The Magic Spectacles

by James P. Blaylock

  He closed his eyes and opened them again.

  It was still there.

  Beyond it, past the grassy bluffs that made up the front lawn, lay the ocean, vast and green and with breakers crashing along a rocky shore. There were no other houses in sight. There was no street, no neighborhood, no cars or people, only the house sitting all alone at the edge of the sea.

  The lawn behind the house was clipped and green, with a patch of vegetable garden at the back of the grass and then a deep woods running away uphill to where the trees and everything else in the world disappeared in cloud drift. All was silent except for the cry of sea gulls and the sighing of the ocean.

  Danny followed Ahab across the hillside toward the edge of the woods. He knew that he hadn’t gotten home; he was as far away from home as ever. He had found another piece of Mr. Deener’s magic. There was something false and unnatural about it, and it was no more like his house than a bat is like a bird.

  Suddenly it struck him then that he couldn’t see any seagulls even though their cries repeated themselves every half minute or so, like a recording. And the sea waves broke on the rocks with the same hissing and sighing and crashing, over and over, as regular as breathing.

  The trail from the cave struck a bigger path leading down from the top of the valley. He and Ahab followed it along the edge of the trees toward the back of the house, When they got to the garden Ahab stopped and wouldn’t go any farther, but sat down and put his head on his paws. What had looked like a vegetable garden from up on the hill was nothing but a patch of weeds. Danny watched the back of the house, not wanting to get any closer.

  Someone moved beyond the kitchen window. Danny pulled on Ahab’s leash, stepping back in among the trees at the edge of the woods. It was a woman in the kitchen, working at the sink. Even though Danny hadn’t looked at the clinker flowers or seen the moon up close, he knew she was Mr. Deener’s dead wife; what was her name? – Velma.

  Then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, she disappeared, blinking away like a goblin fire. There she was again, in the back bedroom now, sweeping the window sill clean with a whisk broom. Beneath that window, spread out over the grass, were odds and ends of Mr. Deener’s apparatus. There were china plates on forked sticks and big globes of clear glass and strings of prisms hung on kite string. And there was more apparatus beyond the corner of the house, back by the garage. On the driveway sat a pyramid built out of jars full of glass chips that shone like goblin jewels in the morning sunlight.

  More glass magic; that’s all it was. It was worth about as much as a hat full of dirt, except that you could wear the hat once you emptied the dirt out. A house built of magic wouldn’t even keep out the rain. Danny suddenly had enough of it. Goblins or no goblins, it was time to go back into the cave and try again. He didn’t want anything more to do with Mr. Deener and his magic.

  He looked away up the hill. From where he stood it looked almost round, like the top of Mr. Deener’s head. The door into the cave stood open like a dark eye looking out onto the sea. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Ahab, and then stepped forward into the garden. There was a crunching under his foot, and he looked down to see a broken piece of what must have been a gigantic clinker flower. Its edges were dark with dirt and soot. More fragments lay scattered in the weeds, as if the clinker flower had burst apart like a ripe toadstool.

  Holding onto Ahab’s leash, he took off running, back up the path along the woods, cutting off across the grass toward the door in the hillside. He slowed down only when the hill got steeper, but he didn’t stop. Ahab ran ahead of him now, yanking him along. It was just when he got to the open door that he saw someone come out of the woods up the valley, walking down the path toward the ocean. He stepped into the darkness of the cave and watched. It was Mrs. Barlow.

  At first he thought the wind had started up and was blowing stuff out of the trees, because she was surrounded by big sycamore leaves that dipped and twirled and flew in wide circles around her head, darting down the path and back up it again. Then he knew it was henny-penny men, charging along in front of her as if trying to make her hurry up.

  He almost stepped out into the sunlight and waved at her, but he stopped himself. He still had five candles left to burn. Nothing had changed. Mr. Deener had pretty clearly gone off his chump, as their father would say. Let Mrs. Barlow see to him. The best thing to do was try the cave again. If the goblins were still messing around in the treasure room, then he and Ahab would run right through the middle of the silly little creeps and straight out through the other door.

  He let go of the leash in order to light a candle, and then he set out down the shadowy corridor. As the tunnel curved, the sunlight disappeared behind him, and the darkness settled in. He walked slowly and softly, ready to run.

  Then, suddenly, there arose a sort of mad cheering from the treasure room ahead. He heard the terrible laughter of the big goblin. A shout followed the laughter, and not a goblin shout, either. There was a scream. …

  Ahab barked and leaped forward, into the darkness, dragging the leash behind him. The tags on his collar jingled once, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 15: The Runaway Marbles

  John threw his hands out and twisted in the air, grabbing for the edge of the cauldron. In that moment he saw a gray blur and felt something smash into him, and suddenly he wasn’t falling anymore. He was knocked backward, slamming into the goblin king and bowling him over, and the two of them tumbled through the dozen goblins that a moment ago had tried to throw him into the pot.

  There was a wild barking and growling and goblins fled away on every side, pushing and shoving and poking each other, stumbling over the piled up treasure. John realized suddenly that it was Ahab they were running from. Ahab had come to save him! John pushed himself to his knees, looking around for Danny. Maybe the lost jacket didn’t mean anything at all. …

  The king scrambled toward where Polly was trying to yank herself out of the grip of three yowling goblins. He was hooting and yipping waving the doughnut monocle in one hand and the sticks-and-rags crown in the other. Just then Danny ran out of the darkness at the back of the cavern. He waded straight across the top of the treasure, knocking helter skelter through the goblins.

  The king tried to shove the crown onto Polly’s head and to hurry her toward the cavern door, but Danny leaped from atop a pile of treasure and landed on his back and the two of them stumbled forward as Polly pulled free of the king’s grasp. The king threw his hands out to catch himself, and the doughnut monocle flew into the air, turning over and over in the glow of the torches so that a kaleidoscope of green light flashed and flared on the cavern walls.

  John leaped for it: he took one step up onto a wooden crate of treasure and threw himself into the air, reaching upward. His fingers touched the twirling stick. He closed his hand over it as he fell, rolling into a gunnysack stuffed with dead fish and jumping straight to his feet. With his free hand he picked up the sack, spilling out fish, and twirled it around and around his head, aiming to throw it at the pack of goblins that were rushing to help the king.

  Ahab’s furious barking filled the air as he ran in circles around the kettle, chasing goblins. The kettle rocked and shuddered, and black water and fish skeletons and no end of jewelry and dead leaves and bones and muck washed over the side, hitting the floor with a whoosh of boiling steam. John let go of the bag, and it flew out of his hand like a meteor. But instead of bowling over the mob of goblins, it sailed straight toward the kettle, which was just then rocking forward and spilling out a dark wave of goblin brew, dangerously close to crashing down from its rocky shelf.

  The bag hit the side of the kettle with a wet whump. The kettle tilted, balancing on edge for one long moment, and then dropped to the floor and cracked to pieces like an iron Humpty Dumpty. The spindly little stand that held the fishbowl was knocked flying. The fishbowl itself flew like a ball through the uprushing steam, high overhead toward the back of the cavern where it shattered aga
inst the rock wall.

  A great cry went up from the goblins and at the same time a billow of cold fog whirled from the broken kettle and from the lake of dark water on the floor. Jewels began to pop and snap like ice cracking, and the fog rose so thick and dense that it began to rain little crystal droplets of cold glass. John ran toward the broken fishbowl and so did Polly. Danny whistled for Ahab, and then took off in the same direction, away from the goblin king, who covered his head with both hands, leaping and dancing as if the falling droplets were bumblebees.

  John snatched a burning torch from its niche in the wall and waved it over the ground. The marbles were gone. Shards of fishbowl glass lay everywhere, but on the smooth rock floor of the cavern there wasn’t a single marble to be seen. At first he thought they had vanished, but then, from the direction of the overturned kettle, eight little marbles came rolling in a line, right past the toe of Danny’s shoe and straightaway down the dark tunnel.

  “There they go!” John said, pointing at the marbles as they rolled past and disappeared into the darkness. But he could see that these were smaller than the fishbowl marbles – a couple were pee-wees, as tiny as the eyes of a fish. They were marbles out of the kettle, partly boiled away. Everyone set out running, following after them, John carrying the torch in one hand and the doughnut monocle in the other. Faster and faster the marbles rolled, downhill now in a neat little line.

  “They’re heading for the door!” Danny shouted, and just about then they rounded the last bend in the tunnel and the door appeared ahead of them, still wide open, the sun shining through and the green grass of the hillside visible beyond. John tossed the torch away. He wouldn’t need it now.

  Already the marbles were gaining speed, pulling ahead. They rolled straight out through the open door, down the trail that led to the sea. And no more than twenty feet ahead of them rolled another line of marbles, maybe a hundred of them, glinting in the sunshine. It was the marbles out of the broken fishbowl. They bounced and leaped, hopping over stones and twigs.

  It was no use trying to keep up. John was out of breath. Danny and Ahab passed him, and he quit running. Clearly they weren’t going to catch up with the marbles. Polly quit running too, and walked along beside him. It was then that John looked around and saw the house on the ocean. He stopped in his tracks and stared at it.

  It was his house; there could be no doubt about that. He looked at the wild and lonesome scenery roundabout, and at Mr. Deener slowly sweeping the front walk with a broom, and at the marbles racing downhill toward him, and at the empty ocean stretching away as far as he could see.

  “That is my house,” he said to Polly.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think it’s Mr. Deener’s house.”

  Chapter 16: In the House of Dreams

  They found Mrs. Barlow in the garden, sitting on the bench alone. Her head leaned on her hand, as if she was weary and sad. The bag of doughnuts lay in the dirt among broken pieces of clinker flower. The full moon shone overhead, flat and white like a painting on vast sheet of blue window glass.

  “It’s all up with the Deener,” she said to them. “His head’s as dense as a cabbage.”

  “Does he have the bag of memories?” Polly asked. “He hasn’t thrown them into the ocean, has he?”

  “Oh, he’s still got them all right,” Mrs. Barlow said. “He walks to the edge of the ocean and stands there staring. Then he walks back into the house. He’s done that three times. I spoke to him, but he won’t say a thing. He just stares, like his head’s already lost in fog. Maybe he used to listen to me a little bit. I thought he did. Not now, though. Not anymore. You can shout in his ear, but the words just rattle around in his head like rocks in a can. And he’s… she’s….”

  Mrs. Barlow couldn’t finish the sentence. Her breath caught in her throat. She shook her head and tried again. “There’s the clinker ghost of poor Velma Deener inside.”

  Polly put her hand on Mrs. Barlow’s shoulder. “We’ll talk to him,” she said. “Don’t worry. Maybe we can still make him see.”

  She shook her head. “He’s lost in magic,” she said, gesturing toward the house and the ocean. “He’s stupid with it. He meddled with it so long that his brain turned into moonbeams and toadstools. He’s a hopeless old fool, and so am I. I’ve plumb run out.”

  “Well I haven’t,” Danny said. “I’m going in there.”

  “And I’m going with you,” John said. His brother’s eyes seemed suddenly to be smouldering, just like when he had stared down Harvey Chickel in the driveway – when was it? Day before yesterday? It seemed like the distant past. “Let’s go,” he said, and with Danny, Ahab, and Polly following he led the way around the side of the house.

  Henny-penny men hovered outside the windows, looking into the kitchen, their leaves darting this way and that way through the air, Mrs. Deener worked at the counter inside, washing dishes in a sink overflowing with pink soap bubbles. The bubbles rose from the sink and drifted straight through the windows even though they were closed tight, as if the window glass was simply another one of Mr. Deener’s illusions. The henny-pennies sailed their leaves into the glass trying to get through, but the leaves bounced off, and the soap bubbles popped roundabout the little men, answering them with pink drops.

  Mr. Deener himself crouched on the walk in front of the house. It was a little concrete path that ended on the weedy beach. An old broom was tilted against a hibiscus bush with big orange flowers on it, and half the path was swept clean. The line of fishbowl marbles lay in the grass, bumped up against the edge of the walk, and Mr. Deener, wearing a beat-up old hat on his head, held the bag of memories open in his hand, one by one picking up the marbles and putting them into the bag with the others. The bag rattled and jumped as if it were full of live mice, and Mr. Deener’s face seemed to shift and squinch up and leap around with it, like the face of a man being stung by bees.

  From the front yard, it was clear that something was wrong with the house, something off-key, like goblin music. A misty sort of ghost light swirled around it, and the windows themselves seemed one moment to be glass, with sunlight shining off the panes, and the next moment to be dark, empty air, like the shadows of windows. Smoke tumbled up out of the chimney like steam out of a kettle.

  Mr. Deener didn’t even see them. He tied off the mouth of the bag, then turned and looked for a moment at the ocean. Like the moon in the sky, the sea looked like a painting on a window, and it seemed to John as if shadows moved beneath its surface – maybe the shadows of vast, dark whales, or maybe the shadows of evening traffic moving along the roads and avenues of another world.

  Mr. Deener swung the bag in his hand, and for a moment John thought that he was going to pitch it into the sea. Then, without a glance in their direction, he walked into the house and shut the door, taking the marble bag with him. Ahab lay down on the lawn then and put his head on his paws. When John and Danny and Polly walked up onto the porch he didn’t follow, but turned around and ran back up along the side of the house toward where they had left Mrs. Barlow.

  John knocked on the door. The knock echoed through the house like the tolling of a clock. He could barely feel the door if its insides had against his knuckles. The wood was papery, as if it had been eaten by termites. A minute passed and nothing happened.

  John knocked again, harder, and Polly shouted, “It’s us, uncle Deener. We’ve come for a visit!”

  There was the sound of footsteps. The door swung open and there stood Mr. Deener. He seemed barely to recognize them. He didn’t smile, and he didn’t look like a happy man.

  “We were just out taking a walk,” Danny said.

  “First rate,” Mr. Deener said. “What a capital idea. A good day for it.” He started to shut the door, but Danny put his foot in the way. Mr. Deener smashed his face up, pulling his head down into his collar, as if he were going to have one of his fits.

  “Won’t you let us in, uncle Deener?” Polly asked.

  “I know that
voice,” Mr. Deener said, opening one eye. “Is it really Miss Polly?”

  “Of course it is,” John said. “You remember Polly. It’s us, too – the Kraken brothers.”

  Mr. Deener looked hard at John. “What an absurd name,” he said. “I don’t remember it.”

  “Yes you do,” Danny said. “Try.”

  “I remember…what I choose to remember,” Mr. Deener said. “You can come in for a moment, but don’t touch anything. No mud on the carpet, if you don’t mind, and no fingerprints on the window glass. I can’t offer you anything to eat, I’m afraid.”

  He swung the door open and let them in. Mrs. Deener moved back and forth in the kitchen, appearing and then disappearing, first at the counter, then at the kitchen table, then at the counter again. She didn’t seem to know they were there. She wore an apron and yellow potholder gloves, which she shoved into the sink full of soapy dishes.

  In the living room the furniture was covered with doilies, and there were flowers in a vase on the table. They weren’t any kind of flowers that John had seen before, and when he sniffed them, they didn’t smell like anything at all. Up close they looked as if they were made from cobweb or had been spun out of moonlight. Almost nothing in the house was really solid or was quite the right color. It was a ghost house, through and through, and it was dim and dark inside, like an aging memory.

  “Nice flowers,” John said, gesturing with the doughnut monocle at the vase.

  Mr. Deener seemed to see the monocle for the first time, he turned his face away, as if he didn’t like the look of it. “Won’t look through it,” he said.

  “No one’s asking you to,” Danny said, and John shook his head at his brother. There was no use being impolite. Mr. Deener was like a piece of thread pulled very tight. Another little yank and he’d snap.

  John put the monocle behind his back, and Mr. Deener sat down in a big, comfortable-looking chair, holding the bag of memories on his lap. The chair seemed real enough, more solid than anything else in the room. Maybe that was because he had known it so well. He had sat in it ten thousand times, so he remembered it clearly. His eyes stared out the window now, toward the sea. The walls of the house didn’t keep the sea breeze out very well at all.