The Ouroboros Lock

by Mark William Chase

  Scarcely able to believe what I had done, I shoved the wrapped hand into my bag and hurried off, leaving the body where it lay in the drizzling rain and sodden mud. No one would care—he was just a thief. A dead, wretched thief and nothing more!

  I returned home just as the first rays of dawn crept over the hills to the east, painting the scowling clouds in bloody hues. Exhausted, I slept the day away, rising at dusk with the foul taste of what I had done lingering like some waking nightmare. I couldn’t eat, but I forced down a full bottle of brandy in a feeble attempt to silence the memory of what I had done. It didn’t work, and I sat staring idly at the blood-soaked bundle crumbled on my table. After some hours had passed, I summoned enough courage to unwrap the package, revealing that livid black thing bound within. Taking both it and the instructions Mortimer had translated from the infernal book, I entered the workshop in the back of my house, which I had prepared for this ghastly ritual.

  The room was clear of furnishings; black curtains covered the windows. Only the small wood stove remained, being necessary to bake the hand and extract the fats that would be used to make the candle tallow. I began by putting the dismembered hand in a clay pot and poured over it a mixture of saltwater, sesame oil, nightshade, and mandrake, measured precisely as specified by the spell. This done, I placed a lid over the pot and set it on the stove, which was only hot enough to smolder to dry out the hand. I had already traced the outline of a circle in the center of the room, inscribed with words of power written in the mystical alphabet of Honorius, just as Mortimer had prescribed. Evenly spaced around the circle were six black candles, which combined with the red glow of the stove provided the room’s only illumination. On the east side of the room stood a mirror I had painted black, held in a triangular frame and engraved with the same indecipherable letters. I tried in vain to clear my mind of all perturbing thoughts, then drew a deep breath and knelt in the circle, facing the mirror.

  “O’ She Who Cannot Be Turned, Inexorable One to whom all must bend, hear me! I conjure and invoke thee in the name of thy father, Erebus, and she who bore thee, Our Lady of Shadows and Queen of the Night! I entreat thee, Sister of Fate, invest within this Glorious Hand all powers ascribed to its nature and bestow thy blessing that its virtue may unlock the prize I seek. Grant me what is rightly mine and let fall your foulest curse upon all who would stand against me!”

  A palpable darkness enveloped me. I shook in terror, cold chills and hot nausea churning through me. Somehow, I managed to keep my wits. Whether I saw or dreamt it I cannot know, but in the depths of the black mirror the face of a woman emerged, wizened and regal, her gray hair and tattered gown blowing in a wind that was not felt. In her right hand she bore a cruel set of shears, twisted like the blades of a scythe. When she spoke, her voice was as thunder, resonating through every fiber of my being.

  “I am She Who Cannot Be Turned, the Inexorable One to whom all must bend. Neither god nor mortal may meddle with the Weave, lest he pay the price!”

  My body shook. I felt nothing—nothing but the ice-cold chill of primordial fear. Price? Mortimer had said nothing of a price. “I will pay this price,” I croaked, my voice hoarse and quavering. “Tell me, what must I do?”

  The lady began to fade from the mirror, but her portentous voice proclaimed an irrevocable decree. “The price is paid and we shall spin. The Hand is the Key, the Lock is the Door. As it was, so shall it be, and so shall it be again. It is done!”

  The last word echoed in the void like the peal of an enormous bronze bell. My eyes shot open and I found myself in the circle, kneeling before the black mirror, which showed no hint of what had transpired. Had it been a dream? Had I only imagined her? But something had transpired—a miracle of the most wondrous and terrible order! The cooking should have taken a day, yet when I opened the lid of the pot my eyes were met by the sight of a perfectly mummified hand. The salt and herbs had cooked into the withered flesh, and a layer of fatty oil had congealed around the inside of the pot. I could not have hoped for a better outcome.

  Once I had removed the hand, I melted a block of wax over the fatty residue, then mixed the amalgamation to make five small candles. When this was done, I secured each candle on a finger and covered it with another layer of hot wax to act as glue.

  Dawn rose, but the passage of time had lost all meaning for me. Though sleep was now a hopeless memory, I returned to bed, where I tossed restlessly through the morning and late afternoon. Then, at last, the welcome dark of night descended.

  A rolling beckon of thunder stirred me from my dozing. I rose to wash and fetch a bit of supper from the scraps of cheese, bread, and ham growing stale in my kitchen. The storm was as dire as the night before, but for as long as I waited it never abated. Dismal though the weather was, I could delay my venture no longer. In my soul I felt some inexplicable force propelling me toward a great impending goal. This was the night I had been waiting for. This was the night I would at last reclaim what was rightfully mine.

  My decision made, I dressed in a fresh set of pitch-black clothes, put the Hand of Glory in my pouch, and slipped the dead thief’s pistol through my belt. It was nine o’clock when I left on my two-hour walk to Voger’s manor through the raw and wretched rain. I kept off the road, but my caution proved to be unwarranted, for not once did I come upon another traveler. The daunting trek up Tappington Hill was made only slightly less miserable by a brief lull in the storm, but the downpour resumed as I crept through the ivy-choked gates of the baron’s estate. Light still shone from the mansion’s windows, but it mattered little—the hand would deal with any wakeful dwellers. Moving as silently as I could, I approached a door near the western corner of the mansion. There I collected my wits and drew the marvelous relic from my travel pack.

  My skin grew cold and clammy as I held the waxy hand, but I had come too far to shrink away in fear. I carefully lit each finger in turn, chanting the requisite spell.

  “Now open lock to the dead man’s knock—fly bolt, and bar, and band. Nor move nor swerve, joint, muscle, or nerve, at the spell of the dead man’s hand. Sleep all who sleep! Sleep all who wake! And dream as the dead for the dead man’s sake!”

  To my astonishment and delight, an audible click marked the release of the complicated mechanical lock that secured the door—a lock of my father’s very own design. I turned the knob and the door swung open without creak or groan. Cautiously, I entered the house and made my way down the corridor, then through another door into what appeared to be a parlor. The room was mostly dark, although one wall sconce burned dimly, its gas turned down nearly all the way. I was certain the Ouroboros Lock was somewhere in this house, but where? In his notes, Mortimer had given the incantation to divine even that perplexing answer.

  I held the hand before me and issued the supreme invocation. “Let those who rest more deeply sleep, let those awake their vigils keep. O’ Hand of Glory shed thy light; direct me to my spoils tonight!”

  The candles flickered, swaying this way and that, and though I felt no wind, the five tiny flames settled in one direction. I turned and followed the course the Hand of Glory had determined, passing down a short hall and into a lavishly furnished art gallery. As soon as I entered, I heard a ticking and a clicking, at first quiet and slow, but building at an ever-increasing rate. The candle flames pointed in the direction of the noise, and I followed it to the far wall where, upon a small, marble-topped table, sat the Ouroboros Lock!

  The device was by now a blur of motion, spinning faster and faster as I drew closer. How the Lock had activated was a mystery, but it was a mystery I could leave for another time. I knew only that I had to take the Lock and make my escape before the candles on the Hand burned out. I clutched the Hand of Glory tight and reached out to take the Ouroboros Lock with my free hand. As I did, the mechanical clicking and clattering of gears reached a crescendo, and the spinning disk of gears shone with brilliant, blinding white light.

  In a flash, I was wrenched in some impossible direc
tion—neither left nor right, nor backward, forward, up, or down—but at an angle tangent to all of these. A rush of vertigo swept over me and felt myself falling through an infinite nothing at some impossible speed, only to come to a sudden, lurching halt a split second later. The blinding light faded. I found myself standing woozy and queasy in the gallery room exactly where I had been. The lock had stopped glowing and was quickly winding down. The Hand of Glory’s candles had winked out, with the pinky almost completely burned away. But that was the least of my worries, for I was no longer alone!

  I heard a slight shuffle, like feet moving quietly on the floor, followed by the click of a pistol’s hammer drawing back. I froze. No one should be awake! Was it that fiend, Mortimer, here to take the Lock for his own dark purposes? Was it Mister Macey, the shadowy agent of Lord Voger? Could it be Lord Voger himself?

  Having no time to wonder, I darted for the Ouroboros Lock. My ears split with the crack of a gun, the bullet cutting through the air less than an inch from my head, missing only because my sudden motion to grab the device. Fearing for my life, I scampered away, leaving behind the Ouroboros Lock. Running with abandon, I dashed into the hall and charged through the parlor as three more shots resounded, then threw myself out the back door in a desperate bid to escape. On my feet again, I crossed the yard and clambered over the fence, falling gracelessly to the other side and dropping the Hand of Glory in the midst of my panic. I fired my own pistol, but the careless shot missed my pursuer by a wide margin. Lightning struck across the weeping sky and my pursuer fired in return. My foot slipped on the muddy embankment and I slid down the hill. Another gunshot issued in the dark—the sixth and last attempt of my assailant to dispatch me.

  “Thief!” I heard him scream in the distance. “Fates curse you, you wretched thief!”

  His revolver was empty and I had managed to outrun him, but my reprieve was short-lived, for I spotted a second man taking up the chase. I leaped over a rock and splashed through a puddle, then turned to look back through the pounding deluge.

  With one shot remaining, I hastily fired. My foot must have hit a rock or root, for no sooner had I fired than I stumbled to the ground. Helpless to break my fall, I crashed headfirst on a jutting stone. Sharp pain stabbed through my skull, sending tendrils of blinding fire across my face.

  I blacked out, but came to just as my attacker threw himself upon me. I flailed my arms in a fruitless struggle, managing only to drive an elbow into his chest. The terrible black outline of my assailant towered over me, a rock heaved high above his head. The stone came down and I heard a crack like splitting wood. A dull numbness swam over me; the second crack seemed distant and hazy. All my senses fled away, and the merciful dark of oblivion wrapped its somnolent arms around me.

  I faded in and out of consciousness, for how long I cannot guess. In those few moments of lucid comprehension I felt only the throbbing pain, the black hood that blinded me, and the forcefulness of the man who dragged me, half-staggering, to an unknown destination. I could not speak, as my jaw was broken and my mouth gagged. Bound hand and foot, there was no chance of escape.

  We stopped a short while later and my captor forced me onto a stool, prodding me with my own pistol. I pulled at the restraints, but there was little I could do. My unseen adversary only tightened the bonds that held me. Another rope dropped down and looped around my neck, pulling tight against my throat and pressing the coiled knot against my vertebrae. My heart skipped a beat as sudden panic set in. I was being hanged!

  The stool disappeared from under me. I fell, not far, and the awful truth flashed before me as the noose snapped taut. The Greek poet, Hesiod, long ago warned in his Theogony how the Fates pursue both men and gods for their evils and how they never cease from their vengeful fury. This I now know to be true. For I recalled every detail as I flung about, choking for air. The chase, the struggle, the walk to the hangman’s tree: I had seen it all before, but from a different and much earlier perspective.

  I had watched the doomed thief dying as he hung, trapped, as I was now trapped, in a prison of time and fate—the unwitting captive of the Ouroboros Lock, condemned to die and die again in an unending circle of death without end.

  Part II

  The Eye of Lachesis

  or

  The Assassin’s Tale

  It was one dismal October night when my noble lord dispatched me to obtain another exotic jewel to adorn his treasured hoard. But it was not to Cairo, Bombay, or Baghdad that I steamed on this occasion, for the object of his desire was here in this very city of dreadful night. The Ouroboros Lock it was called—the supreme achievement of the master artisan Avery Guissant, renowned throughout the Empire for his unbreakable locks. Of course, as anyone in my perfidious profession knows, “unbreakable” is a relative term, for all locks can eventually be broken—if not by hook and pick, then by the coarse means of a sledgehammer. But the Ouroboros Lock was a different sort of lock: a puzzle bound in time as well as space, the mechanical and mathematical complexity of which defy all attempts at rational comprehension.

  Although I do not know when or where Lord Voger had first learned of the device, Avery Guissant was a well-known and well-respected locksmith, and my lord had purchased several exquisite locks from him in the past. Shortly before his mysterious disappearance, Avery had taken a substantial off-the-books loan from my lord, apparently because he had already put his business up as collateral for the various on-the-books loans he had secured. Two hundred pounds was no small amount of change, but only recently had my lord taken an interest in collecting on the debt. I suspect that fiend, Mortimer, had slipped some tantalizing hint to the baron, telling him of the fabulous powers invested within the Ouroboros Lock. How Mortimer knew of the device and its powers I could not say, but Lord Voger had a good rapport with the vile warlock, just as he did with many who dabbled in the Black Arts. As for myself, I made it a point never to trust anyone who could grin broader than my lord.

  In the end, Lord Voger sent me rather than his usual ruffians, for procuring the priceless device was not a task to trust to the brutish hands of a knuckle-cracking street tough. So here I was, in the cold October rain in the middle of the night, crouched low behind a mossy stone wall with orders to obtain the Ouroboros Lock at any cost. The drizzling, moonless night was nearly pitch black, but I had cased the premises over the past few nights already. The house that Corbin Guissant had inherited from his father was a modest, late 18th century Georgian-style cottage, with a sizable yard surrounded by a short stone wall that was more decorative than functional. The neglected condition of the gate and garden had come as a pleasant surprise, and this night Corbin had apparently left his kitchen window open. Given the choice, I would have preferred to pilfer my prize while Corbin was away, but the idle do-nothing seemed always to be home before dark and went to bed just after ten o’clock at night. But I was unconcerned. This job would be trivial compared to my fortuitous expedition to the buried city of Ubar or my daring escape from the lost tombs of Aksum.

  Or so I, in my arrogance, had presumed.

  It was just past the so-called “witching hour” when I quietly slipped through the open window, armed only with my wits and my prized Lefaucheux pinfire revolver. After a taking a moment to orient myself in the pot and plate-strewn kitchen, I eased quietly into the sitting room to begin my search for the prize. No sooner had I turned to enter than I froze at the sight of a lanky, black-clad figure lurking about the ember-filled fireplace. Was it Corbin? No... the man, dressed all in black and carrying a strange, waxy candle before him, crept through the room, crouched low to the floor, just as a thief would do. Perhaps he had been the one to unlock and open the window... but what were the chances that another thief would intrude on the very same night as my burglary? Then again, this night was a perfect night to commit just such a crime, and I would be a fool not to suspect that other parties might be as equally interested in the Lock as Lord Voger.

  Crouching just to the side of the door
, I reached for my Lefaucheux, then froze in sudden disbelief when a device on the mantel suddenly came to life. Somehow, the thief had activated the Lock and its intricate mechanisms clicking and clattering in a deafening symphony of ticking gears, whirring spindles, and ratcheting wheels. A blinding flash of brilliant white light enveloped the entire room and I spun away, throwing up my hands to cover my eyes. The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and when I looked back the lanky thief was gone. Instead, in the shadowy darkness, I saw another man, distinctly larger than the first thief but also dressed in black and holding a similar candle in his left hand. I had no idea where the first thief had gone, but I could not let the interlopers get away with the Lock! The man spun around, his right hand dropping to his side as though to draw a gun.

  All my skill and years of training culminated in a single instinctive response as I snapped my own gun up and fired. The house echoed with an ear-splitting crack and the bullet punched through the man’s right temple, killing him instantly.

  The gun and candle thumped to the floor as he fell, and I quickly put my gun away. I still had a job to do, and I had to act quickly. The last thing I wanted was to be here when Corbin came rushing out from his bedroom to see what the matter was. I would have no choice but to kill him if he saw me, and while the death of one thief was easy enough to cover up, the murder of Avery Guissant’s son would draw far too much scrutiny from the constabulary for my taste. And why hadn’t the first thief returned?

  With no time to lose, I tore off my shirt and threw it over the dead man’s head, then wrapped it around tightly to keep any blood from staining the rug on the floor. The room was incredibly dim, and my eyes had still not recovered from the strange burst of light. Even so, I was able to find the candle the thief had dropped, nearly dropping it again when I saw that it was not a candle at all, but a withered human hand, covered in wax drippings and missing both the pinkie and ring finger. A Main-de-Gloire? There was only one person I knew who could craft an object of such potent sorcery: Mortimer. Had he sent the men to steal the Ouroboros Lock?