This next is the most unpleasant part. Let’s hurry through it. If you are grown you might cover your ears while it is told, or else you will remember something you once had and which is yours no longer; and if you are young then you might brighten the night lights, but sometimes this only draws out the shadows.
The room Swain stepped into was one of the most curious he had yet seen, and at first he thought its walls were on fire. Soon he realized this was not so, and all that flickering came from one candle in the center of the room, which was so dusty and coughed so heavily that its flame always-almost went out, but it just managed to keep on; and this flame’s light was bouncing off of hundreds and hundreds of jars of all sizes, full of needles and threads and buttons.
The jars were crammed into wooden cases that ran along the length of the room, some so full that their fronts would not shut properly. There was a ladder that you could move along the walls to reach the highest shelves, and there were bins and crates stacked into the corners, quite precarious, but they stood.
Swain might have liked to marvel at it a bit longer had he not heard the clearing of a throat behind him, Ahem, and you have guessed that it was Mrs. Gordon who shut him up in the room, and turned the lock; now when the door was closed he saw her standing against the wall, just behind him.
She held Verow at the back of her neck and dangled the whimpering girl above the ground so that her feet were just able to kick at the dust on the floorboards.
“Let her go!” Swain shouted.
“I HEARD YOUR PLANNING, BOY!” said Mrs. Gordon. “I KNOW WHY YOU FOLLOWED US HERE!”
Of course this was mostly lies, although Mrs. Gordon would liked to have believed that she knew all the truth; but the matter was that she heard only pieces of the children’s conversation, and the rest came as a faint buzzing in her ears, as if a fly had lodged in her head. This is true of all grown-ups when they hear of the world of lost things, for some part of them that used to daydream has dwindled out.
“I KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! IT’S MINE! MINE!”
Swain drew back and pressed himself against the wooden cases so suddenly that the jars wavered dangerously at the edge of the shelves; a large, ugly hat fell down from an upper box and onto his head, going down completely over his eyes. By the time he pulled it up and could see again, Mrs. Gordon was almost on top of him.
“YOU CAN’T TAKE IT FROM ME!”
The next instant her umbrella crashed into the spot where Swain’s head had just been; he dodged her swipe and the umbrella smashed one of the wooden cases instead, sending buttons and needles flying out in all directions as the shelves gave way and the collection of jars plummeted to the floor.
In this panic Mrs. Gordon took a few more blind swings, each time felling another shelf or rupturing another set of jars; and now all the boxes were toppling and the silks flapped through the candlelit air like wispy spirits. All the while the woman held fast to Verow, dragging her helpless captive through the chaos.
“YOU WON’T HAVE IT! I’VE KEPT IT ALL THIS TIME! IT’S MINE!”
Swain could see the button shining like a medallion upon the woman’s breast as she romped and thrashed, much too wildly for him to get anywhere close; but here is Verow to help us along!
She yanked and pulled against Mrs. Gordon’s crushing grip, and as she did it the woman let out one more anguished cry as the boxes she had just upset came down on her; and then she was falling tops-over- end, and went crashing into a shelf. That silenced her well enough.
When Mrs. Gordon woke some hours later she was a nightmarish sight, and you could see the needles sticking into her face and the glass tearing into her clothing; and so alarmed was she by the open door and the empty room that she hardly noticed the button missing from her coat.
Topher Daniel can be reached at [email protected]
