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

  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.
r />   “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.

  “She's a toy,” Kitt said at last.

  She faced us with a smile under deep, sadder eyes. She clasped her gloves together as her key continued to turn, spinning ever softly the delicate balance of clockwork that her crafter had painstakingly cobbled beneath her thin, near translucent skin.

  We had found the Watchmaker's Doll.

  “A-ha! Now are finally getting somewhere, Pocket! Mechanical women moving on a spinning key! Just fantastic!”

  “Clockwork under skin. I swear on my life. And it's wo-man, not wo-men. There was only one.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You don't seem to be taking this very seriously.”

  “You're right, fine. Let's assume this is all true, and no one else in the world had discovered this before you.”

  “And Kitt.”

  “And Kitt, sure. So what then, grand adventurer? Did this turnkey girl swear you to an oath of secrecy or reveal some glorious secret as a reward for her freedom?”

  “She...um...made us scones.”

  “Scones?”

  “With jam.”

  Kitt and I found ourselves sitting on a pair of short stools in one of the dusty side rooms off of one of the dusty corridors in that labyrinth of a basement. The room also served as a makeshift kitchen and we watched in amazement as the Watchmaker's Doll slopped dough and flour together.

  She had insisted on making us breakfast. Strange first response, in my opinion, to a pair of strangers who have just broken into your home. But I was hungry, so I didn't get vocal about it. Kitt did point out that it was the middle of the night, but she said that the time was close enough to breakfast to have breakfast, so we had breakfast. And we didn't feel like arguing about proper timing to a girl who lived in a watch shop.

  “You can cook?” I had asked.

  “I think so,” she had replied. “Probably.”

  If she was the Doll, then it seemed the three of us were playing house. I'm sure Kitt and I should have spent this time pondering on the make and workings of the sophisticated and quite revolutionary piece of machinery that was before us, but we were both more concerned with being accommodating guests to our hostess. Besides, she seemed to take insult to words like “machinery” being directed towards her.

  “How...” Kitt whispered to me while she stuck the doughy globs into an oven. “How is this possible?”

  “I haven't a clue. I never dreamed something like...like this...”

  “I know! It's like something out of a storybook. Do you think she knows?”

  “She seems to. I mean, she has a key in her back.”

  “Maybe we should ask.”

  “That seems rude.”

  “Oh.” Kitt rested his elbows on his knees. “Why is she making us breakfast?”

  “Because she wanted to,” I whispered.

  “Why are we letting her?”

  “Because I'm hungry. How long did you say this place has been closed up?”

  “I forget.”

  “Mmm...”

  “Worried the food's already off?”

  “Not enough not to eat it.”

  At last, the Watchmaker's Doll came over with another smile and a pan of lopsided scones. She then sat down on a third stool and produced a sticky jar of strawberry jam.

  “My favorite,” she said.

  Favorite? Surely a woman filled with cogs and gears wouldn't...

  “The lady first!” she announced with vigor, lifting a smeared scone to her lips. And then, quite astonishingly, she ate! She just...ate. Swallowed and everything. She continued this until the entire thing was gone and then excused herself for, as she put it, “a momentary wash.”

  “What is she doing, eating like that?” Kitt whispered.

  “Probably making her gears sticky.”

  “Is that why she left? A wash, she said. Is she...cleaning...her insides?”

  It was an unusual thought, but then I remembered the self-powered rubbish bins, consuming and burning away edible scraps. Could she be of similar design, or just simply a strawberry enthusiast? At any rate, I seriously doubted that she actually needed to eat, but the practice certainly wasn't foreign to her and she seemed to gain much enjoyment from it. Such strangeness lies in science.

  “I don't know, Kitt. Ask me about the workings of life before you ask me about the workings of women.”

  “But she's not a normal woman.”

  “There's no such thing.”

  We bit into our scones, which, despite a little bit of blackening on the bottom, were quite edible and quite delicious. I was well into my second and Kitt was licking jam off of his fingers when the Doll returned. She was carrying my bottle of faerie juice.

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. I nearly forgot that.”

  “It's yours?” she said, shaking the bubbles around. “What's in there?”

  “My essence,” I said with a laugh.

  “You keep your essence in a bottle?”

  “Doesn't everyone?” I took a thoughtful chew on my meal and smiled to myself.

  “What does that mean?” she said.

  I thought it over. “I'm not sure. I was trying to sound clever.”

  “I see.”

  “Did it sound clever?”

  “It sounded somewhat clever.”

  “All right then. I'll mark it as a success.”

  The Doll regained her seat and watched me and Kitt eat.

  “So,” Kitt said, talking through his food. “How long you been on your own here?”

  She tilted her head to the side.

  “I'm...not sure.”

  “Lost track of the days?”

  “I was never following them,” she replied.

  “Oh.”

  “I've been sleeping a lot.”

  “So you sleep, then. How does that—“

  “You're being nosy,” I interjected.

  “I don't care,” said the Doll.

  “No, he's right,” Kitt said. “Too many questions. I talk too much sometimes.”

  “That so?” I dryly questioned.

  “You can talk if you want,” Kitt offered to her. “Give us a few questions.�
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  “All right,” she said.

  I took a third scone. Her first question was a logical one, but the timing of it took me and Kitt by surprise.

  “Who are you?” she asked us.

  We looked at each other. Of course. We had been too busy conversing and enjoying jam to realize that no one present at this cluster of stools and jars had ever made a former introduction.

  “Right,” I said.

  “Right,” Kitt said. “We never told you our names or anything. You don't know us at all.”

  “I know you are a master of the shadows,” the Doll said to Kitt. “So I would figure that you are thieves.”

  “Very good!” Kitt said. “Clever girl!”

  “He's the thief,” I maintained. “I just followed him down the hole.”

  She nodded. “So you are a thief and a follower.”

  “No, don't call me a follower. That's sounds so...weak-willed. Besides, I just came in to search for my bottle.”

  “So you are a searcher?”

  “I'm Will Pocket.”

  She smiled and daintily shook my hand.

  “Mister Pocket.”

  Kitt's hand was next.

  “And I'm Kitt Sunner.”

  “Mister Sunner.”

  “Just Kitt.”

  “Mister Kitt, then.”

  “Still too formal.”

  “All right, Kitt-Kitt.”

  “Oh my...”

  I laughed and suddenly realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had had such amusement and, well, fun amongst complete strangers. I think the trick about people that become not-strangers in your life is that when they enter your life, they don't appear very stranger-like to begin with.

  Strange.

  However, I was still sane enough not to hang around an abandoned building with a street thief and a hostess that was currently lingering somewhere between shut-in and jostled property.

  “Well,” I said, standing and finishing my last scone. “Thank you very much for the meal. Quite tasty.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” she said. Then suddenly, her eyes changed to suspicion. “You're not leaving, are you?”