The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson

by Quinn Sosna-Spear

  In the video Max looked adoringly down at his son, whispering softly, so as not to wake him, “Hello, Walter. I’m your dad.”

  Walter hadn’t seen this film in years. Neither had Hadorah. For her, however, it brought on a whole different mess of memories.

  • • •

  Six years before, Walter’s room had been very different. There had been no inventions, only a few toys that had littered the floor, foreseeing the mess that would one day replace them.

  Hadorah had approached from the hallway, carrying a pile of clean linens. She’d stopped by the door, hearing Walter’s high voice echoing beneath it. She’d peeked inside, curious.

  Walter faced the other way. There was a projected image running on the wall behind him. What was odd was that he sat with his back to the film. He had connected the projector to an old rotary phone with scraps of odd wires he’d fitted together.

  Hadorah noted that the projector didn’t show one video but a choppy film made up of clips. Every few seconds, every few words, the film cut to an image from an entirely different video. The only valuable part of this collage was the audio that was fed through a bulky wire straight into the telephone.

  The volume on the receiver was too loud, and Hadorah could hear it from the hallway. Max’s voice sounded tinny as it bounced out of the phone.

  “Everything—is good—here.”

  Walter spoke into the receiver, clutched to his ear with both hands.

  “Good!”

  “Is—your mother—all right?”

  Hadorah’s mouth dropped, watching her son as he held the phone tighter.

  “Yes.”

  “You are—taking care of—her?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s my—boy.”

  There was an odd pause, and then Max’s voice returned.

  “Walter?”

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “I miss you.”

  “Me too.”

  Hadorah sank to the ground outside, clasping the clothes to her chest.

  • • •

  Hadorah, in the present, pale and limp, sat on the ground, watching the reel project onto the living room wall. The film was almost over.

  In the video, Maxwell stood over the crib, placing his son inside. Walter, an infant with big brown eyes, woke and looked up at his father. Max put his finger through the bars, and Walter reached a chubby fist out to grab it.

  Hadorah remembered the final words Walter had whispered into the phone, so many years before. His sweet voice echoed in her head.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  In the film, baby Walter’s grip was firm, refusing to let Max’s finger go. Max responded with a soft smile, leaning in.

  “I love you too, Walter.”

  Mascara tears tracked Hadorah’s sallow face. The video flickered off, and she sat alone. Little did she know that Walter was only a few feet behind her, feeling just the same.

  CHAPTER 32

  •  •  •

  AFTERMATH REANIMATED

  Walter returned upstairs, overcome by emptiness. It wasn’t a normal kind of empty, though—not like you’re hungry or tired or even bored.

  It was a kind of emptiness that cannot be filled. It felt like he’d had an arm cut off . . . and yet there were two by his sides. It felt like his brain had been swirled out his nose and replaced with cotton. It felt like an aching pain deep in his chest, and yet he knew he couldn’t be healthier.

  The feeling reminded him of his inventions. It made him feel like a machine. So that’s what he’d be. He’d try to forget all the pain and instead just do what he was supposed to.

  Walter silently stepped onto the landing and walked to the very back corner, where no one ever went.

  He needed a large space to work, but he couldn’t sneak past his mom to get into the basement. Plus, he didn’t want to be left alone in there with . . . her. Not yet.

  Instead he decided to investigate a place that he thought might fit his needs.

  Walter took the ladder from his room and leaned it against the back wall. He then climbed, his whole body numb. In one hand he held a crowbar that made a soft clang as he grabbed each rung.

  When he reached the top, he was inches from the boarded-up room. He balanced with his legs and slipped the edge of the crowbar under the slats. With a hollow crack the old planks gave way, and a cloud of dust and decaying wood followed.

  Walter swallowed back his coughs and slid the broken pieces back into the hole, so that Hadorah wouldn’t discover them while he was investigating. He then continued, cracking away one slat at a time until the gap was large enough that he could hoist himself up into it.

  Once inside, Walter brushed himself off and pulled the ladder in behind him. After setting it to the side, he looked up from the floor. Instantly the breath became caught in his throat.

  It was his father’s workroom, as if preserved for a museum. Warm red wood tables sat up against walls, covered in hanging tools. The tools didn’t seem to be in any particular order—some were catawampus, and others upside down. Walter even discovered a dirty fork balanced between two pegs.

  He smiled. He hadn’t known that his father was messy. None of the newspaper articles had thought to mention it.

  His knees now shaking, he walked farther inside, taking it all in.

  The room should have been dark, but there was a large, round attic window that took up half a wall. It was patterned like the top of a jewel, with facets that glinted endlessly. The beauty of it couldn’t be spotted from the outside. Walter had only seen it as blackened, dirty glass. From the inside, however, it cast a brighter light than he had ever before witnessed in Moormouth.

  Someone had made it—Maxwell, perhaps—so that the meager natural light of the town would be amplified. Moonshine flooded in, through the center of the jewel, and filled up the room with a gentle, cheery glow.

  Walter walked to a table in the back. On top of it were sheets of scrap metal, the edges shorn and tinged with age.

  He ran a thumb over the warped and uneven surface of one, removing layers of dust and revealing a brilliant copper color underneath.

  This would do. This would do just fine.

  He removed the pile of schematics from his pocket and unrolled them, pressing them flat against the wood. As he did, his hand hit a hammer on the edge of the table. It had been laid there and forgotten. Walter picked it up in awe. It had been the last one his father had used before he . . .

  Walter couldn’t finish the thought as he gripped the cold handle.

  Maxwell had used it, and now Walter would too.

  Walter glanced over his schematic, then checked his watch. With a renewed sense of vigor, he tapped the metal flat, as quietly and quickly as he could.

  • • •

  Hadorah, bleary-eyed, walked downstairs. She’d just had a horrible nightmare.

  She pushed the basement door open and breathed a sigh of relief to see that her son wasn’t up to anything. Her expression then clouded when she saw the girl lying on the cold gray slab. Cordelia’s face was soft and peaceful, as if she were only asleep.

  Hadorah couldn’t bear to look any longer. Instead she went straight to her workbench, where a plain coffin waited.

  The funeral was in two days, and she couldn’t think of anything more important to do.

  • • •

  As the sun rose over the Mortinson home, it met Hadorah, asleep over the coffin, a whittling knife in her hand, and Walter, creeping down the basement stairs. Slung over his arms were various sizes of copper bands.

  He eyed his mother only for a moment before moving quickly to Cordelia.

  He gazed at her face, feeling the sting of sweat rolling from his hair into his eyes. Brushing the sweat away, he looked down to see that she was no longer wearing a nightgown, nor her usual school uniform. Instead she had been dressed in a light blue gown of silk, a matching ribbon in her hair.

  Walter shook his head, unable to look any longer. Ins
tead he slipped a ring off his arm—the smallest of them—and snapped it around Cordelia’s wrist. The click of the band closing was quiet, but loud enough that it echoed in the wide basement.

  Walter looked up to see if Hadorah had awoken. She hadn’t.

  Perfect.

  He moved more quickly, snapping bands around her joints, connecting them with a spine of gears that he’d had tucked under his arm.

  After only minutes, he was fastening the final ring around her neck, on the side of which was a curious key slot.

  Walter’s hands quivered as he fit a key inside. He turned once.

  The gears of the spine ground together unpleasantly, hissing at the tension. Hadorah’s eyes fluttered as she was drawn from sleep. Walter twisted the key again, and the hissing became louder. Another twist, and louder still. He continued, round and round, until the turning became effortful as the tension grew tight.

  • • •

  The fuzz of Hadorah’s dreams finally dispersed, and she looked up to see Walter fighting to turn the key again.

  A humming began to emanate from the mechanisms surrounding Cordelia’s body.

  Hadorah’s voice was groggy but desperate as she stood, knocking the stool back behind her. “Walter—no.”

  He refused to turn around. “Leave me alone.”

  Her voice softened as she held out a hand. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I have to.”

  “I thought you were finished with all of this! It’s too dangerous! Think of your father!”

  Walter stopped cranking. “Inventing didn’t kill Dad, and you know it.”

  Hadorah stepped toward him, but it was too late. Walter let the key go. It spun to life; now no one could stop it. Finally it slowed to a constant, turning rhythm. Cordelia’s eyes eased open—one blue, one green.

  Walter’s heart raced as a smile broke across his face. It had worked.

  Behind him, Hadorah suffered through nauseating déjà vu as she wrapped her arms around herself.

  Cordelia’s voice sounded like a mechanical version of what it had been, something Walter had devised from his memories. “Walter.”

  He laughed giddily, leaning over her, picking up the paper script to read from as he went. “Yes! Cordelia!”

  She sat up slowly, aided by the bands that moved her limbs as a skeleton might, but her movements weren’t quite humanlike. They were disjointed and stilted.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  His eyes gleamed as he replied—she hadn’t left after all. “Good, and you?”

  “Just dandy. You look tired.”

  Walter smiled more widely. Hadorah looked on, increasingly uneasy as she waited for what she knew would come.

  “You too,” he said.

  “I missed you.”

  Walter dropped the script, wrapping her in a hug and muttering into her hair, “Cordelia, I—”

  But Cordelia couldn’t listen. She kept on book, as she was programmed to do, unaware that Walter wasn’t reciting with her anymore. “Of course you did. I would too.”

  Walter looked into her eyes, expecting to see the spark of life return. “Cordelia—”

  But it didn’t. She spoke nonsensically, unwavering. “Well, how would you explain it, then?” Walter looked on, his smile remaining but becoming increasingly as dead as his eyes. Cordelia continued with her one-sided conversation. “You would say that.

  “If you did, I would go too.

  “But do you know why?

  “Of course you do.”

  Walter’s smile dropped as he spoke her line with her, in unison—

  “Because I love you.”

  Walter collapsed at the middle, bent over, the pain too much. Cordelia was oblivious as she tittered her mechanical laugh. “Now, don’t get sappy on me—”

  A screw turned loose. Her facial expression stayed the same, her eyes pinned wide in malfunction. “Walter? Walter? Walter? Walter?”

  Through tears, he closed her eyelids with his fingers. She suddenly fell silent and motionless, sinking onto her back once more.

  Walter sobbed silently over her body, tears and sniffles pouring out of him. Hadorah stepped out of the shadows. She walked over, slowly at first, and then smoothed a hand over his back.

  Walter’s ragged voice cracked through his sobs, “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  Hadorah shook her head, looking over to Cordelia. “We will, at the funeral.”

  “I wanted to say good-bye to Dad, too. It was m-my fault—”

  She stopped rubbing as the memories washed over her.

  They had watched the explosion together, but Hadorah had hoped that Walter was too young to see the tire of his windup car land at her feet in flames. She hadn’t wanted him to know that it had caused the explosion. She had been hoping that maybe she’d kept it from him this entire time. The pain clutched in her chest when she realized he knew—he’d always known.

  Hadorah shook the memories from her mind and began rubbing his back again, leaning close to his ear as she spoke quietly. “It was an accident.”

  He cried, turning and latching on to her. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry—”

  “Shh . . .” Hadorah patted Walter’s back as he sobbed into her. It was something neither had done before, but the experience came naturally. They were mother and son, after all.

  As he wept, neither he nor his mother saw the green stone in Cordelia’s eye begin to glow. They didn’t notice when the stone pooled onto her cheek and rolled down, a marble again, nor when it rolled off the table and onto the ground, not even when it hopped into the safety of his shoe.

  No, neither of them noticed, but for some reason Walter’s tears began to dry up, and the emptiness inside felt filled by something.

  He may have never known it, but the marble had melted. And now it was gone.

  CHAPTER 33

  •  •  •

  WALTER IN THE WAKE

  Walter returned, carrying a composition book that was immaculately clean despite the binding cracking off from overuse.

  “This is it.”

  He dropped the book onto one of the workroom’s dusty tables. On the front was written, in curly print: “Owned by: Cordelia Primpet. If found: Burn immediately.”

  Hadorah felt her ribs tighten. She wanted to do as Cordelia had suggested and toss it into the fireplace. But then she saw Walter glancing back with hopeful eyes, and she sighed.

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  • • •

  Walter knew that his mother had always dreamed of this moment, of them standing side by side over a body, working together in the “family business.” Of course, neither of them had ever imagined it would be over this body. Both would have given almost anything for it not to be her. To distract themselves, they worked on their own projects.

  Walter was twisting a screw into some kind of projection box. He had tried to explain it to his mother, but to both of their long-felt disappointment, none of it had made any sense. He had eventually given up, and she was relieved for it.

  Hadorah, for her part, was finishing the too-small-for-comfort coffin. Walter had always secretly admired his mother’s ability to make coffins, but this happened to be his least favorite kind.

  “The soldering iron.”

  Hadorah didn’t even need to look as she handed him the pen-size tool from the wall. Walter glanced up at her as he reached for it. “Are you sure this is all right?”

  Hadorah grunted in response.

  He took that as a yes and hurriedly grabbed it from her and went back to work.

  Walter knew she didn’t like it. Her face definitely said that she didn’t like it. He was amazed, however, that she was doing it anyway.

  He side-eyed her as she suddenly picked up Cordelia’s journal and leafed through it. Walter watched over her shoulder. He’d already looked over every page. There were stories, drawings, and photos crammed in from corner to corner. Hadorah stopped at a page that wa
s bookmarked. On it was a detailed drawing of a circus with many performers—clowns, lions, the lot. Two figures in particular, standing at the front, caught Walter’s attention. One was a happy puppeteer; the other was a girl floating on the cloud above him, holding a long sunflower between her hands.

  It was his favorite drawing in the whole entire book.

  As twilight peeked into the workroom from the one small window, it lit the covered shapes now littered around the floor. The pair worked long into the night.

  • • •

  Walter looked over at his mother. She seemed tired, her fingers stiff and crunchy, popping every few minutes. She was hunched over the coffin, carving the final petal into an elaborate sunflower on its face.

  She then looked up at Walter, who quickly turned away, poring over a drawing of a shadowy unicorn in the book. Hadorah’s quiet voice drifted over to him. “As a little girl . . .”

  Walter looked up, surprised. He had never heard Hadorah talk about her childhood; he’d previously wondered if she’d even had one.

  Hadorah continued, “There was nothing that I wanted more than to create something out of nothing. To finally give people what they wanted. To make someone happy.” She paused, and he dared to look over. She was staring at her own thin fingers. “I so wanted to invent. But then I met your father and thought I’d never be as good as him. I thought I might as well stop trying.”

  Walter felt the breath catch in his throat.

  “I didn’t appreciate him enough—or you, or myself, for who we are.” She pushed her chair back, standing. She then turned to her shaken son, brushing a rogue curl from his forehead. “I’m sorry, Walter. I grew up surrounded by death, and I forgot how to live. I’m so proud that you’re different.”

  She nodded at him. Her eyes looked watery—but then, didn’t they always? She trudged toward the stairs. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  The door clicked quietly behind her—a typhoon disappearing at sea.