by Joe McGee
For Donna Galanti and Keith Strunk.
And also for Ron Burgundy; the original
Magnum, P.I.; Ron Swanson; and my dad—
gentlemen, your mustaches
are an inspiration.
Greetings, friends… You have opened this book because you are interested in the unknown, the strange, the unexplainable. Well, look no further. For the first time ever, I am prepared to share the shocking and spooky tale of what happened in the curious and quirky town of Wolver Hollow. I must warn you, though…. What you are about to read is not for the faint of heart. Continue if you dare… but do not say you weren’t warned.
1
“…And his mustache was all that remained.”
Mr. Noffler leaned against the edge of his desk and watched the class. They were silent for a moment. Their eyes were wide. None of the students knew whether or not to believe what they’d just heard.
Every kid in Wolver Hollow grew up going through the same weird routine on October 19, but until now, they never knew why. Every October 19, the town shut down before dusk.
Shops closed.
Parents made their children stay inside.
Curtains were drawn.
And doors were bolted.
Every year, men who were normally clean-shaven grew mustaches in preparation for October 19. Women and children took their fake mustaches out of the drawer and taped them above their lips. Parents made a game of it, but their eyes were filled with fear.
When children would ask why they had to wear mustaches, or what Mommy was so afraid of, it was always the same answer: “You’re too young” or “It’s nothing, just a silly old legend.” But now that they were in fifth grade, they were finally learning the truth. They were finally going to hear about the legend of October 19.
“And that is today’s local history lesson,” said Mr. Noffler. He clapped his hands and sat down.
Parker frowned. That couldn’t be it, he thought. He had the feeling that Mr. Noffler was leaving out all of the good parts. He hadn’t told them why it was all such a big deal in the first place. He hadn’t told them why they locked their doors and wore fake mustaches. Parker sensed a mystery, and he wanted answers. He was not about to let Mr. Noffler stop there. Not when he was so close to learning the truth. Parker leaned forward at his desk and raised his hand as high as he could. “Yes, Parker?” said Mr. Noffler. He set down his marker and adjusted his glasses.
“How big was the explosion?” asked Parker.
“So big,” said Mr. Noffler, “that it rattled houses and broke windows for miles around. It left a crater in the ground large enough that our entire school could fit inside of it!”
The class murmured in amazement.
“Well, how did the gunpowder explode?” Parker asked.
Mr. Noffler tapped his upper lip, like he always did when he was considering his answer. Mr. Noffler did not normally have a mustache, but, like everyone else, this week he did. October 19 was only one day away. He crossed his arms and stared at Parker.
“That’s a great question, Parker,” said Mr. Noffler. “No one ever quite figured out what caused the unfortunate black powder incident that vaporized poor old Bockius Beauregard. It was labeled an accident.”
“Vaporized?” Parker asked.
“Vaporized,” said Mr. Noffler. “Well… mostly. As I said—”
“The mustache,” said Lucas, Parker’s best friend. “It survived.”
“Yes, the mustache,” said Mr. Noffler. “The magnificent mustache of Bockius Beauregard. It was the envy of every man in town.”
“That must have been some mustache,” said Gilbert Blardle, doodling mustaches in the margin of his notebook.
“Indeed it was,” said Mr. Noffler. “There never was another mustache quite so magnificent ever recorded again in Wolver Hollow.”
“Who keeps track of mustaches?” asked Lucas.
“This is the weirdest town ever,” said Parker.
“Some say that mustache had a life of its own,” continued Mr. Noffler. “Some say that that is why it returns from the grave every year on the anniversary of Bockius Beauregard’s unfortunate explosion. Nobody knows for certain. Nobody dares to go looking. And so, it remains… a mystery.”
A mystery! Parker’s eyes lit up. He knew it!
“Wait,” said Parker. “Did you just say that the mustache returns? From the grave?”
Mr. Noffler smiled and stood up from his desk. “I did.”
“Are you getting all of this?” Lucas asked.
“Every word,” said Parker, writing furiously on a piece of paper. He and Lucas had a detective agency—the Midnight Owl Detective Agency—and finding out if the haunted mustache was real or not sounded like a mystery most definitely worth pursuing.
“This could be our biggest case yet,” said Lucas.
“Bigger than the Case of the Missing Toad,” said Parker.
“Or the Mysterious Mailbox Mix-Up!” Lucas said.
Mr. Noffler slipped his thumbs through his suspenders and slowly walked about the classroom. He weaved his way around the groups of tables.
“His mustache,” said Mr. Noffler, “was indeed all that remained. It was found six hundred yards—five football fields—away from the crater, in an apple orchard. It was still attached to his lip.”
“Gross!” said Sally McKinley, who sat across from Parker.
Parker wrote, Five football fields. Still attached to lip.
“It’s not true, you know,” said Samantha von Oppelstein. She was applying a new coat of black nail polish to her fingernails.
“What isn’t?” Parker asked. He tried to listen to Mr. Noffler and write down everything Mr. Noffler said at the same time. He already had one full page of notes from what Mr. Noffler had told them at the beginning of class.
“All of it,” she said, not looking up.
“How do you know?” Parker asked.
She shrugged. “It’s just a stupid story.”
Parker stared at his notes. This was the coolest thing he’d ever heard. He didn’t want it to be just some stupid story. He wanted this to be the Midnight Owl Detective Agency’s biggest case yet.
“Well, I think you’re wrong,” he said. “I think the legend is true. I think the mustache does return from the grave every year.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “Then why, in over one hundred years, has the mustache never been seen?”
Parker opened his mouth to answer, then snapped it shut. He tapped his chin with his pencil. He tried to answer again, but closed his mouth. He looked like a fish, sucking in air.
“You heard what Mr. Noffler said,” Parker finally managed to say. “Nobody dares to go look for it.” But even he was not convinced by that answer.
Samantha von Oppelstein rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh, right. Suit yourself. But how could a mustache survive an explosion that big when the rest of the man was… What was the word?”
“Vaporized,” said Parker, checking his notes.
“Vaporized,” finished Samantha von Oppelstein. “It’s impossible.”
Parker read back through his notes. She had a point. It did seem rather improbable. Not impossible, he thought, but highly improbable.
Robby Dugan raised his hand and said what they were all thinking. “That’s impossible. A mustache can’t go flying six football fields away.”
“Can’t it?” Mr. Noffler asked.
Nobody had an answer.
“It’s all true,” said Mr. Noffler. “You can read about it in the town archives, in the library. Some poor farmer out picking apples scooped up what he thought was a caterpillar—”
“Mr. Noffler, stop!” squealed Lucinda Brown from the other side of the room. “I’m going to be sick.”<
br />
But Mr. Noffler did not stop.
“—only to realize he was holding the magnificent mustache of Bockius Beauregard. Killed the old man on the spot. He had a heart attack right there. But the farmer was only the first victim.”
The class fell silent.
“See?” Parker said to Samantha von Oppelstein. “There was another victim. That means that it came back. From the grave.”
Samantha von Oppelstein painted another nail and said nothing.
Parker frowned. Why was she being so difficult?
“When they found the farmer’s body, still holding that bloody mustache, they asked the same thing you asked. ‘How could a mustache survive such an explosion?’ They called it unnatural. They said it was the devil’s work, and they blamed the mustache for the farmer’s death.”
“So what did they do?” Lucas asked.
“They pried that bloody mustache out of the farmer’s cold, dead hand and took it up to the cemetery. There they found a spot in the farthest, most weed-choked section of the graveyard, and they dug a small hole. Then they set that mustache on fire, and when it was nothing but a pile of ashes, they dumped those ashes in the hole, covered them over, and left them to the worms and grubs.”
“Cool,” said Samantha von Oppelstein. “This is why I like to write poetry in the graveyard. It’s quite eerie.”
“You,” Parker said to Samantha von Oppelstein, “are odd.”
“Thank you.”
“And one year later,” said Mr. Noffler, “on October 19, the very anniversary of the explosion, they found the cemetery caretaker lying dead among the tombstones…. Something had tried to steal his upper lip.”
The class gasped.
“Steal it?” asked Parker.
“Steal it,” said Mr. Noffler.
“His whole lip?” Lucas asked.
“The whole thing,” said Mr. Noffler.
The class gasped again.
“But that caretaker had a bit of a mustache of his own,” explained Mr. Noffler. “A pencil-thin one, popular back then, and so the magnificent mustache of Bockius Beauregard could not steal the caretaker’s lip. That is why today, on the anniversary of Bockius’s death, the people of Wolver Hollow wear mustaches. It’s why we stay inside, and stay safe. Because, you see… that magnificent mustache haunts Wolver Hollow, angry at being blown up, burned, blamed for the farmer’s death, and dumped in a hole. That magnificent, remarkable mustache, unable to rest in peace, forever seeks a new lip to rest upon. And if it finds you late at night, when the moon is out and the crickets stop chirping—”
The entire fifth-grade class sat at the edge of their seats.
They gripped the edge of their desks.
They watched Mr. Noffler with wide-open, unblinking eyes.
“—it will STEAL YOUR LIP FOR ITS OWN!” yelled Mr. Noffler, leaping toward them.
Several students screamed, most jumped, and three students fell out of their chairs. But not Parker. Parker was thinking. Samantha von Oppelstein had asked a very good question. Why had it not been seen in all of these years? Was there really a haunted mustache, or was it just some silly old superstition? He and Lucas would get to the bottom of this and discover the truth. But there was only one way to do that.
The bell rang, and with a scraping of chairs and shuffling of feet, Mr. Noffler’s fifth-grade class hurried out the door.
“Remember to stay indoors tomorrow night!” Mr. Noffler called out to them. “Be sure to wear your mustaches!”
Parker stopped Lucas in the hallway. “Meet me by the bike rack,” he said. “We have a mystery on our hands.”
Lucas grinned. “The Midnight Owl Detective Agency is on the case,” he said.
2
Parker had his backpack on and his bike ready to go when Lucas got to the bike rack.
“What was Samantha von Oppelstein going on about?” Lucas asked. He climbed onto his bike. “I saw her whispering something to you.”
“She says the whole legend isn’t true,” said Parker. “She says it’s impossible.”
“It does seem kind of impossible,” Lucas said.
“Improbable, not impossible,” Parker said. “There’s a difference.”
“But if it were true, you’d think that the mustache would have found at least one lip in the last one-hundred-something years,” Lucas said. “You’d think someone would have seen it at least once.”
“That’s what she said. But if it weren’t true, why would the town shut down on October 19? Why would everyone lock their doors and bolt their windows? Why would everyone be so scared?”
“Superstition?” said Lucas.
Parker flipped his kickstand up and started pedaling.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where are we going?” asked Lucas, pedaling behind him.
“The library,” said Parker. “Mr. Noffler said we could find the records there. Any good case begins with studying the facts.”
Lucas groaned. The library was the last place he wanted to be on a Friday afternoon. Okay, second-to-last place. The cemetery was the first, and that’s exactly where they’d have to go tomorrow night if they were going to find out whether or not the mustache was real.
Parker and Lucas pedaled down South Main Street. They crossed over the old metal bridge that spanned Wolf Creek. They leaned as far to the left as they could and spit over the short wall and into the fast-moving creek. Everyone knew that a troll lived under the bridge, and if you didn’t spit when you crossed, he’d curse you and eat your toes in the night.
They passed by people on the sidewalk—men with mustaches, ladies already wearing their fake mustaches even though the anniversary wasn’t until tomorrow. People hurried about their business. Nobody stopped to chat with their neighbors like they normally did. Everyone was in a rush. They offered brisk nods or a quick hello, and were on their way.
Silverman’s Pharmacy had a big sign in the window offering AUTHENTIC HORSEHAIR MUSTACHES for two dollars, while Kate’s Craft Emporium had Make Your Own Mustache kits marked down, WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.
The boys said hello to Mayor Stine as they passed. He was in the middle of supervising the hanging of a large banner that stretched over the street, from the library on one side to town hall on the other.
It read: CURFEW IN EFFECT, TOMORROW, OCTOBER 19. DUSK TO DAWN!
He pointed to his thick, drooping mustache and called after the boys, “Don’t forget your mustaches.”
“We won’t!” they called back, coasting up to the front of the library.
The library was a big, tall brick building with two marble pillars on either side of the arched front double doors. Ivy raced up one side of the building, and the grass was in definite need of being mowed. Parker and Lucas rested their bikes against the rusted metal fence and climbed the steep steps. Two dark semicircular front windows made the building look like it had eyes, angry eyes just waiting for kids to approach the front doors and be swallowed whole.
Parker pulled the doors open, and he and Lucas stepped into the dimly lit library. Dark wood shelves created a maze of books that seemed to stretch forever. A few empty chairs and tables were scattered about, and a broad set of stairs curved up to a railing-enclosed balcony with even more books. Dim lamps cast shadows across the rugs and runners, and creepy old men and women stared down at them from their framed paintings on the walls.
“Aren’t libraries supposed to be relaxing?” Lucas asked. “It feels like this is where books go to die.”
“Smells funny too,” said Parker. “Like my grandfather’s socks.”
“Why do you know what your grandfather’s socks smell like?”
“Because he won’t wear shoes.”
“Can I help you, boys?” asked a short, ancient-looking woman peering down at them from the balcony. She lifted her glasses and squinted at Parker and Lucas, then dropped the glasses back into place.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Parker. “We’re doing a research project for school�
�”
Lucas nudged him. “Don’t lie,” he whispered.
Parker turned and whispered back, “It’s not a lie. We’re doing research, and it’s because of school.”
“What kind of research?” asked the old woman, suddenly standing behind them.
“Ahh! How did you…? You were just—” Parker pointed at the balcony and then at the floor. “Never mind. We’re interested in reading more about the big quarry explosion of eighteen hundred something.”
“Yeah,” said Lucas, “the one that exploded a mustache.”
The ancient librarian chuckled. “Oh no,” she said, “it didn’t explode a mustache.”
“It didn’t?” Parker asked. “But—”
“Oh, heavens no,” she said. “It exploded a man. His mustache—”
“Was all that remained,” Parker said. “Of course.”
“That’s right,” she said, smiling. “Terrible business, and dangerous, too. Come with me.”
The librarian led them to a small room at the back of the library. A red velvet rope hung across the open doorway, and a hanging sign read: ARCHIVES. LIBRARY STAFF ONLY.
She lifted the rope and ushered them in.
“Have a seat. What you want is the Wolver Hollow Gazette, years 1887 to 1889. Just a moment.”
Parker and Lucas waited while she rolled a ladder over to a particularly dusty, particularly cobwebbed section of shelves. The librarian climbed up to the very top and reached for the highest shelf.
“Nobody ever reads the history anymore,” she said. “You might be surprised how many secrets this old town holds. Ah, here we are.”
She slipped a large book off the shelf and slowly climbed back down. She set it on the table in front of the boys with a loud thud. An inch of dust rose up off the table.
Lucas and Parker both tried not to sneeze.
“October 19, 1888,” she said, shuffling out of the room. “And don’t touch anything else. I’ll know.”
She stopped and peered back around the corner.
“I always know.”
Parker and Lucas stared at the open doorway. Neither of them was sure what to say.