Back at the seminary, the Brooks kids bounded out of the van and excitedly ran toward the entrance of Thompson Hall as their parents took their time getting out.  Graham had grabbed the package that his father had received at the music store and was now running furiously ahead of his siblings with the package tucked under his arm like a football, determined to reach the door first.

Definitely not a bomb, his father thought as he watched his younger son sprint across the grass with the package.

"C'mon, y'all!" Graham yelled back to his siblings and parents.  "Y'all are so slow!"

"You gotta wait for us anyway, Graham," Bev called back.  "We have the keys!"

After what seemed an eternity (to Graham, at least), his parents and the other kids finally reached the door.  "Come on," Graham said insistently, jumping up and down.  "I wanna see if there's a message!"

"We all do, Graham," his father said.  "Keep your britches on."

"What're 'britches'?" Emily asked, laughing.

"Your pants," her mother replied.

"Why would he want to take his pants off?" Emily asked.  Jeff howled with laughter.

"Here we are, guys," Michael said, putting the key into the lock and turning it.  A breeze of welcome air-conditioning greeted them as he opened the door.

"Come on!" Graham yelled again as he took off up the stairs.  His brothers and sisters ran up after him, just as excited as he was.  Michael and Bev understandably took their time going up the two flights to the third floor, but they too were excited about what secrets the album and the package might be hiding.

As Michael and Bev reached their floor they saw that their kids had already gone into their parents' room.  Sunlight filtered in through the levolor blinds over the windows.  Graham stood at the dresser, the package resting before him on top of it.

"Dad!  Can I open it?  Please?" he begged excitedly.

"One thing at a time, Graham.  Let us get in here," his mother answered.

Michael and Bev entered the room and shut the door behind them.  All their kids stood looking at them with a look of excitement on their faces.  To them this was all one cool adventure.

"Virgin vinyl," Michael said, holding the unopened album out for them to see.  "Untouched by any stylus' blade."  He flipped it around so that its cover faced him.  "Let's first see what we can find out about this album," Michael said, tipping the album slightly to one side in his hands.  The ambient light in the room caused a glare to reflect off the shrink-wrap.  He could see nothing that hinted at any secret message.

"Well, honey," he said, "you tried this yesterday with my old copy of Masque.  Where's your black-light penlight?"

"Here," she said, pulling it out of her purse.  Michael resisted the temptation to steal a glimpse inside.

"Thanks," Michael said, taking the light from her and turning it on.  Bev and the kids gathered around to watch as Michael swept the faint beam across the front of the album and then the back.  He saw nothing.  He then flipped the album back over and ran the beam across the front cover again, more slowly this time.

"I'm not sure," he said.  "I don't know if I'm seeing something or if it's just a smudge."  Michael looked around the room.  "There's still too much light.  We need a room with no windows."

"Oh!  I know!" his son Michael exclaimed.  "There's a supply closet next to the stairs out in the hallway.  We found it when we were exploring the last time we were here.  There aren't any windows."

"Is it big enough for all of us?" Bev asked.

"Yeah, it's a big room with a door that leads to the fire escape," her son answered.

"To the supply closet, then," Michael said in his best superhero voice.  "Away!"

The seven of them stepped out into the hallway toward the supply closet.  Young Michael opened the door to the closet and they all squeezed inside.

"I thought you said this was a big room, Michael," Bev said to her son and she tried to turn around in the tight space.

"Well," he said, "it was big when no one else was in here."

"Everyone exhale and we'll all fit," her husband said half seriously.  "Just don't breath in again."

"Right," Jeff said, chuckling.

Their faces crowded around the album cover in the near darkness.  Michael took out his wife's penlight and shone it again on the shrink-wrapped cover.  At first, as before, he could see nothing.  Then...

"There!" Katherine yelled.  "On the left side!  A letter 'I'!"

Cries of "Ooh!" and "Cool!" rose from the children's throats as they struggled for a better look.  Sure enough, a purple, handwritten letter "I" glowed eerily on the left side of the cover, halfway down.

"And there's more!" their father said as he moved the light's beam to the right.  He was feeling just as excited as his children were.  "The letters 'F,' then 'L,' and 'E-E.'  'I flee.'"

"And there's an 'A!'" Bev said, her own voice rising with amazement.  "There really is a secret message here!"

The letters they had found so far stretched across the left side of the album cover.  Michael wasn't sure, but it seemed to him that the printing looked very similar to that of the first message from the other night.  He moved the beam further right, across the image of Arcimboldo's painting itself, and found another ghostly letter.

"'D,'" he said out loud, continuing to move the the penlight across the image of the fish-man, "then 'I-N,' and 'G-B.'"

"And then 'A' and 'T,'" his wife finished as the beam reached the right edge of the album cover.

"Put it all together," her husband said, moving the beam back to the beginning of the string of letters and pulling the penlight back to illuminate all of them at once, "and we get, 'I FLEE A... DINGBAT.'"

Michael cocked his right eyebrow.  "'I flee a dingbat'?" he repeated incredulously.  They all stared at the glowing message.

"What kind of a stupid message is that?" Jeff said out loud.

Suddenly all the kids burst out laughing at the silly sounding sentence as the close quarters of the closet made their guffaws especially ear-splitting to their parents.

"'I flee a dingbat!  I flee a dingbat'" the girls and Graham cried out, caught up in the hilarity of it all.

"Okay, okay!" their father shouted, trying to overcome the sheer volume of his kids' voices in the small space.  "Let's go back to the room and think about this."

After a moment's fumbling Jeff opened the door and the family spilled out into the brightly lit hallway.  The kids ran back into their parents' room as Bev and Michael followed them.

"Well, that was enlightening," Michael said facetiously to his wife as he pulled the door closed behind them and put the album down on the dresser top next to the package.  "That makes about as much sense as 'Pop is a climbed rogue.'"

"What do you think it means?" Bev asked him as the girls and Graham climbed onto the antique beds and began jumping on them.  "Hey!" she yelled to her younger children.  "Stop jumping on the beds!  You might break them!"

"Aww," the three complained as they slid off the beds and sat down on the floor.  At least their sons Michael and Jeff were beyond this stage.

"Well," her husband said, returning to her question, "it's probably another anagram, as before.  But I don't have a computer here to help me figure it out."

"What about the computers in the seminary library?" she asked.

"The library closed at noon," Michael replied.  "It won't reopen 'til Monday."

"Well," she said as she walked toward the bathroom, "it looks like you'll have to figure this one out on your own."

On the other side of the room, their kids were obviously already trying to figure it out, although how seriously they were doing so remained open to debate.

"'Dingbat'!" Jeff said, laughing.  "That's what that white-haired old guy on that All in the Family show on TV Land calls his wife!"

"Maybe it's an appositive," their son Michael said.  "'I flee as a dingbat!'"

"Or a genitive of separation," Graham countered.  "'I flee from a dingbat.'"

"'I flee a dingbat!  I flee a dingbat!'" the girls sang out with laughter.  "That can be our family motto!" Katherine said.

"What's a 'motto'?" Emily asked.

"I don't know," Jeff answered in his best Vaudeville voice.  "What's the 'motto' with you?"

Emily stared at her brother as her father looked on.  She obviously didn't get the joke.  Michael turned back to the album cover.  In the normal light of the room there was nothing that even suggested that there was anything written across the shrink-wrap.  But he knew there was.

He looked back at his youngest daughter.  She wore a kind of half-smile on her face, still trying to figure out Jeff's joke.  Michael could identify with her confusion.  More than once over the last day-and-a-half he had felt that someone was playing a joke on him.  A joke he didn't get.  Someone who somehow knew quite a bit about him, about his love for the music of Kansas and Kerry Livgren... possibly even about his wife and family.

That thought filled him with a cold dread.  Up until now the whole affair with the mysterious coded message from the other night had been a fun adventure, one that he and his family had embraced with enthusiasm.  But now the mysterious package before him and the unopened copy of Masque bearing its own nonsensical message, all "reserved" for him by some unknown party who somehow knew that he would end up at that particular record store, bore down upon him.  Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that he would find the first message and that it would lead him to the second.  How much more about him and his family might this someone know?  And for what purpose?

Michael stared again at the album.  He imagined its invisible message glowing against the dark background of the cover art.  I FLEE A DINGBAT.  Computer or no, he had to decipher its meaning.  His attempts at the earlier message had only served to show him how easily and completely he could miss the mark.  Not this time, he thought to himself, closing his eyes.  His family might somehow be in danger.  Come on, Michael.  He bowed his head in concentration.  Think...  Think...

Slowly the sounds of his children's laughter faded from his consciousness.  He could see only blackness behind his closed eyelids as images began to flash before his mind's eye.  The message on the stage.  The John Brown dummy.  Water.  The man at the record store.  The brown-paper package tied up with string.  The glowing message on the album cover.  It seemed that he could feel his pulse beating in his ears, somewhat suggesting the cadence and tempo of the closing moments of the Kansas song "Incomudro."  He felt a pressure building inside his skull as he sought to force the message to make sense.

I FLEE A DINGBAT.  There was something familiar about the message.  He was sure of it.  He had seen the letters before.  Not in that order, but he had seen them.  He knew them.  Somehow.  Somewhere.  He had seen them before.

The throbbing in his head seemed to grow louder.  It seemed that his entire world had shrunk to the space between his ears.  I FLEE A DINGBAT.  Now he was actually hearing the pounding, final crescendo of "Incomudro" in his mind, as if his brain had pulled the song out of his memory and had set it to auto-play.

I FLEE A DINGBAT.  He let the letters flow around themselves and fall where they may in his mind, caught up in the maelstrom of sound that seemed to be taking over his brain.  The music in his head kept playing, building relentlessly toward its conclusion.  He couldn't have stopped it if he'd tried.  Note by note, beat by beat, it increased in volume and tempo inside his skull until he no longer knew if he was only imagining it or really hearing it with his ears.  I FLEE A DINGBAT.  Louder and faster, faster and louder, the music in his head drove irresistibly, unstoppably, indefatigably toward its pounding climax until finally...
 

Michael's eyes snapped open.  A distant thunder seemed to echo in his ears.  He stared down at the record album in his hands.  The word KANSAS on the cover stared back at him in bold yellow letters as the thunder in his head faded gently into silence.
 

And he knew.
 

Michael turned to face his family.  It seemed as if he were in the midst of a waking dream.  How much time had passed?  He watched as Jeff picked up Emily and started carrying her around the room on his shoulders as she shrieked and laughed.  Graham and Michael had pulled out their cell phones and were playing a game of secret agent on opposite sides of the room.  From the bathroom he could hear the voices of his wife and oldest daughter as they discussed the best way to style Katherine's hair.  They had been completely unaware of the battle that had raged in his mind, utterly oblivious to his moment of aperçu.

"I know what it means," Michael said quietly to no one in particular.

"What's that, honey?" Bev asked absently as she walked out of the bathroom and started to rummage through her purse for a headband for Katherine.

"I know what it means," he said again, clearing his throat.

"You figured out 'I flee a dingbat'?" Jeff asked as he put Emily down on the bed.  "That was fast."

"Yes," he said quietly.  His kids and his wife all stood looking at him.  The quiet calm of his voice did more to get his family's attention than any shouting ever could have.

"Did the letters start glowing and rearranging themselves before your eyes like they did for Tom Hanks?" Graham asked.

"Hmm?" Michael replied, still feeling somewhat dazed.  "Oh, uh, no," he finally said, "it was more of a... Jimmy Neutron... 'brain-blast'.. kind of... thing."

Michael stood motionless for a few more moments.  He felt that he was only just now coming fully awake again.

"Well?" Bev finally asked.  "Don't keep us in suspense.  What does it mean?"

"Yeah, what?" the kids added, gathering around him.

"Well," Michael started, not fully sure how to explain, "to begin with, it means that the 'P.S.' in 'P.S.: Find Kerry Livgren' from the other night... isn't a postscript."

"It's not?" Jeff asked.  "The 'P.S.' isn't just a plain old 'P.S.'?"

"No," his father replied, "it's not an afterthought -- 'Oh, by the way, find Kerry Livgren' -- tacked onto the end of the message.  The letters 'P.S.' are initials."

"Initials?" Bev asked.  "Whose initials?"

"Not the initials of any one person," he replied, suddenly feeling that he had gotten his family into something far stranger than he had imagined.  "The letters 'P.S.' stand for the name..."

Michael stopped.  The faces of his family were all staring expectantly back at him.  How on earth do I explain this?

"They stand for the name," he finally continued, "of a secret society."

"A secret society?" younger Michael asked, his face twisting into an expression of confusion.

"What's a secret society?" Emily asked.

"A group of people who secretly get together for a purpose or a reason that only they know," Bev answered her, "like that 'Finders' group that wouldn't sell the theater next to our church for such a long time."

"So the 'P.S.' stands for a secret society," Graham said.  "What secret society?"

"Not just any secret society," his father answered, "but a secret society... that is the secretiest secret society in all of secretdom."

"Wha...?" Katherine started to say.

"A secret society so secretly secret," her father continued, "that they guard... a secret."

"A secret?" Emily asked, trying to keep from laughing.

"A secrety secret!" Michael answered.  "A secrety secret so secretly secreted in secrecy that no one outside this one secret society knows the secret," he half-whispered, leaning in towards them, "not even... Squidward's house!"

He's lost it, Bev thought to herself.

"If you only knew," Michael continued, "the secrety secret that this secret society secretly secrets... it would change your life forever."

His kids stared back at him, not sure if their father was pulling their collective legs, if he'd gone off the deep end or if he was telling them the honest truth.  Bev tried to remember the name of that psychiatrist who attended their church.

"This secret society," her husband continued, "guards the secretiest secret of all secrets... a secret that is nothing less... than the Holy Grail itself."

"The Priory of Sion," Jeff said suddenly.

"What?" his father said, his train of thought momentarily derailed.

"'P.S.,' the Priory of Sion," Jeff repeated.  "We talked about it in school.  In Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code the Priory of Sion is a thousand-year-old secret society that guards the secret of the Holy Grail, which everyone else thinks is the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper but which is really Mary Magdalene and the bloodline of Jesus, which survives to this day through the Merovingian royal line."  His father stared at him.  "Well, in the novel, at least, that's what it is," Jeff finally added.

Michael took a deep breath.  "Dan Brown's novel aside," he said to his son, "the Priory of Sion didn't even exist until 1956, when a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard, who was known to French authorities as both a con artist and a charlatan, made up the 'society' out of whole cloth and backfilled its alleged roster of grand masters with every famous personage of history he could think of, ending with himself as the current grand master, all in an attempt to make himself out to be someone important.  He finally admitted under oath in 1993," Michael continued, "that he'd made it all up, that it was all a hoax, and he died alone in obscurity in Paris in the year 2000."

Bev looked at him.  "How do you know all this?" she asked.

"I watch The History Channel," he replied, turning and walking over toward the study desk under the window.

"So," his son Michael said, trying to make sense of it all, "the 'P.S.' in 'P.S.: Find Kerry Livgren' stands for the name of a secret society that secretly guards the secret of the Holy Grail but isn't the fictional Priory of Sion."

"Right," his father answered as he sat down at the desk.

"You got all that from 'I flee a dingbat'?" Graham asked, mystified.

"'I flee a dingbat,'" his father said, picking up a pen and writing the words on a piece of paper, "is an anagram for a single word.  A word that is both the secret motto and the secret greeting of the secret society I've been telling you about.  The members of this secret society secretly confirm their identities to one another in secret meetings by the use of this one secret word.  This is how I know I'm right about the meaning of 'P.S.'"

"But I don't understand," Bev said.  It was all so very confusing.  "If 'P.S.' stands for the name of a secret society that guards the secret of the Holy Grail but isn't the Priory of Sion, then what is it?  What society of people does 'P.S.' stand for?"

"It stands," Michael replied, writing again on the piece of paper, "for the name of the secret society of people whose secret motto, whose secret greeting, is this."

Michael held up the piece of paper for his family to see.  At the top of the page he had written the phrase "I flee a dingbat."  From each letter in the phrase he had lightly traced lines that led to the corresponding letters of a single word written beneath it in the middle of the page:

"'P.S.,' he said quietly, "stands for the People of the Southwind."