“Wish carefully is all I’m saying.”
“I just wish I could stay here,” she said. “I want that more than anything.”
Mr. Masterson turned to her, put his hand to his chin, and eyed her like he was taking the measure of her. She must have passed some sort of test because he said then, “Lucy, would you like to see something I’ve been working on?”
“Sure,” Lucy breathed. “What is it?”
“There was a very strange man named Charles Dodgson—you probably know him as Lewis Carroll, yes?”
“Yes, I know him,” Lucy said eagerly.
“Personally?” Mr. Masterson asked.
“We’ve never met,” Lucy said. That made him smile.
“He asked a riddle in a book once. ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ I could never figure it out,” he said. “Nothing worse than hearing a riddle and not knowing the answer to it. Maddening, which was certainly his point. Because I was on deadlines, I didn’t have time to go mad. I made up an answer of my own.”
“You made up an answer?”
Jack Masterson grinned at her. According to his entry in the online encyclopedia, he was fifty-four years old, but at that moment, he looked like a little boy.
“Watch this,” he said and went to his window where Thurl was perched. Mr. Masterson opened the window wide. Then he picked up a little wooden lap desk, not much bigger than a cafeteria tray. With a flourish, he tossed it out the window. Lucy gasped. Was Mr. Masterson crazy? She ran to the window, looked out, expecting to see the writing desk on the ground below.
But the most amazing thing happened, Lucy told Christopher. The desk didn’t fall to the ground. It hovered in the air. Mr. Masterson held some kind of remote control in his hand.
“I put toy helicopter rotors under the bottom of the desk,” he explained as he pushed buttons on the controller. “Flies just like those little hovering thingos you see in the shopping malls.”
The writing desk fluttered and hovered and rose and fell and eventually came back to the window, where he snatched it out of the air.
Lucy knew at that very moment that Jack Masterson was the most incredible man who had ever lived and would ever live, and she had to be his sidekick, or she’d never be truly happy as long as she lived.
Jack Masterson asked her, “Now you know…why is a raven like a writing desk?”
* * *
—
Now, thirteen years later, Christopher answered the riddle.
His voice was soft and full of wonder as he said, “They both can fly.”
“Exactly,” Lucy said with a smile. “Turns out…with a little help, they both can fly.”
Christopher stared at her in wide-eyed amazement.
“Anyway,” Lucy went on—she’d promised Christopher that the story had a happy ending, so she better give him one—“I had to leave, of course. You can’t just show up on your favorite writer’s doorstep and actually move in with him when you’re thirteen years old. But he was supernice, and he did sign a book for me. And he said when I was older, I could come back and visit him again. So maybe I’ll get to do that someday.”
“Can I come with you?” he asked.
She was about to say yes, of course she’d take him anywhere, when she remembered what Mrs. Costa had said, that she was never going to be Christopher’s mother, not unless a miracle happened.
She needed to say something, though. Christopher was looking at her, waiting for an answer. Maybe now was the right time to tell him, to at least start breaking it to him that things weren’t going to work out the way they’d wished.
“You know, sweetheart. I wanted to talk to you about—” she began, but suddenly Theresa appeared in the doorway of the computer room.
“There you are,” Theresa said. Lucy saw she was holding a blue envelope in her hand. “This was just delivered for you. By courier. Hope you’re not getting sued, baby girl.”
She looked at the blue envelope. She looked at Christopher. Christopher looked at the blue envelope. Christopher looked at her.
He screamed. She screamed.
When you gotta scream, you gotta scream.
Tick-Tock. Welcome to the Clock.
In the middle of the deep green wood stood a house half-hidden by towering maple trees. Astrid had never seen a house so strange or so dark. Although the house was tall and wide and made of red brick, so much green ivy grew over it that she could only tell where the windows were by the way the moonlight glinted on the glass.
“Is that it?” Max whispered behind her. “Is that his house?”
“I think so,” Astrid whispered back. “Let’s go in.”
“It’s dark. No one’s inside. We should go home.”
“Not when we just got here.” Astrid wanted to go home too. Nothing would be easier than to go home. But they wouldn’t get their wish if they gave up now.
A light appeared in the window. Someone was inside.
Astrid gasped softly. Max gasped loudly.
They looked at each other. Slowly they approached the house on a path made of slick mossy stones. Max followed close behind her.
When they reached the door, it was so dark Astrid had to turn on her flashlight to find the bell. She pushed the button and waited to hear a ring.
She didn’t hear a ring but a voice, a weird mechanical voice.
“What can’t be touched, tasted, or held but can be broken?”
Astrid jumped back, which made Max jump. They were both panting with fear.
“What was that?” Max asked, eyes wide.
“I think it was the doorbell.” Her hand was shaking, but she pressed it again.
The voice spoke again, and it was like listening to a clock talk, and every syllable was a tick.
“What. Can’t. Be. Touched. Or. Taste. Ed. Or. Held. But. Can. Be. Broke. En?”
“It’s a riddle,” Astrid said. “We can’t get in unless we answer the riddle. What can’t be touched or tasted or held but can be broken? Think, Max!”
But Max wasn’t thinking. He was shaking. “Astrid, I want to go home. You promised if it was scary, we could go home.”
Then it hit her. She knew the answer.
Astrid called out to the door, “A promise!”
After a long pause, the mechanical voice said, “Tick. Tock. Wel. Come. To. The. Clock.”
The door creaked open.
—From The House on Clock Island, Clock Island Book One, by Jack Masterson, 1990
Chapter Seven
Hugo was in exile. His own fault. Three stories up in the air, he stood at the railing of the widow’s walk and watched as the boats and ferries came and went, bringing boxes and grocery bags, even temporary household staff to handle the cooking and cleaning. A small army of staff had been temporarily enlisted by Jack to put on this insane contest of his. So far only one priceless marble bust made by a dead artistic genius had been broken. Jack had laughed and said, “That’s why we have insurance.” Hugo’s head had nearly exploded, which was when Jack sent him to the widow’s walk to “supervise the boats.”
Hugo protested. “Supervise the boats? Someone has to make sure nothing else gets broken down here.”
“Hugo,” Jack said with a large and rather terrifying grin on his face, “your bad mood is scaring the children.”