Paul McEuen - Spiral

“The Sawtooth Mountains. Near Stanley, Idaho.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Elephant’s Perch is an eight-pitch rock-climbing route. I almost got killed there. The woman I was dating at the time took me up it. A rope got stuck, a storm came in. The lightning nearly nailed us before we got down. Liam turned it into one of his elephant jokes: ‘Where does an elephant perch?’ ”

“How did Liam know about it?”

“From one of our bull sessions. Talking about brushes with death. First war stories, then outdoor disasters. I told him about Elephant’s Perch, he told me about nearly drowning in a box canyon in China.”

“What does this have to do with letterboxing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dylan? Do you have any—”

But Dylan was gone.

THEY FOUND HIM IN HIS ROOM, SEATED AT HIS LAPTOP, FINGERS flying over the keyboard. Jake watched, the back of his neck tingling. He was at a site called Letterboxing North America.

Maggie said, “A letterbox is—it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s usually a small box of some sort hidden in the woods, with a notebook and a rubber stamp inside.”

“There’s one on the desk, Mom. Over there. Pop-pop and I were going to put it out near Lucifer Falls.”

It was a cigar box. Inside was an inkpad in a thin snap-shut metal case, a logbook, and a little wooden block with a rubber stamp on one surface. Maggie picked up the logbook. “People who visit the letterbox will make their own personal stamp inside, a record of their visit, that they found the letterbox.”

She took the stamp and inked it, then stamped it on the page. The image was a spiral.

“That’s Liam’s letterboxing stamp. That swirl.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everyone has their own stamp. Liam’s is a spiral. Mine’s a mushroom. Dylan’s is an arrowhead.”

“What’s the purpose?”

“Nothing. It’s just an adventure, a treasure hunt. You follow clues to find the letterbox, and stamp the logbook inside the box.”

“So you hide these. How do people get the clues?”

Dylan said, “The instructions on how to find letterboxes are on this site. There are thousands of letterboxes listed.”

Jake watched over his shoulder and quickly began to understand. They entries were organized by geography, by state and region, followed by city. Dylan was on the central Idaho list.

“I think Pop-pop might have been playing. That the elephant stuff was part of the riddle. There are four letterboxes near Stanley, Idaho.”

Maggie nodded. “I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t leave us without an explanation. I knew it.”

Dylan clicked on one.

The Spiral LbNA # 23877

Placed by: FungusAmongUs

Placement date: October 17

State: Idaho

County: Tompkins

Nearest city: Stanley

Number of boxes: 1

“Look who placed it: FungusAmongUs,” Maggie said. “Click on the directions.”

Dylan clicked on the icon.

LETTERBOX CLUES

“You think Liam wrote this?” Jake asked.

“It sounds like him,” Maggie said. “He often wrote his clues as silly poetry. But why would he give us clues to a letterbox in Idaho? He wants us to go to Idaho ?”

Dylan stared at the screen. “What land in trust?”

“Oh my God,” Maggie said. Her eyes were on fire. She reached over her son’s shoulder, hit print. An inkjet in the corner sprang to life.

“What?” Jake asked.

“This letterbox isn’t in Idaho. It’s a couple of miles from here.”

THEY PARKED IN A LITTLE LOT OFF ELLIS HOLLOW CREEK Road, next to a sign that said FINGER LAKES LAND TRUST PRESERVE.

“Did Liam come here with Dylan a lot?” Jake asked.

“We both did,” Maggie said. “Liam’s on the board of advisers of the Finger Lakes Land Trust. And Dylan and I did a couple of Fungus-Among-Us art projects out here. It’s a beautiful area, mostly forests, gorges, and streams, all owned by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. Over a hundred acres total. It used to be a hunting ground for the Cayuga Indians.”

The sun was low, the trail cut by long, dark shadows, as they worked their way through the brush. Maggie read the second pair of lines: “ ‘After spotting a ship, veer left and keep going/to water and up is a tree pregnant and showing.’ There’s a rotten old rowboat near the trail juncture,” she said. “It’s about a quarter of a mile up. Dylan loved to play in it when he was younger.”

“He seems to be holding up pretty well.”

“He puts up a good front—it’s a Connor trait. But Liam’s death has been very hard on him, I can tell. He’s hurt, and he’s confused. Just like me.” Dylan had fought to come with them, but Maggie wasn’t having any of it. She didn’t know what they were going to find, but she didn’t want her son to see it until she knew what it was.

A slight breeze was in the trees, setting off the eerie squeaking of tree branches rubbing against one another. They half walked, half ran down the trail. On the way over, Jake had told her about his conversation with the Cornell police, that people were coming from Fort Detrick to investigate Liam’s death and search his labs. And about Vlad’s comment that a Crawler would make a great vector for a pathogen.

“You think he would’ve kept any dangerous fungi in his lab?” Jake asked.

“It’s possible. There are thousands of deadly strains. Fungi are mostly feeders on the dead, but more than a few are willing to speed up the process and create their own food. There it is,” she said, spying the broken-down rowboat in the shadows on the side of the trail. Maggie had a flashlight with her, played the beam up and down the rotting boards. The trail forked, one part continuing straight, the other dropping off to the left. Maggie veered left, Jake behind her. A few hundred yards later was a stream. From there, the path went up a small rise, a larger ridge to the left. She stopped and flashed the beam around, the woods swallowing it. She reread the note.

“Pregnant tree?”

“Up there. You see that?” Jake said. “Partway up the hill. There.” He took off, running up the rise toward a strange-looking tree, its trunk bent. In profile, the bend looked like a protruding belly.

Maggie was right behind him. “It has to be it. The ‘tree pregnant and showing.’ ” She read the next lines: “then seek among fallen one whose life’s long bereft.” Just downhill from the pregnant tree was a fallen trunk, well on its way to total decay. She made her way over, palms sweating now. She ran her fingers over the green and brown moss clinging to the exterior of the trunk, tapped on it with her knuckles. It responded with a soft thunk .