The Mystery of the Masked Marauder (Nate and Basset, PI: Pet Investigators Book 1)

by Peter Cox

  Now that he could talk, I felt a lot less lonely. But as I sat there thinking, I still wished I had a best friend, someone I could tell about all this. Someone human.

  At that moment my parents came home (they always carpooled to save money), with a loud bang from a car door, followed by another, even louder bang.

  They were probably fighting again.

  They did that a lot now.

  “Nate, we’re home!” I heard my mom shout up the stairs, as if they had snuck into the house instead using the car doors like their own personal drum kit. “We brought home pizza for dinner!”

  “We’ll talk more about this later,” I whispered to Basset as I ran downstairs.

  We always had dinner together, even if it was just takeout or fast food.

  The whole time we were eating, I tried my hardest to seem normal. You know how it is: the harder I tried to look normal, the more I started to doubt what normal was.

  Am I eating too fast? Wait, now I’m eating in slow motion like it’s the lamest action-movie-pizza-eating scene ever. Am I not meeting my parents’ eyes when they ask me about my day? Or am I staring into their eyes too much? I feel like this is a creepy amount of eye-staring.

  Mostly I just tried to keep out of sight. You can’t usually hide at a normal dinner table, but we had a massive lamp sitting in the middle of our table; an ornate, extremely fancy globe light covered in frilly, lace-like etchings.

  It looked like it belonged in a Victorian house, not on a cheap Ikea table used to eat pizza.

  The lamp had been sitting in the basement of the house when we moved in, forgotten by the old owners. My mom called it “the most hideous thing I’ve seen outside my grandmother’s house,” but my dad insisted on keeping it and putting it on display.

  He said it classed up the house.

  It made me feel like I was in a nursing home.

  Which is not a particularly classy feeling.

  But today I loved that lamp. I hid behind the stark orange globe the size of my head for most of the meal. Hard to have a conversation with a giant glowing ball in front of your face.

  My parents never seemed to notice. Either they were too distracted by their own thoughts and anxieties, or I was a really good actor and didn’t even know it.

  My guess is that it was the first one.

  Basset did come downstairs at one point and said hello, but my parents didn’t even flinch. From their perspective there must have been absolutely no sound.

  One of my theories had been that maybe I had learned to understand Basset’s barks, like how some people can learn Spanish just by being around a lot of Mexican people. But that clearly wasn’t the case here.

  After that, Basset gave me a sad look, and went back upstairs.

  It was a painfully slow dinner, partly because of how hard I was working to seem normal and how scared I was that they’d know I was keeping a secret, and partly because I couldn’t wait to go upstairs and talk to Basset more.

  There was a whole other world out there, a world of talking animals. Imagine all the things they could tell me, all the things I could discover!

  The wait was killing me.

  It didn’t help that half the words out of my parents’ mouths were jabs at each other.

  “So taking out the trash later?” “I told you I’d get around to it. I’ll get around to it.”

  I figured it had to do with the stress of moving and finding new jobs and not having enough money, but I still wished they could work these things out together instead of against each other. But what do I know, I’m just a kid.

  I won’t write about any of the specifics here, because it doesn’t really matter, does it? It never changes from house to house, really. They fought about how to spend money, usually when one of them wanted to buy something the other thought was “frivolous,” or about how to spend the little free time they had on the weekends. But usually it wasn’t about anything. When people get stressed, they snap at each other over little things, and then the person who gets snapped at is also stressed, so they snap back. In my house there was more snapping going around than at a snap-clasp factory.

  That was a stupid analogy. Sorry.

  Once dinner was over, my plan was to sprint right up the stairs as fast as I could.

  “After you’re done eating, I’ll help you with your math homework,” my dad said. “Then we’ll have some family time.”

  So much for that idea.

  My parents always insisted on doing “family time” every few nights. It was usually just us sitting and watching a movie or some TV together, which fits the “together” part of “family togetherness” but I never understood how it made us any more of a family.

  How does silently watching something in the same room as someone else count as quality time?

  “Hey kids, let’s sit in the same room and not talk to each other for a few hours! It will be almost like sleeping in the same room, except we’ll be awake!”

  They had rented that animated movie about the talking rhinoceros who does karate to fight the evil penguins. You know the one.

  It didn’t really hold my attention. Not when there was a real talking animal sitting up in my room waiting for me.

  Not doing karate, but still.

  Basset came down once or twice, but he never seemed interested in movies before, and this time was no different. He’d come in, I’d smile at him, he’d watch the movie for a couple seconds, and then pad out of the room silently.

  When it was time for bed, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Basset. My parents had caught me staying up late to read enough times to get tired of it, and they now checked on me regularly to make sure I was quiet and my lights were off.

  “Goodnight buddy,” I whispered as I climbed under the covers. “We’ll have to chat some more tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” he whispered back.

  “Why are you whispering? I’m the only one who can hear you.”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, again in a whisper. “Just seems like the right thing to do so late at night. Besides, I think there’s a squirrel outside, and I don’t want to spook it.”

  “Ah,” I said, reminding myself to ask him some questions tomorrow about how the animals all get along with each other. “Well, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, buddy,” he said back.

  He curled up at the foot of my bed, like he had every night, then we drifted off to sleep.

  And that’s when the face appeared at my window.

  Chapter 3

  THE MASKED PHANTOM

  In the middle of the night I woke up in a cold sweat, bolting upright in bed. I didn’t know what it was, but something had me spooked. Basset was nowhere in sight, and my heart was pounding away like I had run a race, or was face-to-prematurely-pimply-face with Guster. It was weird, but I felt scared, like someone was watching me.

  I turned to look out the window, and felt a nasty icy pit form in my stomach.

  Someone was watching me.

  Right at the glass of the window a masked face with blank, hollow eyes was staring in at me. It looked like the mask from that Phantom of the Opera movie my mom loved so much, except that it covered the whole face instead of just half of it: it was icy white and inhuman, like a death mask. It was pitch dark outside, and all I could see was the death-white face. No clothes, no body, nothing but the eyeless face floating in the darkness, staring right at me.

  I wanted to run away, spring into my parents’ room as fast as I could, but I was too scared. I was scared that if I moved one inch, even flinched, the face outside would see me, and would burst through the window with a crash and come right at me.

  So I sat there, sweating more icy bullets.

  Slowly, a white glove appeared in the window, it also appearing to float in midair.

  The window had a thin film of pollen stuck to it, and the gloved hand went straight for the glass and started to write in the dust.

  It didn’t make a sound, but within sec
onds it had spelled out “Death is coming. Look in Baskertonn Manor.” Then the other hand came up to the window and wrote “2 1 19 20 15 14.”

  It was an ambidextrous phantom, apparently.

  I had no idea what the writing meant. I had overheard some of the other kids at school talk about the old Baskertonn place. It was supposed to be buried back in the woods somewhere, an old abandoned house that no one had lived in in over a hundred years. There were all sorts of stories about the place – ghosts and witches and nonsense like that – but none of the kids knew much for sure about the manor. No one had seen it in 50 years, they said. Even their parents didn’t know where it was, but everyone knew it was real.

  That was the story at least.

  So I knew what that part meant, but the rest of it was just…weird.

  Suddenly, I blinked and the face was gone, the window was back to normal, and Basset was back at the foot of my bed, sound asleep.

  It had been a nightmare.

  It took me a while to fall back asleep, but when I finally did the memory of that nightmare slowly faded away, until I didn’t remember it at all.

  When I woke up, Basset was just stirring at the foot of the bed, and he looked up at me.

  “Morning boy,” I said, a flutter of excitement playing in my stomach as I thought of all the things I would do and learn today.

  There was no response.

  Chapter 4

  MEETING THE ANIMALS

  “Boy?” I asked, hesitantly.

  Still nothing.

  Had it all been a dream?

  Of course it had. I had been stupid – incredibly stupid – to think that the day before could have been real. Talking dogs? Who’s seriously gullible or lonely or desperate enough to believe that? It’s ridiculous.

  I was disappointed, of course, because that dream gave me a glimpse of a different life, of escape from a life without friends. Even more, it meant that the world of adults – the world that was always reasonable, the world that told us Santa wasn’t real and aliens are only in movies and everything is neat and ordered and there are no more surprises, the world of bills and working until you’re too stressed to enjoy your money – was wrong.

  Sorry for that last sentence, sometimes my thoughts can be a bit like a dog’s, I guess: excitable.

  The dream told me there was still some mystery out there, some wonderful things to discover and explore.

  So yeah, I was disappointed.

  But I have to admit I was relieved too.

  Getting to live out some adventures in a magical world might seem exciting in a story. Not so much when it’s real.

  Talking animals would mean even more people to get to know, more rules for being polite, and who knew what was going on out there? Were some animals at war with others? Would some of the animals be dangerous knowing that I could hear them? Would the government come after me?

  You know how difficult it is to start going to a new school in a new town. Well, imagine that not only do you not know the teachers or the students and you’re all alone, you don’t know anything and you’re all alone. You don’t know any of the rules: You don’t know how your life works anymore, what words will get your head lopped off by some disgruntled grizzly bear, or which animals are friendly and furry, and which creatures are little balls of nasty.

  It would be a tad overwhelming.

  But if you asked me right then and there, I would have said my disappointment outweighed my relief. In other words, I would rather the dream be real. I would rather face the danger and the mystery and the enormity of a new world than go back to my old life.

  Which is good.

  Because it was real.

  As I was thinking all this and wrestling with these thoughts, I heard a cough, then a sputter.

  “Hack! Gruffffff. Blech. Sorry buddy, something caught in my throat. I ate some brown stuff in the backyard last night and it’s not really agreeing with me this morning.”

  “Bas-set!” I almost screamed the first part of his name I was so excited, then remembered that I had to keep quiet, and quickly whispered the second part. It sounded like someone switched on the TV with it way too loud, then quickly turned it back down.

  “I thought for a second it was all a dream!” I whispered back.

  “I’m so sorry to scare you,” he said, giving me that sad look he was so good at. “Brown stuff, you know.”

  I smiled. “Why DO you dogs eat things when you have no idea what they are?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, like he had never even thought of it before. “Why do humans not eat random stuff? Who knows what you’re missing out on!”

  I laughed. “I guess you’re right. But I still think I’ll skip the brown stuff, thanks just the same.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. It wasn’t great.”

  He shook his head a couple of times, like he was trying to shake the taste away, and then turned back to me with his mouth hanging open, the smile I had seen a thousand times on his face, like when he knows it’s time to go outside for a walk or some fetch.

  “So what do you want to do first?” he asked haltingly, like he was trying to talk slowly, but wasn’t quite getting it. “There’s a lot of stuff I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now and I never thought I’d be able to and now I can and I don’t even know where to start but I also want to take you around the neighborhood and see if you can understand everyone and introduce you to some other dogs and maybe a few of the nicer cats and – ”

  I laughed, and Basset got that look like he was blushing under his fur again.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “Got carried away again.”

  “It’s okay boy,” I said, giving him a quick hug. “I understand. I’m excited too. Let me get dressed and get some breakfast, then we can head out around town. I want to talk to you too, but Mom and Dad would think it’s weird if I stayed in my room all morning on the first day of summer break!”

  He nodded his head and his smile widened. He loved going outside.

  “Hey, that reminds me,” I said. “I know we can’t understand you when you talk, but if you animals are all… I don’t know…. smart? …. Well, how come you never try to communicate with us in other ways? Like nodding your head?”

  “Would you think a dog was nodding its head at you, or would you think you were going crazy?” I nodded MY head. “It’s best not to even try. It causes too much trouble. People think they’re seeing things, or think their dog is crazy. Some dogs have tried it. It… never ends well.” He had a tone in his voice that told me he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I didn’t know what that was all about, but I didn’t want to make him upset. He seemed sad talking about it. Lonely, almost.

  As we were heading downstairs for breakfast, I thought I heard a scuffling noise coming from the crawlspace door. I turned and looked, and hesitated.

  When my parents first bought this old house, they moved a rickety bookcase on the landing to find a tiny, crooked door that they figured must lead into a crawlspace. It was only about three feet high, but it was locked tight with three bulky padlocks.

  My dad kept saying he wanted to get a locksmith in here to get that door open and see what was inside. My mom said it was probably just some musty old Christmas decorations too tacky to use, but Dad said you never know, there could be old baseball cards in there or something.

  So far they still hadn’t gotten around to getting the door open.

  The noise freaked me out a little, but I figured it was nothing but a mouse back there. One of the locks looked like it was open, and I wanted to test the others and see if I could go explore in there myself, but before I could my dad suddenly came to the bottom of the stairs.

  Just as suddenly, the noise stopped.

  After a rushed breakfast with my parents (my mom had some work to get done, even though it was a Saturday, and my dad had a lot of house projects to work on), they asked me what I’d be up to all day.

  “Just exploring around t
own a bit,” I told them.

  They seemed happy about that, but my mom of course asked “Meeting up with any friends?” to which I just shook my head, a little sadly.

  Then Basset and I ran out the back door, and into “the unknown.”

  I love to explore. In my old town some of the guys and I would head back into the woods that were behind my parents’ house and just wander.

  I always loved following unknown paths in the woods, especially ones overgrown and untouched for years, ones that barely counted as a path at all.

  Chances are paths in the suburbs will lead you to accidentally trespassing in someone else’s yard and then lead you to some serious grounding (that only happened to me twice), or they’ll lead you to something as exciting as an alley behind a convenience store. I knew that. But I still held out hope that one of these paths would lead to some unexplored corner of the world that people hadn’t seen in years.

  You might think that’s ridiculous. Most people do. But maybe that’s why it’s possible, because everyone thinks it’s impossible. I mean, if no one explores these paths because they’re too boring, doesn’t that just make it more likely that the end of them is unexplored?

  I guess I like to daydream.

  In my old town we found old train tracks that hadn’t been used in so long people forgot they were there, and weeds and small trees were growing between the ties. We found streams to fish in that no one else knew about, and small caves full of rocks that looked like Indian arrowheads and old bottles from hundreds of years ago with cool labels for products that no one alive had heard of (my favorites were “Dr. Johnson’s Magical Healing Fish Oil” and “Mushroom Tonic”). And best of all there were shortcuts to different areas of town. We could get from school to the library so fast it was like we had a secret passageway, and we got our hands on the new Harry Potter books before any of the other kids could even get halfway to the library.