Our house was a lavish but gloomy three storey building near Hyde Park, which my bedroom window overlooked. I would watch the pedestrians and think of ways to get their teeth. You may wonder why I had such an obsession for teeth. I have often wondered myself and I really don’t have a clue. I cannot give you an answer. My first memory of teeth was my grandfather’s. I was sitting perched on his knee, my face close to his mouth, which was covered in grey whiskers. And his teeth were huge and yellow fang-like monstrosities. Incisors like a sabre-toothed tiger. I remember thinking, he’s going to take a bite out of me.
And now you’re wondering if I now have those specimens in one of my little dark boxes don’t you? Well, the answer is yes. They have always been my prize possession. I didn’t kill him. He died peacefully in his armchair. I just pulled them out later.
But things change, they always do, and my life just after my fifteenth birthday changed dramatically.
My father had been away for several months in Africa, overseeing a diamond mining operation, and he returned unexpectedly one evening with a terrible fever, with pustules on his face and body, sweating and hallucinating. The doctor confined him to his room, but it was far too late.
The next day my mother contracted the disease, followed by myself. My father died on the third day, screaming. We let the servants go. The doctors could do nothing; they could not recognize the disease. I lay in my room and I could hear my mother crying next door, dying. During the night she passed away and I was left alone. I did not want to die. I did not want to end. I kept thinking I could see my grandfather sitting in the corner of the room watching me, smiling and toothless. He smelt of boiled butterscotch sweets. I think he was happy watching me die. I think he was chuckling.
And so I said out loud, “My name is Ebeneezer Tumbletee and I will make a deal with any angel or devil to save my life.”
I didn’t get an angel. But I wasn’t expecting one. And he appeared and stood by my bed with his little black spectacles and introduced himself as the Lord of the Underworld.
“You are a curious thing, Ebeneezer,” he said, leaning against the wardrobe. I could barely keep my eyes open; a haze was forming around the room, dark and smoggy. My grandfather had disappeared.
“I think you had better come with me. And don’t worry, I won’t bite,” he said, smiling.
June 1887
Tumbletee trades a soul for teeth
I am a magician. I am a collector of rare artefacts, especially teeth. And I had one particular artefact I wished to sell. A soul. A very rare soul. I kept it in a beautiful glass jar. The soul was a wispy trail of blue, swirling and bubbling. I was sad to part with it, but there were other things I required.
I visited the clockmaker, Albert Chimes. The extender of lives, the killer of children. I had a trade for him. A soul for teeth, a soul for teeth, a soul for teeth… toothypegs.
“Good morning, Albert,” I said, and took off my top hat. He looked positively terrified and this pleased me. I was perhaps the one thing that frightened him.
“What are you doing here, Tumbletee?” I had traded with him before, he knew what I liked.
“I have something to sell. Something that might interest you,” and I removed the jar from my coat pocket and put it into his hands. His eyes lit up, mesmerized by the contents.
“A soul.”
“A very unusual soul,” I replied.
“How did you acquire this?”
“It is from an Egyptian princess. I spent some time on an excavation in Cairo. Her tomb was painted with red flowers. Her soul lay in a little pot waiting to be collected.”
“This soul is not human. It is something else,” Albert muttered, shaking it slightly. He was excited. I could see his hands trembling.
“Yes, she was rather unusual. Some sort of sorceress, perhaps? Put her into one of your clocks.”
And then I spied a beautiful grandfather clock engraved with ladybirds, at the back of his shop. “Something appropriate. Something like that,” and I pointed at it.
“And what do you want in exchange?”
I smiled. “Teeth. Teeth of the children. I need rather a lot.”
“What do you want with the teeth?” He looked disgusted.
I laughed out loud. “You have the audacity to ask me what I need children’s teeth for, and yet you kill them and stuff their souls into clocks. Give me the teeth, Albert, there’s a good boy, and you can have the soul.”
“Very well,” he rasped, and a deal was struck.
“How shall I get the teeth to you?”
“My manservant Foxhole will come and collect. I need a rather large supply.”
“Of course, but I will need a little time to get it ready for you.” And he examined the soul as a schoolboy looking at a jar of sweets. “Wonderful,” he sighed.
“I thought you’d like her.”
June, 1888
Captain Mackerel & the Voyage Back to England
The Mermaid’s Tail sliced through the waves. Taking us back to England, back to the ladybird clock. Back to my mad grandfather. Back to the beginning, to find an ending.