“I think someone does,” whispered Caroline. “Maybe we should leave before he comes back.”
“Or it,” Jed added.
“Oh my gosh! What if this is where Boreas lives?”
“Yeah, maybe. But I always pictured Wizards having nicer places.”
“Most of this stuff looks hundreds of years old.”
Jed used the silence as an opportunity to process what was happening in Bayberry Cove. Suddenly, the past two days seemed unbelievable.
“Caroline, do you notice anything strange about this cave?”
“Ummm…you mean besides the obvious?”
“Seriously, look around. Think about it. There is a small mattress where someone sleeps. A couple of chairs. A few storage containers. An old dining room table.”
“What’s your point?” she asked.
“A magical creature doesn’t live here. And neither does some wild beast. A person lives here. Flesh and blood. Maybe some homeless guy.”
“I suppose so,” she conceded.
“In fact, think about the past couple of days. What has happened that can’t be logically explained? A deer got killed in the forest; we were attacked by some wild animal; an old man drowned while taking his morning swim. That stuff happens every day.”
“But that thing in the forest wasn’t a normal animal. And who shot it? And why was Charlie swimming that early in the morning?”
“But can’t…” Jed was cut off by Caroline’s gasp. He turned to see what she saw. Walls of hieroglyphics, but nothing like they had seen in their history textbooks.
“What is that?” Caroline exhaled.
“Pictures,” replied Jed.
“Pictures of what?”
“I’m not sure, but I think they tell a story.”
“Well,” Caroline said in amazement, “let’s start reading.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“Larry, Max, you’re back!” shouted Sam. “Where are the kids?”
Larry Wamsley and Max Tucker were forced to give up their search. Jed could have been anywhere, and they didn’t even know if Caroline was on Mt. Misery. The rain let up enough for them to find their way down the mountain and back into town. By the time they found Sam and Bobby at the mayor’s office, the skies had cleared and the ground had begun to dry.
“We lost Jed, and we couldn’t track him after the storm picked up. There was no sign of Caroline either,” Larry said.
“So you just left ‘em?” asked Bobby.
“Bobby, we had no other choice,” Max answered. “We could have wandered around Mt. Misery for hours and still been a mile away from Jed. The smart move was to come back and regroup.”
“Regroup how?”
“Well, Sam, we’re not really sure.”
The mayor panicked. “I have to go out there and officially open the Pumpkin Festival in about thirty minutes or people are gonna know somethin’ is wrong. What are we gonna do!”
Larry was tired of not having any answers, so he started talking, figuring any plan was better than no plan at all. “Sam, Bobby, you go out there and kick off the festival. Try to keep things as normal as humanly possible. The last thing we need is a riot.” Sam and Bobby agreed.
“Max, you and I need to figure out what the hell is going on around here. I don’t care what happened four hundred years ago – I’m not about to sit around and watch this town fall apart on my watch.”
“So, what do we do, sheriff?” asked Max.
“We get guns – lots of them. We go back into that forest. And we don’t come out unless we’re carrying the beast’s dead carcass.”
“And what about Jed and Caroline?” Bobby asked. “We can’t just leave ‘em up there!”
“No, we can’t,” admitted Larry. “But, for now, they’re going to have to survive a little while longer on their own.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“Cut the bull, Joe. What the hell is going on around here?” asked Anne.
“I told you what I know,” Joe replied in a stubborn tone.
“That’s a bunch of crap, Joe, and you know it! We found the book. We know all about your grandfather.”
“You two don’t know nothin!” he growled.
“You see, right there, Joe. What does that mean? What are you talking about? What don’t we know?”
Joe Tabor took a long swig from his mug of lukewarm coffee. He had the look of a man reliving a previous conversation. “If this is going to make any sense, the first thing you have to understand is that my grandfather didn’t write all of those journal entries.”
“Ok, so who did?” asked Tom.
“This is the part no one ever believes,” sighed Joe.
“What part!” Anne shouted impatiently.
“The journal is mine.”
“Wait, you wrote the entries back in 1932?” she asked.
“Not quite,” Joe said. “I wrote them all.”
“You mean…” her voice trailed off.
“That’s right,” he looked up and made eye contact with Tom and then Anne. “My real name…is Jacob Poole.”
