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Chapter One

The Dead Letter Office

Herman, Wyoming was a five-blink town. Albert Flynn knew this because it was the kind of conclusion one could only arrive at based on long hours of exceptional dullness. On his first day in Herman, Albert had taken off at a dead run from one end of town, which was marked by a mailbox shaped like a birdhouse, and arrived at the other side of town without blinking more than five times. Once, he’d done it in only two blinks, a feat that had made his eyes burn as if someone had thrown a handful of flour in his face. By day two, he not only knew about the five blinks, he understood there was a real chance that a normal boy might literally die of boredom before the summer came to an end.

But Albert was no ordinary boy. For starters, he was smart enough to make things interesting for himself, especially in a place like Herman.

And so, being a kid of small size and big imagination, he decided to jump across town, an activity that took under twelve minutes and included exactly 217 jumps, an encounter with a black cat, and a detour through a sprinkler. He decided to crawl back to the other side, a decision he would later regret as he sat on the steps of the post office picking gravel out of his palms.

It was activities like these—blinking, jumping, and crawling—that led Albert to believe that Herman, Wyoming was possibly more interesting then he’d initially given it credit for. He’d seen and heard some unusual things on those small but important journeys.

Surrounded by a dense ring of evergreen trees, the town was secluded in a way that made it feel set apart from the rest of the world. While he was hopping past the town grocery, he found a cluster of pink, polka-dotted daisies sprouting right out of the cracked concrete. At noon, as Albert crawled on the edge of the circular forest, he could hear music on the wind that swept through the evergreen trees. Houses were brightly painted with purple and blue and yellow, and though most of them looked as if they were about to crumble from their own weight, they’d stood for as long as Herman had been a town, and would for centuries more.

The post office sat in the middle of Herman, Wyoming. It was here that Albert had spent summers before, here where he would spend the summer again. The building was small, thick, and perfectly square, the sort of place where one simply came and went without a lingering glance. Unless one wanted to stop and watch three wrinkled, old men playing a game of Tiles on the front porch, one of whom was Albert’s grandpa, who he called Pap.

“How’s that sorting project moving along?” Pap asked from the porch. It was Albert’s third day in town, and the sorting wasn’t moving at all. Pap turned a white Tile in his wrinkled hands. His two old buddies shook their heads and smiled.

“I’m plotting strategy,” Albert answered, because he couldn’t tell Pap the truth: that he’d been blinking, jumping, and crawling around town when he should have been working. The dead-letter office, which held all the undeliverable mail for the entire country, hadn’t been touched since the previous summer. It was Albert’s job to wrangle it into shape, and having goofed off for about as long as he was likely to get away with, he wandered into the dusty, old post office.

“That’s the spirit,” Pap said as he watched Albert move in the general direction of work needing to be done. “Show those letters who’s boss.”

The post office was where Albert Flynn, a short stick of a boy with mouse-brown hair and three large freckles on his nose, found himself on his first week of summer vacation.

His dad, Bob Flynn, was the mail carrier in Herman, and summer was the only time they saw each other. Unfortunately, his dad’s mail route took him miles outside of town, to all the scattered homesteads in the valley. He was usually gone all day.

To Albert, the post office was a second home. He spent the rest of the year in New York City, surrounded by the constant blaring of sirens, throngs of people in the streets, and a blended family that threatened to drive him insane. Both of Albert’s half brothers and his half sister were notorious tattletales who constantly conspired to blame every mistake or problem on Albert. He was eleven, they were five or six or seven, depending on the kid, and he was hopelessly out of touch with everything they did. Albert’s mom was often at loose ends, dealing with three high-energy city kids, and while Albert’s stepdad wasn’t altogether mean, he also wasn’t interested in Albert.

Summers in Herman with his real dad were the best part of Albert’s life, not because he was in love with the post office (that part, unfortunately, was boring, just like school was boring to Albert)—it was because he loved the woods, the mountains, the adventure of being way out in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t just good at jumping and crawling; he was also a strong climber and an avid outdoorsman. Herman, Wyoming, suited him. And even though they weren’t as close as Albert wished, he did prefer living with his dad to the city life.

Albert made the turn down a short hallway and arrived at the door to the dead-letter office. Inside it was like a miniature city with its own towers of unmarked envelopes and dust-covered packages stacked to the ceiling. On his first day, Albert had made a tunnel through the unclaimed mail, wiggling his way to the other side, and there he’d sat, doing what he always did: open, read, file, and repeat. That was Albert’s job. By the end of the first hour he was desperate for a promotion out of the dead-letter office, and that’s when the blinking, jumping, and crawling had started. He hadn’t been back since.

There was a small, dust-covered radio in the corner of the room that played country music and hourly news updates. A long wad of tinfoil was duct-taped to the radio to improve the static-filled reception. When the afternoon news roundup started, Albert looked up from his work opening, reading, and sorting. They were saying something about New York, and at that very moment, New York was starting to seem slightly more exciting than opening other people’s mail.

“Weather experts are reporting an unusual cloud of volcanic ash over New York City and so far, scientists are scrambling to figure out where it came from. Dr. Moritz Wilhelm of the weather bureau had this to say:

“‘Seismic activity in the gulf region appears to have created an underwater plume of ash powerful enough to break the surface of the ocean. We’re investigating.’

“An underwater volcano? Scientists are debating as we speak . . .”

Albert went back to the mail, sorting and sorting and sorting, thinking about how cool it would be to watch volcano ash fall like snow back home. Maybe there would be enough to build a snowboarding jump. Maybe he could even see blobs of red lava shooting into the sky.

“Figures,” Albert said, shaking his head. “I leave for five minutes and miss volcano burps. Next it’ll be dinosaurs on Forty-Second Street. Just my luck.”

He opened packages of old holiday presents, such as fruitcakes hard as stones that would never be eaten. (Not that they would have been in the first place. Albert knew a thing or two about bad fruitcakes.) He read letters from mothers to their sons, scolding them about not keeping in touch. He felt a little awkward reading other people’s mail, but that was the job. These were dead letters and packages with no return address that had never found their point of delivery, and it was Albert’s job to examine them like an archaeologist. If he could find a full name or a return address inside, he would send the item back from where it had come. If not, the contents were bound for the incinerator, a fire-breathing hole with a metal door out in the lobby.

Twenty-seven minutes later Albert was really getting into a good rhythm, but he was also feeling that dreaded sense of deep, almost sleepy boredom setting in. Albert wished he had an assistant of some sort. Maybe a boy his age, who would help him build tunnels out of the dead letters, and play Fruitcake Wars with him. Albert had a few acquaintances in school back in the city. But never in all his life had Albert ever had a true best friend.

He wanted that more than anything in the world.

Albert thought of his dad, driving his mail truck around Herman, the cool kind missing a whole door on one side, and wished that was where he was—anywhere but here. He started to nod off, the soft drone of static-filled music in the background, and slammed his forehead on the counter.

That was when the dog walked in.

Its fur was a wiry mess of jet black, but its nose was pink, which struck Albert as a mismatch, like when one of his younger brothers wore swim trunks and a Christmas sweater at the same time. The dog was about the size of a loaf of bread, and shaped like a beagle. Its eyes were the brightest shade of blue Albert had ever seen on an animal.

“Hey, little guy, where’d you come from?”

The dog walked through the back door of the dead-letter office like it knew exactly where it was supposed to be. And in its mouth, covered in a dripping glob of dog slobber, was an envelope.

“Are you lost?” Albert asked. “Because if you are, I could sure use the company. I have fruitcake.”

Albert didn’t have a dog of his own in New York, so when he slowly reached down toward the animal, his fingers trembled a little. But the dog placed its head on Albert’s palm, and Albert’s nerves settled down, just like that. The dog’s fur looked wiry and stiff, but it was soft on Albert’s fingers in the strangest of ways. Its blue eyes looked right into Albert’s brown ones, and that weird pink nose was sniffing the air. One of the dog’s eyelids moved.

“Did you just wink at me, or do I need a candy-bar break?”

Albert picked up one of the fruitcakes he’d unwrapped and bit into it. It had the consistency of a brick left over from the Civil War era. Albert felt lucky not to have broken a tooth as he looked down and noticed that the dog had set the slobbery envelope on the floor.

“You’re a smart boy, aren’t you?” Albert said to the dog. It cocked its head like it was listening, in the way smart dogs do. “You’re like a carrier pigeon!”

He took the envelope. It was torn at the corner from the dog’s teeth. It was just like any other letter. Rectangular, unmarked, and . . . wait. Albert flipped the envelope over. He had to look at it twice to be sure what he was seeing. Scrawled right there, in deep-red cursive, was his very own name.

Albert Flynn.

Had Albert Flynn been any other boy, he might have set the envelope aside and reported the Case of the Albert Envelope the moment his father returned from his mail route. But he’d been opening other people’s mail for three days. Well, okay, a total of one hour, twenty-seven minutes out of those three days, but still. The idea of a letter for him was too delicious to leave unopened.

“Now this,” Albert said to the dog, “is cool. Don’t you think so?” He hadn’t expected the dog to answer, of course, but he still looked to see if it was listening. When he did, he discovered that the dog had pulled the rock-hard fruitcake out of the trash bin and was gnawing on it happily.

“Go right ahead,” Albert said. “Make yourself at home.”

He focused on the letter. Albert had gotten very good at opening envelopes without tearing the precious contents inside. He picked up a letter opener shaped like a shriveled claw on one end and sliced open the top.

He’d hoped for something strange, because he was very fond of strange things. It would have been a real letdown if he’d discovered a letter from his mom inside, reminding him to brush his teeth and eat his vegetables.

He was not disappointed with what he found.

 

 

Chapter 2

The Forest Maze

If there was one thing Albert knew for certain, it was the look of his dad’s handwriting.

It was sloppy script, so terrible it looked like a chicken had discovered a pencil and decided to take up writing. So when Albert opened the envelope, he knew at once that the letter inside was from Bob Flynn.

Hey, Kiddo, the letter said. (Or at least, that was what Albert guessed it said. The letters were so wacky he couldn’t be 100 percent sure.)

I’m running way behind today on my usual route. Normally, I wouldn’t ask you to do this without me, but I’ve got a very important letter that needs delivering.

Albert’s face broke into a smile. His dad had never, ever, no matter how many times Albert had begged, ever let him deliver actual mail before, let alone do it completely on his own. He looked down at the dog, which was well on its way to eating the entire fruitcake.

“I’ve been promoted!”

He read on.

There’s an important letter sealed in this envelope. It’s for a guy who does NOT like coming into town. Ever. He’s sort of a hermit. When mail comes for him, which is rare, it’s always a rush. Follow the map below. Don’t worry; you won’t be on your own. Farnsworth knows just where to go.

“Farnsworth?” Albert looked at the dog. He scratched his head, opened his mouth, and burped.

“My dad has a dog and I don’t even know about it? You gotta be kidding me.”

He looked back at the letter and his eyes widened.

At the very bottom, in bold chicken scratch, was a final warning.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, read the enclosed letter.

“Well, that’s not fair at all,” Albert said to Farnsworth. His fingers itched to open up the letter and see what secrets were inside of it. But Albert had a job to do, and he wanted to do it right.

The bottom of his dad’s note had a map. It was made up of little stick images of the forest outside of Herman. (Bob Flynn’s artistic abilities were on par with his penmanship.)

“The woods?” Albert said to Farnsworth. Albert loved the woods. There was fishing in there, trees to climb, and trails to explore.

The map his dad had drawn was simple. Walk right out of the post office, take Main Street down to the edge of the woods, and walk straight until he passed a tree that looked like a giant slingshot. Fork left there, hop the trout stream, and climb up the hill until he came to his destination, marked with an X on the map.

“This Mr. Hermit guy must live in a cabin out in the woods. This just gets better and better!” Especially if it gets me out of this dead-letter office, Albert said to himself.

He looked at Farnsworth again—the dog was licking his lips, having just finished off the last of the fruitcake.

“You’re a big eater for such a little guy,” he said. “Good luck digesting that thing.”

The little dog thumped his tail on the dusty floor. Albert grabbed the envelope and tucked it safely into the back pocket of his cords. If he left now, he could deliver the letter way before sunset and be back in time for dinner with his dad and Pap. He turned to Farnsworth.

“Okay, wait here. I have to tell Pap.”

Albert slid around the maze of piled-up letters, holding his breath so as not to knock them over, and peered out the half-open front window of the back office.

Pap was sitting on the porch of the post office with two other old men, their balding white heads leaning over a game of Tiles. It was this way every hour of every day. Three old men and a game that looked an awful lot like dominoes that no one ever seemed to win, because, well, it just didn’t ever end. Maybe the old men couldn’t remember how to finish it.

“What’s the progress report in there?” Pap asked without looking up from his Tiles.

“A dog came by and visited me,” Albert said.

“Wiry hair, pink nose?” Pap asked. Albert nearly fell over backward when he heard the words. Pap always had a way of surprising him. One of the other old guys elbowed Pap in the ribs as he picked up two Tiles with matching symbols.

“Uh . . . yeah,” Albert said. “I guess so. And blue eyes. It brought me a letter from Dad. I’m delivering a piece of mail.”

“To the woods, eh?”

Farnsworth let out a little whine from behind Albert. Albert sighed. He just wanted to get out of there and deliver the letter. Why so many questions from Pap?

“How’d you know? Actually, it doesn’t matter. I gotta go!”

“Don’t get lost,” Pap said.

Albert thought he heard two of the old guys grumble about something, but it was hard to hear what they were saying. Albert shrugged his shoulders and walked to the back door of the old post office, Farnsworth right on his heels.

The main road was just as familiar to Albert as slicing open the top of an envelope. They went a few blocks, passing by a crack in the road that looked like a smile. An old woman on a bike rode past.

“Hello, Virginia,” she said to Albert. “You’re looking lovely today.”

Luckily she didn’t stop, because that would have almost certainly led to a major chat session with someone who thought he was a girl, and that was a conversation he didn’t have time for. Albert double-timed it to the edge of the woods and stared into the maze of trees. The wind blew, making the branches of the trees shiver. It almost looked like they were waving Albert in.

Farnsworth raced onto the path, leaping over a small boulder and ducking under a fallen tree in nothing flat.

“Doggy sugar high,” Albert surmised, and though he couldn’t say exactly why, he had a feeling an adventure was about to begin. “So this is what it feels like to deliver mail. Cool.”

Albert followed, breathless, as Farnsworth leaped over tree roots and uneven patches in the ground. It was dangerous work, running through these woods, but Albert was good at this stuff. In gym class, he’d beaten all of his schoolmates in the mile run, and then, right after, he’d climbed the tall rope in the gym in just twenty-four seconds.

Albert kept up a good pace, following Farnsworth’s wagging tail through the trees. Every so often, the animal would stop, sniff the ground, and bark. They hadn’t crossed paths with the slingshot tree yet, and the dog seemed to understand where he was going, so they kept on.

Farnsworth was small and could slip beneath thorn patches without gaining so much as a scratch, while Albert had to stop and find a way around. It was exciting running through the woods, crashing through little streams that soaked Albert’s shoes. He felt like he was Indiana Jones about to stumble onto some hidden cave with gold piled high to the ceiling. It was infinitely better than sorting through dead letters.

They finally passed the first marker on the map Albert’s dad had drawn—a tree that did, in fact, look like a giant slingshot without the string, its limbs split into two branches spreading outward. Albert imagined himself shooting massive rocks into the sky, knocking down forest zombies and wildebeests.

Farnsworth barked, reminding Albert of the mission they had. The dog took off again, forking left around the slingshot tree. Albert followed, running down what looked like a worn trail in the ground, as if someone had passed through here many times before. Albert wondered how many times his dad had come down this way to deliver mail. And why, after all this time, hadn’t he told Albert there was a person living in the woods?

As he ran, Albert’s shoelace got caught on a stray root. “Wait!” He called to Farnsworth to stop, but he was fast, and by the time Albert had released himself, the mutt had disappeared into the trees.

“Farnsworth!” Albert yelled, but the dog didn’t return. He looked back in the direction from which he’d come, and saw that the ground was thick with leaves and roots crisscrossing one another like a maze. He shivered, but then stood up straight.

“Dad’s counting on me to deliver this letter,” he said to himself. “I can do this.” He looked down at the hand-drawn map again. “The stream is next.”

He walked on, swerving around big trees and under branches, until he reached a rise in the trail. He climbed up, grabbing exposed roots and pulling himself along, until he reached a shelf. There he found the stream, like a silver scar in the ground. And sitting patiently, wagging his tail, was Farnsworth.

“There you are,” Albert said. He stooped down and placed his hand on the dog’s head. Farnsworth licked his hand, turned around, hopped right into the stream, and then across to the other side. Albert followed after him, leaping across the stream. The opposite bank was steep, and by the time he’d scurried up it on all fours just like Farnsworth, the dog had already raced off again through the trees.

“Wait up!” Albert shouted, and this time, he followed even closer, keeping his eyes on Farnsworth instead of the map. After all, his dad had said the animal knew exactly where to go. He couldn’t lose him again, not if he wanted to make it to his destination before sunset. Speaking of destination . . . his dad hadn’t said where he would end up. Albert guessed it was a house sitting in the woods, with an old man like Pap waiting for him on the front porch. He decided that no matter what, he’d deliver the letter in time, then cut out quick and make it home before it got dark. He couldn’t wait to see the look on his dad’s face when he told him he’d done the job right, all on his own.

His dad was gone all day, delivering mail, and at night, they always ate the same frozen dinners in front of the TV. They talked about fishing and hiking and all the things Albert wished they’d spend their summers doing, but never really did much of. Bob Flynn wasn’t remarkable, by any stretch. But he was Albert’s dad. And that was enough for him to be Albert’s favorite person in the world. He never wanted to disappoint him.

After a while, Farnsworth barked again, drawing Albert away from his thoughts. They had almost reached the bottom of the big hill, just like his dad’s map said they would.

“You want to race the rest of the way, don’t you?” Albert said, as he bent down to scratch behind Farnsworth’s velvety ears.

The dog’s ears perked up, and he took off in a flash, faster than Albert had ever seen him run before. It was a wild chase, both of them running through the forest as fast as their legs would carry them. Just when Albert was about to pass the little dog, his foot got caught on a thick vine.

Albert’s feet went out from under him. He flipped through the air and landed in a cloud of dust on the hard ground. It was awesome. He’d felt like he was flying.

“Did you see that?” Albert shouted. He’d expected Farnsworth to be at his side, wagging his little tail.

But Farnsworth was gone, again.

It was then that Albert realized just how dark the woods were becoming. He looked up at the sky. It was barely visible through the tops of the trees, but Albert could see the deep-pink-and-orange swirls overhead. Sunset was here, and by the looks of it, it was almost over. How long had he been in the woods? Time passed quickly, Albert realized, without a clock to measure it by.

“So much for delivering this letter before dinner.”

Albert called out, hoping for the dog to come running back with a stick in his mouth. He looked down at the map again. The directions ended with the top of the hill, right where he was standing.

Albert spun around, searching for a house, or a tent, or something in the woods. But there was nothing. Just trees, trees, and more trees.

A half hour later, with darkness coming on fast, Albert felt like he was trapped inside a maze. He sat with his back up against atree and really thought about his situation for the first time since he’d left the dead-letter office.

He hadn’t found the house or the person. He hadn’t delivered the letter, and by now, his dad had probably figured out that Albert had failed. But the really troubling thing, the thing that was starting to make him afraid like he hadn’t been in a long time, was that he was lost.

The map was no help anymore, Farnsworth was gone, and no matter how hard Albert tried to make sense of the woods, it all just looked the same. Every time he got close to finding his bearings, the ground itself seemed to have changed around him, and Albert was sure he’d walked in a thousand circles.

“What now?” he said to himself. He picked up a rock and tossed it as hard as he could. It landed against a tree trunk with a loud crack that echoed through the woods. Albert wished he had a friend with him right now, someone to help figure this all out. He could feel the letter in his back pocket, just waiting for him to deliver it.

His dad had said not to read it, not under any circumstance.

But Albert had made it all this way, followed all the directions right, and now . . . nothing. This was pretty dire circumstances, as far as Albert was concerned. Surely, if his dad knew he was lost, he’d want him to read it for a clue . . .

Albert pulled the letter out of his pocket.

The writing was barely readable in the fading light. At first, Albert thought there was nothing on the paper at all. But as he tilted it, sure enough, there at the bottom of it, scrawled in his dad’s chicken scratch, was one simple message:

Albert’s time has come.

The letter slipped out of his fingertips. It was about him? Maybe he’d read it wrong. He picked it up again and spent the next thirty seconds reading it over and over until the message sounded like it was screaming inside of his head. Albert’s time has come.

“My time?” Albert said. “What time?”

He looked in the direction of Herman. Or at least he thought he did. How far into the woods was he?

“Farnsworth?” he called halfheartedly.

He took one more look at the letter, shook his head, and started down the hill for home.

“I give up,” he said.

His timing was perfect, for right then, a shadowy figure moved in the trees, coming his way.

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