Facing the Hunchback of Notre Dame Read online

  the

  Enchanted Attic

  BOOK ONE

  Facing the Hunchback of Notre Dame

  L.L. SAMSON

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  prologue: What You Need to Know Before Reading This Fantastic Little Book … Or All of This Backstory Isn’t Normally a Good Idea, but We’d Like to Get On with Things

  one: Bottles, Books, and Beakers Or Introducing the Setting and the Main Characters

  two: The Gaggle of Rickshaw Street Or Introducing the Relatives and Other Secondary, Though Critical Characters

  three: Party Like It’s 1399 Or Enough! Let’s Get the Plot Rolling!

  four: A Third Wheel Is Important if You’re Riding a Tricycle Or Welcoming the Character That Rounds Things Out

  five: Sometimes Unexpected Guests Prove to Have Arrived at Precisely the Right Time

  six: Worlds Collide and the Instructions Aren’t as Helpful as One Should Expect

  seven: Mystery Loves Company

  eight: When in Doubt, Get Something to Eat

  nine: Who Knew the Bathroom Was Such an Amazing Place?

  ten: If Only Noah Had Come Through the Enchanted Circle

  eleven: Will the Real Cato Grubbs Please Stand Up?

  twelve: Funny, I Never Pictured a Mad Scientist Looking Like That

  thirteen: Who Says Bounty Hunters Don’t Make Good Priests?

  fourteen: Thereby Proving That All Scientists Are Mad Scientists And If You Don’t Like That, Take It Up with the Administration

  fifteen: Sometimes Fourteen Years of Life Experience Clearly Has Its Disadvantages

  sixteen: Sometimes Fourteen Years Is Plenty of Time to Accumulate the Necessary Brain Function to Figure Out How to Proceed

  seventeen: Don’t Ever Underestimate the Brilliance of Street Smarts

  eighteen: Why Does It Seem Like a Crime to Stop for a Bite of Lunch?

  nineteen: What Does It Take for a Guy to Get Some Lunch Around Here?

  twenty: No Sense in Sitting Around All Day, Trust Me

  twenty-one: A River Will Do Whatever a River Wants to Do

  twenty-two: Where Two or Three Are Gathered Together, a Lot More Gets Done

  twenty-three: Separated! And the Clock Is Ticking!

  twenty-four: Really, Surviving a Flash Flood Should Be Enough Trouble for One Day

  twenty-five: The Smartest People Are Sometimes the Easiest to Fool

  twenty-six: Back to Boring Old Summer—Don’t You Just Feel So Sorry for Them?

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  prologue

  What You Need to Know Before Reading This Fantastic Little Book …

  Or All of This Backstory Isn’t Normally a Good Idea, but We’d Like to Get On with Things

  Backstory: The past events leading up to the present story so the reader might better understand the current happenings.

  The adventures began when fourteen-year-old twins Linus and Ophelia Easterday were deserted by their parents. Drs. Antonia and Ron Easterday (PhD, of course) never thought much about anyone other than themselves and their lepidoptera (four-winged insects such as butterflies and moths). So for this reason they have no problem leaving their children in the care of Portia and Augustus Sandwich, the kids’ aunt and uncle on their mother’s side, also twins. And on this particular excursion, they were scheduled to be gone for at least five years. Five years! How could they leave their children behind for such a length of time?

  The children bade their parents goodbye at the docks in New York City, as Ron and Antonia set out on a boat called The Basset Hound to study never-before-seen butterflies on the island of Willis, which was discovered by Willis Cranston from Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, while parasailing from a cruise ship. That is all we know about Mr. Cranston, and most likely that’s all we should know about him.

  Both children were actually a bit relieved at Antonia and Ron’s departure, due to the fact that the Drs. Easterday are lousy parents. Therefore, the children had grown up primarily on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cold cereal, and instant oatmeal. And not even the most delightful peaches and cream kind, I might add. Plus, they’d been doing their own laundry for more than seven years now. A crime! Hopefully your parents are much worthier than those two. If not, you have my most sincere condolences (feelings of pity while wishing circumstances could be better for you, even though they cannot).

  Linus and Ophelia, enjoying the carefree lifestyle that is summer vacation, hopped aboard a train and headed inland for the town of Kingscross, where the esteemed Kingscross University has been educating minds since the late 1600s. Snow and ice regularly occur during a Kingscross wintertime, and I’ve watched a colleague or two of mine in the English department fall down flat on the steps leading into our building. May I admit that I chuckled?

  They do not respect me here at the university, but who cleans up the messes of their infernal making? It is I, Bartholomew Inkster, that’s who. Of course, they look down their noses at me because I’ve never had the time, what with having a real job and all, to earn the number of degrees that they have. But let’s face facts: If you were given the choice between having either all of the janitors or all of the English professors in the world disappear, who would go first? My point exactly! And if I laid my reading list alongside any one of theirs, guess whose would be longer and more diverse? That’s right. You guessed it.

  The children eventually arrived at their aunt and uncle’s home on Rickshaw Street. Portia and Augustus Sandwich live in a townhouse three stories tall and built from stone the color of verdigris (the green that collects on copper). The bottom floor of the Sandwiches’s townhome holds the family business, Seven Hills Better Books, which sells rare and antiquarian books. In other words, either there aren’t many of these volumes left, or they smell like mildew. Portia runs the place, and she always offers me a peppermint whenever I enter the shop to peruse the current findings.

  But beware: while in their shop, I’ve occasionally witnessed shifting shadows, a hint of cloak, a waft of odor … only to turn around quickly and find nothing there. Just a little warning, mind. Nobody else seems to notice these things, and I hate to bring it up at the risk of ruining Portia’s business.

  Augustus, when not at auctions looking for ancient merchandise, sits around and talks with the customers — mostly about twaddle, but everyone needs to chat about insignificant topics on a regular basis. It clears the mind for more important matters.

  Portia and Augustus are brother and sister. I believe I mentioned previously that they are twins as well, and they secretly believe the Drs. Easterday are loony to leave behind such adorable children. I do have to wonder, however, if Linus and Ophelia behave better for their aunt and uncle than they do for their parents. It’s just a suspicion and clearly I might be mistaken. The children have always seemed most polite when I’ve encountered them in the store.

  The bookstore has been in place for almost two decades, yet the older residents of Rickshaw Street remember when Cato Grubbs owned the house. He ran an apothecary and laboratory equipment shop — and a rather successful one at that—until he mysteriously disappeared. One day he was there serving his customers, and the next day his shop door remained locked. Not a single person saw him leave. He said goodbye to no one.

  Eventually the bank regained ownership of the building until Augustus and Portia obtained it at quite the bargain. As such, the bank did not pay to have Cato’s belongings removed, which is how the younger set of twins came to suspect that Cato did much more than sell beakers and burners. They do have quite an overactive imagin
ation, those two. They’d been living with Augustus and Portia for about a month when they discovered their suspicions held weight (a thousand pounds worth).

  Why don’t Linus and Ophelia tell this story themselves? Easy. Not just anyone can write a piece of fiction! Linus is scientific, and Ophelia dissects novels a bit too much to get taken up in the writing of one. So they asked me, Bartholomew Inkster, to tell it for them because I know my way around a pen and some paper, and also because I believe their story is worth telling. That’s the most important qualification, after all.

  Before you continue on, I would like to explain a few things so you may be an informed reader. Being a self-educated, literary fussbudget (a needlessly fault-finding person), it is within my nature to explain a bit of the writing process as I proceed. You may choose to either use these tidbits of information to increase your knowledge of English and the fine art of writing, or ignore the opportunity to learn literary technique from an expert and simply skip over my explanations. If you choose to ignore the input that I have so generously provided regarding the writing craft, then you may also choose to ignore the simplified definitions of some of the rather advanced words I’ve used within the story—words that I’ve explained at the request of Linus, who seems to think my vocabulary rather too advanced for the average reader. For those who wish to increase their knowledge, read on. For those who prefer to ignore my teachings, well … read on anyway.

  one

  Bottles, Books, and Beakers

  Or Introducing the Setting and the Main Characters

  When Ophelia Easterday discovered the secret doorway, her brother Linus pretended he’d never seen it before. If anything bad should happen, he figured Ophelia might as well feel responsible too. And Linus didn’t want to hurt her feelings. As his twin sister, she was prone to believe he told her everything. He certainly didn’t want her to think any differently. Secrets do come in handy at times.

  “You’ve got to see the attic, Linus. It’s fantastic!”

  They stood in Uncle Augustus’s collection room on the second floor, where gowns and costumes from days gone by (organized by time period and fabric) hung in plastic bags on racks, all around the room.

  Ophelia moved aside a red velvet curtain to reveal what looked like a plumber’s big foul-up. Chunks of plaster were missing, wood laths peered through the holes, and a musty draft breathed over them. But if one pressed against the rightmost protrusion, a door opened without a sound. Ophelia pressed the spot.

  “I thought there was a window under here. Imagine my surprise!”

  Imagine, Linus thought.

  “Look, steps! And you’re never going to believe what’s up there!”

  A mad scientist’s lab? Linus thought.

  As you can see, my dears, Ophelia does a lot of talking while Linus does a lot of thinking. Not that Ophelia doesn’t think. Oh no. She is quite bright. Just as bright as Linus, in the IQ sense. However, Linus possesses mathematical smarts as well as practical smarts, which come in handy more often than Ophelia cares to admit. He is very handy around the house as well, and if you need a computer desk assembled, Linus is your man. But don’t be too hard on Ophelia. She would give you the shirt off her back. (That’s what we call a cliché, a word or phrase that is tired out, used by millions, and should never be found in the pages of a well-written book. I only included it here so as to alert you to such things used in the books of other writers. I go all around Robin Hood’s barn to avoid them like the plague.)

  Linus and Ophelia carefully ascended the dark, narrow staircase.

  “Look—it’s a lab!” Ophelia burst into the room, her head now level with the slanted planes of the ceiling. You know how attics are.

  Linus bent down a bit to fit through the small door. For a boy his age, his height, one could say, seemed a bit showy. And although he and Ophelia tore into the delicate fabric of society only minutes apart, they resembled one another not at all. Her dark, curly head came to the middle of Linus’s chest, and he looked down upon her with bright blue eyes beneath a head of straight blond hair. Linus described the two of them as the troll and the princess, while Ophelia argued, “Oh no. We’re Lennie and George from Of Mice and Men.” This claim always made Linus roll his eyes. (You will have to read that book in high school, and then you will understand why Linus would rather be a troll.)

  The lab would have made anybody stare with open mouth, which is what both twins had done when they first saw it. Yet now upon their second entry into the attic, they stared open-mouthed again. The room affects people like that. I know I felt the same way the first time I entered the dimly lit space that smells of old shoes, horsehair, hot dogs, and geraniums. Shelves line the front and back walls where vials and bottles and baskets are neatly arranged and labeled. Ginger. Cardamom. Pekoe.

  Linus pulled out a basket, his fingers searching through odd bits of junk, most of it very old and seemingly workaday. Nuts, bolts, hinges, nails, bits of fabric, leather, Popsicle sticks, and silver cutlery.

  I could do a lot with this stuff, he thought.

  “Look at these bottles, Linus!” Ophelia touched another shelf. The bottles held liquids that glowed from the single beam of sunlight streaming through the small window above their heads. One bottle, pyramid shaped with a cork stopper, ietted a variety of colors at the same time! “I wonder what this one’s for?”

  Linus shook his head. Boy, would he like to find out! In some ways he was annoyed that his sister had also found the attic. Now he was responsible to someone else for whatever happened when he got his hands on these things. Could he, Linus, be a mad scientist in the making?

  On one shelf three glass jars — simply labeled One, Two, and Three—sat next to a mortar and pestle. Mandatory scientific apparatus complete with tubes, beakers, and burners rested under a thick layer of dust on a table near the entrance.

  Linus suggested that I explain some of the more unusual items in the room. So if you already know what a mortar and pestle are, please forgive me. I do not mean to insult your intelligence. However, for the rest of you, a mortar is a small but heavy bowl, usually made of stone, with thick walls; and the pestle is basically a thick stick with a rounded end that’s not only easy to hold, but also fits perfectly in the bowl. With a pestle one might grind seeds or herbs against the inside of the mortar to create a fine powder.

  They ran their hands along stacks of ancient books with names like Bringing the Imaginary to Life: A Proposition; Trapdoors to Other Realms; Simple Chemistry to Wow Your Simple Friends (They’ll Think You’re a Magician!); The History of Alchemy; Physics for Nincompoops; Mixing It Up with Common Chemicals; and Stage Presence—Stage Presents: The Art of Showing Up and Showing Off. Many more books, albeit older and smellier, were written in German; some were written in an alphabet of which even I don’t know the origin. These last books were, naturally, the most threadbare and obscure (unknown by most people), and they were also the most apt to send chills down your spine. I’d recommend leaving them alone. “What you do not know will not hurt you” is a widely accepted maxim (old saying, a general truth). Some things really are better left alone, but I also believe that to remain in ignorance can come back to harm you.

  “This is a great place to read,” Ophelia said as she plopped down on a large, blue velvet couch in the middle of the room. The cushion exhaled a large puff of dust, which was illuminated by the meek shaft of light coming through the dirty window above. Not that any of that dust and grime bothered these children, amazingly enough. “We need to keep this place a secret.”

  Uh … yeah, Linus thought.

  “Auggie and Portia will think it’s too dangerous for us to be up here. And look at that circle painted on the floor.” The lip of the circle ended just inches from the couch. “I wonder what that’s about?”

  Linus did too. He also wondered where that large square bottle of amber liquid that was now sitting on the floor between the couch and the bookcase had come from — and when? It wasn’t there before.
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  “Did you bring that up here?” Linus asked Ophelia.

  “No. Did you?”

  He shook his head.

  Her eyebrows raised. “Really?”

  “I swear.”

  Aunt Portia called to the twins from downstairs, but the words merely tiptoed to them as through a thick fog, “Time for tea!”

  “We’ll figure out what that bottle is later,” Ophelia said as they turned to leave. “We’re assuming Uncle Auggie doesn’t know anything about this place—but he might. Remember, not a word.”

  Linus nodded. Some things went without saying.

  two

  The Gaggle of Rickshaw Street

  Or Introducing the Relatives and Other Secondary, Though Critical Characters

  Ophelia pleasantly saw herself and Linus as junior editions of Uncle Augustus and Aunt Portia, destined for a similar existence. Yet Linus stayed awake some nights dreading the very same thing!

  You’ll like Auggie and Portia. Everybody likes them. They possess that general air of goodwill and, even better, humor. They are actually the aunt and uncle of the twins’ mother, Antonia Easterday, who recently wrote a letter to her children full of details about hers and Ron’s studies on Willis island, but she never once asked how they were faring in Kingscross. The outrage!

  While Linus and Ophelia display almost no physical similarities (other than their toes), Portia and Augustus resemble one another the way a salt shaker resembles a pepper shaker, excepting for the obvious detail of gender. They both stand tall and straight while holding their slim ribcages aloft. And they both possess that soft, dripping candle wax variety of skin that vibrates a bit when they talk. Which is often. Quite the chatty, social pair, they are what one would call extroverts. (An extrovert is a person who becomes energized around other people. Introverts are their opposite —people who recharge by themselves.)

  Portia resembles a movie star grown old, her face lovely and gentle, her eyes bright. In other words, she hasn’t “let herself go.” (Grown-ups say that about older women who gain weight and stop wearing makeup and doing their hair as they age. There are no correlating expressions for men who do the same sort of things.)