Written on the white envelope was one word.

You.

I picked it up off the porch. No addresses. No postage. I glanced up and down the street. Nothing but a quiet suburban Monday morning. All of my neighbors were either at work or traveling for the holidays. The envelope weighed little, seemingly empty, until I felt something small and hard, like a rock, in one corner.

“Hey Beth,” I called out for my wife. When she poked her head out of the laundry room, I held the envelope up. “What do you make of this?”

“It’s a letter.” She narrowed her eyes to read it. “And it’s for you.”

I smirked. “Thanks. But if you had picked it up then ‘you’ would mean for you.” I tilted the envelope back and forth and whatever was inside slid in tandem. “Should I open it?”

“Of course. It’s probably from one of the neighbors.” She returned to folding clothes for her trip.

With a shrug, I tore one end and let the object slide out onto my palm.

It was an almond.

No letter or invitation or ransom note.

Just a nut.

“It’s an almond,” I yelled to her.

“A what?”

“An almond.”

“Max, are you sure?”

That was kind of an insulting question, but I was too distracted to be offended. “Yeah, look.”

She came out of the laundry room with an expression that said she clearly didn’t think I had the mental capacity to differentiate an almond from the gas bill. But then she saw it and looked just as confused as me, which was rare, and something that I would normally be smug about. “Hey, you’re right.”

I plucked the almond from my palm and held it up between my index finger and thumb. It seemed silly to more closely inspect it, as what more could be revealed about a simple nut? Then I noticed the red markings.

On one side was some kind of design. The almond wasn’t very large which made the image small and hard to make out. As I squinted, it appeared to be a rudimentary face, akin to something that a child might draw.

Beth had much better eyesight. “Looks like a skull.”

It was an astute observation. “Yeah. Creepy.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Beth said proactively. She had the uncanny power to peer through my forehead and see my imagination already doing cartwheels.

“Nothing? Someone sent me a scary nut face. That can’t possibly mean anything good. I don’t think that’s how all the single ladies in the neighborhood would choose to flirt with me.”

She smirked. “Only the ones who’ve met you.”

“Seriously, what do you think it means? Some kind of death threat? From like a vegan cult?”

“It’s probably the neighborhood kids playing a prank on you.”

“Me? What’d I do?”

“Maybe they saw you running around in your squirrel combat outfit and figured you were the neighborhood loony. Y’know, kids can be cruel to misfits.”

For several months I’d been locked in a housing dispute with a gang of squirrels that kept chewing their way into our attic. I’d go up, shoo them out and patch the holes. In short order, they’d destroy my patches and move back in. Rinse and repeat. I had picked up knee and elbow pads to more comfortably crawl around the narrow parts of the attic but the piece de resistance was the miner’s cap with a working headlamp that I found at a thrift shop. When the ensemble was complete my wife had dubbed it the Squirrel Combat Outfit. Personally, I thought I looked quite dashing, but I was smart enough to not let anyone catch me wearing it.

Armor aside, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with how fast the almond had transferred upon me the label of bullied neighborhood weirdo. Or at how fast my wife had reached that conclusion.

“I haven’t had any issues with neighborhood kids.” Since this was technically true and there were no teenagers around to hear me, I opted to macho it up a little. “Besides, do you really think some kids would be able to push me around?”

“Says the guy who wears a helmet to deal with squirrels,” she retorted.

“It’s common knowledge that, in battle, most breeds of rodent go for the head. If you haven’t noticed, this is a war. An urban squirrel war. And in a war, there are casualties.” I paused here. Frowned. Chewed my lip. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going with this line of debate.

“I’m pretty sure that your squirrel enemies didn’t put an almond in an envelope and leave it on our doorstep.”

Despite the urging of my overactive imagination, I had to admit she raised a solid point. I turned my attention back to the almond’s red face. “Yuck. What do you think this is? Ink? Paint?”

She frowned the way she always did before she told me something I didn’t want to hear. “Honestly, it looks like blood.”

Now, I wasn’t a germaphobe. I wasn’t afraid of public bathrooms, airplane tray tables, or letting people sample my drink. But the idea of someone else’s blood on my skin was enough to make my stomach swirl, and in a heartbeat, I furiously scrubbed in the kitchen sink with a purifying mix of sanitizer and dish soap.

After seeing my reaction Beth seemed contrite and tried to walk back her analysis. “I’m sure it’s just dark ink or paint as you said.”

“Oh really? How do you know that?”

“Almonds don’t bleed.”

I laughed at that, albeit reluctantly so as to not let her humor ruin my moment of justified panic. Then I grabbed a plastic sandwich bag, used a butterknife to nudge the almond in, and sealed it tight.

“You’re keeping it?”

“Of course. If I die of some biological contaminant then this will be proof.”

She shook her head and left the room.

I sighed, took one last look at the plastic-wrapped almond, and tossed it on the counter.

Beth was still up packing when I went to bed. She was leaving for Hong Kong the next morning and always had a lot of nervous energy before long-distance business trips. It was well into the wee hours of the night before she came to bed.

That’s when I heard it.

Nails on wood. Not a scratching sound, per se, like something attempting to dig its way into the house. More of a scurrying, like small, clawed feet moving rapidly across our hardwood downstairs floors.

I nudged Beth. “You hear that?”

“Squirrels,” she said drowsily.

I shook my head. Squirrels were diurnal, although that’s not the evidence I presented. “The squirrels are always quiet at night. I negotiated that with them after the Battle of Five Steps.”

She pulled a pillow over her head. “Battle of Five...oh, you mean that time you fell off the ladder?”

Evidently, the epic retelling of that struggle needed some work. “It was clearly an act of sabotage.”

“Oh my god,” she said, her voice going up an octave but still muffled enough that I could pretend I wasn’t getting scolded. “I’m too tired for your war stories. Especially that one. It makes no sense. You clearly lost so why would the squirrels make any concessions?”

She made a solid, albeit kind of rude, point. “You should have more respect for a veteran.”

Finally, the pillow came away, which I knew was akin to an executioner pulling the guillotine blade into place. She spoke softly, however, kindly taking into account my wild imagination. “It’s the squirrels. Please go to sleep. I have to get up in like three hours.” With that she rolled over, taking most of the blankets with her.

She fell back asleep quickly, but I laid awake, waiting for any interruption of the silence. Eventually, it came. A slight thump this time, as if something low to the floor had toppled over. There was no ignoring it now. I slid off the bed, not bothering to wake Beth. The eventual story of my investigation could be much more dramatic with no witnesses anyway.

The top floor was carpeted so I made my way fairly silently into the hall. Above me was the hatch to the attic. It was too high to reach so I waited there for any further sounds that would implicate the squirrels. But either they were adhering to the peace accords of the Battle of Five Steps or they were just tired from chewing on my house all day.

Then, clearly from downstairs, came the scurrying sound again. It sounded exactly how a small animal would if it were covering a short amount of ground in a big hurry.

Now I was concerned. To make matters worse, all of my rodent fighting gear was in the garage—now behind enemy lines. At times like this that I had to remind myself to drop the drama. In all likelihood, it was a squirrel or a mouse, and it would run for the hills as soon as I went downstairs.

Our house was an older build and no matter how slow one walked on the steps they creaked. If there had been an animal downstairs, it definitely heard me coming.

But I found nothing untoward. From room to room I went, flipping on all the lights, peeking under all the furniture. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The only thing different from when I went to bed was Beth’s packed suitcases, ready to roll by the front door. With my imagination overpowered by lack of evidence, I went back to bed.

***

Just before dawn, Beth left for the airport and I barely remembered her saying goodbye. With the whole bed to myself, I slept in later than normal, but it was fitful and riddled with dreams of unseen things watching me and scratching sounds that echoed from the walls.

The echoes segued into reality as I awoke to the busy morning commotion of my squirrel invaders above me. The sounds of them scampering around the roof would carry on all day. It was way past due for me to patch the holes again, as temporary a fix as it may be.

I yawned my way downstairs and into the kitchen. While I prepped the coffee pot, I noticed something odd. The bagged almond had been placed in a ceramic bowl atop a scrap of paper. I plucked it out. On it, in blocky letters, was “99”. Had Beth left me some kind of puzzle to solve?

I hated puzzles.

My brain was still too foggy to catch fire, so I returned to my coffee. When I peeled the lid off of the can, there, on top of the dark grounds, was another almond. My breath caught in my throat. Then, it dawned on me.

This was all Beth’s doing. Some kind of nut-based scavenger hunt to keep me busy while she traveled. Cute in a way but I was mostly impressed she’d kept a straight face the whole time. She wasn’t much of a prankster, or so I’d thought. At least she hadn’t drawn that creepy little face on this one.

With a chuckle, I set the pot to brew and headed upstairs to get dressed. My mood was decidedly better now that this mystery was put to rest and I rolled the new almond around in my fist like a lucky die. One down. Ninety-eight to go. I wondered what kind of prize Beth had in mind if I found them all.

Back downstairs I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee, taking a sip with an exaggerated sigh. I dropped the almond into the bowl with its brethren.

That’s when I noticed the note again.

The number was different. It had said “99” not ten minutes ago. I was sure of it.

Now it said “98”.

I stared dumbly at the two almonds—the new one sitting aside the skull-painted original.

Despite the fact that I was alone in the house, someone had just done the math.