The Magic Spectacles

by James P. Blaylock

  He got up and began to walk around the room, stiff-legged, like a sleepwalker in a cartoon. He looked straight ahead of himself, as if he could see a thousand desserts in the air and was eating each one in his mind.

  “Meringues,” he said. “Jelly rolls, cinnamon rolls, sugar rolls, milk-doggies, monkey bread, popovers, pollyannas, pinky winkys, polliwogs, popinjays, poppolumps…” His voice rose like a tea kettle going off.

  “Stop him, quick!” shouted Aunt Flo.

  Polly clutched Mr. Deener’s arm and tried to steer him back to his chair. It was no use. He was crazy with the idea of food, and he wouldn’t sit down or keep still. He tried to rush toward the kitchen, but Polly still had hold of his arm, and Aunt Flo grabbed the tail of his coat and yelled, “Hurry, Mrs. Barlow!”

  Mr. Deener picked up a doily from the back of a chair and stuffed it into his mouth. He tried to chew it up. “Salt!” he shouted. His eyes blinked open and shut and he waved his arms, knocking a vase off a table. He began to shake, and the house shook with him.

  The dinner plates jumped and clanked. Glassware rattled in the cupboards and plaster dust fell from the ceiling where the hanging lamp swung back and forth. Rubble fell into the fireplace. Doors and windows banged open and shut. Danny and Polly scrambled under the dining room table. John ran for an open doorway, braced himself in the middle of it, closed his eyes, and held on. Mr. Deener’s eyes were mashed closed now. His hands groped in the air.

  There was a terrible creaking noise that grew louder by the moment, maybe from deep in the earth. The wind moaned and howled outside the windows, and there was the crash of thunder from the sky. It sounded as if the whole house, the whole hillside, the whole strange land, was shaking and blowing apart and in moments would collapse in a heap like a house of cards.

  Chapter 14: Glazed Doughnuts

  “Excuse me,” someone said to John, and tapped him on the shoulder. The house still swayed crazily and the air was full of a roaring sound. Holding on, John turned around, and there was Mrs. Barlow carrying a long wooden dowel strung with glazed doughnuts. “Coming through,” she said. John moved out of her way and she charged into the room, hurrying toward Mr. Deener, who was tottering back and forth and making loud smacking noises.

  Mrs. Barlow waved the doughnuts back and forth under his nose. Slowly he quit shaking. The roaring faded. The dishes in the cupboard clattered one last time and grew still, and the pictures on the wall quit swaying and righted themselves. The lamp in the ceiling swung slowly back and forth. John let go of the doorway, and Danny and Polly crawled out from under the table.

  “When the Deener is in one of his fits,” Mrs. Barlow said, “there’s no one but me who can settle him down. It’s doughnuts that does it – glazeys only. No cake doughnuts.”

  “I’ll just have one of those,” said Mr. Deener, opening his eyes. “Two of them, maybe.” He slumped in his chair. “The pup will need one too,” he said, whistling for Ahab, who looked out from behind the table where he had gone to hide during the shaking. “And some for the brothers, of course.”

  But then Mr. Deener took the whole line of doughnuts away from Mrs. Barlow and began to eat them all himself, in two bites each, gulping them down and sort of wheezing, as if he were catching his breath. In a moment there were only two doughnuts left, which he held over either eye, looking through them at John and Danny.

  “This is a doughnut scope,” he said to them. “You can see things through a doughnut. Windows and doors.” After saying this he ate both doughnuts at once, piled on top of each other and smashed together, like a doughnut sandwich.

  “Well!” said Mrs. Barlow. “Aren’t we a pig!” She set the water glasses upright on the table again.

  Mr. Deener breathed heavily. His hands twitched on the arms of his chair. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I was…”

  “Overcome,” said Polly helpfully. Then to John and Danny she said, “He can’t help himself when the fit comes over him. He has to have doughnuts, quick.”

  Danny whispered, “Won’t he eat anything else?”

  “Not when the fit’s on him,” Polly said. “When he has the fit, it’s got to be glazed doughnuts. Aunt Flo says it comes from remembering. Uncle Deener is what she calls a sufferer.”

  “Have we got any more?” Mr. Deener asked the cook. “Not for me, of course. I don’t want them. I’ve eaten plenty. You couldn’t make me eat another one. Not if you tried.” And with that he stopped talking and looked around, as if waiting for someone to make him try. “I mean for the pup,” he said. “And the brothers. Look at them, skinny as sticks. The goblins have eaten the candy that they were bringing for me. It’s a filthy shame. We must have another rod of glazeys, Mrs. Barlow!”

  “We know what your little game is, Deener,” said Mrs. Barlow, giving him a look. “You’ll snatch them up and eat them too, and the rest of us can go starve.”

  Ahab trotted over and licked Mr. Deener’s hand, which was all sugary from the doughnuts. Mr. Deener sighed deeply and said that Ahab understood him. And then Polly said that she understood him too. And Danny and John said that they did too, although actually John didn’t understand him at all.

  Mrs. Barlow went back into the kitchen and came back out with another stick of doughnuts, which Mr. Deener tried to snatch out of her hands.

  “Clods!” she shouted at him. “Dirt clods and muddy water!” Mr. Deener collapsed into his chair, squishing up his cheeks and eyes again.

  Mrs. Barlow passed out the doughnuts. Just for luck, John looked through the holes in the doughnuts, hoping that Mr. Deener’s “doughnut scope” wasn’t just nonsense. Maybe it was something he could write up in the science section of his book He couldn’t see anything unusual through them.

  “Save two for… for the Sleeper,” said Mr. Deener, rising sadly from his chair.

  “He won’t eat them,” said Mrs. Barlow. “You know very well he won’t. They’ll sit by his bedside and dry out. I say we tie the Sleeper up and make him eat one.”

  Aunt Flo said, “Never mind that. When he comes in from fishing he’ll need his sleep. The squirrels will eat the doughnuts right enough if the Sleeper lets them dry out. Nothing will be wasted. Mr. Deener is quite right.”

  “Fishing!” Mrs. Barlow said, as if she didn’t like the word. “Hmph!”

  “I’ll take them to his room,” said Polly, and she slipped the two glazed doughnuts off the dowel and hurried away toward a wooden stairs that angled up toward a second floor. Mr. Deener looked very sad again lone day he’ll catch his fish,” he said, wand then maybe things will change.”

  For a moment nobody spoke, although Mrs. Barlow looked like she wanted to. Then, cheerfully, Aunt Flo said, “Time for dinner.”

  The idea of dinner seemed to brighten Mr. Deener up even more. He shook John’s hand. “Which of the brothers are you?”

  “John.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Deener. “I’ve been waiting for your arrival, you know. You have such a preposterous last name – Kraken. Do you know what a Kraken is?”

  “No, sir,” John said.

  “It’s a giant sea creature – a squid or an octopus or some kind of nautilus. It pretends to be an island, and people come along on boats and pitch tents on it and eat picnic lunches, and then, in the middle of their sandwiches, it rises up and eats them. Very funny, eating your lunch on a squid’s back. Why didn’t they just name you squid?”

  John didn’t know what to say to that, so he smiled and shrugged, and just then Polly came back downstairs and said, “He’s back. Sound asleep.”

  Mr. Deener sighed very heavily. “Fish?” he asked.

  Polly shook her head, and Mrs. Barlow came in carrying a platter with a roast beef on it and potatoes and carrots heaped around. She laid it on a table set for all of them, herself included, and with one plate at the head of the table where no one sat. It was clearly intended for “the Sleeper,” whoever he was. Mr. Deener plucked up a big serving spoon and began to shovel potatoes
and slices of roast beef onto his plate, filling and filling and filling it until he had a sort of mountain of food. Then he looked up, surprised, and said, “For you, my dear,” and reached the plate across toward Polly, who shook her head politely.

  “I couldn’t eat half that much,” she said. “You have it, Uncle Deener. You look hungry.”

  “I am, and that’s the truth,” Mr. Deener said. He started to eat, wrinkling up his forehead and chewing very steadily through the whole-plate of food. Then he served himself another, and then called for pie when it was done, and ice cream for the pie, and coffee to go with it, all of which Mrs. Barlow brought in great quantity, telling him that she had a mind to serve him dirt cutlets or worm sandwiches or some other awful thing if he didn’t quit pigging the food up.

  “He eats for two,” Aunt Flo said, as if to explain Mr. Deener’s tremendous appetite.

  “I’m through,” said Mr. Deener. “I’m full up.” And he fed all the scraps to Ahab in a big heap. Then he said, “I’m going in to work,” and he nodded to everyone, saying to John and Danny, “I’m building a device for the purposes of exploring the moon.”

  “A telescope?” asked Danny.

  “No, a ladder,” said Mr. Deener, and he walked out with his hands clasped across his stomach and a toothpick in his mouth.

  “And you ought to go up to bed,” Aunt Flo said to Polly. “You can show the boys to their room.” Then she said to John and Danny, “We’ll get down to the business of helping you find your way home in the morning. Mr. Deener will see the way, if you’ll help him to see it. We’re all hoping that Mr. Deener will see the way’

  So they followed Polly up the stairs, passing the half-open door of the room where Mr. Deener worked. He was dressed in an apron now and was twining holly leaves and ivy vines onto the rungs of a rope ladder. Heaped on the floor were old books and a ribby old umbrella with all the fabric pulled off and a scattering of globes made of colored glass, like fishing floats, all of them the size of oranges.

  “You know the clothes you were sewing?” John asked Polly.

  “Are those for the little leaf men?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They’re called henny-penny men, actually.”

  “Where do they come from?” Danny asked.

  “Uncle Deener makes them,” Polly said. “He makes them up out of “spare parts”. That’s what he says. I told him I’d sew their clothes.”

  “Doesn’t he make any henny-penny women? “John asked.

  She shook her head. “He can’t. He tried once, but something went wrong and he had a terrible fit. You saw how he got tonight. It was like that, only worse.”

  They climbed the second flight of stairs to the third floor, where yet another set of stairs angled away into a sort of tower. Somewhere above them lay the Sleeper, with his glazed doughnuts beside him on a plate.

  Their bedroom had a fireplace of its own and was very cheerful with wood paneling and books and a big painting on the wall of two apes sitting in a tree, watching a crocodile go past on the ground below.

  After Polly left, Danny fell asleep right away. It had been a long and tiring day. John lay awake, watching the fire burning low in the grate and Ahab asleep in front of it. The curtains were drawn back, and leaves drifted past it on the night wind, maybe carrying henny-penny men. The sky was full of stars.

  They had been lucky to fall among friends instead of among goblins. But John missed his bedroom and his mother and father. He knew they would think that he and Danny were lost, and that they wouldn’t get any sleep that night at all. If only he could call them on the telephone and tell them that the two of them were safe and that Ahab was there with them.

  Thinking that way made him grow more and more sleepy and he began to dream about being home again. He and Danny were playing marbles in the backyard with Kimberly – or was it Polly? He dreamed that the back gate scraped open. It was Mr. Deener coming in, as if he lived there, as if it were his back yard. Only it wasn’t Mr. Deener all of a sudden; it was a great fat goblin, wearing rats for shoes.

  Part two of three

  Chapter 15: Upstairs in the Old House

  A noise woke John up. It was a crash, like glass breaking, and then someone saying “Ow!” very loudly. Then it was quiet again.

  “What was that?” Danny asked.

  John sat up in bed and looked around. There was still an orange glow from the fireplace, but the room was dark and full of shadows. “I don’t know,” John whispered. “Maybe it’s Mr. Deener, making his moon ladder.”

  “I think he wants to steal the glasses,” Danny said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Maybe,” John said. “Let’s be careful with them.” He climbed out of bed, found his jacket, and checked the pocket. There were the spectacles, safe and sound. Danny got up and stepped across to the door. He pushed it open softly. Light shined into the room from the lamp in the hallway.

  “Anybody out there?” John whispered.

  “No,” Danny said, “but I can hear him working downstairs, dragging things around.”

  Danny started pulling his clothes on: Here we go again, John thought. “We better not,” he said. “What if Polly or Aunt Flo wakes up and finds us messing around through the house? What are we going to tell them?”

  “We’re going to ask them how come they’ve got the Sleeper held prisoner upstairs.”

  “Prisoner?” John said. “He was out fishing earlier. What kind of prisoner is that?”

  But Danny was tying his shoes, getting ready to go out into the hall. “Wait!” John said, “I’m going too.” He wasn’t about to stay behind, even if this meant new trouble, which it probably did. He pulled his shoes on.

  (Chapter 15 continues after illustration)

  The house was quiet now. Even Mr. Deener had quit bumping around. The long hallway was empty and full of shadows, lit only by moonlight through the tall windows looking out toward the meadow. From outside came the sound of the wind. Floorboards creaked as they walked slowly toward the stairs that led up into the darkness of the tower. There was no moonlight on the stairs, and it was ghostly dark.

  “I’m not going,” John whispered.

  “Afraid of the dark?” Danny asked, putting a foot on the first stair.

  “No,” John said. “I’m just not stupid, that’s all.”

  Danny shrugged and started up without him. John hesitated for a moment, looked back down the empty hall, and then, holding on tight to the wooden handrail, he followed Danny up into the darkness. He held his breath. This was really dumb. A man lay sleeping in the room above, and they were going to walk in on him. What if the Sleeper woke up? What would they say?

  The stairway brightened, and they found themselves at the edge of a large round room. Again there were windows facing the meadow. The full moon hung in the sky like a lantern, shining through the windows and casting their crisscross shadows across the floor. They could see all the way to the woods beyond the meadow. Amid the dark trees there was the yellow glow of a goblin fire.

  John shivered, suddenly cold. He glanced around the room. A bed sat against the far wall, nearly hidden by a wide chair. Someone was lying in the bed – the Sleeper. His face lay in the shadow of the chair, shaded from the moonlight that shone ghostly-white on his nightshirt and sheet. He stirred uneasily in his sleep.

  On another wall sat a tall wardrobe with the door standing half open. It seemed to be full of white nightshirts, all hanging very neatly. On hooks beside the open door hung a half dozen pointed cloth nightcaps.

  John took a step backward, and then another one, feeling with his foot for the top tread of the stairs. It was wrong to be there, to be snooping in someone’s room. At any moment the Sleeper might awaken. Clearly the man wasn’t a prisoner. There wasn’t even a door on his room….

  Just then Danny pressed his finger to his lips and motioned for John to follow him. Silently he stepped across to get a closer look at the man who lay in the bed. Ready to turn and run, John followed him. Jus
t three steps more….

  There were the doughnuts beside the bed on a nightstand. The Sleeper hadn’t taken a bite. There was a full water glass, too, and an unopened book that was covered with dust.

  The man turned in his sleep, creaking the bedsprings. John grabbed the sleeve of Danny’s shirt. And then, suddenly, as if he had been jerked forward by a rope, he sat up. Moonlight shone on his face.

  It was Mr. Deener.

  Chapter 16: The Sleeper Puts on His Hat and Goes Out

  Danny turned and slammed into John, and they both stumbled back toward the open wardrobe and climbed in among the nightshirts. John reached out to close the door once they were inside. He left it open only a couple of inches, just so he could see the edge of the bed.

  The Sleeper flopped back down and began to breathe heavily and slowly. The minutes passed. Each time John started to push open the door to slip out, the Sleeper rolled over in bed, or mumbled something in his sleep, or made smacking noises with his mouth, and John had to snatch the door shut again.

  The nightshirts in the wardrobe smelled partly of mothballs and partly of the same kind of soap that had blown out of Mr. Deener’s gun. On the floor lay several pairs of bedroom slippers with fur around the ankles. There were no shirts or pants or shoes or any other daytime clothes.

  “No!” the Sleeper said suddenly. Then there was a long silence. John held his breath and listened. Finally, in a voice full of sadness, the Sleeper said, “I didn’t mean to. I would have been there. I should have been there. Where was I? Oh, don’t ask!” And he sobbed so hard that something rattled in his chest, as if part of him was broken.

  “It’s Mr. Deener!” Danny whispered.

  “It couldn’t be,” John said.