Curioddity (27 page)

“How are you feeling?” asked Mr. Dinsdale from across the small table where they now sat. His face carried a look of genuine concern, as did Lucy's.

“I feel more like I do now than when I first got here,” said Wil, defeated. On the tabletop in front of him, the Perpetual Penny wandered lazily across the flat surface, having no intention of ceasing its spinning activities anytime during the next millennium. “I can't believe all of this is real. I don't want to believe it.”

“Yes, you do, Wil. I knew it from the moment I first met you. You're looking at things with your heart again instead of your eyes. Life is about to get a lot more interesting.”

Wil grasped the cup of tea that had been placed in front of him and let his attention wander to small, spherical objects that were floating aimlessly throughout the room. “I feel like my centrifuge just stopped spinning,” he said, wistfully. And off this simple-yet-complicated remark, Lucy placed a tender hand against his cheek and brushed his hair back slightly. Her caress felt like the most perfect touch in all the world.

“And is the world better, or worse than before?” asked the old man.

“Roughly the same, Mr. Dinsdale.” Wil considered his plight. “I can't tell which direction I'm facing, or if I just learned something, or if I already knew it and just remembered it. I can't tell if I'm coming or going, and I have no idea how I got here. All I know is that everything's random, and this place is the epicenter of it all.”

“When you visit the Museum of Curioddity, the world begins to waken. And when you leave it, you always take a piece of it with you. You're simply seeing the world the way it's supposed to be seen. It takes some getting used to.”

“Is that penny spinning forever?”

“Yes, it would appear so.”

“Why?”

“Because you're ready to believe it can. With a two percent margin for human error, of course. But this being Thursday, that usually goes down by a couple of percent.”

Wil looked at Lucy, hoping with all his heart that she would remain real, no matter how unreal this entire experience seemed to be. Despite her concern for his well-being, Lucy seemed to be taking it all in her stride. “Are you sure you're okay?” she asked. “I think you had some kind of electric shock.”

“It's perfectly fine, Lucy,” exclaimed Dinsdale. “Those ropes have a few hundred thousand volts running through them but it's counteracted by the effects of the Levity. Or at least that's the theory.”

“That's the theory?” repeated Wil, incredulous.

“Yes, and it works, apparently.” Mr. Dinsdale jumped to his feet in the arbitrary, energetic manner he seemed to have claimed for his very own. “Now that you're back in the fold, we have to get straight to work. I'm glad you left a message on my answering machine last week telling us you'd be coming. There's no time to lose.”

“No time to lose what?”

“That's the spirit!” said Mr. Dinsdale, happily. “Come on!” He turned on his heel and headed toward the main floor with the expectation that Wil and Lucy would follow him.

Lucy glanced to Wil, greatly amused. “He's better than advertised,” she said, her eyes widening. “Come on. I want to see what happens next.”

Grabbing Wil by the hand, she led him out of the office and into the motionless centrifuge of randomness otherwise known as the Museum of Curioddity while the Perpetual Penny continued to spin, perpetually.

*   *   *

O
UT ON
the museum's upper floor, the building seemed to have undergone a seismic shift either in a perceptual sense, or just literally. Wil hadn't remembered the hallways being so wide, nor the ethereal will-o'-the-wisps that seemed to float in and out of rooms chased by more of the small, spherical objects. The museum was alive in every corner, and in every meaningful way.

Lucy gasped in delight at each exhibit they passed. Inside the display of perpetual motion machines they found one of the Roberts tinkering with da Vinci's Perpetual Emotion machine. The burly worker had a set of handwritten instructions laid to one side, and was twisting something on a back panel with a small eyeglass screwdriver, while a second Robert kept his arm stuck in the machine's front orifice and alternated between a state of euphoria and a state of utter despair. Wil pulled Lucy slightly toward him, making sure to give the wretched contraption a very wide berth. Perpetual things were now becoming normal, but that didn't mean they were all safe.

While no one was looking, Mr. Dinsdale had teleported to the end of the hall, which led to the temporal exhibits and the featureless room beyond. Next to him, tiny flashes of lightning seemed to illuminate the glass bottle “lightning catcher” from within. “Wil! Lucy! Come this way, please!” called the strange old man.

Lucy tightened her grip on Wil's arm, intrigued by the possibilities unfolding before her very eyes. Clearly, she did not need to be untrained in order to see the museum properly—it already fit into her worldview. “Is Mr. Dinsdale always this arbitrary?” she said, chuckling, as they approached the waiting old man.

“Not really,” whispered Wil as they arrived near the lightning catcher exhibit. “He's a lot less predictable on Mondays.”

As they approached, one of the small, spherical objects whizzed past their heads, followed by a tiny will-o'-the-wisp that made a giggling sound as it chased down the sphere.

“Hey, what are these little circles flying around the hallways?” Lucy asked Mr. Dinsdale as they caught up to his position. “They look like little spaceships.”

“Oh, those?” replied Dinsdale in a matter-of-fact manner that suggested he barely noticed them these days. “Those are some of John Keely's old toys. They levitate using the electromagnetic forces contained within their atomic structure. At least, that's what the manual says. I wouldn't be surprised if they have levity in them.”

“And what about the wispy things?” asked Wil. “Are they part of the exhibit?”

“Oh, those aren't part of an exhibit. We don't know what they are. But they seem to like the little flying spheres so we let them come and go as they please.” Dinsdale turned his attention to the green bottle on the shelf next to him. “Lucy, I really think you'd like this exhibit. It's a lightning catcher, you know.”

A small tornado seemed to flash through the green glass, which only served to heighten the incredible atmosphere at this end of the museum. As Lucy stared into the green glass, Wil stared, mesmerized, at the look of wonderment on her face. Could it really be that he had not viewed this incredible exhibit properly on his previous visit? He thought back to a phrase he'd heard his mother repeat so many times before:
Your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe
. Perhaps this concept had finally come full circle, and he was seeing the truth of the world that had previously been hiding in front of his eyes, all because he simply now believed it. Things were going to be a lot different around here—that much was certain.

Dinsdale began to lead them both away along the hall connecting to the temporal exhibit. “I'm going to level with you, Wil: I have been testing you. The recovery of the Levity box was a precursor to a much more important task. Put simply: I need your help. I need a crack detective on the case.”

“On what case?”

“We'll get to that. First things first: are you up for the task?”

“I don't know what it is!” Wil fussed. “How can I be up for anything if I'm planted on my backside before I've even started?”

“Haven't you learned anything this week?” said Dinsdale, doing a poor job of containing his annoyance. “Good things happen if you do them out of order. Where's your sense of adventure?”

“It's tired. And also very confused. It would like to take a vacation in Hawaii and have pina coladas delivered on the hour, every hour.”

“But Wil—”

“He accepts,” interjected Lucy, abruptly. “And so do I.”

Wil looked at Lucy with astonishment, only to be met with a not-so-innocent smile. “Whatever we're accepting,” she said, “it's better than wondering about what it would have been if we'd said no. I hate it when that happens.”

“I believe you would be a valuable asset in this endeavor, Lucy. Thank you.” Dinsdale looked expectantly at Wil. Wil looked at Dinsdale, and then back at Lucy, incredulous. He looked at the wooden crates: no help at all. He looked at Mary Gold, who smacked her gum, loudly. Surely, he was not about to agree to this, was he?

“I'm a very wealthy man, Wil,” said Mr. Dinsdale. “The fact is, I personally invented more than half of the useful little products we find in our homes today, like bathing cream and shelf studs. Marcus James, on the other hand, simply sells other people's ideas. But you know how it goes—everyone loves a middleman.”

“They do?”

“Quite possibly. Think about the week you've had: has it led you to places you would otherwise not have visited? And would you have preferred to be sitting in the Castle Towers having visited none of those places, Wil?”

Wil looked at Lucy, the beautiful girl he had met in a side street store he would never have visited but for Mr. Dinsdale's box of Levity. No, he decided; he would not have preferred that at all.

“Your eyes now see what your mind is allowing you to believe. I need your help, and I need it now. What do your instincts say?”

“Run like hell.”

“Those are your father's instincts. Look underneath, just as I have been training you to do all week. What is the exact opposite of what you have been taught to think?”

“Well…,” said Wil, hesitantly, and then warming to the moment, “I guess I could stand to get out of the centrifuge and give things a whirl by myself for a change—”

With a squeal of delight, Lucy Price leaped forward and planted a passionate kiss directly on Wil's grateful-yet-surprised lips. “Wil!” she exclaimed. “I love this! This is gonna be epic!”

Wil stared down at the floor, just to check on his vertigo. The floor didn't appear to be moving. He was safe for now, though understandably wary of all things epic.

“Follow me, both of you,” said Mr. Dinsdale as he moved away toward the center of the museum. “We only have a few hours left.”

“Before what?”

“Before the Museum of Curioddity is closed down for good.”

*   *   *

W
IL,
L
UCY,
and Dinsdale moved together along the wide hallway toward the temporal exhibit. As usual, Mr. Dinsdale had thrown Wil for a total loop. He remained quiet for a moment, sensing the old man needed time to gather his thoughts and elaborate on his last statement. Lucy moved along quietly, holding his hand, a worried look on her face. His heart skipped a couple of beats as he surveyed the various looks of amazement she was unable to contain whenever she encountered various exhibits set into alcoves in the wall.

Those very same walls seemed to close in a little as the group proceeded, which gave a very skewed sense of perspective—it somehow seemed as if the hall continually grew in length, suggesting that it somehow expanded to as long as one might need it to be, depending on how long one's conversation was going to last while traversing it. No surprise, Wil realized, that it led to the Temporal Exhibit. The hallway itself was probably one of the exhibits.

While Wil pondered this matter, the group passed the featureless room where he had first encountered Lucy in ghostly form. Lucy stopped dead in her tracks. Wil already knew why.

“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing approximately half of the answer.

“I don't know,” she replied, puzzled. “It's like I just had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Has that ever happened to you?”

“I've been fending it off pretty much all week but we're definitely going to have a few words once Monday rolls around.” Wil turned to address Mr. Dinsdale. “I think the museum's connection to Lucy's Magic Locker sent me in the direction of the Levity box, Mr. Dinsdale. I was connecting to her all along; we just didn't know it. Lucy's the ghost you've been seeing in that room. That's how she was able to reach out and pick the Levity box off one of your shelves.”

“Why, Wil!” exclaimed the old man, excitedly. “I'm genuinely impressed. Now where would a mere insurance claims detective get such an outlandish idea about the fabric of space-time?”

“I read about it in a magazine my mom gave me when I was a kid.” Wil looked at his feet. He felt a dam of emotions about to burst, realizing how much he missed Melinda Morgan, and the way he used to be.

Dinsdale examined Lucy up and down. He placed a hand over one eye, bent double at the waist, and examined her upside down, much to her obvious amusement. “My goodness,” he bellowed. “I think you're right, Wil!”

“Right about what?” said Lucy in an attempt to play along.

“Right about now,” replied Dinsdale. “He's right about now! You're the person we've been haunting! I knew it had to be true!”

Mr. Dinsdale produced a small flashlight from his pocket and pointed it toward Lucy's eyes. “Are you—or have you ever been—a member of the Federal Brotherhood of Theosophy?”

“Um. No. I don't even know what that is.”

“You can never be too careful. Have you been visited by space aliens? Specifically, the gray ones. The green ones don't count—they're everywhere.”

“Not that I remember.”

“Interesting. Are you afraid of cheese?”

“How did you know—?”

“It's not important. Finally, do you imagine things that appear out of the corner of your eye and subsequently disappear? Especially breakfast cereal?”

Lucy seemed stunned into silence.

“I'm afraid this confirms my suspicions,” said Mr. Dinsdale, ominously. “For reasons as-yet unknown, the museum has been trying to forge a connection with you, Lucy. I do hope you'll forgive my associates and I for intruding in your life. If I'm not mistaken, we're the ones who've been haunting you.”