by Joe Meno
Professor Von Golum hisses something at him and he tries to look past and it seems, on the TV, the Modern Police Cadet is now proposing marriage to this strange woman, placing a gigantic ring on her finger. In the next scene, they are actually getting married—the woman in a pretty white dress with a gray veil, Leopold Jones in his cadet uniform, walking down the aisle—and now Billy is pushing Professor Von Golum aside, placing his ear against the television screen.
The boy detective thinks, Is this woman a spy from the London mob or a plant from ORACLE, Scotland Yard ’s enemy organization, perhaps? How will Leopold Jones fare in love with someone I have never seen before? How will it all be resolved by the end of the hour?
Before Billy can discover the answers to these important questions, the show is over and the credits are rolling.
NINETEEN
The boy detective sits on the porch as the Mumford children prepare to test a third rocket, their flashlights flashing in the dark. It is late and the neighborhood is sound asleep, the streetlights flickering solemnly at the end of the narrow street. The Mumford children in their pajamas hurry back and forth on the lawn making final preparations: Gus Mumford in blue, Effie Mumford in purple to match her winter jacket.
“May I ask what is the point of your experiment?” Billy calls out in a hushed voice.
“We are trying to prove that people are social beings coerced by society to be distrustful of one another even though we are all naturally fond and curious of one another. I have it all here in my notes,” Effie Mumford says, passing Billy her notepad. “It is my new experiment for next year’s science fair.”
“Very interesting,” Billy says. “And how do you mean to prove that?”
“With this rocket, like a message in a bottle adrift at sea, we are attempting to gain the attention of some other human being. Our first two attempts were, for various reasons, unsuccessful. But the sky is clear tonight and we think we have solved our problem with the firing mechanism.”
We have definitely solved the firing mechanism problem! it says in Gus Mumford’s note.
“Are we ready?” Effie Mumford asks.
Everyone nods. Billy smiles as Effie Mumford holds the silver launch device in her hand.
“We will begin the countdown. Launch in 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Launch!” When she presses her small fingers against the silver button, the rocket quickly ignites and shoots deftly through a clearing in the trees straight into the plains of the high night sky. In a moment, the rocket explodes, and in large silver letters a single message becomes brilliant and clear: HULLO, ANYONE OUT THERE.
“We misspelled ‘hello,’” Effie Mumford whispers, making a note of this in her notebook.
Billy glances up at the sky again and very slowly the silver letters begin to sparkle and fade, and fade, and fade, and soon they are only a glimmer of floating black paper and smoke.
“Now what?” Billy asks.
“Now we wait,” Effie Mumford whispers, leaning her elbows on her knees.
“Wait for what?”
“For somebody to reply.”
“I see.”
The trio sit on the front porch, staring up at the night sky, the stars doing their best twinkling, the moon a quiet coin in a dark fountain, the Mumford children watching and waiting and slowly getting drowsy. Effie Mumford leans against the railing, her eyes fluttering, Gus Mumford has tightened himself into a small ball, and Billy, head growing heavy, begins to drift away, all of them quiet and content beside each other on the Mumford’s front porch.
In our town, we feature a variety of adult-themed bookstores; we think you may be familiar with the kind. Along the narrow and dusty aisles are thousands of doe-eyed women caught in the most mysterious of poses. Why are there so many terrible places like this in our town? Because the heart is terrible—like a rotten tooth, it is small and soft and weak. It has a terrible requirement, and that terrible requirement is mystery. For example, there is one particular magazine in one particular aisle in one particular dirty bookstore in our town called Girls in Turtlenecks. That is all there is: shot after shot of blushing gals in tight-fitting turtlenecks, naked from the waist down. We stare at a copy and feel flush. And somehow, silently, we know the truth: Airbrushed and honeyed, they are still no match for the feeling we get waiting to kiss.
TWENTY
In the morning, the boy detective thinks he sees the lady in pink as he is riding the bus. She is a lovely woman in a pink hat hurrying down the street and then—poof—she is gone like a dream. Looking out the window, he is surprised when the Sterling Tower, the tallest building in our town, likewise disappears.
Moments later, as the bus moves past the fallen industrial sites toward its destination downtown, the boy detective begins to once again remember the Case of the Haunted Candy Factory. At his best, at his smartest, at his most daring: He returns to remember what he once was—the boy with all the answers, not a miserable young man who is obviously failing, quite miserably.
Following the light through the air vent, the two siblings found themselves directly on the catwalk far above the candy factory. Below them, two gunmen were jimmying the Grape Dynamite machine.
For a second, the two gunmen stared up in disbelief at Billy and Caroline.
“The boy detective!” one of the gunmen snarled. “So you’re the snooping pests we’ve caught!”
There was a strange rumbling from within the tunnel behind the opened vent. A skinny man, breathing hard, huffing and puffing, crept out. The boy detective and his sister recognized him almost instantly: the strange bearded dentist, John Victor, their number-one suspect.
The dentist glared at the boy detective.
“What are those two doing here?” he asked.
“That’s for you to discover,” the boy detective retorted.
“How did you ever escape?” the dentist asked. “Those doors were locked!”
“The only tool a good detective ever needs is ingenuity.”
“You may have discovered I was the culprit, but it looks like your ingenuity has all but run out.”
“We better get rid of these kids right now,” one of the gunmen muttered, drawing his pistol near.
“Not so fast!” came a voice just before the factory lights flooded on. Within a moment, the gunmen were surrounded by armed policemen. Flashlights and sirens filled the scene with brightness.
“Just in the nick of time!” the boy detective and his sister shouted with surprise. Daisy Hollis hugged them as well, thanking them for a job well done—No.
No.
That is wrong again.
Daisy Hollis was already dead then. Not dead, but missing. Indefinitely. Her remains had never been recovered. The only victim of the Pawn Shop Kidnapper never to be found.
Daisy Hollis did not have the chance to be hugged by anyone again.
Daisy Hollis.
It is a terrible thought. It is a terrible thought the boy detective does not like to consider.
TWENTY-ONE
At recess, Gus Mumford does not punch anyone in the guts, he does not hurl smaller children through the air, he does not poke anyone in the eye: Today he is a lamb. He sits swinging beside the small bald boy, both of their feet dangling in the air. Neither of them speak. In their silence, more than a dozen secrets are shared. Gus Mumford smiles as the other boy smiles and blushes as he blushes. He watches the fold of the other boy’s neck and the dimples in his cheeks. He likes the shape of the boy’s ears, small and like seashells. He likes how he smells, like powder and fall leaves. He knows he cannot put into words all the thoughts he is thinking so he does not write, he only watches and hopes that the other boy does not suddenly turn to vapor and vanish. When the bell begins to ring, marking the end of recess, the small bald boy quickly rises, takes Gus Mumford’s hand and without a word, gently presses Gus’s forefinger against his long, pale eyelashes. Look, look, there is one now stuck at the end of his finger. Gus Mumford stares at it and beams. He watches it as all the other
children hurry past, disappearing back inside, his heart light and glowing.
At school the following day, Gus Mumford is alarmed to see the seat in front of him is empty. He looks around the room nervously, staring up at the clock, turning to watch if Miss Gale is going to explain, but no. The school bell rings and class is started. Miss Gale asks the class to please take out their spelling workbooks, and still the seat before him is unused, the soft bald scalp now a soft fuzzy glow of a memory. Gus Mumford panics and a voice somewhere in the back his throat begins to gurgle. He raises his hand and, as is the case, Miss Gale ignores the small, prodigious fingers there waving so near her face; instead she calls upon Arthur Allen who, out loud, perfectly spells “hemorrhage.” Morning classes continue like this: Gus Mumford growing frantic, stirring in his seat, scratching at his desk, watching the classroom door for some signal, some sign, until finally the lunch bell rings and the third-graders, in a uniform burst of chaos, scuttle to their brown-bag lunches. Gus Mumford, hands nervously balled into their most comfortable form—fists—stalks up to Miss Gale’s desk, slamming a single note hard against the wood, glaring up at the dark-eyed woman who has, for so long, offered only question, question, question after question, the answers of which Gus Mumford already knows. Here, scribbled dramatically in pencil, is a question Gus Mumford would like to ask, and after Miss Gale’s eyes dart down to read it, she is truly surprised by what is being asked, and so, forgoing her usual treatment of the boy, answers rather affectionately: “Oh, he’s ill again, I’m afraid.”
Gus Mumford’s face does not change. He mumbles a small sound—like the saddest sigh of all time, ever, escaping from a weak heart several thousand miles away—and then, after the sound has risen and dissipated, his head grows heavy and hangs down, and Miss Gale’s cruel hand is somehow gentle on his neck.
“He had to go back to the hospital. I don’t think he’ll be rejoining us, I’m afraid.”
It is that day that nearly every third grader in the world gets crippled. The poor young dears must bear the brunt of Gus Mumford’s unending rage, and he works his way through the playground at recess, torturing, assaulting, maiming. Blood, tears, broken fingernails line the jungle gym, four-square court, sandbox. Boys, girls, small, short, tall, lanky, skinny, fat. Charlie Evans sipping his milk through a straw loses a tooth as he is smashed in the face by what may be either a wrecking ball or Gus Mumford’s right fist; Lindsay Scottworth somehow loses a pigtail; after that sad day, it seems poor Bobby Cohen will never walk in a straight line ever again.
TWENTY-TWO
Hidden beneath the front porch later that afternoon, Gus Mumford holds the prominent citizens of Ant City close to his heart, whispering, “Now I have nobody. Now I have no one.” He lays there staring at the strange movements of his remaining, segmented friends, quite sure that in their cavernous exploits they are attempting to spell out a message, which, in the boy’s mind reads: WE STILL LOVE GUS.
TWENTY-THREE
At work, the boy detective is wary: He watches for signs of the masked women. Throughout the day, he looks for a sinister shadow creeping down the aisle between cubicles and is relieved when it is only the youth from the mailroom delivering that week’s new mail. Everything seems to be going fine until Billy returns from the washroom and finds that a small business card has been left for him on his seat. As expected, the card reads: BEWARE: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Quickly, he disposes of it, running it through the paper shredder. The rest of the day is spent waiting to take his next pill and listening for strange foot-steps creeping from behind the curtain of impending doom.
Another strange message has arrived for the boy detective; he discovers the white envelope beneath his door upon returning to Shady Glens that evening. Billy looks down the hall, but no, there is no sign of who may have delivered it. It is again, addressed, in small black handwriting, that simply says: “To the boy detective!” but now an exclamation point has been added. Billy gently opens the letter, slipping his finger beneath the fold, glancing at the marks in the shadowy hallway light. Again, inside is a single piece of yellowed paper which simply reads:
D-11
9-16-19-19-6,
23-19-12-8-26-12, 16 21-12-12-11 6-22-2-25
15-12-19-23.
The boy detective stares at the note, turns to see if he is being watched, then gently folds it and hides it under his bed.
Dear reader, here you can help the boy detective. Match the code D11 with the decoder on your ring to help solve this mystery.
After midnight that evening, when he knows he will not be able to rest, the boy detective pulls himself to his feet, puts on his cardigan and tie, and goes off in pursuit of the cause of his coworker’s mystery. He hurries off toward the bus stop, knowing the abandoned amusement park will be the destination of this late-night search. As he waits for the bus, he wonders. He wonders if the young lady in pink might be on the bus tonight. He is disappointed when it arrives and he sees it is almost completely empty and no one is wearing pink.
TWENTY-FOUR
The boy detective suddenly realizes Professor Von Golum is sitting across from him on the bus. Though it is quite late and the old man, as a matter of his age, should be back at Shady Glens resting in his bed, it is only a moment before the Professor stands, retrieves a silver raygun from inside his white hospital robe, and points it at Billy menacingly.
“It is all as easy as this,” the old man mutters. “You will be felled, at last, by my immobility ray.”
Billy’s heart goes cold in his chest.
“Any last words, detective?” the villain asks with a sneer. The town lights flash by their faces as Billy deliberates. The boy detective nods then, opens his mouth, and, instead of speaking, leaps, knocking the weapon from the old man’s clawlike hands.
“Oh God, you broke my wrist,” the Professor gasps, holding the fractured limb to his chest. “Oh God, I think you really did.”
The bus driver, now aware of the conflict, hits the brakes, the two combatants falling atop one another, and Billy, securing the raygun, dashes off the bus, his heart pounding, his hand sore, his red face showing his grave embarrassment.
TWENTY-FIVE
It is through the abandoned amusement park that the boy detective creeps. Having done his best to ignore the mysterious incident of the young man who disappeared from the Mammoth offices; having tried to disregard the certainly nefarious threats of the masked women who quickly escaped into the van marked with the faded letters “Property of Gotham Amusement Park,” Billy quietly steps forward. He follows the strange darkened path past the Jolly Roger roller coaster—now only a wire catastrophe, its schooner-shaped cars leaning crowded against a crushed snow cone machine—then past the great Unicorn Carousel—the gentle animals now mostly dismembered, their horns having been stolen by mean-spirited vandals long ago—further still past Dead Man’s Curve—with its ornate miniature Studebakers wrecked upon one another—to a spot deep inside the park where he stops and listens to the strange recording of a high-pitched voice he now recognizes: “It’s always twilight for lovers … It’s always twilight for love …”
The sound echoes from the Twilight Tunnel of Love rising ahead, the daring shape of a man-made mountain overgrown with false japonica and ivy, a glowing red heart still active, twinkling with sequins above the narrow cavelike entrance.
Quietly, he hustles over the fallen red velvet ropes, over the sturdy chain-link fence erected to prevent exactly this kind of trespass, and into a lovely swan-shaped car, the ride still cycling, whether by mystery or malice or simply wind, the crooner’s voice growing louder as the opening approaches and the ride jerks and jolts Billy into absolute darkness.
From out of nowhere and lit only by the enormous holes which have grown along the opening of the man-made mountain, a silvery cupid’s arrow hurtles toward Billy’s head. He ducks and the cherubim’s pointy arrow narrowly misses his neck. The ride bustles along up and over a pink-colored waterfall, crashing down past Lover’s L
eap. A pair of gigantic mechanical lips open and close up ahead as the swanshaped car draws deeper into the cave. Hurrying off the ride, he finds a small, dimly lit catwalk. There in the dark he can hear the sounds of people at work: the shuffling of feet, the subdued tone of mumbles so familiar to his own work environment that creeping through a small opening he is not surprised to find a very familiar-looking office—gray cubicles, greenish carpeting, and a small army of well-dressed and professional-looking women, some in business suits, some in skirts, all in black canvas masks. Billy, spying from behind a row of empty desks, listens as the strange creatures answer their ringing phones, the hum of the Tunnel of Love’s theme song still echoing from above somewhere, barely audible among the busy jostling of confidential whispering, pencils on papers, fingers on typewriters.
From what he can tell, it is indeed an office of some kind, and what these masked women are selling is a kind of uncanny extermination service. The paperwork piled high in stacks beside Billy makes it clear: They are in the business of making other people disappear. Two of the lovely masked henchwomen walk past Billy whispering, their soft black high heels marching away. Billy creeps down the empty aisle and stops, finding himself staring down at a pair of glossy black Mary Janes. Looking up, he sees a masked woman in a blue suit who immediately begins shouting. The boy detective discovers he is carrying Professor Von Golum’s immobility raygun and, without hesitating, presses the snub nose of the weapon against his adversary’s neck.