Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Read online

  “Yes, yes, I'm getting to it.”

  “Well, get to it faster.”

  As I, for some reason, then explained to the inquisitive fox boy, the bottle in question had found its way to me one peculiar time in the spring of the previous year. A time in April, specifically, and being such, the sky was pouring rain. It was also the dead of night and between the blackness and the wetness I was having considerable trouble navigating the southbound streets of the city. I was soon lost.

  “Huge surprise.”

  “Alan, please.”

  I wandered for awhile until walking over something large in the street that turned out to be an elderly Frenchman. I asked if he was all right, and he informed me that he had taken to the streets in search of “an enlightenment of the senses.” I pointed out to the old man that it was raining quite hard for such experiments and he told me that rain was a vital part of life and therefore the sensation of water on skin was critical to his research.

  “Sounds like he spent considerable time 'researching' an opium den.”

  “I know, but listen…”

  I hated to bother someone so entranced with the weather, so I apologized for running my boots over his stomach and fell into a mud puddle. The old man wheezed and cackled. I swore and tried idiotically to ring myself out under the pouring shower.

  “Bravo!” the Frenchman bellowed, sitting up and clapping hard. “Merci bien!”

  I ignored this and waited for the rain to wash the mud off of my coat. I dipped my hands into my pockets, the insides of which were especially wet for some...oh no. I pulled my hands out at once to find them dyed black-purple, right down to the fingertips. I remembered that I had been toting a small inkwell that must've overturned when I fell. Angry, I pitched the empty vial into the mud, only to watch it skip over the surface like a perfectly timed stone.

  “You have great skill,” the Frenchman said.

  “Sure,” I replied, staring at my hands. “It takes a special breed of idiot to change his skin purple.”

  “Indeed it does!”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, the old loon playing in the street like a child.

  “Eh...thanks.”

  “Are you a child of the Revolution?”

  “I don't think so.”

  He cackled and wheezed again. “Forgive me,” he said at last. “You must think me terribly rude. But I find you endlessly entertaining.”

  “Thanks,” I grunted.

  I wandered off towards an orange orb that I figured was a lamppost when the sloppy footsteps of the coot hurried beside me.

  “Now, now, now,” he said. “Wait, wait, wait. You can't go just yet!”

  “I can't?”

  “No!”

  “I don't know. Look at my legs. Left, right...yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm perfectly able to leave. Good evening, sir.”

  “Hang on a bit!” he pleaded, grabbing at my coat. “I need to reward you.”

  “Reward? What for?”

  “The entertainment.”

  “I appreciate it, but you don't have to celebrate me falling down in the mud.”

  “Of course I do!”

  “In fact, it's the sort of thing I like to try to forget.”

  “Oh, you shouldn't do that, friend. You should never do that. Besides you added a critical, yes, an absolutely critical element to my investigation. You, sir, are a stimulant and a vital touch of that great magic.”

  I slid against a wall under a small awning and enjoyed a small cover from the showers. The Frenchman chose to remain in the rain, smiling wide at me.

  “I hate to tell you,” I finally said. “But if you're expecting to get any magic out of me, you're going to be greatly disappointed.”

  “Says the man with the magical hands.”

  I looked down at my purple skin. It was already starting to run with the rain.

  “That's only ink.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that's your clever little lie. Keep all the magic to yourself.”

  “You overestimate me.”

  “I think not, storyteller.”

  “How did—“

  “How can you tell a duck's bottom feathers are wet?”

  Hmph...lucky guess. You see a man with ink on his fingers and you make assumptions. He could've very well called me clerk or bookkeeper. I wasn't buying this muddy oracle act. I didn't answer his question and instead shook my hands. The color was quickly fading. I held them up for presentation.

  “Sorry,” I said to the man. “Looks like my magic's run dry.”

  “How sad for a man of your ability.”

  “Maybe. But I'll live.”

  He took a deep breath of rainwater and spit it out. “I suppose you will.” He retrieved from somewhere unseen a long cigarette and a single match. Cupping both from the rain, he lit the match against his heel and put it to the other.

  “Now it's my turn to laugh,” I remarked. “If you think you're going to be able to smoke while standing out there.”

  He said nothing, arched his back, and began taking long, pronounced drags on the cigarette under the downpour. I watched in amazement as the hot red glow of the tip continued to burn through the dousing rain. Impossible. The Frenchman released a round of smoke through his nostrils, flicked ash to the ground, and continued smoking. Impossible!

  “How did you do that?”

  “Just maybe,” he said to me. “Just maybe I have lost in my years less magic than you. Here.”

  He reached a wrinkled hand under the awning and handed me four soggy, long cigarettes. They were wrapped in purple papers and smelled very slightly fragrant.

  “I don't really smoke.”

  “Take them. Try smoking in the rain sometime.”

  “Uh...sure,” I said, plopping them into my coat pocket without thought.

  A splash of wind spit through the rain. I started to shiver.

  “You were asking about shelter, right?” the old man said.

  “No. Never mentioned it.”

  He shot me a wild eye.

  “But you meant to.”

  My foot pushed against the wall and propelled me off once more into the rain. We walked for a bit, stomping around in the slop. Once we had been stomping for a good while, he began rubbing his chin, as though the act powered his brain through some strange utility of kinetic energy.

  “I'll tell you what you need,” he said to me. “A good woman. You have a woman, friend?”

  “No.”

  “You should find one. Great way to gain some magic.”

  “Great way to lose some magic too.”

  “Hmm...I suppose,” he cackled. “But find one with nice enough curves and you'll never mind.”

  “Heh,” I smirked. “If you say so.”

  “Why, boy? What's wrong with a shapely woman?”

  “Not a thing in the world.”

  And so the old man led me in his frenzy through the wind and the rain and the overwhelming darkness of the night through the veins of the city, through the crooked, weaving lines that wiggled through the southside. I hopped bins and crates, squeezed between buildings, and hurried down alleyways. At last he led me to this faint glow in the night which revealed itself as an inn. Or what used to be an inn. The look of the place alone suggested that it hadn't been properly run for years. But there was definitely a life about the place, something in the ether I couldn't quite sort out, and when I asked the Frenchman about its condition, he was more than happy to respond.

  “Optimum operation, boy! Optimum operation!” he said as we approached the front door. “This place is no longer simply a nailed-up box of lodging, of refuge. Yes, boy, we can extend the courtesy of a dry roof and a warm bed, but this is more! This is an outpost of essence! A phantom limb to the body of revolution I left behind in Paris!”

  “Look, you might want to quiet down with all that 'revolution' talk. The King's not that keen about words like that.”

  “Oh, you English are so drab, with your militarists and your industry! I'm talkin
g of a movement of passions! Of humors! Of...boy, could you lend a shoulder? The door's stuck again.”

  “Sure.” Push. Thud. Squeak. We went inside. Electric Bohemia, he had called the place. It was written across the walls of the lobby in scavenged letters taken from city notices that must've been previously posted on the premises. The “EM” in BohEMia, for instance, was stamped with a familiar government typeface. And given the state of the establishment, I dared to suppose that it may have very likely been clipped from the word “CondEMned.”

  A man with a curled beard was sleeping behind the front desk. The Frenchman rang a rusted bell and the gent woke in a bustle. He then blinked and asked my escort how his nightly experiments had fared. They made small talk, or not, maybe it was some probing debate on the fiber of all humanity. I wasn't paying attention.

  “Now!” the Frenchman announced, clapping his hands at me. “All seems to be in order. There remains only the matter of your gift.”

  “Gift?”

  “I owe you for the entertainment, remember? How quickly the youth of this world forget!”

  “Really, sir. The dry room is gift enough. And those unusual cigarettes.”

  I lightly patted my soggy pocket, assuming the already-dampened tobacco sticks were by now reduced to a glob of sour pulp.

  “Nonsense! Petty offerings! You need something more...appropriate for the favor.”

  “Oh? And what's appropriate for a mud puddle performance?”

  “Hmmm...that seems to be the question...”

  He started rubbing his chin again. I shook some rainwater off of myself.

  “Look, sir,” I began, softly. “Really—“

  “Got it!” he said, beaming. “Entertainment for entertainment! A fair trade!”

  “Fair trade?”

  “You like to be entertained, don't you, friend?”

  “I…suppose so…”

  “Then why don't you make yourself good and comfortable, and I'll see if I can't send something nice and expressive your way. You like expressive entertainment, don't you?”

  “Oh...sure. Expressive is fine.”

  “Good! I thought so! On your way, then.”

  He took me by the arm and led me through the lobby, pushing along deeper into the inn.

  “That-a-way, young man,” he instructed as we ventured along. “Go on.”

  He then vanished through a side door and initiated loud conversation with another on the opposite side. The discussion was clear and blunt, but being a little cold and dizzy from the weather, I did not pay adequate attention to exchange.

  “The boy wants 'expressive beauty,'” I half-heard the Frenchman say. “You're an expressive beauty, right?”

  “I can do expressive,” said another.

  Rather than ponder the implications of these words, I shook a little water from my ears and wandered forward, drippy and alone, on my way.

  The old man had sent me in the direction of a crooked hallway toward the back of the establishment. It was dim and a smell I could only classify as week-old sour milk led me by the nose down the corridor to a small corner bedroom, windowless and warmer than the rest of the inn.

  I closed the door and sat on the edge of a table. The walls were mustard yellow, though clearly not originally. Still, the stained color brought a sense of décor to the box, and I let my eyes bounce from the yellow to the green of the untrimmed potted plants that had been stacked in one corner. An overstuffed and overused sofa sat across from me. To this day, I do not know what possessed me to choose a tabletop to nest on in place of the obvious seating arrangement, but I went with my gut and knocked songlets and diddies into the wood with my knuckles, waiting for God knows what to appear.

  A good quarter of an hour later, a woman finally came through the doorway, tried once, twice, and finally succeeded in closing the peel-paint door, locking it with an old brass key. She was wearing the faintest shade of green I'd ever imagined and looked me over with great exaggeration while her right hand tugged on the one-piece leotard she wore. The choice in wardrobe made me instantly associate her with a golden-haired trapeze artist I had seen as a child, and I found it suddenly very difficult not to regard her as an acrobat.

  “You the one the old man sent me for?” she spoke.

  “I think so,” I answered, a little cautiously.

  “You're all wet.”

  “It's raining.”

  “Oh.” She rubbed her painted thumbnails over each other and caught a look at a neatly arranged triangle of bubble-bottomed glass teacups. “Oh! The hell did you do with those?”

  “Not a lot.” In truth, I had found the three cups lying overturned on the floor upon entering the room and, in waiting, had properly arranged them to kill time and make a good impression. My act seemed to have had the opposite effect.

  “Well, just great,” she spat. “There's nothing left to be arranged, is there?”

  “I...suppose not.”

  “Wonderful.” She grabbed at the veil she had been wearing on her head and cast it to the floor. “Can't really play servant when you've left me no task to serve, can I?”

  I didn't know what to say, so I apologized.

  “I'm...sorry.”

  She looked with a fiery-green annoyance hard into my eyes, no easy task as my sloppy wet bangs were trying their hardest to curtain them. She then suddenly softened into a smile and placed her painted fingers on her hips.

  “That's all right, sugar. No harm.”

  “Glad.”

  She nodded, politely smiling like a show horse, and took four pronounced steps backward. Slowly, like a lady of breeding, she lowered herself onto the old couch, her weight pushing a few rusty springs up through the material, and struck an exaggerated pose.

  “I'm ready,” she said calmly. “Begin when you please.”

  “I'm...sorry?”

  “I already said there's no harm, so you can begin.”

  I caught my breath and attempted to solve this riddle.

  “No...” I said, a little stupidly. “I mean...I'm sorry?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, I don't understand.”

  With a sigh and a grunt, she arched her back up and threw another fiery-green stare my way.

  “You artist types are the absolute worst, you know that? You have to spell out everything!”

  “I...think there's been a mistake. The old gentleman—“

  “Frenchie's a coot, but he pegged you right. Stop with the babbling, artist, and start sketching.”

  “Sketching?”

  “That is what you types need, right? I'm doing the modeling thing, so get going.”

  “I can't draw.”

  “What?”

  “Or paint.”

  “This a joke? Frenchie called you an artist.”

  “I am. Of the written and....uh....spoken word.”

  “Oh, I get it.” She cracked her knuckles and stood up. She then began to tap her pointed feet on the floorboards, stretching her bare and bruised legs. “Bookish type. Okay. What's your name, love?”

  “Will Pocket.”

  “Nice to meet ya, Will. I think I know what you need.”

  She dropped to all fours and began pulling a rather large steamer trunk in the opposite corner from the leafy greens.

  “And what's your name?” I asked.

  “Not important.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Not to you. Call me whatever you want. Your treat.”

  “I can't just make you up an identity!”

  “Some writer you are. Hey, give me a hand with this trunk, will ya, Will? Thanks. Look, if it'll help, call me Abby.”

  “Abby...”

  “Sure, why not? Good a name as any,” she shrugged. I observed in hesitation as the lady rummaged through the trunk, throwing tiaras, feather boas, and ballet slippers around the room before removing a pair of cheap, costume faerie wings, green as her eyes, and donning them.

  “There we are!” she said with a sudde
n, unexpected sweetness. “Ready to be of assistance, Master Will! Shall I fetch you ink and paper?”

  I watched, absolutely astonished, as the mad woman bounced on her toes from corner to corner, humming a tune I could swear sounded quite similar to the knuckle songs I was rapping into the table previously.

  “What are you doing?” I said at last.

  “I am this evening's Muse, Master Will! Begin as you will!”

  I tried to protest, but I couldn't get a word over her song. Her humming voice became louder and she swayed to and fro, knocking over plants, which I then tended to, and knocking open dresser drawers, which I then adjusted, in her rainy night dance.

  On her song's third refrain she whacked open a cabinet drawer for the second time and in responding to it, I took notice of a small, framed photograph. Without thinking, I took it in my hand and observed it. It was a yellowed portrait of two school-age girls, the taller grinning with sparks in her eyes and gaps in her teeth. Her hair was up and her body was tilted toward her companion with the grace of a circus acrobat.

  “Give me that!” Abby snapped, tearing off her wings. “No one said you could start snooping! Show's over!”

  “I didn't mean to upset—“

  “Get out, Will.”

  I have no idea why I didn't. I wanted to like hell, but instead...

  “What do you think you are doing?” Abby barked, leaning in on me.

  “One moment.”

  “What's that there?”

  “Hang on.”

  I had taken from my soggy pocket a soggy napkin I had picked up somewhere in my travels and a half-dulled pencil and was scribbling furiously with one on the other.

  “I'm almost done,” I calmly announced.

  She leaned in to observe my work.

  “What's the gag, Will? You're no sketch-painter.”

  “Not before this night.”

  I rose from the table I had again taken rest upon and handed her the napkin. Politely I squeezed the rain out of my shirttail while she studied my drawing, a crude stick-bodied caricature of the spark-eyed, gap-toothed young girl.

  “I think I should go,” I said with a bow.

  “Will,” Abby said, barely over a whisper, “I don't understand.”