The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

 4. Mrs. Oberg took this opportunity to speculate with regards to what wild animals might have eaten the girl’s family, and then suggested that maybe she was too traumatized to speak thereafter. She also brought up the possibility that Mr. Howell was a pedophile, though that isn’t the term she used. As Mrs. Oberg went on at great length upon the subject, her digression has been edited out. After all, an endnote is in better taste, unless Dr. Meagher wants a protracted diatribe about body parts and their respective fluids described with a good number of Anglo-Saxon, consonant-heavy words engraved on a plaque right there on the exhibit, surely prompting a number of embarrassed parents^4a to answer many awkward questions on the way back to the car.

4a. Do they still let children scale the Clockroach and pretend it’s a train? That was always my favorite part of school field trips to the SMPI, until one day I fell off and impaled my foot on a rusty spring. They made me get a tetanus shot.

 5. When asked precisely how everybody knew this if no one ever visited them, Mrs. Oberg’s ironclad logic went as follows: “If they weren’t up to any mischief, they would’ve just moved to town like civilized people.”

 6. This seems rather unlikely.

 7. The interviewer considered the wisdom of interrupting to ask if the girl was made of metal, given Mrs. Oberg’s previous statement, but resolved instead to save his breath. After all, he wasn’t getting paid by the word. Or at all.

Clockroach: The Facts

(Fact-checking provided courtesy of Julia Frimpendump, professor emeritus of regional history, University of Washington. Sponsored in part by the West Coast Pioneer Bibliography Project, but not sponsored so extensively that the graduate student who was stuck typing out Dr. Frimpendump’s notes was compensated one red cent for his efforts.)

Though Saint Hubert’s church was, in fact, subjected to a fire in 1889, it did not burn in its entirety, and most of its records were preserved. There is a record of burial for a woman named “Rose M. Howell” on October 2, 1878, lending credence that the story of Addison Howell may hold a grain of truth; but there is no record for Mr. Howell’s death, nor any subsequent burial.

After consulting with an archeo-industrialist in Cincinnati, I have concluded that the peculiar device known locally as “the clockroach” is very likely intended for use in the logging industry. Its forward claws suggest a machine capable of carrying tremendous weight, and the multiple legs imply that it could have traversed difficult terrain while successfully bearing a load.

Based on this information, one could speculate a kinder story for the tragic Addison Howell. It’s reasonable to guess that he might have been a lonely man who adopted an orphaned girl, and in his spare time he devoted himself to tinkering . . . eventually coming up with this peculiar engine that might have revolutionized the industry, had it been adopted and mass-produced. His conversation-turned-argument with the logging foreman may have been some patent dispute, or an altercation over the invention’s worth—there’s no way to know.

The casual record-keeping and insular nature of a tiny homesteader’s town has left us little with which to speculate.

However, the remains of a marble crypt can be found in Saint Hubert’s churchyard. The church’s present minister, Father Frowd, says that it collapsed during an earthquake well before his time—and to the best of his knowledge, it was salvaged for materials.

As for the wagon with the murdered occupants and the sole surviving child, evidence suggests that a family by the name of Sanders left Olympia, Washington, intending to homestead near Humptulips in 1881. This family consisted of a widower Jacob and his brother Daniel, and his brother’s daughter Emily. The small family never reached Humptulips, and no record of their demise or reappearance has ever been found.

In one tantalizing clue located (once again) via Saint Hubert’s, a spinster named “Emily Howell” reportedly passed away in 1931, at the estimated age of sixty. Her age was merely estimated because she never gave it, and she passed away without family members or identification. She was found dead alone in the large home she kept outside the city limits—her cause of death unknown.

But she is buried behind the church, and her tombstone reads simply, EMILY HOWELL, D. 1931. SHE NEVER FORGOT HIM, AND NEVER FORGAVE US.

Sir Ranulph Wykeham-Rackham, GBE, a.k.a. Roboticus the All-Knowing

Documented by Lev Grossman

Museum: Imperial War Museum, London