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Nine-year-old Christopher and his eleven-year-old sister Mandy were two residents of the Strange and Wonderful House. Mandy was bolder than her brother, and once talked him into sneaking with her into the Cellar without their Uncle Jack's knowledge.
There, when Mandy plucked a wine bottle from a shelf, Christopher tried to wrestle it from her to put it back, only to cause her to drop it. It shattered, (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Cellar) and the fumes of the liquid, actually distilled memory instead of wine, plunged Christopher in a hallucinatory daydream about being a bloodthirsty pirate. He was quickly pulled out of it by a mysterious man who explained that this very bottle had just been requested by the Master of the House from Montresor so that it could be served during upcoming negotiations between himself and the Goblin King. Distressed, the old man, who was none other than Montresor, the Keeper of the Cellar ordered them to create a new bottle by convincing a legendary pirate to give up some of his memories, and then artificially aging the bottle in Father Time's attic — threatening them with the giant rats who also lived with the cellar if they didn't comply. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Cellar, Montresor) To allow them to do such a thing, he let Chris drink from a bottle full of a wizard's memories, flooding his mind with knowledge of magic. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The First Step)