Free Hauntings and Heists by Dan Poblocki Page A

so real,” said Woodrow.
    “Maybe we just
want
it to look real,” Viola suggested. “It’s exciting to believe in the beast, isn’t it?”
    “There was a famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster that looked real too,” Sylvester said, “but that one was a bunch of baloney. The guy who shot it said so…. Well, eventually.”
    “If there’s one thing we’ve learned as a mystery club,” said Viola, “it’s that we can’t go around accusing people of stuff they didn’t do. We need proof that Dr. Blunt made it up.”
    “But how?” said Rosie. “Isn’t the fact that he invented a nonsense name enough?”
    “Not really,” said Woodrow, thinking. “But maybe we’re wrong about the name. Maybe it isn’t nonsense.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Viola.
    “Maybe he chose those words for a reason.”
    “Like what?” said Sylvester. “You think he was trying to tell everyone something? Like by code?”
    “Not by code,” said Woodrow. “But something like it.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Rosie.
     
    “I think maybe Dr. Blunt’s name for the beast is an anagram,” said Woodrow.
    “What’s an anagram?” asked Sylvester.
    “We learned the term in class last year,” said Rosie. “Remember? An anagram is a word or words whose letters can be moved around to make other words.”
    “Like a puzzle,” Woodrow said, nodding.
    “I think you guys could be right,” said Viola, opening her notebook. “Brilliant.” She tore out several sheets of paper and handed them to the others. “If we’re going to figure this out, we’d better get started now. There are a lot of letters here. And this might be the only way to prove that Dr. Blunt is up to something.”
    A long while later, the group was frustrated.
    “I can’t make sense of this,” said Rosie, finally.
“The Hudson River Oftrem Snake
has too many letters!”
    “Hold on,” Woodrow answered. “You’re right, Rosie. There
are
too many letters. But what if we don’t use all of them?”
    “Isn’t the point to use all of the letters?” Sylvester asked.
    “Try using
Oftrem Snake,”
said Woodrow. After a few minutes, he gasped. “It worked! I got it. Did you?”
    Viola gasped too. “If you rearrange the letters of
Oftrem Snake,
it becomes
Monster Fake!”
she said.
    “Wow,” said Sylvester.
“The Hudson River Monster Fake.
Or
Fake Monster.
That’s actually kind of cool.”
    “I can’t believe someone would do this to us,” said Rosie, her mouth agape. “To the town.”
    “I can,” Viola said, crossing her arms. “Now the question is: What are we going to do about it?”
    “I don’t think we should go to the paper,” said Woodrow. “Dr. Blunt works with your father, right, Viola? We don’t want to cause any trouble.”
    “Oh,
I
want to cause trouble,” she said softly. “Or at least find out what the doctor was thinking.”
    “We could send him a letter,” Rosie suggested. “Tell him we figured out his trick.”
    “That sounds like a good plan,” said Viola.
    They decided Woodrow should write it, since he was the one who had decoded the anagram first. After looking up Dr. Blunt’s address online, he dropped the letter in the mail. Then, they waited.
    A few days later, Woodrow slipped notes intoeach of his friends’ lockers, asking them to meet him at lunch. He had something to tell them.
    When they had all met in the cafeteria at a long booth near the windows, he began. “Dr. Blunt called me last night.” The group gasped, and Woodrow continued. “He actually congratulated us on figuring out his hoax.”
    “He congratulated us?” Viola couldn’t believe it. She’d been so sure that he would have been upset or embarrassed at being caught.
    “He told me that he doesn’t believe that there’s a beast in the river, but plenty of animals do live in the Hudson River — and the contest was actually really destructive to their habitat. People were trampling the shores, going out on their boats, disrupting the