The ancient book of secrets
Written by William Mattox & Jordan Sacchetti (with help by T.J. Mattox & Chris Mattox).
This Book it dedicated to: our parents who taught us
"Let your imagination soar, it will only be a matter of time before you can achieve anything you could have never imagined!"
And to all our friends who stuck by thick and thin throughout our journey to making the wonderful book your reading today
This is also to any and all people who always believed in the underdogs!
Chapter 1
"The Field Trip"
"Okay class; now remember our field trip to the national museum is next Monday" Mrs. Smith said to the class.
"Remember to bring your permission slips back by Friday" she added.
It was the last block of the day and the bell was just about to ring, me and my best friends sat in the back of the class talking to one another.
"Man, this is going to suck, there is never anything interesting but a bunch of bones at the museum!" said Matt nerlosky in an almost sleepy voice. He was never one to do something dull, he tries to find adventure in everything even school.
"True" said Jaden song with a mouth full of chips.
"But then again I heard that there is an awesome book locked up somewhere in the museum, maybe we can try and find it?" he said trying not to spit out his food. Jaden loved chips, you can put any bag of chips in his hand and he will love you for life, so we call him Chip, he was also the jokester of the group and could crack a joke in just about any situation.
Then there is me, James Thompson, I'm sort of the leader of the group, I love adventure and would do anything to go on one. I am one of the biggest geeks when it comes to school work. We all lived in the same neighborhood, practically on the same street; we hang out every day and go on some of the craziest adventures. Yet next Monday we would have never thought that we are going to be on the biggest adventure of our lives.
"RRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGG!" The bell had rung and every one scurried out of the classroom, all heading towards the buses and the cars. Then all of a sudden the bus driver started to beep the horn, and she started saying
"Hurry up! I don't have all day, I got a life to you know",
Now the bus driver has always been mean to kids, she has never liked kids. Especially me and my friends. Because one time she kicked us off the bus so we had to walk to school, and it was the worst rain storm of the day. We eventually arrived at the bus stop outside of our street, the bus driver slammed the bus doors and drive off with a puff of smoke from the exhaust pipe.
"Man, what a witch she is! I hate her guts!" said Matt.
We all started laughing and then Chip said with the biggest smile
"I could not agree with you more, just imagine riding your car down the street and see her on her broom stick! With a black cat on the handle"
We laughed for a few minutes then all went home. A few days has passed and it was Monday morning the day of the field trip, it was just after 6:00 AM when Matt's alarm clock went off with the most annoying sound "BEEP, BEEP,CHIRP,BEEP,CHIRP CHRIP" His mother came in to his room and shouted
"Matt if you do not get up I will wake you up! And I'm sure to the heavens you don't want that!"
Matt just responded in a Low grumble,
"10 minutes mom pleases!"
"Well you forced this upon yourself!" His mom said with a grin as she throws a bucket of extremely cold ice water! This meant on impact made Matt jump out of his bed and hit the ground with a thud.
Five minutes later, matt walked down the stairs looking like he was about to fall on his face dead, he sat at the breakfast table and made himself a bowl of cereal. When his mother came in to the kitchen and asked
"Did you turn in the permission slip form to Mrs. Smith?"
"Yes Mom," Matt replied, almost falling asleep in his bowl of cheerios
"Good because I'm not going to waste precious gas to drive your butt to the museum" she said with a tone. He eventually walked up to the bus stop and met up with everyone.
"You ready to go to the museum today Matt?" said Chip
"No, I'm so tired my mom woke me up at 6:00 today" he replied
"Oh yah, your mom is strict I remember the time I slept over" said chip
"She woke us both up at I think it was 5:30 in the morning with a blow horn and maybe us brush our teeth and do push-ups before breakfast!"
Matt decided to change the subject
"Well I'm pretty sure the museum will be more boring than when Mr. Emanuel decided to give us that one hundred-twenty question test in geometry!"
"Oh yah! I almost failed that test because I fell asleep half way through it!" Chip chimed in. the bus roars up to the bus stop the driver swings the doors open and shouted
"Get in or scram, I don't have time to put up with you little brats"
We ran onto the bus and sat behind a couple of nerd who were talking about the museum. The first nerd said
"Dude, I can't wait to get to the museum! It will be interesting to the see the Bradypus tridactylusexhibit! Or the Pale-throated Three-toed Sloth"
"I really want to see the prehistoric sciurus carolinenis or the Eastern gray squirrel!" said the second one.
We get to school and had started to get off the bus when Matt tripped over his own two feet and fell down the bus stairs and toppled over the administrator.
"Sorry sir, I did not mean to run into you" Matt said
"It's okay, it was an accident" the administrator replied.
We walked to class and sat down waiting for Mrs. Smith to show up, she was almost always late to class because she drives a car that was possibly the slowest car in the world and she lives ten miles from the school. The door swung open and Mrs. Smith walked in wearing what looked like a blue dress with dinosaurs and dinosaur bones with almost matching ear rings.
"Sorry I'm late class; my car got a flat, and ran out of gas coming to school." She spoke out
"Now then, let us grab all our belongings and head to the bus, we got a lot to see!" she added
We all grabbed our stuff and started out the door, Chip, of course decided to stop by the lunch room and grab a bag of Doritos for the road. We got to the bus loop and up came the which of a bus driver unlocking the doors to the bus she quickly turned around and gave every kid a evil hard looking stare and spoke out
"OKAY! Listen up!"
"I'm only here to take you brats to and from this museum, I'm nobody's mother so I expect the best from you, any fighting, any food or drinks dropped or spilled on my bus, I will pull over and I will kick who ever did it out and they can walk!" she added on
"Oh and another thing, I expect you to get on and sit orderly there is no standing, no rolling down the windows, and there will not be any horse play what so ever!"
She barked. After she finished making us feel we were loading up to go to a high end prison we all got on the bus and sat down and the bus started driving, I can tell it was going to be a long trip!
We ended up talking for a good two hours about how we will sneak off and try to find that book Chip talked about the other day, we finally pulled up to the museum and started getting off the bus.
"Well after two hours of sitting we are finally here!" I said with a grin,
Well the bus driver slammed the doors as soon as the last kid got off and drove off like she was never going to come back. We walked up to the front doors and up to the kiosk where we got our maps, tickets, and some really cool looking fake necklace that had a ying yang symbol on it.
"Okay class" Mrs. Smith began to say
"We are going to take the tour of the museum then after word you all can go your separate ways and explore!" She said as the tour guide approached
The tour guide started to speak and said
"hello everyone my name is MR. theomatcan but you all can call me James!" he started to say when three random guys ran up to him, they looked to be pailiotoligest with their safari hats and tan clothing with big boots and a funky French mustache.
"Sir! We have found an amazing new find! It's in the lab right now being analyzed! You must come and see" one of the guys said
"Hmmm, interesting I will see once I'm done giving this tour" Mr. Theomatcan replied
The other guy looked at him and shook his head and started walking off
"Now then, why don't we begin in the front of the museum with the exhibits of some famous people named Lewis and Clark?" he had chuckled and then we took off on our tour.
"this is the early human, the Neanderthal! Little is known about them except that most where found in Africa and have been the only life to have buried their dead before they evolved" he said with excitement.
He looked at his watch to check the time, the time on the watch read 12:30 with that he looked back at us and said "Well kids it looks like its time for lunch, we will finish the tour later" we all went to the cafeteria and started to get in line. There was a sign in the front of the line that read "Menu for Today" and right below it had what they where serving "Hot dogs, hamburgers, broccoli, Mac & cheese, chips, and a drink" Well as soon as Chip saw the menu he dashed to the line like he was being chased by a wild animal, we had got in line and a few minutes later where looking for a place to sit, we ended up at the very last table in the back that no one was sitting at. And we all started talking about the book.
"This food is flipping great I can eat this all day" said Chip
"Hey! Watch it your spitting food all over me" said Matt trying to dodge the flying pieces of food
"And besides, we are suppose to find out how we are going to find the book, not chugging down hotdogs" he added.
Little did we know that Mr. Theomatcan had went to the lab to talk with the paleontologist about the discovery they made before the tour began at the beginning of the day
"What have you scum ball, nitwits found this time!" Theomatcan said with a raspy voice.
"Well s-s-sir, we went back to the site where the book was found a few months ago, and when we arrived we noticed a shine ball looking thing-
"What shiny ball looking thing!" Theomatcan interrupted
"It appeared to be a crystal ball" the paleontologist said.
We have just finished lunch when our tour guide Theomatcan came in and announced to the whole class
"Students, I have to tend to a very important business, so I will have to cancel the tour for today"
"You may explore the museum as intended, I hope you all have a good day" he added on.
"That was weird" said matt looking blankly at the rest of our group
"I bet he's up to something, I never really trusted him" add Chip
After that we all went and started exploring the museum. Now knowing how big the museum was me, Chip, and Matt all smuggled our walkie-talkies with us. And we all went to the grand hall which was the middle of the museum.
"Okay guys lets all switch to channel 4; no security guards have 4 on the walkies." I said to the gang.
"Now remember if you find anything report over the radio, and check in every 10 or so minutes" I added.
"Got it!" the rest of the crew replied in unison.
We all separated; Chip went to the dinosaur exhibit, Matt to the early human exhibit, and I went to the medieval exhibit. As Chip was walking down the dinosaur exhibit he noticed a tall dark man in a black suit with a black top hat and a cane that had the shape of a dragon head for the handle, he appeared to be going into the restricted area of the museum where they kept artifacts that was still being studied.
"Hey! Guy? You, there?" Chip radioed
"Yah, I'm here!" I replied
"Yo' I got you five by five" Matt chimed in
"Hey guys I just saw a man walk into the restricted area of the museum he looks like Mr. Theomatcan!" Chip informed us.
"Okay we will be there in just a minute, where are you in the dinosaurs?" Matt Said.
"I'm next to the T-rex!" Chip replied.
"Got it!" I chimed in.
After about thirty minutes of walking me and matt finally met up with chip, we where discussing about what chip had saw and came up with a solution to find out if what he as saying was correct.
"Well, I never really saw his face, just his body and what he had on" Chip began explaining.
"He had a white pal face with dark sun rimed glasses" Described Chip
"He also had a dark black suit with a black cape and red lining" He added.
Right after chip got done describing the person a security officer came up behind matt and looked down on us I started thinking "Uh Oh! We're in trouble now!"
"H-H-Hey, G-G-Guys! I think we're in trouble" I said with a stuttered almost broken voice.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? THIS SECTION IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATION!" the officer shouted at us.
"Come with me, we're going on a little trip" he said.
Well we all knew where we where going, to the security room of the museum and he is going to get us all in trouble.
"Man, my mom is going to kill me if she finds out where I am!" said matt in a broken voice.
"Okay, now kids, tell me what you where doing in the off limits section of the dinosaur exhibit?" The officer said.
"Well sir, we got lost and-"
"Got lost?" the officer interrupted,
"How do you get lost? There is a directory map in front of the exhibit" he added
"Well you see….. We…Uh…. We-"
"We did not see the Directory…Uh…Because...We were not paying A-A-Attention" Matt Interrupted
I whispered to matt "Nice save man"
"Thanks" he replied back.
The Guard looked at us with a weird "I Don't believe you face" then turned around to look at the monitors for a minute or two. He looked at one of the screens and then back to us.
"okay, I will let you go, just thank your lucky stars that I'm not calling any of your parents!" he said as he opened the door to let us out of the room and go back to our field trip.
"Okay guys let's try not to get caught again okay!." I said to Matt and Chip as we walked out of the room.
A few hours have passed by and we did not see any of our class mates anywhere, they where no were to be found, no one we knew was in any exhibits, the cafeteria, and even the gift shop. I turned around and looked at the others.
"Guys I think we got left behind!"
"Well, it could be worse" Said Matt,
"Ya we could be trapped in here all night!" Chip rang in..
"Well maybe we should try calling our parents" I suggested
"And what get caught again then grounded for not sticking with the group. I don't think so" said Matt.
"I say this is the perfect opportunity to find that book" He added with the biggest grin I have ever seen.
"Matt's right, James, this would be the prime time, I mean we can wait until the whole museum closes and look for the book in that room where that strange guy walked into' Said Chip.
We wondered around the museum until they announced that they were closing for the night. That's when we all found a spot to hide and no one, not even the cameras could not see us..
Time passed and the night guard finally passed us and locked the doors to go home. It was about 12:00 when the doors closed for the night..
"Okay guys, let's go look for that book!" I said.
We spent hours looking for the book until we all met up in the same room that the stranger we saw earlier in the day went into. As we huddled around figuring out a different plan we heard voices coming from behind a door down the corridor.
"Sir, we found out how to make the crystal ball worked!" said one of the paleontologist
"Finally, it took you dunce buckets long enough."
"how does it work?"
"well sir, we have found that if you chant the words on the front of the book then you hold it above the pit of fire it will active and you will only say the date or year you would like to visit"
Theomatcan took the crystal ball out of the paleontologist's hand and then the book from the shelf.