Dispatch 01 / Month 1
The Light
Goes Out
The first letter every new member receives. This is what arrives in your child's envelope — a real story, a real puzzle, and a clue that moves the mystery forward.
Clue 1 of 6. Every case begins here.
Silver Bay, the 16th of September, 1924
Dearest Explorer,
Tomorrow this light goes out, and I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from anyone else. By the time you are reading this, it will have been dark a long while, and the people in this town will have decided what happened to me. They will say it was the weather. They will say it was the rocks. They will say a great many kind, sad things, and they will be wrong about every one of them, and I would rather you did not believe a word. I am not lost. I am not in trouble. I have simply gone somewhere, and I did not ask permission, because I am fifteen and I know exactly what the answer would have been.
Here is the difficult part, and you will have to be patient with me. I am taking two things with me and I am leaving one thing behind, and I am not going to tell you which is which. That is not me being unkind. It is me being careful. If I write it down plainly and somebody finds this letter who ought not to, then all of it is finished before it has begun. So you will have to work it out. You have everything you need. One of the three things is not what it appears to be, and the person who notices which will be the person I am hoping for.
Every few days now I have been leaving a mark around the town. Perhaps you have seen one. It is a compass rose, scratched with a knife point, and one arm of it is much longer than the other seven. There is one on the base of the old anchor outside the museum. There will be others, in other places, and I promise you they are not decoration and they are not a joke. Tomorrow morning I will take the compass out of its case, and I will put another one in its place. If you ever hold the compass in that museum, you will know at once that it is not mine. I am counting on nobody else ever holding it.
Yours in adventure,
Finn
Keeper, Silver Bay Light
P.S. There are five more letters after this one. Do not rush them. I did not.
Letter from Finn
The Light Goes Out
Case File from Zara
Briefing No. 1
Three Puzzles
Manifest, Riddle, Long Arm
Clue Card
Piece 1 of 6
Plus an evidence hunt, an observation journal, a For Grown-Ups guide, and, in the first envelope only, a welcome letter and Official Member Card.
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