Stolen key chittering in his pocket, Samuel Kirkwood finished his trek to the Ottergrove Gazette's Headquarters.

He pushed the door, read the sign "pull" and pulled it.

Upon his entrance, his vision was immediately obstructed by a towering coat hanger laden with jackets and scarves. Samuel figured that journalists were extremely cold sensitive, because the sun was burning the pavement outside. He stepped aside and inched past the coat hanger, his nose brushing against the Mount Everest of fabric.

Sam was in a long hallway; walls tall, white and lightly scribbled on; floor dented and worn; ceiling arched and dusty. He stepped slowly, approaching a notice strung upon a wall on his left:

intruders welcome.

Underneath the strange saying, written directly onto the wall in a short, neat handwriting, were the words

please go to the main office (saves us time).

An arrow followed the sentence, pointing to a door that was so flat it blended perfectly with the rest of the corridor. It didn't even have a doorknob. Needless to say, this was a strange place.

Sam read the sign "push" and pushed the door.

Before him, a staircase twisted and turned downwards. The walls on either side were covered in flowery pink wallpaper, lined with fluffy glowing lampshades that resembled used tissues. The lasting effect was one of a passageway to a posh grandma's evil underground lair.

Ignoring the voice in his head telling him to run in the opposite direction, he began his descent, holding on to the footstep machine as if his life depended on it, which, in retrospective, might've been the case.

That exact same moment was eventful.
Gwen the zookeeper, watching a line of smoke dancing on the tree line, entered a number on her cell phone.
Garrett took off, his head spinning in indignation like the pedals beneath his feet.
Frankline tried the key.
And, further away, the Mayor answered the phone.

"Hello? Mr. Swanson speaking."
The person calling talked very fast, pausing to breathe at short intervals and drawing huge amounts of air. The mayor was afraid she was having an asthma attack.
"Fire. Here next to the birds. Ottergrove zoo."

A few words, and the line was cut, leaving the mayor disoriented. Why, when confronted with a life-threatening situation, would you call the mayor of your town? A very capable fire department was at a few dials' reach, why waste those precious seconds?
Seconds that Mr. Swanson, lost in thought, was wasting as well, until a sniff of smoke woke him. The fire was spreading. He shoved aside the conspiracy theories budding in his brain and fumbled with the telephone.

----

Frankline sighed. She tried unlocking the door one more time, and, facing defeat, looked up at her father. It was true, the guy was pretty weird, tripping over the counter and throwing himself between them when the moment came to pay. But a vicious, plotting thief who now owned keys to their home? She thought not. She hoped not. Frankie imagined him as a cooped-up inventor, a scientist gone mad, not as a scheming pickpocket. Although she didn't want to, she had to admit it; thieves are the best actors.

The wind whipped in Garrett's face as he glided, united with his metallic friend at last. Thieves are the best actors. He should've remembered. Garrett needed to get as far away as possible from his brother, the traitor. He needed to scream, to clear his head. He needed to think.

He turned a corner, jumped on the sidewalk and almost ran over a man and his daughter walking towards him.

"Sorry!" he hiccupped, hoping he didn't know them.

Alas, these were his mom's most recent customers and the father was Samuel Lynden. Samuel-Lynden-the-famous-meteoricist. Also, the girl, Frankline, was in his class. Garrett braked. Mr. Lynden smiled and waved his hand in an "it's fine" kind of way.

Frankline looked exhausted. She reached into the pocket of her pants and brandished a shiny key. Her tone was light, but there was a determined gleam in her eyes.
"Do you know anything about locks?"

----

The piercing siren announcing the fire truck carried across the village. Firefighters stomped out of it and sprayed the blazing trees until nothing was left but black, bare, cypress, standing very, very dead. Other casualties were a few crispy bugs hiding under the burnt bark and spiky singed shrubs. The facade of the mayor's mansion was also slightly charred, but it was nothing compared to the scorched dark brown gate enclosing the birds' habitat in the Ottergrove Zoological Garden. Gwen, traumatized, was resting in the employee building, while her sister Carla desperately called for the winged creatures frolicking above.

Now, as the panic receded, a new question came to light. How did the fire start?

Many believed that a careless person had left hot coals on a barbecue nearby, or that a smoker had thrown a cigarette butt into the woods, which were very probable but incredibly dull theories.

The mayor had a better hypothesis; it involved Samuel Kirkwood, another trip to the hardware store, and a lot of digging.

----

At the bottom of the staircase was a small room. It was well underground, so there weren't any windows, and the general compactness of the space made Sam uncomfortable.

The interior decor mirrored the stairs'; flower tapestries and kleenex lampshades galore.

A shrunken old lady (The evil posh grandma, thought Sam) was typing on an antique computer.

Behind her stood a large iron door, the entrance to the archives.

Samuel studied the elderly's features. There was a strand of bright magenta in her wispy white hair and her horn-rimmed glasses were a bright turquoise. He recognized her as the lady who sold the gazettes in the town square. He hadn't seen her since the bird incident.

"Hello," he said.

She nodded, her eyes still focused on the screen. "Do you have an authorization pass?"
"Um, no. But I'm here for... Uh... The mayor sent me."
Not true, but not a lie either. This situation was just so strange.
The lady looked at him for the first time since he'd entered the office.
"I remember you!" she grinned. "You're the boy with the bird... a blue parrot. You still have it? T'was cute."
"Yeah, I still have it." She hadn't believed the bird was a cat and it didn't surprise him.

A thought went to Raisin, the macaw in his air conditioned apartment who'd started it all.

"Go ahead," she proceeded, pulling a loose strand of purple hair behind her ear and adjusting a bronze plaque on her desk  (Archival Management). "The extra-terrestrial encounters' drawer will be in section 3B. "
She then entered something on her computer, and –hurrah!- the door behind her opened.
"How do you know..."
"You have two hours."

----

Garrett did not, in fact, know anything about locks. That was his mom's specialty. But she was on a break at work and her co-worker was a young lady who was not interested in helping them. The best way to help Frankline and her dad, he realized, was to take a look at the surveillance cameras.
Frame by frame, they watched the man enter the store holding a weird machine, browse a little, and then drop the contraption...
"What's that thing he's lugging around?" Frankline asked suddenly. It was a rhetorical question, an obvious statement, but Garrett thought he should answer.
"I don't know."
"Huh", said Mr. Lynden, which made the boy feel even more stupid.

Unable to decide what the object was, the three pairs of eyes went back to the screen, where the robber was saying something to Garrett's mother.
"Is there a sound recording?"
"Uh... no, I don't think so."
"I remember what he said! He said he wanted to copy a key too!" exclaimed Frankie.
"Can you slow it down a bit?"

Garrett pressed a button and the man's pace slowed down considerably. He walked towards the counter at a hilariously slow speed, stood there for what seemed to be a lifetime and, with a tiny flick of the hand, switched the two keys on the counter.

"Awesome!" Garrett blurted out, and instantly regretted.  He smiled uncertainly at the frowns drawing themselves in front of him like shutters before a storm.
The boy cleared his throat and justified, traits sullen: "He must be a skilled illusionist to pull off a move like that without anyone noticing. Believe me, I've tried."
A true statement, since he'd spent most of his sixth school year his nose stuck in magician books and card wizardry manuals. He'd practiced whenever he could, as recommended, but with no success whatsoever (two years later he still picked up the books and card tricks on rainy days, only to put them back on the shelves where they would eventually collect dust and rot and become rat food after a zombie apocalypse cleared all humans from Earth).

The father and daughter's facial expressions relaxed. For a second there, they'd thought Garrett was pleased to see the burglar get away with his crime. Turns out he was just amazed at the efficiency of the trickery, being an amateur illusionist himself.

"There, stop!"
Frankline pointed to the screen, but she really didn't need to. The face was blurry, as expected with the poor camera quality, but the traits recognizable. Way of speaking, of course, because, well, they didn't recognize him, but someone would.

Printed paper and police station. "I'm becoming a regular," thought Garrett.

----

The Archives, with a capital 'a'. Where all the secrets are kept.

Sam had expected it to be a grand hall: circular dome, Corinthian columns and all. But the Archives was a dingy room with wall-to-wall beige carpet and rows of kaki, gray and brown metal organizers, looming towers of knowledge. Its' area was slightly larger than the municipal swimming pool, which is to say not very big considering the Gazette was founded in 1896.

Section 3B was a dark green filing cabinet with four drawers. They were named Spectre Scare, Divination Drama, Tarantula Trauma, and, at the very top, Extra-terrestrial Encounters.

Samuel Kirkwood reached up and opened it with a tug. It was full to the brim.

----

The envelope was white and on it was a bright red stamp: express mail. The mayor opened it and found what he was hoping to find; a letter, with the heading gaggle of cacti. The first report had arrived.

(July 24th, 2018)