Sighing, he sat up in bed and retrieved the letter and clues from his desk drawer, staring at them for a long moment. As he did, he felt the last ounce of bravery drain from his spirit. Quietly, he crept from his room and took the letters downstairs to the living room.
It was the only room in the house with a fireplace.
Twenty minutes later, the gas-log fire had heated the entire room, its blower wafting warm and comforting air across Tick’s face as he sat directly in front of it, staring at the licking flames. The rest of his family had long since fallen asleep, and he had been extra, extra careful not to wake his freakishly light-sleeping dad. This was Tick’s moment of truth and he needed to be alone.
He gripped the first letter tightly in his right hand, clenching a fist around the wrinkled cardstock. He didn’t know how it worked, but he trusted the instruction told to him by the mystery-person, M.G. If ever he wanted it to stop, just burn the letter and everything would “cease and desist.” Tick had no doubt it was true, just as he had no doubt that Gnat Rats, Tingle Wraiths, and an eight-foot-tall woman named Mothball really and truly existed.
Burn the letter, stop the madness.
The thought had run through his mind a thousand times since he’d first come to consciousness after the brutal gnat attack. Only two clues in—ten to go—and he wanted to quit. Desperately wanted to quit. How could he keep going, when things worse than the Gnat Rat might attack him? How could he, Atticus Higginbottom, a kid with a pretty decent brain but the body of a thirteen year old, fight the forces that some unknown enemy threw at him? How could he do it?
He sat up, crossing his legs under him, facing the fire. He thought about the tremendous ease of simply throwing the letter into the fire not two feet in front of him, of watching it crinkle and shrivel into a crispy ball of black flakes, of returning his life back to normal. He could do it and be done. Forever.
And then it hit him—an odd feeling that started somewhere deep down in his stomach and swelled into his chest, spreading through his fingers and toes.
The first letter said many lives were at stake. Whether that meant ten or ten thousand, Tick didn’t know. Neither did he have any idea how twelve clues, written to him in cryptic messages from some stranger, had anything to do with saving people’s lives. But could he really risk that? Could Tick really be a coward and throw this challenge to the flames, when so much might be on the line? When so many people’s lives were on the line?
Even if it were just one person?
What if that one person was Kayla and her life was in the hands of someone else? The thought gripped Tick’s heart, squeezed it hard. He pictured Kayla’s big-toothed smile, her cute look of concentration when she played on the computer, her giggle fits when Tick tickled her under her arms. Tick’s eyes rimmed with tears. The thought of anything bad happening to his little sister made him feel a sadness that was heavy and bleak.
In that moment, in the darkness of deepest night, sitting in the warmth of a flickering fire and thinking about things far beyond what any kid should have to contemplate, Tick made his decision, committing to himself that he would never waver from it, no matter what.
In that moment, he answered the question posed to him by the one known as M.G.
Will you have the courage to choose the difficult path?
“Yes,” Tick whispered to the flames. “The answer is yes.”
He folded up the letter and turned his back on the fire.
In a place very far from the home of Atticus Higginbottom, Master George awoke with a start. Exactly what had jolted him from sleep, he wasn’t sure, but it didn’t make him very happy. He rather liked the act of blissful slumber and believed very strongly in the old adage about beauty sleep. (Though he knew if Mothball or Rutger were around they’d say something persnickety about him needing to sleep for the next forty years to gain a single ounce of beauty.)
He looked down at his toes, poking out from his red crocheted socks like little mice searching for food. He’d pulled his blanket up too far, exposing his feet, and wondered if the chill of the night had awakened him.
No, he thought. I don’t feel cold. This was something much more. Something shook me.
And then he shot up into a sitting position, any remnant of sleep completely quashed. He threw the covers off, put on his velvet slippers, and shuffled to the next room where all kinds of buzzing machinery and humming trinkets blinked and clinked and chirped. A large computer screen took up the entire left wall. Several hundred names were listed in alphabetical order, their letters glowing green, a variety of symbols and colors to the right of each name.
One of the names had a flashing purple checkmark next to it, which made Master George gasp and sit down in his specially-ordered, magnetically adjustable, ergonomically sophisticated swivel chair. He spun in three complete circles, moving himself with the tips of his toes, almost as though he were dancing. And then he laughed. He laughed loud and long and hard, his heart bursting with pride and joy.
After many disappointments, someone had finally made a Pick, one so powerful it had shaken the very foundation of the Command Center. The ramifications could be enormous, he thought, giddy and still chuckling.
And then, to his utter and complete astonishment, defying every sense of rational thought in his bones, two more purple checkmarks appeared on the screen, almost at the same time.
Three? So close together? Impossible!
He stood up, rocketing the chair backward with the backs of his knees, squinting to make sure it hadn’t been a trick of his eyes. There they were—three purple marks.
While dancing an old Irish jig he’d learned from his great-grandpapa, Master George went in search of his tabby cat, Muffintops. He found her snoozing behind the milk cupboard in the kitchen and yanked her into his arms, hugging her fiercely.
“Dearest Muffintops,” he said, petting her. “We must celebrate right away with some peppermint tea and biscuits!” He set her down and began rummaging through his pots and pans to find a clean teapot. Once he’d set some water on the stove, he straightened and put his hands on his hips, staring down at his whiskered friend.
“My goodness gracious me,” he said. “Three Picks within a few minutes of each other? I daresay we have a lot of work to do.”
Upstairs in his room, Tick was wide awake, despite the late hour.
He studied the first letter from M.G. until the sky outside faded from black to bruised purple and the first traces of dawn cast a pallid glow outside his window. The wind had picked up, the infamous branch that used to haunt his dreams as a kid taking up its age-long duty, scraping the side of the house with its creepy claws of leafless wood. But Tick kept reading, searching, thinking.
The magic words.
He didn’t know what they were, why he needed them, or what would happen on May sixth when he was supposed to say them, but he knew they were vital and he had to figure them out. And the first letter supposedly told him everything necessary to do just that.
Nothing came to him. He searched the sentences, the paragraphs, the words for clues. He tried rearranging letters, looked for words that were perhaps spelled vertically, sought the word “magic” to see if it lay hidden anywhere. Nothing.
He remembered the famous riddle from Lord of the Rings where the entrance to the Mines of Moria said “Speak friend, and enter.” It had literally meant for the person to speak the word “friend” in the Elven language and the doors would open. But nothing like that seemed to jump out at Tick as he sought for clues.
Figuring out the date of the special day from the first clue had been a piece of cake compared to this, and he grew frustrated. He also felt the effects of staying up all night and a sudden surge of fatigue pressed his head down to the pillow, pulled his eyelids closed.
When his mom poked her head in to wake him up for school, he begged for one more day, knowing she’d have a hard time arguing with a kid who’d been eaten alive just a few days earlier.
After his mom tucked him back into bed and patted his head like a sick three year old, Tick pondered the pledge he’d made by the fireplace the night before—to keep going, to fight the fear, to solve the puzzle. No matter what.
I’m either really, really brave or really, really stupid.
Finally, despite the light of sunrise streaming through his window, he fell asleep.
Part
2
The Journal
Chapter
11
Old and Dusty
That Friday, completely healed and caught up on the work he’d missed at school, Tick sat in his science class, trying to pay attention to Mr. Chu as he talked about the vast mysteries that still awaited discovery in the field of physics. Usually, Tick enjoyed this class more than most, but he couldn’t get his mind off the second clue, frustrated that he wasn’t able to crack the code of the first letter.
“Mr. Higginbottom?” Mr. Chu asked.
Tick’s attention whipped back to the real world, and he stared at his teacher, suddenly panicked because he had no clue why Mr. Chu had said his name. “Sorry, what was the question?”
“I didn’t ask you a question,” his teacher answered, folding his arms. “I was just wondering why you’re staring out the window like there’s a parade out there. Am I boring you?” He raised his eyebrows.