The Girl and the Pendulum (An Original Story – Part 11)
Part Eleven
“Come in, Mr. Cattrell,” Cassandra said after the second round of knocks. Cattrell wiped his feet on the stiff, wire-haired doormat and stepped inside.
The air was filled with nuances that appealed to several senses. The warmth of the moist air was combined with the slight scent of a sugary confection, while the tock of a ticking sound echoed through the small foyer. The hardwood floor beneath him creaked like an old ship keel as he stood, and he could feel an uneven quality to the wood through his shoes.
“Would you like something to drink?” Cassandra stood facing him in her sitting room. In one corner, against the street-side wall, stood an upright piano, an ancient one, a player piano.
“I wouldn’t mind some of that African coffee. It was pretty good,” Cattrell answered, taking off his fedora.
Cassandra smiled. “I’ll make some. Please have a seat.”
Cattrell sat on a Victorian sofa with fleur-de-lis etches in gold tassel. Not his style, but worth something somewhere. He considered it a bit too gaudy for his own taste.
He peered up and saw the source of the ticking sound: a Black Forest cuckoo clock hidden in a wall alcove previously used for an old telephone.
A strange antique contraption sat on the coffee table. It was a suspended golden tray filled with sand, with a silver teardrop pendulum suspended over it. The tip of the teardrop barely submerged itself into the sand. He wondered what arcane mysteries it possessed.
“You must be taken in by the sand and pendulum. Not the Edgar Allen Poe kind, of course.” She smiled, setting his coffee on a silver coaster. “When you push the pendulum --”
She gave the teardrop a push, and it began swinging around, forming arcs in the air. The tip slashed the sand this way and that, forming tracks. The tracks alternated in geometry.
“Every line is followed by its mirrored line, every curve repeated by its twin.”
The slashes reminded him of wheat, and the color of the sand reinforced the image.
“Over time, sacred geometries form, giving rise to shapes the mind has never seen. Forms emerge that the soul can contemplate.” Cassandra took a sip of her coffee. “Or so they say.”
The coffee was hot and more delicious than the morning’s brew. He took a long sip and set it down on a coaster.
The teardrop swung back and forth, back and forth.
Click. Rrrr.
“I’m sure your camera has taken some interesting pictures.” Cassandra sat down and gazed at him expectantly with those hazel eyes. Cattrell thought for a moment, putting his camera down.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked.
Cassandra’s gaze broke. “I thought this was about a missing object?”
“It is.” Cattrell retrieved a cigarette from his coat pocket. “May I?”
Cassandra nodded her head. “I’ve lived here 3 years.”
Cattrell studied her perfectly symmetrical face through the initial haze of cigarette smoke. “What do you know about Zenith, or New Dynamics?”
Symmetry was beauty’s playground, he once read. Symmetry, like the sand within the golden tray.
Read from the beginning:
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten
Read the next chapter:
"The Girl and the Pendulum" is an 18-part future-noir science fiction story about a a private investigator's search for a missing android. How can a man who searches for missing women find lost artificial intelligence? I welcome feedback on this story about a man and his difficult case in a post-war, post collapse world. Stay tuned, as I also will begin publishing my 300,000 word epic novel "The Messiah" on Steemit in 2017.
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