“Your uncle is in good health, last I saw,” the old man reassured him. “The chances of something happening to him are slim. The music box might simply be telling you that all humans are mortal, and that eventually, everyone’s time comes.”
Adam bit his lip.
“Go on home, sonny,” Victor said, placing a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Make sure the door at home is locked if you’re worried.”
Adam nodded miserably, then left the room.
Victor sat by himself for several long moments. The old man gazed out the foggy window, deep in thought.
He had guessed correctly that the music box was trouble. Over the last fifty years, he’d told his share of extraordinary tales, some scarier than others. Yet it was not ghosts, or dragons, or three-headed monsters with the ability to swallow people in one gulp that were the most frightening. Those paled in comparison to the one simple fear that had plagued humans since the dawn of time. He’d seen powerful adults crumble and handsome young men morph into deranged lunatics, tortured into insanity, as they tried in vain to avoid the one thing that all flowers, squirrels, and pigeons—and people—must face eventually.
The old man wheeled back down the hallway to the kitchen. When the others asked him what the twelve-year-old had wanted, he refused to say, and merely answered, “Only time will tell.”
Footnotes
[1] There were only eleven people in that particular book club
[2] Ms. Ginger liked to show people this particular letter as proof she had a knack for writing unique stories.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
M IS FOR MURDER
Adam stayed awake past his bedtime. Two hours and three minutes past his bedtime, to be exact.
It was after midnight, the quiet time when all is still, and every action becomes suspicious tenfold. If your doorbell rings in the morning, that is as ordinary as puddles after a rainstorm, but if your doorbell rings in the dead of night, you’ll think twice before answering. If you’re digging a hole during the day, you might get a few good-natured people asking questions about what you’re doing. But if you’re digging a hole past midnight, you can be sure the police will arrive with questions (and possibly handcuffs), and they won’t be good-natured.
Adam listened to Uncle Henry’s steady snores coming from the living room. He turned on his side and pressed his ear against the pillow. He counted the number of cracks and peeling spots on the wall. His eyes felt like heavy lead weights, but he couldn’t sleep.
Victor was right, he thought. An object that warns of death is terrible. The warning alone was enough to frighten him more than anything ever did, and made him want to crawl under his bed. Except he was too old for that. So he made do with huddling under his blanket.
“Maybe it’s not going to be Uncle Henry,” he mumbled to himself for the fortieth time. “Maybe it’s Jack, or Daisy, or Francine, if she’s still alive, or…”
His gut, however, told him it wouldn’t be any of them. No, it would be someone closer to him.
The thought of Jack and Daisy tied his stomach into knuckle-sized knots. He couldn’t prevent their families’ deaths—even the notorious Robert Baron III didn’t deserve to die. He never got the chance to intervene in his own parents’ deaths. What was the point of owning something that could travel back in time, then, if it couldn’t save lives?
His mind wandered to seven years ago, the day of the plane crash. He’d been sitting awake in his bedroom, waiting for his parents, when the grown-ups from social services arrived to deliver the news. They told him his parents wouldn’t return, and that he would be moving to New York City to live with his uncle. They said other stuff too, but Adam didn’t understand. Their words sounded far away, as if the grown-ups were speaking underwater. Within days, Adam had been thrown from his comfortable, familiar home into a chaotic world of long meetings with lawyers, of strange grown-ups asking him how he was twenty times a day, of new, cramped spaces.
He had started building himself a cocoon after that. It was where he could remain safe from all the changes. But, as Adam was now realizing, he couldn’t avoid change any more than he could stay cocooned forever.
Francine and Victor had been right: there were memories he cherished, even after his parents’ death.
A sudden loud crash downstairs made Adam sit upright. Uncle Henry was still snoring. His heart jumping in his chest, Adam opened his bedroom door a crack and strained his ears.
Muffled footsteps were coming up the creaky stairs from the bakery.
Fear rooted Adam to the spot. His heart now hammered in his chest—pitter-patter-pitter-patter—echoing in his eardrums and drowning out every other noise.
“Uncle Henry!” he tried to cry out, but the words stuck in his throat.
Someone fiddled with the doorknob on their apartment door. The puny knob lock clicked forward.
What happened next seemed to be in slow motion.
The door swung partly open, halted by the chain lock holding it in place.
Uncle Henry awoke mid-snore on the futon. “Hrmph? What…?”
Long fingers pinching a pair of heavy-duty pliers reached through the door crack. In a second, the chain lock had been cut clear in half. The door thundered open.
This all happened within the span of five seconds. By the time Uncle Henry stood up with a start, and by the time Adam could regain his senses, the intruder had leaped forward.
Adam watched his uncle fall to the floor with a thud. The intruder—tall, dark suit, sharp chin—pinned down his uncle with his foot and whacked the squirming baker’s head with the pliers. Uncle Henry moved no more. Adam screamed.
The intruder turned to look at him. His hungry scowl sliced white in the dim light from the windows.
“Where is the snow globe?” barked M.
Adam slammed the door. On second thought, it probably wasn’t the best course of action, because now he was trapped in his bedroom.
He leaped toward the single window, which faced the back alley. Their apartment was only on the second story, but the cement ground below seemed miles away. A jump down would very likely break his leg.
His bedroom door swung open. Adam threw whatever he could at M—his library books, his pencil case. Each futile projectile only bounced off M and made the man madder. He snatched Adam’s arm and thrust him to the floor. Adam’s nose hit the edge of his bedpost when he fell forward. It started to bleed.
“Enough! Where is the snow globe?” M jerked Adam backward.
Adam scrambled for something else to attack M with. With his free hand, he threw his pillow, which M tossed aside easily. The man shook Adam again.
“You of all people should know how it feels to lose everything,” M hissed. “To lose your family and your home to a simple accident. We can turn it around. You can get your parents back. All you have to do is give me the snow globe.”
Adam knew it would take one swing of M’s pliers to knock him out like his uncle. He braced himself for the painful blow. A desperate idea formed in his mind—if he kept talking, maybe he could distract M.
“You can’t prevent all accidents,” he said, his voice shaking. “The snow globe is useless. People have already tried, believe me.”
“Hmph, I don’t expect a half-witted child like you to understand the snow globe’s true potential. You only used it so you could vanish and dazzle your stupid friends, didn’t you?”
“I don’t have any friends,” was Adam’s response.
“Really now?” M’s lips curled upward in a sneer. “That’s not what I found in my investigations. My dimwitted aunt was quite fond of you. Her name’s Daisy. You might remember her.”
Adam froze. “Daisy?”
“She mentioned a boy, a ‘wonderfully kind’ boy, who traveled from the future and encouraged her in her youth. If only she foresaw how useful the snow globe was, she could have taken it from you right then and there…For thirty-one years, I’ve tried to track down this item. You don’t know all the hard work I�
��ve put into my quest, all those years of following endless leads. But now, I’m so close.” M leaned forward, his eyes wild. “So close,” he repeated, “to bringing back everything I lost in the fire. To bringing back the destiny I was meant to have, what was taken from me so unfairly.”
The fire. Daisy. Aunt. It took Adam only a second to connect the dots. “Candlewick’s Candles,” he gasped in spite of himself.
M nodded. “I was its next heir. But it’s all gone. Nobody could find my father’s body in the mess. Not that it mattered—the ungrateful townspeople didn’t even show up for his memorial.” M’s face grew tense. His next words were barely a whisper. “With the snow globe in my possession, I can recover the fortune, grow it exponentially. I’ll be the wealthiest man in the country. I’ll even see my father again, and show him what I could accomplish. Candlewick’s Candles will be an empire once again!”
“But you can’t prevent his death,” said Adam solemnly, thinking of Francine’s words. “It’s recorded history.”
M’s scowl returned. “Shut up, you imbecile. I’m asking you one last time—the snow globe, where is it?”
M began flipping aside the stuff on Adam’s desk. Adam’s gaze flicked involuntarily to the dresser. M’s eyes narrowed, and he kicked the bottom drawer open. His grip on Adam loosened when he saw what was inside.
“The pendulum!”
M grasped the object with shaking fingers. The golden disk swayed on the chain.
“So this is where it went—proof of the snow globe’s magic!”
Stall him, Adam thought pleadingly. Help me stall him.
For a moment, M seemed to be mesmerized. The villain stared at the pendulum. “Father?”
Adam wasn’t sure whether he misheard. But M said it again.
“Father, it’s me.” M seemed to be talking to the pendulum. There was a breath of silence. “It’s me, your son. The heir to the Baron name.”
Then someone thrust M backward. M made a gagging noise and tried to push away the arm binding his throat. Adam broke free from M’s grip and watched in shock.
“Victor?” he cried.
The elderly man was supporting his weight with a cane in one hand; his other arm was locked around M’s throat. M swung the sharp pliers in his hand and jabbed the side of Victor’s body. With a yelp, Victor let go and doubled over.
But the distraction allowed Adam to grab his music box from his drawer. He now smashed the wooden box on M, straight in his face. M howled in pain, dropping the pliers and the pendulum. Adam snatched the pliers and whacked M’s head.
M was unconscious before he crumpled to the floor.
Victor was also on the floor, clutching his bad leg. The side of his sweatshirt was stained dark red.
Panicked, Adam rushed for the telephone and dialed 9-1-1, his nose still dripping blood. He found that his uncle was still knocked out cold, but breathing. Adam spoke with the operator, surprised they managed to understand him through his incoherent babbling. After shakily giving the operator the address and requesting an ambulance, he hung up and bent down next to Victor.
“Sorry I was late, sonny,” Victor wheezed. “Couldn’t get up the stairs in my wheelchair. Had to use my walking stick…”
“How’d you know we were being attacked?”
“I kept an eye out down the street. Saw a shady person breaking in, so I followed.” Victor gave a shaky cough. “How’s your uncle?”
“He’s okay,” Adam whispered. “The ambulance is coming. We’ll get you and Uncle Henry to a hospital in no time. It’ll be okay.”
The red stain was growing larger. Adam grabbed a towel from the bathroom and pressed on the wound.
Victor gasped for breath and managed a toothless grin. “Listen, sonny, there’s no need. I’m already old as it is…old and frail…”
“We can save you,” Adam said, pressing the towel harder. Tears pooled in his eyes. He blinked them away angrily. “Just hang tight, you’ll be fine.”
“The music box.…Remember what you told me? This was foretold.”
“You won’t die!” Adam shouted.
“My time would’ve come eventually one of these days, Adam…” Victor’s voice was fading between the rasps. “I’m glad I got to save a life in the process.”
“No, you’re going to make it. Just hold on, the ambulance is coming…”
Victor clasped Adam’s hand and said nothing more. After a few moments, his hand grew limp. All that was left was the faint trace of a smile on his wrinkled face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OF WAITING ROOMS AND CEMETERIES
Adam had only been to the hospital once in his life. He had been eight years old at the time, and had accidentally burned his hand by spilling boiling water from the stove. He remembered hating the hospital’s hallways, with their smell of disinfectant and their colorless floors, and the waiting room full of crying infants and uncomfortable plastic chairs. Most of all, he hated the harsh fluorescent lights and windowless walls.
He sat in a windowless waiting room now, watching a toddler tear apart the pages of a golf magazine. Adam didn’t say anything (he probably would’ve torn out the pages too, as it was more fun than reading about golf) and merely sat there, silently counting down the hours on the clock. He had slept in the same waiting room the night before, and had somewhat gotten used to the smell and the bright lights. His neck was sore. The plastic chairs proved uncomfortable for sitting, and even more difficult for sleeping.
The events of the terrible night M attacked seemed like forever ago. In fact, only two days had passed on the calendar. Today was the day Uncle Henry would finally be released from the hospital. Adam didn’t remember the exact words the doctor had used, but he’d heard the phrases “severe concussion” and “two-night mandatory stay.”
A nurse appeared in the waiting room. “Adam?” she said with a smile. “Your uncle wants to see you.”
Uncle Henry sat on a tiny bed with white sheets in a matching white room, eating a cup of chocolate pudding. His head was still bandaged, his face gaunt and his eyes heavy, but he brightened upon seeing Adam.
“They’ve been feeding me chocolate pudding nonstop,” said Uncle Henry, waving his spoon. “Maybe I should extend my stay.”
Adam and his uncle had talked a bit the previous day, but Uncle Henry had been less than coherent. Now the baker looked and sounded much healthier.
“Tell me the news about M again,” said Uncle Henry.
“The police said he has a nasty bruise on his face and a broken nose. They’ve arrested him for breaking into our home, among other—stuff—” Adam’s voice broke. He looked away.
“I should’ve taken you seriously when you told me about M.” Uncle Henry touched his bandage and winced. “Experience is a tough teacher.”
“I get why he did it, though,” Adam said quietly. “He lost a lot. He wanted to change the past, like I did.”
Despite all the terrible damage M had done, Adam understood the villain’s motives, however misguided they’d been. In the end, they’d wanted similar things. But whereas Adam wanted to help others with the snow globe, M did not care if others were hurt in his quest.
Uncle Henry asked more about Adam’s music box, which led to questions about the snow globe. This time, he fully believed Adam’s tales.
“So M was trying to go back in time to stop the fire at the candle factory,” Uncle Henry murmured.
Adam nodded, thinking of Victor’s permutations. “I don’t think it would’ve worked,” he said. “What happens in the past can’t be changed. It’s like reading through a history textbook. Everything that’s already happened up to this point has already happened. The only thing we can do is move forward.”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“Also, the snow globe doesn’t just take you where you want to go,” Adam added. “It’s really random.”
Both random and logical, he thought. All the people he met were connected like the intricate arms of a snowflake.
He wondered where his parents had gotten the snow globe originally, and asked if his uncle knew.
“I recall hearing about it once,” answered Uncle Henry. “They brought it back with them from a trip overseas. Were adamant they protect it with their lives. They hinted they wanted to use it to change the world for good. At the time, I’d just thought they meant it was worth a lot of money.” He paused. “A time traveling snow globe. It doesn’t surprise me that your parents owned such an item.”
“The man in the raincoat who came into our bakery a few months ago—J.C. Walsh—he had one that looked identical to theirs,” said Adam. “He was the one who told me to find it in the attic.”
“He told you to find it?”
“Well, not exactly. He never told me what I was supposed to be looking for. Just told me to go to the attic, and that my adventures await.”
“Hm, that’s odd. Maybe he was friends with your parents.” Uncle Henry looked thoughtful. “I guess we’ll never know.”
They both fell quiet. Uncle Henry took a few more bites of pudding.
Adam remembered something. “The Hol—the homeless shelter is holding a memorial service for Victor next week. On Christmas Eve.”
“We’ll be there,” his uncle reassured him. “I’ll be right as rain by then. Victor will be missed.” Uncle Henry gingerly touched his bandages. “If he hadn’t been there to save us, we would’ve both been goners. Not to say you didn’t put up a good fight, from what I heard.”
“The music box helped. Turns out it was great for throwing at people.”
Adam studied the floor, thinking. The whole debacle had started with the music box, warning him of an impending death, which he had told Victor about in a panic. Which had sent Victor looking after them, which had led to his death.
Victor’s story about the orange peel came to Adam’s mind. All because of the piece of orange peel. What was the orange peel in this case? The music box? Candlewick? The snow globe?
In the end, Adam kept these questions to himself. Uncle Henry looked like he needed time to recover from all the stories, on top of his injuries.
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