Free The Magic Spectacles by James P. Blaylock Page B

acting like nuts.
    John slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and took out the spectacles just to make sure they were safe. The moonlight through the window shone on an old pair of broken reading glasses with black plastic frames. The spectacles were gone.

Chapter 17: Making a Goblin
    “They’re gone!” John said out loud.
    Danny was already at the top of the stairs, ready to follow the Sleeper down. “What?” he asked. “What’s gone?”
    “The spectacles. They’re gone. They were in there when I went to bed. I checked. Look.” He held out the glasses from his pocket.
    “He stole them!” Danny said. “That’s what woke us up. He came into the room and stole them. Heck.”
    “Maybe,” John said. “Maybe….”
    “Maybe nothing,” Danny said. “It’s a good thing you were keeping them
safe
. Again.” He turned around and started down the stairs, into the darkness below.
    “Wait,” John said. “Where are you going?”
    “To get them back,” he said, not even slowing up.
    John wanted to argue. It wasn’t
his
fault that the glasses were stolen, any more than it had been his fault when they’d broken in the woods. But there was no use arguing if Danny wasn’t there to argue back. John started down the stairs himself, hurrying to catch up. Danny was right about Mr. Deener, anyway Mr. Deener had wanted the glasses. The goblins wanted them. The henny-pennies wanted them….
    Danny went straight across the hall at the bottom of the stairs without even looking to see if it was safe. He passed down into the darkness again, and John bolted across the hallway after him, both of them crossing another hallway at the bottom of the second set of stairs and going on down to the ground floor. There was a glow of light from the distant kitchen and another from the open doorway of Mr. Deener’s laboratory, but otherwise it was dark. Mr. Deener’s singing had suddenly stopped, and John could hear water splashing, as if in a sink. There was no sign of the Sleeper.
    Danny slowed down, flattening himself against the wall outside the laboratory. He held his finger to his lips, as if he thought John was about to start talking. Together they peeked around the corner of the door. Mr. Deener stood with his back to them, washing his hands in a bowl of water that sat on a high wooden table. Pink bubbles floated up out of the bowl, and water slopped over the edge and onto the table. The air was full of the smell of goblin soap.
    “I’m the saddest man alive!” Mr. Deener cried, and his voice shook with big, humping sobs. “I
can’t
wash it out! All the soap in the world isn’t enough!”
    There were tall glass windows beyond him, like skinny doors, side by side in the wall. One of them was open. Its thin curtains blew inward on the night wind, and moonlight shone through it. The shadow of someone in a pointed cap and loose shirt moved through the night beyond the curtains. John could see the silhouette of the fishing pole in his hand just before he disappeared into the shadow cast by the trees.
    A flurry of autumn leaves blew in through the window just then and scraped across the wooden floorboards, dancing around Mr. Deener’s feet. He began to hum, but the humming had no tune to it. Like goblin music it was just a mess of sounds.
    He took the bowl of water off the table and lay it on the floor. Then he stepped across to an old bookcase, reached in among the books, and pulled down a glass jar, which he set on the table. Moonlight glowed through the jar. It was filled to the top with chips of colored glass, red and green and yellow and blue, all stirred together in a circus of colors.
    He reached high over his head to where a rope dangled in the air, leading up into the darkness of the high ceiling. There was a creaking noise when he pulled on the rope. He let it go with a snap, and the end of the rope flew up into the air, and there was the sound of something rushing downward like a bucket down a well. A window