Four

Blackford House

“Well it has to be one of them,” muttered Mr. Tinker, and he slipped another of the skeleton keys into the lock. He’d already tried nearly every one on the large iron ring, but still the front door wouldn’t yield.

“Maybe the house doesn’t want us here,” Lucy said, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. “I bet you that’s how Quigley hurt his head. The house threw a brick at him like it did at his car.”

Oliver swallowed hard and changed his suitcase from one hand to the other. He really wished Lucy would stop saying things like that. The place was creepy enough without her making it worse.

Mr. Tinker rattled the key in the lock, jiggled the doorknob, and then—click—the key turned. “Victory,” he said, sighing with relief. “Remind me to mark this one with some electrical tape, Ollie.”

Oliver nodded, and Mr. Tinker opened the door.

Creeeeeak!

Oliver hung back in the doorway as Lucy and their father stepped into a cavernous, darkened foyer. Rectangles of dim, dusty light filtered in from the rooms on the other side, and Oliver could just make out a wide staircase dissolving up into the gloom at the far end of the foyer.

Mr. Tinker ran his hand along the wall and flipped a switch. Nothing happened.

“You see?” he said, pointing up at the foyer’s large chandelier. Its crystals glinted faintly in the shadows. “That’s why Mr. Quigley needs the clock fixed before he moves in. It generates electricity for the entire house. How ingenious is that?”

Oliver pushed up his glasses, stepped inside, and set down his suitcase. His eyes had adjusted a bit, but with only the daylight streaming in, the foyer was still dim—in part because the walls were paneled three-quarters high in dark wood. To his left, he spied a shadowy parlor filled with antique furniture; to his right, a dining room with a long table. There were a handful of paintings on the walls, and where there was no paneling, the paper was peeled and gray.

“Well, will you look at that,” said Mr. Tinker, gazing up the stairs. Built into the wall on the first landing was an enormous clock face that had to be at least ten feet in diameter. The hands, which were nearly as tall as the children themselves, had stopped at midnight (or noon, depending on your perspective, Oliver thought); and where the numbers should have been were twelve shallow, black holes.

“Let’s have a look at our bread and butter,” said Mr. Tinker, and the children followed him up the stairs to the clock—which was a cuckoo clock, Oliver discovered on closer inspection. There was a two-foot-high door for the cuckoo at the top, and the holes, which were about six inches deep, had been carved to look like animals.

“How cool!” Lucy said, reaching up to touch the hole where the eight should have been. It was shaped like a pig.

“Guess that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Ate like a pig,’” said Mr. Tinker, chuckling. “Get it? The number eight instead of ate?”

Lucy rolled her eyes, and Oliver stuck his hand into the hole for the five, which was shaped like a turtle. He could feel the curve of the animal’s shell carved in hollow relief along the back of it.

“Anyhow, the detail is extraordinary,” said Mr. Tinker, touching the three hole. It was shaped like a rabbit. The clock face itself was made up of dozens of white-painted bricks that were peeling in places; and Oliver could clearly make out below the cuckoo door, where the twelve should have been, a hole shaped like a cat. There was also a duck for the two and what looked like a rat or a mouse for the seven.

“But why would someone build a clock with holes in it shaped like animals?” Lucy asked.

“Maybe the animals are miss-ing,” Oliver said, and he stood on his tippy-toes to touch the rabbit hole. “These holes remind me of statue niches—you know, like in a church or something. Besides, we’ve seen clocks like this before in the shop, right, Pop? Not this big, I mean, but with animals and stuff instead of numbers?”

Mr. Tinker nodded vaguely and opened a door that led to the clock’s mechanical room. The only source of light inside was a round window in the back wall, but Oliver could see enough of the complex machinery to know this clock was unlike any they had ever come across in the shop. Oliver’s mouth hung open in amazement.

“We’ll need to take a closer look at this after we get the generator going,” said his father. “What do you say we check out the rest of the house?”

The Tinkers climbed up the remainder of the stairs to the second floor, where they found four bedrooms off a dingy, dark-paneled hallway. Most of the furniture was covered in sheets, and the air smelled musty and stale. On the third floor, they found a cluttered attic that was much too dark to investigate, so they climbed back down to the first floor via a narrow servants’ staircase that led to the kitchen.

On one side off the kitchen was the hallway that led to the servants’ wing, and on the other, the door to the dining room. Inside, in addition to the long table he had seen earlier from the foyer, Oliver found a china-filled breakfront and a large buffet with a painting of Blackford House hung on the wall above it.

“Look how beautiful the house used to be,” Lucy said.

Oliver thought the painting had to have been made not long after the house was built. All the shutters were attached, the shingles and the chimneys were in perfect condition, and there were flowering gardens everywhere. There was also a horse-drawn carriage parked out front, and a white horse trotting around a field in the distance.

However, the biggest difference, Oliver thought, was the color. In the painting, everything looked bright and sunny. But in real life, even on a lovely summer day like today, Blackford House seemed to exist only in shades of gray.

“You were right, Oliver,” Lucy said. “The property was a lot bigger. I don’t see those creepy woods anywhere.”

From the dining room, Mr. Tinker led the children back across the foyer and into the richly furnished parlor. There were more antiques than Oliver could count, as well as a massive stone fireplace, above which hung another painting—a large, dark portrait of a man and woman that likely had been damaged in a fire.

Oliver figured the painting was from the late 1800s—judging by the people’s clothes. The woman was seated with the man standing behind her. Their skin was gray and their eyes sunken and dark—probably because of the smoke, Oliver concluded. The woman appeared to be holding something—a child, perhaps—but Oliver could not be sure because there was only a large, black smudge in the woman’s arms.

“What a creepy painting,” Lucy muttered, staring up at it. “But it’s kind of sad, too. The whole house, I mean. Don’t you think, Pop?”

Mr. Tinker nodded absently and ran his fingers over an antique lamp that had grabbed his attention. Lucy frowned. Poor kid, Oliver thought. Pop never listened to her.

“I know what you mean, Lucy,” Oliver said, looking around. “It’s like, now that you’ve seen that painting, you can’t help thinking about how the house used to be at the same time you’re looking at it now.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” Lucy said glumly, and she slid open the doors to an adjoining room. “My solar panels!” she cried, her mood turning on a dime, and Oliver followed her into an enormous library with tall windows—the same tall windows they had seen before from outside. Below them was a faded, velvet-cushioned window seat, and built into the walls were dark wooden bookshelves crammed so high with books that rolling ladders had to be used to reach the ones at the top.

And it wasn’t just a library, Oliver realized, but a laboratory, too. Off to one side, there was a long table cluttered with chemistry equipment; and directly behind it, the bookshelves were filled with all sorts of bottles and jars labeled with chemical symbols.

“How cute!” Lucy said, and she squatted down beside two wooden statues near the fireplace. One was a lovable-looking dog, the other a snarling cat. Each was carved to look as if it were running—only the little dog was looking back over its shoulder as if the cat were chasing it.

“Did this mean cat hurt you?” Lucy asked, and she pulled out a small triangle of wood from between its teeth. “Look, it’s his ear, Pop! The cat bit off this poor dog’s ear!”

Lucy laid the ear against the dog’s head. It was a perfect fit.

“Someone must’ve put it in the cat’s mouth as a joke,” said Mr. Tinker. “Maybe the other clocksmith Mr. Quigley tried.”

“You think these could be some of the missing animals, Pop?” Lucy asked. “You know, the ones that go in the clock?”

Mr. Tinker shrugged and shook his head. “I doubt it, Lucy. They’re the wrong shape for those niches and look to me like a set. Still, that’s pretty funny, don’t you think? Someone putting the dog’s ear in the cat’s mouth like that?”

Oliver pushed up his glasses and looked around.

There’s nothing funny about this place, he thought.

No, nothing at all.