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She would have died hereafter.
There, too, would have been such time for such a word.
And to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this keen petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And ere all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, my brief light!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
Ah, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then it is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying Nothing.
--Macbeth Act V, sc. v, lines 19-30
---
James Hamish's uncle, Gregory Mason had been studying the note for some time. The note had been mailed to him in an envelope with the address to the Mason residence. The return address read:
---
Tracks,
Thirtieth Chair,
Second There,
I'll see you there?
---
Above the sending address, the sender had been so strange as to write July 1, which might have been interpreted as the sending date, except the date had not passed yet. The current day was July 1, in fact, and the letter must have been sent a week or so before. If it was the estimated time of arrival, it was wrong as well, as the letter arrived June 29. Additionally, there was no post on Sundays, which made the letter even stranger.
Gregory had been studying the note once again for about an hour, copying it, making strange markings of it, and viewing the original under different lenses of magnification, different colors, everything one could think of...
Gregory was getting less and less patient with the note as the hours had passed, and by 7 on that Sunday night, he had lost his nerve, crumpled the paper up, and threw it near the wastebasket, along with the envelope. Whatever kind of joke it was, he clearly wasn't in the mood for it.
James had noted his uncle studying the note for a long time that weekend, and figured he'd give a crack at it. The words had seemed familiar... something like he was learning in his summer school English class. He called his friend Chris Perry, because she had been excelling in English for the past years and probably would have information on this seemingly familiar message...
---
"What does it say?"
James read the note to her, and there was silence for a few minutes as the faint ticking of a keyboard could be heard. There were a few minutes of silence, and then Chris spoke.
"It's odd... It seems to be the familiar lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet," she said.
"I could have figured that out," said James, "but I wanted to know if there was anything unusual about it..."
"Well, there are a few discrepancies in the words. Look at where it says 'There, too, would have been time for such a word.' It's odd that these words were changed... Listen here, these are the original lines:
---
She would have died hereafter.
There would have been time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
---
"You see how some of the lines are different? Even the line numbers are strange..." she asked.
"Yes... I see... I think I might know what's going on with this note, too... Thanks, Chris."
He hung up the phone before Chris had a chance to response...
James grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote down the following words: too, And, keen, ere, my, Ah, it.
"The discrepancies... the iambic pentameter Note 1 changes... these break the iambic pentameter..."
James stared at the words. too. And. keen. ere. my. Ah. it.
"They're all one syllable... They throw off the iambic pentameter... Why is 'Nothing' capitalized...?"
James rewrote the words various times.
"Ah, And, ere, it, keen, my, too... Nothing?"
James looked at the clock. 7:15. He started writing the words upside-down and in different print and rearranged them and eventually arranged them as follows:
too
And
keen
ere
my
Ah
it
(Nothing?)
"Takemai...? Is it Japanese...? Takemain...? Take... Take main... Take Main!?"
James grabbed the envelope.
"Tracks! Thirtieth chair on the second car! Take the main line! 19:30! 7:30 PM!!"
James looked at the clock. 7:25.
"Damn! I'll never make it in time...!"
James rushed out the back yard, jumped the wall that led to the street, and ran to the train station...
---
James lived a twenty minute walk from the station, which made it a fifteen minute run, and when James arrived at the station, he thanked himself for having played soccer for quite some time before, though he did admit he was out of shape.
James rushed to buy a ticket, but saw the time.
"7:40... Damn..."
The cashier asked if James wanted to buy a ticket. He asked when the next train for the Main line would come.
"It should be coming shortly, actually. It should have come at 7:30, but it seems there were some slight delays..."
James thrust about ten dollars at the man as the man handed James his boarding pass. James rushed through crowds of people and saw the Main line train about to leave. The doors were closing...
Just then, someone held a door open and the train stopped. A person stepped out having remembered they were supposed to get off there...
---
James had made it safely into the third car and made his way to the second car, when he noticed someone was already sitting in seat thirty, sitting alone. There were some people in the car, but there were quite a few empty seats in the car.
James grabbed on to the railing and stood behind seat thirty, studying the person, though he wasn't able to get much out of him, save the hat he bought was fairly new and probably used to disguise himself. James was about to go back to the third car when a person sitting two rows behind approached James and made him sit down in the row behind the other man with a hat.
"Excuse me, but what are you..."
James's voice fell short as he saw that the man in front of him was checking his gun. The other man sitting next to James gave a small grin.
"We'll talk about it in the car, kid."
