Shawn shook his head to indicate his ignorance. "I met Tiffany. But I don't know where she is now." He knew Tiffany had last been in Bradford's house, and that had probably gone badly. But he didn't know for certain what had happened to her; Bradford might have killed her. But he also might have trapped her in the krinner, or she might have escaped, or  Mr. Clayton might have turned her into a bird for all he knew. He was afraid to ask Mr. Clayton, in case he got an answer.

More scribbling down in the notebook.



"Where was the last time you saw her? When was it? Yesterday?" Edith asked Shawn.

"We need to know. No rock can be left unturned in the investigation. " She stressed.

Michael's heard turned to Shawn as if it was on a swivel.

Shawn looked like he was trying to remember. "It was a long time ago - before school started, so I guess it was at least two months ago? We were outside, I think maybe? It might have been near my house?" He shook his head apologetically. "I'm really sorry, I didn't know it was going to be important until later, so I don't remember much."

There was a long drawn out pause as Edith stopped writing in the notebook. She narrowed her eyes and looked at Shawn. It appeared for a moment that she was about to follow up with another round of questions when her posture soften behind the desk.

She placed the notebook to one side, neatly flipping the cover back and closing it to reveal the My Little Pony logo.

"Alright." She said with finality. "We believe you" she finished, as if her word spoke the final verdict on behalf of the kids of Rodeo Drive. Though she said the words, there was no sense of kindness in her voice, but rather the formality of cold, hard logic.

Shawn felt a little relieved that there wouldn't be more questions about Tiffany, but mostly he was just glad he'd been believed. "Thank you. This whole thing on Main Street is really scary, but I heard you already know a bunch about it?"

Edith nodded her head. "We've been at this investigation for about two weeks." Edith confirmed. "But no thanks to you." Edith said, taking a bit away from her earlier softness.

"Members of the investigative team have been looking for you. You play some role in all of this---probably you don't know it." She added, moving a bit back to that softness she had displayed a moment earlier, but which never seemed to meet her eyes.

"We have a partial list of missing kids." Edith instructed "And we think things are somehow centered on that kid's house that you like to play with. The young one."

She flipped open the notebook, pages shifting this way and that until she settled on a single page. "Ralph." She said.

Shawn wanted to protest that it wasn't his fault they hadn't included him in the investigation, but the conversation moved on and he didn't want to double back to it. Especially now that they'd got to the important part. "I've been trying to find Ralph. Do you think he's...is he okay?" It was the question he'd be expected to ask, but it was also what he really want to know. Even if he dreaded the possible answers.

Edith[s big head slumped as she sighed. "I hope so. But from an investigative point of view, if Mumm-Ra is in a temple and all of the bad stuff is coming from there..." Edith paused. "We don't know, but it doesn't look good." Edith said, and she folded her hands.

"What else do you know?"

It wasn't really good news, but Shawn had been bracing for confirmation of the worst, and more uncertainty wasn't that bad by comparison."Well...I've been inside Ralph's house. And I think it's the lady who lives there's fault." He wasn't really sure how to broach the subject of supernatural happenings - whether it was Leonard's slightly metaphorical version, or the one he'd learned - since Edith seemed so logical and methodical.

"What!!!?" Edith's eyes opened so wide that they looked like they might fall out. "When were you inside? Did you see any of the missing kids?" Edith asked grabbing the notebook and flipping it to blank page.

"You went inside that place?" Corey asked, but it sounded more like he was shocked than he was interested in knowing about the experience.

"Michael and I did, yeah. It was an hour or two ago, I guess?" Shawn decided to play it coy for the time being about the supernatural stuff, feeling out if Edith would believe him or not first. "I dunno if she's missing, but I saw this girl I know, Sara? She didn't notice me, but she was acting really weird..."

"Ughhh! I haaaaaaaaaaaate Sara." Corey complained. It had to be said, that for even Corey this sounded like a forceful complaint from what Shawn was learning was one of the most expert complainers he had ever met.

"What do you mean....weird?" Edith ignored Corey, her big head leaning towards Shawn as if ready to soak in the information, analyze it.

Shawn wasn’t a big fan of Sara either, but he still didn’t think she deserved whatever was going on in that house. “I dunno, she was all hunched over and stuff. She was just wandering around the house with a big knife, and she didn’t seem all there up here, you know?” He tapped his head for emphasis. “I know it sounds crazy - you probably don’t believe me.”

Shawn heard shuffling from below, the sounds of sneakers on the ladders rungs and voices that were talking. As Shawn spoke about Sara, several kids emerged from the bottom of the tree house almost too busy to notice Shawn. The formed their own semicircle around the desk, then one by one stopped talking and began to listen to the conversation between Edith and Shawn, taking notice of Cory and Michael.

Michael, for his part, had completely abandoned the conversation as such. He was sitting Indian-style in one corner of the tree house, candy displayed out in front of him. He had already arranged the candy and grouped them by type. Shawn could see Michael's lips move as he counted them.


Edith appeared less interested in Shawn's guilt or innocence or even if Shawn was believable or unbelievable. Instead she focused on writing the details of what Shawn was saying in her notebook.




"A knife." Edith repeated, hand furiously scratching down notes.

"Was she wearing any clown costumes or anything?" Edith asked.

Shawn hadn’t been laughed at yet, and Edith’s follow up question was very much on the path towards what Shawn knew was really going on, so he took it as a good sign. He tried to recall what Sara had been wearing. “I…don’t think so? I don’t really remember how she was dressed, but I probably would if she was wearing a clown outfit.”

Edith considered what Shawn said. "What else did you see inside the house? Anything strange?" She leaned forward, looking at Shawn directly in the eyes, as if whatever Shawn said might be the missing puzzle to whatever was happening in the investigation.

Shawn wanted very much to ask Edith questions about what she knew - what her sources were. But first he needed her to trust him, and that meant sharing what he could. He thought back to anything else he could give her, some potential clue like in Encyclopedia Brown. "Hmm...oh! Sara was carrying vegetables into the basement. I don't know why, but she was doing that for some reason.""

'Vegetables?' One kid said, and the one next to him let out a little, girlish giggle.

In the corner of the room Michael chimed in. "Yes." He said simply, without looking up, hands busy arranging the Tootsie Rolls into columns and rows along the floorboard in front of him.

Shawn didn't like getting laughed at, but Edith was unquestionably the leader here, and hopefully winning her over would mean winning the rest of them over as well. And she seemed to want information more than anything else, so he nodded confidently. "It's true, we saw it with our own eyes. It's really weird, so it has to be important, right?"

There was a murmur and a hush as the kids began speaking. They weren't standing around the wall any more, coming in and around the desk where Edith and Shawn were. The murmurs became more vocal as several side conversations suddenly enveloped Shawn.

"Peas! I bet it was Peas!" One kid said.

"Blah! I hate peas!" Another responded.

"One time I fed my green sprouts to my dog. Yeah, Mommy got mad." Shawn overheard the girl next to him say.

All the while, Edith wrote down in her book. Then she got up and went to the back wall where the yarn was connecting the various investigative entities and places clearly important and marked.

Shawn heard the conversations going on around him, but when Edith got up and went to the back wall where she was clearly brainstorming, he casually followed her. "It was lettuce, in case that helped." He spoke low, more casually than before, like they were having a conversation now instead of an interrogation.

"What's happening to the people in that house? It's got something to do with clowns, doesn't it?" Admittedly, Shawn already knew that, but hopefully she knew enough that he could ask more specific questions.

Edith traced a red piece of yarn that was tacked to the board with one thick finger. She touched the the picture that read 'Ralph's House' and followed the yarn all of the way to a picture that wasn't labeled. Then she took out a red colored crayon and wrote 'Sara's House.'

She stood back and Shawn could see the pattern. There were all sorts of houses with strings that lead back to Ralph's house. Under the homes, they were labeled with names like 'Tiffany' and 'Penelope' and about a half a dozen other names of kids Shawn may or may not have heard of. Had the names been kids that Shawn had always known? Or had they been changed once Mr. Clayton had gotten inside the dreams. Maybe after Shawn had made those wishes...it was difficult to say.

What was certain was the the Puppet now lay completely and utterly motionless. Completely asleep and absent from the conversation.

Edith stepped back admiring the diagram of yard and cardboard. Of names of streets written in crayon. Three streets really. Rodeo Drive was written in green and a cardboard cut out of the tree house had been circled. Main Street was written in red with the words 'DANGER' underneath. And behind the tree house, disappearing off at the edge of the wall was written 'Celebrity Boulevard.' Shawn could see that one trail of yard extended over there as well.


"Not sure" Edith said, responding to Shawn's question about the vegetables. "But we've got to figure this out. What else do you know?" Edith asked, the question pointed as if Shawn might be holding back. Or maybe that was just the way Edith asked questions and spoke to people, a sort of no-nonsense attitude and gruffness Shawn was learning was less than an endearing trait for a young girl. Certainly directors wouldn't like that at least during a rehearsal or a the script reads which Shawn had become accustomed.

Shawn followed the yarn all over the wall, tracing the path of danger through the neighborhood. It felt like he should recognize most of these names, but maybe that had been another time, another Shawn.

He had been taken off guard at first by Edith brusque attitude, but it was slowly growing on him. Shawn was someone who liked to have clear expectations, and Edith was a definite master of that. And since she'd made references to the Circus and clowns, he figured he at least had a chance to be believed. "I think I know some more stuff, but I'm not sure if you'd believe me. Or if it even makes sense. Can you tell me what you think happened to Sara, and why you asked me if she was wearing a clown outfit?"