Chapter Text
Among the plaster strip malls, brick fast food restaurants, and concrete parking lots of John F. Kennedy Drive, the little wooden house numbered 1646 stuck out like a sore thumb. The house, if it could even be called that, was actually a refurbished two car garage, surrounded by a tall chain link fence with a gate in front of the barn-style front doors that no one had seen open in years. If you were a newcomer to Gravesfield, you wouldn’t know about the grand manor that stood adjacent to the “house”, nor the fire that destroyed it, nor how quickly commercialization consumed the former estate’s grounds.
However, within your first few days in town, you will have likely heard of the house’s lone occupant. She was an inventor, but none of the townsfolk would be able to name a single one of her inventions. She was a doctor, but no one could tell you what she was a doctor of. She was a researcher, but no one could tell you quite what she studied. She was a scientist, and everyone would tell you that her particular brand of science was really, really, really loud -- some may say “explosive”. For someone born into such a wealthy and reputable family like the Clawthornes, everything about the mad scientist of Gravesfield, Dr. Eda Clawthorne, made her into somewhat of the black sheep of the family.
Eda’s latest stunt was disappearing. All throughout August and September, whenever anyone would see her out and about in public, she would go on and on about her “biggest discovery yet” and how it would “revolutionize the world of science and the world at large”. No one paid it any mind as it wasn’t the first time she made similar declarations, but some of the more attentive townsfolk did note how strange it was that her absence immediately followed her most brash and public claims.
The rumors started mere days following her disappearance in early October. Some said she built a rocket and blasted herself into orbit. Some said she invented a miracle cure-all and was kidnapped by the government to protect the pharmaceutical companies. Some argued that she would never be able to invent anything that worked that good and had simply gone and blown herself up with one of her insane inventions. Regardless of the cause, everyone agreed that the quiet Eda’s disappearance brought was a much needed break from the norm.
Everyone except Luz Noceda.
As Luz dug around in her pockets to find her key to 1646’s gate, she spotted the padlock was already unlocked, hanging loosely from the chain barely keeping the gate closed. It was a little odd, but not unusual. Eda had a habit of forgetting many things, and locking the front gate was one of them. The gate creaked open as Luz pushed inside. She could hear something coming from inside the garage, a ticking sound, likely one of Eda’s machines.
Luz knocked on the side door and waited. After a few seconds, she knocked again, a little louder. Then, a third time.
“Eda?” she called between knocks.
Again, no response.
Luz tried the handle and was a little surprised to find that door unlocked as well. She let it swing open and peered into the garage before stepping inside, carefully propping her skateboard up by the door. The ticking noise was much louder inside.
“Eda? Are you here? I got your letter,” Luz called once more into the dark garage. She hesitated before flicking the light switch, then watched as the lights flickered on one by one.
The interior of the garage would almost trick you into believing it was a real, if small, house were it not for the unhidden garage door replacing one wall and the odd exterior you would have to approach first. Against the far wall was a living room with all the clutter and loose clothes of a family of five mixed with the stacks of textbooks and broken machine parts of a graduate engineering student. Off to the side was a small bedroom area, sectioned off with several bookshelves acting as dividers. Even smaller was the corner of the garage Luz had claimed as her “room”, her home away from home, complete with a bed and workbench. Sometime in the weeks since Luz had last visited the garage, much of her space had been invaded by Eda’s ever expanding collection of gadgets and gizmos, including a new addition to the previously blank wall above the workbench.
Dozens of clocks lined the wall; everything from cuckoo clocks to the exposed guts of a disassembled grandfather clock, and even a classic Kit-Kat clock, all in perfect sync with each other. The myriad of different sized gears and pendulums produced ticks of all different volumes and timbres, creating a clicking drone that sounded exactly once every second. Luz watched as every second hand completed a lap around the clock face and every minute hand jolted forward.
7:53. A few of the fancier clocks even helpfully specified “am”.
“A little overkill, don’t you think?” Luz quipped, quickly disappointed when she wasn’t met by a similarly sarcastic remark from her friend.
She stepped into the center of the garage and looked at the floor. In a long rectangular shape around her, the floor was noticeably a little lighter than the rest of the garage, with much less dust. Whatever Eda’s “biggest discovery” was used to sit right where Luz stood, covered by a large tarp that Luz was forbidden to look under. Whenever she would ask what was under it, Eda would only reply with “the future” before quickly changing the subject.
“Oh! King! Heeere Kingy Kingy Kiiing,” Luz beckoned. She spun in a circle as she clapped her hands, hoping for any sign of the black dog, though stopped when she spied King’s dog bowl in the corner. A mountain of uneaten kibble nearly completely engulfed the small bowl. Eda seemingly forgot to turn off the automatic dispenser, and if King were anywhere near it, a few loose crumbs would be the only evidence that any dog food was there to begin with.
“‘Be here ASAP,’ she said. ‘It’s urgent,’ she said,” Luz muttered as she made her way to Eda’s recliner. She collapsed into the comfy chair with a sigh and leaned back…
…and then suddenly was launched forward by the chair. Luz barely had time to let out a sharp yelp before she smashed against a bookshelf. She tried to steady herself, only to find her crashpad was tipping over onto another bookshelf, which towered over a third.
“No, no, no, no, n-!”
Like dominoes, the shelves toppled into one another with a mighty crash. Luz fell with them, closing her eyes and shielding her face with her arms as she landed hard against the wood.
“ MY CHAIR. NO TOUCH, ” a fuzzy recording of Eda’s voice boomed forth from the recliner’s general direction.
Luz sat up just in time to see the recliner’s surprise ejector seat fold back into place. She sat up, rubbing the sharp ache on the small of her back. A million curses ran through her mind, all of which were silenced when she spied a single undisturbed book on the nearby coffee table.
Even when compared to its contemporaries, books in The Good Witch Azura series were thick, which was part of the reason why Luz loved them, and part of the reason why Eda despised them. Eda could skim through an entire textbook in a day or two and compartmentalize all of the information within that she deemed relevant in her head, but couldn’t tell Luz a single thing that happened past page two in the first Azura book. Because of this, Luz was a little confused when she spied her spare copy of book one she had lent to Eda had a bookmark placed more than halfway through the book.
Luz’s extreme annoyance was immediately replaced with a sense of anticipation. Eda was reading Azura without quitting before the second chapter!
“Well, if you’re not gonna let me sit in your chair, I can at least snoop on your progress,” Luz said to the absent Eda.
In a single motion, she stood, swiped the book off the table, and sat legs crossed against the fallen bookshelf. She skimmed through the pages, stopping occasionally to read over some of her favorite paragraphs as she made her way to Eda’s bookmark. Though she had read the entire series too many times to count, Luz still found a solace in reading the early chapters and knowing everything the characters didn’t. She knew how Azura and Hecate’s rivalry would evolve into romance, how the friendly Lucy would be revealed to be the villainous Lucy, how the demise of the wise mentor Adegast was actually a-
LUZ,
CALL ME. NOW.
555-0991
-EDA
Bold letters were scrawled in red ink across the bookmarked page. Some smaller text was written sideways in the margins. Luz had to turn the book to read it.
P.S. SORRY FOR RUINING YOUR BOOK. COULDN’T MAKE IT OBVIOUS. KNEW YOU WOULD OPEN IT.
An even smaller note was written upside down below it.
P.P.S. DON’T SIT IN MY CHAIR.
Luz frowned. She had another two copies of this exact book back home, but it still broke her heart just a little bit to see one massacred this way.
“You better have a really, really good reason for this.”
With a huff, she stood and crossed the room to the bright red telephone mounted near Eda’s bed, which was only a little crushed by the fallen bookshelves. As she dialed the number from Eda’s note. Luz flip flopped between thinking of an excuse to clear herself of any wrongdoing regarding the recliner situation and thinking of all the choice words she would give Eda for destroying her book. She finished dialing, held the receiver up to her ear, and waited… and waited… and waited…
“C’mon, Eda. This is ridiculous, even for you.” Luz hung the receiver back on the hook with a decisive click and headed for the door. With school, homework, a social life, a band, and a girlfriend to worry about, Eda’s antics would have to take a backseat. Even if Luz was a little worried for her favorite mad doctor, whatever the clocks were for and whatever was under that tarp could wait.
Then, just as Luz’s hand touched the doorknob, the phone rang, and any semblance of that idea was dashed from Luz’s mind. She practically bounded across the garage, snatching the receiver off its hook and shoving it against the side of her head.
Luz cleared her throat. “Hello?”
“Luz! Thank god the book worked!” The voice was unmistakably Eda’s, and she was unmistakably ecstatic.
“Eda! Where have you been?”
“Never mind that now! I can tell you everything later!” The more Eda talked, the quicker the pace of her words. She sounded almost out of breath. “Listen, I need you to meet me at the Twin Pines Mall at exactly…” There was a brief pause. “1:15!”
“1:15?” Luz asked. “It's Friday, I’ll be in school.”
“In the morning, Luz! In the morning! You know that big thing I’ve been working on? The thing under the tarp?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“It’s done! And I need your help to document it!”
“Okay, sure, but what’s going on?”
The sound Eda made was somewhere between laughter and a wheezing cough. “I’ll give you all the details at the appropriate time. Don’t forget! Twin Pines Mall, tomorrow morning, 1:15am! And bring your video camera!”
“Eda, w-?”
The ticking clocks’ synchronized drone suddenly erupted into a cacophony of chimes, cuckoos, and ringing. Many of the clocks played a little mechanical show to mark the new hour. Regardless of how spectacular the visuals may have been, the wall of sound still assaulted Luz’s ears like a barrage of gunfire.
“Are those my clocks?” Eda asked, barely audible.
Luz plugged an ear with her free hand, almost shouting over the noise. “Yeah! It’s 8 o’clock!”
“Yes yes yes! My experiment worked!” Eda celebrated, only adding to the barrage. “They’re all exactly twenty five minutes slow!”
“Twenty five minutes slow…” A pit opened up deep in Luz’s stomach. “Wait, Eda. Are you telling me it’s almost 8:30?”
“Damn right, kiddo!”
“Oh shit! I’m late for school!”
Luz slammed the receiver back into place and dashed out of the garage, nearly forgetting her skateboard in the process. She kicked the gate open and haphazardly shut it behind her, not even bothering with the lock as she ran forward, rolled her board out in front of her, and stepped onto it, letting it carry her out onto the street.
To her luck, a pickup truck was driving out of the drive-thru line at the neighboring Burger King -- the perfect opportunity for Luz to hitch a ride. She grabbed onto the tailgate of the truck and let it carry her towards town square, past the dilapidated “Welcome to Gravesfield” sign and its empty promise of “A good place to live”. Past the old abandoned movie theater, forever advertising The Exorcist and Disney’s Robin Hood . Past the far out of date sign claiming the Texaco station still offered full-service. Past the grand but scarred courthouse, which Luz recognized as the last major landmark before Gravesfield High.
As the truck veered off Luz’s desired path, she let go of the tailgate and coasted forward. It would be a tight squeeze, but maybe, just maybe, Luz Noceda would make it there just in time.