Burying a father sucks.
The doctor said it was a brain aneurysm that killed him, but Ethan McCloud knew better. It had to have been the Six-Fingered Man. Before, he hadn’t known in which direction he wanted to go. Now he did. He was going to find the Six-Fingered Man and do to him what he’d done to his father.
All he had to do was find him first.
He pulled out a piece of memo paper from his father’s desk drawer and grabbed a pen. He began to make a list:
He sat back and stared at the list. Only six things to do, but besides the first, the rest seemed so impossible at this point. Then he had an idea. He searched his dad’s office, checking to see if he had a laptop. Ethan found it in a leather case behind the sofa. He pulled it out and noticed that it was new and top-of-the-line. He checked the case and found a mouse, cables, and a debit card from Colorado State Bank. This stopped him. The name on the debit card was his—Ethan C. McCloud.
That was his name.
He’d been meant to find this.
Opening the laptop, he noticed that it required a username and password. Now he was stumped. What would his father use? If the card had been meant for him, then it had to be something obvious, something his father would expect him to figure out easily.
But what?
Ethan glanced around the room at the pictures and books. His gaze fell on each item on the desk, wondering if it might reveal a clue. Finally he stood and went over to his father’s honorable discharge. He removed it from the wall and flipped it over.
Nothing.
Damn it. What would his father have used?
Then he spied the salmon picture. Ethan placed the honorable discharge back on the wall and removed the other picture. He gazed fondly for a moment on his father’s happy face, then flipped the picture over. There on the back, written in block letters, was PW=Columbia_River_Salmon.
Awesome, but what is the username?
He searched the back of every picture in the room but found nothing else written on them. He sat heavily on the sofa, staring at the log-in screen.
What could the username be?
He let his gaze dance around the room until it rested on a plaque he’d bought his father when he was ten or eleven. It read World’s Best Fisherman and had a photo of his father superimposed on a cartoon figure catching a whale.
Ethan smiled.
He typed in Fisherman, then the password.
It didn’t take.
He put the username into all caps and tried again.
This time it took. He was in.
The screen came up, and on the desktop were three files. One titled Introduction to Managed Attribution and Proxy Servers, which reminded Ethan that one of the admonitions was to never connect to the internet without managed attribution. The other file read Notes for Ethan. The third was a thumbnail icon for a video that read In Case of Death.
Ethan took a deep breath and, using the pad on the laptop, scrolled and selected the video-file icon. His father’s face appeared right away. It could have been made his last night for all he knew. His father was wearing the same goofy Dude robe, his hair was askew, and his smile was wan. But it was his father, and for this single electronic instance he was alive.
“This video is meant for Ethan. If anyone else finds this, please don’t listen to it. It’s a private matter. Make sure he gets it.”
Then there was a pause as his father gave the stern look all his children knew meant that he wasn’t kidding.
Ethan grinned, remembering the ten thousand times he’d been on the losing end of that very same stare.
After about thirty seconds, his father abruptly changed. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “So it’s come to this, has it, son? I’m sorry to put you in this position, but when I thought of all the people I knew, and who would be the best one to pass this on to, all I could think of was you. I know you probably think it’s because you don’t have a wife and kids, but that’s not true at all. I believe that your mind is singularly suited for this mission. You think critically and base your answers on provable facts. Too many of us have traveled down the rabbit hole and gotten caught up in the minutiae of all the supposed facts at hand. The document, as you can see, is as much a trap as it is a platform from which to find these giants. That’s our ultimate goal, after all, and I think with your mathematical background you can actually do it.”
Then his expression got serious.
“But follow the instructions. Beware the Six-Fingered Man. He’s not fictional. He’s real. I know, because I saw him once. The problem is now that he knows where I live, it’s only a matter of time before he tries something, and I need to—”
Ethan pressed pause, catching his father in midsentence. Had the Six-Fingered Man been in the home the morning his dad died? Did he give his father something that caused the aneurysm? An injection, or a pill? And why hadn’t the doctor found it?
The answer to the last was obvious. Without any indication of foul play, why would the doctor suspect it was anything other than an act of God? Real life wasn’t like an action movie.
Ethan pressed play again.
“—protect your mother. That is the utmost. There’s no way for the Six-Fingered Man to know I sent you the box unless you’ve ignored the admonitions, which I’m sure you haven’t. Even so, I don’t want you staying around the house for too long. That will only put her in danger. You’ll find a debit card in the bag with your name on it. I opened an account. I know they laid you off at the high school, Ethan. A letter came to this address from the board of education. I guess they took the address from your application and sent it here. I didn’t tell your mother, though you probably should. It’s never a good thing to lie to your mother. Trust me on that. There’s nearly ten thousand dollars in that account. I won it in Vegas a few years ago and decided to store it away for a rainy day. I see storm clouds in the distance, so that day is coming soon.
“Now for advice. I’m not going to give you any. Like I said, you think differently. Use that. Trust your instincts. Solve this equation and figure out what it all means. And please be careful. One last thing. If you’re ever in trouble, seek out Nathan White. He lives in Memphis. He’s a stand-up guy and has more resources than any single man should. Tell Nate that I sent you because I’m dead and you’re in trouble. That should be enough. Don’t tell him about the Six-Fingered Man, though.
“I love you, son. I love you. I so cherish that fishing trip we went on on the Columbia. Sometimes I think I love you best.” He regarded the camera with so much love that Ethan couldn’t help himself as a sob escaped.
“I love you, too, Dad,” he said softly to the screen.
Then his father cracked a smile. “Enough of this mushy stuff. You’ll be here anytime now, and I have to hide this somewhere only you will find it.” Then he winked at the camera, moved forward, pressed something, and the video went black.
Ethan sat and stared at the screen through tear-prismed eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but it was long enough that the screensaver came on. It was an image of a Sumerian statue of a six-fingered giant.