The Museum of Extraordinary Things

by Alice Hoffman

  I reached into my waistcoat pocket for the watch. I had not realized the weight of it until that moment. My future had nothing to do with the time it told, nor did it define who I’d been in the past. I placed it on the game table.

  “Do you think you returning my own property to me makes you an honest man?” Block asked.

  “I think it makes me a man. I’m not sure you can say the same.”

  Before I left my old enemy, I took a last look at the watch I had carried for so long. It had never seemed like mine. Whether I was honest or not, I was free from its burden. I went out of the town house and met Agnes on the corner. We walked together speaking of Juliet, who was at that very moment on her way to California. We took the dogs into the park. Mr. Block kept them locked up in the kitchen; because he’d bought them for Juliet he despised them now. I let them off their leashes for once. As it turned out, broken or not, it appeared I had a heart.

  MAY 1911

  THE STABLE was empty, although several of the liveryman’s pigeons managed to find their way in through gaps in the wooden siding to take shelter for the night. Eddie had taken to spending time in this gloomy place with both Mitts and North, breathing in the scent of hay, remembering how he had come here as a boy and slept beside the horses. After one tiff, when Mitts approached the wolf in an overly friendly fashion, the two got on well enough, if ignoring one another meant there was an uneasy peace. Eddie’s hand was still wrapped, but the pain had eased. He supposed the bones were mending. His heart, however, was not in a similar condition, precisely the problem with having such an organ, for it caused pangs of desire and regret, reminding an individual that he was indeed human, prone to human sorrows and desires.

  Eddie had reverted to his old insomniac’s habits, avoiding sleep for as long as possible, existing on a diet of coffee and gin. When he did close his eyes, whether dozing in a chair or resting his head against the stable wall, Coralie came to him in his dreams. She was in the river, in his bed, out of reach and leaving him in a fevered and dejected state. He’d memorized several lines from the note she’d written him. I do not love you and cannot pretend to. I am promised to a man in France, a family friend, and it is to him I now go. Please do not follow me. Forget me if you can.

  He wished to do exactly that, but had discovered it wasn’t possible. He’d taken to drinking with serious intent, not for pleasure but for sheer inebriation. He missed the presence of the liveryman, and now held a deeper understanding of why a person might turn to opium, as he, himself, had embraced gin, for it was gin alone that allowed him a deep, black brand of sleep. Eddie tried not to dwell on the fact that he would soon be homeless. In a matter of days, the stable would be rented out to a tenant who had put in an offer to let the entire building. The new renter was an ironmonger who wished to set up a furnace in the alleyway and use Moses Levy’s studio for storage. Eddie was to vacate by the first of June. It was already the end of May, and deciding where to go next loomed as an impossible task, for it was difficult enough to find loft space possessing good light, all the more challenging given his financial situation and the presence of two large canines, one of which was indistinguishable in form and temperament from a wolf. When Eddie was drinking heavily enough, he had half a mind to move onto Beck’s property and build himself a shack. There he would take the hermit’s place, equally embittered and alone, avoiding humankind, but close to the river, comforted by that proximity. Then he thought better of the notion, for what the old man had predicted would surely come true before very long. The woods would disappear, replaced by concrete and bricks. There would be no room for wild creatures, just as there’d be no room for men who wished to escape the concerns of city life.

  Eddie soon unwrapped his hand from its splint. It had healed well enough in his opinion; he didn’t need a doctor to tell him so. He was mulling over where he might go, perhaps to Queens County or even out to the potato farms of Long Island, when Beck’s wolf-dog began to growl, the hair rising along his back. Mitts also fixed his gaze on the back door that opened into the alley. Eddie grabbed a pitchfork from a stall and told the ever-friendly Mitts to stay, while North accompanied him. A light rain was falling when he opened the door and stepped onto the pavement that led to the dirt alleyway. There was the stench of outhouses and of rotting garbage. North’s growl deepened as they walked along, and although Eddie spied nothing beyond the dark, the wolf-dog suddenly lunged forward. A man’s deep resonant voice rang out. “Hold him back, please! I beg you!”

  Eddie grabbed North, pulling him off his quarry. The night was dark, starry, but in this narrow alleyway there was only a small slice of sky to be seen. As summer approached, a dense heat collected between buildings so that every inch was a tinderbox. Perhaps it was that heat, or perhaps it was the tension of a possible confrontation, that caused Eddie to break into a sweat. By now, his eyes had adjusted well enough to spy the hazy figure of a man. The stranger’s head was bowed as he examined a rip North’s sharp teeth had torn in the fine woolen cape he wore. “Please understand, I’m here for your benefit,” the man said without gazing up. “I don’t wish to frighten you.”

  Eddie laughed. He had the pitchfork as his weapon and the hermit’s fierce companion beside him. “And how would you do that?”

  The fellow stepped forward and North lunged again. Eddie kept his grip on the wolf-dog’s collar and held fast, all the while mesmerized by what he saw. Before him was a man entirely covered by hair, growing down his face so that his features were difficult to discern. He had a feral, wild countenance, yet he wore a well-tailored suit under his fine woolen cape.

  “I’m a man, though you might think otherwise,” the stranger announced, obviously accustomed to a puzzled, often hostile response to his presence.

  Eddie was bewildered. He gazed at the individual in the alleyway with unabashed curiosity. Though functioning through the haze of drink, he was still a photographer to the core, and he cursed himself for not having his camera at the ready so that he might record this visitation. “The world is more varied and wondrous than most men understand,” Eddie said to his visitor. “No one is what he seems.”

  “I’d agree with that. And in that same vein, I’d say that beast is no dog.” The stranger eyed North cautiously. “Dogs usually prefer me to ordinary men.” Dogs, it was true, often had an uncanny sense of what a person was made of, while wild creatures did not take the time to discern such distinctions, for it was equally true that men mattered little in their world. Yet, it seemed that North recognized the stranger as an equal of a sort, for after he had assumed the stance of the dominant of the two, he seemed more accepting of the hairy man. The stranger appeared relieved. “We may need a wolf where we’re going.”

  Eddie laughed at the notion. “Sir, it’s late in the evening and I plan on going nowhere.”

  The stranger, however, seemed convinced otherwise. He had a rented carriage waiting on Tenth Avenue. He introduced himself as Raymond Morris, a resident of Brooklyn and a concerned friend of Coralie’s.

  Upon hearing his beloved’s name, Eddie felt instantly sobered. “You’d best not include me in Miss Sardie’s concerns. She wrote me a note plainly stating she never wished to see me again.”

  “Sir, you are mistaken. Coralie has not the ability to compose a note. She was never taught to write.”

  Eddie was startled to hear this, for Coralie had spoken of her love of reading. “Say what you will, but I received her note,” he protested. Indeed he had the sheet of paper in the drawer of his bedside table, though he’d thought a hundred times of burning it.

  “You received what the Professor wished you to have. The museum is closed and every employee has been let go. He has her trapped, for that is the only way he can keep her. The best course of action is for you to come with me, as I would never get a foot in that house. We may do well to let the wolf lead the way.”

  Mr. Morris slipped on his hood, then gestured for Ed
die to follow. Like a dreamer who asks not for reason, needing only a single mission to move him forward in his dream, Eddie accompanied his new companion to the street. North, for his part, was wary, but willing to follow the stranger.

  The driver of the waiting hansom seemed a nervous man. He had on a cap and a formal suit, for he worked full-time for a wealthy patron, and took odd jobs in his off hours. He’d known Mr. Morris for some time and had become used to his appearance, but he didn’t care for the way the horse startled when it picked up North’s scent. “You didn’t say nothing about a wolf, Ray,” he said to Mr. Morris.

  Mr. Morris handed over an extra ten dollars, an enormous amount considering the streetcar crosstown was a dime, but one had to take into account the distance to Coney Island, the secrecy of their journey, and the wolflike creature now leaping into the rear of the carriage. In his haste, Eddie had left the stable door ajar, and Mitts, who could never tolerate being left behind, managed to push his way out. The pit bull galumphed his way to the waiting carriage and made a beeline for the driver, cheerfully ingratiating himself, licking the driver’s hand and wagging his stump of a tail. Perhaps it was this genial, merry behavior that allowed them to gain their transit to Brooklyn that night, for the driver said he’d had a dog like Mitts in his youth and he firmly announced there was no finer or braver companion.

  It was late when they reached their destination, after one in the morning. The sky was a bowl of stars in Kings County. The streets of Coney Island were deserted, but as the carriage passed by Dreamland they could see brilliant banks of lights and a boisterous crush of carpenters and workmen. A fiendish amount of last-minute construction was at hand, with hundreds of employees and day workers doing their best to finish before morning, when the park would open its gates for the season, with thousands arriving by excursion steamboat and ferry and railroad. In only hours, the first customers would be invited into the new and improved playground that had cost a true fortune to refashion. Great care had been taken to assure it would outshine all other entertainments, not simply on Coney Island but in the world.

  Dreamland was illuminated by thousands of lightbulbs; the scene was so bright Eddie needed to blink to see within the gates as they passed by. He could spy the outlines of the grand entertainment Hell Gate, with its leering forty-foot-tall demons holding court at the entranceway to the ride’s covered tunnel. Every light in the park had been turned on for the workers, but the strain was too much. All at once, as their carriage approached, there was a short circuit, with many of the bulbs shattering from the burst of energy that surged before everything went black. Mr. Morris’s driver whistled for his horse to increase his pace, for he feared the creature would be spooked by the rising sound of the roars of lions and tigers pacing their cages, all startled and invigorated by the sudden dark.

  Inside Hell Gate a team of workers who were mending fissures in the tunnel with hot, sticky tar that would shore up any leaks were suddenly engulfed in utter blackness. In the confusion that followed, with men panicking and rushing to escape the falling glass shards of the bulbs, a pail of burning hot tar was kicked over. It flowed much like lava, the black goo sparking with crimson flashes of heat.

  “It seems we have good fortune on our side,” Mr. Morris murmured as they passed the chaos in the park. “The dark is good for deeds such as ours.”

  Whereas Surf Avenue had only moments ago seemed as vivid as a theater’s stage, there abruptly fell a cover of pitch. If a kidnapping of sorts was what they would attempt, then fate was indeed favoring their actions. The carriage halted on the corner, where the driver was paid another exorbitant fee and told to wait with Mitts, until their return.

  The two men drew near the museum, one cloaked, the other still shaking off the haze of his heavy drinking. The wolf followed at their heels. Eddie half-imagined he was still inside a dream. Men did things such as this in dreams: approached a dark house filled with treasure, sank into a sea of true love, traveled with wolves and wonders on a warm night. The air smelled acrid from the tar across the road, and there was a tinge of sulfur to it as well, for inside the tunnel at the Hell Gate a flame had broken out. The workmen quickly scattered away, due to the rising smoke. A rush of air followed them through the tunnel, flinging sparks in every direction, as if the stars themselves had been replaced by embers.

  Once in the garden, Eddie and Raymond Morris took shelter beneath the pear tree. There Mr. Morris revealed he had a key to the kitchen door in his possession. “A friend was kind enough to give this to me. She was to meet us here, but perhaps she’s been held up by the ruckus on the street.” He looked over his shoulder, worried, scanning the empty garden. At last he turned back to Eddie. “We have little choice but to go forward without her.”

  “Did your friend say where we might find Coralie?” Eddie assumed Morris referred to the red-haired woman he had photographed in the garden, for there was a softening in Mr. Morris’s tone when he spoke of her.

  “The cellar. A room you surely remember.”

  Eddie nodded. “I remember more than I’d like to.” He still had nightmares of that room and of the box that contained the cold form of Hannah Weiss.

  Eddie brought forth the two small keys he kept as a talisman. He hadn’t known why he’d hung on to them, but perhaps it was due to a remnant of the abilities Hochman insisted he possessed. His thoughts were tangled in the puzzle of where fate had led him, to this house on this night. Through the din inside his head, a very real siren sounded. It was two minutes before two in the morning. The usual stillness of the hour had been broken by fire alarms at Dreamland. Sparks from the spilled tar had traveled with astounding speed. Canvas and fabric caught first, then the papier-mâché statues and rides went up, and finally there was a terrible leap of flame to wooden structures and rooftops. Already the firehouse at West Eighth Street, a hundred yards away, and the station at Fifteenth, near Surf Avenue, had sent out horse-drawn carriages, as well as their new hook and ladder trucks. The police had been called in, and scores of men in uniform advanced toward the New Iron Pier, some still pulling on their boots and buttoning their coats as they ran toward the disaster.

  On the porch where they stood, Eddie and Mr. Morris could feel Surf Avenue vibrating as the first buildings at Dreamland began to fall. A scream barreled down the avenue, for fire has a voice. Eddie closed his eyes against the flashes of light in the sky. For a moment he was on the outskirts of his village, running through the forest while fire took everything that had been left behind; he was on the sidewalk of Greene Street watching beautiful young girls fall through the air, their hair and clothes aflame, in the woods watching the hermit’s shack burn, embers floating upward like fireflies. He knew the language of fire, and recognized its destroying call. There was little time to waste, for time itself would soon be devoured by the flames that were increasing at a ferocious pace, racing faster than a man could think.

  Mr. Morris hurriedly unlocked the back door. It was their good fortune to enter a quiet house. Sardie was nowhere in sight. All the same, North was left behind to guard the entryway as the men hastened to the cellar. The stairs creaked under their tread, and the darkness doubled until Eddie found and lit a lantern. He thought of the moment when he’d stood in the garden of this house and gazed up to see Coralie staring back at him. He wondered if the river had carried him here, and if perhaps he was again the person he’d been before he walked away from his name and his fate.

  The workers and the paid performers who lived at Dreamland were already being evacuated, rushing down Neptune Avenue, which was hardly far enough. The Lilliputians had their own fire department, with small fire trucks and hoses. Once the women and children of their community had been evacuated, the men set to work pumping streams of water on the flames that were ready to engulf the baby incubator house. Nurses in the infant house had taken six premature babies from their incubators, making sure to wrap them in damp blankets to protect them from fallin
g sparks. Under cover of the spray of water, they raced away from the park, with each child

  saved.

  All through the neighborhood the cries of the animals could be heard as more than eighty beasts, all of which had been located in cages only yards away from Hell Gate, were rushed into the arena. Ferrari and Bonavita and eight other trainers did their best to keep order, which was all but impossible. Mortal enemies were let in together, bears with antelopes, leopards and hyenas alongside the high-strung Shetland ponies, which had to be blindfolded so they would not panic. Only the beloved elephant, Little Hip, who nightly slept beside his trainer, Captain Andre, now at a party in Manhattan, refused to be moved to the arena, despite a chain and whip.

  Flames had spread along Surf Avenue, and the enormity of the disaster was just beginning to be understood by residents and bystanders. The heat was nearly unbearable, the black sky turning bright in fits and starts, with garish shadows falling everywhere. Mr. Morris’s hired driver had taken off the moment he spied the inferno. He dared not tarry, for the rush of firemen and policemen would soon enough cordon off the area and the officials might decide to appropriate his horse and carriage to cart away survivors. The driver, who felt the need to save his own skin, apologized to the pit bull as he let Mitts out to fend for himself, certain that the stalwart nature of the breed would help the dog to survive.

  The dog moved through the frantic crowds, making his way to the yard of the museum. In a desperate search for his master, Mitts managed to push open the back door. He quickly made a mess of things in the kitchen, leaping atop the table so that pots and pans scattered across the floor. Upon hearing Eddie’s voice echo from the cellar, Mitts raced down the stairs, whimpering and panting, at last settling uneasily when he spied Eddie, now working feverishly on the locks.