The next morning, Harrison woke up feeling lousy. His throat was scratchy, and his head felt all puffed up, and when he tried to stand up and walk, he felt like he did the time he was on his cousin's fishing boat and was trying to walk from one side to the other. Eventually, he had had to sit down on a crate and not move at all. And that was before the seasickness had set in.
"Oh Harrison!" His mom looked at him with a frown as she pulled the thermometer out of his mouth. "Well, at least you don't have a fever."
"I feel awful!" He said, and his voice sounded strange to him, as if he were underwater.
"I know you do." She tousled his hair. "I'll take you over to Grampa and Gramma's house. Here, put on your robe so you stay warm. We've got to go now though, or I'll be late for work."
Harrison took the fuzzy blue bathrobe from her and wrapped it around himself. He then slowly made his way downstairs.
Harrison always went over to his grandparents' house whenever he was sick. Both of his parents had jobs, so unless it was something really serious, they just sent him up the street to spend the day there. He never minded it, because his grandmother was an incredible cook. Today, he thought there was a good chance she would make him a big batch of her famous chicken soup, and, if he was especially lucky, her chocolate-chip cookies.
Harrison lived with his mom and dad and little sister in a small town in Michigan. His grandparents lived just up the street from his own house, at the top of a hill in an old, old house that the kids at his school liked to say was haunted. Harrison got along OK with most of the kids at school–not Jason and his friends of course–but he didn't really have anyone he considered a good friend.
And he certainly didn't believe what they said about his grandparents' house. He thought they just said those things because they knew he was easy to scare and they liked to tease him. And he'd been in that house enough times to know it wasn’t haunted. At least, he thought it wasn’t. He had to admit it was a pretty odd house, and there were parts of it his grandparents didn't want him going into. Still, he'd never seen anything weird there, and he was pretty sure his Gramma or Grampa would have told him if there was anything weird about it.
As she always was when he got to the house, Gramma Rose was waiting there for him with a hug and a big mug of something to eat or drink. This time, as he'd guessed, it was some of her famous chicken soup.
"I pulled some out of the freezer and warmed it up for you as soon as I heard your grampa on the phone!" she said, pulling him to her. "Don't you worry Sarah, we'll take good care of him!"
Harrison' mom said thank you, kissed him goodbye, and went back to the car. He noticed that she looked tired.
Once inside, his grandmother quickly took him upstairs.
"Now, I'm sure it's nothing but a little first-week-of-school jitters," said his Gramma cheerily, as she bundled him into the giant four-poster bed with his mug of soup and a stack of books and a heavy brass bell he could ring if he needed anything.
"Your grampa thought you might like to look at some of these while you're lying in bed," she pointed to the stack of books. "So you don't get bored."
He looked at the pile of books, which she had placed on the nightstand next to him. They were all very old and didn't have paper covers or any pictures on their fronts. They were also coated in dust and looked as if they hadn't been touched since before he'd been born. One of the titles was "An Alternate View of the Peloponnesian Wars, by A.G. Salter."
"Gosh," Harrison mustered. "Thanks Gramma!"
After she'd left the room, with a reminder to ring the bell hard if he needed anything because her hearing wasn't what it once was, Harrison lay back in the big bed. And in a moment, it was as if everything else had come to a stop, or existed in some other universe somewhere. His school and the nasty kids there, his parents rushing around the house in the morning to get ready for work, his six-year-old sister Jennie chattering about the kind of kitten she wanted most of all.
This was one of the things he loved most about being at his grandparents' house: the quiet. He could just lie there in bed and the rest of the world could continue on its way, but he didn't have to pay attention to it. He could lie here and listen to the silence. To the clock ticking somewhere down the hall. To the birds chirping and the insects humming outside the window next to his bed. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes.
***
Downstairs, Harrison's grandfather had come up from the basement where he had been working on a "project." Harrison was always interested to see his grandfather's "projects", even though he didn't always understand what they were about.
One time, Grampa had made a detailed model of the Trojan War, complete with a little wooden horse and soldiers pouring out of it. Another time, he had built a not-quite-working model of one of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines.
Harrison's Grampa Lewis was a cheerful man, but he often grumbled about how his grandchildren lived. Always being rushed about, everything so fast, their parents so busy all the time. No time for a game of chess, or backgammon, and some chocolate-chip cookies.
Chess? Young Harrison played a different kind of game now. "Mine Wars" or some such. It was on a computer screen and the way the boy told it, he didn't even see the other people he was playing against. It didn't seem like much of a game to his grandfather.
And they didn't seem to be teaching him much of anything in that school of his.
"Tell me boy," he had asked him not long ago. "What do you know about the sack of Constantinople?"
Harrison had looked at him blankly.
Grampa had taken Harrison and marched straight over to the boy's house. He had stormed into the kitchen where his son and daughter-in-law were both staring into their cell phones.
"They're teaching him nothing in that school!" He bellowed. "Nothing!" His son–Harrison's father–sighed, still looking at his phone.
"Of course they are, dad," he said. "They're teaching him all the stuff I learned and all the stuff you learned too."
"Oh yeah?" Grampa had bellowed. "Ask him about the sack of Constantinople! Go on, ask him!" "Well Dad," Harrison's dad was looking up from his phone now. "To be fair, I don't think I learned about that at his age. I bet you didn't either."
"Well you'd be wrong!" Shouted Grampa. "Alright, something basic then. Ask him about the Revolutionary War. What was that all about, eh?"
All eyes had turned to Harrison, who was already uncomfortable enough because of all the shouting. He knew his Grampa was trying to help, and that he was only shouting because he got passionate about these things, but still, it made him uncomfortable.
"Well," began Harrison, "the Revolutionary War... the Revolutionary War was fought against ... the British, and the people who started it owned slaves and after they won, they didn't let women vote."
Grampa lost it. "What an utter load of unadulterated balderdash!" He bellowed.
When he thinks back on it, he admits it was not one of his finer moments. He saw his grandson turn red in the face and he immediately regretted his outburst.
"Dad," Harrison's father had offered meekly, "what he said is all true..."
"Oh of course it's true!" Grampa had bellowed. "But it's hardly the most pertinent information to draw from that episode in history, now is it?"
He could see Harrison's mother growing more uncomfortable throughout the discussion. Now, she whispered harshly to him, her face tense:
"Grampa Lewis, please keep your voice down!"
"What on earth?" He was genuinely puzzled. "Are you afraid the neighbors might hear us having a lively discussion?"
"No!" Her voice was now squeaky, which he knew meant that a line had been crossed. "I'm afraid the neighbors will think my husband's father is a... a white supremacist!"
She had run crying from the room.
"Oh for the love of God!"
Now it was Harrison's father's turn to look uncomfortable. "Dad... no offense... I just think you should go..."
***
When he woke up, Harrison had no idea what time it was or how long he had slept. His head still felt a little puffy, but his sore throat had subsided, and he felt rested. He could hear noises from downstairs: Thumping about, and voices talking but he couldn't make out the words. He remembered that his grandparents were planning to take a trip and that they were leaving tomorrow or the next day. He figured they must be getting packed now.
He pulled off the thick down comforter and quilt that his grandmother had covered him with, and swung his feet down onto the floor. He waited a moment and then stood up. He no longer felt like he was making his way across the deck of a fishing boat. And he felt a little restless. He looked over at the pile of dusty books on the bedside table and felt even more restless. He decided to go wandering.
His grandparents' house was a fun one for wandering around in. Legend had it that it had once belonged to a wizard, and that bits of his magic could still be found there. Harrison didn't really know what that meant though. He'd read "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Once and Future King", so he knew a few things about wizards, but the one thing he knew for sure was that they weren't real. He had to admit though that it did make the house seem more interesting.
He knew that there were some parts of the house that he was not supposed to wander in, but he didn't remember why. He also didn't remember, today, as he began his wandering, exactly which parts those were. He decided not to worry about it too much though. After all, it was Grampa and Gramma. They wouldn't get very angry with him if he ended up going into the wrong room by mistake.
As he stepped out into the hallway, he could hear their voices downstairs. It sounded like they were bickering about what to pack for the trip, where to stop for lunch and what time to plan to arrive at the bed and breakfast. It was a comforting sound. He continued down the hallway.
Most of the rooms on this floor were bedrooms. There was also a bathroom of course, as well as a small study. He had been here enough times that he knew this part of the house very well. It was the next floor that interested him. So he made his way down to the end of the hall, to a narrow door. Behind that door was a stairway leading up.
If the kids at school could see him now, Harrison mused, they would be surprised. Here he was, "Fraidy-Cat Harrison", wandering around the house everyone else was afraid to go near because they thought it was haunted. But to him, it wasn't a "haunted house"–it was his Gramma and Grampa's house. And anyway, he knew it wasn't haunted.
He closed the door behind him and went up the stairs.
Up on the next level were several unused rooms, some of which were used for storage. Harrison poked his head into a couple of them, but they looked thoroughly uninteresting. One, a disused guest room with dust covers on the furniture, the other piled high with boxes. Then he came to the room at the end of the hallway. At first it seemed that the door was locked. He turned the handle several times but it wouldn't budge. Harrison was starting to turn away, but just as he did, the door came open on its own.
"That's weird," he thought. He pulled the door all the way open and looked inside.
It was a large room, filled with piles of boxes and furniture and all manner of trinkets and objects, stacks of paper and what looked like a big piano in one corner. This looked like a room where everything in the house that didn't have a place got put. Sunlight streamed in from the window at the far end of the room and Harrison could see dust floating in the air there. Stepping over a stack of books and then a pile of papers that had fallen over long ago, he made his way over to where the sunlight was shining in.
Over in this corner, he could see part of an ancient Persian rug. It looked like it covered most of the floor, but he could only see isolated fragments of it here and there, the rest being covered by all the... he didn't want to call it "junk", but all the piles of things the room contained. He sat down on the rug and looked around.
All around him were stacks of boxes. An empty birdcage sat atop one stack, and a pile of something that looked like viking armor sat atop another. Just next to him was an old trunk, the kind that he had seen in movies that took place back when people traveled by ship instead of by airplane, and they carried big trunks around with all of their clothes and toothbrushes and everything in them. Or, now that he thought about it, there were other people carrying the trunks around for them.
This trunk looked old and battered but solid. It was black, with gold-colored metal fittings, and a lock in the front. Harrison jiggled the lock, just to see what would happen, and to his surprise, it was loose. He lifted up the lid easily, and looked inside.
Inside the trunk was a neatly folded jacket and set of pants, and a silk top hat. They all looked old fashioned, but very clean, and were a rich, dark purple. There was no dust on them at all and they did not look as if they had been sitting in a trunk for years and years. Next to the clothes, there was a little pile of papers, and on top of the papers sat some small glass bottles with stoppers, of varying sizes and in different colors.
There was nothing else in the trunk, and Harrison was starting to close the lid, when he saw something pasted to the inside of the lid. It was a poster. The kind that was used to advertise things a long time ago. This one had the words: "The Fantastic Dr. Faustis & his Miracle Elixir No. Six!" in very fancy lettering, and below that, more words and a picture of a cart drawn by a dappled grey horse. On the side of the cart were the same words: "The Fantastic Dr. Faustis & his Miracle Elixir No. Six!" Next to the cart stood a man wearing what appeared to be the same coat, with long tails, pants, and hat that lay before Harrison in the trunk.
Harrison read the rest of the poster:
"Join Dr. Faustis for a ONE-TIME-ONLY appearance, where he will give a special demonstration of the protective powers of his Miracle Elixir Number Six!"
And below that:
"Guaranteed to protect whoever takes it from any and all ailments!"
And then, in very big letters:
"Come and see for yourself!"
And then the date and time of this very special, one-time-only appearance:
"Saturday, September 12th, at One O'Clock PM."
Why... that was tomorrow, Harrison thought. Today was Friday the 11th, and the next day was Saturday the 12th. What an odd coincidence. The poster did not have a year on it, but from the picture, it looked like it was over a hundred years old. How odd that it just happened to be from a year in which September the 12th also fell on a Saturday. And how odd that he had happened to find this poster today of all days. The day before the event on the poster was to take place.
And then Harrison looked at the rest of the wording on the poster. And he gave a shiver. The next thing it said was where this Very Special Appearance was to take place–and it was right here in town!
"114 N. Spring St., New Zebedee"
Now Harrison did not know what to think. This was too much of a coincidence. He knew exactly where 114 N. Spring Street was. It was in the old downtown area, around where the old movie theater was. It wasn't a movie theater any more, it had been turned into office space years ago. But everyone still called it the old movie theater.
"How odd," thought Harrison. He sat there staring at the poster for a few more minutes, and then suddenly had the feeling that he shouldn't be there. That he was intruding on something, or that maybe he was not alone in the room. Another shiver went up his spine and he closed the lid of the trunk quickly. All of a sudden the room felt very big and cold and a little menacing.
Harrison quickly got up and made his way back to the door. He did not want to see what else might be in the room, and he kept his eyes low as he climbed over the papers and the books and made his way back to the door.
As he approached the door, he had an awful feeling that it would be locked and he would not be able to get out. He knew that his grandparents were downstairs, two floors below, and that they would never hear him no matter how loud he yelled or how hard he pounded on the door. He started to wonder how long he could go without food or water and was just starting to imagine a way he might lower himself to the ground through the window using objects contained in the room... when he arrived at the door and opened it with ease.
Once on the other side, he shut the door quickly. But the feeling had followed him, and the hallway no longer had the friendly feeling it had when he had first come upstairs. He hurried over to the door to the stairway, and–despite a moment of dreading what might lay behind it– opened the door and clattered down the stairs.
***
"Feeling better now?" Grampa Lewis smiled up at Harrison. He was sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with a little portable radio, when Harrison came rattling down the stairs.
"A little better," he said. "Yes."
"I said all he needed was some rest and a little chicken soup!" Gramma Rose stuck her head out from behind the refrigerator door, where she was gathering materials to make sandwiches for lunch. "Isn't that right, Harrison?"
Harrison still felt a little jittery after his experience in the room upstairs. But he smiled, and said "I think so Gramma Rose."
"Tell you what Harrison," said Grampa cheerily. "It's just past noon. What do you say we have our lunch over a nice game of chess?"
Grampa Lewis had tried teaching Harrison how to play chess on several occasions. Each time, Harrison immediately forgot the rules for how each piece moved as soon as the game was over, but he did enjoy playing at the time. He always felt that he had let his Grampa down a little though by not remembering.
"Sure Grampa," he said now. "We could do that."
As they got started with their game, Grampa said, casually:
"You know, Harrison, we've heard tell that all the kids think our house is haunted. That so?"
Harrison felt uncomfortable. He'd never said anything to Grampa or Gramma about the things the other kids said, or how they often dared each other to run up to the porch, or try soaping the windows on Halloween.
"It's alright," Grampa said smiling, "they're just kids."
Harrison wondered if that did make it alright. But Grampa continued:
"I guess you've also heard that our house once belonged to a wizard, eh?"
"Well..."
Harrison began to respond, but Grampa laughed gently and continued.
"It's true!" He exclaimed. "My uncle Jonathan was a wizard, of sorts. He could do actual, genuine, magic... although he wasn't as powerful as our friend Mrs. Zimmerman, but that's another story."
Harrison wasn't sure what to say.
"They even taught me and your Gramma Rose a thing or two, too! Has she ever told you about her magical umbrella? One day, I'll tell you about some of the things I've seen, Harrison. It'll knock the socks off of you!"