The Journal of Curious Letters (The 13th Reality #1) (14 page)

He told himself he didn’t know why he wanted to wait, but his heart knew the truth. Deep inside, he hoped his son would decide to tell him on his own what was going on. Edgar could hold out just a little bit longer—maybe a day or two—watching his son’s every move.

Down below, Tick waved as his short friend disappeared down the dark road.

Quickly, Edgar turned and went back to his room.

~

The next day was Friday, the last day of school for two weeks, and Tick thought it would never end. Having enjoyed a grand total of four hours of sleep the night before, he nodded off in class constantly, waking with an unpleasant string of drool on his chin more than once. Mr. Chu was the only teacher who gave him a hard time about it, but Tick survived.

Finally, the last bell of the day rang.

Tick was at his locker, the excitement of the coming vacation days perking him up a bit, when disaster struck in the form of a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Billy “The Goat” Cooper sneering at him with arms folded, his goons gathered behind his massive body.

Just wait it out, Tick, just wait it out.

“Well, looky here,” Billy said, his voice the sound of marbles being crushed in a vice. “Looks like Ticky Stinkbottom and his pet Barf Scarf are excited to go home and wait for Santy Claus. Whatcha getting this year,
Atticus?
A new teddy bear?”

“Yes,” Tick said, stone faced, knowing it would throw the Goat off track.

Billy faltered, surely having expected Tick to adamantly say no or try to walk away. “Well, then . . . I hope . . . it smells bad.”

Tick really wanted to say something sarcastic—
It’s a teddy bear, not a Billy the Goat doll
—but his common sense won out. “It probably will, with my luck,” he said instead.

“Yeah, it
will.
Just like your feet.” Billy snorted out a laugh, and his cronies joined in.

Tick couldn’t believe how idiotic this guy was, but held his face still and said nothing.

“Here’s an early Christmas present for you, Ticky Stinkbottom,” Billy said, and his cronies’ forced laughter ended abruptly. “Stay in your locker for three minutes, instead of the usual ten. Then, go into the bathroom and stick your head in a toilet. Do that and we won’t bother you until we get back from Christmas break. Deal?”

Tick felt his stomach drop because he knew Billy would send a spy to make sure he did what he’d been ordered to do. “With my hair wet, I might catch a cold on the way home.”

Billy reached out and slammed Tick up against the locker, sending a metallic clang echoing down the hallway. “Then I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have school for two weeks, now isn’t it?” He let go and stood back. “Come on, guys, let’s go.”

As they walked off, Tick lowered his head and stepped into his locker, closing the door behind him.

~

A few minutes later, he stood alone in the boys’ bathroom, staring at his distorted image in a moldy, warped mirror. He pulled down his scarf with two fingers and examined his birthmark, which looked just as ugly as ever. He felt himself sliding into that state of depression he’d visited so often before he had resolved to quit letting the bullies rule his life.

But then he thought of Mothball and Rutger, the letters and clues, and the way they all made him feel
important.
He snapped out of the gloom and doom, and smiled at himself in the mirror.

Forget those morons. I’m not sticking my head in the toilet, spy or no spy.

A moving smudge suddenly appeared on the reflection of his face, like black moss growing across the mirror. Startled, Tick reached out and touched it with his finger, but only felt the cool hardness of the glass. In a matter of seconds, the entire mirror was dark, blacking out everything. Tick took a step back, a shot of panic shooting through him.

The blackness grew, enveloping the wall and the sink, moving outward in all directions. It took on substance, puffing out like black cotton, devouring the entire bathroom wall. Tick spun to see that all the walls and the ceiling were covered now, dark smoke everywhere. The room looked like the result of a five-alarm fire, but Tick couldn’t see flames and felt no urge to cough.

Then, with a great whooshing sound, every bit of the strange smoky substance rushed to the exit of the bathroom in streaks of wispy darkness, coalescing there into a big ball of black smoke. Tick’s heart stuttered to a stop as he realized what hovered between him and the exit.

A Tingle Wraith.

Tick moved to run, but stopped instantly. He had nowhere to go. The Wraith completely blocked the one and only exit out of the bathroom, its dark smoke already forming into the same ancient, bearded face he’d seen in the alley a few weeks ago. Mothball’s words about the creature came back to him, sending a sickening lurch through his body.

If any man, woman, or child hears the Death Siren for thirty seconds straight, their brain turns right to mush. Nasty death, that.

Tick turned to look for another way out. A tiny window let some daylight in, but other than that, there were only stalls and urinals. He ran to the thin slat of a window and grabbed the metal crank bar to open the window. He twisted the bar clockwise and a horrible screech of metal on metal boomed through the room as the glass slowly tilted outward.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew the Wraith would start its deathly cry soon. He looked over his shoulder and saw the mouth forming into a wide, black abyss.

Tick quickened his pace, cranking the window as hard as he could. It jammed when it reached the halfway point. He pushed and pulled but the lever wouldn’t budge. He beat against the glass with both fists, but ended up with bruised knuckles, leaving the dirty glass unbroken. Desperate, he tried to squeeze through the window anyway, pushing one arm through. It didn’t take long to see it was hopeless. The crack was too thin.

He ran to the stalls, jumping up on one of the toilets to see if he could lift a ceiling tile and climb up. But it was too far above his head.

And then he heard it, the worst sound to ever beat his eardrums, a cacophony of nightmarish wails. The sound of dying men on a battlefield. The sound of a mom screaming for a lost child. The sound of criminals at the gallows, waiting to drop into their nooses. All mixed together into one horribly terrifying hum.

The Death Siren.

Thirty seconds.

As the Wraith’s cry increased in volume with every passing second, Tick squirmed his way onto the top of the stall siding, balancing as it creaked and groaned below him. He held on with one hand and reached up with the other, stretching to see if he could touch the tiles. His fingertip brushed it, but that was all.

Frantic, he jumped back down to the floor and ran out of the stall, spinning in a wide circle, looking for ideas, for a way out.

The Death Siren rose in pitch and volume, growing more horrible by the second. Tick covered his ears with both hands, hoping to quell the noise, but the stifled groan he heard was worse. Spookier. Creepier. He knew it was almost over, that he only had a few more breaths until his brain turned to mush from the loud, haunting cry.

He looked directly at the Tingle Wraith. As he stared at its wispy black face, long and old and sad, its mouth bellowing out the terrible sound, Tick realized he had only one choice.

He dropped his hands from his ears, closed his eyes, and ran straight toward the smoky ghost.

Tick held both arms out in front of him, stiffening them like a battering ram, and charged. He crossed the floor in two seconds, his clenched fists the first thing to make contact. Not knowing what to expect, and his mind half insane knowing the thirty seconds were almost up, Tick threw himself forward with every bit of strength in his legs and feet.

A cold, biting tingle enveloped his hands and arms and then his whole body as he ran straight through the black smoke of the Wraith. The Death Siren took on a different pitch—lower, gloomy. Tick felt like he’d dived into a pool of arctic water, everything muffled and frigid and dark.

But then he was through the Wraith’s body, slamming into the wall on the other side. His mind sliding into shock, Tick flung open the bathroom door and threw his body out into the hallway, banging the door shut behind him.

Silence filled the school, but he could still hear a muted ringing in his ears, like the tolling of death bells.

~

Tick crouched on the floor of the hallway, panting for several minutes, exhausted and unable to move another inch. He kept looking at the crack under the bathroom door, sure the Tingle Wraith would follow him, but nothing came out. Mothball had told him the Wraiths couldn’t move very much once they were positioned and formed. Their weapon was the Death Siren.

He finally stood, his nerves and heart settling back to normalcy, filled with relief. Tick felt sure the creature had gone away. Shaking his head as he remembered the horrible feeling of running
through
the Wraith, he set off for home, knowing what he had to do.

It was time to have a little chat with Dad.

~

The next few hours seemed to take days. Tick did his best to act normal: showering to wash away the icky feel of the Tingle Wraith, joking around with Mom and Lisa, playing with Kayla, reading. When his dad finally came home from work, Tick wanted to take him up to his room right that minute and spill the whole story. He couldn’t do this alone anymore. He needed support, and Sofia was just too far away.

But Tick had to wait even longer because after dinner, Dad challenged Tick to a game of Scrabble, which he usually loved, but tonight seemed to drag on longer than ever before. To liven things up, he put down the word “kyoopy,” at which his dad had a fit, demanding a challenge. Tick held in a snicker as he lost the challenge and had to remove the word, losing his turn. He still won by forty-three points.

Finally, as they were cleaning up the game, Tick managed to casually ask his dad to come up to his room for a minute.

“What’s going on, son?” his dad asked, sitting on Tick’s bed, one leg folded up under the other. “You’ve been acting a little strange lately.”

Tick paused, running through the decision one last time in his head. This was it, no turning back. He couldn’t tell his dad about everything tonight and then say he was kidding tomorrow.

All or nothing, now or never.

He chose
all
and
now.

“Dad, there’s a good reason I’ve been acting so crazy.” Tick leaned down and pulled his
Journal of Curious Letters
from underneath the bed where he’d stowed it away that morning. “Remember that letter I got a few weeks ago? The one from Alaska?”

“Yeah. Let me guess—it wasn’t from a nice Pen Pal buddy?”

“No, it was from a stranger, saying he was going to send me a bunch of clues in hopes I could figure out something important that could end up saving a bunch of people.” He paused, expecting his dad to say something, but he only got a blank look, ready to hear more. “I thought it was a joke at first, but then weird things started happening—like the Gnat Rat—and I started receiving the clues and I’ve met some very interesting people and I believe it’s true, Dad. I
know
it’s true.”

Tick expected a laugh, a chastisement, a lecture on not playing make-believe when you’re thirteen years old. But his heart lifted at his dad’s next words.

“Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

And Tick did.

~

It took thirty minutes, and Tick showed his dad every page and note of his journal, hiding nothing, repeating every word he could remember of his conversations with Mothball and Rutger. He told it all, and when he finished, he felt like three loads of concrete had been lifted from his chest.

His dad held the journal in his hands, staring at the front cover for a long minute. Tick waited anxiously, hoping with all his heart that his dad would believe him and offer help.