The boy found the book in the attic.
It was an old Boys Annual that had seen better days, but was still readable. The scribbled note inside showed that it had belonged to his grandfather. He can hardly remember him, although he had the feeling that the man was a bit odd. He knows that he had never really warmed to him. He thought the book looked interesting, so he took it back to his room. That night he began reading it. He was a few pages in when he noticed that a word had been underlined in red. The word was ‘bother’. It made no sense at the time and he carried on reading. It was when he discovered the word ‘this’, that he began to wonder whether this was some sort of secret code. Was the old man trying to tell him something?
Although it was getting late and he had already begun to feel tired, finding this second word and the possibility that there was a secret message hidden in the pages woke him right up. A further search came up with the word ‘nonsense’, near the end of the book. Now, he knew for sure that it was a message. He turned back to the beginning of the book and started a more careful search, going from page to page.
It was here that he found two more words that he hadn’t noticed before, on pages that were more grubby than most. They were certainly underlined like the others. These were the words, ‘do’ and ‘not’. He felt sure he was getting somewhere. He went on and found the word ‘as’. Then further on he found the two words, ‘is’ and ‘just’. Just to make sure, he took his time working his way carefully through the whole book. After assuring himself that he had them all, he got pen and paper and wrote the eight words down using the sequence they had appeared in the book. When he was done, the sentence read, ‘do not bother as this is just nonsense’.
He had never liked his grandfather.