The Specter Key (4 page)

It tapped twice more and then stopped, the keys moving right before his eyes with no one pressing them. He didn’t know what to do, and when the movement ceased, he was still frozen in place, feeling the back of his throat go dry and his palms begin to sweat.

Very slowly he stepped forward until he could see the paper clearly in the light of the moon.

And printed on the page were two words:

Hello Bran.

The Typewritten Message

Seeing the words on the page sent a shiver across Bran’s skin.

“What’s going on…?” he whispered, reading them and not entirely believing what he had seen. Bran was very alert now, sleep forgotten.

The keys had been typing
X
s before he had come in the room; it had known he was there and had drawn him in. Fearful, he took another step closer, reading the page again and looking around the room. Was it a ghost? Something trying to communicate with him? Bran moved until he was standing right in front of the desk, looking down at the words.

Suddenly, as if to prove to him it wasn’t imaginary, the carriage gave a jump, sliding across the page to a fresh line. The keys started to press down by themselves again, the little metal arms striking against the page with rapid speed. The keys were pressed so quickly it was like a motor, the carriage jerking back into position in less than a second.

There isn’t much time.

Bran swallowed hard, staring at the freshly inked words. It knew his name, which was enough to send terror through his skin.

“W-what’s going on?” he asked aloud, unsure if it could hear him. There was a second of a pause, and then the keys flew to the page once more.

Help us.

The carriage leapt back across to a new line. He took a glance around the room. He was alone. He didn’t waste another second, pulling the chair out and sitting in front of the typewriter.

“What’s happening to you?” he whispered frantically, talking to the typewriter as if somehow they could hear him through it. The letters clicked across the page in a fury.

We cannot escape.

It went to a new line. Bran read the words, every nerve on edge. He couldn’t think of what to say next. But he didn’t want to let them go, whoever it was on the other end, so he stammered for something.

“Where are you?” he asked, keeping his voice low. The keys moved again.

Trapped.

It leapt to a new line.

She has enslaved us.

It crossed again.

Help us.

And then, in a furious scramble of keys:

There isn’t much time.

New line. He felt the intensity of the room begin to grow. The page was almost to the end, and he didn’t know how much longer whatever magic was at work would stay active.

“Who put you there?” Bran asked. Then the keys moved again, typing only four letters:

Emry

He blinked at the page, unable to do anything but read the name, twice, a third time, not believing what was there. His heart was racing, his hands shaking.

What can they mean by that?
he thought with alarm. He saw that the typewriter had moved to a new line. They were almost to the bottom.

“Who are you?” he asked aloud. There was hardly room for one last line on the page. Sweat was gathering on his forehead. He gripped the sides of the chair in anticipation, hoping that it wasn’t too late, staring at the last words on the page. Had the spirits left already?

But the keys snapped twelve more times. Before Bran could read it, there was one final push given to the page, and the paper went out the top and started to slide behind the typewriter. Bran caught it, bringing it up into the moonlight, so that he could see the final words written there.

The Specters

And that was all. The typewriter was out of paper.

Bran stared at it in his hands, almost as if it wasn’t real, but it was there, as much as he didn’t want to believe it.

“The Specters…” he said. An abrupt rushing sound filled the room, like a gust of wind, and a great, bright green glow erupted from the paper between Bran’s fingers. It burned to the touch, and Bran reflexively threw it onto the desk. In a second he saw that it had ignited with green fire, eating the page as if a torch had been held to its center.

The glow blasted onto Bran’s face, and he leapt back, searching for something to throw on it. But in a second he was already too late, and the glow ceased just as quickly as it had started, engulfing the room in darkness once more. All that was left of the page and the words written on it was a crumpled, ruined piece of paper. Bran seized it, but the paper was so brittle it tore into pieces, still hot enough to make him drop it to the desk again.

He quickly looked to the typewriter, but it was only metal and ink once more; whatever had possessed it had lost its strength and departed.

***

Bran could find no use for the shreds of paper, but he kept them anyway, the darkened edges leaving black markings on his palms. He was bitter that his only clue had just burned itself up. He knew there was magic at work, strong magic, and someone who needed his help.

He went up to bed, but he certainly couldn’t sleep, so he thought he’d do as usual and sit at his desk for a while until he was over it. However, when he got to his desk, he saw his blanket.

The box,
he thought immediately, sweeping the blanket off. It was still there, the shape of the moon facing up. It felt almost as if Bran had uncovered the face of a corpse instead of a box. He had just brought it home and already strange things were happening—strange magic seemed to surround it, as if something within was trying to break free.

The Specters. Bran turned it over in his head. There was no disregarding what he had seen. He didn’t exactly know how to react to what had happened. The box could be haunted for all he knew. Perhaps something inside of it was listening to his thoughts at that very instant, waiting to be broken free. The label said Emry Hambric, after all. In one startling thought, Bran wondered if it hadn’t been left for him but contained something cursed from his mother’s criminal past. Perhaps the Specters were actually spirits trying to twist his mind into breaking them free.

It scared Bran how little he knew. The desperation in the words on the typewriter played on his sympathies, despite the warnings in his head. He repeated what he remembered from them: “She has enslaved us.” If it was someone, or something, that his mother had cursed before her death, could they be reaching out to him as a last resort?

The confusion nearly made him wish he had left the box with Adi. He ran his fingers along its intricate metal ornaments at the corners. He was at a loss for what to do next, so he finally set it back and just stared at it for a long while, presently pulling out the piece of note paper that had been taped to the top.

The words Nigel Ten stared back at him: this mystery man that nobody had heard of. Perhaps he had the key—or at least knew about the box? But how to find him, Bran did not know.

***

The next morning he decided to go to Highland’s Books, where he knew Astara would be helping Mr. Cringan get ready for Fridd’s Day. Luckily, Mabel needed a new quart of echinacea, and the nearest herb shop was on that side of town, so he was easily able to use that as his excuse. It was a sunny day that smelled of freshly cut grass, since everyone was eagerly getting their houses ready for Fridd’s Day parties.

There was a small group of people around the bookstore making up what remained of the repair crew. The outside had been completely rebuilt, with rows of shiny new windows on the front and red bricks all around. Already there were displays in the windows, waiting for the store to open, and some of the repair crew were doing bits of cleanup work outside. Over the door was a brand new sign with a banner pasted in front.

Highland’s Books

Grand Reopening – Fridd’s Day Eve

Bran smiled when he saw it, for he knew that once the store was open, the last bit of remaining damage from what had happened to him months before would be gone. He parked his bike in the front and went inside.

“Hello, Astara, anyone home?” he called. The workers inside ignored him as they went about, finishing up the hardwood flooring in a corner. Everything was brand-new, with rows of books already on some shelves.

“Over here, in the back.” Bran heard Astara, and he started down the steps toward the door marked
Employees Only
—not that it had stopped him before. The back was more like a warehouse with towers made up of boxes of books, as well as files of public records which Cringan kept stored in the back. It was much emptier than it had been, mostly because it was where the fire had started and done the most damage.

“I’m over here,” Astara said, and Bran spotted her at a long table with boxes of books surrounding her. There was music playing from a radio on the desk beside her, and as he made his way over, she lifted another box and ripped it open.

“Cleaning out?” Bran asked, sliding to the other side.

“Sorting it, mostly,” she replied, looking at a book and then tossing it into a large pile on the floor. “Most of these have been here for ages and won’t get sold. We’re getting rid of what we can and putting out the rest for sale.”

“You sure you’ll be ready to open up by Fridd’s Day Eve?” Bran said.

“Of course.” She nodded. “There’s not much left. We’ve already got most of it out. We’re just waiting on the flooring to finish up. And I have to watch the—”

She jerked her head toward the wall nearby, behind which Bran knew was a hidden room containing illegal books on magic. Astara nodded at him gravely: she was there to make sure none of the workers accidentally stumbled upon it, as Bran himself had done before.

“Are you going to move back in to live here, then?” Bran asked.

“Not sure yet,” Astara said. “Most of my things are all right. Just a corner got burned, but half of it is ruined from the fire department. It’s going to take some cleanup, and Adi said I could stay at her house if I wanted.”

“Do that then,” Bran said.

“It’ll be really different,” she said, twisting her face. “I liked it here. I won’t get to hear cars rumbling by all day.”

“Your commute to work will certainly get longer,” Bran said, grinning, and she pushed the box at him but smiled anyway.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “How’d you escape?”

“Mabel wanted some more medicine,” Bran said. “Who better to send than me? But I really came here because I wanted to show you this.”

He reached into his pocket and drew out the tattered pieces of the burned paper. He had carefully folded what was left so that it didn’t break anymore, but it was still brittle, and he held it out so Astara could look.

“See any writing or words on those?” Bran asked her. She looked closer, taking the pieces and laying them on the table.

“Been playing with matches?” she asked, turning them over. Bran shook his head.

“No, this paper was all in one piece last night,” he said. “It burned up all by itself.”

He told her what had happened the previous night. Unfortunately he couldn’t remember all the words that had been typed, except for his mother’s name and what they had called themselves: the Specters.

“What do you think it means?” Astara asked, looking closer.

“Either I’m losing my mind,” Bran said, “or there’s something in that box that’s trying to talk to me.”

“And we already tried getting it open,” Astara said. She stared at him, both of them thinking hard.

“You didn’t tell Adi, did you?” Astara asked. Bran shook his head.

“No, she’d take it away for sure,” he said. “She didn’t even want me keeping it. But there’s no way I’m letting this out of my sight. Not now.”

He let a deep breath out. “There’s just something not right about all this.”

“What’s not right, now?” a voice broke in, and Bran spun. Astara swept her hand across the table and hid the pieces of paper in her hand just as Mr. Cringan stepped up to them.

“Can’t be anything wrong with this week, can there now?” Mr. Cringan said, a smile across his face. “Fridd’s Day’s coming up, and it’ll be the best one ever!”

Mr. Cringan had yellow hair on his head and through his cleanly cut beard, and white teeth shone when he grinned at them. He held two big boxes of books in his muscular, tanned arms. Bran jumped forward to grab the one off the top and set it on the desk.

“There we are now,” Mr. Cringan said. “Nothing better than the smell of all these pages. And seeing an extra helping hand!”

Mr. Cringan chuckled merrily. He was much happier these days it seemed, and Bran knew it was because his bookstore was finally about to open again. Fortunately, Mr. Cringan had gotten a generous insurance policy, or else he might not be so jolly.

“We’ve got everything planned to perfection,” Mr. Cringan boasted. “Hardly a detail left out. Yellow streamers and balloons and five yellow cakes, all laid out on a yellow table with corn tortilla chips and cheese sauce. Gigantic bowls of cheddar popcorn and caramels, and everyone dressed up in yellow like no one’s seen!”

“Sounds like a real party,” Bran said, and Mr. Cringan looked up.

“Well, you are coming, aren’t you?” he asked with a smile. “You’ve got to come.”

“You have to,” Astara insisted. “We’re going to have the biggest party in town. And you know how hard it is to get Duncelanders near any place with books.”

“I wish I could,” Bran said. “But Sewey has already drafted me into dancing with Madame Mobicci at their company party. I’m pretty much stuck.”

“Oh well,” Mr. Cringan said. He was clearly disappointed, though he tried to cover it up as best he could with a laugh. He started to walk away, stepping behind some crates. The moment he was out of view Bran spun back to Astara.

“That was close,” he breathed, and she quickly slid the burnt scraps back to him.

“We’ve got to figure this out,” she whispered. “There’s something big going on. Last time this happened, this store burned down.”

“That’s not going to happen again,” Bran vowed, shoving the pieces down in his pocket. There was something else in there, and he was reminded of the other paper. He brought it out for Astara to see.

“That’s our clue,” Astara said, looking at it. “It’s the only real thing we’ve got.”

“Right,” Bran said, taking a deep breath. “If only we knew who Nigel Ten was.”

“Well, Nigel Ten’s not a person,” Bran heard Mr. Cringan chuckle behind him.

Bran stiffened and turned, not having realized that he could still hear them.