The Case of the Mysterious Missing Book

For everyone out there who spent their childhood with their nose buried in a book, there is that one story, that one that sticks with them for years - hopefully in a good way and not in an emotionally scarring Clan of the Cave Bear way. For me, that book was The House on Hackman's Hill, by Joan Lowery Nixon.

I read this book in second grade. Nearly twenty years later, I can still remember being curled up on the couch, eyes wide and heart pounding as something slowly crept up the stairs towards where the main characters were hiding in the old abandoned house on their quest to find a missing mummy. Its portrayal of Anubis is actually what started my life-long love of mythology.

I can't tell you how well written the book was, or whether it would make all the creative writing students and teachers out there cringe (the fact that it was middle grade genre fiction would probably have a good chunk of them banging their heads right there - they miss so many good reads that way). All I can say is that I loved that book.

In fact, I loved it enough that I lent it out to a friend... and never saw that copy of it again. About five years ago, I ran into a newly reprinted version in the book store by chance and had to pick it up. Unfortunately, I didn't have a surplus of free time right then, and thanks to university burn-out, I didn't really want to read anything, mentally taxing or not, so I put it in a safe place, vowing to read it again someday and try to figure out just what it was that snagged me as an eight year old.

Safe places are the last place you want to put anything you ever actually want to see again.

The last time I remember seeing the book was a few months ago. It was still right where I had left it, still waiting. And I could have sworn I left it there. And yet, when I went to go find it earlier today... Gone. Again. No sign of it anywhere.

Since then, I have scoured my room and the spare room, everywhere I have stashed any books in the last two years or so. No sign of it anywhere. It has, once again, gone missing, this time a victim of the mystical Bermuda Triangle-like vortex that is my room.

No doubt it will someday reemerge, spat back out into our dimension where I can snatch it up and finally reread it again. Until then, I found a few more books hiding in the nooks and crannies that I never got around to reading, so the scouring wasn't a total waste of time!