An Apostle of the Lord, Chapter 25
Eddie and Vladimir were expecting a visitor from Oz and were walking back to the barn. Jellia had followed through on her promise and someone named Scraps was on her way. They entered the barn and pulled up one of the doors. Up the steps flew an excited mass of crazy-quilted material and a face with large button eyes and a yarn top-knot. "Waaaahoooeeee!"
Scraps was a product of Doctor Pipt's Powder of Life. An Oz woman who hated housework built a servant out of scraps of quilting material with a quilted head, legs, arms and skirt, thick cotton gardening gloves for hands and white flat buttons for eyes. A scattering of the doctor's powder brought the cotton body to life. To the woman's dismay, though, Scraps had no interest in housework. True to the pattern in her material, she was too carefree and scatterbrained to care for tedious work.
Scraps eventually found her way to the palace in the Emerald City where her cheerfulness and kindness was well received by Queen Ozma. It happened that for a few days Ozma was visiting at Glinda's palace with her head housekeeper Jellia Jamb and the ever-lively Scraps. And Jellia thought it good to share Scraps with Eddie and Vladimir.
"Well, okay," said Eddie to Scraps. "I'm Eddie and this is Vladimir. Is it okay to just leave you and Vladimir here in the barn while I run a couple errands? There's just one thing you need to know about Vladimir. He can't spend time in the sunshine without getting seriously burned, so don't let him go outside the barn while I'm gone.
"Right! Take Vladimir outside to play...just kidding! He will stay unburned, but I can't say we won't be messy."
"I can live with that," said Eddie and he pulled up the opposite door in the floor and headed down the steps.
As soon as the door shut, Scraps dashed madly outdoors and spun around, skipped a bit and made flapping gestures. "It's gorgeous out here, Vladie! I want to explore. Do you want to come along?"
Vladimir stepped back in horror. "Scraps, I can't go out there! Didn't you hear Eddie? Sunlight can kill me!"
"I know that," said Scraps. "But, do you want to go exploring with me?"
"Uh, yeah?
"Okay, Vladie, we will. First, we need to dress for the occasion. Come on!" Scraps pulled up the door Eddie had just opened and gone through. Where ever Eddie had gone, they were going somewhere else. She grabbed Vladimir by the hand and led him down the steps.
Eddie came up the stairs in his barn near the Winchesters' bunker. He joined Dean Winchester who was browsing through the cars behind the barn.
"So, how many of the cars were taken?" Eddie asked Dean.
Dean scratched his head. "Sam says he saw three of them being driven away. We sent the license plate numbers for these cars to Jody to track and she says all of them are stolen and their owners are dead or missing. Apparently, the vampires attacked and killed people and took their cars to drive to the sanitarium. Everything in the cars confirm their owners and tell nothing about where the vampires came from. Sam is looking online for suspicious activities where the car owners lived and hasn't found anything. I wonder if we should be watching the sanitarium."
"If the owners are sophisticated enough to have smart phones and televised internet access," replied Eddie, "they surely e-mailed everyone who might go there and canceled any future deliveries. It would be worth it to check St. Louis police reports. Does anyone know if the authorities are even aware the place is vacant?"
"Jody probably checked, but I can ask," said Dean. "I suppose we should get rid of these cars before someone snoops around and the police discover you have abandoned cars on your farm."
Eddie placed his hand on each vehicle, which car turned to water and collapsed into the ground, leaving a large muddy puddle in the field. "Done!"
Scraps and Vladimir reached the end of the tunnel, opened the vertical door and emerged from one of the mirrors in Glinda's ballroom. In the room, Glinda and Queen Ozma were seated in their royal gowns chatting. Jellia was with them. The three watched Scraps lead the boy across the room and into the hall.
Scraps popped her head back into the room to grab an elaborately decorated drawstring bag.. "I'm taking him to the fabric room, Jellia!" And she was gone again. Jellia hopped up and followed her.
They went down a hall and up a spiral staircase to another hall and into one of the side rooms. Inside, Vladimir looked around in awe at mountains of fabric and stacks of drawers of notions. He watched as Scraps rummaged through her drawstring bag.
"What are you making, Scraps?" asked Jellia.
Scraps pulled out of the bag two bundles of slender metal blades lined with notches and pulled both of them over the fat fingers of her clumsy cloth hands. She held them up to show Vladimir and made the blades twitch across each other like small scissors. He stared wide-eyed at the pointy delicate contraptions.
She turned to Jellia and explained. Vladie burns in the sun. We need something that will protect him so we can go outside. A hat! Yes, a wide-brim hat and a cloak!"
"Well, here is felt for a hat. What color?" asked Jellia. She and Scraps both faced Vladimir.
"Uh, blue?"
"Blue it is. Here Scraps," said Jellia. "I'll find some blue thread."
"Red for me," said Scraps. She took the blue felt and with her metal fingers cut a length of it with a perfect half-oval cut out of one end and perfect oval hole cut in the middle. Then she formed the cap, used her fingers like needles to pull the thread back and forth through the felt, sewing it shut. Next, in the same way she stitched the cap to the oval and produce a wide-brimmed hat with a flap that would droop down behind Vladimir's neck and over his ears. She stitched netting across the front brim and set the project aside.
"Put it on, Vladie!" Scraps started on a red hat for herself, a duplicate of the blue one. Finally she put it on and bounced over to a rack of silk flowers. She tucked a huge pink and white posy in her hat, then looked back at Vladimir.
Vladimir was okay with the big hat but cringed at the thought of a big flower in its brim.
Scraps understood and turned her attention towards other decorations.
"Ah!" she finally exclaimed. "How about this?" She dance across the room to Vladimir with a large peacock feather and tucked it into his hat. "We can check it out in the mirrors on the way back."
Jellia came up behind Vladimir and held up a skein of white cloth. "This color or blue?"
"Let's go with that," decided Scraps. "We will try it out and, if he likes it, I'll add blue trim later.
Scraps took the cloth and, without even measuring Vladimir for size, cut a perfectly squared end off of it. She stitched on wrist cuffs and flipped the material around to gather the other end and run a cord through it. Finished in minutes, she had sewn a cloak that would wrap around Vladimir to shield him when he pulled his arms together. She motioned for Vladimir to come try it on.
He pulled on the cloak and Scraps pulled the drawstring which caused the wide collar to stand up. Then she snapped the cuffs around Vladimir's wrists.
"Okay, walk around, Vladie."
Vladimir did walk and, after feeling the cape begin to flap, he ran. The cape glided along behind him.
"Good! Let's show Ozma and Glinda." Scraps pulled off her specialized fingers and put them back in her draw-string bag.
The three returned to the ballroom where Scraps and Vladimir preened in front of the mirrors and posed for Ozma and Glinda, much to their delight.
Having royal approval, Scraps decided it was time to hurry back. She crashed into one of the mirror and sat back on the floor, dazed.
"You can't go back through the same mirror you arrived through," Jellia reminded her.
So, Scraps and Vladimir checked the other mirrors to find one with a reflection that hinted of the interior of a barn and pushed through it. Soon, they were through the tunnel and out of the barn, and running enthusiastically through the fields and the woods.
Eddie visited with Dean and Sam at the bunker and finally headed back to the barn and took the tunnel back to Indiana. Coming out of the tunnel, he saw Scraps standing alone in the barn and trying unsuccessfully to play innocent. She turned to the right and to the left with her arms behind her back.
"Where's Vladimir?" Eddie asked.
"Guess," suggested Scraps.
"Hiya, Eddie!" called out Vladimir.
Eddie looked up towards Vladimir's voice to see the boy sitting upside down on underside of one of the barn's rafters. Scraps giggled at Eddie's shocked look.
"I'm coming down," called Vladimir and he flipped over to glide over to the wall, scooted across it a few feet and glided again to the ground.
"I'll catch you," called Scraps and she held out her arms. Vladimir crashed into her and they both fell laughing into a heap of cloth and boy.
"My papa could do that," explained Vladimir. "Here's something else he could do. I can't mesmerized Scraps. You'll have to let me do it to you for it to work." He climbed onto the wall.
"Okay," Eddie let his guard down and looked into Vladimir's eyes.
The boy disappeared and seconds later appeared at another location on the wall, then beside Scraps, and finally disappeared altogether. Eddie felt a tap on his should and turned around to see Vladimir there behind him.
"Papa explained it. Now I can do it," Vladimir said. "I tell you to forget the next few seconds and then I move. You see me at the new location and I tell you to forget again and I move again. Papa did this all the time and I could never tell where he would move to."
Eddie had to admit that this skill was incredible and that he was amazed that Vladimir perfected it in such a short time.
"My only concern," said Eddie, "is my fear of being hypnotized into hurting somebody like happened at the sanitarium. That vampire told me to kill everyone. And I could have killed Captain Fyter right then if Glinda hadn't intervened."
"Easy!" said Vladimir. "I learned how to keep Papa from mesmerizing me, so I'll tell you. We can't reach your mind if it's already occupied with something else. Just count to yourself when you see my eyes looking at you. It's just that easy."
So, Scraps and Vladimir spent the last couple of hours in his room drawing pictures on tablets of paper, waiting for Ozma to call her home to the Emerald City.
Afterwards, Vladimir made his way to the living room, teddy bear under his arm. "She's gone. They popped her back with the belt."
"So, would you like to see her again?"
"Sure!" said Vladimir. "She is lots of fun. Besides, she might want to trade her buttons back." He sat the teddy bear on the table. Scraps' button eyes were stitched snugly on its face.
"Uh, doesn't Scraps need those buttons to see with?" Eddie asked.
"Nope. She doesn't used the buttons to see, she sees in all directions without them. They're just there because people get weird looking at a face with no eyes. Her mouth doesn't move either, it just opens to let the sound out from the speaker inside. She had to learn to turn towards people to let them know she is paying attention to them."
"That's good she doesn't use the buttons to see," said Eddie. "Otherwise, she'd be looking at us right now through the bear's eyes."
Vladimir considered that for a moment. "Hmmm. Well, just in case she can, when I talk to him I'm calling him Scrappy."