The Magic Spectacles Page 7

  “It is,” Danny said. “I saw him straight on. It’s Mr. Deener. The Sleeper is Mr. Deener!”

  “Shh!” John whispered. The bed creaked, and the Sleeper’s feet swung off the mattress and onto the floor. He stood up. John could see him clearly now. Maybe it was just the moonlight, but what he looked like was the ghost of Mr. Deener. He stepped into his bedroom slippers and then stood there for a moment like a man who has forgotten something but can’t quite remember what. He turned toward the wardrobe, and John flattened himself against the back wall, pulling the nightshirts across in front of his face and peering between them.

  Very slowly the Sleeper walked to the wardrobe door. Both his hands reached out. For a moment they hovered there, waving in the air like the hands of a sleepwalker in a cartoon. Then the hands moved, and John heard the rattle and scrape of the fishing pole as the Sleeper picked it up from where it lay tilted against the edge of the wardrobe. Muttering, he turned and shuffled in his slippers toward the stair, carrying the fishing pole with him.

  When the sound of his footstep faded, John and Danny climbed out into the room. There were noises from below again –bumping, scraping, and the sound of Mr. Deener’s voice singing the same loony song he had sung on the road that night. So, what did that mean? That there was a Mr. Deener upstairs and a Mr. Deener downstairs? The Sleeper looked like Mr. Deener; the goblins looked like Mr. Deener; the henny-penny men looked like Mr. Deener; the whole place was full of Mr. Deeners, all of them acting like nuts.

  John slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and took out the spectacles just to make sure they were safe. The moonlight through the window shone on an old pair of broken reading glasses with black plastic frames. The spectacles were gone.

  Chapter 17: Making a Goblin

  “They’re gone!” John said out loud.

  Danny was already at the top of the stairs, ready to follow the Sleeper down. “What?” he asked. “What’s gone?”

  “The spectacles. They’re gone. They were in there when I went to bed. I checked. Look.” He held out the glasses from his pocket.

  “He stole them!” Danny said. “That’s what woke us up. He came into the room and stole them. Heck.”

  “Maybe,” John said. “Maybe….”

  “Maybe nothing,” Danny said. “It’s a good thing you were keeping them safe. Again.” He turned around and started down the stairs, into the darkness below.

  “Wait,” John said. “Where are you going?”

  “To get them back,” he said, not even slowing up.

  John wanted to argue. It wasn’t his fault that the glasses were stolen, any more than it had been his fault when they’d broken in the woods. But there was no use arguing if Danny wasn’t there to argue back. John started down the stairs himself, hurrying to catch up. Danny was right about Mr. Deener, anyway Mr. Deener had wanted the glasses. The goblins wanted them. The henny-pennies wanted them….

  Danny went straight across the hall at the bottom of the stairs without even looking to see if it was safe. He passed down into the darkness again, and John bolted across the hallway after him, both of them crossing another hallway at the bottom of the second set of stairs and going on down to the ground floor. There was a glow of light from the distant kitchen and another from the open doorway of Mr. Deener’s laboratory, but otherwise it was dark. Mr. Deener’s singing had suddenly stopped, and John could hear water splashing, as if in a sink. There was no sign of the Sleeper.

  Danny slowed down, flattening himself against the wall outside the laboratory. He held his finger to his lips, as if he thought John was about to start talking. Together they peeked around the corner of the door. Mr. Deener stood with his back to them, washing his hands in a bowl of water that sat on a high wooden table. Pink bubbles floated up out of the bowl, and water slopped over the edge and onto the table. The air was full of the smell of goblin soap.

  “I’m the saddest man alive!” Mr. Deener cried, and his voice shook with big, humping sobs. “I can’t wash it out! All the soap in the world isn’t enough!”

  There were tall glass windows beyond him, like skinny doors, side by side in the wall. One of them was open. Its thin curtains blew inward on the night wind, and moonlight shone through it. The shadow of someone in a pointed cap and loose shirt moved through the night beyond the curtains. John could see the silhouette of the fishing pole in his hand just before he disappeared into the shadow cast by the trees.

  A flurry of autumn leaves blew in through the window just then and scraped across the wooden floorboards, dancing around Mr. Deener’s feet. He began to hum, but the humming had no tune to it. Like goblin music it was just a mess of sounds.

  He took the bowl of water off the table and lay it on the floor. Then he stepped across to an old bookcase, reached in among the books, and pulled down a glass jar, which he set on the table. Moonlight glowed through the jar. It was filled to the top with chips of colored glass, red and green and yellow and blue, all stirred together in a circus of colors.

  He reached high over his head to where a rope dangled in the air, leading up into the darkness of the high ceiling. There was a creaking noise when he pulled on the rope. He let it go with a snap, and the end of the rope flew up into the air, and there was the sound of something rushing downward like a bucket down a well. A window appeared from above, jerking to a stop in front of the table. It looked exactly like Mrs. Owlswick’s window.

  Danny stood up and stepped into the opened doorway. John lunged forward and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him back into the shadows. “Wait!” John whispered into his ear.

  (Chapter 17 continues after illustration)

  “That’s our window!” Danny whispered back to him. “He stole that too!”

  “If that’s our window, then good,” John said. “At least it’s safe. At least we know where it is. But probably it’s a window just like ours. Let’s see what he’s up to.”

  Mr. Deener’s humming suddenly stopped, and both John and Danny held their breath, waiting. Had he heard them? John peeked past the door frame again. Mr. Deener stood very still in front of the table. He seemed to be looking into the jar of glass chips as if it were a crystal ball. His hair blew in the wind through the open window, and his coat-tails danced.

  Silver moon beams shined into the room, drifting toward the hanging window, seeping into it. As if it were an aquarium, the level of moonlight rose in the window, higher and higher, swirling around in the pale green glass until it flowed out over the top, spilling into the open jar of glass chips.

  Mr. Deener stood right behind the table, still peering closely into the jar. He was no longer humming or singing or crying or talking to himself, but seemed to be hypnotized by what he saw in the jar. Rainbow-colored moonlight shone through his wispy hair, and the hanging window swung slowly back and forth in the wind.

  And then, from out of nowhere, a goblin stood next to Mr. Deener.

  It had happened so quickly, that John had barely seen it appear. There had been a blur of light and shadow, and then the moonlight had seemed to blink, and the goblin stood there on its skinny little legs. It was half Mr. Deener’s size,—a shriveled-up Mr. Deener. It shook its head and gobbled a little bit, as if trying out it voice for the first time. Then it began to cry, sounding very much as Mr. Deener had sounded just a few minutes earlier. Mr. Deener gasped and trod backward, pushing it away from him.

  “Go, foul creature,” he whispered, and pointed toward the open window. It shambled across the floor and climbed out into the night. Then, strangely, John saw a mouse climb out through the window behind it—only it couldn’t be a mouse, because it ran standing up, on its hind legs. Both of them were gone into the darkness outside, and Mr. Deener was left alone in the room.

  Something bumped into the toe of John’s shoe.

  He looked down at the floor, and there lay a marble. At first he thought it was spinning, but then he could see that it was simply full of light, maybe moonlight, and it was the light that wa
s spinning inside the marble. He bent down to pick it up.

  “Oh oh,” Danny said just then, and John looked up, expecting to see Mr. Deener coming to get his marble back.

  But it was Mrs. Barlow, heading toward them down the hall, holding a cloth flour sack open in front of her. “I’ll take that,” she said, “if you don’t mind.”

  At the sound of her voice Mr. Deener turned around and looked at the open door. On his face, pushed down very low across the bridge of his nose, were the magic spectacles, the one good lens still glowing with moonlight.

  Chapter 18: The Clinker Garden

  Mrs. Barlow held the flour sack open so that John could drop the marble into it. From inside the sack came a moaning noise like wind under a door, and then a noise like muttering voices. When she snatched the bag shut and tied the top with a string, it jumped and rumpled in her hand, as if it were full of live toads.

  “Calm down!” she said to the sack, and shook it a little. It thumped a couple of times, like a heartbeat, and then was still.

  Just then there was the sound of a door or a window slamming shut. Mr. Deener had gone outside, into the darkness. The laboratory was empty. Across the floor was a trail of what looked like glowing sea foam, as if Mr. Deener were leaking moonlight from the cuffs of his trousers. “The glasses!” Danny said. “He took them!”

  “Quick!” said Mrs. Barlow, “Follow me!” But instead of going out through the laboratory, she hurried down the hall toward the kitchen again. “We’ll bring him back!” she said. “We’ll tweek his nose for him!”

  In the kitchen she opened a cupboard and pulled out two big watering cans. Then she shoved the flour sack into the cupboard and shut and locked the door, putting the key into her apron pocket. Too much thievery, she said, pointing at the locked cupboard. “Goblins?” Danny asked.

  “Only once,” she said. “The other times it was him, the Deener. He gets into a state, like tonight, and he can t be trusted.” She handed a watering can to John and another to Danny and said, “Fill these with lemonade.”

  “What?” Danny asked. He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. “Lemonade?”

  She pointed toward the corner of the kitchen where a big crock with a wooden lid sat against the wall. “Fill ‘em up,” she said.

  John pulled the lid off the crock. It was full of lemonade. Slices of lemon peel floated on top. Danny took a dipper from a hook on the wall and used it to dump lemonade into both watering cans.

  “Poor Deener,” Mrs. Barlow said, picking up a big wooden spoon and heading out into the hall again. “He’s a good man. He’s just gone to seed.”

  “If he’s such a good man,” Danny asked, “then how come he stole our spectacles?”

  “He’s what you might call a Humpty Dumpty,” Mrs. Barlow said to him. “The medical men call it ‘going to pieces’. That’s the technical term. What it means is he’s taken a fall. He’s all broken up. I’m saving the pieces of him in my flour sack.”

  “I’ll break him up,” Danny said.

  “No you won’t,” John told him. “That won’t help at all. He’s got to be put back together again. He just needs…something.” He couldn’t think of what it was, but there was something about Mr. Deener that he liked – the doughnuts, maybe. Or the talk about sea monsters and moon ladders. “We really don’t know why he took the spectacles,” John said. “Maybe they’re his.”

  “Maybe,” Mrs. Barlow said. “And maybe he’s just a stinker.” She whacked the wooden spoon into her open hand, pushed the front door open, and said, “Careful with that lemonade. She pointed across the cobblestone drive, into the deep shadows of the trees. A splotch of moonlight lay in the darkness as if someone had poured it out of a can. Even as they watched, it seemed to be disappearing, soaking into the ground and drying up.

  “He went down the hill,” Mrs. Barlow said. “He’s working the clinker garden again.” She shook her head, and her voice was tired, as if she was downright sick of Mr. Deener ‘working the clinker garden’, whatever that meant.

  They followed the trail through the trees. John held the watering can in front of him in order to keep it steady. His hands were sticky with lemonade that had slopped over the side. A tangle of blackberry vines grew along the edges of the narrow path, and here and there, down near the ground, more little scraps of moonlight were caught in the vines where Mr. Deener had brushed against them on his way down to the clinker garden.

  “Hark!” Mrs. Barlow whispered, stopping suddenly. John listened. He could hear Mr. Deener humming somewhere ahead, but the vines were so high he couldn’t see anything. The humming sounded like flies in a bag. There was a pause, followed by the sound of Mr. Deener’s voice, talking to someone. John waited to hear who would speak back to him. The Sleeper? Aunt Flo? But there was nothing. No one else spoke. Mr. Deener began to hum again.

  They crept forward. The path wound around toward the bottom of the hill, not far from where they’d fought with the goblins earlier that evening. The berry vines ended at the edge of a broad patch of dirt and dead weeds. Mr. Deener stood among the weeds, bent over at the waist. Behind him, on a fallen log, sat an old wooden coffee grinder with a crank on top. He had a watering can of his own, and was pouring something out of it onto the ground, something that was blue in the light of the full moon.

  “There, there, my dear,” he said, standing up and moving a few feet farther on. “And here’s a tasty drop for you.” There were faint popping sounds like bubbles bursting. He searched in the weeds, poured more blue liquid out of the can, and said, “Aren’t you looking fabulous tonight!”

  “I knew it,” Mrs. Barlow whispered, looking past the edge of the berry vines. “He’s watering the clinkers again.” She shook her head sadly and clicked her tongue.

  “What’s clinkers?” Danny asked.

  “Charcoal,” she said. “Ashes. Burnt lumps out of the fireplace. You pour salt and laundry bluing on them and they grow into a kind of fungus garden.”

  “Sounds okay,” John whispered, trying to see through the vines. “It’s like a moon garden.”

  Mrs. Barlow said, “Hmph!” as if it didn’t sound okay to her at all.

  John wondered what laundry bluing was. He would ask Mr. Deener about it, and then write the formula out in his book before he forgot it – except that his book was at home Anyway, that was a good way to be friendly Maybe they were going to have to trust Mr. Deener in some way, no matter what Mrs. Barlow said.

  Mr. Deener emptied his watering can right then, shaking the last drops out onto the ground. Then he got down onto his hands and knees, took the spectacles out of his pocket, and put them on. He put his face very near to one of the lumps in the weeds, and then cocked his head to the side, staring at it through the unbroken lens.

  Just then Danny stood up, as if he were going to rush out and take the spectacles back right then and there. John grabbed him by the back of the shirt. “Wait!” he whispered. “Not yet!”

  Mr. Deener stood up and took off the spectacles. He didn’t act like he’d heard anything. He turned the spectacles over in his hands, as if they were a dying bird. Then, slowly and carefully, he picked up the coffee grinder from the log, snapped the lens out of the spectacles, and dropped it into the hole at the top of the grinder.

  “Hey!” Danny shouted, pulling himself free and jumping out from behind the vines.

  But it was too late. Shaking his head sadly, Mr. Deener ground the spectacles lens to pieces in the coffee grinder.

  Book Two

  Chapter 1: The Face Among the Weeds

  Mr. Deener walked slowly past them, carrying the coffee grinder and the watering can and heading back up the hill. His face was blank, as if he had left his mind in a box somewhere. In the moonlight he looked more like the Sleeper than like the Mr. Deener that had defeated the goblins on the road. For a moment John thought that Danny would try to take the coffee grinder away from him. But he didn’t. It was too late to do anything at all.

  John didn’t
look at his brother. Why had he told him to wait? Why had he stopped him? John kicked a rock on the path, and it bounced away into the weeds. Danny couldn’t have done anything about it anyway, he told himself. He kicked another rock. “How did I know?” he asked Danny.

  “What did you think,” Danny said, “that he was going to just give them back?” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe John could be so stupid.

  “I didn’t smash them up,” John said, getting mad.

  “Same thing anyway,” Danny said.

  “No it isn’t,” John said. “I just wanted to give him a chance, that’s all.”

  “And that’s his last chance,” Mrs. Barlow said. “So both of you be quiet. No one’s to blame. You two are starting to sound like the Deener. He’s all full of blame. Blame for this, blame for that. The whole world wants to blame something on someone else. That’s why nothing ever gets fixed; everybody’s too busy blaming everybody else.” She thumped her wooden spoon into her hand again, as if she wanted to conk the whole world on the head, and knock the blame out of it.

  “Now pick up those cans,” she said, “If you boys want to help the Deener, you can start right now. But I’ll warn you; sometimes helping people is like having rocks in your shoes.”

  “Help him?” Danny asked. “I just wanted the spectacles so that….”

  “Don’t worry about the spectacles,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Forget the spectacles. That’s the kind of trash I’m talking about. That’s the Deener’s way of doing things. What we want to do is put his head between two ears for him, and keep it there.” She nodded hard at them, as if that was the last word she would hear on the subject of the spectacles.

  The brass frames, bent and empty, lay in the dirt. John picked them up. They were junk now When he handed them to his brother, Danny tossed them back down into the weeds without looking at them. John picked them up again and put them into his pocket.