“Then what?”
“It’s a verb, too. ‘To raven’ means ‘to devour voraciously.’ It must be where the word ‘ravenous’ comes from.”
He taps at his chin “So we’re looking for writing that is…eating something?”
“We might be at a dead end.” I sigh and pocket my phone.
“Not necessarily.” Harrison examines the lock of the first stall, turning it to ‘occupied’ and back. He then looks at the second one for a few seconds before moving on to the third.
There’s a knock on the door. A woman’s voice I don’t recognize. “Hello? Is the bathroom closed?”
I swallow. “Just a minute. There was an incident. We’re doing some cleaning.”
“Is that Bianca in there?”
“N-No.” I lower my voice. “But how sweet of you to think I sound like her. It’s…Hilda, the custodian. I’m cleaning up. Someone got sick in here.”
“Oh, heavens. How long will it be?”
“At least ten minutes,” I say. “Maybe you could use the men’s restroom.”
“Not on your life. I’ll go ask Rouge if I can use her restroom in her office.”
“No! No! Don’t do that!” I think quickly. “If you can just wait a few minutes, we’ll be open momentarily.”
“Okay… I guess I’ll wait.”
“Great. Thank you.” I turn to Harrison. “Can you hurry it up?”
“I think I might have found something.” Harrison exits the leftmost stall, the one against the wall. “Look here.”
I cross. “Make it quick. We’ve got someone waiting.”
“I heard. But look.” He turns the lock on the stall to ‘occupied’ and points. “See here? Could these be little teeth?”
I look closer. On the right side of the ‘occupied’ end of the lock, there are a few tiny triangles. Hardly noticeable unless you’re looking for it.
“And these aren’t on the other two stalls?”
“Correct. If the word ‘occupied’ has these little teeth, then it kind of looks like it’s eating the word ‘vacant’ when you turn the lock.”
I blink. “The writing is…ravening.”
“Indeed.” He grins.
“Oh, my God. Did we actually figure it out?”
“I don’t know, but we should check this stall out from top to bottom.”
“And quickly”—I glance toward the bathroom door—“before Ms. Whoever outside decides to call Rouge for help.”
“Right.” He gets on his knees and looks around the toilet. “Anything odd?”
“No,” I sigh. “It looks like a regular toilet to me.” I look it up and down, from the bottom of the toilet to its bowl to its tank on top. I even remove the top to check the flushing mechanism on the inside, but everything looks like it should. “Maybe we were seeing things with those little teeth.” I rub at the back of my neck. “It seems like every time we get some momentum, we end up right where we started. Maybe this is all a wild?—”
I stop as I examine the lever in front of the tank. I’ve never noticed before, but in tiny cursive writing it has the words “Flush Me” on it. I check the other toilets. They don’t have the writing on the lever.
I walk in and flush the toilet, expecting something crazy to happen.
