Uncle Shom: Part3

He smiled for the first time in ten years.

His house sat at the end of a gravel road that no one bothered to pave, a crooked Victorian with a porch that sagged like an old mule. Everyone in town knew Uncle Shom as the man who fixed clocks and never smiled. But I knew him as the man who, twice before, had shown me things that couldn’t be explained.

By an unreliable nephew

He stepped back. And the wall began to turn. End of Part 3.

“The first two were lessons,” he said. “This one is a choice.” uncle shom part3

“You’re late,” he said without turning.

Part 1 was the jar of fireflies that never died. (He shook it on Christmas Eve, and they spelled a name I’d never heard: Liora. ) He smiled for the first time in ten years

Hundreds of them. Padlocks, skeleton locks, combination locks, rusted iron deadbolts, tiny brass suitcase locks, a clock-face lock with no hands. They covered the surface from floor to ceiling, each one fastened to a ring bolted into the dark oak.

He pointed to a lock near the center of the wall. It was small, silver, no bigger than a thumbnail. It didn’t belong among the others. But I knew him as the man who,

“That some doors aren’t meant to keep things out,” he said. “They’re meant to keep something in.”

Now, this is Part 3. I arrived on a Tuesday in October. The leaves were the color of bruised plums. Uncle Shom didn’t greet me at the door. Instead, I found him in the parlor, sitting before a wall I had never noticed before. It wasn't a wall of plaster or wood. It was a wall of locks.