The Journal of Curious Letters Read online

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  A long pause followed, and Tick began to panic that Mothball would leave without telling him anything else. “So . . . what do I do? What are the messages for? Who is M.G.? What’s supposed to happen on the day he talked about in the first clue?” The questions poured out, even though he knew what her answer would be before she said it.

  “Sorry, can’t speak about it. Master’s orders.”

  Tick wanted to scream. “Well, then I guess there’s not much more for us to talk about, is there?”

  “Not much, you thought right there, little man.”

  Tick shivered, staring absently at the world of white surrounding them. “O . . . kay. So, what do we do now?”

  “Best be on me way, then.” Mothball bowed her head, as if she felt just as awkward as he did. A few seconds later she snapped her fingers and looked up. “Ah, me brain must’ve shut off there for a moment. I forgot something.” She pulled out a small writing pad and a pencil from her pocket. “What’s yer name—if you don’t mind me asking?”

  Her question surprised Tick. “You don’t know? How did you find me if—”

  “Just be needin’ to verify, I do.” She held her pencil at the ready, waiting for his answer.

  “Atticus Higginbottom. But everyone calls me Tick.”

  She scanned the pad with the tip of her pencil. “Ah, there you are.” She wrote a big checkmark where the pencil had stopped, then reached into a different pocket and pulled out a crumpled yellow envelope. She held it out for Tick. “’Ere ya go, little man. Congrats to ya on makin’ a very wise and brave choice not to burn the Master’s first letter. Now this should keep you occupied for a spell.”

  Nothing was written on the front of the envelope, but Tick took it, knowing it had to be the second clue. He didn’t know why he felt so surprised. M.G. never said all the messages would come through the mail. But it did seem odd to receive two on the same day. Maybe M.G. was sending another kind of message altogether: Never assume anything, expect the unexpected.

  He folded the envelope and put it in his pocket, anxious to go home and read it. “Thanks. I guess I won’t bother asking you any questions about it.”

  “Shapin’ up right nicely, you are.” Mothball smiled. “Very well, until next time, then. Best of luck to you and yours and all that.”

  Tick felt an overwhelming feeling that if she left, he’d never understand anything that was going on. He desperately wanted her to stay, to talk, to help. But having just met her, he didn’t know what to do or say. “You really have to go?” he asked, like a small child begging Grandma to stay just a little while longer.

  Mothball’s face softened into the nicest, kindest expression Tick had ever seen. “’Fraid so, little man. Got others to visit, ya know. Quite weary on me legs, it is, but not much choice in the matter. You’ll do well—me bones tell me as much.”

  “Will I ever see you again?”

  “I hopes ya do, Master Tick. I certainly hopes ya do.”

  And with that, the tall woman turned and walked back into the thick copse of trees, her large shoulders sending an avalanche of snow off the limbs where she brushed them.

  Tick stared for awhile, half-expecting to see a magic poof of smoke or the fiery blastoff of an alien spaceship, but nothing happened. Mothball had simply vanished into the trees.

  His life had turned completely crazy and for some reason it made him more excited than he’d felt in a very long time.

  He set off for home with a smile on his face.

  ~

  Mothball waited until the boy went around a bend in the snow-covered road before she stepped out from behind the thick tree where she’d been hiding. She shook her head, bewildered by the exuberance and innocence of youth. He was a fine one, this Atticus Higginbottom, and though she knew she wasn’t supposed to do it, she’d settled on the one she’d be rooting for in this whole mess.

  She walked the half-mile to the designated spot that lay deeper in the forest. No one in these parts probably remembered that this place had once been a burial ground, its wooden grave markers long since decayed and crumbled to dust.

  Poor deadies, she thought. No one comin’ to pay respects and such.

  She triggered the nanolocator signal for Master George, then waited for her boss to work his navigation skills. Funny little man, he was. A good man, really. As nervous as a midge bug caught in a toad paddy, but a kind and gentle soul when you dug down deep. Why, he’d saved her life, he did, and she owed him for it.

  Several long moments passed. Mothball fidgeted back and forth on her feet, wondering if the restless man had messed up a thingamajig or whatchamacallit on the Barrier Wand. He was a very precise old chap, and usually responded in a matter of seconds, especially when expecting the nanolocator signal, as he should be now. Mothball had been right on schedule.

  A small deer bounced along nearby, leaving delicate little footprints in the thick layer of snow. To Mothball’s delight, it stopped to examine the unusually tall visitor. She was so used to scaring creatures away, it felt nice for a change to see something not turn and take flight.

  “Watch out for the little man, won’t you?” she said, glad no one was around to see her talking to a deer. “Tough times ahead, he’s got. Could use a friend like you.”

  The animal didn’t respond, and Mothball laughed.

  A few seconds later, she felt the familiar tickle at the back of her neck. As she winked away from the forest, vanishing in an instant, she couldn’t help but wonder what the deer would think of such a sight.

  Chapter

  8

  ~

  A Very Important Date

  Tick tore open the envelope from Mothball the second he’d left the odd woman’s line of vision. He had to pull his gloves off to do it, and the cold bit into them with tiny frozen pinpricks. With no surprise, he pulled out a single piece of cardstock that looked exactly like the others. His fingers growing stiff in the frigid air, he read the single paragraph.

  At the appropriate time, you must say the magic words with your eyes closed. If you can’t speak and close your eyes at the same time, you belong in a hospital. As for what the magic words are, I can’t tell you and I never will. Examine the first letter carefully and you will work them out.

  He read it again three times, then stuffed the letter and the envelope into his coat pocket. Shivering as he put his gloves back on, he couldn’t help but feel a mixture of excitement and wariness.

  Magic words? Eyes closed? What is this, Oz?

  Things were getting just plain weird. Pulling his scarf tighter, Tick rubbed his arms, trudging through the snow toward home.

  ~

  He got to his house just in time for dinner, which he wolfed down like a kid determined to eat all the Halloween candy before a sibling stole it. He barely heard the conversation around the table and excused himself after stuffing the last three bites’ worth of spaghetti into his mouth all at once.

  He leapt up the stairs to his room, determined to finally put some major thought into figuring out the clues. Something about seeing an eight-foot-tall woman appear out of the woods on a snowy day made everything seem real. Though he had no idea about the whys or hows or whats, he was now committed to the game.

  Tick unfolded the original letter and both clues and put them on his desk, pointing his lamp to shine directly on their stark black words. He reread the first letter from M.G., which seemed to be mostly an introduction to set things up. The most recent message said the first letter would reveal “magic words” he’d need to say on a special day, but he’d get to that later. One thing at a time.

  The first clue obviously told him the date of that special day—the day when he’d have to have solved the ultimate puzzle spelled out by the coming clues. He focused on the paragraph, reading it several times.

  Mark your calendar. One week from the day before the day after the yesterday that comes three weeks before six months from six weeks from now minus fort
y-nine days plus five tomorrows and a next week, it will happen. A day that could very well change the course of your life as you know it.

  I must say, I hope to see you there.

  As he read through it, he tried to visualize in his mind the stated time periods, adding and subtracting as he went. But by the time he got to the end, the words always jumbled up and fell apart inside his thoughts. He realized he needed to treat it like a math problem, solving it in sections until everything could be added together.

  He pulled out a pencil and drew parentheses around phrases that were easy to identify as a stand-alone period of time. Then he assigned letters to them to help him solve them in the most logical order. All the while, he knew he must be the biggest dork this side of the Pacific Ocean, but he didn’t care. He was just starting to have fun.

  He first attempted to figure out the clue from beginning to end, adding and subtracting time with each new phrase as it came in order. But he kept hitting a snag because of the words “before” and “six weeks from now” in the middle of the paragraph. The phrases seemed to split the timeline into two pieces and he realized he needed to work around them, not from first word to last word.

  After a half hour and lots of erasing and starting over, he copied the phrases and their assigned letters to a different sheet of paper. Then, using the Seattle Seahawks calendar that hung next to his bed (which also had a one page, year-at-a-glance section for this year and the next), he penciled in the dates as he figured them out. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and took a look:

  Beginning Date: Today, November 26.

  A. –6 weeks from now = January 7

  B. –6 months from A = July 7

  C. –the day before the day after the yesterday that comes 3 weeks before B = 3 weeks plus 1 day before B = 22 days before B = June 15

  D. –1 week from C = June 22

  E. –D minus 49 days = May 4

  F. –E plus 5 tomorrows and a next week = E plus 12 days = May 16

  He went over his math again to make sure he’d done it right, and was just about to put the calendar away, quite satisfied with himself, when he realized he’d missed the easiest and most important part of the clue. The beginning date.

  You idiot, he thought.

  Whoever M.G. was, he or she would have no way of knowing when people received the cryptic letters, much less when they would test out the first clue to figure out the

  all-important date. Tick reread one of the lines from the first letter:

  Beginning today (the fifteenth of November), I am sending out a sequence of special messages . . .

  November the fifteenth. Even before officially starting the messages, M.G. had provided the mystery’s first hint: the start date needed to solve Clue Number One.

  Tick quickly went through the calendar again, calculating three times what the date should be based on the new starting date, erasing and rewriting. Finally, confident that he’d solved it, his paper showed a different result:

  May 6

  At first, he worried that the results were only ten days apart when the beginning dates had been off by eleven, but after looking at the calendar three times, he determined it had to do with June only having thirty days.

  May sixth. The all-important date. Just over five months from now.

  Tick wrote the date in big letters on the bottom of the first clue, then ripped out the one-page calendar and stapled it to the back of the cardstock. He examined the second clue for awhile, which really did nothing but refer him to the first letter he’d received as a code or something to figure out the “magic words.” After an hour of staring at the typed message, his brain exhausted, he gave up. He folded everything up together and stuck the stack in his desk drawer.

  For the rest of the evening, Tick couldn’t quit thinking about the first clue. According to the stranger known as M.G., something very important was to happen on May sixth of the next year.

  But what?

  ~

  Much later that night, after playing Scrabble with his mom and Lisa (Tick’s best word: galaxy, 34 points on a double-word score), eating two-thirds of a bag of Doritos while watching SportsCenter with his dad (swearing on his life he’d never eat another chip—a promise he knew wouldn’t last past tomorrow), analyzing the clues for a while (still no luck with the magic words), then reading for an hour in bed (the latest seven-inch-thick fantasy novel he’d checked out from the library), Tick finally went to sleep.

  In the middle of the night, ripping him from a dream in which he’d just received the very prestigious Best Chess Player in the World trophy, crowds chanting his name and cheering wildly, Tick heard the sounds again: the metallic whirring, the scraping, the patter of tiny footsteps. All coming from inside the closet, where the door was closed.

  Something bumped against the door.

  Tick sat up, suddenly very, very awake.

  Chapter

  9

  ~

  The Gnat Rat

  Tick’s first instinct was to run and get his dad again, the creepy chills of the night he’d first heard the noises returning in full force. But he steeled himself, resolving not to go running off like a baby again until he knew it was all for real. Whatever was moving around in his closet couldn’t be very big, and it had to have a reasonable explanation. Maybe it was just a squirrel that had chewed a hole through the wall—too small for them to have noticed that night when he and his dad had searched the room.

  What about the mechanical fan sound? he thought. He told himself that maybe the little squirrel had accidentally eaten his dad’s electric shaver, but then realized he was probably one step away from the mental hospital talking to himself like this, and telling jokes at that. Just go check it out, he told himself sternly.

  He reached up to his headboard, keeping his eyes riveted on the closet, and flicked on the lamp. The warm glow banished the dark shadows, illuminating fully the door with its many posters and sports banners taped haphazardly across it. Encouraged and braver with the light on, Tick swung his legs around and stood up from his bed, hoping the closet door didn’t burst open when he did so. Nothing moved. The sound had completely stopped.

  Maybe I just imagined it. I haven’t heard it since it woke

  me up.

  Think it all he wanted, he couldn’t convince himself. A slice of fear cut through his heart, making it pound even harder, sending a pulse of heat through his veins. His hands were sweaty and his shoulders and back tingled, making him remember what Mothball had said about the smoke-ghost he’d seen in the alley. The Tingle Wraith. But its sound had been totally different, and Tick didn’t really expect to see one in his closet.

  No, this was something different, if anything at all.

  He crept over to the door with ginger steps, staring at the thin sliver of space between the floor and the bottom of the door. If anything shot out from that crack, Tick knew he’d die of a heart attack on the spot. He stopped a couple of feet away and paused, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  Just open it, you sissy.

  He reached forward and twisted the handle, knowing his dad had done the exact same thing just over a week ago, remembering that there had been nothing there then.

  He pulled the door open and stepped back.

  Something very odd rested on top of a pile of dirty clothes.

  Something Tick had never seen before in his life.

  ~

  Edgar Higginbottom was a light sleeper, which he hated. Anything and everything woke him up. Cars outside, dogs barking, a child crying. When his kids had been babies, Edgar had woken up the instant any of them fussed. Often he’d lain there, wishing against all hope that Lorena would somehow hear and offer to take a turn checking on them or feeding them. But he always got up after a few seconds, feeling guilty for being so selfish after all his wife had gone through to bring those kids into the world in the first place.

  This time, though, it had been a sudden light that snapped him awake, followed by t
he slight creak of someone walking in the house. He pushed himself up onto one elbow and looked at the door to his room, which stood slightly ajar. Judging from the angle of the shadows caused by the light, and the direction from which the sound had come, he guessed Tick had gotten out of bed for some reason.

  What’s he doing up at—Edgar looked at his clock—three in the morning?

  He flopped back down onto his side, then rolled his big body onto his back, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he stared at the ceiling. Then, with a grunt, he threw off the covers and sat up on the edge of the bed, searching for his slippers with his toes.

  He found them, put them on, and stood up.

  ~

  Tick’s mind seemed to split into two factions as he stared at the object. One side wanted him to run because anything that magically appeared in a closet had to be bad. The other side wanted to investigate because the thing looked completely harmless. The latter won the battle, his curiosity once again victorious over common sense.

  He stepped closer and dropped to his knees, leaning forward.

  It was a strange metal contraption, about a foot long, five or six inches wide, and maybe eight or nine inches tall. Its shiny gray surface had no blemishes, sparkling and clean, with round, gear-looking things attached to the side. A thin handle was attached to the top of the box and a small snout-like nose and a sinuous metallic tail were attached to either end. Along the bottom edges a series of ten evenly spaced rods poked out from the box and curved toward the floor, ending in a flat piece of metal about the size of a quarter. The first thought that popped into Tick’s mind was the thing looked like a stainless steel accordion, ready to march away.