Case File 13 #3

by J. Scott Savage

  “Jogging?” Mr. Dashner spat. “Do I look like one of them crazy fools who sweat in public for enjoyment? Listen here, I’ve been a little under the weather today, but I can still deal with a handful of troublemaking scoundrels.” He leaned a little farther out, and the dazed look in his eyes disappeared as he spotted Carter. “You!” he shouted, poking a knobby finger in Carter’s direction. “You’re the brat who stuck gum to the back of my car!”

  Carter backed toward his bike. “You, uh, must be thinking of some other kid.”

  Old Man Dashner rubbed his eyes and squinted. “It’s you all right. Didn’t I tell you I’d feed you to my piranhas if I saw you again?”

  The old man started down the steps and Carter made a break for it. “I’m out of here,” he screamed, jumping on his bike and pedaling furiously.

  Nick grabbed the back of Angelo’s shirt. “Time to go.”

  “I just wanted to ask you about this morning,” Angelo said. “Did you feel unusual in any way?”

  “I’ll make you feel unusual.” Old Man Dashner grabbed a stick from beside his steps, brandishing it like a sword. “Teach you young troublemakers to bother peaceful folks.”

  Nick yanked on Angelo—who finally seemed to realize talking was no longer an option—and the two of them grabbed their bikes and ran down the driveway.

  “That’s right, you run!” Mr. Dashner shouted, waving his stick. “And keep running too! Next time, I’m calling the cops.”

  “Didn’t I tell you he was crazy?” Carter said when Nick and Angelo had caught up with him.

  Angelo shook his head. “Cranky, yes. And possibly violent. But not crazy.”

  Nick panted, trying to catch his breath. “If there’s a difference, I’m not seeing it.”

  “This morning was crazy. What we saw back there was just angry.”

  Carter laughed. “Dude, that’s exactly my point. This morning he’s running around in a pink swimsuit. This afternoon he’s waving sticks and threatening to feed me to the fish version of a food processor. That’s crazy, cuckoo, nuts, mixed up in the melon.”

  Angelo tapped the picture. “Except that I’m almost positive the person who just threatened us on his porch has no memory of being this person. And did you hear him ask if I was the milkman? There hasn’t been milk delivery in Pleasant Hill since before we were born.”

  “What are you saying?” Nick asked. “You think he has that thing where older people can’t remember stuff? What’s it called, all timers?”

  “Alzheimer’s,” Angelo said. “A form of dementia most common in people sixty-five and older. The most common symptom is forgetfulness, which could explain why he doesn’t remember that he was out jogging in a Viking helmet this morning. And yet he not only recognized Carter, he also remembered that Carter put gum on his car, and that he threatened to feed him to a species of fish illegal in the U.S.”

  Nick hadn’t thought of that. “But if he can remember all that, why can’t he remember what he did this morning?”

  “It’s my curse,” Carter said. “People remember things I did that even I’ve forgotten about.”

  “I don’t know.” Angelo pulled his pen out of his monster notebook book and chewed on the back. “Don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence that Mr. Dashner decides to dress up and go running on the same day that Ms. Schoepf freaks out?”

  “You think she has old-timers too?” Carter asked with a grin. “Maybe she’ll forget I didn’t turn in my English assignment last week.”

  “It’s Alzheimer’s, not old-timers,” Angelo said. “And I don’t think Ms. Schoepf or Old Man Dashner has it. Something weird is happening around here. And I want to figure out what. Come on, let’s head back to my house.”

  As the three of them neared Angelo’s house, Nick noticed Angie, Dana, and Tiffany standing in the front yard. “What are they doing here?” he asked.

  “Maybe they found Carter Junior,” Carter said, racing ahead.

  When Nick and Angelo got there, Angie was folding her arms with an annoyed expression on her face. “It took you long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?” Nick asked.

  Carter tossed his bike on the grass. “Did you find Carter Junior?”

  Tiffany looked up from texting on her pink, rhinestone-covered phone. “How could we when we’ve been waiting here for you? It’s rude to tell someone to hurry to your house and then not be there when you said.”

  Angelo opened the calendar on his iPad. “Did we have an appointment?”

  Angie gritted her teeth. “Is this your idea of a joke? Because I’m not in the mood for it. First you’re all, ‘I know everything. I’m so smart. Meet me at my house.’ Then you don’t even show up.”

  Nick held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. Who told you to meet us here?”

  Dana slammed a basketball on the concrete driveway and caught it in a graceful swipe of one hand. “Come on, guys. This isn’t funny. I’m missing basketball practice. Angelo, you said it was really important that we meet you as soon as possible—and you were kind of snotty about it. I thought you’d found the homunculus. Now, do you or do you not have something to tell us?”

  Angelo wiped his glasses on his shirt, with the same thoughtful look he’d had earlier. “When exactly did I tell you to meet me here?”

  Dana rolled the ball from hand to hand with an uncertain expression. “Right after school.”

  “He couldn’t have,” Nick said. “He’s been with us the whole time. We were checking up on Old Man Dashner to see why he was jogging in a women’s bathing suit.”

  Angie’s cheeks flamed bright red. “You guys are jerks. See if we ever help you again.” She spun around and stomped away. “Let’s go.”

  Dana shook her head and gave Angelo a disappointed frown. Tiffany followed Angie, still typing on her phone. “Trust me,” she said. “The Twitterverse is going to know you guys are losers with a capital L. Hashtag peabrain.”

  “What was that all about?” Carter asked. “This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder. First Dashner, then Ms. Schoepf, and now Angie, Dana, and Tiffany. It’s like the whole world is catching the crazy disease.”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like,” Angelo said. He grabbed Carter by the elbow. “For once I think you’ve hit the atom directly in the nucleus.”

  Carter wrinkled his nose. “Say what?”

  Angelo opened his notebook, writing and talking at the same time. “One of those things by themselves might be a coincidence. Old Man Dashner might have had a crazy urge to go running. Ms. Schoepf might have adopted a radical new teaching style. And Angie . . . well, maybe she was just messing with us. But taken all together, it can’t be a coincidence.”

  Nick suddenly remembered something else. “My dad started acting really strange last night. One minute he was all happy, giving me a raise in my allowance and promising to take us out to dinner. But two minutes later, it was like it never happened.”

  Angelo wrote so fast his hand was almost a blur. “There is something going on here. Something big. I don’t know what it is. But I know someone who might.” He grabbed his bike. “Let’s go to the library.”

  The Pleasant Hill library was a one-story glass-and-brick building. It didn’t look that big from the outside. And even inside it appeared to be like any other library—a checkout desk, children’s section, fiction and nonfiction shelves. But in the far back, behind the reference desk, was an area few people ever saw. Nick hadn’t even known about it until Angelo took him there shortly after an amulet had turned Nick into a zombie.

  If it hadn’t been for the help of an unusual man, Nick might have remained a zombie forever. It wasn’t the only time the man had gotten the boys out of a jam either. He’d saved their bacon again at a school called Sumina Prep, which ended up being the laboratory of a mad scientist. He called himself a reference librarian, but Nick had an idea he was much more than that.

  “Is Mr. Blackham in?” Angelo asked the gray-haired woman
sorting books at the reference desk.

  She looked up and smiled sweetly. “Oh, it’s you three again. Did your girlfriends come with you?”

  Nick felt his cheeks burn. The last time they’d come looking for Mr. Blackham, it was with Angie, Dana, and Tiffany. But the woman clucked her tongue. “Not girlfriend like the kids say now, dear. But a girl who is your friend. That’s what it meant in my day, you know.”

  Nick shrugged. “Um, no. They didn’t come.”

  “Well, that’s just fine. I believe Mr. Blackham is doing some kind of investigation in the back. He’s been in there all day poring over dusty old books.” She wrinkled her nose and jingled her silver bracelets. “I keep telling him he needs to read Percy Jackson or maybe Harry Potter. Something exciting like that. But he’s had his nose stuck in German folklore all day.”

  “German?” Angelo said. He gave a meaningful look to Nick and Carter. “We’ll go look for him.”

  “You do that,” the woman said. As the boys walked by, she chuckled. “Oh, and I’m glad everything worked out with that nasty business up at Sumina Prep.”

  Nick turned around. How did she know about Sumina? “Do you think she knows things too, like Mr. Blackham?” he whispered.

  “Nah,” Carter said. “He probably just tells her stuff.”

  In the back of the library there were no windows to let in sunlight that might damage the valuable books. What few lights there were buzzed and flickered, casting the room in the dull gray of a cloudy afternoon.

  The noises of the main library seemed to fade the farther in they went, and the boys’ footsteps sounded louder than they should have. It was almost like another world. A world of tall, looming shelves with thick, dusty books. Nick glanced over his shoulder, wondering how a building this small could seem so big inside.

  At last they reached an alcove set into the far back of the building. At the center of the opening stood a large metal desk covered with books, bottles, pieces of what looked like very old pottery, and even a couple of small statues. A nameplate on the front of the desk read BARTHOLOMEW BLACKHAM, REFERENCE LIBRARIAN.

  The boys looked around, but the librarian was nowhere in sight. “Mr. Blackham?” Angelo called. Although he spoke softly, his voice seemed loud in the silence of the dim space, and a cloud of dust motes swirled in the air.

  “I don’t think he’s here,” Carter whispered.

  Nick looked longingly toward the bright light of the main library. “Maybe we should—”

  A shadow fell over them, cutting off his words. A fluttering sounded from overhead and all three of them looked up.

  “Can I help you?” a voice asked from behind them.

  Nick turned with a start to find a pale man in a long, black coat standing directly behind him. He had no idea how the librarian had gotten there without him seeing.

  “Holy diaper change,” Carter muttered. “You scared the you-know-what out of me.”

  “Mr. Blackham,” Angelo said. “We need your help. Something really weird is going on.”

  The librarian nodded, his piercing eyes studying each of the boys, one by one. At last he set the books he was holding on the desk and took a seat. “Tell me everything.”

  Angelo told Mr. Blackham about Mr. Dashner and Ms. Schoepf. Carter told him about Angie and her friends thinking they had seen Angelo. Nick finished by telling him what had happened with his father. The librarian didn’t take a single note, but Nick got the feeling he hadn’t missed a thing.

  “Very interesting,” Mr. Blackham said, pulling off his leather gloves. “And you believe these things are related?”

  “Don’t you?” Nick asked. “I mean, it would be a pretty big coincidence if they randomly happened at the same time.”

  “Coincidence is the province of rubes and verdant storytellers,” the librarian said.

  Nick didn’t know what that meant. But he thought the librarian was agreeing with him.

  “So,” Carter said, “do you know what’s causing everyone to turn whacko all of a sudden?”

  The librarian furrowed his brow in concentration. He ran a hand over one of the thick leather volumes on his desk. Finally he sighed. “No.”

  “No?” Angelo gasped, looking like he’d just been hit in the head with a board. Nick couldn’t blame him. After the last two times the librarian had helped them, he just sort of figured Mr. Blackham knew everything.

  “I wish I did,” the librarian said. “Something is clearly happening here and I’ve been doing my best to learn what. But at this point . . . I’m just not sure.”

  Nick looked at his friends with a sick feeling. If even Mr. Blackham didn’t know what was going on, what chance did they have of figuring it out? “Well, if you can’t help us, you can’t help us.”

  Angelo squeezed his hands together. “Thanks for trying.”

  The boys began to turn away, but the librarian stopped them. “Are you familiar with the term causality?”

  Both Nick and Carter turned to Angelo. Angelo stared at the ceiling, thinking. “Isn’t that figuring out why something happens?”

  Mr. Blackham clapped his hands silently. “Very good. The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined four chief types of cause. Material, what something is made of. Formal, its form or nature. Efficient, the thing that immediately effected its change. And final, the thing’s ultimate goal.”

  Angelo nodded uncertainly. “So . . .”

  “So to solve your problem, you must first determine what started things, as Carter put it, ‘turning whacko.’”

  Nick was confused. “You’re saying to figure out what’s causing everyone to start acting weird, we need to figure out what made them start acting weird?”

  “Precisely.” The librarian smiled until he could tell they didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Think back,” he said. “Is there anything that happened just before people in your neighborhood began behaving oddly? Anything out of the ordinary you might have failed to mention?”

  Nick got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He looked at Carter.

  “Well . . .” Carter shuffled his feet on the thin carpet. “Something did happen. But it couldn’t have had anything to do with this.”

  The librarian waited, his face a study in patience.

  It was Angelo who finally broke the silence. “Over the weekend, we found something in the woods.”

  Mr. Blackham’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “Something?”

  Nick felt bad making Angelo take all the blame. “We think it was a homunculus. We were planning on taking it back where it belonged. But the night before last, it disappeared. We’ve been hoping it went back to where we found it.”

  “I see.” The librarian tapped his fingers on a pair of thick books that were written in a language Nick thought must be German. “And this was how long before people began acting strangely?”

  “If you count my dad, the day before.”

  “It was my fault,” Carter blurted. “I took Carter Junior without telling them.”

  Angelo hung his head. “But I was the one who told him to put it in the aquarium. That’s why it ran away.”

  “Do you think that really has something to do with what’s going on?” Nick asked. “I don’t see how the homunculus escaping could have anything to do with people acting weird.”

  Mr. Blackham pursed his lips. “It’s difficult to say. But at this point it does seem the most likely efficient. Unless you can think of any other recent causality?”

  All three boys shook their heads.

  “If Carter Junior running away really did cause all this, what can we do about it?” Nick asked. “We’ve looked for him everywhere.”

  “And I’ve read everything I can find on homunculi,” Angelo said. “I never saw anything about making people act crazy.”

  Mr. Blackham stood. “I recommend you think back to everything you’ve seen. Everything you’ve noted. Try looking at it from a new perspective. A different angle.”

  “That
’s it?” Carter asked. “You’re not going to help us make it right?”

  Mr. Blackham pulled on his gloves. “This new information will take some looking into. To be perfectly frank, I’m never seen an actual homunculus. I shall begin researching it immediately. In any case, I do not have a shadow of a doubt that you will find a way to identify the problem and fix it.” Without another word, he nodded and disappeared into the rows of shelves.

  “You think he’s just messing with us?” Carter asked as they walked toward the front of the library.

  “Maybe he wants us to figure things out on our own,” Nick said. “So we can become true monster hunters.”

  Angelo shook his head. “I think for once we’ve come across something he can’t solve for us. We’re going to have to figure this out on our own.”

  Nick was all for solving his own problems. But he didn’t have the first clue where to look. “I don’t get the part about looking at things from a different perspective. What are we supposed to be looking at?”

  The three boys stepped outside, where the sun was starting to set. Nick checked his watch. It was almost five.

  “Let’s go to my house,” Angelo said. “And start from the beginning.”

  “Okay,” Angelo said, sitting down at a desk covered with notes and books. “Let’s get started.”

  “What is all this stuff?” Nick asked.

  “Research,” Angelo said, as if the answer was obvious.

  “Yeah-h-h-h, I can see that.” Nick waved his hand at books ranging from climatology to European dance, plus pages of handwritten notes that seemed to be mostly mathematical equations. “But there’s nothing here about homunculi.”

  Angelo scooped the pages into a neat pile. “I told you. There’s almost no information available on homunculi.”

  Nick plopped onto the bed. “So what are we supposed to be looking at from a new angle?”

  “I’d like to look at a bag of Doritos from an angle just above my mouth,” Carter said. “You have anything to eat around here?”

  Angelo pointed to a Tupperware container. Carter opened it to find pieces of cut celery and cherry tomatoes. “Gross.” He sniffed. “I’d rather starve.”