His shattered hands grazed the small wooden boxes in front of him. A red haze tinged his old fox eyes. This had gone too far.
At first he’d thought it was his apprentice, Bob, kidding about. Each morning he would sit down at the old printing press to find a few of each of the letters replaced with an X. He’d chuckled and feigned ignorance, certain that the errant letters would return and, in the meantime, he continued setting type.
But the Xs kept appearing, threatening his work. A heated argument followed. Bob stormed out in the fury of denial leaving his coat behind him. But, the stash of missing letters was not in Bob’s desk. Then, panicked eyes discovered that an entire section of the alphabet, I through M, had gone.
His frontal lobe screamed. All those years of love and care poured into maintaining these precious blocks. Nights spent scrubbing each individual plane clean of ink and signs of oxidation. The hundreds of books and pamphlets he’d printed by hand, spreading knowledge and laughter; all of it now reduced to a terrifying string of incoherence.
Should he call the police? No, their inevitable smirks and false pity would only waste time. He needed proof of this trickster’s existence.
An afternoon’s foraging at the second hand electronics store yielded a working analog surveillance camera that he installed in the printing room. That night, armed with a torch and his ironwood cane, he hid on the platform above the press and waited, but around midnight he dozed off.
Dawn woke him with shades of shame and old-age. Another group of letters had been violated. Rushing to the front desk he pulled up the footage on the small television screen. Fast forwarding to midnight he let the tape run and there, at three thirteen, he saw a shadow, and then a figure, and then nothing! The tape stopped.
Mute in his frustration, he rewound the tape and watched it in slow motion. There it was again. Shadow, figure, nothing.
Whoever it was had tampered with the tape.
It was then that he noticed the mirror in the corner of the frame. Joy blotted out the fear. One small adjustment was all he needed to unmask his tormentor.
The next morning, he ambled past the press on his way to the front desk. Only five letters remained now, but a smile negated any hint of alarm. With victorious ease, he relaxed into the chair and started the tape, focusing on the mirror. Once more, at three thirteen, he saw the figure appear, and then a face swam into the mirror’s grainy surface.
Victory fled. He replayed the sequence twice, but the testimony remained the same. He stumbled back to the press in shock. His traitorous eyes looked towards the corner. His guilt stared back at him.
Bob found him the next morning. A fatal brain embolism, the coroner said. The five remaining letters found in his balled fist spelled out TH END.
Being familiar with those old presses, this really hit home. Touching. Moving. Thanks.