Chapter 8

Mort woke up on the couch, not remembering why he was not helping Cel clean out the attic. He heard her in the kitchen and decided that they were either finished or taking a break. Mort got up to help Cel cook when he heard paper pass through a slot and Cel rushed to pick up the mail.

"Yes, it's here!" Cel shouted, removing a letter from the stack.

"What? What's here?" Mort asked, confused.

"My first royalty payment!" Cel exclaimed. Mort was reminded of the enthusiasm he had felt when he received his first royalty check. It had been so long ago and many other royalty checks ago. "And you got one, too!"

"Really?" Mort said, "Oh, for my rewrite of my story 'Secret Window'"

"I remember that one, the ending did seem different than it was meant to be," Cel said, "What did you change?"

"The ending, want to read?" her father asked.

"I will once I've gotten back from the library, i had to do some research for my book."

"I'll come with you," Mort answered, "I have some shopping to do, we're almost out of butter."

"Okay," Cel said. She hoped that he wouldn't try to see what she was doing. They left for town, leaving Chico at home. When they got there, Cel headed for the library and Mort to the grocery store.

Cel sat down to one of the library computers. She had known who two of the four that had disapeared were, but the other names that Mort had told her she did not recognize. These Cel typed into the search engine one by one. Her resuts were very unusual.