Nothing out of the ordinary has happened in the office since my last post, just the usual sounds (and smells every now and then, like flowers maybe? Perfume?) so just normal haunting, not full on poltergeist materialization. NBD.
But… Something else has been happening. Something I hadn’t picked up on at first, but looking back has been going on for a couple weeks now?
It happened again this morning and then I realized… I was wearing the Hippocampus pin. And I can’t be sure, but I think every time I thought about that room I’d been wearing the pin. The pin was trying to tell me to go back.
Far weirder things have happened, and if these pins really were from The Book of The Wild, The Lost Age, well, maybe they have some residual magic in them?
I just want to go on the record that I personally don’t think it’s breaking and entering if all I had to do was lean against the locked door of the storage space to open it. Like, a hard, repeated leaning.
I broke into the storage room.
When I turned back, I’d blocked the light and could see, stuck in the space between the wall and the baseboard, was the edge of a yellowed piece of paper. I shimmied it out and found it was a folded up sheet of aged carbon paper. For all the non-old Mountaineers, carbon paper was how you made copies of things back in the day. You’d put it behind a sheet of paper you were writing or typing on to make an exact copy.
It was a copy of a letter that Warner Green himself had written decades ago! An exact typed replica. He’d probably put the carbon paper in the typewriter himself.
It had faded with time and sun, but I could make out that it was from the desk of Warner Green, it was written sometime in the 60’s, and it was a draft of a letter to readers who’d bought the pins!
________ and as you know, elemental [materials] sometimes hold onto magic, and these pins, made of the rarest of metals, I’ve been told contain traces of magimystic energy. __________ and when the time comes, the pins may call on you to find what they have been asked to find __________ Something missing worth rediscovering. Further instructions are included within this mailing.
All you truly need to know is that this must be kept in the strictest of confidence. ____________________ The pin, its purpose, even your membership in this society, must be kept secret from those who cannot bring themselves to believe. But we believe. Magic is real, and it is up to us to seek it out, perhaps learn to use it, but most of all protect it.
Also, we’re all just casually wearing relics of The Lost Age!
So you’d think that would be enough, right? Enough magimystic adventuring for the day? Nope. I didn’t notice until I checked later, but pretty much the second I walked into the storage room I got a text message on my phone. A notification.
I have no idea what it means. You? I mean, we know that the Silver took up residence across the sea in Neithernor. But what does the sentence mean?
How in the name of Herman did the notification come from the Ackerly Green app?
My first thought was the eastern sea as well. I haven’t seen it for myself but I hear its really something!
Also, I’m like… Mildly freaking out I’ve been wearing a rare magiqal artifact on my denim jacket. Ya know. Like its no big deal.
I honestly highly doubt it, I think that bridge was burned in the War of Neithernor.
I think… Not to sound like I’ve totally lost it… But I think maybe it’s the ghosts of old Secret Society members giving us this clue, to uncover the work they left undone?
EDIT: I googled the verse and found nothing. If its part of a poem or a “bigger picture” my guess is its magical in nature.
I put the regular image of the chronocompass in the app, under “About Ackerly Green” but not the moving one. I don’t even have access to that image or video or whatever it is.
I will say this though, the process of developing the app and putting it together was really easy, even though I’d never done anything like it before. There were times when it felt like it was already made and I was just assembling the pieces. Maybe I accidentally performed some kind of spell? I don’t know how I would’ve done that… there’s probably a more magimystically logical explanation. Thoughts?
The chronocompass @Revenir found looks like the one that appeared over the messages to Knatz and Augie. Not the kind you solve, but the kind that was already doing something.
Maybe we’ve done this somehow after opening the Book of Briars? Having drawn the two timelines, Wild and Kings, closer together - maybe now magiq can flow from one to the other?
Okay, so I followed @Robert 's advice about the camera. I set one up in the office and it sends me alerts when it detects motion.
I’ve had about a dozen alerts in the past hour, and every time I check the camera there’s nothing there. Or almost nothing. There are weird flickers and blackouts every now and then.
I think he’s back. The ghost. We’re in the country but I’m driving back down to the city to see if I can catch him. Not like a ghostbuster, but catch him like, hey, don’t go… let’s talk about pins and apps and haunting my office.
Wish me luck. I’m already sweating.