HOURS LATER, SAME as every Christmas Eve, Henry stared up at the ceiling of his grandparents’ guest bedroom with only the occasional blink, waiting to fall asleep.
Most years he lay awake because of the expectation and excitement for the morning to follow, especially those Christmas Eves more than two years ago when he knew that if he could just fall asleep, he’d soon hear the sound of his mom and dad calling for him to come downstairs.
Tonight, though, felt different. Really, really different.
Yep, this staying-awake business had absolutely nothing to do with whatever would be under the tree in the morning. Besides, he’d already opened two of his gifts: an authentic New York Giants hoody that his friend Jeremy-the-Jets-fan would hate, and an old pen that Chief later whispered to him was for the ledger—once they figured out what the darn thing was all about.
That’s what was keeping him awake, of course.
And the story that came with it.
Henry turned on his side, as if that would help him get to sleep, and looked over at the bedroom door. It was open a scant couple of inches—his mother always kept it cracked so she could peek inside a handful of times each night. Even at home, she had to make sure her son was still breathing.
I’m fine, Mom. No worries, I’ll be okay. Just need to find a way to get a little sleep.
He heard Christmas music softly playing downstairs. Just from the beat, he could tell it was Mariah Carey telling him that all she wanted for Christmas was, well . . . him.
Gigi liked to say she was an expert, or, as she politely urged Henry to call her, a historian of holiday music old and new. This was her favorite radio station—the one she’d tune to in the middle of November and leave on until New Year’s, when the last “Merry Gentleman” had been put to rest.
Henry sighed and plopped his arms on top of the comforter, unable to stop thinking about the great Hunter S. Skavenger’s story; of the unsettling description of Hiram Doubt and his Four Men of Darkness; of the legendary, though never-completed, hunts of 1883, 1884, and 1885.
And, of course, his father.
Henry had discovered only a few hours ago that Nathan’s promise of adventure had its roots in the very story Chief told him. That it should have been the three of them walking the streets of the city searching for whatever undiscovered items Skavenger had placed. A secret the three of them would have tried to hide from Gigi and Mom while asking for another piece of pie around the Christmas Eve table.
I just wasn’t old enough yet. They were waiting on me.
None of those things could ever be changed, of course. Henry knew that much. But the thought of adventure had been revived tonight by Chief’s promise.
A promise that the two of them would figure out what that ridiculous piece of ledger paper was all about.
Yeah, but seriously, what is it? Even Chief doesn’t know, and Chief knows everything! Is it really one of Skavenger’s clues? The first one? The last one? Maybe it’s nothing . . . maybe it’s just a bookmark in a book.
Henry tossed the covers aside. Maybe there was something in the story he’d overlooked or forgotten. Or, most tempting of all, maybe there was something on the ledger sheet he hadn’t seen. Maybe they just hadn’t looked closely enou—
Wait a second!
Henry remembered he’d once watched an old detective movie with his father in which the hero closely studied a piece of paper with a magnifying glass, seeing the imprint of words written on a sheet that had once rested above it. Henry and Nathan had laughed and laughed at how serious the detective seemed to be.
“Y’see? Y’see?” his father had mocked the actor’s stilted delivery. “Detective, this is now hard evidence! It can be admitted in a court of laaaaaw!”
Even now, Henry smiled.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe if he studied the ledger sheet closely enough, he’d find something he could show Chief in the morning; a Christmas gift of his own to kick-start the detective work for both of them.
He eased his way out of bed and tiptoed toward the door, being careful when he peeked out—in case his mother was on her final approach, ready to peek in.
The hallway was empty.
Henry stepped out, the music from downstairs barely loud enough to dampen the sound of his footsteps. He leaned his head around the edge of the hallway at the corner . . . the one that turned and led directly to his grandfather’s study.
The door was open, but only by the couple of inches he’d found it earlier that evening.
A layer of full-moon blue drew a line across the floor toward Henry’s feet, and for a half second, he was sure the old man would be in there, surrounded by candles blazing their light.
He wasn’t, though. The study was empty.
And Henry made his way in without a hint of a sound.
He looked toward the desk, dark but uncluttered, which meant he’d have to actually find the ledger sheet, wherever it might be. Knowing Chief, it could be anywhere; maybe even tucked inside one of the hundreds of books lining the shelves or stacked high on the floor.
Next to page 214 prob’ly.
Or over by the newspapers.
Or under the first base from old Yankee Stadium.
Or anywhere.
Henry decided to start at the desk, his eyes jumping to the old green banker’s lamp an arm’s length away—fake light absolutely, which meant nothing good could ever possibly come from it.
The lamp probably wouldn’t even work, he figured, given how much Chief relied on candles. If it did, though, it might spill light into the hall and straight under the door of his mother’s guest room.
Risky. Risky, risky, risky. But . . .
Gotta do it.
Ever so gently he tugged at the small, old chain hanging next to the bulb and the lamp flared bright.
Henry held his breath for a half moment, certain he was about to hear the turning of a doorknob, the steady rhythm of his mother’s footsteps, or some other sound that would quickly be followed by “Henry? What’s up? It’s the middle of the night. You feeling okay?”
There was nothing, though.
Nothing except for the scratching sound of Henry opening the desk compartment, revealing the junk drawer to beat all junk drawers. He shook his head, quietly moving aside the countless old letters, several of which were tucked inside brittle, old air-delivery envelopes, the familiar red-and-blue stripe around their edges.
Australia.
Brazil.
London.
Istan—
The ledger sheet!
It was right here. Not inside a book, but instead, underneath a letter from some guy named Dewey McElroy, postmarked 1947.
Henry quietly pulled out the old ledger and placed it under the light. The only sound came from the downstairs radio, which was now quietly informing the entire house that it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Henry pushed the lamp cover a smidge higher to better highlight the old sheet of paper, then spent the next few minutes holding it upways, sideways, and longways, before reaching the conclusion that . . .
Zero. Zip. Nada.
He muttered under his breath, though very much out loud, “Well, guess I’ll wait till tomorrow to solve the Great Skavenger Hunt of eight . . .”
Henry barely whispered the first syllable of the year before a long-faded numeral . . . 8 . . . slowly began to scrawl itself onto the paper, without a hand or pen guiding it. Right there, in the old empty box where the date would’ve been recorded, the inked number quickly deepened into a dark and brilliant black.
Waaaait . . .
. . . wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.
His actual voice had fallen silent even before saying the rest of the number, because he couldn’t say the rest of the number. Not with an eight now clearly, unmistakably visible on the age-old ledger paper.
Not a computer-looking eight, or a typewritten eight—even though the only typewritten eight Henry had really ever seen had been on his computer.
This was a handwritten eight. Gliding onto the paper as if it had been written in that same moment by the hand of a ghost.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he finally managed to murmur as he tilted the lampshade even higher to see if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Nope. No tricks.
8
It was there. Right there. In black and white . . . well, black at least. And all he had done, just before the number had somehow appeared, was to say that Skavenger’s Great Hunt of—
Hold on. You said it. You said it out loud. You started to at least.
“Eighteen,” Henry whispered, making certain this time to say the entire word.
And just as the first number had appeared in the date box of the ledger, before his voice had stopped and faltered, the second numeral now followed suit.
The ghostly ink soaked its way into the old paper, slowly and hauntingly. Written in that very moment in letter-perfect handwriting. The elegant style of writing reserved for the year . . .
“1885,” Henry hesitantly added. Out loud.
Another eight and a new five began to spill onto the page. It was quiet enough that he could actually hear the scratching sound of an old pen as the full year appeared.
. . . shhccrriisstttchhh . . . shhccrriisstttchhh . . .
1885
The back of Henry’s neck tingled cold, his thoughts instantly jumbling into nothing more than a steady, uninterrupted stream of:
Holycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrap.
Until, for whatever reason, the smallest flicker of curiosity decided to fight off the adrenaline and bubbling panic rushing through his body.
Perhaps it was Dr. Riggins and his never-ending fascination with questions that begged for an answer. Maybe it was Chief, who taught him that if he didn’t know something he should ask. And if he didn’t believe it, he should ask again.
Maybe one of those things was the reason why Henry was still sitting right there in the old man’s chair, staring at the suddenly very mysterious piece of ledger paper below him.
Wait, hold on here a second. I say it and it shows up? I say 1885 out loud and there it is? I said 1885 a couple of times when Chief and I were talking. I’m sure I did. So why now? What the heck’s even going on here?
He stared at the number for another good long minute. Maybe two.
The practical side of Henry Babbitt’s brain usually won most of these arguments, if not all of them. He got it from his mother. And right now that practical side was telling him: All right. Enough with all this “saying 1885 out loud” business. You fell asleep, okay? You’re dreaming. Simple as that.
He rubbed his eyes and then closed them tight. Really tight. It was a trick he’d figured out a few years ago as a way to help him get out of nightmares.
Close my eyes as tight as I can, long as I can, and I’ll wake up.
Henry kept his eyes shut for longer than was usually necessary; longer because the rolling, tingling sensation that was always there as he’d slowly wake up was missing this time.
He opened his eyes.
1885
Still there.
Still impossible.
Somehow, the ink had already faded enough that it now actually looked as if it had been there for well over a century. Henry rubbed his thumb right on the date—gently at first, but then hard enough that he worried for a second the old paper might rip in two.
The ink didn’t smear in the least.
Henry hesitated again for what felt like forever—wanting, but terrified, to say the one word he knew made perfect sense.
Tick, tick, tick, tick . . .
It was as if the clock on Chief’s desk was tapping him on the shoulder, reminding him that he was now officially wasting time. Nudging him to either say it out loud or keep his mouth shut.
Or maybe I should just go get Chief. He won’t be mad. He’ll be excited. He’ll know what to do.
But instead, Henry Babbitt took in a deep, uncertain breath, unable to resist.
“July,” he finally said out loud.
. . . shhccrriisstttchhh . . . shhccrriisstttchhh . . .
July
This time he didn’t wait, finishing the date with the only item left missing.
“Tenth,” he quietly said. Out loud, just as he had bef—
WHUMP.
It was in that moment that something clearly happened, though what that something was, Henry didn’t have a clue. The sound that followed his saying the word “tenth” wasn’t so much a sound. It was a feeling. Almost like the quick change in the air one felt during the strongest of summer thunderstorms. An electric sensation.
What happened after that, though, was entirely clear—despite that it was also completely and totally unexplainable.
The brand-new laptop computer on the far corner of Chief’s old desk, the one he used more as a paperweight than for anything else, slowly began to fade away, until it disappeared entirely.
Gone. Vanished.
What? No.
This week’s short stack of newspapers followed suit, quickly evaporating from Henry’s sight.
The newer books on the old man’s shelves began to fade away as well, vanishing within seconds. The pens on his desk. The Derek Jeter–autographed baseball in its small glass collector’s case, disappearing like a soft grounder into the Hall of Famer’s glove.
No, no, no.
One by one, as if in mind-boggling exact order, the contents of Chief’s study grew transparent and then became . . . nothing. Nothing at all. Henry could both see and hear the stack of Old Gray Lady editions thumping its way shorter and shorter.
The banker’s lamp on the desk eased its way from white light to gray and then black, followed a heartbeat later by the wicks on each of the old man’s candles unexpectedly and eerily crackling to life as the gentle, soft hum of electricity faded with a steadily slowing whooooooosssshhhh.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
KUHTHUMP!
Henry plopped straight onto the hardwood floor, landing right on his rear. Chief’s chair, the one he’d been sitting on, was now nowhere to be seen.
The desk was the next thing to go.
The first base from Yankee Stadium was already fading.
And the golf club from Scotland? It was still there, but it was now on the floor because the one thing that had always held it up, Henry’s favorite leather chair, wasn’t there anymore.
Henry pushed himself up to run toward the door, tripping and falling right on his face as his foot got tangled in one of the royal garments from ancient Egypt. The only thing that had made his fall even possible was that the wooden box that had protected the delicate items for decades had also vanished. Those garments had never been out on the floor before, until right now.
“CHIEF?! MOM?! GIGI?!” Henry yelled out, repeating each name even louder as he ran into the hallway, seeing that everything in the corridor and on the landing was absent. It was as if a moving company had finished three days of work in the span of three minutes.
“MOM? CHIEF?” he shouted over the bannister. But the only sound Henry heard was his own voice, which had recovered enough to drown out the music playing downsta—
He stopped.
There’s no music playing downstairs. There’s not even a crackle.
Because you know there’s not gonna be a radio down there.
Henry raced down every step with barely a glance at the wall now barren of any and all photographs. Once on the main level, he stopped long enough to glance into the dining room—emptied of all its furnishings as well as the usually long-lingering aroma of Christmas Eve dinner.
Gone. All of it.
But it was when Henry stumbled into Chief’s and Gigi’s great room that he noticed something else was already well underway. Something almost as unsettling as the past three, probably now four, minutes.
Everything from the fourteen-foot-tall Christmas tree to the stunning artwork, even the hardwood floors, had been erased from the vacant room. Until . . .
A much, much different collection of furnishings slowly began to appear. Almost all of it looked Victorian in design, despite the fact that each piece looked as new as if it had just been purchased yesterday. Oak cabinets proudly stood against the wall, dark red tables covered with bright white linen were placed in each corner, and the room itself was now illuminated by brass lanterns slowly coming into view, both on the walls and on the side tables.
Henry even felt a tingle rippling over his own body; a chill that made it seem as if something had just changed about him as well.
This is crazy, this is crazy, this is . . .
Henry couldn’t catch his breath. How could he? Everything that was in the house he’d known for so long was now gone, all of it eerily replaced by what, exactly? From when, from where, from what?
“MOM? CHIEF? GIGI?” Henry called out once more, but even as he did, he knew there wouldn’t be an answer. Just as he knew—
Wait.
Something was different about the main window in front of him.
It wasn’t just that Gigi’s prized window coverings were gone, replaced by Victorian drapes. It was what he could see beyond the window, through the inch-wide opening in the curtains. Light. Henry cocked his head and stepped closer.
The snow can’t be that bright, can it? Wait, no. It’s not that it’s bright. It’s that it’s . . .
Something was wrong. Something with the color of the moonlight that was piercing through where the drapes were bunched together. Instead of being a sparkling white, it was almost . . . yellow.
Clip, clop, clip, clop . . .
What the heck? What the heck is that? He was right on the verge of panic.
In the same way the objects inside the house had slowly been appearing, now there were sounds outside that were slowly rising. Sounds that made zero sense at half past whatever in the middle of Christmas Eve night.
Clip, clop, clip, clop . . .
Clip, CLOP, clip, CLOP . . .
CLIP, CLOP, CLIP, CLOP . . .
Henry gulped.
Okay, okay. Calm down, just think it through. Everybody’s still in bed. You fell asleep in Chief’s study. That’s the only thing it can be. All the excitement of Christmas, the talk you had with the old man, it all just—
No matter how hard his head tried to tell him he was asleep, Henry felt wide awake.
Nothing makes a noise like that in the middle of Christmas Eve night. NOTHING.
Just then, with the room steadily brightening from not only the lanterns but the general warmth and humidity that certainly didn’t come with midnight in December, Henry heard . . . a voice.
A voice he didn’t recognize coming from far upstairs, deep in the master bedroom.
“George? Emily?” a man’s deep and resonant voice called out. “Your mother and I are ready to head to the park. We’re already late, and we don’t want to miss anything.”
“Okay, Papa!” a young boy’s voice answered.
A rush of near-terror flooded through Henry’s veins. He looked up and over his shoulder, seeing no one. Yet.
George? Emily? Who’s George and Emily? Who’s Papa?
Henry reached for the knob, turned it, and quickly pulled the front door open. And that’s when the warm air of a summer morning brushed against his face.