Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  The building’s old gray walls were studded with pillars and granite statues. Its gray tower rose high and cockeyed into the air. Beneath a huge statue of William Penn atop the tower was a figure staring down at me, a stern, cast-iron Pilgrim with a great black hat.

  Even as we hurried past the place, I could feel the Pilgrim’s stare, as if it was a shadow in my heart. I had passed City Hall many times and never felt so creeped out by it before. Was I a little jumpy? Sure I was. But wouldn’t you be?

  The address on the letter from my father was a few blocks from City Hall, just off a street filled with fancy stores and bright window displays.

  “Look at those shoes,” said Natalie. “They’re like stilts.”

  “You’d break your neck.”

  “But I’d look good doing it.”

  “Come on,” I said, giving Natalie a good yank.

  When we finally reached the building, we stopped and stared from across the street. I looked left and right, took the letter out of my backpack, and checked it again. No, this was the right address. I spun around in frustration.

  “Looks empty to me,” said Natalie.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  Before us was a fancy stone building, seven floors high. It had surely been something in its day, but its day was long ago. The stone was filthy, the front door had wooden planks nailed across it, and the lower windows were boarded up. Handbills advertising a rock band were pasted on the plywood. A chain-link fence surrounded the building like a cage.

  The date of the letter was the year of my parents’ divorce. In the time since, my father had moved his office, but to where?

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess my information was way old.”

  “Can we go shopping now?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “They have the trashiest shops on South Street,” said Natalie, “with bins of bangled earrings. We have to get ourselves some…Wait. Look up there.”

  “Where?”

  “That window. On the fourth floor.”

  “What about it?” The upper windows at the front of the building were dark, all except those on the fourth floor, which glowed dimly.

  “I saw someone up there. Long pale face, beady eyes. He was looking down at us.”

  “It had to be a reflection or something.”

  “He was there, I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe he’s the maintenance guy.”

  “Exactly. If this is the last address you have for your father, he might be able to tell us where he is now.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think so much, Lizzie.”

  “The front door is boarded up.”

  “Then we’ll go in the back. Come on, let’s see who’s up there.”

  As Natalie hustled across the street, I looked up at the building, seeing no life at all in the grimy fourth-floor windows despite the glow. But even if Natalie had just imagined the figure, I couldn’t let her explore an abandoned building on her own. I waited for a car to pass by before I followed.

  We made our way along the fence and around to the back of the building. That was where we saw the large rip in the weave of the metal. Beyond the gap was a doorway. Wooden slats were nailed over the upper part of the frame, but they left a rusted doorknob showing.

  “I guess we found the way in,” said Natalie.

  “This is not a good idea.”

  “Oh, come on, Lizzie,” said Natalie. The chain links rattled like chains as she slipped into the gap. “What are you afraid of?”

  “My father?” I said. I hadn’t meant to say that, didn’t even know I was thinking it, but out it slipped.

  On the other side of the fence, Natalie stood up and looked at me through the links. “Really?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well, don’t worry,” said Natalie, pulling at the fence so the gap widened. “This building is so abandoned, even the ghosts have left. Come on.”

  I nodded a bit, as if that was a relief, and then ducked into the gap.

  Something grabbed at me, like hands pulling me back. I let out a little shriek as I turned, expecting to see a fiend with sharp claws behind me. No fiend, just a jagged piece of wire that had speared my coat. I took a deep breath to calm myself before I freed the fabric and slipped all the way through the fence. Side by side we walked to the door.

  Natalie gave me a little smile before she reached for the rusted knob. The thing turned in her hand. The door cracked open. Darkness leaked out of the opening.

  Natalie stooped down so that she was below the lowest board. “Hello?” she called out.

  No answer.

  “Anyone?”

  No one.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “After we look around.”

  “Nothing’s in there but rats.”

  “Then what’s to be afraid of?” said Natalie.

  “The rats!”

  “Come on.” Natalie ducked into the doorway and was swallowed by the darkness. After a nervous glance at the gap in the fence, I followed. The door shut with a bang behind us.

  It was utterly black inside. The air was damp and smelled of wet fur. The only sounds were our own breaths and a tap-tapping, tap-tap-tapping falling down from high above us, like a coded warning from a distant world.

  Natalie held up her phone with one hand and held my hand with the other. From the light of the cell phone I could make out the cinder block walls and shuttered windows of the stairwell. A pigeon fluttered and cooed above us. Together we started to climb.

  “What’s that glow up there?” I said.

  “It’s from that fourth floor, I’ll bet,” said Natalie.

  “We should turn around.”

  “Shush,” said Natalie with such authority that I immediately shushed.

  When we reached the fourth-floor landing, we saw the stairwell door had been propped open with a wedge of wood. We peered through the gap.

  The long hallway beyond the door was surprisingly well lit, with green walls and splintered wooden flooring. Natalie pushed the door open and stepped boldly into the hallway. I hesitantly followed. The tapping grew louder and more distinct.

  “Is it typing?” I said. “On a typewriter?”

  “Can’t be,” said Natalie. “Nobody does that anymore.”

  “Maybe it’s a ghost typing.”

  “Cool.”

  The doors on either side of the long hallway were shut. But the door at the far end, its top half made of frosted glass, glowed with light. The tap-tapping was coming from behind that door.

  Slowly we tiptoed forward. We were halfway to the far door when it smashed wide open.

  Natalie and I froze. A giant in a hat and suit strode out, ducking beneath the doorframe before the door hissed to a close behind him. His suit and hat were brown as mud. His thick tie reached only halfway down his chest. He talked to himself as he walked toward us.

  “Nothin’ to be done,” said the man in a deep voice. His ears were like huge slabs of roast beef. His teeth were as big as giraffe teeth.

  We slid out of his way, pressing up against one of the walls as he kept coming and kept muttering.

  “Twice bitten and so all is lost, she says. Velma was right, I waited too long. Velma’s always right. Nothin’ to be done.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Natalie as he passed us by, but the man was so lost in his own conversation that he didn’t seem to notice us.

  “It’s de law she says, and de law is de law. Twice bitten and so all is lost. Nothin’ to be done.”

  We watched as he yabbered and jabbered to himself, until he stooped down once more and vanished into the stairwell.

  We looked at each other, then turned together toward the door at the end of the hallway. We were now close enough to read what was printed in gold on the frosted glass:

  WEBSTER & SON

  ATTORNEYS FOR THE DAMNED

  “That must have been my father’s office,” I
said. “But who’s using it now?”

  “Let’s find out,” said Natalie.

  Natalie knocked lightly with no response. Before I could stop her, she grabbed the knob, gave it a turn, and yanked the door open. Quick as that, we were inside.

  “What can I do for you, dearies?” said a pucker-faced woman perched behind a desk. Even as she spoke, she kept typing away with two fingers on an old-style manual typewriter, large and black, with round keys and thin metal bars that jabbed the ink onto the paper. In front of the typewriter was a sign that read: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING OR COMBUSTING IN THE OFFICE.

  “We’re looking for Eli Webster,” I said softly. “I have this old address for him…and we hoped you might know where he moved to.”

  The woman looked at me through narrow glasses with jewels in the corners of the frames, and then quickly down at a large calendar open on her desk, before jerking her head back up to look at me. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s nothing to be done,” said the woman. Her voice was fast and shrill, like the call of a crow. “Nothing to be done if you don’t have an appointment.”

  “An appointment to see who?”

  “Whom is the word, whom. And if you don’t know even that, how can I help you at all? Time to go, dearies, time to go. We all have work to do.”

  As the woman turned back to the typewriter, I gazed about my father’s old office.

  Alongside the woman’s desk were two rows of chairs in which four people sat lost in thought. It was as common a scene as the waiting room at the dentist’s office, until I looked more closely at the four.

  An older woman with skin a shade of green sat next to a boy holding his hands over his ears and humming to himself. Across from the boy sat a beautiful blond woman in a long-sleeved black dress who had the most luxuriant eyelashes I had ever seen. Beside her sat a man with a hump on his back that was moving beneath his shirt.

  I was staring at the scene, my mouth open, when Natalie dug an elbow into my side. “He’s the one I saw from outside,” she whispered, pointing to a tall, thin man working at a high desk in the corner of the room.

  The man’s skin was as white as copy paper. He was writing with a feathered pen. He wore a long black coat with a fussy high collar, and his boots rested on the crossbars of his chair, which was almost as tall as a lifeguard’s station. The man lifted his face and looked right at me with something sad yet encouraging in his gray eyes. I had been ready to run from the bizarre office, but the man’s gaze gave me a shot of bravery.

  I stepped forward and knocked on the secretary’s desk with a knuckle. The woman stopped typing, jerked her face up at me, and stared sharply through her glasses.

  “I’d like to talk to somebody, a landlord or a maintenance person, about Eli Webster. If the printing on the door can be believed, this was his office before the building turned into a ruin. Someone must know something.”

  “And who are you again?” said the woman.

  “I never said.”

  “This is Elizabeth Webster,” said Natalie.

  “Elizabeth Webster?” squawked the woman. She turned to the calendar and pecked at one of the filled blocks with a pointed red nail. “Why didn’t you say so at the start? We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Waiting?”

  “For you. Yes, of course.” She turned the page on the calendar and pecked at another filled block, and another. “You’re late, but no mind. Have a seat, have a seat. I’ll see if he is ready.”

  The secretary jumped up from her chair and waddled like a penguin into one of the doorways that opened to the waiting room.

  Natalie took hold of my arm and pulled me toward two chairs beside the secretary’s desk. We sat across from each other, Natalie next to the humming boy with his hands over his ears, me next to the beautiful woman with long lashes.

  Natalie leaned forward. “This is sort of creepy.”

  “You think? Maybe we should go.”

  “Are you kidding? They must know something. You want to find your father, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then there we are. Nice hair, huh?”

  I turned to the blond woman who sat next to me. She looked straight ahead, with no emotion on her face. I noticed sprouts of blond hair popping out of her long sleeves and from the neckline of her dress, and then I noticed—Gad!—her eyelashes weren’t eyelashes at all. They were growing out of her eyeballs.

  The woman turned and smiled at me. I almost swallowed my tongue. In a confiding whisper the woman said, “My name’s Sandy. I’m suing a witch.”

  “My name’s Elizabeth,” I whispered back. “I’m looking for my father.”

  “I hope you have better luck than I’ve had.”

  “Problems?”

  “Our writ has dissolved in a bubbling cauldron.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “With witches, anything can happen, as I’ve sadly learned. And all I wanted was better hair. It was so lank and lifeless.”

  “Not anymore!” I said, trying to be supportive.

  “He’ll see you now, dearie,” said the secretary from outside one of the offices. “Now he’ll see you.”

  When Natalie stood with me, the secretary pointed one of those red fingernails right at her. “Not you, dearie. Not you. Just her.”

  I calmed Natalie with a hand motion.

  Sandy with the hairy eyeballs nodded reassuringly at me. I squeezed out a nervous smile in return.

  The secretary led me into a dusty office with two desks and a fireplace. Over the fireplace hung a gigantic painting of an old, fat lawyer with a comb-over and a jacket way too tight for him. A skull with a wild white wig sat on the shelf below the painting. One of the two desks was small, with a clean, empty top. The other was huge and covered with towers of opened books and disorganized papers. It took me a moment to realize there was an old man sitting behind the desk, obscured by the tilting piles.

  “Ah, Avis,” croaked the old man in a raspy voice. “Have you seen the Hensley Testament? It up and disappeared on me again.”

  “The Hensley Testament?” said the secretary.

  “Yes, precisely. I’m in great need of the Hensley Testament.”

  The secretary skittered to the desk, grabbed a page off one of the high piles, and handed it to the old man. “Here.”

  “This?” The old man studied the document for a moment, moving it back and forth in front of his eyes. “Oh yes, of course this is it. See to it that you don’t misplace it again, you forgetful old finch.”

  “Your appointment is here.”

  “Well, bring her in!”

  “I already have.”

  “Where?” He leaned around a stack of books to gaze at me. He was short and bald, with a round nose and great gray tufts of eyebrows. He looked more elf than lawyer. I suddenly smelled cookies. “Her? Can’t be.”

  “Should I put her out?”

  “No, no, put out the cat, but she can stay. Just get me the Hensley Testament, and be quick about it. This is an office, not a chicken-plucking party.”

  “I’ll get on it. Right on it,” said Avis, giving me an exasperated glance before fluttering out of the room and closing the door behind her.

  “So, you’re our Elizabeth?” said the old man. “Taller than I thought you’d be, but I suppose that’s only to be expected, considering how late you are. Why, last time I saw you, you were knee-high to a leprechaun. I know that because a leprechaun was in the office on that very day. That’s your desk over there. Might as well settle in. We have much work to do on the Hensley Testament. You are ready to begin, I assume?”

  “To begin what?” I took a step back from the strange old man. “Are you sure you’re talking about me?”

  “How could I be mistaken about something like that? It was right in this office when your father first brought you in to see me. You played on my lap and I threw you into the air and you spit up right on my suit.
He was so proud.”

  I looked at the old man and for a moment was sure that I had never seen him before, and then a startling realization reached inside and grabbed at my heart. It was in his jaw that looked so much like my father’s jaw. It was in the squint of his eye that looked so much like my own.

  “Grandpop?”

  It felt like a long-forgotten dream had just marched up and tweaked me on the nose.

  I had grandparents already—plenty really. My mother’s parents, the Weintraubs, were stern, but surprisingly fun. And the Scalis, Stephen’s parents, were all warm and cozy. They tried to treat me like a real granddaughter, not a stepgranddaughter, even though all that trying seemed like such hard work. The four were enough to check off the grandparent box, thank you—wanting anything more would be greedy.

  I knew that my real father had parents, but I assumed they were dead or somewhere in Arizona. The truth was, with all the grandparents I had wandering around me, I really didn’t give it much thought. But now, here I was, face-to-face with another grandfather, who was still, apparently, very much alive and not living in the desert.

  In that moment I was flooded with memories of an old man in a dark suit doting over a little baby still in diapers. Was that me? Was that him? Was any of it real?

  “Grandpop?”

  “Your grandfather, Ebenezer Webster the third, at your service.” He pushed himself out of his seat and staggered around the desk with the help of a cane. His legs were skinny and bowed, his frame was bent almost in half. “Who on earth did you think I was?”

  “I don’t know, the landlord, maybe?”

  “I’m that, too, since I own the building. Have for decades. Bought it cheap, a real steal, and the upkeep is remarkably reasonable.”

  “But if you own it, why did you let it get so run-down like this?”

  “Like what?”

  I looked at him.

  “Seems in reasonable shape to me,” he said. “And the condition keeps the taxes low. Never underestimate the dangerous effect of taxes on digestion. So, let us get to work. I have piles for you to do. Oh, I’ll keep you busy as a mule through the whole of your apprenticeship. But at the end of it, you’ll be ready, I promise you. Just like your father was. And I was. Like all the Websters before us. Oh yes, I’ll have you fit and ready.”