Page 27 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
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‘What do you think it wants?’ Imogen whispers.
I’m standing beside her and we’ve both got our faces squashed against the small glass window in her office door, peering through nervously. ‘I don’t think it wants anything. It’s a spinning wheel,’ I say, wondering how my life got to a point where I’m having a conversation about what an escaped non-sentient object might want when the wooden thing really hasnodesires of its own whatsoever.
‘Do you think it’s after blood?’
I try to contain my laughter because she sounds legitimately concerned, but it gets the better of me and bursts out. Imogen is a perfectly sane middle-aged woman who has worked here for almost as long as I have. She isn’t prone to flights of fancy or anything out of the ordinary, but she sounds honestly worried that the spinning wheel in her office is here on some sort of revenge mission that can only end bloodily.
The office is at the back of the shop, down a narrow corridor between her till area and her storage room, and there isnofeasible way that anything could have snuck down here without her seeing it, and yet, somehow, one of my exhibits is in her office, and she has no idea how it got there.
There is something really strange going on here.
In fact, at this point, themostreasonable explanation is that my exhibits have turned into ghosts and developed the ability to phase through walls, which is really, really unlikely.
I go to open the door, but she stops me and hands me a long-handled umbrella with a sharp tip. ‘Here. Just in case.’
I have to bite back the laugh again as I take my new protective weapon and go into her office, but the spinning wheel is just a spinning wheel, sitting there… menacingly.
There aren’t any clues for how it got there. It’s a small, windowless room with only the one door, tucked away at the back of the shop, and there’s no hint of how it could possibly have moved each time she looked at it, and I’m half-wondering if Imogen’s secretly had a bottomless brunch. Eventually I give up on trying to understand it, give the spinning wheel a gentle nudge with my foot while holding the spike of the umbrella out threateningly, just to make double-sure that it’s not about to attack, and then I pick it up and carry it back out.
Imogen jumps aside and gives me and the spinning wheel a wide berth as I hand her umbrella back and apologise again, wondering if I should reassure her that I’ll put it in a cage or something in future, lest it escape and seek her out again.
When I get back to the museum, Warren’s water bottle and the model of Remy the rat are now sitting on the front desk, and Warren looks up when I come in. ‘Should you be carrying that thing? What if it tries to bite? Do you need a tetanus jab after a spindle bite?’
‘Very funny,’ I say, despite the fact I’m trying not to laugh.
‘This is the best thing I’ve seen in years. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I need to know what’s going on, and at the same time, I actually don’t want to know because it’s marvellously fun, and it’s sent my imagination into overdrive.’
Mine too, but mainly because therehasto be a logical explanation, I just don’t know what it is. ‘Either way, budge over, because there’s a bicycle lock in one of those drawers and I’m going to tie this thing up and lock it in place. Just in case.’
He laughs as he gets off the stool behind the counter and gives me space to crouch down and rummage, and when I stand back up, Remy has moved along the counter and is looking over, and I let out a yelp of surprise at his rodenty face staring at me, and Warren is nearly doubled over with laughter.
I laugh too, and take Remy and the spinning wheel away to put them somewhere safe, consistently surprised by his sense of fun when he doesn’t overthink it. Half the time, it’s like he forgets to be all businesslike and serious, until he remembers and quickly censors himself, and I wonder again if there’s more than I thought hiding behind the fancy suits and excellent taste in jumpers.
10
Warren is a conundrum, and despite working together for a few weeks now, I feel like I know hardly anything more about him than I did on the day he arrived, and I keep thinking of what Mickey said – about finding his wish and granting it. He seems to love the idea of the exhibits coming to life, and I wonder if he’d be more open to the possibility of wishes coming true than I thought at first. Ithasbeen a couple of weeks since I collected wishes from the well, so it’s as good an excuse as any to go down there and just have a little look…
Last time I saw him, he was hunched over his computer at the kitchen table, not looking like he’d be going anywhere for some time, and it’s past 5p.m. so the museum is closed for the night. I’m tidying the Fairytale Homes hall after a busy afternoon, but I realise this is the perfect opportunity to sneak down to the basement and find out if his wish was something we could realistically make come true.
And I’m 99 per cent positive that the basement is haunted and I prefer the idea of going down there while someone else is in the building. Usually I make Mickey come with me as a safety in numbers thing, but at least Warren would hear me scream.
The basement has an access door through Ariel’s grotto, and I listen at the bottom of the stairs but it doesn’t sound like Warren’s going to move anytime soon, so I grab a torch, and click open the lock that allows one side of the cave to be pushed inwards, and venture down the long, hollow, freezing corridor that runs underneath the garden.
This is an old building that’s had many uses over the centuries it’s stood here, and this part of it must’ve been some sort of dungeon once, because I’m fairly sure that I can still hear the distant sound of ghostly, rattling chains every time I come down here.
The basement door creaks as I unlock it and push it open with my shoulder, and flick on the light that Darcy got working for me a couple of years ago, which is the only thing that allows me to come here without having a fear-induced heart attack.
The other end of the room is directly underneath the wishing well in the garden, and although it was probably used for water once, many moons ago, by now, the old stone has crumbled and fallen away, and the well opens out directly into this room, and all the colourful pieces of paper that children have pushed through the grate above now litter the floor in here, waiting to be granted.
Warren’s wish was written on blue paper, and I bend over and rifle through the scattered wishes, picking up every blue one I can find and discarding it when it’s not the right one.
There aren’t as many as there once were – testament to my declining visitor numbers and, I think, a declining number of children who believe in magic, but there’s still a good few all over the uneven stone floor, and I keep looking for that one piece of blue paper, until I find it…
…and wish I hadn’t.
Warren, 41, Bromsgrove.
