The Curious Case of the Cursed Crucible

by Constance Barker

  “She’s being sarcastic,” Clarence told Enid.

  Enid nodded. “I guessed that, Clarence.”

  “But you missed the point, Cecilia. I didn’t mean that we should go to talk to the guy who makes the cures... I’m talking about meeting the man who was cured.”

  “His victim?”

  “A success story, according to the articles I read. There have been a string of them in that area suddenly. Look, if there’s anything to the story then we can follow the trail.”

  “But that blog...”

  “A bunch of cures were reported on that blog but I don’t think this outfit had anything to do with the miracles, if that’s what they were. They are capitalizing on them, making it seem that way. Sort of like saying someone had cancer, took aspirin and got cured, so you should take aspirin.”

  “You think there is something else going on?”

  “Right. Every one of these miracles is reported elsewhere and they don’t seem to be connected. In our experience, that suggest an artifact is being passed around. We need to find out. That’s what we do.”

  “He’s right,” Enid said. “It won’t hurt you to take a drive and see what is going on.”

  “You know, I really didn’t envision using my limited time on this earth going to estate sales.”

  “Then you are in the wrong line of work,” Clarence said. “That’s what reselling curiosities is all about. An estate sale is a perfect place to find rare merchandise that we can sell online at a nice profit.”

  “And I have to go? You are the buyer. Would you consider....”

  “There is also the probability, or at least the possibility, of encountering an artifact in either place. And it’s today. And you are an Antique Dealer.”

  I doubted the probability of finding one was high, but I nodded. “Fine.”

  “Hurrah, an outing,” Edgar said.

  I knew that Edgar liked hunting for artifacts. He liked old things, anyway, and he had a nose for cursed things. He could sense them somehow and it made him feel like a useful part of the team. Well, he was a useful part of the team. Our ghost. And he’d saved us more than once. “I’m outnumbered and outgunned,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  So we refused a last cup of tea, said goodbye to Enid, and piled into the car.

  One the way, Clarence was quiet for a time before he asked the inevitable question. “Did you ask her about Daniel Twill? About what happened to him?”

  “I didn’t mention him,” I said.

  His face tensed. Clarence was dealing with his own issue regarding Daniel Twill and the Grand Storehouse. He didn’t have the same concern, but this was an ethical issue, concerning Daniel’s fate, and it overlapped mine. “We need to talk to her. But first, we have to figure out what we intend to do,” I said.

  Clarence puckered his lips. “If he’s in there, and he is one of us, an Antique Dealer, we need to find out how he got trapped there.”

  “Well, I agree that we need to find out why he’s there, taking into account that he might have been stashed there by someone. He wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Walter,” he said.

  “Maybe others. We don’t know.”

  “We need to find out and Enid could help.”

  “You know how she is. She gets stubborn. The Storehouse is a sore point with her.”

  Clarence scowled. “It’s Lila’s father we are talking about and she is our friend.”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “On balance.”

  I smiled. “I know you are taken with her.”

  He didn’t like me being insightful about his emotions. “Lila Twill is unique. She is the best friend she knows how to be. I’ll admit that can be a slippery slope at times, but if her father is trapped in there we should help her get her father out. And Enid might know how and why that happened.”

  “There is so much that’s unclear, beyond the issue of why Daniel Twill is lost in the Grand Storehouse,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  My stomach tightened. I hadn’t been completely forthcoming with Clarence about my concerns either and I felt guilty about that. They sounded crazy enough bouncing around my head without me saying them out loud. I mean, it was my fault that my fiancé Walter Temple was lost in the Grand Storehouse as well. I had mixed feelings about that and if someone grilled me on it, the way Walter’s father Solomon had, it dredged up a lot of guilt.

  That was one reason I had so much trouble simply asking Enid if she knew why Daniel Twill was in there. If she knew, she might not be able or willing to tell me. And then that would come between us. But I understood how Clarence felt. He was fine with leaving Walter in the Grand Storehouse, but when it came to Lila’s father he wanted to find out if the man deserved to be there, If he didn’t, then he wanted to help him.

  But Clarence didn’t know the questions I had about time lines...wondering if they’d been changed. If I was right, then everything became rather tenuous. The reasons Walter and Daniel were trapped might only be valid in one of several alternative time lines. I was worried about changing anything too radically until I knew for sure if we were in the right one.

  Finding out the answers presented new challenges because if it turned out that someone had altered the time line, made things wrong, well, I knew of some tools we could use to fix the situation. Unfortunately, using any of them meant introducing a new variety of uncertainty. And it would definitely mean overruling Enid’s refusal to use artifacts even if the end seemed to justify the means.

  It all made my head and heart hurt.

  I looked over at Clarence, who stared out through the windshield. He was a careful driver to the point of irritation. “Look, you’re right, Clarence, and I feel guilty about the situation as much as you do.”

  “Then?”

  “Well, haven’t you had your fill of knowing things you’d rather not have known?”

  “This is important and about a friend.”

  I took a breath. “For the moment, Clarence, can we focus on this artifact? I need more time and I’m curious what the catch is to an artifact that heals people. How can that be bad?”

  “I know. It’s just that we’ve never encountered a harmless one yet. Edgar’s curse, I suppose, but whatever the pen box is, whatever Edgar is... that’s more accurately just an unknown; we haven’t proven the pen box is an artifact or that it is harmless.”

  “I’m glad to know that I’m not associated with anything proven harmless,” Edgar said from the back seat. “Say, Cecilia, when we get back, remind me to show you a chess opening I just remembered. It was shown to me some time ago by a chap named Paul Charles Morphy. He was a pretty good player, as I recall. You can use it to clobber Enid.”

  The name sounded familiar. “Wasn’t Paul Morphy a chess master in the 1800s?”

  “The chess champion of the United States in 1857, I believe. He went to Europe but the European champion, Howard Staunton, refused to play him.“

  I was sure all that was true. What I didn’t know was whether Edgar was poking fun about knowing the man or if he was serious. “We will see about that chess lesson later. But first, we need to explore the possibility that there is an artifact out there that can heal people... and Clarence needs to go shopping at an estate sale.”

  Chapter Two

  The man we were on our way to see was named Ralph Logan. One of the articles Clarence had found said that he’d been cured, rather miraculously of terminal cancer. “According to the article, His doctor was convinced it was nothing short of a miracle, but Logan has never made a public comment,” I said.

  Clarence nodded. “Right. It’s worth talking to him. If he was really cured but we can’t find a trace of any artifact, we can check on a few of the others listed on that blog. If that turns up nothing, then maybe it’s worth going to see whoever runs that blog. Maybe he or she did more than just collect data. We can poke around and see if anything they’ve got smells of an artifact.”

  “That’s a slo
w and steady approach.”

  “There’s no reason to go crazy over this one lead. I don’t want you thinking that I believe that everything I run across is golden. I just want to keep following the leads that do crop up.”

  “So you aren’t convinced that this report necessarily is the work of someone wielding an artifact?” I asked.

  Clarence laughed. “You’re the one who called me the resident skeptic. And yes, I doubt these cures are real. I do know that chasing down improbable things has led us straight to artifacts before. I doubted the spectacles until we found them... by following reports that made us think some cursed object was at work. And then there were the tabloid reports of big winners dying that led us to the cursed dice.”

  “You made your point,” I admitted.

  Edgar giggled. “I remember how panicky you both were when Lila convinced us all to jump out the window of that high-rise building in Las Vegas. You were trembling even though you knew we had an artifact.”

  Clarence snorted. “Lila was acting on a hunch about how they worked. She wasn’t sure they’d do anything or how much the luck the dice were supposed to give us.”

  “And trusting that terrified you,” Edgar said. “It was humorous.”

  “Don’t pretend you were so nonchalant yourself,” Clarence said. “Even though you had no reason to be frightened of going out the window—you are already dead, you were screaming about it. You have to admit that you were scared.”

  “With good reason,” Edgar said, sounding stuffy.

  “What reason?” he asked.

  “I might be dead, but that isn’t necessarily the advantage you make it out to be, Clarence.”

  “It isn’t? Why not? You couldn’t die again.”

  “But I do have to worry about what happens to me if Cecilia dies,” Edgar said. “None of us have a clue what might happen then. It’s uncharted territory. My very existence might be entwined with hers.”

  “It’s so lovely to have friends caring about you for yourself and not what you mean to them,” I said. My snide comment left a sour taste in my mouth. Edgar was right, but I was in a bad mood. Guilt and a troubling unease were keeping me from mellowing out.

  Edgar went quiet. I glanced back and he was fading. He does that when he’s stressed out. “Don’t fade away,” Clarence said, peeking in the rear view mirror. “We need that artifact sensing ability of yours, old pal.”

  “Yes, yes,” he mumbled. “I’ll be here for you, Clarence,” he said, emphasizing the ‘you.’ Clearly, I’d hurt his feelings... again. Edgar is quite a sensitive individual for a ghostly presence. Of course, that’s because of my assumption that a ghost would have a thick (if ectoplasmic) skin after all it’s been through. Edgar certainly didn’t. I knew I’d have to apologize to him sooner or later. He holds a grudge otherwise. But it wasn’t going to be now.

  “How do you know where the guy lives?” I asked Clarence. “We could be going on a wild artifact chase.”

  “Of course we could. Every one of these sojourns is potentially going to come up with nothing. But as far as finding the guy, whose name is Ralph Logan, happily for us I found another article in a local paper about his recovery. It didn’t have any additional facts but local papers don’t seem to mind printing addresses, so we know where his home is.” Clarence gave me a satisfied grin. “In fact, one reason I decided to investigate him first was because I had his address.”

  “That makes perfect sense to me,” Edgar said pointedly.

  When we pulled off the highway, we entered the suburban sprawl of a smallish town. I call it small, but it was bigger than Destiny’s Point. Fortunately, the suburb was even smaller than Destiny's Point and that was good because, as with so many suburbs, the developers had ensured that the actual houses all looked the same.

  Our fellow, Ralph Logan, lived on Acorn Street. We quickly learned that all of the streets had names having to do with trees, probably to offset the fact that the land had been clear-cut before construction started. There wasn’t an actual tree in the place. It’s like developments in the desert called Vista Mar. You can see the ocean from the top of the nearest mountain maybe, although the nearest mountain is a hundred miles away.

  We didn’t have a map, but I doubt a map would’ve helped. None of the roads were straight. As we twisted and turned along Oak Street, it became Oak Lane, Oak Valley Lane, and, rather incongruously, Oak Parkway. “With all these oaks there have to be acorns somewhere,” Clarence said.

  “Don’t get defensive,” I said. “We’ll find it.”

  He sighed. “You know, I looked it up on some online maps before we left, but for some reason, it seems that no one has mapped this area yet. I guess they haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “That’s ominous,” Edgar said.

  I didn’t contradict him, even though I was sure it was just as Clarence said and they hadn’t gotten to it yet.

  “Acorns at last,” Clarence said, turning onto a two-lane asphalt road that looked exactly like the last three we’d been on. Of course, everything looked the same, except that some of these houses had cutout acorns on the mailboxes. I imagine it was the only way to pick out your own house on the way home from a party.

  “Acorn Lane,” Edgar said. “You said he lived on Acorn Street.”

  “Give it time,” Clarence said. “I’ve worked out the twisted logic of these twisted streets.”

  And indeed he had. Three or four (I lost count) turns and permutations later he pulled up and stopped in front of a nondescript, ranch style, concrete-block house with a driveway, flagstone facing on the bottom half of the building, and a flower bed with some nondescript brown bushes filling it. The yard was neatly mowed, like all of the other yards around it. A birdbath sitting in the middle of the lawn was the only thing that distinguished it from its neighbors.

  “Is this a prison?” Edgar asked.

  “It was supposed to be utopia,” Clarence said.

  “In the fifties,” I said. “I’m sure Donna Reed lived in all of these houses at one time.”

  We walked to the front door and knocked. A burly man dressed in a black suit, with a white shirt and black tie opened the door. “You’re early,” he said.

  “But here we are,” Edgar said. Fortunately, Mr, Logan was not one of the few people who can hear or see Edgar.

  “I’m a journalist researching miracle cures,” Clarence said. “I was hoping you could spare a little time and tell us about your experience.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Busy.”

  “But if you were cured in a miraculous manner, don’t you want to let people know about it? It could save lives.”

  He was hesitating, I was sure he was considering the idea of just slamming the door in our faces. Finally, he grunted. “Look, there isn’t much to tell. All people need to know is that they only have little time on this earth. They should use it wisely. You can’t hoard it so you might as well spend it.”

  “Let us tell your story,” Clarence said. “You will be famous.”

  “And you can move to a nice house,” Edgar said.

  He shook his head. “I have nothing particular to say. I’m not interested in fame.” He gave us a twisted smile. “It wouldn’t be much use to me. Besides, I’m not really able to explain what happened.” He glanced at his watch. “And now you will have to excuse me. I’m expecting some people later and I haven’t finished getting things ready.”

  Looking past him I could see that he had a table set up for a buffet. Either he was colorblind, or he was planning to have the most somber party on the planet. I could see black crepe hanging in a doorway. The tablecloths were black as well. “We wouldn’t take much of your time...” Clarence began.

  “I appreciate your interest but I have nothing to say. Bye now. Use what time you have wisely.” This time he shut the door.

  “Well, that didn’t help much,” I said. “What now?”

  Clarence looked puzzled. “I guess we go to the estate sale.”

  Oh
joy, oh rapture, I thought, this time I wisely kept my comments to myself.

  Chapter Three

  When we arrived at the estate sale I was pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be a bigger event than I expected and was being held in a large two story wood-frame house that once must’ve been a showplace. Now it was in need of paint but it was still charming in an old-fashioned way. It had a front porch that ran the full width of the house and huge yard that had once probably been magnificent.

  The sale was mostly inside, where tables had been set up to display the china, some first-edition books, some expensive knickknacks, and other pricey items. Some elegant display cases showcased opulent jewelry, both men’s and women’s. The rest of the estate, the less valuable items, spilled out of the house to cover card tables set up on the lawn.

  It was quite an operation, run by a professional company.

  “I don’t sense anything artifactual,” Edgar told me as we walked through the house and then outside.

  I didn’t either. “Is that a word, artifactual?”

  “Of course it is,” he said, uncertainly.

  “I didn’t expect we’d find anything here in the way of cursed objects,” I said. “Even Clarence came here mainly for the shopping.” I showed him the list that Clarence had given me. It had the types of things he thought he could resell. “You know old stuff. You can help by pointing out anything that you think might be valuable.”

  “I can do that,” he said, glad to be part of this impromptu Easter egg hunt. I was glad to let him take over that job. As I’d been walking around, I’d used my phone (and a conveniently located free wi-fi hotspot) to take another look at the blog that had inspired this trip into the world of the miraculously healed. For no discernible reason, I’d started searching for the names of the people who were listed. I found the names, but the most recent references were all in obituaries. Reading them, I learned that all those people had one thing in common. “Those cures don’t seem to take,” I told Edgar. “Apparently, six months after they were supposedly cured, every one of those people died.”