The Lost Days (21 page)
Authors: Rob Reger
I gave Fridge Box II
a decent burial in the Dumpster out back. But I wasn’t all that sad to see it go.
Oh. AND. The WONDERFUL part. The splendorous, beautimous, fantastiffical part is this: If the cats belong with the van, and the van belongs to my golem, and my golem belongs to me, then all of that adds up to one thing: Had a knockdown, laughing, meowing, squirming hugfest with them to celebrate.
The Cats are Mine!!!
Had a knockdown, laughing, meowing, squirming hugfest with them to celebrate.
Later
Have found the Letter From Emma!!!!!!!!!
Here’s how it happened: I was hanging out in the van trying to have a nice, relaxing nightmare, or get some inspiration for my next breakthrough, or, I don’t know, fully recover from amnesia, and the my cats were being just extremely pesky. Instead of piling on top of me as instructed, they were all over the van, walking on my face, making their collars jingle in my ear, tussling one another, etc.—at least, Miles, NeeChee, and Sabbath were doing all that. When I sat up to open the door and let them out, I saw that McFreely was quietly scratching up the upholstery from the floor between the two front seats. Now…I just don’t know what to think of this. Maybe it’s all a coincidence, but I think it’s fairly odd that she would A) Get the boy cats distracting me, B) Scratch RIGHT THERE, of all places, C) Stop when she had pulled up enough of the upholstery to reveal the corner of the letter, and D) Look directly at me and meow like “Are you happy?”
She is a very mysterious feline!!
Anyway, the Letter’s on the next page.
F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF
E
MMA
L
E
S
TRANDE
My dear great-niece
,
How unfortunate it is that you and I will never meet, but fate has ordained that I will be dead before you are born. I am arranging with a friend to have this letter delivered to you once you are thirteen years of age. Understand, as I do, that knowing each other in life is hardly necessary; you and I will grow to know each other quite well nonetheless. As a sort of introduction, I am leaving you all of my property, and ask that you lay claim to it as soon as possible. Of course you will need to prove yourself worthy first.
The situation is as follows. Your inheritance, including one asset in particular of exceptional value, rests in a small town called Blackrock. I am enclosing a sum of money so that you can make the necessary plans to spend some time away from home. I leave the decision in your hands, but I suspect you will want to devise a subterfuge so that no parent or guardian insists on accompanying you.
I give you this stern warning: A very serious threat currently exists in Blackrock—a person who, if the facts were revealed, would stop at
nothing
to rob you
of what is rightfully yours. Do not, under any circumstance, approach Blackrock until your defenses are prepared. At the very least, you will need to be incognito. If only there were some way you could defend your very
mind
—but I am afraid that is impossible, or that the solution is beyond my tired old brain. Dear niece, I would like to say that I have every confidence that you will find a way to remove the threat and take full possession of your property. My sources have assured me that you have a better chance of success than most people would. However, I must be honest with you: Your opponent is powerful and has even more powerful allies.
I apologize for the dearth of solid information in this letter, but I am sure you understand that it is impossible. This letter is incriminating enough already, and if it should fall into the wrong hands…One thing I can give you: a point of contact—my employee, Rachel, at a café called the El Dungeon. It will be a good place for you to start.
Follow your dreams, my child.
Your great-aunt,
Whew.
Where do I begin with all that?
Well, I’m going to make the following
educated
wild guesses:
- My goal here in Blackrock is to take possession of my inheritance—Great-Aunt Emma’s estate.
- The estate probably consists of the El Dungeon building and all its oddball treasures, the amazing secret closet, and, uh, the minipark, or something.
- The one exceptionally valuable asset is probably either, I don’t know, the matchstick DeLorean (ha), or the customer base at the El Dump (ahahahah). Seriously though, I bet the real treasure is hidden behind the locked door in the secret closet.
- Possible opponents: the mayor? The police—nah, she said “powerful”! Attikol? Ümlaut? Curls? Crazy Hilda??? Would like to think it’s the police, or Curls…but am afraid it is probably Attikol.
- It seems that, at least for now, my opponent doesn’t realize he’s my opponent: He hasn’t discovered that my inheritance is valuable to him.
- Great-Aunt Emma expected there would be some kind of attack on my mind. Which I am afraid is probably Jakey’s psychic power.
- In light of current information, I now have a much better attitude toward my bad case of amnesia. Still, I will have
to be extremely careful to prevent Jakey from knowing about certain…unusual items. - I could just wait for Professor Ümlaut’s Prophylactery and Revue and Uncle Attikol’s Deadly Dollhouse to leave town, and then claim my inheritance, except
- 8A) They come here every year, and
- 8B) Because of the stupid challenge I gave Attikol, he now owns most of Blackrock.
- 8A) They come here every year, and
- So I guess I have to somehow get Attikol (and Jakey) to leave Blackrock forever. Without letting them know why.
- Even if I do manage to accomplish this, I still don’t know how I’m going to get my memory back.
- Rachel totally bailed on her duty to help me out. Where is she, anyway? And why isn’t she here, helping me out?
- Whatever subterfuge I devised to keep my parent or guardian from accompanying me to Blackrock, it’s bound to have some kind of time limit. Which could be either my salvation or my complete undoing.
- I am screwed.
Day 26
HamHawk made his emotional goodbyes to Raven today. He has sold his house to Attikol like everyone else and is moving to Chicago. I have been too wrapped up in closet-diving, van-reclaiming, and mystery-solving to think about it, but now I realize I haven’t seen
any of the other regulars in at least a full day. Curls and the Ümlaut crew are still here as usual, but they’ve lost some of their steam now that they have no audience but themselves. Anyway, it was hurting me to watch HamHawk tell Raven wistful things like “I’ll call you from Chicago, OK?” when she was barely responding, so I went out to walk around town and scope the situation a bit. The streets of Blackrock are looking surprisingly empty, aside from unwanted belongings being piled up on the sidewalk as people leave town. Many, many buildings are also empty. Most of them have been pushed one inch to the east and are now in the process of falling down. And almost all the rest have construction crews working to push them one inch to the east. Thereby knocking them down. I guess buildings don’t take well to being pushed to the east. Lucky for Attikol I never specified they had to stay intact.
Had a moment of terror when I remembered my dream about black liquid coming up from under all those buildings. But everything is looking safely dry. Well, that’s one good thing to hold on to. And all these other things still to worry me: Great-Aunt Emma is still technically the owner of the El Dungeon. And she’s dead. What is going to happen if/when Attikol tries to buy it? If Emma didn’t leave a will, could I claim ownership just because, um, I look a lot like her? And let’s imagine I did own the building. How far would Attikol go to complete his challenge? If the worst happens, and Attikol somehow does push the El Dungeon to the east, how am I going to keep him away from Raven?
What if Jakey comes to see whether I’m over the laryngitis?
What if I accidentally see Jakey on the street?
Later
While thinking this, I suddenly got very nervous and ducked into the nearest building, which happened to be the library. So I figured it was high time I saw the Emma LeStrande room. Hogbark! That was some good stuff. There is another large portrait of Great-Aunt Emma there. With her looking over me, I started reading through the documents she left. (Of course I was hoping for a will, but no dice.) They were all copies of patent applications—you know, those things you turn in to the government when you invent something, so that no one can steal your idea. Here are my favorites:
- Mechanical linen-blackener
- Amplitudinal sandstorm generator
- Snake kibble
- Leafblower annihilator
- Automatic irrigation and feeding system for carnivorous plants
- Cat thoughtwave amplifier
- Method for bronzing live animals without hurting them
- Organic electric wiring to be used inside living plants
- Unbreakable polymer filament synthesized from coffee grounds
- Earwig trap (laughed my cheeks off at that one)
- Magnetic paint
- Method for spinning cat hair into yarn
- Hotrodded slingshot with hidden compartments
