Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (8 page)

Incredible.

The basement was
much larger than I had suspected. The large room I was standing in was one of
several connected by open doorframes that unraveled under the surface of
London. Large rubber and metal coils crawled across the walls like vines,
sliding in and out of the rooms. Arteries, they seemed, moving from a central
heart across the body of this...this...

Basement was no
longer an applicable word. Laboratory seemed more appropriate. I didn't know
what to think. Steam vents were drilled into the baseboards, expelling warm
puffs of air at precise intervals. But what was producing the steam? And for
that matter, why? What was it powering?

And what in the
name of God, the larger question seemed to be, was a dead watchmaker doing with
a collection of wonders boarded up beneath his office floor?

I switched off the
lantern and left it on the closest table. I moved through the room like a
spectator in an artist gallery, observing trinkets and inventions. They were
all dumbfounding beyond all belief. A self-bubbling tea kettle. A magnetic pair
of workers' gloves. And on every wall, the most bizarre sketches and
schematics. Drawings of dreams, of things that might be in this day and age. I
was in absolute awe.

“Pocket!” I heard
Kitt shout from somewhere. “Come over here!”

“What is it?”

“Just come over
here! Trust me!”

“Where are you?”

“Back room! Come
on!”

“All right! Give
me a moment.”

I worked my way to
where Kitt was calling from and noticed the wood around the doorway was
considerably more worn and seemingly bleached. It had been a strange night, all
right, and it would only get more so.

I took a few steps
into the room to find that it...somehow...stopped...being a room. I paused and
checked both my steps and my vision, for I was now standing in what appeared to
be the hull of a ship. I checked my vision again. Yes, definitely a ship. The
space was outfitted with railings and various nautical equipment. Bells and
barometers. Even a captain's wheel. The Union flag hung on one side of the room
and on the other, a framed sailing map of the East.

“Bizarre, isn't
it?” Kitt said, playing with the wheel.

“It's...a ship.”

“I know. Look at
these walls.”

I did. Wooden
paneling with glass portholes. I put my eye to one hole, half-expecting to see
a rocking ocean on the other side. I didn't, of course, and found myself
staring into a flat, cement wall.

“Why would someone
build a ship into a basement?” I wondered.

“No idea,” Kitt
said, blowing dust off of the railings. “There's a sign in the back.”

I followed him to
the end of the cabin, er, room. Mounted across the back wall was a large wooden
sign. Slivers of paint were chipping off and carved in large letters were the
following words:

THE LADY VIOLETTA:

TO WORLDS UNKNOWN

“Violetta...” Kitt
mumbled as we stared.

“Pretty name for a
ship,” I offered.

He nodded and
began checking drawers and closets.

“What are you
doing?”

“Looking for a
bag,” he said.

“What for?”

“Carrying all of
this outside, obviously.”

That's right. For
some reason, I had momentarily forgotten Kitt's motives in coming to the watch
shop in the first place, and I felt a little jarred upon remembering. It had
felt for a very short time that we were nothing but wayward visitors, onlookers
in this tomb of a museum.

“Shouldn't a thief
already have a bag?”

“I didn't think of
it.”

“How could you—“

“Can you help me
look? I need to loot.”

I laughed. He
asked why, but I declined to comment, not wanting to point out to him the
silliness of proclaiming “I need to loot.”

“Fine, Kitt. I'll
check back here.”

The back wall of
this would-be ship was bent in a sort of W shape. The sides of the wall tucked
back at an angle and connected into a corner into little half-walls. The
half-walls turned out to be false and one pivoted open as I knocked my knuckles
on it.

“I think I'm
singing this too early,” I whispered to myself as I slid past the false wall
into the opening it revealed on the left side of the room, “far too early for
this tune.”

“Hey Pocket,” I
heard Kitt say. “Do you think I could've been a sailor?”

“Sure, why not?” I
answered. “But I find myself here crawling, searching beneath an autumn
moon...hmmm...nothing.”

I blew a cobweb
out of the empty cavity behind the wall, slid out, and moved towards the other
side.

“Do you think I
could've been a
good
sailor?” Kitt asked.

“Do you get
seasick?”

“Sometimes.”

I pushed the false
wall on the right side of the room. It got caught on something.

“Then, sure. You
could make a great sailor, some of the time.” I pushed harder and the wall
started slowly moving. It felt like there was a box or something propped
against the other side. “And I've got my worst foot forward, yes, this time,
I'm on my own...damn, what's back there?”

“Pocket, I'm going
to check back in the hall. I'm finding nothing.”

“Uh-huh...” I set
down my bottle of faerie juice and put my shoulder to the wall, leaning with my
full weight. It slid a little more. “Spun and shaken, I am looking, waiting
just...Ah!” I had succeeded in creating a fair-sized crevice in the space. I
stepped into it and removed the box that, as I had suspected, was wedged behind
the false wall.

To be honest, I
was more or less expecting to find another patch of cobwebs, but in its place
was a narrow corridor.

“Does this place
ever run out of surprises?”

There was a switch
on the wall. I tossed it and smaller gas fixtures popped up with fire, covering
the path in purple.

Purple?

Ah. I get it.
Sheets of colored cellophane paper were pasted into specially-crafted lantern
boxes. The flickering light shined through these boxes, creating the
magnificent purple glow. Gorgeous. I stuck my head at once back into the ship
room.

“Kitt! There's—“

He was gone, off
pursuing greater interests. I frowned and returned to the small passageway.

The walls were
covered with a dark, blue-black velvet, and the floor was lined with fresh
carpeting. The lack of consistency in the building was dizzying. A watch shop
with a laboratory in the floor. A laboratory with a ship for a room. And now
this, some sort of hidden shrine, decorated as if for some church service, or
perhaps a funeral. I followed the path, humming to break the silence.

And at the end of
the line...

Beauty.

A large glass case
sat against the wall, propped...no...wired? The case stood on a platform of
rubber-coated bronze. The glass was smooth, curved, and darkly-tinted.
Scattered around the entire display was a cluster of candles. They seemed to be
arranged very delicately, as if part of a vigil, and each one was half-melted
down to its copper candlestick.

Beauty. For me to
even be there, swirling the still air with my breath, seemed blasphemous. I
felt like one stepping into some grand, forgotten painting only to smear the
aged oils with his boots.

And yet I could
not move.

Beauty is a tricky
thing. You either find it where it hasn't yet fallen dead or you attempt to build
it up yourself. For the majority of my life, I had been attempting the latter.

But at that
moment...

I drew an
exaggerated breath and moved towards the glass until I could see my own faint
reflection. Slowly, with greatest respect, I reached with my left hand and
pressed my palm to it. The glass was cold.

I smiled.

And
then...heh...looking back, I don't even know how best to say it. The glass slid
open, rubbing against my fingers, and from inside there came a figure, a figure
resting on pillows and harnesses. Startled, I pulled my hand from the glass and
tried to slam it shut. The sliding door bounced back and, slightly shaken, the
figure fell forward off of the pedestal into my arms. Unprepared, I collapsed
under the weight and together we fell to the floor. Pinned, my breathing
hastened. I grabbed and felt something cold and metal and pulled on it for
support. I slid my shoulders up from beneath and rested against the nearly
wall. Only then did I get a good look at what had fallen into my arms.

It was a girl.

Shocked into
silence, I twisted my arm back and felt the piece of cold metal in my hand spin
with a clank. A soft ticking began.

And continued.

Ever.

So.

Softly.

The girl from
behind the glass lifted her head at me.

A deep, shining
light poured out of her eyes.

When I was seven
years old, I once went to the theater. This was a complete accident on my part.
I was taken with a group of other children by an overzealous schoolteacher who
considered it her duty  to “enlighten our artistic sensibilities,” a woman
of what all I remember, some twenty years later, is that she used to smell of
crackers. Anyhow, she was the one who took my hand and clutched and dragged me
into a room full of painted faces.

But I should have
never been there, should have never rubbed my little shoes on the worn red
carpet. The only reason I did was because my lungs were white.

The London my
parents knew was a self-loathing one. It was thirty years into a guilt trip
brought about by the perpetual poisoning of the city's children. “You're darn
lucky,” my father used to tell me. “You've never lifted a finger, William.”
Children in the country's Black Period were given one hell of a bum deal. Most
were workers, plugging along a pre-Alexandrian Industrial Age, scrubbing
chimneys and moving factories with their tiny fingers. Then in the 30's, some
bright mind decided it should stop, that children should be children.

Well, if they were
rich enough.

Schools were
founded for those that could afford, and those children grew up with a proper
education, married, had children of their own, and sent off those children to
receive similar education.

And so the
tradition continued, years rolled by, the King eventually found his throne,
furthered a national emphasis on schooling, and then I was born. The London of
my childhood was a split one, one of workers and one of students. The high
class, those children of the wealthy, were immediately enrolled, but crafty
Miss Fate took it upon herself to leave a few empty desks that needed to be
filled. My father was a merchant, so I found myself on the very thin line
between classes. A doctor checked my health and concurred that I might make for
a healthy candidate for schooling, pending the color of my lungs.

The lungs of many
children of my class were blackened by breathing in the smoke of industry. The
only fair thing, the Alexandrian doctors felt, was to send off those already
touched by the smoke to work, their extra hands on task building this steamed
city. I was found to be “internally clean” enough to escape such a fate, so I
somehow landed myself in a boys' school. How the doctor determined the
whiteness of my lungs without cutting me open was never explained to me. I
remember the man patted me on the head and said it was one of those “mysteries
of modern science” and that he held “a particular clinical knack” for such
mysteries.

I think my father
paid him off.

Whatever the
reason, I ended up in a classroom. Despite the grand advancement of science and
industry that was building around me, education in my time was focused on
“classical works and authors.” The motivation seemed to be on creating young
gentlemen before young scholars. I didn't last long in the place.

But while I was
there, there once was a moment when my instructor, my cracker-scented misses,
had a moment of fury towards a group of us boys whom she felt were not evoking
the spirit of the arts to the right degree, and dragged us out to a failing
corner theater.

The other boys who
accompanied me griped nonstop about the trip, because their daddies had taught
them that young men of their class should seek out the opera for entertainment.
Common theater was best left for the common boys. My teacher casually tossed
off their complaints, and on the allotted day, we were shuffled one by one down
the street and into the place, a struggling playhouse with a soupy stain on its
ceiling. A less than reputable summit for greater learning, but it was easily
available and, I now suspect, didn't charge admission for children.

The actors came
bounding onto the stage before the show, half-dressed in their colorful
outfits, waving and thrusting their hands to those squeezed into the front row,
of which I was one. They then shuffled off and attempted to perform scenes from
Marlowe's
Faust
and Shakespeare's
Hamlet
trimmed and refitted for
a child audience. This they mostly conveyed with costuming. Oversized devil
horns and copious amounts of face paint. I believe their perception behind this
approach was that even if we weren't able to follow the dialogue, we would be
easily able to distinguish the good characters from the bad.

And for the most
part, it worked. We dutifully cheered when the man with the yellow beard and
sword came out and booed away the man with the evil, long beard.

But then it
happened.

It was late into
their
Hamlet
medley and a pretty actress in a flowing, black wig started
dancing around the stage, throwing plastic flower tops at us. The others
laughed, fought over the flowers, tried to eat them, but I was absolutely
transfixed. And when she was out of flower tops, she suddenly stopped dancing
and began to cry, rubbing her fists into her eyes for exaggerated effect. She
then walked across the stage to where two other actors were hiding behind
wooden shrubs and waving long billows of cheap blue cloth. The girl wrung out
her eyes once more and knelt into the pantomimed water, throwing her arms up as
she drowned. I didn't understand. She was clearly not an evil character, as she
was not wearing the ugly beard. Something, therefore, must have been amiss. Was
it because she had given away all of her beloved flowers?

Without much
thought, I sprung from my seat and climbed the stage, a handful of plastic
petals clutched in my fist. They must not have seen me coming, because no one
stepped out and grabbed me until I had done what I had done.

And I had done
plenty.

I ran headlong to
the supposed river and swiftly kicked the crouching men who were controlling
the river square in the throat. This surprised even me as I was a generally
quiet kid and not one for physical confrontation. The water fell lifeless to
the floor and the woman just stood there, staring at me in silence as I held
out the flowers. The only thing she ever gave me was a momentary change in
face, a flash of gesture too small and distorted that I couldn't tell if it was
a smile or a frown.

My teacher later
reprimanded me with a long speech about respect for performance and craft, not
once considering that from my point of view I was contributing to the scene,
not disrupting it. She explained to me that the drowning girl was supposed to
drown and therefore must. No one will ever kick an ocean for you, I had
decided.

I am telling you
this so that you may gain an understanding of my general relationship and resulting
interactions with women.

So let us return
to the girl that came from behind the glass.

Soft ticking. By
this point, I could more than just hear it, I could feel it. It was pressed up
against my chest. A subtle push-and-click, almost like a pulse, but
more...precise...

I could also feel
my own blood pumping. Carefully, I took the girl by the shoulders and lifted
her a bit from me. The lights had faded from her eyes and she had not said a
word. Strange. I had expected a watch to be hanging where she had been pressed
to my person, but she wore none.

So the ticking...

I looked up again
at her face and found that she was staring at me. My heart jumped a little then
calmed with the relief that whoever this young lady was, she was at least
alive.

Alive and
beautiful, but I'll get to that in a minute.

She blinked at me,
lashes sliding over the milky swirls that made up her pupils.

“Hello,” she said.

Another of those
damned eternities passed.

“Hello,” I said.
“Are you...uh...are you okay?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh. You want to
find out?”

She squeezed her
thin brows together at me.

“Of course.”

She lifted herself
off of me and stretched her arms.

“Wait, Pocket.”

“What?”

“So how many times
are you going to fall onto or be fallen on by people in this story?”

“That's the last
time...I think. It was a long night.”

“No joke.”

She lifted herself
off of me and stretched her arms. She looked about my age and was dressed in
dark velvet, much like the walls, and much like the walls, she seemed well
decorated for a funeral. Her face was young, round, and impossibly familiar.
Her skin was smooth, white, and pale, like the sunken candles that stood at her
feet, and her hair, tucked up in pigtails by clock gears in place of ribbons,
was a luminous fire of red. Long black mourner's gloves ran from her fingers to
her elbows, and in the center of her stomach, surrounded by a heart motif, was
a single, industrial-sized screw.

Screw?

“Aren't you going
to get up?” she asked me.

“Thinking about
it.”

Screw. It was
spinning.

“Are you going to
keep looking at me like that?” she then asked.

“Thinking about
it.”

“What?”

“Sorry,” I said,
shaking back my senses.

I pulled myself to
my feet and scratched my head, an act that reminded me that I had lost my hat
in the fall. I found it bent on the floor and reached for it. The girl
surprised me by reaching faster. She was soon admiring it in her hands.

“Doesn't surprise
me, Pocket. You're slow.”

“I meant it was
surprising that she went after the hat. And I'm not slow. I just savor life too
much to make a rush through every movement I make.”

“You're slow.”

“Alan...”

She made a tiny
fist and punched into the hat, shaping the dent back into fashion. She also
removed an object that I had been wearing in the brim.

“What's this?” she
said, holding it up.

“A spoon.”

“It's got holes.”

“It's slotted.”

“I know how people
use spoons...how do holes help?”

“Uh...I don't
really know. I've never used it like that.”

“Is that why you
wear it in your hat?”

“No. The spoon, it
was...eh...there was this old Frenchman I met once. He was kind of fond of
giving gifts, told me every young man should don a feather in his hat.”

“This is not a
feather.”

“Yeah, I know. He
was...persistent...and a bit strange. It doesn't really matter.”

“Did he tell you
to wear your eyeglass like that?”

“No. That was my
idea.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so anyway—”

She cut me off
with a smile, a trick she would pull on me many times. It was a childlike
smile, all sugar and starlight, painted up in the heavy makeup that made her
face resemble a child's doll. To accompany this smile, she held out my hat to
me, presenting it like a Christmas goose.

I smirked and
received her offering.

“Thanks Dolly,” I
said, donning the hat.

She curtsied, and
as she dipped, I noticed a strange shape protruding slightly from her back. I
remembered the unusual piece of metal I had grabbed onto after the fall. Was it
somehow
attached
to her person?

“Hey Doll,” I
said, trying to present my words as casually and delicately as possible. “Could
I bother you with a question?”

“No bother,” she
said.

“What's that weird
thing coming out of your back?” Kitt said from behind me.

My face met my
palm and the two introduced themselves.

“How long have you
been here?” I said through my teeth to him.

“Since the
discussion of spoons,” replied the girl. “He was standing right there. Do you
have difficulty being aware or observant?”

My eyes narrowed.
“No.”

“I'm just a master
of the shadows,” Kitt said, piping in with one of his uniquely Kitt faces of
self-satisfaction. The girl seemed amused.

“In other words,
your eyes adjust well to the dark,” I said.

“I could see
better than you could back there,” he pointed out.

“Perhaps if you
weren't wearing that half-glass,” the girl added. “You could exist more easily
in the world.”

“That's a good
idea,” Kitt agreed. “Even out your vision. Be less off.”

“Off...” I
repeated in a restrained tone.

I wasn't liking
the direction in which this conversation seemed to be heading, but I was at
least happy that it was serving to distract from Kitt's blunt questioning.

“So,” Kitt said to
the girl. “What is that thing sticking out of your back?”

They say the
difference between tragedy and comedy is the passing of time. I'm still waiting
on that one.

I could see
question marks in the girl's eyes as she felt around behind her back.

“Oh!” she said,
gripping the metal like a lost toy. “This is mine.” She spun around on her
heels. “See?”

Kitt and I were
dumbfounded. A large, smooth piece of curved metal climbed outward from the
middle of her back, shaped into a large T-shape like...well...like the turnkey
of a simple wind-up toy. The ends of the key curved into heart-like shapes and
the entire mechanical piece spun slowly in a circle in time with the screw in
her stomach.

Clockwise.

It added up. The
glowing eyes. The sound of nearby clockwork, as close to me as skin. The
pedestal. The glass and the metal and the tubes and the rubber. The frantic
drawings on the walls. Schematics. The hidden shrine.

The face. The one
that seemed impossibly familiar, as if modeled, if not identically, off of a
woman in a dead man's photograph, a fair face standing before a lost pier.

A picture in a
watchmaker's basement. A place of impossible things.

A girl in the
dark.

A girl with a
knowledge of spoons.

A girl left alone
with a key in her back.