The Curious Case of the Cursed Spectacles (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  As she left I looked at Clarence. "I guess she didn't hear me clearly."

  He grinned. "She doesn't miss a thing."

  "So she thinks I'll stay around."

  "You've been playing detective. Draw your own conclusions."

  I told myself that it didn't matter much what Enid thought. Did it?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The drive to the town of Toni took us through Koin. I half expected Clarence to make some comment as we passed through, make some reference to what wonders we'd accomplished there in averting a disaster. Instead, he stared out the window, a glum lump in the seat.

  "Okay," I said finally. "You have to talk to me. What's bothering you?"

  "A million things. In the last week we have encountered an entirely new world."

  "Yes. And it's an unsettling, disturbing one."

  "But, despite our previous understanding of things, you have to admit that it's a very real one, in the sense that it does exist."

  "Okay."

  "And that has me questioning my view of reality."

  "We know it's an erratic and unpredictable, where our logic is relatively useless and ordinary things can be very dangerous—as Enid pointed out, rather clearly, I think."

  "That's true."

  "Then?"

  "I can't believe that you could even consider turning your back on all this."

  "Turn my back on all this? This evil magic? I should be running away as fast as I can. I'm only doing this so I won't feel guilty."

  "You should feel exhilarated. This is a chance to take part in a grand adventure. Whatever you thought you wanted to do with your life, it can't be more interesting or important than this."

  "You are nuts," I said, although I had to admit a twinge of doubt about letting go of a mystery. But that was just my reporter's nature, I told myself. You smell a story. So maybe…"

  "I do believe that I've seen those spectacles somewhere before." The voice was Edgar's. The sudden intrusion, seeming to be in my thoughts, startled me. I jerked and the car swerved to the center of the road before I regained control. As I pulled back into my lane I saw him sitting calmly between us. He looked healthy and I could barely see Clarence through him.

  "You're back," I said happily.

  "I am?"

  "And looking better. After you saved my life you faded away."

  "I saved your life?" Then he smiled. "Oh yes, the tree limb thing. I wasn't sure I could do that."

  "We got the spectacles back," Clarence said. "They are safe with Enid."

  "What did I miss?" Edgar asked.

  I focused on my driving as Clarence gave Edgar a rather dramatic (in my opinion) retelling of the events.

  "Excellent, excellent. What now?" Edgar asked.

  "We are in pursuit of a spatula… a Tulpa, Enid called it, that might be in the hands of a woman named Sydney."

  "Allegedly, she uses it to make incredible fudge brownies," Clarence added.

  "Rowena was a wonderful cook," Edgar said, his mind drifting. I wondered if he was back to full strength yet. Of course, I had no idea what full strength was for him. I knew very little about Edgar when you got down to it, and although he seemed willing to talk about himself, it wasn't clear that he actually knew a lot more than I did.

  Arriving at the address that Kenneth gave me, Edgar whistled. "You are sure this is the right place for the pastries?"

  "It can't be," Clarence said.

  I understood why they thought that… the building looked like an old mill and rather decrepit one at that. It appeared deserted.

  I checked my phone, calling up Kenneth's text. "This is the address he sent me."

  "Then maybe he made a mistake."

  I wondered. Something felt wrong. "Well, we've come this far so we might as well take a walk around and check it out."

  "I can do that," Edgar said. "I can take a quick flit around."

  "You can?" Clarence asked.

  "I thought that you, and I, and the cursed pen were linked together forever."

  That earned me a ghostly smile. "Even forever doesn't last forever. At the moment we are tied together, but I have a little range that I can travel from the pen. Around a hundred feet, I'd guess."

  "Why didn't you tell me this?" I wanted to know.

  Edgar considered my question. "Because you didn't ask and it never occurred to me to tell you."

  "Fine." So we got out of the car and watched Edgar drift into the mill.

  "Did you notice that when we met Timothy, Edgar seemed drawn to the spectacles?" Clarence asked.

  "He located them for us. He made us stop at the right house."

  "I meant when we were facing Timothy off on the porch."

  "Not particularly. I was distracted by the gun."

  "He was. I could tell he wanted to grab them off the man's face."

  "And?"

  "I was wondering if he is drawn to all the objects. Maybe that's why he's with you, why the pen got left behind."

  "Why would the bad guys do that?"

  "I was thinking that Edgar might just be one of Mason's defenses. He arranged that they wouldn't find Edgar so we could use that attraction to locate them. It would reduce our risk."

  As he said it I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickling. "Are you are sensing something?"

  "That we should get back in the car. Edgar will be safe."

  I didn't want to challenge that assumption, not at that moment anyway. "The car," I agreed. Just as we turned back, two men emerged from the building. I stopped dead in my track and so did Clarence. They looked big and rather ominous, and I was sure they were armed, which made me turn and move faster, but not fast enough. Suddenly the world moved under my feet. Up wasn't up anymore… I was disoriented and lost my balance. I saw Clarence tumbling and I was falling too.

  A man loomed over me, holding something. I looked to see what it was. It was a spray can. He pressed the button, I smelled spices, and then the world scrambled itself, broke into unidentifiable pieces that my brain struggled to put back together.

  And then… there was nothing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke to find myself seated in a chair in a dimly lit, small room that looked like it might have been an office. There was a roll-top desk that was probably elegant, once upon a time, long ago in its long life. Now it was unused and heavy with dust… I could smell it, taste it, and I could see thick cobwebs hanging in the corners of the room. Whoever had knocked us out clearly didn't have a housekeeper.

  My head throbbed and felt thick. I tried to reach up to touch it and rub it, but I couldn't move my arms. After a few moments of futile struggle, my waking brain told me my hands were pulled behind me and tied to a wooden chair I was sitting in.

  Near me, Clarence was breathing. I stared into the gloom and saw him sitting unconscious in another chair, with ropes lashed around his arms holding him in the upright chair. "Wake up," I called. "Clarence, are you all right? Can you hear me?"

  He didn't answer, but the sound of his breathing reassured me.

  I could see a narrow table at the end of the room. I could make out some things on it as my eyes adjusted. I focused and saw Clarence's wallet, my wallet, my car keys, and Mason's keys… it looked as if they'd emptied our pockets onto the table. I saw the pen there too—Edgar's pen.

  "Hey, Edgar." I knew he had to be close by, but he didn't answer. Again, not knowing how to summon him was frustrating and I reminded myself that when we got out of this I needed to find out how to do that.

  If we got out of it.

  "Damn it, Edgar." The pen twitched. I said it again, wanting to make sure it wasn't my imagination, but it wasn't. The pen began wiggling back and forth. The gyrations moved it toward the edge of the table and then it fell off onto the floor. "Are you okay?" I thought a fall like that had to hurt, even if you were already dead. Edgar didn't answer, but the pen rolled in the direction of my foot. My feet were tied, but only to each other and I put my foot on the pen. The
moment I did, I saw Edgar standing there.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Right here. When you lose possession of the pen you just can't see me, is all. But since you hadn't given it away, I could nudge it toward you."

  "That pen has a lot of rules," I said.

  "Tell me about it," he said. I thought Edgar looked a little pale, which means he was a lot more translucent that normal. I wondered if that had to do with his strength or our connection. That was another question for later. "Can you take a look around this building and see if the men that grabbed us are still here?"

  He smiled. "I can check out everything within range." And poof, he wisped his way out dissolving through the door, which I watched jealously, and then returning a moment later. "There are two men just down the hall, sitting around and talking."

  "Saying what?"

  "I can't get that close to them. I couldn't hear and ran out of range."

  "Okay, at least we know something."

  "Another thing…"

  "Yes?"

  "There are other objects here, somewhere nearby."

  "Cursed objects?"

  "Oh very cursed."

  "And more than one."

  "Yes. There are several of them, although at this distance their energies blur together. I don't know more than that."

  "You can sense them?"

  "It's frustrating actually. They pull at me and I want to go to them but of course when they are more than one hundred feet from you…"

  "So, tell me. When I don't possess the pen, you retreat into it?"

  "Right."

  "But you are still tied to me."

  "Right."

  "Why can't you leave the pen and come to me?"

  He considered it. "Good question. Maybe I could… if…"

  "Well, here is one that is more important… can you undo my wrists?"

  The idea pleased him. "I have no idea. Let's find out," he said.

  As Edgar reached for the ropes holding me prisoner we came into contact. It was eerie—I realized that we hadn't ever touched before. So let me see if I can explain what it's like to be touched by a ghost. There was a tingling, like you feel when you walk across a carpet of synthetic material in the summer time and feel a build up of static electricity. The tingling is your body charging up and you know that if you touch metal you'll be shocked by the discharge. This was like that, only with no shock at the end.

  Loosening them wasn't easy for Edgar but slowly it happened. I helped then, working my wrists and noticing that they were damp. That had to be Edgar's touch too and that fit in with all the stuff I'd learned watching horror movies when I was a kid. We both worked the ropes until finally, they came free. "Thanks," I said and turned my attention to undoing my ankles. "Is Clarence awake yet?" I asked and Edgar went over to check. "Nope," he said. "Out like a light."

  When I got free I went over and undid the ropes holding Clarence and started slapping his face. "Wake up. We need to get out of here."

  "What?" he said.

  "I'll tell you what I know later. Right now I'd like to get out of here." I grabbed the things from the table, handing Clarence his wallet and stuffing my things in my pockets. "Ready?" I looked at Edgar. He was faint. "I've got the pen," I told him "You get some rest."

  He turned downright ethereal then and disappeared. Something felt odd in my pocket and I knew that was him safely tucked into the pen. Whatever that meant. This stuff was becoming way too normal. I wasted a moment trying to picture the universe as seen from inside a pen then gave it up as a lost cause.

  I helped Clarence to his feet. He was groggy but coming around fast. "The men who captured us are still in the building and we need to be quiet," I said as I walked him to the door. There didn't seem to be another way out of the room so I turned the knob and slowly opened the door. "Just enough to squeak through," I said. A moment later I wished I had phrased that differently because as the door swung open it squeaked—loudly.

  "We better run for it," Clarence said shaking his head to clear it.

  I agreed. The problem was knowing what direction to run. Stepping into the hallway we realized that the old mill was a labyrinth of hallways going in every direction. Since we'd been unconscious when we were brought in, we had no idea what led where, not even a general sense of the layout. "Just run and head for anything that looks like an exit," I said. So, with Clarence leading the way we ran as fast as we could down a hall. Too soon we heard the sound of footsteps behind us and the shouts of our unhappy former captors sending out an alarm.

  Despite not knowing where we were going, we ran. We both assumed that our lives depended on it. Going at full tilt we wound through empty, dusty rooms and down more hallways and suddenly found ourselves tearing headlong down a rickety stairway that swayed precariously.

  My heart had been pounding anyway, but going down the stairs I was struck with a dizziness, vertigo. The sounds of pursuit helped us push on and the sensations only lasted a few seconds before we seemed to pass out of whatever was causing it. It felt for all the world as if we'd gone through some kind of electric field—a zone of vertigo if you will. A small part of my brain not preoccupied with such mundane things as survival took the time to wonder if one of the cursed objects generated the field, if it was part of some curse. I didn't dwell on it though. I needed one-hundred percent of my body and brain dealing with slightly more important concerns, like the need to get out of there and as far away as possible.

  "This way," Clarence said, heading for a door. It looked like an exit, but when we went through we saw nothing but walls. It was a decoy.

  "It's a dead end," I said. "We need to backtrack, quick."

  We turned to double back, but as we reentered the hallway we saw the men coming down the stairs heavily. I looked around frantically, but after all the hallways we'd passed, here there was no door, no other hallway, not even a window.

  "Uh oh," Clarence said.

  I thought that was a good summation of the situation. And now that they'd spotted us and knew we couldn't escape, the two men approached slowly, moving apart and acting like they'd done this before. "I think uh oh might be a giant understatement," I said cynically. Then, seeing the stern looks on the faces of the men coming towards us, I swallowed and let out a long breath.

  "Stop right there," I said firmly.

  And they did.

  Chapter Twenty

  Although I didn't have a good idea of what was going on, I was pretty sure that the frowns on our pursuers weren't a good sign for us, at least. I was certain that they knew, and maybe had known before we had, that we were stuck in a dead end. We had no defenses and I had no doubt they'd capture us again… we'd simply run out of escape options. But the more you know about what you are dealing with, the theory goes, the better chance you have of getting a decent outcome. A decent outcome definitely sounded like a good thing to me so I tried to take in as much as I could.

  The first time we'd been captured things had happened quickly, but as I looked at the two men facing us, wondering what was behind my command, I realized that at least one of them was a different man—not one of the original duo. That meant we had no idea how many of them there were, how many men we'd have to fight to get out.

  "Edgar said that there are several of the objects here in this building," I told Clarence. I'm not sure what telling him would accomplish, but I wanted him to know. "He could sense them, but he doesn't know what they are."

  "Then it's a good thing we have the drop on them," he said. "I wonder if they are using them. I felt something when we came down the stairs."

  "Me too. Vertigo."

  "And nausea. So maybe they are the people who stole them from us. Clearly, they aren't giving them all away. That's good, right?"

  I didn't like the way Clarence kept thinking of the objects as ours, and our responsibility, but he was probably right. Besides this didn't seem like a good time to argue our relative positions.

  "I do wonder why, if they are using t
he objects, they left out the spectacles for Timothy to find."

  "An accident? Maybe they dropped them. Or maybe they didn't need that one. By the way, have you noticed that these guys are armed?" I was about to chastise Clarence for rudely changing the subject, but he was right. One man had an automatic like the one Timothy had used; the other man had a comb. Under the circumstances, even an ordinary object could be a weapon and I wanted to play safe. Point that comb away from me, I thought.

  "Why delay the inevitable?" the man with the gun said.

  The man with the comb smiled. "We only stopped so you could say your piece, threaten us or whatever. It seemed like it might be amusing."

  So my threat amused them. I've heard it's good to have your enemy underestimate you but I'm not sure that counts if their estimate is accurate. I raised my hands. "We are willing to surrender without a fight," I said. "Just tell us who you are."

  "None of your business," the man with the gun said.

  "None at all," the man carrying the comb said. "Not a bit of it. You can fight back if you like. It won't matter."

  "I'd shoot you both, but the boss wants to see you," the gunman said.

  "Now that you're awake," the comb guy said, "he can talk to you."

  The gunman looked at Clarence, examining him. I didn't like the look in his eyes. "What do we do about this one?"

  The man with the comb shrugged. "Well, I doubt he knows much, but just in case, let's keep him alive for now. He might be leverage."

  "Leverage, yes. That's a good idea, let's do that," the gunman said.

  "Keeping me alive is certainly an excellent idea," Clarence said. "I'm not of any use so why don't you just send me on my way? I'd just be underfoot. I can get totally out of your hair."

  The man with the gun waved it in Clarence's face. "You're a funny guy." He turned to his partner. "This one's a real comedian."

  "A great one," the other man said.