Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms

by Lissa Evans

  She inserted the edge of the coin into a slit just below the hinge, and gave a little push and a twist. There was a springy click. With the lid still open, she turned the tin upside down again and gave it a shake, and a metal disk clattered onto the table.

  “A false bottom,” said Leonora. “Is there anything beneath it?”

  Stuart peered into the money box.

  “A circle of cardboard with the word surprise! written on it,” he told her.

  Leonora laughed, and then leaned toward him. “What’s Jeannie doing?” she asked under her breath.

  Stuart looked around. “She’s fetched a first-aid kit and she’s put a sort of elastic sock on Clifford’s foot. He’s trying to stand up.”

  “We don’t have long to talk, then,” said Leonora. “And I’d love to know how you tracked me down. I’m sorry I lied to Jeannie about inviting you here, but I could sense you were struggling for an answer.”

  “I was a bit.” Stuart paused. “I’m not sure you’ll believe it when I tell you,” he said.

  “I think you’d be surprised what I’d believe,” said Leonora quietly. “Could you meet me the day after tomorrow? Eleven o’clock in the Gala Bingo Hall on Fitch Street? I go there every Thursday morning.”

  Stuart did the nodding thing again, before remembering to speak. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure my dad will let—” and then he realized suddenly that he had left his house ages ago, and that his father would be coming back from his walk to find Stuart gone and no note of explanation. “I’d better go,” he said. “I’ll be there on Thursday. I promise.”

  He hurried out of the office and nearly bumped into Jeannie. “I’ve got to get home,” he said.

  “Not before you tell me what you were going to say before Clifford decided to jump without a parachute. We were talking about your great-uncle’s workshop and you said, ‘Has anyone looked in the—’” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I was going to say, the burned-out factory,” said Stuart. “Maybe he rebuilt it in the ruins of Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms.”

  There was silence, apart from the dove crooning from the rafters high above, and then Jeannie laughed. “No, he absolutely, definitely didn’t do that,” she said. “Something else was rebuilt from the ruins of the factory.”

  “What?” asked Stuart.

  “This place.” Jeannie spread her arms to indicate the enormous warehouse. “We’re standing on the very spot. But in case you come up with any better ideas, let me give you this.” She took a little silver card from her pocket. “My number’s on it,” she added. “And, Stuart”—she crouched to talk to him, in a way that made him feel like a toddler—“I really am the very first person you should speak to if you find out anything useful. Come straight to me. There might even be a lovely reward for you.”

  She smiled widely, but her eyes were like chips of glass. She showed Stuart out the back way, through the yard and the pair of metal gates that he’d seen on his first day in Beeton. After they’d clicked shut behind him, he glanced up at the lettering on the arch.

  He thought of a fire so fierce that it left nothing but molten scraps, and then he set off at a run for home.

  He felt as if he’d been away for hours, but when he got back to Beech Road, he saw his father walking just ahead of him.

  “Hi,” said Stuart, breathlessly catching up to him.

  “Oh, hello,” said his father, looking pleased. “Been on an excursion yourself, have you? Are you ready for your repast? I shall be preparing a Neapolitan speciality, with fungal and caseous addenda.”

  “No caseous addenda on mine, thanks,” said Stuart. And while his father got on with making a mushroom and cheese pizza (no cheese for Stuart), he hurried upstairs to his room, grabbed the money box, unscrewed the base, and tipped out the six remaining threepenny bits onto his bed. Flipping open the lid at the top, he inserted one of the coins into the slit beneath the hinge and gave it a push. There was an immediate twanging noise. He turned the tin upside down again, and the false bottom fell onto the bed. Then he turned it the right way and peered in. And read the words:

  TO MY NEPHEW

  CHAPTER 11

  For a moment Stuart seemed to stop breathing. Then he reached into the tin with shaking fingers and pried out a piece of yellowed card; it had been cut to exactly the right size, so it fitted snugly. On the other side of it was a message, written in penciled capitals. Stuart recognized the handwriting; he had seen it before, on the library request slip.

  I have to go away, and I may not be able to get back. If I don’t return, then my workshop and all it contains is yours if you can find it—and if you can find it, then you’re the right sort of boy to have it.

  Affectionately,

  Your uncle Tony

  P.S. Start in the telephone booth on Main Street.

  Stuart sat on the bed and listened to the noises from the kitchen: the tap of the knife on the chopping board, the swish of the dishwasher, the drone of a radio program on the history of public libraries in England.

  And as he listened, he suddenly realized something: the tin of threepenny bits, the secret message, this entire adventure had actually been meant for his father, but his father hadn’t been the right sort of boy. His father hadn’t been interested in dashing about having adventures, and the only clues he’d ever been good at were crossword clues. So for nearly fifty years Uncle Tony’s trail had gone cold, until Stuart had stumbled across the phone booth, and then the weighing machine, and now it was his journey. And perhaps Uncle Tony wouldn’t mind too much, just as long as the right sort of boy found the workshop in the end.

  And he realized too, that he would never go to Jeannie with the information, however large the reward she offered. This wasn’t about money; it was about an unfinished journey: a Horten family journey.

  He sat and thought for a while, clinking the little pile of threepenny bits as he did so. Each coin, he felt sure, had to have a different destination—a slot of its own.

  “Dad?” shouted Stuart through the open bedroom door.

  There was no reply. Stuart went all the way down to the kitchen and found his father listening intently to the radio, his knife poised in midair, a bit of onion speared on the end.

  “Dad,” repeated Stuart. “What sort of things did they make in the Horten factory? I know you told me, but I’ve forgotten.”

  For a moment his father didn’t move, and then, bizarrely, he began to recite a rhyme.

  “If it swivels, clicks or locks, You’ll read Horten’s on the box.

  If coins go in and gifts come out, It’s made by Horten’s; there’s no doubt!”

  “You know, I haven’t thought of that in decades,” he added happily. “They used to print it on the advertisements. In those days nearly every business in Beeton had a Horten’s coin-operated mechanism on the premises.”

  “Thanks,” said Stuart. He sprinted upstairs again, snatched a pencil and paper from his desk, and sat and concentrated, trying to remember all the subjects of the photographs that he’d seen in Modern Beeton: A Photographic Record.

  MAIN STREET—phone booth

  BANDSTAND

  MOVIE THEATER

  TRAIN STATION— weighing machine

  FAIRGROUND

  GAS STATION

  OUTDOOR SWIMMING POOL

  (ONE PHOTO MISSING)

  Then he fetched the Ordnance Survey map of Beeton that his father had bought at a local shop and spread it out across the bed. He marked the movie theater he’d ridden past on his bike, and also the park where he’d seen the bandstand. There was a field on the western outskirts of the town that was labeled Old Fairground, and five different buildings marked with a tiny drawing of a gas pump, but he could see no sign whatsoever of an outdoor swimming pool.

  “Any plans for tomorrow?” asked his father over their pizza supper.

  “I thought I might begin a summer project,” said Stuart casually. “Mapping the best bicycle routes in Beeton. If that’s okay?”


  “That sounds fascinating. Will you be approaching it from a schematic or a cartographic angle?”

  “Both,” said Stuart quickly, before his father could begin a discussion on the different methods of mapping. “And I’ll start right after breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Stuart’s first stop the next day was the movie theater, but when he got there, he realized that:

  a) It was closed until the afternoon.

  b) It was no longer a movie theater. It was a bingo hall.

  c) It was called the Gala.

  d) It was on Fitch Street, which meant that …

  e) It was the exact place where he’d be meeting Leonora tomorrow morning.

  Therefore it could wait. In any case, according to the notice outside, “Unaccompanied Children” were “Not Allowed In.”

  He pressed his nose against the window, but could see only a foyer with a swirly carpet and a shuttered box office. He got back on his bike and headed for the park.

  It was quite large, with a kids’ playground at one end and a grassy area at the other. The central portion was divided into a sweep of grass, with neat flower beds, and a large wild area—the Beeton Park Nature Reserve. Stuart peered through the chain-link fence but could see no interesting animals or birds, only a sludgy path through bulrushes and a cloud of midges.

  The bandstand was in the middle of the grass area. It was octagonal, with eight posts holding up the roof and a twisting wrought-iron railing around the edge of the raised platform. There were still traces of gold and red paint near the top of the posts, but the whole thing looked neglected and rusty. A large, weather-beaten bulletin board was fixed to the brickwork of the base, over which someone had stuck a poster advertising the Beeton Summer Festival.

  Stuart went up the steps to the empty platform. There was nothing at all to see, apart from a few cigarette butts and a dented Coke can. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he’d expected something—perhaps a machine (made in the Horten factory) that played a selection of brass-band tunes on insertion of a threepence. Feeling frustrated, he went back to where he’d left his bike, and took a moment to consult the map.

  Next stop, the old fairground.

  It took him ages to find it. That was because he’d been looking for a field. He’d imagined stumbling across a broken merry-go-round, all covered in ivy. What he found instead was a brand-new housing complex with a gate across the entrance and a bored-looking salesman sitting in a trailer next to it.

  “Thinking of buying something, Sonny?” he asked Stuart sarcastically. “Here, take a leaflet.”

  Stuart glanced at the cover.

  CAROUSEL PROPERTIES

  Exclusive homes at affordable prices.

  We won’t be taking you for a ride.

  “No, thank you,” Stuart said. He turned away, and then had a thought. “Before the new houses were built,” he asked, “was there anything here? Anything left over from when it was a fairground?”

  The salesman shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “You don’t think I live in this dump, do you? I drive over from Birmingham every day.”

  Stuart got back on his bike. Gas stations next, he thought.

  The first two were modern, the third had been converted into apartments, and the fourth demolished. The fifth, however, was empty and weed covered, with cracked pumps and a boarded-up store. Stuart walked all the way around the building. On one of the building’s side walls, some faded lettering was just about visible: BICYCLE REPAIRS. Below it on the ground were four shallow holes in the cement, as if something had once been fixed there.

  Stuart walked around the building a second time, and found nothing more. He sat on a wall and ate the interesting bits of his packed lunch, and then, feeling grim but determined, he biked back to the park.

  The bandstand was no more inspiring the second time, and there wasn’t a trace of a clue. Stuart leaned his elbows on the railing and looked out across Beeton Park. The playground was full of children, but the stretch of grass was almost empty, apart from a couple of dogs racing in circles. On the far side a man with a pair of binoculars was opening the gate into the nature reserve.

  Stuart closed his eyes and tried to think. Did I miss something? Something tiny and subtle? Something huge and blindingly obvious?

  He opened his eyes again. After a moment, he frowned. Over by the nature reserve there were now six men with binoculars lining up to go through the gate, and another nine or ten hurrying to catch up with them. Curious, Stuart left the bandstand and walked over. All the men were wearing raincoats and carrying cameras and notebooks, and they seemed strangely excited about something. The last of them was going through the gate into the reserve just as Stuart arrived; he was shorter than the others.

  “Excuse me, what’s happening in there?” Stuart called out.

  The man turned around, and Stuart saw that it was actually a tall boy, not much older than himself.

  “We’ve had a rarity alert,” said the boy. “A single specimen of Ixobrychus minutus.”

  “A what?” asked Stuart; it was like talking to his father.

  “A little bittern,” said the boy.

  “Is that a bird?”

  The boy looked at Stuart in amazement. “Of course it’s a bird!” he replied contemptuously. “It’s a bird of reed bed and swamp. Hence its appearance here.”

  “This isn’t a swamp,” said Stuart a bit crossly; he’d had an irritating sort of day, and now this boy was treating him like an idiot.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” said the boy. “The definition of swamp is an area of poor drainage. There used to be an outdoor swimming pool here, and when it was filled in, it created perfect swamp conditions. Only four little bitterns were seen in this country last year, and two of them were right here. Anyway, I’ve got to go now. Good-bye.”

  He went through the gate, and disappeared along a path between the reeds. For a moment Stuart was too stunned to move, and then a great wave of excitement whooshed through him, and he hurried after the boy along the same path.

  The reeds were very tall, and the tracks narrow and muddy. Stuart turned left and then right and then left again, and soon he no longer had any idea where the gate was. Every few minutes he’d stumble across a different group of men with binoculars. At the sound of his footsteps they’d turn to look at him accusingly, and he’d try to tiptoe past. So much mud had stuck to his sneakers that it looked as if he were wearing enormous brown slippers.

  The first sign of the outdoor swimming pool he saw was the old diving board, blotched with mold. It reared above the rushes like a Diplodocus in a primeval forest. Soon after that, he spotted a wooden bulletin board, a few feet off the path. He struggled through the reeds toward it and read the faded lettering:

  BEETON PARK

  SWIMMING POOL

  NO JUMPING

  NO RUNNING

  NO BALL GAMES

  Right next to it was a bench, its wooden slats rotten with age.

  “… Of course, this isn’t what you’d call an official nature reserve,” said a voice from the path. “There’s no restrictions whatsoever on who can visit, so schoolkids can just crash around all over the place, disturbing the wildlife. It’s not surprising we can’t find what we’re looking for …”

  Stuart quickly sat down on the edge of the bench, so that the passing group of bird-watchers couldn’t see him. He felt a bit indignant; he’d hadn’t crashed around at all, he’d been as quiet as a—

  There was a sudden weird barking noise just to his left. He turned his head and saw a bird perching on a dead branch. It had an orange bill and black wings, and it looked him straight in the eye before making the noise again. It sounded like a dog with laryngitis.

  A stampede of bird-watchers came back along the path, waving their binoculars excitedly. The bird called one more time, and then took to the air, flapping slowly away. The bird-watchers turned around again and stampeded after it.

  Stuart was still
staring at the branch that the bird—the little bittern—had been sitting on. It was a very odd branch, curved in a tight loop. He stood up and walked through the muddy undergrowth toward it. He reached out a hand and touched its rough, reddish surface. It wasn’t dead wood; it was metal. He parted the tangle of stems that surrounded the object and realized that he was looking at a turnstile. It was rusting and crooked, and on one side of it was a small box, with a slot for a coin.

  Slowly, he took another threepence from his pocket and placed it in the slot. Then he leaned against the rung of the turnstile and pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed harder. There was a horrible grating noise followed by the clatter of the coin dropping into the mechanism, and then the rung turned suddenly and Stuart shot through, tripped on a root, and fell flat on his face. He picked himself up—his jeans, his T-shirt, his entire body covered with mud—and looked back toward the turnstile. Nothing seemed to have changed.

  He gave the rung another tug, but it didn’t move. He looked at the slot and at the little box into which the money must have fallen. It looked different; one side was now sticking out slightly, like the edge of a door. He pried it open, reached inside for the threepence, and felt something that wasn’t a coin.

  He took out the object and stared at it.

  It was a key. A large, heavy back-door key.

  CHAPTER 13

  He meant to go immediately to Uncle Tony’s house—he meant to cycle there as fast as he possibly could, climb over the gate, and try that key in the lock—but as soon as he got out of the park, people began to point at him and laugh.

  “Help! Help! It’s the creature from the Planet Ooze!” called out a sniggering teenage girl, and it was clear that until he cleaned himself up, he was just too noticeable for secretive activities.

  He biked home on the quietest streets he could find. He’d have a shower, he thought, and change his clothes, and then he could go right out again without everyone in Beeton noticing him.