The Lost Days (23 page)

The locks on the door down in the secret closet are tougher than I expected. At first I was really surprised. Not to mention discouraged. Then I remembered whose secret closet this was. Come on. Of course the locks WOULD be tough, but surely Great-Aunt Emma expected that some little great-niece of hers would come along someday and try to open them? And she’d want to let that little great-niece in, I just know it.

The cats and I stood around for a while as I was thinking all this and gazing at the locks and trying to, like, convince them to open through the sheer force of my mind, or Great-Aunt Emma’s spirit powers, or something. Absolutely nothing happened, and then I started to feel foolish and thought I might as well take some kind of concrete action toward opening them, instead of standing around like a drooling idiot.

So here’s what I’ve learned:

The top one looks like a straightforward bolt with a basic steel knob, but I can’t turn it. I mean, it’s really solid, and I’ve already tried pliers, boltcutters, and a blowtorch. (Local hardware store closed forever=lots of perfectly good, easily fixable tools in Dumpster=paradise.)

The middle one looks like a tiny stoplight. There’s a small circle of glass in the door, and red, yellow, and green lights behind it. The yellow light is lit.

The bottom one consists of a row of dials, like the ones on a
combination lock, only with letters and spaces, apparently dialed randomly. It looks like this:

I’m not sure, but I am probably supposed to dial in some code phrase that will open the door.

Have tried OPEN SESAME, PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR, and a few other variations on that theme. Nothing.

Will have to ponder this upstairs. Am expecting a visit from Schneider.

Later

Schneider came into the El Dungeon looking all a-flutter and practically yelling, “I’m the mayor of Blackrock!”

[We strolled over to the minipark and continued our powwow in the peace and quiet of the nearly deserted town.]

We agreed to meet in three hours at City Hall to see if we could talk the remaining councilmembers into seeing my side of things. Am about to sneak over to the junk-mail factory, to practice my lockpicking and looting skills.

Later

Excellent loot at the factory! Also, am glad that the locks were so much easier to pick than the ones in the secret closet. I now have my oscillating vortical accelerator and astrogendetic gyroscope and everything else I need. Also, it was great fun poking around in the deserted factory. I LOOOOOOOOOOVE deserted factories! I scored some great cortical snippers, a modulated catheterizing burner, and a really nice heavy-duty fluorescent polarity iron, which might help with Great-Aunt Emma’s burly locks. Am really
hoping I can get that room open and build my sandstorm generator before my City Hall meeting. Time is a-wasting!

Later

Tried all my fancy new tools on the top bolt, but no dice. And, still NO idea what to do about the other two locks. Had to leave for my meeting at City Hall, so I told Raven to go down into the closet and see if she could muscle that top bolt open. Closed up the café and bailed. Fingers crossed!

Later

Oh frackalacking jabberwocking gramfadiddling…uh…fram-cheese!!!!

No swear words can convey my excitement right now, because the El Dungeon is MINE!!

Here’s how it went down:

Met Schneider and three councilmembers in the mayor’s office (uh, Mayor Schneider’s office, that is), and he laid out the situation for them. They were acting all nice and agreeable and VERY sorry that there was nothing they could do for me. First off, even though it was great that I had in my possession a letter from Emma addressing me as her great-niece, there was nothing to prove the letter was actually written to ME. It was also nice how I looked just like her, but that wasn’t exactly irrefutable evidence, either. They’d even be willing to let all that slide, if not for the sad
fact that, unfortunately, there was nothing, anywhere, in writing to prove Emma actually owned the El Dungeon in the first place.

Then I had a brainwave.

“Park bench,” I said to Schneider, and he slapped his forehead.

We mobilized the councilmembers for a quick field trip down to the minipark, where we were able to show them, IN WRITING, in brass letters an inch high, our proof that Emma was indeed the owner of Blackrock’s first and only café.

(I did have a moment of terror when I realized the bench now read “Emma LeStrange” and remembered my letter-flipping incident back on Day 6. But then I realized, if they were willing to accept an inscription on a park bench as proof of ownership, one wrong letter wasn’t going to be the deal breaker.)

The three of them looked at the bench, nodded, murmured a little legal talk, and then politely mentioned “compensation.”

Schneider shook his head. “No more bribes, honorable councilmembers,” he said. “It’s not going to work like that anymore. Uh, besides which, we’ve got nothing to offer you.”

There was a little more polite legal talk, and then the next thing I knew, everyone was handing around documents, shaking hands, and signing off, and then I was the new legal owner of the El Dungeon, just like that.

“Hey, Schneider,” I said when the councilmembers had left us there at the minipark. “What just happened?”

“You got lucky, kid,” he said. “Attikol did talk to them about a
payoff. But he never came through, and what do you know, rumor has it that he’s low on money. So, even though your evidence was kind of pathetic, you really had no competition. So you won this round. But like I’ve said, I really doubt that a question over legal ownership will keep him from knocking this building over if that’s what he wants to do. I hope you have a plan.”

Yeah…me too.

Later

Poor golem! Poor poor poor poor golem!

I am a very bad golem-commander!

Raven broke all her fingers, wrists, elbows, and shoulders working on that evil bolt down in the closet. Had to work very hard to repair her. Thank goodness for the local deserted hardware store and its well-stocked Dumpsters. She said it did not hurt, but still. Am feeling like a big jerk.

I feel bad for even calling this good news, but she DID get the bolt open. I wish I knew how to reward her.

One down, two more locks to go.

Later

Still no ideas on those locks, but I’ve built the amplitudinal sandstorm generator as per Aunt Emma’s specifications. Since I have no lab to work in, I had to just move aside some furniture and use the El Dungeon. Installed the completed device in the middle of a deserted intersection, just for fun. And cranked it up. Should see
results some time tomorrow. Am going to spend the night pondering the further details of my plan for convincing Attikol to leave here forever.