by Simon Archer
“I wonder who left all this stuff here. They even took care to cover the piles up with painter’s blankets. Seems odd for an attic. Usually, they are just riddled with random crap,” I said, curious as to who the organizer of the things was.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Jack said as he slowly pulled back the cloth on his pile, trying not to stir up more dust than he had to.
The cloud of dust was still significant, however, and we had to wait for it to settle before we could see what was underneath. When it cleared, we were looking at an antique china cabinet and several taped boxes. I leaned forward, broke the tape on one of the boxes, and peered inside. As I’d suspected, the boxes were full of china dishes.
“There is an entire set of china in these boxes,” I told Jack. He gently pulled on one of the display’s doorknobs, and the case opened easily. He closed the door and looked at me.
“Why would this be up here in the attic?” he asked, confused.
“Why is one thing, but how is what I want to know,” I told him. “There’s no way that was brought up through the hole we just came in.”
“There must be another entrance up here somewhere,” Jack replied. “Want to look for it?”
“I want a shop-vac and about three dozen garbage bags to get rid of the dust!” I told him, only half kidding.
“A little dust never hurt anyone,” Jack joked. “But, if someone offered us one, I wouldn’t say no.” He laughed at himself as he moved to the next covered pile he saw, while I walked up to one by the hole we’d come up through. I pulled the cover back and waited for the dust to clear.
That time, there was a sturdy-looking roll-top desk under the cloth. I pulled up on the desk cover, and it rolled easily, uncovering nooks and crannies for pens, pencils, mail, and notebooks. I rolled it back down and opened each of the drawers. There were files in both of them, so I closed the drawers and took a step back. The desk was not an inexpensive piece of furniture.
“This one is an old desk,” I called out across the room to Jack.
“This is a dining room table,” Jack yelled back. I walked toward him as he headed my way.
“Why is there a house-full of vintage furniture up here?” I wondered out loud.
“I don’t know, but it’s getting harder to breathe with each of these covers I pull off,” Jack commented. “I’m going to need to dive for some air.”
I hadn’t noticed my sinuses were plugged until he’d pointed that out.
“Let’s go down, and I’ll grab some supplies from the garage to suck the dust up with,” I told Jack. We headed through the hole and down the ladder. I looked up at Jack as we both brushed the dust off ourselves.
“I want to know where the other door is,” I told him excitedly. I felt like a little kid on an adventure to find treasure.
“Let’s get that shop-vac already before the girls find us and want us to participate in wedding planning!” Jack laughed.
We hurried to the garage and returned carrying garbage bags, a shop vac, extension cord, and some rags. We ascended back up into the attic, and Jack started uncovering piles and wiping them down, while I vacuumed up years worth of dust. I emptied the shop-vac eight times before we decided to take a break. Jack and I stood at the line in the room where we’d stopped cleaning and surveyed our work.
“This could seriously be a whole other floor to the house. I wonder if someone lived up here at some point,” Jack pondered.
“I’ve never seen an attic this big either, or with such beautiful furniture. It’s so well taken care of. I wonder who it belongs to.” I walked over to a four-poster bed Jack had uncovered and ran my hand along the carved post. All the furniture was hand-crafted wood, but it didn’t all match.
“Is there any way to pull ownership records on the house?” Jack suggested.
“I can and will most certainly start there. There’s just one thing that doesn’t make sense. This house isn’t old enough to have furniture like this ever having fit in,” I told him.
“Maybe the owners inherited it and just didn’t know what to do with it,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“Maybe,” I agreed half-heartedly. I’d spied another drop cloth tucked back in a corner that we had missed. “What’s that?” Jack followed my gaze and walked with me to check it out. We pulled back the cover and underneath stood a large, stone pillar, nearly as high as my chest.
“What is it?” Jack asked, eyebrow raised. He circled around it, cocking his head this way and that.
“It is a sundial,” I answered. Jack had looked everywhere except the very top, which was a dead giveaway. “It’s the most intricate sundial I’ve ever seen.”
“What would anyone want to haul that thing around for?” Jack asked. “Clocks have most certainly improved to the point of not needing a freaking sundial anymore!” He chuckled at himself and went back to a chest of drawers he wanted to open up.
There was something about the dial that caught my attention, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I tried to walk away a couple of times but kept going back to look at it again. Its intricacy was in the tiny carvings all along the dial and down the pillar. They didn’t seem to be anything specific, just shapes, but they were carved into the stone so carefully, it would seem unreasonable to think they didn’t mean something. Then one specific carving stood out to me. It looked like a hand, a very old one. Swirls and other nondescript shapes surrounded it. I leaned in to look closer and then realized what I was trying to figure out.
“Jack!” I yelled over to him. The loudness of my voice must’ve startled him because he jumped and shot me a disapproving look.
“What are you hollering about?” he asked, only mildly cranky.
“Remember I told you that Vila’s old witch had talked to her about our AI program?” I had mentioned the conversation to him but hadn’t had time to go into detail, not that there were many details to give.
“Yeah. Vila went to see her with that memory magic they use, didn’t she?” It was memory magic that the genies had been using when Jack first discovered they were magical.
“Yes. Well, Gisele suggested we find another energy that mimics the one we can’t figure out in some way,” I told him.
“That would be a great suggestion if there was another one like it,” Jack said, shaking his head as though disappointed.
“There is. It is the sun,” I told him. “She said to find one that acts similar because everything is connected. What if the behavior of the sun’s energy can tell us more about the strange energy we are trying to decode? It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Anders. They are really, really different. Our mystery energy is less than a crumb on a scale compared to the sun,” Jack pointed out.
“It’s not about the size. It’s about the behavior,” I told him. “I’d venture to bet that the sun acts either similar or completely the opposite as our other energy.”
Jack looked at me for a few moments, then glanced over the sundial and shrugged. “Hey, I’ll stick to the money and the marketing. You do what you need to do, Anders. Let me know what you will need to perform the tests you want to.”
I knew he trusted me when it came to our technology, for which I was grateful, especially since I knew I wasn’t explaining myself as well as I’d have liked to. I had a sudden urge to ditch the attic adventure and go to my office to start the energy comparison with the sun. Jack started laughing from across the room.
“Go already,” he said as though he read my mind. “I just stood here and watched the desire to work creep up your neck and across your face. Get to it already!” Jack started laughing even harder the longer he stood there looking at me.
“Okay, I’m going. I’ll be back, though. Let me know if you find anything else interesting!” I called back to him as I headed for the ladder.
“I don’t know that we find the same things interesting,” he joked. “You just got sent to work by a sundial!” It hit me then that I should bri
ng the sundial with me.
“Hey, do you think we can get that thing down the ladder?” I reached forward and pulled on the column lightly. It seemed to tip rather easily, but I didn’t know how much it would weigh if I tried to hold it while climbing down.
“Nothing like finding out,” Jack replied. He walked briskly over to the dial and rolled it on its edge over to the hole with the ladder. “Get down there, and I’ll lower it to you.”
“Perhaps we should try to lift it first to see if I’ll be able to carry it down,” I suggested.
“Nah, you’ll make it, I promise. I can tell just by how easy it is to spin across the room,” Jack said as though it was nothing. I hesitated just long enough for Jack to shoot me an impatient look, then I moved down the ladder. Jack bent both his legs, wrapped his arms around the column, and lifted. It came off the ground rather easily, but it was clear by his stance that the dial wasn’t exactly light. Jack took a few steps forward and bent his knees again, lowering the dial to me. I took hold of it with one arm and rested the bottom on my leg. I worked it down the ladder like that until I reached the bottom and could set it on the floor.
“See!” Jack yelled down. “You survived!” He disappeared into the recesses of the attic, his laughter echoing down into the hall and throughout the foyer.
I shook my head and smiled. As I walked into my office, I heard Jack click on the shop-vac again and continue cleaning the attic. I didn’t blame him. He had the choice to either watch me work, discuss wedding plans with the girls, or keep busy in the attic.
If I was him, I’d choose the attic as well.
18
Several hours passed while I pulled data about the sun. I was searching for anything having to do with the sun’s effect on weather patterns of any kind. While the data was expansive, I hadn’t seen anything that looked too similar to my mystery energy behavior. I took time out to call Jack’s weather station contacts in Kansas and Texas to set up testing, and I was just switching databases when Andi and Vila zipped into my office and closed the door behind them. I swiveled around in my chair, crossed my arms in front of my chest, and waited for an explanation.
“We just need a few minutes,” Andi rushed to tell me. She had her ear to the door, listening for something.
“Problems in wedding-land?” I chuckled.
“Not problems, really,” Vila started from her lounger across the room. “More like overload.”
“I can handle an overload,” Andi piped in. “When that overload becomes slurred and repeated, that’s when I dip out!”
“How many bottles have those two had?” I knew Lottie and Lorraine were buzzed because I had opened their second bottle myself, but it sounded like they didn’t stop there.
“They just cracked bottle number four,” Andi reported slowly, rolling her eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lottie have more than two glasses of wine,” I told the girls. It piqued my curiosity. It sounded like drunk-Lottie was having a blast. I started to get up out of my chair. “I think I’ll go check that out!”
“NO!” the girls shouted at me in unison.
I sat back down and stared from one to the other of them. “That’s quite the reaction for such an innocent action. Why, exactly, shouldn’t I go downstairs and say hello to my inebriated fiancé?
“Because you will never be able to leave!” Andi whined.
“And you’ll have to fake restroom issues, like we did, to get away from the talk of lights and dresses and music,” Vila added with a sour face for emphasis. I leaned back in my chair and reconsidered my course of action.
“You ladies have really had fun the past little while, haven’t you?” I joked with them. They both immediately shook their heads. Andi stopped suddenly.
“What is that?” she asked, her gaze falling on the large pillar sitting next to my desk.
“It is a sundial,” I answered.
“What is it doing here?” Vila joined in on questioning me.
“That’s something I haven’t gotten around to showing you yet,” I replied. I stood up and waved my arm, signaling for the girls to follow me. I decided to make a show out of traveling through the house, so I stopped at my doorway and slowly peered out, turning my head in both directions before stepping out into the hall.
“What are you looking for?” Vila asked.
“The drunkards!” I replied dramatically.
“Oh! Good idea!” she said happily. Both girls shifted their heads back and forth, making sure the coast was clear as well. I flattened myself against the wall and started slowly inching my way down the hallway. We were about halfway to our destination when we heard Lottie and Lorraine approaching the foyer from the kitchen.
“Get down!” I whispered commandingly. The three of us crouched down and huddled together just out of sight of the two women.
A small pang of guilt shot through me but amusement instantly replaced it. If Lottie caught us hiding from her, she’d laugh until she couldn’t breathe. And with that realization, my guilt disappeared. Andi slowly raised her head to see if they had passed through, then slowly stood, confirming that the coast was clear. The three of us kept to the wall as we made our way to the ladder.
“What is this doing here?” Vila asked, circling the ladder.
“I found the attic!” I told her. “Well, Jack found the attic. I just happened to be with him.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Andi nearly yelled. “Is it just fantastic up there?”
“Shhh!” Vila hissed at her. “Do you want Lottie to try to climb a ladder right now?”
“No, most certainly not,” Andi answered then turned to me, her voice dropping to a whisper. “What’s up there?”
“Get up there and see for yourself,” I instructed her with a wink.
I waited until both girls had climbed the ladder and stood in the attic before going up myself. I had the thought of pulling the ladder up behind me just in case Lottie and Lorraine found it because there was no way I’d feel comfortable with them trying to climb at the moment. However, I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get it back down, and the last thing I wanted was to get stuck up there, so I left it. I joined the girls who congregated with Jack in the center of the room. In the time I’d been working, he finished vacuuming the entire attic and started on wiping down the furniture.
“You may be in the wrong profession,” I told him. “You are really going to town up here!”
Jack chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a project to work on.” He had all the drop cloths off the piles of boxes and stacks of furniture and brought up several lamps and extension cords. I recognized the lamps as being from various guest rooms.
“Nice touch with the lighting,” I commented.
“Crazily, though, it still isn’t enough. Six lamps and this place is still too big to light completely,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Let us help you with that,” Vila said. She raised her arm and snapped her fingers before we could respond. The entire attic immediately started to glow as though there were tiny stars covering the entire ceiling.
“Now, that is what you call custom lighting!” Jack laughed. “Great call, Vila.”
She gave Jack a wink and started looking around. “This isn’t like any attic look I’ve ever seen!”
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “It’s all old furniture. Some of it looks antique and rather valuable.”
Andi walked over to the roll-top desk I’d found earlier and pulled the top up. “Where’s the other doorway in?”
“That is an amazing question,” I told her. Both she and Vila stopped and turned their heads toward Jack and me.
“We haven’t found another way in yet,” Jack informed them. Both girls tipped their heads in curiosity.
“Well, Bennett can take care of that,” Vila said with a wave of her hand. She turned and went back to wandering around the attic.
“What does she mean?” Jack asked me.
I shrugged a shoulder and shook my head. “I have no idea.” I wasn’t too worried about it because I was more interested in seeing what Jack had found while I’d been working on the solar research. “What did you uncover, other than a ton more dirt?”
“More furniture,” he told me. “Everything in here is either furniture or furniture accessories.”
“What is a furniture accessory?” I hadn’t heard of such a thing.
“That’s what I’m referring to the china and such as,” Jack chuckled. “Furniture-adjacent? Belongs to furniture?”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Furniture accessories will do just fine. You found more china?” The lack of repeat pieces of furniture alongside another set of dishes surprised me.
“Yes, but this one was with a huge credenza instead of a china cabinet,” Jack replied. “Here, it’s over this way.” He spun on his heel, and I followed him across the attic to the credenza. The piece was built so solidly that it looked like it weighed two hundred pounds on its own.
“I am dying to know how they got this stuff up here,” I commented. “It is amazing the ceiling can hold the weight. Maybe that is why everything is spread out and all along the walls, instead of in the center of the room.”
“That would make sense,” Jack agreed. “You should see the vanity over here. I don’t know if it’s Lottie’s style, but I know Lorraine would just love it!”
I followed Jack all the way to the back of the attic before he stopped. He stepped aside to reveal a small, mirrored vanity table complete with stool. Something shiny flashed at me from the corner of the mirror, so I leaned in to get a better look. I brushed my hand over the border on the mirror and stood back suddenly.
“What is it?” Jack asked, sounding concerned. His voice then changed to one of mocking. “Did it bite you?”
“It may as well have,” I told him. “Diamonds and gemstones line the edges of this thing.” I pointed at the corner I’d just inspected. Jack rushed to the mirror and leaned in as I had done.