The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson

by Quinn Sosna-Spear

  • • •

  The hearse slid onto gleaming streets made of abalone, a pearly shell that washed up often on the Elverpool shore. The duo was in momentary awe as the late-morning sun reflected off the road and lit the sparkling buildings with dancing shadows.

  From a distance the ground shimmered in blues and greens, as if the car itself were floating on water.

  Walter couldn’t help but feel unfortunately conspicuous, a black smudge in a blue town.

  His fears were solidified as the townspeople stopped swimming and sunbathing to stare.

  No one in Elverpool had ever seen a hearse, as it was a long-held tradition that the deceased were lovingly tossed to sea, with a quick fly-fishing session to follow. Furthermore, no one in Elverpool had a car. There were only boats and feet. No one ever needed to hurry.

  To Walter’s relief, however, the Elverpudlians had soon had their fill of worrying and turned to their friends to talk about where they would eat or how they had learned to blow bubbles with their spit.

  Walter, Cordelia, and the hulking automobile were all but forgotten. Cordelia’s hunger, however, was not.

  “There. Let’s just go there.” She pointed to the massive treasure chest that sat in a lump in front of them.

  Walter nearly thought to argue, before he remembered whom he’d be arguing with. This establishment didn’t look like the kind of place one should be eating at. The openmouthed chest looked more ready to eat them, in fact. Still, he swiftly parked the car, but staring up at the restaurant, muttered, “I don’t—”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. Come on.”

  Cordelia barreled out of the vehicle and tromped toward the restaurant. As she pushed past the seaweed hanging in the doorway, Walter watched, too shocked to say anything, as a large barnacle shot a tendril out to grab her—only moments too late. It curled back up in its shell and waited.

  Walter had never eaten in a treasure chest before and was already nervous about the dangers that loomed ahead.

  Staring at the hungry barnacle, he figured he ought to at least go in through the back.

  • • •

  The interior of the restaurant hadn’t changed in thirteen years; neither had the waitress.

  As Walter and Cordelia pored over menus, Ria Troutsputter approached.

  She was the single most unhappy person in the world, for good reason—she was wearing her work uniform, a fish costume that looked as though it had swallowed her whole. It was bulbous, rubber, and orange, with scales made of recycled life vests and eyes made of lure bobbles. It hung around her with a perpetually shocked look. With it she wore matching toe rings that squeaked when she walked.

  Ria had once had dreams of being a famous actress who made people of all ages sob and sigh, or perhaps being a marvelous chemist who discovered the cure for aging and all of humanity’s woes.

  Instead she’d grown up to be a halibut, and now everyone was to pay.

  “What do you want?” Ria asked.

  “I’m sorry?” Cordelia replied.

  Ria responded helpfully, as halibut do, “To shove into your faces?”

  Cordelia snapped back, as Cordelias do, “Just give us a second, all right?”

  Walter offered a smile in place of Cordelia’s brush-off. Ria wasn’t paying attention anyway; she was too busy setting her watch alarm. A second later it blared.

  “Second’s up. What do you want?”

  Walter, always ready to appease, said the first thing that came to mind—despite having no idea what it meant.

  “I’ll have the special.”

  Ria gritted her words through a rehearsed smile. “That shore is an ex-shell-ent de-sea-sion. You?” She turned toward the unamused girl.

  “The cod.” Cordelia snapped her menu shut and shoved it toward the woman.

  “Oh my cod, good choice. If you need anything . . .” Ria trailed off as she trudged away.

  Walter’s eyes gleamed as he prepared a joke, and for a second, though neither he nor Cordelia would ever know it, he looked quite like his dad. “Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the seabed.”

  Cordelia, unimpressed, turned her attention to the bowl of tartar sauce packets, reading the back of one.

  Walter may not have been able to stop his blush of embarrassment, but he also couldn’t help the giggle that slipped out. Seabed.

  • • •

  Meanwhile, the cogs of Moormouth had never stopped turning. The entire town flooded out of the church doors Sunday morning. Hadorah bobbed along with the mob, still wondering where her son was and quietly hoping he didn’t end up on her table next.

  Behind her, Mrs. Primpet fought through the crowd, keeping pace with the mortician. She shouted to be heard over the yawns and grumbles. “I hear your boy’s missing too?”

  Hadorah couldn’t quite meet the other woman’s prying eyes as Mrs. Primpet matched her shuffling gait. “Sorry we haven’t had time to talk,” Hadorah said, just loud enough for the other woman to hear.

  “It’s funny how they can’t find them, isn’t it? A whole police force and just two children.”

  “I’m not sure ‘funny’ is the word I’d use.”

  Mrs. Primpet beamed her curious clown-lipped smile. “And I’m sure you would have said something, but you haven’t an itty-bitty inkling of where they might be?”

  Hadorah anchored herself to the ground, causing Mrs. Primpet to nearly bump into her.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Their uninterested and unconcerned neighbors parted around them, merely glaring at the inconvenience.

  “Odd that our kids are together. I didn’t realize that they were close anymore,” said Mrs. Primpet.

  “Neither did I.”

  Mrs. Primpet smiled. “Well, you’ll let us know if you hear something?”

  “Of course.”

  “See you next Sunday, dear!”

  With that, Hadorah breathed all the tension out of her body as she watched Mrs. Primpet disappear into the gloomy crowd like a lighthouse swallowed by the smoke of a wreckage.

  • • •

  Though the sky was clearer a couple hundred miles northwest, the tension was equally thick. Cordelia had, by now, surrounded herself in condiments and was finally on to sugar, her final distraction. Walter, meanwhile, had pried all the prongs off a fork with his pocketknife and was moving on to bend the defenseless spoons.

  “So . . . Flaster Isle?” he asked.

  Cordelia actively wasn’t paying attention. She was, instead, reading the ingredients on the back of a packet. Hm. Apparently there’s sugar in sugar packets. She tossed that one aside to read the next. Unfortunately for Cordelia, Walter didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t responding, as he continued, “To learn more about . . . Well, you know, a lot to learn about in a place like that. Flasterborn asked me to—I mean, I wanted to go see . . .”

  Cordelia tried not to sound too interested when she remembered the letter Walter had showed her. It was from Flasterborn? But how? She had been trying to contact him for years, with no response. How had Walter gotten one?

  “Is that what the letter was about?” she asked.

  “What letter—oh! Uh . . .”

  Walter wasn’t used to having Cordelia respond to him and had to pause and gather his wits before replying, “Yeah. My dad was, you know, and I am, well . . . Never mind, it isn’t important.”

  “I understand, Walter. You don’t have to tell me. I didn’t mean to pry.” Her voice slinked like a cat, but Walter, who’d never had a cat, didn’t know how dangerous that could be.

  “No, that’s all right! I’ll tell you!” he shouted, a bit too loudly. His voice broke as he continued, more quietly, “When my dad worked with him, Flasterborn, I guess . . . I guess they were friends. So Flasterborn has asked me to, possibly, come work for him—sort of.”

  “Wow! That’s amazing.” Cordelia surprised both Walter and herself with her genuineness.

  “Yeah, well. We’ll see. He hasn’t actually
met me yet.”

  Walter’s tone sank, but Cordelia either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She barreled forward. “So, he knows you’re coming?”

  He nodded, causing her grin to ignite as she bubbled in her seat, strategizing. “Fantastic.”

  “What about you? Why do you want to go to Flaster Isle?”

  And just as quickly as Cordelia had opened up, she shut down again. That was not a question she was willing to answer.

  “Who doesn’t want to go there? Everybody loves Flasterborn.”

  “You must really love him if you came all the way here with me.”

  “I must.” Cordelia picked up her third sugar packet, and that was that.

  Walter gave up, shoulders sinking. He had never been very good at talking to people who were alive.

  Ria returned balancing a bowl and a plate in one hand, while scratching her wagging tail with the other.

  “If you need any kelp, drop me a line.” She unceremoniously dumped the dishes, and Walter dared a glance up.

  “Actually, I would love . . .”

  But she had already squeaked off.

  He stared into his bowl, a yellow broth littered with swimming bits of fish and the like. A tiny octopus surfaced. He spooned it up and lifted the little thing to eye level—a tentacle hanging limply off the silver edge.

  Cordelia looked on, aghast, pushing down a gag. Walter looked up, meeting her disgusted eye.

  “Whoops . . .” He dropped the octopus back into the soup, accidentally sending a splash across her white nightgown.

  She gasped, wiping at the stain.

  “I’m so sorry. Here, let me . . .”

  “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  Walter reached over with his napkin but was too late. Cordelia was already scampering away.

  “Cordelia, wait. I can fix—”

  But she was gone, trotting through the restaurant, fumbling blindly through her backpack.

  Finally she found what she was looking for and pulled out a pill bottle. She spun the cap off expertly. Without thinking, she dropped a pill into her hand and swallowed it dry. Tossing the bottle back into her bag, Cordelia found herself at the end of a promising hallway. She peeked around, making certain it was empty, before proceeding in.

  There was a bathroom door on either side of the dead end. On the doors were pearly plaques, one with the word “Cow” and the other with the word “Bull,” accompanied by identical silhouettes of manatees.

  Between the rooms was a phone in a water-filled glass box mounted to the wall. For this phone, “grimy” was an understatement. It was dusted with a smattering of tiny barnacles sucking away and other bottom-feeders that had, somehow, beached there.

  Cordelia pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and gingerly submerged two fingers into a hole in the top of the box, in order to retrieve the receiver. She had to bat away a curious anemone with her pinky along the way.

  After pulling the phone out, she held the speaker a good six inches from her ear as she dialed a number she found written on the most-opened page of her journal.

  “I’d like to be connected with Dr. Automaton. I need an appointment.”

  She paused, listening to the woman on the other end.

  “No, you don’t understand. There isn’t much time—”

  Her whisper was interrupted by heavy footsteps.

  “I have to go.” Cordelia tossed the phone back into the box, splashing herself, before spinning around, desperately hoping that Walter hadn’t caught her.

  As the scummy water, mingled with soup, dripped from her dress, she was both annoyed and relieved to see that the intruder was only a cook. He crooked a brow at her before entering the “Bull” side.

  Cordelia sighed before pushing open the “Cow” door, already wondering how she was going to scrub the murky green spot off the white nightdress.

  She had been in far too much of a hurry and hadn’t thought to bring any other clothes. This was something she would soon come to regret.

  • • •

  Cordelia returned to the table, looking more distracted and upset than ever before. Walter peered over at her uneaten cod with concern.

  “Didn’t you want to eat something?” he asked.

  She pushed the plate away, not bothering to look up at him. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  Ria, with her ever-perfect timing, squeaked up. “From the bottom of our carps, we hope you had a swimmingly good time.” She dropped the check onto Cordelia’s nearly untouched food, adding, “Gratuity’s not included,” before flouncing to another table.

  Cordelia grabbed a hunk of cash out of her journal and peeled off a few bills.

  As the runaways disappeared out the front door, Ria sneered, waving her lolling fish tongue at them. She picked up Walter’s bowl and panicked when it wiggled.

  The kids turned to look back at the restaurant after hearing the older woman shriek. Then, with a mighty pop, soup splattered across the window in a lovely explosion of yellow and fish guts.

  Cordelia’s face was blank as she turned to Walter. “What was that?”

  “Oh, I managed to put together a little exploder. It’s made of octopus, Fizzy Pops, and soda water. Dastardly little thing. She won’t get that smell out for weeks.”

  He turned back to see Cordelia smiling, which made him smile too.

  CHAPTER 15

  •  •  •

  FLASHBACKS AND FANFARE

  Hadorah arrived home unsure of what to do. Hadorah always knew what to do. But this was a catastrophe. No one would help her find Walter. So she did what she always did when she felt afraid and unsure: she cleaned.

  Hadorah clutched the trash can in one hand and a broom in the other as she swept. She tidied the whole house twice.

  As she swept the kitchen, she took extra care to get beneath the little crevice under the counter. Amid the dust bunnies was something unexpected. It was small, gold, and circular.

  Hadorah stared with instant recognition at the familiar curling letters imprinted in the wax. There was only one HOF she knew of: Horace Odwald Flasterborn. Somehow Walter had found the letter. And if Hadorah knew Flasterborn, she knew exactly what it said.

  “That no good . . .”

  But the rest of her thoughts were lost as she rushed from the room—a new energy rattling in her bones. This was the energy of a mother ready to catch her son doing something he shouldn’t be, and catching her son doing something he shouldn’t be was something Hadorah knew she could do. Not even fear would stop her.

  • • •

  Walter was driving again and this time had kept his mouth shut. He’d done such a good job, in fact, that while Cordelia wrote the last of her thoughts in her notebook, she secretly hoped to be bothered.

  Just as the hearse chugged around a bend, the thin gullet of road opened into the belly of a wide desert. It was the sort of desert that graced the pages of picture books about genies and knights (not the silvery dragon-obsessed knights, though—the Arabian kind). The sands looked like shaved gold, with swirls of heat dancing off the surface. There were no plants and only one rock, under which sat a very grumpy lizard.

  Cordelia and Walter both loved this place, if only because they loved picture books. They didn’t dare voice these opinions out loud, however, for fear of being judged.

  From end to end the landscape was empty, just a vast, glittering sprawl of sand. Walter picked up the pace, sending grains shooting around the tires and behind them in a cloud.

  Soon, however, they realized they weren’t nearly as alone as they had thought. A group of hazy, colorful blobs took shape ahead in a long line across the plain in front of them.

  “What is that?” Walter asked.

  Cordelia prepared to respond in an uncaring and slightly annoyed way, only to look up at the mysterious shapes and become curious as well. “Maybe it’s a . . . a . . .”

  As they squinted into the evening dust cloud, they saw something unsettlingly peculiar.
<
br />   “It’s a parade,” she said.

  Cordelia was right. The shapes came into view. They were floats. One was a massive, shining sun; another was a roaring lion’s face; behind that was a peacock with vast rainbow tail feathers. Now that Walter was close, he realized that the parade was as long as his two eyes (or Cordelia’s one) could see, and he was now blocked by its path.

  “What do we do?” Cordelia groaned.

  “Enjoy the show, I guess.”

  “Can’t we pull around or something? This could take all night!”

  Walter chewed on his bottom lip as he tried to see the end of the parade, but it was just too long. He finally shook his head and tugged a thin knitted blanket out of his bag and tossed it onto her. She glowered, before throwing the blanket over her feet and curling away from him.

  Walter thought he ought to sleep as well, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off the bright floats in front of him. They looked familiar, but he couldn’t figure out why.

  • • •

  Four hours later, and the parade had finally let up. The last float was a giant jiggly watermelon.

  Walter watched the watermelon bounce after the parade, which had turned in the direction they were moving and was advancing parallel to the road.

  Walter could finally drive again, which was wonderful because he’d waited so long. It was also terrible because he was now very tired.

  He yawned as he eased the hearse back to life, driving alongside the parade, passing float after float.

  He failed to see that Cordelia, still wrapped silently in her blanket, had her one eye wide open. He slurred, trying to keep himself awake and out of his thoughts, “Cordelia? You up?”

  Her eye snapped shut. She was hoping not to be caught. It worked. Walter yawned and said more quietly, trying not to wake her:

  “I just wanted to say that I’m . . .”

  As he trailed off, her heart sped up. . . . That he what?

  “I’m sorry for staining your dress.”

  Oh. She feigned a deep breath to cover up her sigh. Good, she thought.