CHAPTER ONE           Story Table of Contents          Finding Martin Game

Timothy Moffat was beginning to doubt his own sanity.

But since Timothy Moffat had spent quite a bit of his 36 years on this planet simply not paying any attention, this didn't really help him to narrow down a time frame.

Had it happened a couple of months ago perhaps, while he was sitting on a wheeled office chair and juggling phone calls from irate customers?  Could there have been an insidious shadow sneaking under the barrier into his cubical, a voodoo spirit seeking to unhinge his mind?

Maybe it was a curse born from the bad karma pervading the office telephone lines, backing up like a sewer pipe into his headset.  Too many desperate callers, all of them exhausted from pressing "1" and pressing "2" and wriggling on hold because their call is important to a company that routinely neglects to hire enough employees to answer the phone in a timely fashion. Callers reduced to disembodied voices, alternately berating and begging the powers on high to send a live operator to assist them.

Once in a blue moon Tim would actually be able to help one of those callers.  It made him feel sort of like a detective to track down the relevant computer records and to untangle the bureaucratic messes that tend to grow around customer accounts like thorny bushes.  It was like solving one of those metal puzzles that Auntie Erdina used to give to him each Christmas.  And on those rare occasions when he could actually fix a customer's problem, Tim would feel a rush of adrenalin that sent him flying.

Flying.  Almost like one of those dreams he'd always had since he was a little boy. Dreams of flying like Superman across the ocean, searching the waves below to find an exotic island lost in the more remote areas of the South Pacific.

No, Tim thought to himself, shaking himself out of his usual daydreaming state.

It didn't seem very likely that he'd been driven mad by shadows in a cubical, no matter how much angst had been oozing out of the telephone cord. The only malevolent presence that had seemed to pervade his office had been the ongoing speculation by co-workers concerning how many layoffs would result from the big merger. The most cynical of these employees had been taking bets that the corporate office would close down their entire Customer Service department, leaving callers on hold to seek enlightenment and salvation by pressing "1" and pressing "2".

Sure enough, Timothy soon found himself cleaning out his desk and getting rid of several years worth of ballpoint pen caps and ancient ketchup packets. Some time later he discovered that it could be both exhilarating and somewhat scary to walk out into the parking lot clutching a severance check and a small cardboard box.

Weeks later he still hadn't been able to bring himself to take any serious action regarding the Help Wanted ads, despite the dwindling balance in his checking account and his dismay upon realizing that he'd already seen almost all of the available TV reruns of "E.R." and "Law and Order".  He'd been having some trouble deciding between "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" when a ringing telephone interrupted his rerun dilemma.

"Hello?" Tim picked up the receiver with some trepidation, expecting some sort of telemarketing pitch or perhaps a recorded political message.

"Timothy Moffat?  Are you the Tim Moffat who went to school with Martin Kessler?  You're the one with the red hair, right?" the woman's voice inquired.

After a hesitant confirmation from Tim, the woman continued.  "My name is Rachel, I'm Martin's sister.  I know you couldn't possibly remember me, but we need your help. Martin has disappeared.  We need you to find him."

"Disappeared? Martin? You need me?"   Tim was thoroughly confused.

It had been over 14 years since he and Martin had been roommates in college.

After graduation Martin moved back to his home town in a remote part of New Mexico, so over the years they'd kept in touch mostly by e-mail.  But Tim had always kept a soft spot in his heart for Martin, considering him to be the most bizarrely interesting person he'd ever met.  Sort of an eccentric genius, someone compelled to push the limits of ordinary reality to the breaking point -- that was Martin all over.

Timothy was quite certain that Martin had never mentioned having a sister.

At this point Tim tried to turn off the TV so that he could concentrate better on the situation at hand, but this involved some fruitless searching through the sofa cushions to find the remote control.  Once again he heard Rachel's voice on the phone, saying "Hello? Hello? Are you still there?"

"Sorry, " Tim offered, finally standing up and turning off the TV manually. "Go ahead, I'm listening.  What's happened to Martin?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Rachel replied.  Rachel went on to explain that Martin had been living alone in their family's old house in northern New Mexico.  It'd been several years since their mom closed up her dance school business there and moved to New York City, so Martin makes a point of calling and visiting her regularly.  But Mom hadn't heard from him in a couple of weeks and she was worried about him, so she called Rachel.

Rachel explained that she drove down from the city to check the old family house, but there was no sign of Martin.  Turned out he'd stopped showing up at work too.  Mom was now convinced that Martin had gotten himself into trouble and needed to be rescued.  And for some reason that was completely unclear, Rachel decided that Tim should be the one who should go and find him.

"So how soon can you get there?" Rachel asked.  Tim could have sworn that he heard her foot tapping as she waited impatiently for his answer.

Now it so happens that Timothy was possessed of a fairly high tolerance for putting up with rude and impatient telephone behavior.  He'd always been rather proud of his unflappability and his ability to cut through other people's personality deficiencies in order to get to the information that they could offer.  But there was something about Rachel's voice that he found highly disturbing. This woman was irritating and intriguing at the same time, in a way that left him stammering and off balance.  He didn't like it one bit.

Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true.  Tim wasn't really sure how he felt about this phone call at all except for the undeniable fact that he couldn't help being worried about Martin.  If anyone could get himself into serious trouble of the truly bizarre variety, Martin was the man to do it.  And that left one other mystery needing to be solved: Why did Rachel think that Tim was the man to find him?

After an awkward pause, Tim spoke.  "I'm not a private detective, and I don't know any of the usual ways to go about looking for a missing person," he told her.  But Rachel assured him that the "usual ways" would be a waste of time in this situation, and that only someone considerably weirder than usual would be able to help.

Not quite sure whether to take this remark as an insult or a compliment, Tim stayed silent for a few moments.  Perhaps I'd be better off not getting involved, he thought to himself. But his friendship for Martin was the factor that pushed his indecision aside, and he reluctantly agreed to try to find Martin.

Rachel rattled off some directions for how to get to Martin's house and where to find the spare key so that he could let himself in.

After all, he was pretty sure that he had Martin's home address saved in his old  e-mail somewhere.

He tried to concentrate on what Rachel was saying about her needing to catch a plane to La Guardia, but instead he found himself wondering why some woman he'd never even met thought he was weird.

He certainly hoped that Martin hadn't told his sister about the time they kidnapped the gargoyle off the upper floor ledge of the old library building.

He pulled his car back into the proper lane and realized that he was no longer on the phone with Rachel.  He was driving eastwards on the freeway, heading out of Los Angeles towards New Mexico with a MapQuest print-out of driving directions, a package of Fig Newtons, and a super big gulp-sized wild cherry Slurpy.

The gas tank was full but the slurpy was empty.  Hence the loud slurping sound.

Tim went back to daydreaming, which actually isn't a half-bad way to handle a long driving trip when there isn't anyone else in the car available to tell you interesting stories.

As a result, he was dangerously close to running out of his third tank of gas by the time he finally located Martin's house at the end of an unpaved mountain road.

Which brings us back to the question that Timothy Moffat had asked himself about the loss of his sanity.

Standing out in front of Martin's house, he realized that he had no idea about where to find the key to the front door.  And he could have sworn that the stone lawn ornaments in front of the house had rearranged themselves since he looked at them a minute ago!

Tim turned his back on the garden and considered the various places where a key might be hidden.  There had been no mat on the doorstep, and no answer when he'd rung the doorbell.  The streetlamp next to the door was slightly broken, but when he looked through the crack in the amber-colored glass, all he could see was a spider web.

At the end of the front sidewalk stood a mailbox mounted on a post.  The wooden mailbox, which appeared to have been hand-made, was shaped like a windmill.  The mailbox was  painted mostly red with a black roof.  The four realistic-looking windmill blades were also painted black.  At the top of the mailbox was a hinged roof that Tim couldn't figure out how to open.

Somewhat absent-mindedly, Tim turned the blades of the windmill.  As the blades turned, and the mailbox played a little tune that Tim recognized from his scouting days as "The Happy Wanderer": 
  I love to go a'wandering, 
along the mountain track, 
and as I go, I love to sing, 
my knapsack on my back. 

Val-de-ree..., Val-de-ra... 
Val-de-ree, Val-de-ra-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, 
Val-de-ree..., Val-de-ra... 
My knapsack on my back.    At the end of the song, the roof of the mailbox popped open! Inside the mailbox, Tim found an absurdly large stack of junk mail and catalogs, and an envelope from the local telephone company stamped "Final Notice" in big red letters.

Tim felt a little bit guilty opening Martin's mail, but he told sternly instructed himself to start thinking more like a detective.  There could be a clue here!  Tim opened the envelope and looked at the phone bill, which proclaimed in no uncertain terms that Martin's local and long distance telephone services would be disconnected if payment was not received by the due date. The bill had been sent a week and a half ago, and the due date had already passed.

Turning his attention to the front lawn, Tim noticed that the grass looked wild and unkempt, as if it hadn't been trimmed in a long time.  Not a very good place to hide a key, Tim thought, but he took the time to look through the grass anyway, bending down closer to get a better look.  He looked for quite a while without finding anything.  But just when he was  almost finished searching the entire lawn and just about ready to stop, he found something!

Not a key, just a red rubber ball, slightly sticky and covered with numerous indentations that Tim suspected might have been left by teeth.  Tim slipped the ball into his pocket and wiped his fingers on his khaki trousers.  Tim wasn't overly fastidious by nature, which is why the floor of his car was currently decorated in empty Slurpy cups and Fig Newton crumbs.  But there were limits.  Tim wondered briefly if Sherlock Holmes had ever made any significant observations about dog drool.

There was a flagstone path leading up towards the side of the house, probably headed towards the back door of the house.  But the way was blocked by overgrown bushes that were far too thorny to push through.

So Tim went back to examining the thin strip of garden that ran along the front edge of the house.  It was a haphazard collection of rocks, green plants, and weeds, with some unusual lawn ornaments --  large stone statues shaped like penguins wearing t-shirts.  According to the names painted on the stone t-shirts, the penguins were named Huey, Dewey, Louie, Stewie, and Chuck.

Timothy took an instant liking to the penguins, although he didn't quite trust the somewhat mischievous glint in their painted eyes.  Sort of like Donald Duck's nephews, he thought, except penguins instead of ducks.  Tim had always wanted to have nephews, but maybe he would settle for adopting lawn penguins instead.

Tim looked under three of the penguins.  He didn't find the key, but out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something shiny being passed about.  And looking at the penguins again, he was now certain that they had changed positions.  Chuck wasn't the last penguin anymore.

 

Tim decided that there was no use resisting his descent into madness any longer.  He should have expected to become mentally ill as an inevitable consequence of agreeing to drive out here in the first place.

Of course, that's it!  It was all the fault of that pushy woman on the phone.  What was her name?  Rachel?  The one who accused him of being weird?

Timothy looked down at himself and decided that he didn't look particularly weird.  Except for the fact that he was wearing socks that didn't quite match. So that only made him a little bit weird, right? 

Tim just hoped that he was weird enough to find Martin...

  Suddenly Tim shook himself out of his introspection.  On a hunch, Tim looked under the last penguin.  Stewie, Dewey, Huey -- he wasn't quite sure which one it was, but he looked under the last penguin at the end of the row.  And underneath, he found a gold-colored house key!

Tim quickly snatched up the key.

And, even though he knew that it was completely impossible, Tim realized that the lawn ornaments looked as if they were trying not to snicker.

Chapter Two          Story Table of Contents          Finding Martin Game