TEA WITH THE MIDNIGHT MONSTERS

SECRETS

Have you ever swallowed a live hamster?

That's what a secret feels like -- like having a live angry hamster in your belly. It wants to get out -- either up through your throat and out your mouth, or out through your bottom, with your poop.

At nine o'clock on Sunday night, Caroline and Cruz both had hamsters in their bellies -- both had secrets they needed to tell, and they felt as if they could confide in each other. Together, they sneaked into the tearoom alley.

"You want to go first or should I?" Cruz said. "My friend in forensics came by."

"With the results?" Caroline said.

"You won't believe it."

"Try me," she said rather dryly. She would believe anything now. She had just seen an alicorn crash through her window.

Cruz showed her a set of documents and held them under the back door light. "The small black things -- "

"The poop?"

He looked at her. "How did you know it was -- ?"

"Lucky guess."

"They sent it off to a Dr. Hanson -- at the Museum of Natural History. In his opinion, it's excrement from a long extinct species of -- vampire bat. A bat that inhabited South America in the... Pleistoncene era." He read from the report and then looked up. "The museum would like to buy your poop, unless you're willing to donate it. They asked me to give you a business card."

Caroline nodded. "Please go on."

"The red scales," he said, reading again from the report: "Fossil specimens of micro-polygon reptile skin... found in Cretacious Haman formations, discovered at a road site in South Korea."

"Reptile skin?" Caroline repeated. "Prehistoric?"

Cruz nodded. "And the green wire -- was human hair and not dyed."

Then Caroline gasped. "My phone!" she said. "I have my phone!"

"Your phone?"

"My phone! Oh my goodness! What was I thinking?" She turned and opened the back alley door and swiftly entered the kitchen again. Cruz followed, and Caroline found her purse and dug through it. "Thursday night, Millie's dream! I completely forgot!" She found her phone, tapped in her code, and swiped right. "Millie -- Millie stole my phone to take a video. She filmed the creatures -- from her dream --for proof, to show me -- and then she dropped my phone out the window. Of course, I forgot, for obvious reasons..." She handed the phone over to Cruz. "You look," she said. "You check the video. Last one there." Caroline knew what he would find. He would find monsters. Millie's witch and dragon and bat. Monsters exist! They truly did!

Cruz scrolled and found the last video, three minutes and three seconds long. He sat on a stool and tapped PLAY.

After some moments as he watched, his face grew pale. He watched and watched and grew paler and paler.

"What do you see?" Caroline asked. "Are you all right? You look ill. Can I get you some tea?"

Cruz pressed pause. "Tell me," he said, without looking up. "Tell me this wasn't photo-shopped? Or animated? Or..."

"Please. Please. Millie would have needed special effects and... Is it a vampire bat? And a dragon with scales and a witch with green hair?"

"And a red devil," Cruz said, stunned. Dizzied. "I don't... know how... to present this," he whispered. "To my boss... To the Missing Person's Squad..."

Caroline nodded. "You may not have to." Then she turned and slipped Hope's backpack off the counter. "Someone, someone -- and don't ask me who, please don't ask -- dropped this off at my flat tonight. It's why I came by." She gave him the bag. "I believe it belongs to Hope Goodman."

Cruz's eyes grew ever wider as Caroline explained:

Among the items inside the bag, she found two letters. Both were dated 1950, and both were addressed to Ludwig Cornelius, the real von Billings. One was signed by President Truman, and on the other, there was a note -- a note handwritten by her son, Pim. She handed the letter to Cruz:

"Mum! Believe this! Please! Me and Millie and all the kids safe in bomb shelter under Central Park! Churchill's but bigger! Find trees! Find waterfall! Find cave behind water! Dig deep! Bring POLICE. We miss you with all of our hearts. Bring GUNS PS. I have a fever. HURRY! Love, Pim!"

"They're in Ludwig's bunker," Caroline said. "He never built it in Wyoming. He built it here in New York City."

Cruz could only stare at the note. Could this be possible? Could it be real?

"Look in the bag," Caroline said.

Cruz took the backpack and unzipped it. He reached in and pulled out a baseball glove; in faded black marker, scrawled across it, he found a boy's name:

Ethan Zane