Category: Charlie’s Room

Isaac picked up Charlie’s soft toy cat with a smile. When Great-Aunt Bethyl visited Charlie in the hospital after he was born, she brought the toy as a gift. She handed it to him and he’d snuggled into it and loved it from that moment on.

It was gray with little white paws, so Charlie named it Socks. He took Socks with him wherever he went. He ended up leaving him in odd places. At bedtime they had to hunt for Socks or Charlie couldn’t sleep. They would find him in a block tower or under the couch or in the refrigerator or some other strange place.

“Charlie, if you put Socks on your bed when you’re done playing, he’d be easier to find,” Isaac said once when Charlie was little.

“I do, but then you hide him, Daddy,” Charlie replied.

Isaac didn’t mind playing the find-Socks game, but he certainly wasn’t the one hiding the toy. Well, today he’d found him early. He picked up his pen that had also been eaten by the couch and replaced the couch cushion.

The doorbell rang. Isaac answered the door. It was his Aunt Doris. He managed to smile. “Aunt Doris, how lovely to see you. Please come in.”

She handed him a heavy suitcase and pushed past him. “I’ve come to stay for a week. I’ll stay in Charlie’s room.” She sat on the couch and looked around with a frown.

“Charlie just got a loft bed, Aunt Doris. I could pay for a hotel room for you,” Isaac said.

“Nonsense, I’ll just sleep in your room,” Aunt Doris said. “You can sleep in sleeping bags in Charlie’s room.”

“Well, um…”

Aunt Doris laughed. “I’m just kidding. Go buy me an air mattress.   It’s cheaper than a hotel room.”

“I don’t mind, Aunt Doris. That way Charlie won’t wake you up early like last visit,” Isaac said.

“I hope he’s old enough to know better. He wasn’t well behaved last time. Did you get the parenting books I sent you?” Aunt Doris folded her arms and leaned forward.

“Yes, thank you, Aunt Doris,” Isaac said. “It was kind of you.”

“Yes, well, I could see you needed lots of help,” Aunt Doris said. And then she jumped a little. “Ouch! What was that?” She pulled Socks out from under her. “This toy poked me.   It’s obviously unsafe. Go throw it away right now. Then you can go buy me an air mattress. Don’t worry about me; I brought a book.”

Aunt Doris handed Socks to Isaac and pulled a book out of her purse and started reading. Isaac looked at Socks and squeezed the toy a bit, but he didn’t feel anything sharp.   He hid the toy on top of the refrigerator and left to buy the air mattress.

While he was gone, he called to warn Marianne.   She wasn’t pleased. “She rearranged all the kitchen cupboards last time she came over.   And she kept correcting Charlie for everything he did. She even said he was breathing too loud.”

“I think she’s lonely and just wants to help,” Isaac said. “I tried to get her to stay at a hotel.”

“Maybe she won’t stay long,” Marianne said. “We’ll be back in an hour or so. I’ll tell Charlie he can have extra time on the swings. There’s no reason to hurry back.”

Isaac returned with the air mattress and managed to inflate it.   He’d bought sheets to fit and found an extra pillow and quilt in the closet. He went back into the living room. “What would you like for dinner, Aunt Doris?” He asked.

“Nothing with salt. Or sugar.   Or dairy. Or white flour,” Aunt Doris said.

“Fish and rice and broccoli?” Isaac asked.

“Brown rice,” Aunt Doris said.

“It’s a deal,” Isaac said. Aunt Doris went back to her book.

Fortunately, Charlie was happy to camp in their room on the floor. Isaac managed to sneak Socks from the kitchen and hand him off to Charlie without Aunt Doris noticing. Everyone settled in and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, Isaac woke up to a pounding noise. Someone was knocking loudly on the bedroom door.   Somehow Marianne and Charlie slept through it. Isaac opened the door.   “Aunt Doris? Are you okay?”

Aunt Doris was glaring at him. “Of course I’m not. That terrible air mattress deflated. You must have done a bad job inflating it. I’ll watch this time and make sure you do it right.”

Isaac re-inflated the air mattress and Aunt Doris found his work acceptable. They went back to sleep.   In the morning, Isaac heard noises in the kitchen. He went out to find Aunt Doris’s suitcase in the hallway. Aunt Doris was in the kitchen cooking herself breakfast.

“I’m leaving after I eat, Isaac. I am so disappointed in you,” she said.

“What happened?” Isaac asked.

“The air mattress deflated again. I’m fairly certain this is a plot to give me a bad back and force me into a retirement home. I won’t stand for it. Take my suitcase out to my car now,” Aunt Doris said.

She was gone in less than an hour. Isaac went to Charlie’s room to check on the mattress. It was nearly flat.   He pulled off the sheets. The top looked fine. He flipped it over. Socks was on the floor under the far corner. How had Socks ended up there?

Isaac found two little clusters of five pinholes in the far corner of the mattress. He picked up socks and checked his paws. No hidden claws. “Socks, did you do that?”   Socks didn’t answer.

Marianne came in. “Where’s Aunt Doris?”

“She left. She was upset the mattress kept deflating,” Isaac said.

Marianne leaned over his shoulder and looked at the little holes in the plastic. “It must have been faulty, you should return it.”

Isaac looked at Socks again. “Hmmm. Maybe you’re right. I’ll need to write Aunt Doris an apology again.”

“Well, at least she probably won’t visit for another year,” Marianne said.

“I guess we could visit her?” Isaac said.

“We’ll discuss it,” Marianne said.

Marianne looked at the thermometer and sighed. “Still feeling under the weather, I see. You’ll need to call in sick again.”

Isaac frowned. “I feel fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Marianne said. “I can’t remember the last time you were sick. Take one more sick day.   It’s what they’re for.”

“Fine,” Isaac said. He collapsed back onto the pillow.

Marianne smiled. “I’m taking Charlie to school and then I’m going to the post office. Do you need anything?”

“No, thank you,” Isaac said.

Marianne patted his shoulder and left the room. A little while later, he heard Charlie yell, “Bye Dad!” The front door slammed.

Isaac called in sick. Then he rolled over and stared at the wall. He was bored already. He kicked off the blankets and wandered down the hall.

He looked in Charlie’s room. Charlie had made a huge blanket fort. Blankets were tied with yarn to his bed and the rod for hanging clothes in the closet and his desk chair. Several blankets were pieced together with safety pins.

“Wow!” Isaac whispered. He crawled inside. He could sit up with room to spare. There were pillows and books grouped around an old turquoise rug. Where did Charlie find that? He stroked the faded rug and left behind a darker stripe of color as he changed the position of the fibers.

Isaac’s grandmother, his Nona, had given him the rug when he was Charlie’s age.   Isaac smiled fondly. He lay back on the rug and looked up at the blanket ceiling. There was a paper safety pinned there. In big block letters, it said, “Do you like my tent dad?” Charlie obviously knew him too well.

He started to laugh, which caused him to cough. He continued a weird mix of laughing and coughing until the rug unexpectedly lifted itself, and Isaac too, into the air a few inches. Isaac stopped laughing and coughing and the rug silently popped them both to somewhere else.

The somewhere else was a cave. Torches along the far wall did their best to light the cave, but shadows lurked everywhere.   Around the edges of the room, there were piles of things that gleamed in the dim light. In the center of the room there was a pedestal. On the pedestal, there was a small, shiny oil lamp.

Isaac was thrilled. He cautiously rolled up the rug and stuck it under his arm. He listened and looked around the room again. He was alone. Watching where he stepped, he approached the pedestal. Isaac picked up the lamp and rubbed it on his sleeve.

A tall young man appeared next to him. He looked at Isaac and scowled. “Well?”

“Are you a genie?” Isaac asked. He wasn’t dressed like a genie. He looked like a normal teenager.

“Djinni,” the young man said, sounding bored.

“Do you grant wishes?” Isaac asked.

The young man looked at him. “Hmmm.   You can have two.”

“Not three?” Isaac asked.

“Inflation,” the young man said.

“Could you take me home?” Isaac asked.

“Yes,” the young man said. He rolled his eyes.

“Please may…I mean, I wish for you to take me home,” Isaac said. Everything blurred around him for a second, and then he found himself in his living room, holding the rug and lamp.

“One more wish,” the young man said.

Isaac looked around. He looked at the djinni that looked like a teenager. “Would you like to be free from the lamp?” he asked.

“Of course I would,” the young man said.

“Then I wish for your freedom,” Isaac said. There was a flash of light and the lamp and young man disappeared.   Isaac smiled. He took Nona’s rug back to his room and hid it on the top shelf of his closet.

He took the rug out of the bathroom. It was fluffy and had red and white stripes. It reminded him of candy canes. He arranged it in the blanket fort and then took a pen from the mug on Charlie’s desk.

He wrote, “I love it!” on Charlie’s note and added a smiley face. Then he decided to take a nap. It had been a busy morning, and maybe he was feeling a little under the weather after all.

Isaac woke up feeling cold.   It was the kind of cold that made him curl up and shiver. “What’s wrong?” Marianne asked.

“It’s cold,” Isaac said. His throat was sore and it hurt to talk. He coughed. Ouch.

Marianne checked his forehead. “I think you have a fever. Let me get the thermometer.”

“Could you bring me another blanket?” Isaac asked.   He buried his head under the blankets.   That made it hard to breathe, but it was warmer.

Marianne brought several blankets and the thermometer.   “Yep, a fever. You’ll need to call in sick. I’ll go get some medicine.”

“My throat hurts too,” Isaac said.

“Oh dear,” Marianne said. “I have a lot of errands to run today. I’ll buy the ingredients for chicken soup while I’m out.”
“I’ll call work,” Isaac said. He called in sick and curled up under a heavy pile of blankets.

“Dad!” Charlie yelled. Isaac woke up out of a strange dream where telephones were taking over the world.

“Charlie?” Isaac struggled to wiggle back out of the pile of blankets and sit up. Wow, now he was feeling much too hot. Why did he have so many blankets?

“Dad, my homework is gone. I left it on my desk last night and now it’s gone,” Charlie said.

“You didn’t put it in your backpack?”

Charlie sighed. “I wasn’t sure on some of the answers.   I was going to ask you to check it, but I forgot. Now it’s gone.”

“I’ll write you a note,” Isaac said. He scribbled out a note that he hoped made sense.

“Can you look for it and bring it to me if you find it?” Charlie asked.

“We’ll see,” Isaac said. He handed Charlie the note and kicked off the blankets. He drank the cup of water that somehow appeared on the nightstand, and curled up again and fell asleep.

He woke up mostly feeling better. He felt all sweaty and icky and his throat hurt, but his head no longer felt like it was packed full of cotton balls. He got up and shuffled into the kitchen for another drink of water.

On the way back to his room, he passed Charlie’s room.   Hmmmm. Maybe the homework had just fallen behind the desk or something. He went in to check.

He paused. Charlie had a photo of his Grandfather Charlie on his desk.   Marianne must have given it to him.   Isaac picked up the picture of his father, looking much younger. He would have been sixty-seven today.

Isaac picked up the picture, feeling sad. His father had been a schoolteacher, and in the picture he was at his desk correcting papers. He was looking up and smiling at the camera. Isaac imagined his dad was smiling at him.

His dad winked. Isaac blinked and looked at the picture. His dad seemed to smile a little wider and lifted the paper he was holding, just a bit. Isaac squinted. Was that Charlie’s homework?

Isaac laughed. Ouch. His throat still hurt. “Thanks for looking out for Charlie,” he whispered. “I love you, dad. Just leave his homework on his desk when you’re done.”

He hugged the photo to his chest tightly and then put it back on Charlie’s desk. He waved and maybe his dad nodded back. He went back to bed and fell asleep.

He woke up to Charlie jumping onto to the end of the bed with a thump. “Thanks for finding and checking my homework, dad,” he said. “The teacher says I can turn it in tomorrow.”

“It wasn’t me. It was your Grandpa Charlie,” Isaac said.

“Oh, are you still feeling sick?” Charlie said.   “I’ll go get mom.”
“Tell her I want a photo of Grandpa Charlie for my desk too,” Isaac said.   Then he snuggled back under the blankets and tried to decide if he was ready to get up.

Isaac was dreaming. Somehow he knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t quite wake up. In his dream, people kept knocking on the door. He’d open the door, and the person would smile and wave and walk away. He’d close the door and the knocking began again.

The tempo of the knocking changed. Now it was a monkey at the door. Then it changed again and it was a dog knocking in a shuffle-tap rhythm.   The knocking grew sharper. He opened the door and no one was there.   He looked back and forth. He heard a strange rustling sound and looked down.

A bird was perched on the door knob. He looked down at the bird and it looked up at him. It launched itself off the knob, and he felt the feather soft touch of its wings on his face as he woke up.

Marianne’s hair was in his face. He sat up. She rolled over and the blankets rustled. There was a tapping sound coming from outside the room.

Isaac stood up and walked softly to the door and opened it. There was nothing there. He checked the doorknob and then behind the door. Nothing there either.

The tapping sound started again in a different rhythm. It was coming from Charlie’s room. Charlie’s door was open a little. Isaac pushed the door open all the way and looked inside.

Charlie was asleep. His quiet, regular breaths sounded loud in the middle of the night. Moonlight streamed in through the window, lighting the carpet in front of the closet. Inside the closet a pair of shoes danced.

Tap tap tappity tappity tap tap tap they danced. They floated and whirled and danced some more. And then they stopped.   Isaac walked into the room. His bare feet made whispery noises on the carpet.   Another pair of shoes started to dance.

Isaac sat in the moonlight in front of the closet and watched the shoes dance.   He softly hummed a tune. The shoes danced in time to the tune as he hummed.   He sang a lullaby. A pair of shoes waltzed.

Isaac clapped quietly after each pair of Charlie’s shoes took turns performing.   He considered fetching some of his shoes and maybe Marianne’s too. He really wanted to see if his sandals would do a shuffling, kicking dance or more of a tapping twirling one.

Just as he started to stand up, a cloud drifted in front of the moon. The light dimmed. The shoes stopped. Isaac sat back down and waited hopefully. The shoes didn’t move. He waited and listened to Charlie breathe quietly.

He started to feel tired. He laid down on the carpet so that he could wait more comfortably. He was really, really tired. The shoes would wake him up if they started dancing again. He could just take a short nap. He fell asleep.

Charlie woke him up in the morning. “Dad, why are you sleeping on the floor?” He asked. He shook Isaac’s arm.

Isaac sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was morning. The sun was coming up, and the shoes in Charlie’s closet stood neatly in rows.   Had it been a dream? If it was a dream, then why was he in Charlie’s room?

“Dad?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Isaac said. “I think your shoes were dancing.”

“I sometimes have strange dreams too, Dad,” Charlie said. “Not that one though. That’s really weird.”

Marianne came into the room. “There you are! You were up early today, Isaac,” she said.

“Dad was sleeping on my floor. I think he had a weird dream,” Charlie said.

“Hmmmm,” Marianne said. “Well, let’s have breakfast.”

That night, there was a snowstorm. It snowed six inches in the night and hadn’t stopped when morning came.   Isaac woke once in the night.   Light came in from the streetlight outside, dimly illuminating the dancing snowflakes. He checked Charlie’s closet. The shoes didn’t dance.

He checked again a few nights later when there was moonlight again. The shoes didn’t dance. Did they only dance before big snowstorms? When the moon was a certain size? Once every hundred years? He asked them in a quiet whisper once, but they didn’t answer.

There was a present on his desk when Isaac returned after the team meeting.   It had a tag that said “to: Isaac, from: Secret Santa”. It was a little puzzling, because Isaac was fairly certain they weren’t doing a secret Santa gift exchange this year. He’d better go check. He hoped he hadn’t missed something.

Isaac hurried over to the office manager’s desk while trying to think of what he had in his desk and car that he could rewrap and gift to someone if he needed to. His stapler? The emergency flashlight? Maybe he could duck out really quickly and go to the antique store.

“No, we’re not doing a secret Santa thing this year,” the office manager said when he asked.

That was a relief, but also puzzling. “Then why did I get a gift?” Isaac asked.

“Who knows? Maybe someone wanted to do something nice anonymously,” the office manager said.

Isaac returned to his desk and looked at the gift again. It was a simple red gift bag. He sat down and started taking the white tissue paper out of the bag.   Nestled inside, he found a little bulbous glass candleholder.

The glass was textured, and four smooth heart shapes were pressed outwards in a row around the holder. Inside, there was a little purple candle. It looked cute and cheerful. Isaac smiled.

They were sent home early for the holidays. Isaac stopped at the grocery store for marshmallows. Once home, he arranged a ring of pillows on the floor of Charlie’s room and placed the candle in the center. They could use chopsticks to roast marshmallows over it and tell ghost stories.

Isaac went back to the kitchen for chopsticks and slipped a box of matchsticks into his pocket. Next, he gathered a water bottle and a book of not-too-scary scary stories. He assembled the treasures in Charlie’s room.

Would the candle be bright enough to read by or would he need a flashlight?   He should probably test it out.   Isaac closed the curtains and lit the candle. The flame flickered and cast shaky shadows on the walls.

The heart shapes must not be as smooth as they looked. The shadows they cast had menacing faces that seemed to be laughing as the shadows flickered in time with the candle flame.

Isaac looked at the candleholder. It was still cute and cheerful. He looked at the shadows. He could still see the laughing, menacing faces. He heard a murmur, as though there was a radio playing in another room or maybe outside a few houses away.

It was rhythmic, like chanting. The faces were moving in time with the faint chanting. Isaac couldn’t quite catch the words. It was strange. His head started to feel like it was filled with buzzing bees.   He opened the water bottle and filled the candleholder with water until it spilled over the edges in little dribbles.

The shadows vanished. Isaac’s head felt clearer. He carefully took the candleholder to the bathroom and left it in the bottom of the sink, still filled with water. He grabbed a hand towel to mop up the spills.

He wanted the creepy cheerful candleholder out of his house as soon as possible. It probably wasn’t safe to just throw the thing away. He didn’t want to give it away either, not when he wasn’t sure if it was safe. He didn’t want to just break it or bury it either. For all he knew, that could cause some ghastly reaction.

Thank goodness for Great-Aunt Bethyl. She’d know what to do. He called her right away. “Great-Aunt Bethyl, it’s me, Isaac,” he said. “Someone gave me a candleholder that chants when you light it. What should I do?”

“Isaac, it’s nice to hear from you again,” Great-Aunt Bethyl said. “I know someone who studies oddities like that.   I’ll send him right over.”

“Thank you, Great-Aunt Bethyl,” Isaac said.

“Of course, Isaac dear,” she said.

A man wearing sunglasses and an ugly reindeer sweater appeared at the door twenty minutes later. He was holding a little green gift bag. Isaac brought the candleholder with him when he answered the door, water and all.

The man held out a hand. Isaac handed him the candleholder. The man handed him the gift bag and left without saying a word. Isaac watched him turn the corner, then closed the door.   He looked down at the bag. The tag said “In exchange, G-A.B.”.

He cautiously opened the bag. He found a scented candle in a glass jar. The label said “roses”. He took off the jar lid. The candle smelled nice. It reminded him of his grandmother.

Isaac took it back to Charlie’s room and lit the wick. The shadows were normal. Isaac smiled. The sleepover could continue as planned. He’d have to send Great-Aunt Bethyl a thank you note. But first he needed to find the flashlight so he could make funny faces and read the stories in his book to Charlie.

Isaac shuffled his feet as he walked to his car. Work had been crazy today. He was so tired. Perhaps it was a night to pick up pizza on the way home? That sounded nice.

He started to turn his key in the lock when he realized that the doors were already unlocked. That was really strange. He looked under the car and through the windows. No one was hiding and nothing was missing. However, there was a clock sitting innocently on the passenger seat that hadn’t been there before.

Isaac had parked in front of that shady antique shop. He looked over at it with narrow eyes. It was closed and the windows were dark. Ah well, what harm could a clock do? And this one was such a cheerful shade of blue. It would be perfect for Charlie’s room.

Still feeling slightly suspicious, he checked it over carefully when he arrived home. It didn’t have hidden compartments or hidden teeth, but it did need new batteries. He had some in his desk drawer. First, he needed to find the coupons and go pick up some pizza.

He returned home half an hour later. He left the pizza in the kitchen and dug through his desk drawer. He took the batteries to Charlie’s room.   It just took a moment to put the batteries in. Tick tick tick tick tick.   Well, it seemed to work just fine.

Isaac found the little dials for setting the time and turned the clock over.   It was nearly correct. He just had to set it back a half turn or so.   He flicked his wrist and turned it a little too much. Oops.

He was about to fix his mistake when he heard someone come in the front door.   Didn’t Charlie have a swim meet today? Marianne and Charlie shouldn’t be home for at least another hour. He set the clock down and walked out into the hall.

And nearly ran into himself, striding down the hall holding a bright blue clock. “Aaaaah!” his other self said.   Isaac jumped back and clutched at his chest. His other self held the clock in front of himself as a shield.

The clock wasn’t ticking and the time was wrong. “Have you picked up the pizza yet?” Isaac asked.

“What?” his other self said.

“I think the clock sent me back in time. I just set the time after I picked up the pizza,” Isaac explained.

His other self set the clock down and backed away from it. “I haven’t picked up the pizza yet. Is it safe for you to talk to me? Won’t that mess up time or something?”

“It wasn’t on purpose and it’s too late now. What should we do?” Isaac asked.

“Well, how far in the future are you from?” Past Isaac asked.

“About an hour,” Isaac said.

“Then let’s go pick up the pizza. You can explain on the way. And wait in the car. Do you know where the coupons are?” Past Isaac said.

So, Isaac and Past Isaac went and picked up the pizza while Isaac explained.   And then waited in the car while Past Isaac went into the shop.

“Do you think if I mess up setting the clock too there will be three of us?” Past Isaac asked. He put the pizza on the kitchen counter.

“If you don’t, will there be a time paradox?” Isaac asked.

“Maybe I just won’t remember any of this,” Past Isaac said.

“What if I put the time back to the correct time and just finished my journey,” Isaac said. “I think that could work.” They walked down the hall and stared at the cheerful blue clock on the floor.

“Maybe. It’s all a little strange,” Past Isaac said.

“Should we give the clock to Great-Aunt Bethyl and her friends?” Isaac asked.

“Is it safe to have anyone messing around with time travel?” Past Isaac asked.

“You’re right,” Isaac said. “Do we have a big enough shoe box?”

“Yes, the one for boots that Marianne used for the craft paint. It’s on the garage shelf,” Past Isaac said.

“I’ll transfer the paint to one of those clear storage containers from the kitchen,”Isaac said.

“Much better for storing the paint anyways,” Past Isaac said. “You can see what’s in the box.” Reluctantly, they went into Charlie’s room.

“Off I go then. Does this mean I’ll never see you again?” Isaac asked.

“I am you,” Past Isaac said.

“Sort of. You’re me without the coming back in time which won’t happen now,” Isaac said.

“I’m still not sure how that works,” Past Isaac said.

“I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a twin. I always wanted a brother, you know,” Isaac said.

“I know.” Past Isaac said. “If I’m still around to remember this, I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too,” Isaac said. He gave himself a quick hug, and then he picked up the clock. “Goodbye,” he said. He twisted the knob carefully. Past Isaac disappeared.

Isaac sadly removed the batteries from the clock. He switched over the paint and packed the clock away carefully.   He taped up the box and used a marker to label it “Articles on Stormwater Management and Watershed Protection”.

He stored the box in the far corner of his closet shelf and left his room with a sigh. Pizza and an early bedtime tonight. Today had been a crazy day.