The House With a Clock in Its Walls

by John Bellairs

  Hadn't Mrs. Zimmermann said that she had seen old Isaac taking notes on the sky? There were dates here and entries after them. Lewis read a few entries, and his eyes opened wider. He leafed some more.

  A spatter of rain hit the window. Lewis jumped. Outside he could see thick masses of blue clouds piled up in the west. Through them ran a jagged red streak. It looked to Lewis like a hungry mouth. As he watched, the mouth opened and a ray of blood-red light shot into the room. It lit up the page he was holding. On the page were scrawled these words:

  Doomsday not come yet! I'll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a CLOCK that shall set all the world on fire upon an instant.

  Lewis felt very frightened. He gathered the papers together and started to get up. As he did so, he heard a noise. A very faint noise. Something was fluttering around down inside the organ case.

  Lewis stumbled backward, knocking over the bench. The papers slid out of his hand and scattered over the floor. What should he do? Run for his life or save the papers? He gritted his teeth and knelt down. As he gathered up the sheets, he said to himself over and over again, "Quia tu es Deus fortitudo mea... quia tu es Deus fortitudo mea."

  Now he had all the papers again. He was about to dash for the door when he saw something come floating up out of the darkness inside the organ. A moth. A moth with silver-gray wings. They shone like leaves in the moonlight.

  Lewis ran to the door. He rattled the knob but he couldn't get it open. Now he could feel the moth in his hair. Lewis went rigid. His face flushed. He was not scared any more. He was angry. Very angry.

  He swatted at the moth and crushed it. Lewis felt a horrible runny stickiness in his hair, and all the fear came rushing back. He wiped his hand frantically on his trouser leg. Now Lewis was out in the hall, running and shouting, "Uncle Jonathan! Mrs. Zimmermann! Come quick! Oh, please come quick, I've found something! Uncle Jonathan!"

  A little while later Jonathan, Lewis, and Mrs. Zimmermann were sitting around Mrs. Zimmermann's kitchen table drinking cocoa. The dusty papers lay in a heap on the table. Jonathan put down his mug and said, "No, Lewis. I tell you again. They're nothing to worry about. Old Isaac was crazy—crazy as a coot. This stuff has nothing to do with that ticking noise in the walls. Or if it does, it can't help us any. It can only frighten us."

  "I'd say that was why Isaac left those papers there, wouldn't you, Jonathan? To frighten us to death, I mean."

  This was Mrs. Zimmermann speaking. She was standing at the stove with her back to Lewis, and she was making a great show of stirring the cocoa.

  "Sure. I'd say that was it, Florence," said Jonathan, nodding. "One last trick for the road and that sort of thing."

  Lewis looked from one to the other. He knew they were covering up. But what could he say? One thing would lead to another, and before long he would have to tell about Halloween night. When you are hiding something, you get the feeling that every other secret is connected to your secret. Lewis couldn't challenge anyone for fear of being exposed himself.

  Late that same night, Lewis lay awake in his bed listening to Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann talking. They were in the study below and, as usual, their voices drifted up the hot-air register. And, as usual, he couldn't quite make out what they were saying. He got out of bed and crawled over to the wooden grating in the floor. A warm breath of heat softly beat at his face. He listened. Even now, he just couldn't hear well enough. There was only one thing to do. He had to use the secret passageway.

  Lewis put on his bathrobe and tiptoed down the back stairs. The kitchen was dark. Good. Slowly, carefully, he removed all the china from the shelves of the china cupboard. Then he tripped the hidden spring, and the cupboard swung outward. He walked softly in.

  This time Lewis remembered to bring a flashlight. Not that he needed it much. He didn't have far to go, and light shone through many chinks into the cobwebbed passage. Before long he was standing behind the bookcases that lined the wall of Jonathan's study. He peered through a crack in the boards, and there, beyond the books, were Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann. Mrs. Zimmermann had just conjured up a match out of thin air, and she was lighting a long twisted cigar with it. She blew smoke out of both corners of her mouth. "Well, now we know," she said.

  "Yes, now we know." Jonathan's voice came from his leather armchair, where he sat slumped. All that Lewis could see of him was one blue-sleeved arm and a set of hairy knuckles grasping the chair arm.

  "The question is," Jonathan went on, "can we do anything about it?"

  Mrs. Zimmermann began to pace. Cigar smoke trailed off behind her. She scraped the large purple stone of her ring along the whole length of a bookshelf. "Do?" she said. "Do? We fight them. What else?"

  Jonathan gave a hoarse laugh. It made Lewis feel very uncomfortable.

  "Easier said than done, Florence. They're both stronger than we are, you know. We only fiddle around with magic; they gave their lives to it. As for her, she may have quite literally given her life for it."

  "But why would they want to do what they're doing?" said Mrs. Zimmermann, folding her arms and puffing angrily at her cigar. "Why? This beautiful world. End it. Why?"

  Jonathan thought a minute. "Well, Florence, I can't really see into the workings of a mind like Isaac Izard's, but I'd say the answer was scientific curiosity. Think of all that's been written about the Last Day: graves opening, bodies rising up fresh and new. Some think there will be a whole new earth, much better than the present one. Wouldn't you like to see it? And another thing occurs to me. Isaac and Selenna Izard didn't enjoy this world very much. Why shouldn't they try for the next one?"

  Jonathan puffed on his hookah. There was silence for several minutes.

  "And the clock," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "I have to hand it to you. You were dead right. There is a real, literal clock in these walls. He calls it a 'device,' but it has to be a clock. He wasn't kind enough to tell us where it is, of course, though it seems to me that he tells practically everything else. He even gives hints about where he hid the key. Not that that matters now." She broke her cigar in two and threw it into the fireplace.

  "But there's one thing I'd like to know," she said, turning suddenly to Jonathan. "Why did he need a clock to bring about the End of the World?"

  Lewis gasped and put his hand over his mouth. Then it was going to be the end of the world, after all!

  "Because he lost the moment," Jonathan answered. "The moment he had been seeking all those years. It was quite a search that old Isaac made. That's why he has all those crazy notes about mackerel skies and Last-Judgment skies and clouds that look like chariots and trumpets and masks of doom. That was what he was after. A mask of doom. A sky that would be right for his incantations. Sky magic is old stuff, as you know. The Romans used to-"

  "Yes, yes!" cut in Mrs. Zimmermann impatiently. "I know all about sky and bird divination. Who's got the D.Mag.A. around here, anyhow? All right. So the right sky comes along for old Droopy Drawers. Fine. Dandy. So why doesn't he just wave his wand and turn us all into mullygrubs?"

  "Because by the time he had made sure it was the right kind of sky, the sky had changed. It doesn't take long for clouds to move and change their patterns, you know. Or maybe he lacked the heart to do it. It sounds silly, but I keep hoping that was what held him off."

  "Him? Lack the heart? Isaac Izard? He was a hard man, Jonathan. He'd have pulled out his mother's teeth one by one, if he had to have them for some devil magic."

  Jonathan sighed. "Maybe you're right. I don't know. The important thing is that he did miss his opportunity. That's why he had to build the clock. To bring the time back. The exact time when everything was right and in its place. That's what he means when he talks about 'a device to redeem the time.' Redeem, indeed! He wanted to destroy us all!"

  Mrs. Zimmermann was pacing again. "All right," she said. "All right. So he built the clock. Why didn't he just wind it up?"

  "He couldn't. Not all the way, at any rate. Didn't you read that passage?" Jonathan go
t up and went to the library table, where the papers were lying. He picked them up and leafed until he found the page he wanted.

  "Ah. Here it is: 'But when the device was completed, I found that I lacked the skill to wind it all the way up. I have tried, but I must conclude that one with greater power than I possess will be needed for the final adjustment. Curse the day she left me! Curse the day she went away! She might have done it!' "

  Jonathan looked up. "In that last sentence the word 'she' is underlined four times. 'She,' of course, is our friend across the street."

  Lewis closed his eyes. Mrs. O'Meagher really was Mrs. Izard then! He had guessed it, of course, but he hadn't been sure. Mrs. Izard! And he had let her out. He felt like the stupidest, most foolish person in the whole world.

  "Ah, yes," said Mrs. Zimmermann, smiling wryly. "Well, we shall see in the end who is stronger. But tell me one thing more, oh, sage, since it seems that you have been cast in the role of explicator and annotator of the testament of Isaac Izard."

  "Yes? What would you like to know, Florence?"

  "Well, he claims that the clock isn't wound all the way up. But it has been making a ticking sound for years now. A magic ticking that seems to be coming from behind every wall of this house. It's hard for me to believe that the clock is just whiling the time away until old Auntie Izard arrives with her key. What is the clock doing?"

  Jonathan shrugged. "Search me, Florence. Maybe it's trying to drag the house back into the past without the aid of that 'final adjustment.' Maybe he fixed it so the ticking sound would scare away anyone who might be foolish enough to come and live in this house. Isaac didn't want his clock found by accident and destroyed, after all. I don't know why the clock is ticking, Florence. But I do know this. When Mrs. Izard or whoever is over there puts that key in the slot of that clock and finishes the job that Isaac started, then—at that moment—Isaac Izard will return. You and I and Lewis will be ghosts or something worse, and he will be standing in the turret with power in his right hand. And the End of the World will come to pass."

  Lewis clamped both hands over his mouth. He fell to his knees, shuddering and sobbing. For a moment he was on the verge of shouting, "Here I am! Come and get me!" so they could come and take him away and put him in the Detention Home for life. But he didn't shout. He clamped his hands more tightly over his mouth and cried in muffled bursts that shook his whole body. He cried for a long time, and when he was through, he sat staring listlessly at the dark wall of the passageway.

  Mrs. Zimmermann and Jonathan left the room. The fire burned low, but still Lewis sat there. His mouth was full of the taste of ammonia, and his eyes burned. He took his handkerchief out of the pocket of his bathrobe and blew his nose. Where was the flashlight? Ah. Here it was. He clicked it on.

  Lewis got up slowly and started to pick his way toward the entrance. Even though he was walking upright, he felt as if he were slinking. Now he was running his hand over the splintery back of the china cupboard. He tripped the spring, and the cupboard swung silently outward. Lewis half expected to see Mrs. Zimmermann and Jonathan sitting there with their arms folded, waiting for him. But the kitchen was dark and empty.

  Lewis went up to his room. He felt as if he had stayed awake three nights in a row. Without even stopping to take off his bathrobe, he threw himself onto the rumpled bed. Darkness filled his brain, and he fell into a dead dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next day was Saturday, and Lewis woke up in a state of panic. He was like a pressure cooker with the lid clamped on tight and the steam hole clogged up with chewing gum. Thoughts kept bubbling and seething to the surface of his mind, but none of them seemed to make sense. What was he going to do? What could he do?

  Lewis sat up and looked around the room. Two long panes of sunlight lay on the splintered and paint-stained floor. Over by the fireplace stood a tall mirror with battlements on top that matched the ones on Lewis's bed. Before the mirror lay a beautiful hooked rug. Jonathan claimed that Mrs. Zimmermann's great-grandmother had made it. The pattern of the rug was "Autumn Leaves."

  Scallop-edged leaves, bright gold and deep blood-red, with some green ones thrown in for contrast. The rug seemed to float before the mirror, and the leaves swam in the pool of bright sunlight. It was an illusion, of course. This was no magic carpet. But Lewis liked to stand on it in the morning while he was dressing. It made him feel that he was free of the earth, if only for a little while.

  He stood on it now as he pulled on his pants and tucked in his shirt. The shimmer of leaves lifted him off the floor. Things seemed clearer now. He had to get hold of Tarby. Tarby would know what to do. It was true that he had been avoiding Lewis, but they weren't exactly enemies. And anyway, Tarby was in this thing as deep as he was. He had held the flashlight while Lewis drew the magic pentacle and chalked in the name, Selenna. That must be Mrs. Izard's first name, Lewis thought. She must have put it in my head. Then, behind those iron doors, she was never really dead...

  Lewis bit his lip to cut off this line of thought. He went downstairs, ate breakfast alone, and hurried out the door. Tarby, with his nine brothers and sisters, lived in a huge frame house halfway across town. Lewis had never been invited there and he did not even know the first names of Tarby's mother and father, let alone the names of any of the nine brothers and sisters. He knew that Mr. Corrigan—that was Tarby's last name—ran a hardware store. And that was about all Lewis knew.

  It was a bright, windy April day, and the sky was full of little white clouds that kept tearing apart and merging into each other. Birds were flying about and the lawns were showing that first livid wet green. When Lewis got to the Corrigan house he found a bunch of small children playing in the front yard, which was all chewed up and full of mud holes. One of the younger ones, who looked a lot like Tarby, was hanging by his knees from one of the limbs of a dead tree that had red taillight reflectors nailed all over it. Other kids were making mud castles, beating each other over the head with sand shovels, trying to ride broken tricycles, or just sitting around screaming at the top of their lungs. Lewis picked his way past the toy trucks and inner tubes that littered the front walk. He pushed the doorbell and waited.

  After a while a fat, tired-looking woman came to the door. She had a baby in her arms, and it was batting her on the shoulder with a bottle that it held by the nipple. "Yes?" She sounded crabby, and no wonder. "Uh... Mrs. Corrigan? I wonder if you could tell me where Tarby is."

  "Tarby? Gee, I wonder if he's in the house. I'll see." She threw back her head and bellowed, "Taaar-beeee!" No answer, though it would have been hard to hear one over the racket.

  "No, I guess not," she said. She smiled a tired, kind smile. "He's probably out playing ball with the other kids."

  Lewis thanked her and was about to turn away when she said, "Say! Aren't you that Barnavelt boy?" Lewis said that he was.

  She gave him a pleading look. "Please don't tell Tarby any more stories about ghosts and graveyards. He had nightmares for a week after last Halloween. It was nice of your uncle to invite him over for a cider-and-doughnut party, and let him stay the night and all, but those stories... well, you know how sensitive he is."

  Lewis managed to keep a straight face. "Mm... sure... okay, Mrs. Corrigan, I won't tell him any more ghost stories. See you."

  As he picked his way back down the walk, tripping on toys and dodging one or two mud balls that were thrown his way, Lewis had a hard time keeping from laughing right out loud. So that was Tarby's version of last Halloween night! Well, well. And where had Tarby spent the night? Shuddering under the back porch? Sleeping in a tree? And a whole week of nightmares! Of course, he hadn't been scared. It was just the moonlight. Lewis's inner laughter turned into a wry grin.

  Lewis stopped at a hitching block to tie his shoelace. Now what was he going to do? Well, there were only two regular baseball diamonds in New Zebedee. The one out behind the school, and the one at the athletic field. He decided to go to the one behind the school.r />
  When he got there, he found Tarby playing ball with a lot of other kids. He was pitching, and various boys were shouting, "Come on, Tar-babee! Strike him out!" and, "Give 'em the old knuckleball!" or, if they happened to be on the other side, "Yaah! Pitcher's got a rubber arm!"

  Tarby wound up with a windmill motion, balked several times—this was allowed, because it was softball, not baseball—and when he had the batter making nervous little half-swings, he fired the ball up to the plate. The batter swung so hard that he fell down.

  "Strrrike three! Yerrr—out!" yelled the boy who was the umpire.

  Lewis, standing on the sidelines, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Hey, Tarby! Can I talk to you?"

  "Not now, Fatty. I'm in the middle of a game."

  Tears filled Lewis's eyes. Tarby had never called him "fatty" before. At least he couldn't remember him doing it. Lewis choked back the tears and stood waiting patiently while Tarby mowed down the next batter with three blazing fastballs. That was the third out, so Tarby's team came in from the field. Carelessly, Tarby threw his glove on the ground and said, "Hi, Lewis. C'n I do f'ya?"

  "My Uncle Jonathan's in some awful trouble. We're all in awful trouble. You know that night when we went up to the cemetery?"

  To Lewis's complete surprise, Tarby grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward till their faces were about two inches apart.

  "Look. If they ever find out that you were up there that night, you tell them that you were there by yourself. If you don't, you'll have two broken arms and maybe a broken head."

  Lewis tried to shake himself free of Tarby's grip, but he couldn't. He felt blood rushing into his face as he shouted, "Tarby, this is worse than Halloween stuff! This is ghosts and witches and devils and... let go of me, you candle-head!"

  Tarby let go of Lewis. He stared at him with his mouth open. "Candle-head" was just a name someone had called someone in a comic book Lewis was reading. It didn't mean anything.