The Darkened Room

Everything in Geode’s body told him to run, but his body wouldn’t comply. He’d only meant to consider, not to touch. What a disaster he’d wrought by not keeping his hands to himself. Aunt Petra, who’d raised him from the age of three, always told him that looking never involved hands, and that he wouldn’t get into trouble if he never touched things that weren’t his. But they were so interesting that it couldn’t be helped. And thus began his troubles.

Mister Weatherington’d asked him to come to the 200-year-old farmhouse to collect some items for the Church Charity Bazaar. Geode hadn’t wanted to, but Petra insisted, and no one smart ever crossed Petra. God, what a show she put on about doing good for others! Geode thought.

Petra often declared things urgent and then made them mandatory, and it was bad to be on her naughty bench. It was the last thing he wanted to do on a Saturday, but Geode drove the old blue C-10 over to the farmhouse, knocked on the door, and waited in the foyer until Francis, the maid or housekeeper escorted him into Weatherington’s study.

Edmund Weatherington hardly looked up from his imposing antique partner desk. Whether it was rudeness or determined focus which kept the old man from rising or greeting him, or at least nodding in his direction, Geode felt unseen.

Truth was, Geode never felt seen anywhere in his life. Petra had taken him in out of a “sense of Christian duty,” or so she had told him many times over their 15 years together. What the hell kind of thing is that to say to a kid? Geode thought whenever she said it to him or in front of him. But Petra cared nothing for his feelings then or now.

He couldn’t exactly explain why, but Geode maintained beneficence and understanding for Petra. He’d lost his mom, Aurelia, but Petra’d lost Aurelia too, along with Uncle Maxwell, in the same explosion. No one ever bothered to explain to Geode what Petra’s sister and Petra’s husband were doing together at an unoccupied building late at night. Or why had it exploded suddenly. Geode’s curiosity gave way to his fear.

His memories of Mother were long since faded, and he didn’t really remember Uncle Maxwell. Geode’s father, Jordan Allchance, Sr., had shuffled off not long before the accident and hadn’t been in contact with the boy since. He was probably dead too. So amid what must’ve been a deep well of sadness already for Petra, she stepped up and took in her sister’s bastard child, and she did it with distinction. She just didn’t do it with love.

He’d had so much time to have these thoughts because when Francis announced Geode to Old-Ed, Old-Ed barely grunted and Francis left. Geode stood in the doorway waiting for over five minutes, plenty of time to marinate in his own thoughts.

After his gloom sabbatical, Geode still had time to contemplate the enormous, crowded, dusty room. Dust notwithstanding, it was a feast for hungry eyes, and he was unsure where he ought to look first.

There were ancient telescopes, more old books than anyone could’ve read, and an elegant, old brass cage elevator to the very rear. Had it been more orderly, Geode could’ve been standing in a museum. It damned sure didn’t seem like any “farmhouse” Geode’d ever seen, not that he’d seen many—or any—in his brief existence.

Old-Ed stood, suddenly, as if he’d just realized that he could, and from across the room, Geode heard the elderly man’s joints pop and crack defiantly. “Oh,” Old-Ed said, upon looking up, more to himself than to Geode. Then, “For goodness’ sake, young man, you may as well come in!”

“Yes, sir.” He responded as Old-Ed pushed past him without apology. Geode couldn’t know what the specific urgency was, but he would’ve bet on a biological need, given Ed’s expression as he passed.

As Old-Ed had implicitly invited him to do, Geode treated himself to more of the room, wandering about, filling his eyes and his mind with so many things unlike he’d ever encountered before. The beauty of the untidy collection spoke to Geode’s heart, making it race, and bringing him jealousy and joy all at once. Why should one person own so much when I own so very little? he thought. How many dues do I have to pay before I can have this much to pile into a room and ignore?

Geode found the room wondrous and aggravating. Then, alas, he spotted the deceased menagerie lining the walls, guarding the collection as fur-covered sentries ready to attack as needed. Lions and tigers and hares! Like everything else in the room, they were lovely, creepy, neglected. A rhinoceros head—black, he thought—looked down from its perch above an impossibly tall bookcase. The humongous head looked precariously balanced, and Geode decided not to wander too close, lest the monster choose that moment to descend and attack him. He couldn’t deny the majesty of the splendid beast teetering over his head, but Geode mourned the oddly elegant piggish creature. He wondered, aren’t rhinos on the endangered list? Geode clicked his tongue in disapproval and walked away from the trophy.

Continuing his tour, he stopped periodically to move in for a closer look at some item or another. The expansive room’s dim lighting gave everything a mystical luster, but also made everything harder to see or read. From his periphery, Geode detected an ever-so-slight movement behind him. It surprised, but didn’t scare him. Turning to look, he saw a large, bright barn owl perched on the superlative horn of the black rhino. “How had I not noticed that owl before?!” he said aloud and then shook his head to clear the cobwebs. What a weird combination, especially since the two animals would not have encountered each other in the wild. Old-Ed must’ve brought them together. To each his own, the boy thought dismissively.

Further into the space, he gravitated to one of several brass and wooden telescopes—this one sitting high on a platform and aiming out a window Geode had not before spotted. Moving towards the platform, he lost interest in the scope halfway there, pulled instead to a table to its opposite.

Atop that smooth wooden surface were half a dozen open books with dog-eared pages and handwritten notes with sporadic pink, orange, and yellow highlighting, and a massively thick album of some sort. Also on the table, beside the hefty album, Geode saw a brass-framed magnifying glass with ebony wood appointments, a full frilly pink china teacup—undignified for a man, Geode thought—and a few pairs each of white cotton gloves and tweezers.

Drawing even closer, Geode realized that his hunch—that this was a stamp collection—was spot-on. Amazing guess, since he had never actually seen one, and knew naught about stamps.

The album was duller than he might have expected, its open pages lacking color and variety. Obviously the stamps were old, but he had no clue as to their value. Look, don’t touch, he thought. These are not your things. Petra’d said this repeatedly throughout his childhood. Whether it was her thimbles and bobbins—with which, while she read, he liked to build and play on the ragged green carpet at her feet—or the hand-stitched dolls from her own childhood—kept too high for a child to reach—she never allowed such liberties.

Petra wasn’t directly abusive, and she always made sure he had the necessities, but she was controlling and territorial, making her seem unkind to a boy with no one else.

So Geode just stood there with Petra’s voice clogging his brain, looking at the weird, dull little scraps of paper that Old-Ed had highly prized. He could tell that Old-Ed took painstaking care to place each stamp into the expensive-looking album. The reference books looked rather pricey too. Weird hobby for a weird old man, he supposed.

Geode glanced down at the cheap wristwatch they’d discovered in Mother’s things after the accident and realized that he had been alone in Old-Ed’s lair for over 10 minutes. Does the old geezer even remember I’m here? Geode wondered.

Emboldened by the solitude and annoyed about being abandoned in the dark, dusty room, Geode walked the room even more, looking back at the rhino/owl combination again. The taxidermy on both was first rate, but he could see now that the eyes on the immense rhino were dead-looking and glassy. The bird, whose eyes Geode couldn’t see well because of the height, seemed more lifelike. I’ll bet it ruled the nighttime sky, hunting for field mice! Shame this regal critter had to wind up here, marginalized by lousy design.

The more he traversed the room, the smaller it seemed and the less diverse and interesting the items collected there became to him. Soon, he found himself back at the stamp table, this time focusing on the passages in the guide books with highlighting, and paying keen attention to a portion in one book bearing the most intensive highlighting—and six red ink exclamation marks. These colorful notations surrounded a “1851 Baden 9 Kreuzer Error Stamp.” And, apparently, it was worth more than a million and half bucks! And, looking over at the open page of the album, there was one! It was quite like the picture, ugly and green and carelessly ornate. It sat atop the page, not yet mounted as far as he could tell.

“What could I do with a million bucks?!” he asked himself in a dull whisper. “I could leave this place forever. Just buy myself a new truck and drive until the road runs out.” Beyond that feeble plan, his mind would not go, but Geode was certain that his life would be better with such unlimited wealth as this. The notion crossed his mind that, hedged in with such opulence and volume as this single room represented, Old-Ed would not likely miss a single stamp. Geode contemplated stealing it and starting his life.

He never decided anything without consulting his lucky (and presently only) quarter, so he retrieved it from his jeans pocket and positioned it on his right thumbnail bed, flipped it. The coin traveled in slow motion into the air, but landed and rolled much faster. It took him a moment to spot it underneath the table. Down on his knees, he reached for it, but he’d misjudged how far it was beneath the table.

The massive wings susurrated, and instantly Geode knew that the owl wasn’t dead or stuffed. It came for him now! His reflexes caused his head to raise, and his raised head smacked harshly into the bottom of the table. He felt the tea pouring down on him as he rubbed his injured head. The whirring a camera coming to life somewhere in that room added more soundtrack to his doom.

The ugly German stamp disintegrated in the tea spill, and Geode nearly broke his leg hopping out of the telescope window to his freedom. He arrived at his truck and realized that he had lost his keys during his escape, and the quarter—which had failed to bring him any luck at all—also remained in the room. He dashed into the nearby woods.

The kindness of Miss Francis, in grabbing his keys and his coin, and driving his truck to the edge of the woods, were all that saved him that night. They tell their children that story of how they began to love to this day.

They later learned that Old-Ed died that night. Everyone assumed it was because the German stamp was a fake and someone had had Old-Ed. Far from a million bucks, or even the $25,000 the codger had spent at auction, it was worth less than a dollar. Chances are, Geode supposed, Old-Ed never knew about the fraud, but only the wet, messy loss.