It is after some time, when the boy detective is nearly finished, that he finds, at the bottom of his effects beneath his clothes, Caroline’s gold diary. He slowly lifts it out and then, without a thought, turns to the last entry. Billy moves his finger down the tiny white page.
It reads, in girlish handwriting:
nothing is good. nothing is ever good.
On another page, near the front of the diary, he discovers this entry:
how to begin? as usual, Billy was quite courageous today, my brother
the famous detective. as we searched through the abandoned old house
i discovered a secret passageway behind a large painting of a
pale lady; i was too frightened to enter
but Billy, like always, led the way
we crept past the rather large wooden door and
into a narrow hallway which wound downwards
there were a number of cobwebs inhabited by a variety of
long-legged, menacing-looking spiders, but we simply marched on
the three of us, Billy holding the light, Fenton mumbling, and me
looking behind for any sign of a ghost, bandit, or otherwise
unlikely villain; we then discovered a large trunk, which when opened, as
you might have expected, revealed the pirate’s glowing costume …
The boy detective places the diary under the mattress of the creaking bed. Then Billy lifts the True-Life Junior Detective kit out of his suitcase, staring at it with a remembered softness and a certain kind of disdain. It has not aged well: The corners are caved in and the cartoon boy on the cover of the box—a boy who had once been blond and whose hair is now gray and dirty—holds up a magnifying glass, discerning a secret message which will never be completely translated. The box is now old and sunken, the cartoon child small and withered, the paper having begun to turn and decay.
Billy, ignoring his shaking hands, begins to open the kit, then stops himself, and finally decides to place it in the bottom drawer of the white dresser. He closes the drawer and stares at it, behind which the detective kit lies, unopened; the boy detective can only dream of what might be inside.
We cannot blame him for putting it away. We cannot. We cannot blame him for being afraid.
The boy detective begins to pack his bag again, removing the lovely press clippings from his walls, folding them so gently, returning them to his small yellow suitcase. He is through the double glass doors of Shady Glens and walking down the street, when Effie Mumford, still in her purple and white winter jacket, comes hurrying after him.
“Where are you going?”
“I did not think I was ready and now I know it,” he huffs, hurrying toward the bus stop at the end of the block.
“But wait. What about my bunny? Aren’t you going to find its head?”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“But you said you’re a detective, didn’t you?”
“Yes. No. Not anymore.”
“But look,” the girl says, stopping, reaching into her puffy pocket, and retrieving her bright purple wallet. “Here is a dollar if you can find it.”
“I don’t want your money,” Billy says, setting down his suitcase, breathing heavy.
“No, take it and find out.”
The boy detective stares at the soft, wrinkled dollar. He stares at her small open palm, her weirdly round face, the white patch over one eye, the smashed glasses. He thinks he is staring at the picture of how his heart must look: small and sad and mashed. Billy pauses, feeling the sun beat down on his neck, the sweat on his forehead, the smell of the flowers outside—puffy and sweet—the barking of a dog somewhere, the sky looming wide open above his head, the sound of bees glowing in the very last moments of summer, and he knows if he were to keep walking toward the bus stop, he would never see any of these things again. He would never try again: He would simply walk back into the familiar, perfect world of his own death. The boy detective closes his fist around the money and smiles slowly.
“OK, yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I will find it. I will solve this case by the end of the week.”
“Good. Thank you. Thank you, Billy.”
The girl stares up at him with a grin as wide as some unnamed equatorial line, and then she squeezes his hand.
The boy detective turns, picks up his bag, and begins walking decisively back toward Shady Glens. He hurries back into his room, hoping no one has noticed his quick departure, lays his suitcase on the floor, and climbs onto his bed. He finds one of his bottles of pills, the Ativan, and takes two more than he should and very, very soon his vision begins to blur. He looks up at the ceiling and smiles, then switches on the light. He stares up wide-eyed as a hazy cloud of delicate snowflakes gently appears above his face. He is surprised to see a tall office building outside his window disappear suddenly.
At one time, in nearby New York City, a beautiful silver cathedral was built. Before long, a masked villain blew it up with an explosive device and many people were killed. We hate to even discuss it because your pretty cousin Amy, sadly, was inside. Immediately, like everyone else, she was turned into a brilliant explosion of stained glass. Tiny bits of it fell everywhere. The colorful pieces were carried into the river and disappeared downstream, turning everything they touched gray. Little children, fish, deer—anything near the explosion—became slouched and old. Miles and miles away from the lights of that great city, everyone in our town, including you, became ill, either from the colored glass in their blood or the sadness of seeing the spot on the horizon where the cathedral used to be.
It is later that evening when the boy detective hears someone quietly sobbing in the hallway of Shady Glens. He pulls on his blue sweater and walks out, finding Mr. Pluto lying against the doorframe, gigantic tears splashing from his button eyes, a puddle of grief already forming. Clearly, this is a man who has been very upset by something. Billy frowns at him. Mr. Pluto, wiping his eyes, smiles back.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Billy asks.
Mr. Pluto holds up a gigantic golden hairbrush and attempts to comb his hair, but it is clear: His wig is still most definitely missing. Mr. Pluto takes Billy’s hand and places it along his great bald scalp, still sobbing.
“Your wig is still missing?”
Mr. Pluto nods. Billy helps Mr. Pluto to his feet.
“It’s awful silly for a man your age to be wearing a wig in the first place.”
Mr. Pluto begins to cry louder, banging his fists against his chest.
“Fine, yes, I’ll help you,” Billy says, shaking his head and sighing. Holding Mr. Pluto’s hand, he walks down the hallway, searching for some clue, some evidence, some sign. He begins with simple questions, the grand tool of the boy detective, trying to establish the motive of this very minor crime. “Where was the last place you had it? Do you remember that?”
Mr. Pluto nods. He pulls Billy down toward the end of the hall to his room, where there is a small hand mirror lying beside a white Styrofoam head, the wig’s resting place, no doubt. Billy bends over and slowly inspects the brush. Along the bristles is a single, small, yellow hair.
A single yellow hair.
Eureka.
Billy nods and smiles knowingly, and at once the mystery has been solved. He grabs Mr. Pluto’s enormous hand and leads him down the hallway, stopping at Professor Von Golum’s room. Billy squints in front of the door, peeking through the keyhole, listening to a record of strange jazzy music playing loudly inside.
It goes like this: Through the keyhole, Billy can see Professor Von Golum, lying in his bed beside Billy’s blue sweater, which has been stuffed with pillows, the clipping of Billy’s sister Caroline resting where the face might be—Mr. Pluto’s long blond wig completes the ghostly figure’s head. The Professor is romancing the imaginary composite woman, talking very sweetly, gently rubbing its arm, telling it what he most admires in this, his only companion.
“You have very good-looking teeth. No, don’t talk. Just lie there and let me stare at them like that, as they are so pretty.”
Billy nods and motions to Mr. Pluto, explaining with a simple pointing finger that his wig is inside. Mr. Pluto, angry, his small eyes getting big and wide, gently moves Billy aside, steps back, and knocks the door in with a single great kick. Professor Von Golum lets out a high-pitched scream as Mr. Pluto strides across the room in one step, grabbing for the Professor’s throat, lifting him from the bed and choking him with one gigantic white hand. The boy detective moves to prevent certain murder, tugging on Mr. Pluto’s blue gown. Mr. Pluto returns the Professor to his feet, who, doubling over, continues to choke and wheeze.
Billy takes a step beside Professor Von Golum, staring at his shoulder and the long golden hair left curled along the evil scientist’s neck. The boy detective had noticed the foreign hair earlier—why? Because the boy detective’s mind is always detecting; it cannot stop itself. Billy picks off the hair and smiles. Mr. Pluto turns and retrieves his wig with a snarl, pushing the Professor aside.
“Now you, you stay away from my door,” Billy says to Mr. Pluto.
Mr. Pluto nods bashfully, then creeps out as quietly as he can, his enormous feet thundering down the hall. The Professor continues to choke, cursing, pulling himself upright finally. He turns and points one long dirty-fingernailed finger at Billy.
“That was an awful mistake. I tell you this. You can expect
serious
trouble from me from now on, boy detective.”
The boy detective sighs and walks out, returning to his room. He frowns, then blinks his eyes, staring at the newspaper clippings on the wall, adding the one he has just retrieved:
THE HORROR OF THE HAUNTED MINE
What Lurks Inside Miller’s Cave?
That evening the boy detective, asleep in this strange bed, in this strange room, wakes up to the sound of someone else’s screaming. He bounds out of bed, opening the door to the hallway, his face glowing red with fear. Nurse Eloise, in her white uniform, hurries past, stopping for a moment to console him.
“It’s only Mr. Lunt with his poor phantoms again.”
From down the hall, he can hear the old man shouting: “Phantoms! Phantoms! Merciful lord, grant me reprieve!”
Billy closes the door, crawling back to bed. He begins to fall asleep, but soon the old man is screaming again.
“Phantoms! Phantoms! Why am I cursed so? Lord have mercy on me!”
The boy detective lays in his bed and smiles. The sound of Nurse Eloise’s feet is the sound of something very comforting.
It is at the hour of midnight exactly when a man—appearing to be missing his head—opens his black valise. Hidden from the streetlights, he stands beneath a tree of small nesting bluebirds, his dark suit, white collar, black tie all hanging mysteriously around an empty neck. A pair of gloves suddenly appear on his hands. He sets down his suitcase, un-clasps the clasps, and removes a large silver pair of scissors. Soon the shadows all along the quiet street hum with life as the scissors issue their strange racket: It seems the trees and telephone phones immediately begin shrinking and expanding with each
clip-clip-clip
. The birds, high up in the tree, begin to sing out in terror, and then, in a moment, they are deathly silent, though the night air is still thrumming.
At the bus stop, the boy detective watches in horror as a glamorous woman in a white fur coat enjoys a long-tipped cigarette. The boy detective is terrified of cigarettes: The smoke, like the malignant, vaporous claw of near-death, is enough to send poor Billy into a fit. He inches away from the woman but it is no use—like a sentient cloud of gray infirmity, it nears Billy’s face as he begins to tremble and cough.
Before long, a handsome man in a blue business suit approaches the bus stop, talking loudly on his cellular phone. “No. It’s just as I said, I refuse to argue anymore,” he says.
Billy stares at the man’s face, his fragile mind racing:
Who is he speaking with? What has he just said? Why does he refuse to argue?
“No. No. I already told you. No. Listen. Listen. Do not fuck this up. I am warning you. Do not fuck this up for me.”
Billy clamps his hands over his ears and glares upward, the advertising plastered all around the bus stop somehow echoing the same sense of doom:
1-800-WHO’S the FATHER Find Out Now
ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION?
SHOOT SOMEONE WITH A GUN AND GO TO JAIL
On the bus, the boy detective stares at his fellow passengers—shabby, strange, menacing—glowering at them all with disapproval and disdain. The boy detective thinks:
It is as if the world has lost all its manners and meaning. It is as if people have lost their minds. It is as if we are adrift in a glowing asylum hurtling through the darkness of space and there is absolutely no escape.
During that same bus ride, the boy detective must also stop himself from trying to tie three different strangers’ untied shoelaces.
At work, the boy detective is absolutely terrified. Having been hired by Mammoth Life-Like Mustache International to conduct telephone sales on their behalf, Billy sits in the drab green lobby, staring at the company’s catalog, which features various styles of fake beards and mustaches:
• The Junior Executive
• The Noble Hunter
• The Mysterious Stranger
The office itself is an unending maze of cubicles through which many businesspeople and important-looking white documents are constantly crossing. Crowded around the water cooler and various desks are several attractive, well-dressed mustache salesmen, all laughing and winking and shaking each other’s hands. They all have sleek expressions and very handsome, natural-looking mustaches. Above the cubicles, along a silvery wire, papers with completed orders for new merchandise are being sent along like a conveyer belt. Workers in other parts of the office take the papers and replace them with new ones, without any apparent order to their movements. It is very busy and chaotic, and this is what worries Billy.