The Curious Case of the Cursed Spectacles (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  As things were, my trust in Enid was a confused, rather mixed affair. I believed everything she'd told us. It always checked out. But she constantly came up with new information that would have made things much easier if she'd mentioned them earlier. It was as if she wouldn't lie but seldom volunteered anything. With few allies, I needed an edge and since no one was looking, I ducked into the bedroom and took the spectacles out of the drawer that Enid had assured us would be a safe place for them. I opened the box and they were in water, as she'd said, although I saw nothing special about it. I wiped them off with a tissue from her nightstand and put the box back, then put the spectacles in my pocket next to Edgar's pen.

  Suddenly he stood next to me, Edgar. "Wow. What are we doing now?"

  "We need to make a trip," I told him. "To California."

  "Oh good. I could use a change of scenery and I haven't seen Sarah in ages."

  I smiled and started back toward the living room. Unless I left the pen behind, and there was no chance of that, of course, Edgar was going along with me. That was fine with me, and it was convenient that I wouldn't have to buy him a ticket. "So you knew Sarah?"

  He grinned. "Oh yes. I knew her before she married Mr. Winchester. A sweet, although a somewhat tormented woman, I always thought."

  "Edgar!" Enid said happily. "You made it back. Are you feeling better then?"

  "I am," he said. "And ready to go to California."

  "We're going there, then?" Clarence asked.

  "Not you," I told him. "You need to stay here and recover. You were shot."

  "I am mostly recovered. I'm certainly healthy enough to walk to an airplane seat."

  "I imagine you can do that quite nicely," Enid said.

  I scowled at Enid. "He isn't ready. I know you want to help…"

  "Help? It's my job. You're the one who abandoned the investigation."

  "That's putting things rather dramatically."

  "It's accurate. And just because you came back doesn't mean you get to be in charge again."

  I looked at him. "It's my key. I get to make the rules."

  "Children!" Enid said, clapping her hands together. "You must play together nicely or you'll both be squashed. Now, Cecelia, Clarence might not be one-hundred percent, but you need his help."

  "I need him to get better."

  "I'd enjoy his company," Edgar said. "I think he might like Sarah."

  Which raised another question: Did Edgar not know Sarah Winchester had been dead since 1922 or didn't it matter? At this point, I knew that either could be a real possibility, if you'll excuse the loose use of the word, 'real.'

  "Cecelia, you do need Clarence to go with you. This is going to be unnerving. The three of you need to all play your parts."

  "I get to play the ghost," Edgar said.

  "I'll lead the expedition," Clarence said.

  I wanted to kick them all. "Fine. We all go."

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  With the decision to launch this foolhardy mission with a crew that included a ghost and an injured man made, I wanted to see if we could gain any advantage at all. "You know, Enid… before we leave Destiny's Point and go to California to find these dangerous cursed objects that are hidden within another dangerous cursed object, we could use a little instruction," I said.

  Enid looked at me with actual surprise. "Instruction in what?"

  "To start with, you said that the Grand Storehouse doesn't have a door."

  "That's why you have the key. By the way, it's a cursed object too, in case you hadn't realized that."

  I hadn't. "I've been living with a cursed object?"

  "Yes. Part of the curse was that it kept you from throwing it away."

  "That was probably good."

  "And the rest… well, you couldn't expect any old key to open a cursed object, could you?"

  "I suppose not. But how do we use it? I mean cursed objects are well and good, I suppose, and me saying that shows you how my attitudes have changed recently, but if you don't know how to operate them, they are kind of useless. See, I don't get how the key gets us into a place that has no door."

  Enid laughed. "Oh, of course you're right. How silly of me to say it that way. I should've said that it has no doors of its own."

  "So what does the key do?"

  She stared at me. "Why it opens the door?"

  "What door?" Clarence asked.

  Enid was still looking amused. "That's entirely up to you. You can use any door you like."

  "That needs a little explanation," Edgar said, "even for me."

  She sighed. "It's rather simple really. If you open a door, any door at all, using that key, when you go through the door you'll find yourself in the Grand Storehouse."

  I shook my head to clear it. "I can use any door at all?"

  She nodded. "That's what I said."

  "But?"

  "It isn't really a spatial thing, you see."

  I didn't see at all, but I knew asking questions wouldn't ever get it distilled down to anything sensible. "And we don't have to fly to California and go to the Winchester Mansion?"

  "No. That wouldn't be useful at all. If Mason had been forced to go all that distance every time we found a dangerous cursed object it would've been a nightmare. Besides, some of the objects are… well, they might not let you take them on an airplane. Not that I'd know about that. I've never flown, so it's only what I see on the news, of course."

  Clarence nodded. "Of course."

  I pointed down the hallway. "So we could use the door to the spare bedroom."

  "Why yes, in fact, that's an ideal door to use. It's convenient, and if you return through the same door it will bring you right back here. I must remind you, however, that once you pass through into the Grand Storehouse, remember to keep the key in your possession at all times. And don't get separated either. The key will show you the way out, but not where the others are. You might never find them. And be careful to close the door behind you. You wouldn't want to be followed."

  "Why not?" Edgar asked.

  "If someone wandered in, they might die," I told him.

  "And that's a bad thing?" he asked.

  "I was thinking more of the danger of your ex-fiancé, Walter, following you out," she said. "We wouldn't want him coming here."

  "He might be in the Grand Storehouse?"

  "Well, you told me he might have poor Carl's key, and that he said he didn't need this one. If he knows how to use it…"

  Clarence stood up. "He could be there already. We better get a move on."

  "While we are poking around in this store room…"

  "Storehouse, dear. The Grand Storehouse. Terminology matters."

  "Right. When we are inside looking around… do you have any idea what we are looking for? Can you tell us what the objects we are looking for look like?"

  "I'm sorry. I knew once, but the memory is the first to… the memory does something, the saying says, but I don't quite recall what."

  "We'd better go now," Edgar said.

  So we did. I strode down the hallway, brandishing the key and trying to show a confidence I didn't feel in the least. After all, I couldn't even see how this would get off the ground. Enid said I could unlock the door with the key, but this was an old-fashioned key—a skeleton key. The door had a more modern lock with room for a small key. I went through the motions and to my astonishment, it slid right in. I hesitated, then turned the key and the lock clicked open. When I opened the door we walked through and found ourselves in a long, red hallway.

  "That's the foyer," Enid called after us. "Sarah always liked entryways."

  "The light here is strange," Clarence said. As I glanced around I could see what he meant. It was like the ultimate in indirect lighting. Everything was visible but lit by no specific source that I could spot. With everything bathed in a soft illumination even though we could see clearly, distances were hard to judge.

  "The problem with distances just gets worse as you go deeper, so don't
let go of that key," Enid called musically as Clarence shut the door behind us.

  "This is wild," Edgar said. "I feel odd here."

  "You've never been here before?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure. I probably have; I think so and most likely I was just as impressed then."

  "You know what? Suddenly you seem far more tangible than I've seen you before," Clarence said.

  He was right. "I do," Edgar said, stretching his arms out experimentally. "That feels," he said.

  "You mean it feels good?"

  Edgar put a hand on a wall. "I mean it feels… as in there is feeling. I can't tell you how good it is to feel… anything," he said. "I haven't felt so many physical things since I died."

  "I don't see how that's possible," Clarence said. "That you've started feeling things, I mean. I'm pretty sure you're still a ghost."

  "Possibly, but I'd wager that you just nailed the explanation," Edgar said.

  "Okay, you have to explain that, Edgar" I demanded impatiently as I led the way up a narrow staircase I'd seen. It wound around, turning first to the right and then the left.

  "The very existence of this place is impossible," Edgar said. "It's a cursed object… which is another impossibility. We entered through a doorway that we all know doesn't lead into a basement under Sarah's mansion in California but into a spare bedroom in a small clapboard house in Destiny's Point."

  "And your point?" I asked, ducking to go through a doorway that ended up with me facing a blank wall.

  "That we are in a place that concentrates the very essence of impossible. A solid ghost is impossible, so it makes sense."

  "A rather perverse sense if you ask me," Clarence said.

  Edgar nodded. "Nonetheless, that's what we have here. You can and should expect to run into a lot more impossibilities before we leave, so I suggest that you accept that and get on with the task at hand."

  "He sounds positively lucid," Clarence said. "Either I'm going nuts or we've encountered another of those impossibilities."

  I turned to my right and found a crawl space that led into an adjoining bedroom. I got on my hands and knees and went through with the others right behind me. "It's like the layout of this place."

  "The mirror image of the mansion, remember?" Edgar said. "And the mansion is famous for having an irrational floor plan—that's what Sarah aimed for—on that side. On this side, curiously, the layout makes a certain kind of sense."

  "It does?" I wondered what it looked like to him. I was seeing chaos.

  "You don't see it? Well, I do. And, at this point, I should probably mention that we are not alone in this place."

  "No?"

  He shook his head. "I sense human activity down here with us."

  Despite the fact that we had been going upstairs since we arrived, his use of 'down here' actually made sense to me. "Fine. What do you want to do about this 'activity'? Should we see who it is or keep looking for the objects?"

  Edgar put his finger on the obvious answer. "We have no idea where in the vast place the objects are, but I can lead you straight to whoever is here."

  "It must be Walter," Clarence said. "Who else has a key?"

  "I bet Sarah kept one," Edgar said.

  If Clarence was right and Walter had gotten here first… I wasn't looking forward to that encounter. I wasn't sure that he'd like running into me down here any more than he had at the old mill. "Are we sure we want to find whoever it is?"

  Clarence looked uncertain. "Well, we don't want to wander around forever. Besides, that's sort of why we are here, isn't it?"

  "You know what he said would happen if we met again."

  "He also said he was being nice the last time. He's a born liar."

  "And a menace."

  Clarence shrugged. "If we are going to do this, I can't see how we can avoid him. We are all after the same thing. It has to end in a confrontation."

  He was right and at some level, I'd known that from the moment I'd realized that I had the key. Sooner or later I'd be face to face with Walter again, and if there was no avoiding it, it was probably better if we were sneaking up on him, rather than the other way around. So, for the moment that argument settled matters.

  I nodded at my friends. "Then we'd better go say hello."

  "Let's do it quietly," Edgar said. "The drawback of being solid is that I don't think I could wisp back into the pen if things got nasty and I don't know how fast I can run."

  "I think things have been nasty for some time already," I said. "Lead us to him."

  "But quietly is fine," Clarence said.

  Edgar was brilliant and his sense unerring. He led us up and down and around, through tiny rooms, through rooms that had the walls at odd angles, rooms with windows that looked into other rooms, and then stopped, raising an almost human hand. "Just ahead," he said softly. "He's alone."

  "We can circle him," Clarence said. "If we come at him from all sides…"

  I vetoed that. "Remember what Enid said. We need to stay together. There is only one key and I don't want to lose you."

  He gave me a grateful smile. "Okay. Then we will use the strength in numbers idea."

  "He's facing this way," Edgar said. He pointed to a hallway. "If we go through there we can get behind him."

  "Behind is good," I said.

  We walked through the hallway. My instincts told me, screamed at me, that we were walking away from the place Edgar had said Walter was lurking, but then the hallway abruptly sloped downward and turned a corner. We followed it and emerged into a room. I saw Walter standing in front of me, his back to me. He had something in his hands and in front of him, we could see a clockwork sculpture sitting on a stand on the ceiling of a room that looked like a grand ballroom.

  "Let's tackle him," Clarence whispered.

  I considered that as I saw Walter turn and smile at us. "Well, hello, Cecelia. Welcome. I congratulate you on finding the way here. Your arrival is something of a surprise—I didn't expect such tenaciousness or such good instincts from you. And I see you brought extra help along with you this time. That was wise." Since he'd already met Clarence I assumed he could see Edgar.

  "I thought we might have a party," I said.

  "Unfortunately for you..." his smile grew, "… it's too late for that. Far too late for you to do anything."

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Walter's calmness, his complete confidence, and his apparent knowledge of what was going on, unnerved me. We watched him turn his back to us and place the object in his hand into the large clockwork mechanism. I heard it snap into place.

  "It's a smaller clockwork inside the bigger one," Clarence said. "Maybe a power unit."

  Clarence was right, because as Walter stepped back the larger machine began to vibrate, shaking oddly.

  "What are you doing there, Walter?" I asked. "What's the deal with that giant clock?"

  Walter turned and pointed a gun at us, still acting very casual, but the look on his face was as menacing as the barrel of the gun. "That clock, dear Cecelia, is the game changer. It is the antikythera mechanism and it's complete for the first time since it was first made."

  "Big deal," Clarence said. "So you found an astrolabe. It's worth a bundle, but come on… that's hardly a game changer."

  "An astrolabe?" Edgar asked.

  "It determines celestial events," Clarence said. "This one happens to be mechanical, but the really valuable ones were bronze."

  "You show your ignorance," Walter said. "This is far more than an astrolabe, young man. It's an ancient analog computer—an orrery that models the solar system. It can predict the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to a heliocentric model."

  I laughed. "So you've done all this to get yourself an astronomy toy?" It sounded absurd. "You can get all that on the internet with a few mouse clicks."

  "This astronomy toy is quite special, Cecelia. As it happens, this apparatus, as I've restored it, is one of the most ancient cursed objects i
n the world. Now that it is running again, it holds the secret to manipulating destiny itself."

  "Because it is a cursed whatever it was that you called it."

  He nodded. There was a frustrated lecturer somewhere inside the man. "The Antikythera mechanism… exactly. And the curse, in combination with the device, is powerful enough to allow the person who possesses it to write the future as he wishes it to be."

  "Or she," I said.

  "She?"

  "If a woman had possession of it, then you'd have to say 'she' could write the future as 'she' wishes."

  He looked puzzled. "If a woman had it, yes, but I have it, not you."

  "Still, you stated a general proposition. That means it needs to be grammatically correct even if and when current circumstances change."

  Walter scowled. "I'm starting to think when you jilted me the way you did you were doing me a big favor."

  "In retrospect, I think it was a smart move on my part."

  "Perhaps, under the current circumstances, with me having possession of the device and not you, I should correct your existence completely out of the future."

  "Using that might not be the best idea you've had lately," Clarence said.

  Walter scowled. "How's that?"

  "Okay, see if you can stay with me on this, Walt… We all know that all of the cursed objects are… well, cursed. And, the way it was explained to us, the objects stored here, such as your fancy new ancient clock, are the most dangerous of the lot. Mason needed them really hidden. So let's call them seriously cursed. And, to be clear, when we say they are dangerous, that means they have big deal powers, but it also means that they can be difficult to control as well."

  "I'm getting a little bored with the big windup," Walter said. "Is this going somewhere or are you stalling for time? If you are stalling, you might want to keep in mind that I own the future now."