The Secret of the Golden Plumb Bob
“Thank you, Mr. Loquer, you’ve made my day! No, you’ve made my life!” said the old woman. “I can die now, knowing he’s waiting for me impatiently.”
Mor sat cross-legged, hunched over a large floor board covered in letters. He smiled and nodded. Come on, old dear, get out of my room — I have smarter things to do.
The old woman finally made up her mind to leave, setting two gold coins on his table. He closed the door behind her and took a deep breath. Another sheep fleeced.
The next one came in two hours. He had exactly that long to devote to himself, to wander through the worlds inside his head and then spit them out onto paper. They were multiplying: dialogues, stage directions, descriptions, characters, and twists. But that didn’t bring in the gold coins — no. Three published novels and two short story collections had earned him a total of two hundred gold coins over five years. He made that much in less than a month providing this… other service.
It was a similar process, and Mor had long since made his peace with fate. You needed the brain folds from the same creative little rooms of the mind to bring a character to life through a story or a dead husband through a séance. That was his wool, if we’re going back to that sheep metaphor from a moment ago.
He set aside the crystal ball, the chain, and the rest of the quasi-magical paraphernalia, and cleaned off the floor alphabet board and the fist-sized plumb bob hanging from the ceiling on a thick rope. Fleecing sheep required good equipment — or, in this case, convincing equipment.
He picked up his pen. It was time for some fun.
What? Could it… Impossible. It seemed to him the plumb bob had moved on its own. Don’t imagine things, Mor, your brain is tired.
It moved again. It must be an earthquake, or a draft. Look how it’s swaying.
It just… stopped at an angle. Strange, irregular, defying the law of gravity. You need to sleep, Mor Loquer — you’re starting to see things.
He approached the plumb bob, which was pointing to the letter G as if held there by invisible strings. Mor rubbed his eyes. Usually, he was the one controlling it, guiding his customers along, selling them false hope. But now someone, it seemed, was playing a trick on him.
He nudged the plumb bob, hoping to snap the transparent threads, to end the magic, to let the hallucination start fading. And indeed, the plumb bob swung and stopped again, this time at a different angle, now pointing to the letter O.
Mor Loquer, what have you gotten yourself into?
Once the initial shock and disbelief had subsided, and the tilted plumb bob became the new normal, Mor got to work and wrote down every letter the plumb bob stopped on. Each time it was enough to just barely touch it before it swung and settled on the next.
He wrote: gooddayisthismorloquer
“Is this Mor Loquer?” he read aloud, and the plumb bob suddenly went slack and returned to its natural resting state, right at the centre of the board, exactly where it should have been all along.
He still thought someone was messing with him. He couldn’t figure out how, which made him feel like the sheep for once.
He looked around suspiciously, then quietly, unconvincingly answered.
“I am Mor Loquer.”
The plumb bob seemed to hear that and swung again, and Mor set back to writing.
“I am Creed Semper. I will die on the sixth of April,” he read the message under his breath, then said aloud, “Creed, I swear, if this is your doing, I’ll pay you back a hundredfold.”
His friend was a joker. Only… how had he pulled this off?
Creed Semper’s funeral was on the seventh of April, the day after the police found him dead in his small apartment. That son of a bitch had always been mixed up in something, with all sorts of shady types, but he had been a loyal friend. He was always there when Mor needed help, so Mor had turned a blind eye to his off-the-books dealings. It wasn’t as if his own career as a medium was anything more legal.
He stood among those gathered around the grave as a chill ran through him. The last time… the last time he had spoken with Creed Semper, it was as a ghost. Good God, unreal.
“Mr. Loquer, please come with me,” said a man with a thin moustache in a black coat, approaching him. He had a sharp gaze that made Mor even more nervous. “South Road Police, criminal investigations division. My name is Gary Seventy, I work as inspector for violent and sexual offences. This beside me is Tal Homer, my assistant.”
Mor sized up the young lad — he couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Soft, dark hairs shyly peeked from the corners of his lips.
They stopped just in front of the cemetery’s large gates. “You were close with the victim?”
“I was.”
“Did he behave strangely in the last few days? Did he tell you anything that might indicate this tragic outcome?”
Yes, I spoke with his soul from the future, and it warned me about everything, Mor thought, and shuddered. His breathing grew shallow, and Inspector Seventy noticed. He felt those piercing eyes cutting through him like blades.
“Well?”
“No… There was nothing. Is it… was it a suicide?”
“We have reason to believe it was murder. We found certain… elements that suggest as much,” Seventi replied. “If you learn anything, let us know.”
It was exactly one week after Creed’s death when Mor noticed the plumb bob hanging at an unnatural angle again. This time he skipped the bewilderment and went straight into conversation with… with whatever it was speaking to him from the other side of life.
“My name is Dina Samoulov, and I will die on the fourteenth of April,” the spirit said, and Mor immediately fired back:
“Where and how?”
“On Linden Street, behind building number eight,” the spirit wrote. “Stop it. Please.”
He arrived too late. He caught a glimpse of the killer, just for a moment, but the man got away. He gave chase, but when he rounded the corner, there was no trace of him.
However, he had memorised the face well: a bald, pale man with sunken eyes. He was carrying something in his hands, but Mor couldn’t make out what.
It didn’t take long for the police to arrive.
“I see… the same elements as with Creed Semper,” Seventy concluded, then turned to Mor. “And you just happened to turn up here? Purely by coincidence?”
No, I was speaking with the ghost of this deceased woman, who asked me to prevent her murder, he answered inside his head, and once again realised how idiotic that sounded. That had to remain his secret.
“I was passing by entirely by chance, I swear,” he said aloud. That wasn’t a much better answer.
“I’m watching you, Mr. Loquer. I’m really watching you.”
“Inspector Seventy,” young Tal Homer spoke up, “we found the same thing here too, in his pocket.”
In his hand he held a length of string, at the end of which hung — a plumb bob.
Mor felt physically ill. He hadn’t even locked the front door before he flew to the toilet, where he emptied the entire contents of his stomach back out through his mouth. What in the devil was happening here?
The next victim was an old man by the name of Severin Slow. The plumb bob — the spirit, or whatever it was — gave him the exact time and place of his murder: at midnight, in South Road’s central park.
This time, Mor decided not to be present at the scene, but to keep his distance and follow the killer. He would be risking too much by turning up as a witness again. Yes, in that scenario, ninety-year-old Mr. Slow would not survive, but it was a sacrifice he had to make for the sake of catching the killer.
He positioned himself behind a bush, binoculars in hand, watching the old man feed the pigeons. What on earth are you even doing out this late, grandpa? he wondered.
A hooded figure approached him — and beneath the hood, Mor recognised those same wide, sunken eyes. Where did he know that face from?
The killer crossed his legs and pulled back his hood, revealing his bald skull. He was smiling and seemed to be enjoying the chat with the old man, who was a little confused but responding with equal enthusiasm. The killer nibbled on impressively large sunflower seeds, spitting out husks that the birds happily finished off.
Although he appeared relaxed, that strange and somehow familiar man kept glancing around. As if he were looking for someone. As if he were looking for Mor Loquer specifically.
Then, without drawing attention, he slipped a plumb bob into the old man’s pocket. That’s it, Mor told himself. Now I have everything I need. Kill him, and I’ll report you to the police.
Nothing happened. The killer left after the conversation, leaving the old man bewildered. As soon as he was up, Mor followed him through a maze of alleyways in the city centre, until he lost him. Again.
He decided to go back to the old man and question him thoroughly about the conversation with this oddball.
“Good evening, is this seat taken?”
The old man didn’t answer. His gaze drifted into the distance, and his stiffened body slid down the back of the bench.
Mor stumbled back only to walk straight into a scowl. “You again, at the scene of the crime. I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring you in,” said Seventy, and Homer clapped handcuffs onto his wrists, grinning with satisfaction.
The secret had to come out. He had no other choice: they would either think him mad or stupid, but he had to tell them what had been happening to him. He told them everything: what he did for a living, how he had been deceiving people, and how the plumb bob had started living a life of its own, relaying messages from souls that had yet to be laid to rest.
Seventy, of course, thought the whole thing was utter fabrication, but Mor convinced him to come for a visit.
“We must be quiet… We don’t want to frighten the spirits,” Mor whispered as he gestured for the two detectives to sit. Seventy tried to say something, but Mor pressed a finger to his lips, at which the old inspector frowned but complied.
They sat in silence for a full hour, when Seventy went to speak again. But the plumb bob beat him to it.
At last, Mor thought, and began writing down the letters, glancing briefly at the astonished faces of the two detectives.
“Good day, Mor. My name is Saily Amber. Can you help me?” read the message.
“Yes,” Mor confirmed, not taking his eyes off Seventy and Homer, who had risen from their chairs.
“Fallen Soldiers Street, number 19, tomorrow at 8 p…” he read.
“What kind of farce is this?” Seventy finally said, instinctively reaching for his revolver.
The plumb bob froze mid-swing and went still.
“You frightened it! I told you to stay quiet!” Mor fumed.
“What are you trying to pull, Mor?”
“You saw it yourselves! We have enough information to stop a murder!”
Instead of any reply, Seventy simply gave a contemptuous snort and left the room.
“This is a waste of time,” said Seventy as they made their way to the home of one Saily Amber.
The woman was mowing her lawn in the front garden while children ran about mischievously, throwing themselves into piles of cuttings.
“Has any man come by?” Seventy asked, and described the figure Mor had been seeing. The woman denied everything.
As they were about to go their separate ways, Homer pointed to the woman’s bulging pocket. “What’s that you’ve got in there?”
“Oh, how did this get here?” Sejli said, puzzled, and pulled out the object. In her hand, she held a plumb bob.
The killer, of course, never came for Saily Amber. He had only left his trademark calling card, one that screamed: Mor did this.
Seventy and Homer allowed him to remain free pending his defence. He was still the prime suspect, but the paranormal plumb bob had saved him — as had the one from Saily’s pocket, since there was no physical way he could have planted it on her, given that he had been under the watch of two inspectors the entire time.
He was banned from his fake spirit-medium practice, and so he finally had time to write. Shaken and sleep-deprived, he wasn’t sure how many creative ideas would come to him, so he decided to browse through his old books.
And then the pieces fell into place: a Mr. Shern Malkich, better known as Plumb Bob, a construction worker by trade. He was a pale, bald man with sunken eyes. And yes, he was a product of Mor’s own imagination. A minor character from his second novel. One of those who are memorable enough to stick in the mind, but whose sole purpose is to nudge the plot in the right direction. Where had he ended up at the close of the book? It seemed he had exited the story as unremarkably as he had entered it.
Shern Malkich. Good grief. Now he was thoroughly lost. What was he supposed to do? Go to Seventy and say: hey, I know who the killer is, whose victims are contacting me through their future ghosts — he’s a character from one of my novels.
“Good day,” Mor read. The plumb bob had come to him after nearly two weeks of silence. It was as if it had retreated since the detectives had shown up in his apartment.
“Who are you?” Mor asked. The plumb bob moved toward the letter I, and a handful of names immediately sprang to mind. Then it went to A, then M. Mor dutifully wrote down all the letters, not thinking about them. When the plumb bob returned to its resting position, he read what he had.
I am Mor Loquer. Save me. I will die on the sixth of May.
That was today’s date.
Unsettled, Mor hurried through the long corridors of his apartment block, heading for the staircase that led to the exit. He wanted to be anywhere but home. Should he go to Seventy and turn himself in? At least he’d be alive in prison.
And then he spotted a sunflower seed husk. Unusually large and pale, like the ones the real-life Shern Malkich had been eating.
He picked it up, then spotted another one in the corridor, a floor below his.
One more, then another: at last, the trail of seeds led him to a front door directly below his own. He walked like a mouse that knows the trap will snap it in half, yet finds the smell of cheese irresistible. Curiosity was Mor’s cheese.
He knocked — once, twice, three times — then tried the handle. It was unlocked.
He nudged the door open and saw an empty flat. White walls bathed in sunlight, and a hallway leading straight into a vast, unfurnished living room. Instead of furniture, there was only a floor mat and a cushion, as though a homeless person lived here.
He looked up at the ceiling and saw the alphabet.
“I see you’ve found my little hideout,” said the bald man, appearing from the terrace. He was extraordinarily thin and tall. He spoke slowly and deeply, just as Shern Malkich did in the book.
“You used magnets?”
“Precisely,” he said, and tossed a piece of metal that snapped onto the letter S — no, embedded itself into it, since it was clearly an extremely powerful magnet. Mor immediately pictured the large plumb bob in his apartment shifting upstairs. Every letter on the ceiling of this flat was in the exact same position as the letters on the floor of the one directly above. Next to the alphabet, a hole had been drilled that reached all the way up to the floorboards, allowing the killer to hear everything in Mor’s apartment. That’s how he’d known the police were visiting that day.
“Is it my turn?” Mor asked.
“I’m afraid so. I tried to get rid of you by framing you for the murders, but somehow you wriggled free,” said Shern, and produced a small plumb bob from his pocket.
“Why?”
“You’re really asking? Because of how you treated me. How I ended up…”
“But how did you end up? I genuinely don’t remember!” Mor cried out. He was dealing with a mentally disturbed person, but Shern hadn’t been that in his novel. Had he gone mad at the end? He couldn’t bring his fate to mind.
“Exactly that. You discarded me as though I never even existed. Is that any way to treat someone?”
Mor thought about how to respond. For a moment his gaze drifted to the open bathroom door, where he spotted his own book on the shelf beside the toilet. He had never seen a copy so thoroughly dog-eared.
“Drink this and let’s be done with it,” said Shern or whoever he really was. He had presumably poisoned the other victims with the same substance.
“What if I wrote a sequel short story? No! What if I wrote an entire book and dedicated it to Shern Malkich?” Mor was trying to stall for time.
“Hmm,” the bald man was intrigued. “But it won’t have a sad ending? Shern will live happily ever after?”
“He’ll be the happiest man in the world.”
“Hmm… I could work with that…” Shern went back out to the terrace, then returned. “Here’s a pen and notebook. Help yourself.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. I want my ending. I want to build the greatest house… A palace, actually. And at its centre there’ll be a golden plumb bob, in my honour.”
“Agreed, I’ll start right away,” said Mor, took the pen — and drove it into Shern’s eye.
Then slipped out of the apartment.
The soles of his shoes were on fire, his breath shallower than a mountain stream. He was within sight of the police station when young Homer spotted him, cigarette in hand. “Hey there, Mor — where’d you spring from?”
“Sh… Shern… He’s after me,” Mor tried to explain.
“Who’s after you?” Homer asked, disbelieving.
“Shern… Just hide me somewhere.”
Homer took him by the arm. “Come on.”
They entered a building not far from the station. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe. No one will find you there.”
They walked into a dark apartment that was the polar opposite of the one he’d escaped, except for one thing they shared.
That thing was the killer. Shern, now with a patch over one eye, was waiting on the other side. “Did you think you’d escape me, Mor?”
“What in God’s name is going on here?” Mor asked, turning to Homer, who had closed the door behind him.
“Sorry, Mor. I was rooting for Shern, too, in the book. You have to answer for what you did to him. And for the pen.”
With that, Homer drew his revolver. And pulled the trigger.
One shot, then another. Mor said his goodbyes to life — but remained standing. He looked down at his body and found no trace of bullet wounds. Then he looked at Shern, then at Homer: both were on the ground.
The old detective stood in the doorway, staring at Homer, barrel still smoking. “I emptied his revolver earlier today. The fool didn’t even check it.”
Homer had been shot in the thigh, Shern in the foot. Both were wailing.
Seventy walked over to Mor and handed him a piece of paper — a man with the same distinctive features, but with hair, and considerably younger. “They’ve been looking for him from a psychiatric hospital for several years. You’re not the first writer whose character he’s been impersonating,” he explained.
When Mor had grasped the absurdity of it all, he pointed to Homer: “And him?”
“Just a corrupt policeman who doesn’t know what to do with his life. There are plenty of his kind,” said Seventy, then placed handcuffs on Mor. “Sorry, lad, but your fraud case still requires a proper arrest. You’re probably looking at a few months in prison, or a few hundred hours of community service.”
Several more officers and four paramedics entered the room, converging on the two shot men.
Seventy personally escorted Mor to the holding cell.
And Mor? Mor was laughing.
He had a brilliant idea for a book. He would call it The Secret of the Golden Plumb Bob.
I wrote this story as part of a writing jam in a Discord group Pisci Srbija.