The Raven Read online

  1) preserve freedom.

  2) maintain secrecy.

  3) destroy all enemies.

  Destroy all enemies was sounding very possible, with me as the enemy. I half expected the Raven to jump out of the pages of the book and the ghost of Old Joe Bush to crash through the window.

  They’d get me from both sides.

  I opened the letter — single spaced on two sheets — and knew immediately who it was from. I’d seen this handwriting before.

  So it wasn’t the Raven, after all. It was Fitz in my room last night! He sneaked into my room in the middle of the night in his dad’s rain slicker and nearly scared me half to death. Wow.

  I feel sorry for the guy. Must be rough living in a cave with the Raven. It makes me wonder what I’d do if I were him. Also makes me happy I have parents who aren’t cave-dwelling secret-society members. What’s a guy like Fitz supposed to do? I wish he could come down out of that cave and go back to work at the fly shop.

  I can’t help seeing the similarities between the tree and the blue rock, where Sarah and I used to exchange private notes. Is it just me, or do I have a habit of making friends who like to keep secrets from their parents? Getting to the blue rock was easy when Sarah wanted to exchange a note, but exchanges with Fitz will be harder. I can mountain bike down the river trail, but it’s over an hour to the campsite on a bike, even longer coming back upstream.

  Communicating with Fitz is going to be some work.

  I called Sarah and spoke in my quietest whisper as I flipped the delicate pages in the book back and forth. She couldn’t believe the book was totally empty, but she was thrilled about the fact that the Raven hadn’t actually broken into my house. There was a pause on both ends and I knew what she was thinking. Know why? Because I was thinking the exact same thing.

  If the Raven didn’t come into my house, then he hadn’t crossed some imaginary line Sarah and I had both set up in our heads. We could wait a little longer before telling anyone what we were doing. We could follow the trail of the Apostle and see where it led.

  All we had to do was figure out one more clue — number 3 on the Raven Puzzle — and we’d know the road Sarah would need to follow.

  Somehow I had a feeling it would lead back to the empty book I held in my hand. And the clause, whatever that was.

  Friday, July 15, 6:55 p.m.

  My parents are out playing cards down the street with the Muntzes (old family friends), so I’ve got a couple of hours to languish in my journal. Things to write have been piling up, but the time and energy to write them down have been few and far between.

  Someone blabbed about the great fishing — probably the retired couple, even though they barely caught a thing — and the shop has been humming with fishermen ever since. Albert Vern seemed to sense the crush descending on Skeleton Creek and decided to call off the second-day float and head into Portland on a different assignment. He’s supposed to be back early next week, after things die down, when Mayor Blake says I better get my act together.

  “Time to get this story off the griddle before it leaves town for good” was how he phrased it.

  I have some major news to report, but first I just gotta write down this Gladys Morgan moment — it’s a classic. She came into the shop yesterday during a brief lull. I half expected to see her pull an ax out from behind her back and start taking swings at our floor to even things up after what we’d done to her library. But the ancient town librarian had other things on her mind.

  “Don’t think for a moment you can fool me. I know exactly what you’re up to,” she warned me. I was like, Uh-oh. What does she know?

  “Is there something I can help you with, Ms. Morgan?” I asked, glancing over at my dad, who was starting to pay closer attention than I was comfortable with.

  “I’ll get you back, Ryan McCray, just you wait,” she went on. So it was about ripping her floor apart? Or not?

  “Um, Ms. Morgan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She glared at me over her bifocals.

  “How dumb do you think I am?” She pointed at me first, then my dad. “Start carrying your weight with these reporters! Do you have any idea how many calls I’m taking? How many interviews I’ve done? The mayor is at my heels all day while you fish or talk about fishing or sell fishing stuff to a bunch of fishing idiots. Get with the program!”

  She turned on her heels and stormed out of the shop before my dad or I had a chance to answer her. Then we both started laughing.

  “I’m standing right here!” she yelled from the front steps of the shop, the sound of our laughter drifting out the front windows and into the parking lot.

  Other than that, the moments of levity have been rare. I spend most of my time worried about Fitz, the ghost book, the Raven Puzzle, sneak attacks by the Raven, being haunted by Old Joe Bush, and mostly about Sarah. She’s acting reckless again and it’s making me nervous.

  She called me a little over an hour ago from an Arctic Circle somewhere in Nevada.

  “An Arctic Circle in the desert,” I said. “You’ve officially lost your mind.”

  “Arctic Circle the restaurant, not the north pole or whatever. A little trivia for you: They invented fry sauce. Pretty cool, huh?”

  She was slurping on a drink they serve called a Lime Rickey.

  “I thought you were in LA until tomorrow morning?” I asked.

  She told me the camp had ended at noon, and that she was scheduled to stay the night in the dorm, then start the drive home tomorrow. Instead, she left the second the last class got out so her parents wouldn’t get suspicious.

  “Wait a second. I thought you said your parents were on board,” I prodded her. I got a long pause followed by a shifty answer.

  “They are on board. They just want me off the road by nightfall, so that’s kind of a problem.”

  “Tell the truth, Sarah. What’s going on?”

  She hemmed and hawed, then spilled it.

  “Okay, so maybe I didn’t tell them everything. They’re fine with the detours on the way home, but they won’t let me drive at night. That’s crazy, right? Like driving in the dark is a big deal or something.”

  Right about then I was siding with Sarah’s parents. I could imagine her breaking down at midnight on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, thumbing a ride into some backwater town. Not a good thought.

  “They booked me a hotel in Cheyenne for tomorrow night,” Sarah explained. “But it’s a sixteen-hour drive if all I do is stop to use the bathroom and grab a sandwich. I would’ve had to have left at five in the morning tomorrow to get there before dark, but that wouldn’t have gotten us what we need, which is why there’s a day my parents don’t know about.”

  I did the calculations in my head: Sarah took off from LA in the early afternoon, so she was going to arrive at St. Mark’s church between three and four in the morning tonight.

  “It’s perfect, Ryan. Think about it: I’ll get to our first location before the sun comes up, instead of when the sun is going down. I’ll find the clue, then check into the hotel early and snooze all day. Technically, I’m still checking in before dark. Right?”

  Anytime someone starts a sentence with the word technically, it’s a cover for a lie that’s about to follow.

  “I don’t know, Sarah — it all sounds kind of dangerous. What if your instructor calls them and says you left early?”

  She told me it was LA, where free spirits roam, and that her instructor was a hippie who had already fled to the beach for the weekend. Then she called me a chicken.

  “Name-calling is beneath you,” I said.

  “Sorry, it’s just … come on, Ryan. This is ideal. I can practically see the next Apostle video now. Don’t you want to know what he’s going to say?”

  She was on her game, for sure. I was curious. And I was holding us back, as usual.

  So I did a little calculating of my own, seeing where this was going.

  “Let me guess: You’ll wak
e up in Wyoming around four in the afternoon and call to check in with your parents, because that’s when you’re supposed to be checking in.”

  “Now you’re getting it. I’ll hit the road right after I call them, which should put me at the Spooksville Triangle in Missouri by two in the morning. And I’ll get plenty of sleep. This way I can be at these locations at night, when no one is around. Makes sense, right?”

  It was hard to argue with Sarah’s logic, but I was worried for her and told her so, especially since she’d been feeling as if the ghost of Old Joe Bush was somewhere nearby.

  Her answer to that wasn’t as surprising as I’d expected it to be.

  “I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I think he’s on our side.”

  It’s possible. Whether it’s my dad’s old friend Henry or a ghost or some twisted version of the two, it’s possible he isn’t trying to harm us anymore.

  But how can we be sure?

  “Just get to Cheyenne as safely as you can,” I said. “And no more surprises.”

  I told her I’d be awake all night long, that she could call me anytime, and that she better call me once she got to St. Mark’s Church. If she broke down somewhere she should call me first and we’d figure it out together. And if she got tired, I advised her to stick her head out the window and scream.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  I’ve got time to kill.

  I guess I’ll go grab a few Mountain Dews and get back to the Raven Puzzle. If Sarah is going to do all the exploring, the least I can do is figure this thing out for us.

  Friday, July 15, 10:30 p.m.

  The mayor followed my parents down Main Street after the card game and gave me yet another list of news outlets to contact with follow-up questions. He said he’d give them to Gladys Morgan if I wanted, so I snatched the piece of paper out of his hand. I didn’t need the town librarian returning to the fly shop with a sledgehammer.

  When the mayor left, I sat on the porch with my parents for a half hour or so. I yawned about every five seconds and finally my mom turned to my dad and said, “You’re working that boy too hard.”

  My dad thought that was about the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. He went into one if his yarns about how hard life had been in the old days. It was all I could do to not throw up.

  My dad yawned after that, then I did, then he yawned again.

  “I’ve had better conversations with two stray dogs,” my mom said.

  A few minutes later, my dad had fallen asleep on the porch, and my mom had her nose in a book, which was my cue to call it a night.

  When I got to my room, I found three text messages waiting for me, all from Sarah.

  8:17 p.m.

  Rest stop, making good time, sun will be down soon. I’m wide awake!

  9:45 p.m.

  White Castle! Need I say more?

  9:52 p.m.

  Almost forgot! I finished my documentaries on St. Mark’s Church and Spooksville before I left camp. Got all inspired. Password is fortunato. Check ’em out.

  The White Castle comment eludes me, since I’ve never been. Apparently, they make tiny burgers that cost, like, five cents. That girl has got to get off the road. Her idea of good eats is getting sketchy.

  She’ll be at St. Mark’s Church all by herself before the sun comes up and into the Spooksville Triangle soon after that. Better check out these documentaries so I know exactly what she’s getting herself into.

  sarahfincher.com

  Password:

  FORTUNATO

  Friday, July 15, 10:46 p.m.

  Close call!

  My dad just barged right in on his way to bed, acting all weird. I think Mom told him about me talking to Sarah on the phone. Not good. I barely had time to shut my laptop before he came in, and I’m sure he suspected something. I have to be more careful.

  It was a long day and I’m tired, but those two videos woke me up. I still can’t believe Sarah keeps going into these places all alone. She’s fearless, that girl. And reckless.

  A couple of things I hadn’t thought of that now strike me as problems. For one thing, how the heck is she going to get inside St. Mark’s Church? It’ll be locked at 3:00 a.m. for sure. Check out that video and you’ll see for yourself: It’s not like she’s going to walk right in there in the middle of the night. The Ghost Room is upstairs, in the tower, so she’ll need to get inside. Something tells me she’s already thought this through and her answer isn’t going to be a good one.

  Also, the Spooksville documentary didn’t make any mention of a house or a barn out there. According to the puzzle, there should be something hidden at the hideout for B and C…. I sort of neglected to recall we never really figured that part out. I assumed it would figure itself out once she got there, but now that we’re getting closer to the location, I’m nervous this mysterious building isn’t even there. Maybe it’s burned to the ground or disappeared into a sinkhole, right along with a secret message from the Apostle.

  Looks like I’ve got plenty of work to do while Sarah drives across Utah.

  If I fall asleep she’ll never forgive me.

  Must.

  Stay.

  Awake.

  Saturday, July 16, 1:24 a.m.

  I’m always better at sleuthing in the middle of the night. There’s less pressure and my senses are on red alert. I’m not sure if it’s me worrying that someone is going to come smashing through my window or what, but I do go into a different mode after midnight.

  I figured out the final location, the one marked 3. Darn proud of myself on this one. I might even have to pat myself on the back a couple of times.

  Many drawings to share, so here goes.

  To recap what we already know, in case we’re gone and someone needs to piece this thing together …

  Location number 1 is in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It’s the St. Mark’s Church, where Sarah will arrive in less than two hours.

  Side 1 of the puzzle was a tower with a skeleton lying inside:

  Side 2 was the Ghost Room floor with the marker, where Sarah will need to pry up the floorboard or something:

  Okay, so we’re good to go on one of the clues. Not sure how Sarah is getting in there, but if she does, hopefully we’ll get another message from the Apostle.

  Sarah figured out the second drawing, which looks like this:

  Three roads, the lantern, the skeleton hand — it all led to the Spooksville Triangle. And the related piece from the other side of the Raven:

  This drawing makes it clear that Sarah will need to park right below the rise in the road, from which we hope we’ll figure out what the hideout for B and C is.

  Skipping ahead to the fourth location, it was a gimme with the nickel — Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson had lived.

  The two puzzle pieces for that one look like this:

  Clearly, it’s the Monticello building from the tails’ side of a nickel, but we’re a little stumped on what the rest of it means. Put the letters here? I know where we’ll get the letters: from the Apostle videos at the locations, like before. And we’ll place them in the right order using the places provided on the Raven Puzzle:

  When we have the letters and we put them in order on the front of Monticello, this will all make sense.

  I hope.

  So now the good news — there was one more location to figure out and it had us both stumped. I figured we were being taken back across the country, so I had a pretty good idea the location would be somewhere between Missouri and Virginia. Here’s a map I drew with some of the things we already knew and the area I figured I’d find the last location:

  Follow the trail of the Apostle.

  He was heading back to where it all began, back to the place where the Crossbones was born along with the United States of America. The location had to be in that bottom right corner of the United States. I searched all through Tennessee, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi for haunted places starting with the letters S and G until ab
out a half hour ago, I literally slapped myself in the forehead.

  So stupid!

  Here’s the drawing from the Raven Puzzle:

  Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

  The G is for Georgia, which is right in line with a trip across the country. And if the G was for Georgia, then the S was for a city. A city where a fire took place. A big one.

  As it turns out, without much investigating at all, I found the fire.

  Savannah, Georgia. The fire of 1820, a fire that engulfed two-thirds of the city. I couldn’t help thinking Skeleton Creek had survived a fire just like it in its own past.

  Coincidence?

  Hardly!

  Two huge fires in two Crossbones strongholds? I think they had something to do with it. They burned Jefferson’s house down. These guys are known pyromaniacs.

  The down arrow and the number 30 got me to the location. Take 30 away from 1820 and you get 1790.

  The 17 Hundred 90 building, a haunted hotel in a haunted city. And the most haunted room in that hotel? Look no further than the clue on the other side of the puzzle:

  Room 204. A room you can still stay in today. If you’re crazy!

  I don’t think Sarah is crazy, but I do think she’s more than willing to stay in a haunted hotel room if it gets us some answers we need. That’s a no-brainer.

  I’m going to take a quick break, finish drawing this map, scan it, and send it to Sarah. That way she’ll have a visual. And I’m grabbing a bowl of Cheerios with a ton of sugar. I’m crashing!

  Back in a sec.