He was silent for a moment, then sighed. “I haven’t found it, though. And I’m maybe obsessing a little, and…I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. I had to drop PJ’s set of keys in the mail this morning—I should have done it days ago, but I was trying too hard to find the door—so I thought, well, maybe if I came to you, you all could make some sense of it.”
“Perhapth we can,” Daffy said, with a bit of difficulty. His mind was battling with itself. Max…he knew the kid’s name was Max Goof, knew he was related to Goofy, but did he actually remember—had he made the connection? Or had he just assumed, like everyone else, that…had he even thought about it? No, he had, he’d called Max Goofy’s son when he arrived… “We’ll do thome digging and thee what we can come up with.”
Max raised his head, and there was something almost like hope, mingled with desperation, in his eyes. “You believe me, then?”
“I…yeth,” Daffy said, then repeated more strongly, “Yeth, I think I do. One latht thing…the bird you mentioned. You thaid you didn’t know hith name?”
“I’m sorry, I—I think he mentioned it, but…” Max flapped a hand helplessly, indicating his confusion.
Daffy hesitated briefly. “It wathn’t…Woody, wath it?”
“Woody! Yes! That’s it!” Max slapped a hand on his thigh. “Do you know him?”
“Maybe.” Not yet, but Daffy would get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing he did. “We’ll make thome inquirieth and get back to you. Thank you for your time, Maxth.” He hesitated, then added, “And…I’m not exthactly clothe to—to your dad, but Donald and I were friendth, onthe. I’ll thee what I can do to help jog hith memory.”
“Thank you,” Max said softly. He rubbed his eyes and got to his feet. “I guess I’ll just…leave you to it, then.” He turned, opened the door, and left.
Daffy sat still for a moment, then raised his voice. “Ralph!”
A moment later, the door in front of him opened, and Ralph Wolf poked his head in. “You called, boss?”
“I jutht had a thtatement from thomeone who claimth they met your ‘Woody’,” Daffy told him.
Ralph came fully into the office, looking interested. “Woody? The distorted Woody?”
“The very thame.” Daffy’s hand strayed towards the recorder. “I don’t think we re-recorded your thtatement on him, did we?”
Ralph’s brow furrowed in obvious puzzlement. “Did we need to?”
“It wath one of the tapeth that went miththing when Prentithth attacked.”
“Oh. Huh. Well, we can record it again if you want, I guess, but I haven’t seen him since then.” Ralph scratched his head as he spoke.
“And you can’t think of anything elthe?” Daffy prodded. “Nothing you might have miththed latht time?”
“Don’t think so, no.”
Daffy frowned at him. “What are you working on?”
“Just straightening up the Busted Section,” Ralph said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s a mess. You haven’t been as thorough with it since you came back, you know.”
“Oh. Uh. Right.” Daffy tried not to be embarrassed. “Sorry. Uh…let me know when you’re finished with it. I want you to take point on thith one.”
“Yep. Will do.” Ralph whistled cheerfully as he stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Do you even know they’re lying to you?” a new voice said, sounding amused.
Daffy leaped to his feet. Standing next to the door, where he’d obviously been hidden by it when it was open, was…was a bird. Daffy couldn’t quite peg the species, and the colors weren’t…right. He tried to cover up his confusion. “I’m thorry, I didn’t—can I help you? Thith plathe ith off limitth.”
“I don’t agree with you,” the bird said, as casually as though this were an ordinary conversation.
“That’th not your call,” Daffy snapped. “Who let you in here?”
“Let?” The bird laughed. It was an eerily familiar laugh, a five-note arpeggio repeated once and followed by a staccato trill, but at the same time it felt wrong, warped and twisted and in a minor key when it ought to have been a major key. It tickled something in Daffy’s brain, even as it made it want to leak out his ears. “Sorry, but that isn’t how this works.”
Daffy stared at the bird, which should have been red and blue. “You’re…him.”
“Yes.”
“Woody.”
Woody Woodpecker, or something that looked incredibly like him, inclined his head towards Daffy, an almost malevolent grin curling at his beak, which—as both Max and Ralph had said—was made of old, yellowed bone. “That’s sure a real name.”
Daffy swallowed against a sudden fear. His hand strayed towards the recorder again. “Are you here to…” He gulped. “Kill me?”
Woody’s smile grew impossibly wider and definitely sharper. “No.”
That was less comforting than he would have expected. “Then why are you here?”
Woody shrugged. It was an eloquent and fluid shrug and seemed to have little to do with the way Woody’s arms were connected to his shoulders. “I’m simply collecting what is mine, Archivist. The one who enters my domain.”
“Maxth…” Daffy said, mesmerized. “You…you own thothe hallwayth?”
“What a fascinating question.” Woody seemed to consider that. “Does your wing in any way own your beak? In any case, it doesn’t matter. The wanderer has had a brief respite, but it’s over now.”
The word respite was not one Daffy thought he’d ever heard Woody Woodpecker say, but then, it had been ages since he’d seen him—save a short attempt at a comeback in the late nineties, early aughts, he hadn’t worked since the seventies. He rallied himself and spoke with a triumph he didn’t fully feel. “You’re too late, buthter. He’th—he’th gone.”
Woody laughed again, that weird, distorted version of his signature laugh. “Yeah. Gone. Did you notice what door he went through?”
“Of courthe I did,” Daffy said indignantly. “He went right through that…door…there…” He trailed off as his eyes fell on the wall where the door Max had left through was—had been. “Wait…”
“There’s never been a door there, Archivist,” Woody said gleefully. “Your mind plays tricks on you.”
“Let him go,” Daffy demanded. Fear was beginning to choke at him again.
“No,” Woody said simply.
Anger momentarily overtook the fear. Max Goof was a good kid, a brave kid, and he didn’t deserve to be tortured by something like this, and Daffy wasn’t going to stand for it. “Get him back here.”
Woody laughed a third time. It was grating on his nerves. “Are you going to attack me?”
“Oh, you’d better believe—“ Daffy began, winding up his arm to punch this obnoxious bird right in his smug beak. Before he could even start to swing, though, quicker than a thought, Woody darted in and stabbed his beak into Daffy’s other hand as it rested on the table, hard enough that the tip thunked into the wood of the desk before he drew it back. Daffy yelled out in pain and lost his momentum as he reeled back, clutching his injured and bleeding hand to his chest.
He hadn’t known he could actually bleed.
“Jutht who in the Tham Hill are you, anyway?” he demanded.
“Oh, I’m not a who, Archivist. I’m a what.” Woody bared his teeth. Only a Toon bird had teeth like that beneath a beak, but Daffy had never seen teeth so sharp in a bird. “A who calls for a degree of identity I can’t ever maintain.”
“So you’re not…really Woody?” Daffy managed.
Woody—it was easier to keep thinking of him that way—shrugged again. “Is anybody really anyone?”
“What are you talking about, you daft Toon?” Daffy snapped.
Woody’s eyes definitely used to be green, but Daffy couldn’t tell what color they were supposed to be now. “I’m talking about myself. I’m not used to it, so sorry if I’m not very good at it.”