Written by Veluan, Sat Sep 12 11:56:38 US/Pacific 1998
Part 15
Frank Coalquarter's house
Mack put the bucket down as he stood in the front garden of the house. He looked through the window and saw that the old man was sitting between his books, like a watchdog. He slowly put his hand in the bucket, his hand was a bit wet. He rang the doorbell. He was hoping that Frank used his right hand.
The door opened and an old wrinkled face appeared. "What?" it grumped.
Mack quickly grabbed Frank's hand and shook it. "Hello, pleased to meet you. My name is Mack Johnson and I'm an exchange student, I'm working on a project about the woods, I've heared that you have a lot of books about the subject and I was hoping if I could take a look at them."
The man was silent for a bit. "No!" and slammed the door shut.
Mack smiled and picked up the bucket and walked away. A couple of minutes later the lights went out at Frank's house. Mack walked away from a tree he was leaning against. He walked into Frank's garden and when all was silent he approached the front door. There was a tiny window above the door to let the fresh air into the small house. Mack saw that the keys to the frontdoor lay on a small cupboard in the hall. He threw the fishhook into the hall, it missed the cupboard. He grabbed the wire and threw the fishhook away again.
"Yes!" it landed on the cupboard. He slowly pulled the fishing wire and the hook pulled the keys along the board. The keys were airborne and Mack saw them rise at the other side of the glass in the door. With one final pull the hook and the keys fell on the right side of the door, in Mack's opinion. He grabbed the keys.
"So far so good", he whispered to no one in particular. He opened the frontdoor with one of the keys, he had to be quick now. He opened the door and stepped into the hall. He stood next to the alarmbox. On the display there was a message: "Enter the code. 5 seconds." the five turned into the four. Mack looked at the numbers. His plan worked, when he shook Frank's hand, Frank got the phosphor on his hand. When typing the code a little bit of it came on the numbers. Phosphor lights up in the dark. Mack pushed the button who shone the brightest first. The three appeared on the display. Then the one who shone a little less bright. Then the one who shone hardly at all. A two appeared. Then there were no more bright numbers.
Mack's adrenaline gave him a clear insight, the last number must be one of the already chosen numbers. The chosen numbers were 0-2-1. The two turned into the one. Mack searched for a system. Starting with one, adding two, deduct one. He hoped that the code would end with zero again. Adding two, deducting two. He pressed the one.
The one appeared on the display. "Code correct, hello mr. Coalquarter."
Mack closed his eyes. Lucky guess and he knew it. He took the keys from the door and closed it. Slowly, without making a sound, he walked into the livingroom and walked towards the nearest bookshelf.
It was dark in the living room, but Mack didn't turn on the light, Frank probably wouldn't see it, but just in case. He stood at the nearest shelf and browsed. A guy named Earl Lee Days wrote some historybook, but it wasn't the St. Francis-in-the-woods-history. Luckily Frank labeled the shelves. Mack read Physics, History, Fiction and hah St. Francis-in-the-woods. There weren't a lot of books on the subject, only five. There wasn't a lot to write about Mack assumed.
"The secret world of the St-Francis Woods" that was a title that intriged Mack, he took it and walked towards a barred window. He read a bit.
"Most people don't know what secret world the woods are. For instance, the red-foot squirrel is rarely seen, this squirrel sleeps during the daytime and at night he collects his food containing of little nuts and other little..."
Mack put the book back, it was not exactly the book he was after. He browsed through the other titles.
"The complete and accurate history of St. Francis-in-the-woods written by Simon-Frank Templer. That sounded better, he looked through the index, a lot of the chapters were not interesting, but the legend of the Shadow sounded very..very interesting. Mack took the book, Frank wouldn't even notice if one of them was gone and he wasn't stealing it, he was just borrowing the book for a day, well sort of. He opened the frontdoor, put in the keys, entered the code, got out, closed the door. He locked it and put the keys on the hook again and threw it through the window again, he slowly dropped the keys on the cupboard and pulled the wire up without the keys. He put the wire in a pocket and walked away with the bucket and the book.
If you have any comments, you can email Veluan at gjvdmeer@tref.nl.
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