The minutes stretched. I sat, frozen with indecision, knowing it was too dangerous to mention the drawings to Mr. Herkimer. At the same time, I desperately craved outside confirmation that my odd observations were not evidence of some cancerous madness that had been swelling within me since childhood.
I couldn’t mention it to him.
I simply couldn’t.
The risk far outweighed the reward.
The smell of cigar smoke drifted into the room, bringing with it the news that my employer had arrived home. I didn’t want to be forced to fabricate an excuse to justify why I had remained in the house. It was time to go. I could think on my predicament that evening, formulate a plan. First, I needed to escape and recover from my shock. With a bit of luck, I could slip from the house unnoticed.
Luck failed me.
I passed Mr. Herkimer in the hall. This shouldn’t have been much of an obstacle as the man rarely looked directly at me. Unfortunately, my tongue rebelled against my better judgment and the words spilled out.
“Mr. Herkimer, those lizard drawings on your desk. Have you seen the creatures?”
I practically shouted it at him.
I was mortified.
He raised an eyebrow, then calmly asked me to follow him to his study. He asked me to sit. He closed the door. I knew he would terminate my employment. I was wondering if somehow I had also broken the law. He would ruin me. I reasoned that I could scarcely imagine the ways in which a person like Robert Herkimer might exact revenge for my audacity in bringing such madness into his home.
He sat across from me at his desk, fiddled with his gray walrus mustache, and fixed me with an unreadable look. I think that image of him will remain vivid and indelible in my mind forever.
He tapped his desktop, then slid several drawings toward me.
“Clara,” he said, “are you telling me that you’ve seen these animals?”
I panicked and tried to backtrack. It was no use. Even with years of practice carefully omitting information, if asked a direct question, I’m a terrible liar.
“Well, I didn’t mean to suggest that they were real. I meant…are they from a picture book?”
Robert smiled kindly. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him look pleased before that moment. Then, he said the words that changed everything.
“Clara, they are quite real and I have indeed seen them. Have you?”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Yes. My God, yes. I see them all the time.”
He grinned like the Cheshire Cat and clapped his hands.
“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” he said.
The following week was absurd.
Mr. Herkimer kept me on the payroll, but hired a new tutor for Jonathan. In fact, he offered me a pay increase to leave my other tutoring posts, but I have a reputation to consider and have, as of yet, declined the offer.
He also asked me to call him Robert. I’m still getting used to that. I protested that it might look strange in public and he said that he gave up appearing conventional long ago. I wish I had that luxury.
In the last two weeks…the things I’ve seen defy description. He showed me a dizzying array of impossible curios, housed in the secret attic. A feather the size of a canoe. A pinecone that radiates endless heat. A small shrew-like thing made of living springs, gears, and cogs. Each time I perceived and expressed appreciation for the wonders in Mr. Herkimer’s collection, his opinion of me seemed to grow.
This morning, we did an unimaginable thing. We went and observed my thorny lizards together. He calls them “Prairie Monitors.”
What a truly odd experience to discuss one’s imaginary childhood companions with another. It felt like thinking of an image and having a stranger fish it from my skull and describe it to me.
Part of me is elated about all this. Part of me thinks this must mean I truly have slipped over the edge.
Mr. Herkimer says that seeing these creatures makes me uniquely suited for his line of work. He told me about his teacher, a gentleman in Boston, and his teacher’steacher, a Cree woman in Quebec. He says that there are experts in this obscure field all across the globe.
