A Third Eye Caper
The Night of Flickering Fedoras
It was the winter of 1915, and Chateaugay Lake was as frozen as my luck at the track. The stars were out, but they didn’t seem to be doing much. My office was dimly lit—by choice, of course—when the door swung open, revealing a woman whose face had more trouble written on it than a horse racing tip sheet from last month.
“Nick Danger, Third Eye,” she said, her voice trembling like a lousy gambler’s hands. “You’ve got to come quickly! The sky… it’s doing something weird.”
“Lady, you’ve come to the right place,” I replied, lighting up a Lucky Strike and pretending I didn’t notice the trembling. “Weird is my specialty.”
The Faces in the Smoke
I followed Nancy Thornberry, her heels sliding through the frozen mud slush down to the docks, by the nearby shore of Chateaugay Lake. The sky above was alive with ribbons of green and blue light, swirling like the contents of a cosmic martini! And there, among the lights, were faces—grinning, malevolent faces, like an old friend who owes you money but is still smiling about it.
“What in the name of Nikola Tesla is going on?” I muttered. My usual skepticism was slipping faster than a greased weasel at a county fair.
“These faces,” Nancy said, clutching my arm, “they’re calling to us.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound tough, “but I’m not answering any calls without a penny for the payphone.”
The Astronomer Who Knew Too Much
The next day, I rowed over to see Professor Archibald Whitlock, a man whose idea of a good time involved telescopes and tea leaves. His observatory on Moffitt’s Isle was filled with charts, symbols, and enough dusty books to choke a library.
“Danger,” he said, looking like he hadn’t slept since Halley’s Comet last passed, “those lights—they’re more than just an aurora. They’re a message, written in a language that predates human existence.”
“Predates my rent too,” I quipped. “What’s the message, Professor?”
“It’s a warning,” he whispered, leaning in as if the walls had ears. “Or maybe an invitation… to madness.”
Enter the Inventor, Stage Left
Word on Tobacco Road was that Johqu Bogart, local crackpot and amateur mad scientist, had been meddling up there in his “lab” with the forces of nature again. His latest invention, the “Etherwave Harmonic Resonator,” was the talk of the neighborhood—and not in a good way.
I tracked Bogart back in his shack, where he was tinkering with something that looked like a radio and sounded like a banshee with a sore throat.
“I did it, Danger!” Bogart shrieked, his eyes wilder than a poker game in a miner’s bar. “I contacted them—beings from another realm! The lights—they’re their message to us!”
“And what’s the message, Bogie? ‘Wish you were here’?”
The Song That Shouldn’t Be
That night, I was back at the lake, staring up at the sky like a moth hypnotized by a porch light. The aurora was back, and with it came a sound—a melody that wormed its way into my brain like an unpaid debt. It was haunting, beautiful, and utterly alien, like a crooner from beyond the stars.
I tried to record it, but it was no use. The music was like a dream—impossible to hold onto, but unforgettable. It echoed in my head, a tune that would drive a man to drink, if only to drown it out.
The Steamboat Pirates Are Coming!
Things were getting stranger by the day. Radios were picking up signals from nowhere, and the locals were reporting dreams that would make a psychologist reach for a drink. It was time to bring in the big guns—the Chateaugay Lake Steamboat Pirates Association, a group of misfits who claimed to be experts in “anomalous phenomena.” Or as I called it, “weird stuff.”
We gathered on the lake, armed with cameras, notebooks, and more questions than answers. The aurora flickered to life, and we watched, waiting for something—anything—that might explain what was happening. What we got was more than we bargained for.
The Faces, the Faces!
As the lights reached a fever pitch, I could feel something inside my head—a voice, a thought, something not quite human. The faces in the sky were smiling now, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was the kind of smile you’d expect from a cat just before it pounces on a mouse.
Suddenly, everything clicked. The lights, the music, the faces—they were all part of a puzzle, a cosmic riddle designed to drive a man mad. And I was standing right in the middle of it, holding the last piece.
“They want us to join them,” I realized, my voice barely a whisper. “But if we do, we lose ourselves—forever.”
The Price of a Peek
Things quieted down after that, but nothing was the same. The lights stopped, the music faded, and the good folks of Chateaugay Lake went back to their lives. But something lingered in the air—a sense of unease, like a bad smell that won’t wash out.
As for me, Nick Danger, Third Eye, I’d seen too much. The faces in the sky still haunted my dreams, their grins twisted into something that wasn’t quite human. The melody still played in my head, a tune from beyond the stars that I couldn’t shake.
The universe is full of mysteries, and some of them are better left unsolved. But that’s never been my style. So if you’ve got a problem, and the problem is weird, you know where to find me—just follow the smoke and the smell of stale coffee.
And remember: in the end, all mysteries lead to one place—a place where the lights are always on, and the answers are just out of reach.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?