Free The Magic Spectacles by James P. Blaylock Page A

seemed to be full of white nightshirts, all hanging very neatly. On hooks beside the open door hung a half dozen pointed cloth nightcaps.
    John took a step backward, and then another one, feeling with his foot for the top tread of the stairs. It was wrong to be there, to be snooping in someone’s room. At any moment the Sleeper might awaken. Clearly the man wasn’t a prisoner. There wasn’t even a door on his room….
    Just then Danny pressed his finger to his lips and motioned for John to follow him. Silently he stepped across to get a closer look at the man who lay in the bed. Ready to turn and run, John followed him. Just three steps more….
    There were the doughnuts beside the bed on a nightstand. The Sleeper hadn’t taken a bite. There was a full water glass, too, and an unopened book that was covered with dust.
    The man turned in his sleep, creaking the bedsprings. John grabbed the sleeve of Danny’s shirt. And then, suddenly, as if he had been jerked forward by a rope, he sat up. Moonlight shone on his face.
    It was Mr. Deener.

Chapter 16: The Sleeper Puts on His Hat and Goes Out
    Danny turned and slammed into John, and they both stumbled back toward the open wardrobe and climbed in among the nightshirts. John reached out to close the door once they were inside. He left it open only a couple of inches, just so he could see the edge of the bed.
    The Sleeper flopped back down and began to breathe heavily and slowly. The minutes passed. Each time John started to push open the door to slip out, the Sleeper rolled over in bed, or mumbled something in his sleep, or made smacking noises with his mouth, and John had to snatch the door shut again.
    The nightshirts in the wardrobe smelled partly of mothballs and partly of the same kind of soap that had blown out of Mr. Deener’s gun. On the floor lay several pairs of bedroom slippers with fur around the ankles. There were no shirts or pants or shoes or any other daytime clothes.
    “No!” the Sleeper said suddenly. Then there was a long silence. John held his breath and listened. Finally, in a voice full of sadness, the Sleeper said, “I didn’t
mean
to. I
would
have been there. I
should
have been there. Where was I? Oh, don’t ask!” And he sobbed so hard that something rattled in his chest, as if part of him was broken.
    “It’s Mr. Deener!” Danny whispered.
    “It
couldn’t
be,” John said.
    “It is,” Danny said. “I saw him straight on. It’s Mr. Deener. The Sleeper is Mr. Deener!”
    “Shh!” John whispered. The bed creaked, and the Sleeper’s feet swung off the mattress and onto the floor. He stood up. John could see him clearly now. Maybe it was just the moonlight, but what he looked like was the
ghost
of Mr. Deener. He stepped into his bedroom slippers and then stood there for a moment like a man who has forgotten something but can’t quite remember what. He turned toward the wardrobe, and John flattened himself against the back wall, pulling the nightshirts across in front of his face and peering between them.
    Very slowly the Sleeper walked to the wardrobe door. Both his hands reached out. For a moment they hovered there, waving in the air like the hands of a sleepwalker in a cartoon. Then the hands moved, and John heard the rattle and scrape of the fishing pole as the Sleeper picked it up from where it lay tilted against the edge of the wardrobe. Muttering, he turned and shuffled in his slippers toward the stair, carrying the fishing pole with him.
    When the sound of his footstep faded, John and Danny climbed out into the room. There were noises from below again –bumping, scraping, and the sound of Mr. Deener’s voice singing the same loony song he had sung on the road that night. So, what did that mean? That there was a Mr. Deener upstairs and a Mr. Deener downstairs? The Sleeper looked like Mr. Deener; the goblins looked like Mr. Deener; the henny-penny men looked like Mr. Deener; the whole place was full of Mr. Deeners, all of them