The Unusual Mind of Vincent Shadow

by Tim Kehoe

  “Here, please buy me a copy. Please, Stella.” Vincent held out the money in the general direction he believed Stella was standing. She took the money, bought the paper, and smacked him in the chest with it.

  “Thank you,” Vincent said. “Now will you read it to me?”

  “No.” Stella pulled him faster. She got Vincent into the house and up to his room.

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay if I leave?”

  “I’ll be fine. I have a little experience with this, Stella.”

  “Should I call my mom?”

  “No. Remember, no one can know about this. Please. When you get to school, just tell the office that I’m out sick today.”

  Stella reluctantly agreed to keep the entire episode a secret.

  Finally alone, Vincent anxiously waited for his sight to return. Vincent’s mother had introduced him to Nikola Tesla shortly after his eighth birthday—and shortly after his first toy idea had hit him. He was dying to know what kind of artifacts put Tesla on the front page of the New York Times.

  EVERLASTING

  6

  Biting Beast Balls had come to Vincent the same way his previous ideas had—in a blinding flash. The ideas always started with flashes of light and then—bam!—a complete toy would be floating in front of him. Sky Writerz, Fib Finder Penz, Transplantz, Bubble Chase—all forty-nine ideas had come to Vincent that way. The ideas looked so real he often tried to touch them, only to grab a handful of air.

  Vincent could see every hair, every gear, every detail of each invention. But when it hit, the invention was the only thing Vincent could see. The rest of the world went black. Sometimes the blindness only lasted a few seconds. Sometimes it would last for hours.

  Vincent’s first idea hit him three years ago on his eighth birthday. It was the Everlasting H2O Gun, a squirt gun with a built-in dehumidifier so it would never run out of water.

  Vincent had been playing catch with his father in the park. His dad had just released the ball when Vincent saw flashes of light, and then his world went black for the first time. The ball hit him in the forehead, knocking him to the ground. Vincent could hear his father’s voice, but the only thing he could see was a giant green and gold squirt gun floating in front of him. This terrified him. And when he told his parents, it terrified them, too.

  Three more ideas struck Vincent that week. Each one was accompanied by flashes of light, darkness, and then an incredible toy invention. Vincent quickly realized that he could spin, twist, and even play with the inventions in his head. He was sure he was going crazy. His parents were sure he was sick.

  They took him from doctor to doctor. Each one poked, prodded, and took blood. Lots of blood. And asked questions. Lots of questions. But none of the doctors had answers.

  The night before Vincent was to visit yet another doctor, his mom stopped in his room to kiss him good night, as she did every night. Vincent was busy sketching in his notebook, as he did every night. But he wasn’t sketching Picassos, van Goghs, or Salvador Dalís. He was drawing baseball bats that would quadruple in size when swung, bubble wands that would capture sound in the bubbles, and rockets that would soar high up in the sky and pop into kites. His mom asked him about the sketches, and Vincent said they were his ideas. His inventions.

  It was then that Vincent’s mom realized her son had a gift. She remembered reading that the great inventor Nikola Tesla had similar blinding experiences as a young man.

  But to Vincent the visions were no gift. “Why can’t I be like everyone else?” he asked. He knew the kids at school would call him “crazy” if they found out that he saw things. He made his mom promise never to tell anyone about his inventions. Not even his father. She agreed to keep the secret and promised to help him draw and build his toy inventions. From that day on, they would attribute Vincent’s blinding spells to migraines.

  More than twenty toy ideas hit Vincent in the following six months. His mother helped him with his sketches, and on the nights and weekends that Vincent’s dad was working, they built a secret lab—complete with a hidden door—in the unfinished attic space behind his closet. They filled the lab with everything they would need to bring his inventions to life: hammers, saws, drills, test tubes, beakers, glue, duct tape. His mother even created an elaborate alarm system to warn Vincent whenever someone was coming up the stairs. They spent almost ten months working on the secret lab before she got sick.

  That was two years ago. Since then, Vincent spent most of his free time in the lab working on his inventions. Just as Tesla had—and just as his mother would have wanted him to do.

  THE GREAT MR. TESLA

  7

  After a short nap, Vincent opened his eyes and the Biting Beast Ball was gone. He jumped out of bed, looked around his room, and grabbed the New York Times Stella had set on his dresser. On the front page, there was a black-and-white photo of a very old Nikola Tesla, with the following story.

  TESLA ARTIFACTS DISCOVERED, NEW YORK—The recent sale of the historic Hotel New Yorker to Ramada Worldwide has unearthed an unusual treasure: Several dozen inventions from the great inventor and former hotel guest, Nikola Tesla, were discovered shortly after the purchase of the historic hotel.

  “It is standard procedure to conduct a complete and comprehensive audit of the books,” said Colleen Stanton, Executive Vice President of Global Acquisitions for Ramada Worldwide. “But the results of this audit were anything but normal.”

  Stanton’s audit revealed that a payment was made to the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Company every year since 1943. Upon questioning the staff at the New Yorker, no one could account for the payments. Stanton’s investigations led to the discovery of a storage room full of Tesla’s notebooks and inventions previously believed to be missing.

  “Well, we were all obviously dumbfounded when we opened the door to the storage unit and found the technological remains of one of the greatest inventors of all time. Tesla meant so much to New York, and Ramada is very proud to play a part in his legacy,” Stanton added.

  In 1935, at the age of 79, Nikola Tesla found himself a resident at the Hotel New Yorker, where he stayed until he died in his sleep on January 7, 1943. The morning after his death, Tesla’s nephew arrived at his uncle’s room only to discover that the scientist’s body had been removed and his technical papers and prototypes were missing.

  It was later reported that representatives from the Office of Alien Property went to the Hotel New Yorker and seized all of Tesla’s belongings and transmitted them under seal to the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Company. In all, two truckloads of papers, furniture, and artifacts were placed under seal.

  “The inventions represent an important part of America’s past and would make a great addition to any museum’s collection,” Stanton said. Ramada Hotels plans to auction off the Tesla artifacts next month.

  Vincent lay in his bed thinking about the Tesla inventions. He wondered which prototypes had been discovered and why the government would have seized them in the first place. He looked at the clock and realized his sisters would be home from school soon, and he still needed to clean up his big blue mess.

  THE SECRET LAB

  8

  Vincent went downstairs and grabbed a bucket and a mop from the basement. He took several towels from the upstairs hall closet, paused for a moment, and then reached back in and grabbed Gwen’s hair dryer. With his cleaning supplies in hand, Vincent opened the hidden door in the back wall of his bedroom closet and crawled inside.

  The lab was surprisingly large, extending back over thirty feet, but even at four foot six, Vincent was unable to stand up straight in most of the lab. There were several tables in the middle of the lab that served as workbenches. All the table legs had been shortened, allowing Vincent to work on his knees.

  Hundreds of sketches covered the walls and ceiling. A stack of black Moleskine notebooks was piled just to the left of the door. Bricks and boards were carefully stacked along the length of the room, creating a long,
makeshift bookshelf. The bottom row was mainly books on chemistry, electricity, gravity, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison. The second shelf was lined with old mayonnaise and peanut butter jars containing past failed experiments. Hundreds of failed experiments with handwritten labels: “glow-in-the-dark colored bubbles,” “fuzzy paint,” “self-drawing ink,” “colored fog,” and “no-melt snow.”

  The third shelf held working prototypes. Some of his favorites included: Bounce ’N’ Bubblez, GyroSkatez, B.I.G. Ammo, BlabberBackwardz, RAINbow Rocketz, Soundbreroz, and one of his latest inventions called Mixablez. Mixablez were mixed-up stuffed animals. The prototype was part elephant and part giraffe.

  The top shelf held several strange devices that looked like handheld vacuum cleaners and seventy-six jars containing a black liquid. Each jar was dated, labeled with the words “Pop Tunz solution,” and identified as a different sound. Sounds like “barking dog,” “dad’s guitar,” “police siren,” and “Mom’s voice.” These were all failed attempts at creating the world’s first sound bubbles.

  Vincent had successfully created a magnetic bubble solution by adding dishwashing detergent to his self-drawing ink invention. He hoped to build a bubble-blowing device that would allow him to record sound, and even music, into the bubble solution. The device would then create bubbles that carried the sound until they popped and then released the recorded sound for everyone to hear.

  Pop Tunz was his mom’s favorite invention. They had spent several months working on it. And they had some success. They had trapped a variety of sounds in bubble solutions, including his mother’s voice. However, the messages were so faint they were hard to hear. Vincent needed a way to amplify the sound waves. But he hadn’t worked on Pop Tunz since his mother had died.

  Vincent had been working on Mood Paintz this morning when the experiment exploded in a mess of clear paint that quickly turned blue. He had succeeded in creating a color-changing paint, but instead of changing colors to match the viewer’s mood, it matched the mood of the artist. Vincent was sure he could get it to change with the viewer’s mood if he could just get the paint solution hotter. Even though heating the solution had caused the explosion in the first place. The hair dryer in the hall closet had given him an idea: Maybe if the paint was stirred rapidly while it was heating, it wouldn’t explode.

  Vincent took a screw-driver from his toolbox and opened the hair dryer. He removed the motor and the fan, which he knew would make an excellent high-speed stirrer, and then placed Gwen’s now fanless hair dryer back in the closet.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to clean up from the explosion.

  SNONKEY THE GREAT

  9

  Vincent didn’t need his lab alarm to tell him Anna was coming; he could hear her bounding up the stairs. He closed the hidden lab door and was crawling out of his closet just as she burst into his bedroom.

  “Give ’em back, Vincent!”

  “What are you talking about, Anna?”

  “Elli and Stretch are missing. I know you took them. Now give them back!” Anna stamped her feet.

  “I have no idea what an elongated stench is and I hope to never find out. Now get out of my room.”

  “What were you doing in the closet?” Anna asked.

  Stella walked into Vincent’s room, wondering what all the commotion was about.

  “Great. A party in my room. Why don’t we invite the rest of New York?” Vincent said.

  “Elli and Stretch are missing and I know he took them,” Anna said as she stomped, this time on Vincent’s foot.

  “Ouch!” Vincent yelled, hopping on one foot while holding the other. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Elli and Stretch are two of her stuffed animals. An elephant and a giraffe,” Stella said.

  “Oh. Well, I assure you I don’t have an elephant or a giraffe,” Vincent said. And technically, he was right. He had cut them apart and sewn them together, making one new Mixablez he named Snonkey the Great.

  “Why do you blame me for everything?” Vincent asked Anna.

  “Because it’s always your fault!” Anna said as she stormed out of Vincent’s room.

  “Here’s your homework.” Stella set a stack of books on Vincent’s desk. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. And you don’t look so blue anymore.”

  Vincent followed Stella downstairs to the kitchen. Gwen was standing in front of the open refrigerator, just staring in.

  “Hi, Gwen,” Vincent said, more as an experiment than a greeting.

  “Hey, Vic,” she said without looking up.

  Well, at least she got three letters right. Vincent heard the front door open and ran to see his dad, only to find Vibs. Alone.

  “Oh, hi,” Vincent said, unable to hide his disappointment. “I thought you were my dad.”

  “Your father had to go right from the airport to the museum. I guess the Met has been asked to catalog some inventor’s artifacts for an auction next month and your father has to work late. Now get washed up. I bought Chinese.”

  Vincent spent the rest of the night looking through his books about Tesla. He couldn’t sleep. He was dying to know what incredible things might have been discovered in Tesla’s storage room, and he wondered why his father hadn’t called to tell him about it.

  DEATH RAYS, PEANUT BUTTER, AND OTHER DANGEROUS THINGS

  10

  Norton Shadow spread a thick layer of butter on his toast, covered that with peanut butter, and shoved the entire thing into his mouth. This was his breakfast most mornings, and this morning was no exception.

  Disgusting. That was the thought of everyone at the table. Everyone but Vincent. He didn’t even notice his dad’s inch-thick cholesterol sandwich. He was too busy firing Tesla questions at his father.

  “Did you actually see the artifacts? How many were there? Did you touch them? Do they work? Did they find any notebooks? Anything that looked like a death ray? Or an earthquake machine? Were there any pictures?”

  “Stawp, stawp.” Norton tried to talk but the peanut butter had cemented his mouth shut.

  “Im dawnt naw whattwh.” Norton stopped and took a sip of his coffee. He swished it around his mouth to melt the peanut-flavored cement.

  Vincent couldn’t stand the wait. He had stayed up all night reading about the fantastic inventions Tesla was rumored to have been working on while living at the Hotel New Yorker. Death rays that could send beams over 250 miles. Earthquake machines capable of shaking several city blocks. And even a device that could shoot a beam into a person’s eye and record his or her thoughts.

  “What did you say? I couldn’t understand you.”

  “I said”—Norton had obviously succeeded in swallowing the mass of mush— “I’m not sure what we got. Why don’t you stop by after school and see the stuff for yourself.”

  Vincent was excited about the chance to see the Tesla artifacts, but he didn’t like walking inside the Met alone. Without his mother. After all, it had been their place.

  “Okay. Maybe.”

  Stella was shocked to hear the excitement leave Vincent’s voice. “I’ll go with you,” she offered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure,” Stella said. “It could be kind of interesting and I always love the Met.”

  Just then they heard a bloodcurdling scream from upstairs.

  “Oh my God, it’s Gwen,” Vibs yelled as she ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs with the entire family in tow.

  Another scream.

  “What is it, honey?” Vibs shouted.

  They found Gwen standing in the bathroom holding the hair dryer. The entire second floor of the house was thick with the stinging smell of burnt hair. Over-permed, over-producted, burnt high school hair.

  “Are you okay?” Norton asked.

  “I turned it on and, and—like—the whole thing—like—sparked. I could have been—like—murdered or something,” Gwen said.

  She was clearly fine, just a little shocked.


  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Stella said. “Here, just hand me the murder weapon.” She took the smoking hair dryer from Gwen’s hand.

  Vincent could feel Anna glaring at him with those obnoxious little-girl eyes.

  “What?”

  THE ART OF INVENTION

  11

  “Hi, Vinny,” a woman yelled as Vincent and Stella entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  She was an orange woman who looked to be in her mid-nineties. She wore an orange skirt and an orange and black floral shirt, capped off with blaze-orange hair.

  “Hey, Aunt Bonnie.” Vincent waved.

  “Hi, honey. Well, your father said you were coming in today and would you look at how much you’ve grown! It has been so long since we’ve seen you. We miss you around here and hi, hon, you must be one of Norton’s new kids,” Bonnie said without taking a breath.

  “Hi. I’m Stella.”

  “Stella, this is my Aunt Bonnie, one of the museum’s oldest and dearest volunteers,” Vincent said with a smile—the kind of smile you give to a ninety-year-old aunt museum volunteer.

  “Well, Vinny, I can’t believe how much you’ve grown—you know I used to babysit Vincent when he was little, and I can’t begin to tell you how much we all miss him and—oh hon, we miss your mom so much around here. And boy, I don’t have to tell you how much we’re going to miss your father. No, no, no,” Bonnie said.

  “Miss my father?” Vincent asked.

  “Well, of course we’re going to miss him. Of course we are. And it gets so cold in Minnesota—you need to make sure and wear a hat and jacket and mittens, too, Vinny,” Bonnie said.