Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things

by Simon Van Booy

  “I’m going home?” Gertie said, sitting up. “When?”

  Kolt scratched his head. “Well, that’s the thing. You should be gone by now. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened. Most of my other visitors disappear within moments of meeting me.”

  Kolt examined the name sewn into Gertie’s gown.

  “How clever,” he said suspiciously. “Who would have thought to do such a brilliant thing. It’s as though you knew you were coming and wanted to hold on to something from your other life. . . .”

  “But I’m not sure it’s my gown,” Gertie admitted, lifting her arms. The fabric was now completely dry. “Seems too big.”

  “That’s true,” Kolt said. “Or you might have shrunk a little on your journey to Skuldark—or you might be someone who just happens to be wearing Gertie Milk’s clothes.”

  While it was true, Kolt explained, that Skuldark was not on any maps, occasionally people would accidentally stumble upon it, especially sailors who fell asleep at the helm and dreamed their way here. Usually, Kolt explained, the island had a way of flinging people back to where they had come from.

  But sometimes it took a bit longer, and night would come. Those who had not been returned to the world by then would usually meet grisly ends.

  Gertie felt chills as she remembered the skull and the bone wedged into the cliff.

  “That’s why whenever the B.D.B.U. notifies me of visitors, I always go out searching,” Kolt said, slicing more peach cake, and stuffing it into his mouth. “Ifeelit’smyduty tolookafterpeopleplonkedontotheisland—” he said before swallowing with a gulp. “Plus, I enjoy having guests for the short time they’re here.” He put some more cake in his mouth, “Theycomefromallwalksoflife,” he said, swallowing, “and history—which explains why some visitors are fascinated by the chemical composition of moonberries, while others are more interested in trying to burn down the cottage and drink my blood—but then the next minute they’re gone forever, back to their lives somewhere in history, leaving half-finished sentences, a few crumbs, and in the case of a sixth-century Goth barbarian—a pungent aroma.”

  “So . . . what time is it here then?”

  Kolt thought deeply for a moment. Then a tall grandfather clock near the bookshelves struck once.

  “Ah!” Kolt said. “It’s ten-thirty.”

  “No,” Gertie said, “In time . . . what year is it here?”

  “We don’t have years here, Gertie. Just endless cycles of nature.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, on Skuldark you can never be late . . . or too early either. Everything happens when it’s supposed to. Do you understand now?”

  Gertie was still perplexed, but didn’t want to appear rude.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll soon be flung back to where you came from, and that will be that.”

  Hearing this and having decided Kolt was kind and trustworthy, Gertie decided it was time to be honest, and reached into the pocket of her gown.

  “If I’m about to disappear any second, I should probably return this. I don’t know why I have it, but your name is written on the side. I promise I didn’t steal it.”

  Kolt’s eyes opened very wide, and he stood up and backed away from his chair.

  “It can’t be! No!” he cried. “I don’t believe it!”

  “I’m sorry for anything I’ve done,” Gertie stammered. “I promise I didn’t take it from you, or I don’t think I did.”

  Kolt’s shock quickly turned to exhilaration.

  “Of course you didn’t steal it!” he said. “It was given to you, it’s your key. My goodness! You’re here! Yippee! I can’t believe you made it!” Then he grabbed a magnifying glass off the table.

  “My goodness!” he chuckled, staring into Gertie’s enlarged ear. “You might be the last one, but the important thing is you made it here in one piece! Welcome, dear, dear friend, welcome to Skuldark!”

  “I might be the last of what?” Gertie said. “Who am I? Please tell me before I disappear!”

  “You’re not going to disappear.” Kolt smiled. “Definitely not. You have a Keepers’ key! This is a very special day!”

  He strode quickly to the wall of books on the other side of the room and began pulling volumes off the shelves. “It’s just so completely unexpected!” he cried. “I mean, I knew you were supposed to come, that one day you might arrive . . . but now that you’re here, I can hardly believe it!”

  “So I’m not going to disappear and go home?” Gertie said with disappointment. “Like the other visitors?”

  “No, you’re not! Because you’re not like the others—you have a key.”

  “But it’s your key,” Gertie insisted. “It has your name on it. K-o-l-t!”

  Kolt set down a giant book and turned to Gertie. “That’s not my name! It’s just what I call myself. K.O.L.T. stands for Keeper of Lost Things.”

  “Keeper of what?”

  “Lost things, Gertie. You’re the newest member of the ancient order of Keepers in a hundred years—Earth years that is.”

  “I am?”

  “Isn’t it marvelous!”

  Gertie looked at the letters engraved on the key again. She had so many questions buzzing around her head, it was hard to know which one to ask.

  “So what are Keepers?”

  “Keepers are very special people. I’m one!”

  “But you said your name was Kolt. . . . What’s your real name?”

  “I really don’t know. I wasn’t lucky enough to be wearing a gown with a name stitched into the fabric when I arrived on Skuldark.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  “I woke up one morning on the north side of the island at the base of Ravens’ Peak, with hundreds of black birds circling over me. I was terrified.”

  “You said I’m the newest Keeper in a hundred years, so how long have you been here?”

  “Many cycles, Gertie, but we can talk about all this once you’ve rested. I promise to answer any and all of your questions in the morning.”

  He returned from the bookshelf and flopped down beside Gertie in the other chair. The flames crackled and made their faces glow.

  “I always knew another Keeper would arrive someday,” Kolt said quietly. “I just never imagined it would be a little girl.”

  Gertie sat up straight and raised her arms. “I’m not that little,” she said, “I just look little because this gown is so enormous!”

  7

  A Face in the Mirror

  HER ENTIRE BODY HURT and sleep pulled on her eyes. After taking her cloth shoes from a hook beside the fire, Gertie followed Kolt down a narrow corridor hung with gold-framed paintings, portraits, and other strange things, including a glass case displaying a doll made out of human hair. Wooden floorboards creaked with each step, and nautical deck lanterns (which Kolt said often washed up on Skuldark from sunken ships) cast a warm glow—illuminating their way through the mysterious cottage.

  “My chambers are here on the left side of the hall,” Kolt said, pointing to a wooden door with a brass hand knocker. “But usually I doze in one of those big armchairs by the fire.”

  At the end of the corridor was another door with a brass unicorn-head knocker. On the wall next to the door was an empty glass case with a silver plaque that read:

  ON THE NINTH OF OCTOBER, 1756,

  THE PISTOL IN THIS CASE WAS STOLEN

  BY MR. ALLEN HUNT

  FOR THE PURPOSE OF MURDER

  “This will be your room.”

  “Thanks but I don’t want a room. I want to disappear like all the others, but if that’s not going to happen, then can you help me find my way home?”

  Kolt smiled awkwardly. “Yes, of course, but for tonight—or until we get you home—you can stay here.”

  But Gertie wouldn’t move. For the first ti
me since waking up on the beach, she had no idea what to do. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Please tell me I’m going to wake up and find out all this was a horrible nightmare?”

  “I want to say yes, Gertie. . . .”

  Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  Kolt placed both hands on her shoulders, and turned her toward the door.

  “Go to sleep now, and in the morning we’ll make a list of all the things you remember the names for, the first step to finding out where you’re from.”

  Still sobbing, Gertie nodded.

  “Use your key to enter,” Kolt told her. “And always keep your door locked. It’s your private place. If I ever want you I’ll use the unicorn door knocker.”

  The bedroom was a cheerful yellow, with creamy white wood panels that went from the floor halfway up the wall.

  “I’ve always liked this room,” Kolt said, “the yellow and white make me think of pineapple chunks and ice cream.”

  “I know pineapple!” Gertie said, recalling its tart sweetness, “and I know peaches . . . but I don’t know what ice cream is. That’s another clue isn’t it?”

  “You’ve never heard of ice cream! Where on earth can you be from where there’s no ice cream? Which reminds me, feel free to bring food in here in case you get hungry at night and don’t feel like going all the way to the kitchen—where I’m sure some silly thing left on the main table such as Cleopatra’s dried scorpion brooch or Captain Cook’s bowl of shrunken heads would almost certainly dampen your appetite.”

  A bed had been fashioned in an alcove beneath some windows and looked comfortable with white sheets and a quilt. There were gray drawers built into a wall, a wardrobe that could be locked, and a room off to the side with a sink, toilet, and claw-foot bathtub. The floorboards were very wide, and a much lighter color wood than the ones in the corridor. Kolt said they had been cut from enchanted hemlock trees of Fern Valley.

  “The good thing about this room, Gertie, is that with Skuldarkian hemlock, you’ll be quite safe.”

  “You mean from beasts outside? From the worms and millipedes?”

  “No, from splinters, though that reminds me . . . do make sure the windows are closed by dusk, as many creatures are attracted to light. They think it’s the moon for some reason, though what the little fools would do if they actually got to the moon, I don’t know!”

  At the end of the bedroom was a varnished spiral staircase that led up to the second floor of Gertie’s quarters, where, Kolt said, she’d find “a desk, free-standing easel, writing and drawing implements, computer-typewriter, photocopier, fax machine—though it’s just for show and not connected to anything—an entire wall of books, fiction and reference, a back wall of windows looking out over the sea, a free-standing Italian telescope from the sixteenth century, an exercise bike, a rowing machine, free weights, and a long velvet couch for daydreaming. There’s no microscope, Gertie, because I had to give it back, but if you look through the telescope the wrong way, you’ll be amazed.”

  Gertie stared around the bedroom Kolt said was now hers, and felt like an imposter—as though she was taking over somebody else’s life, while hers was left hanging somewhere, vital and unfinished.

  « • • • »

  After her host had gone and Gertie was alone, she sat very still on her new bed. It was a nice room, warm and private—though the wardrobe looked creepy, and every corner of the ceiling had been webbed smooth by a different spider. She still had so many questions but knew for now she must sleep.

  Before closing her eyes, Gertie forced herself to get up and use the bathroom. When she turned the dial that operated the wall lamps, she found a stranger staring back in the bathroom mirror. It was a feeling most people will never have—to see their own face and not recognize it.

  But what shocked Gertie the most was not the intense gaze, or fizz of her hair—but the crimson birthmark that completely covered one side of her face.

  She caressed it, wondering how she had felt about it before losing her memory. Was it something she had tried to cover with her hair? A shameful mark that had kept her inside, away from glances that drained her confidence?

  Gertie wondered if this birthmark was the reason she had been chosen as a Keeper . . . whatever a Keeper was. She thought that discovering such a vivid detail should have brought her closer to her real life, helped her recall something, anything, like a drop of color into something clear—but those memories seemed lost forever. The more she lived now, the stronger this new girl became, this Keeper person who fought giant worms and tunneled through mountains but was too shy to ask if she could sit down.

  How long . . . Gertie thought, before this new sense of self became stronger than the one she had lost? Would it be weeks or days before it covered over what remained of her real personality, drowning out the voices of those who had loved her?

  « • • • »

  In the middle of the night, Gertie shot up in bed, damp with sweat. For a split second she wondered where she was. Then her recent memories washed over her. The falling skull and white birds galloping through the fog. The journey under the mountain. Then Kolt and the Slug Lamps. Being told she was a Keeper and that she would not be going home.

  But a Keeper of what? Growing and shrinking spices? Books? Beetles? Guard Worms? Moonberries?

  She got up and padded barefoot to her bathroom, locating the toilet without turning on the light.

  Then just as she was about to return to bed, she heard a faint tap, tap, tap.

  It was coming from under the tile floor. She kneeled in the darkness and laid her ear upon the cool ceramic. There it was again. A tapping deep underground. For a split second she imagined the earth churning with insects, like the millipedes at the edge of Fern Valley. Perhaps one had gotten under the house, and was wrapping itself around the pipes, gnawing at them with its teeth?

  But then she heard it again, and Gertie felt certain it wasn’t some insect, as there was a pattern to it, a sort of rhythm to the tapping—an intelligence even.

  She looked for the biggest pipe in the bathroom, then rapped on it with her hand. But her fingers were too soft, so she got her key from the bedside table and struck the pipe loudly five times. Tap, tap, tap, tap, TAP!

  Nothing happened, then moments later she heard tap, tap, tap, tap, TAP! in the same pattern. Gertie tapped seven times, and then, after a moment, seven taps echoed back from somewhere deep under the floorboards.

  Suddenly there was a violent knocking on her door

  “GERTIE! GERTIE! It’s me, Kolt! Are you there?”

  She rushed out of the bathroom and opened the door to find Kolt standing before her in a panic.

  “Phew!” he exclaimed, wiping his forehead. “I thought you’d been kidnapped by the thing under the cottage!”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing making all that noise under the floor! I’m not sure exactly what it is yet. I’ll have to investigate. But I warn you, it may not be human.”

  “But it can count,” Gertie said, holding up her key. “I’ve been testing it.”

  Kolt nodded, “If you say so. I just hope we’re not dealing with Losers.”

  “But if someone’s trapped under the house it’s not their fault.”

  “Not losers, Gertie, Losers with a capital L,” Kolt said. “And they don’t deserve anything but scorn. They’re a group of very, very nasty people. Their mission is to create as much loss in the world as possible. It’s one of the reasons I got Johnny, the Guard Worm, in case any Losers found their way to Skuldark.”

  “But what if I’m a Loser?” Gertie asked.

  “Well, you have a key, which makes you a Keeper. Losers can’t be Keepers. In fact, they’re the exact opposite. Now, go back to bed while I get to the bottom of this tapping.”

  Gertie folded her arms. “I want to come with
you.”

  “I’ll give you the basement tour tomorrow, Gertie, as it’s, well . . . rather a lot to take in.”

  “Maybe I can help?” she said, secretly wondering if the person (or thing) tapping was trying to signal her, as though it knew who she was, and where she was from.

  “Help?” Kolt said, thinking for a moment. “The real question is, how brave are you feeling?”

  “I’d rather be with you than left alone up here.”

  “I suppose if you’re to be the next Keeper, there’s no point putting it off.”

  Kolt disappeared for a few moments, then reappeared with a pile of clothes.

  “I picked these out from the Sock Drawer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll show you later. Get dressed and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  Gertie could hear him racing around the cottage as she changed into a pair of black denim overalls and gold high-top sneakers with a sole that lit up neon green whenever she took a step. The tapping sound under the cottage was now a frantic banging that echoed through the pipes—as though whatever was going on had gotten much, much worse.

  When Gertie got to the kitchen, Kolt was wearing a black bowler hat and gulping tea.

  “There you are, Gertie,” he said, setting down his mug and sweeping a floor rug to the side with his shoe. Underneath was a heavy trapdoor Kolt lifted open to reveal a steep stone staircase.

  “Down here, quick! Follow me!”

  8

  What Lives Beneath

  KOLT WAS MOVING SO QUICKLY that Gertie stumbled and almost fell down the stairs. The passageway must have been carved directly into the cliff, because the walls were made of rock, and the staircase was very narrow.

  “How deep does this basement go?” she asked, afraid that Kolt was taking her into the mountain again.

  “Well, it’s a bit more than a basement, Gertie, you’ll see. . . .”

  Stone hands along the rock wall gripped flickering torches. And with each step, Gertie’s sneakers turned everything neon green.