Read The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 1 (Notebooks of John Loveheart, E) for Free Online Page A

father’s study and looked at the clock. I had thoughts of burning it, pushing it out of the window. I kicked it. I kicked it again. I looked into its great moon face. I am sure it was smirking at me.

    I looked through my father’s desk and I found a locket. A curl of black hair; my mother’s was sunflower yellow. And a picture of a woman with dazzling eyes, slanted like an Egyptian princess, and a smile that curved like a scimitar. A wondrous witch-woman for my father.
    There was no one to protect my mother, but me.
    The clock chimed midnight and I went softly into my mother’s bedchamber.
    She heard me step in. “John, is that you?” A heap of books rested on her night table. I glimpsed The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Eyre . I stepped close to my mother and sat down next to the bed. “Mother, I need you to listen to me.”
    She stroked my face with her hand gently. “What is it, darling?”
    “You are being poisoned by Aunt Rosebud. I have told father and he will not listen.”
    She looked startled for a moment. “No one is trying to poison me, sweetheart. You are so imaginative.” And she laughed.
    “Mother, please. You must believe me.”
    “Go to bed, John,” she said sadly, and turned away from me.
    And so I went to bed and dreamt that night that the clock was watching me, ticking softly. And I heard the hum of insect wings. Dead angels fell from the roof of our house. I ran to the window and I could see my mother dead and floating down the river, tiny snow-bells in her hair, drifting on the water. My father was locked inside one of his time machines, frozen forever. I was alone with the clock. The wings of the ladybirds were fluttering inside my head.
    In the morning, Aunt Rosebud arrived, a new poisonous cake in her hands. I gazed at her from the top of the stairs and slowly descended, our eyes fixed upon each other. “Aunt Rosebud,” I said. “Good morning. Why don’t we all have tea and cake together? I will fetch Father from his study. It looks delicious.”
    She examined me carefully, her lizard eyes ancient and full of spirals. “I’m sorry John, but your mother likes our visits to be private. She needs the comfort of her sister. Why don’t you run off and play?”
    I had reached the bottom of the staircase. She was trying to read me, to guess what I knew or thought I knew. “What kind of cake is it today?”
    She smiled, a smile like the clock. It frightened me. “Lemon drizzle.”
    I could hear those insect wings humming. The clock was trying to communicate with me. I stepped away from her. I am not a hero. I should kill this woman, destroy the clock and save my mother. I am a child. I speak, my lips moving, my voice from somewhere else. “What poison is in it?”
    She didn’t answer me. “I will speak to your father, John.”
    Everything changed after that. I was confined to my room for a month as punishment. Before that month ended I was informed by my father that my mother had died. It was deep in the month of August and on the day of her funeral it began snowing outside, our house a fairy tale palace of white. It was so beautiful that my heart turned into glass. Broke into pieces. Cut up my insides.
    The servants gasped at the weather and shook their heads.
    “This is witchcraft,” said the maid.

    T he funeral was small . A solitary raven watched over the service. Its eyes were devil yellow. Snow rested on the ground, delicate and untouchable as polar bear fur. After the service my father took me aside and said he had found a tutor for me called Mr Fingers, who came with superb references. He would be arriving in the morning.
    That evening the grandfather clock was stolen.
    It was still snowing the morning Mr Fingers arrived, the air dancing with snowflakes, cold little kisses, a thousand tiny bites. He was short, with a pointy black beard and half moon black spectacles and his coat and waistcoat were decorated with ladybirds.
    He saw me staring at his waistcoat and grinned.