by Scott Hale
Addie looked back and forth, between Jen and Gemma. “What? What happened next?”
“I don’t know,” Gemma said, sounding somber. “I’m still working on that part.”
While Jen and Addie shared their own ideas and interpretations with Gemma, she casually looked at her phone. 11:45 PM. Quarter ‘til chaos.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Camilla loved what the Dread Clock had done with the living room. Gone were the couches and chairs, the hardwood floor and the gaudy carpet. All the antiques she had been accumulating had been broken down and fused together. The walls, which had been an unimpressive white, had been repainted, too. Now, a sour green coat covered each one, the paint smeared and dripping, as though the Dread Clock were giving off an intense heat, like the burning center of its self-made universe.
The windows and their view of the front yard were still there, but the Dread Clock had made alterations to the glass. When Camilla looked through them, she saw not the front yard, but another plane entirely, where land and sky wept, and the ocean was a belt of bubbling bacteria. There were people in this place beyond her home, but they were too far away, too near the distant buildings, to make contact with. Besides, they wouldn’t have heard her calling, anyway. They wore helmets and backpacks and bumbled about in dark, bulky suits covered in tubing. To Camilla, they looked like deep sea divers or wayward astronauts. Surveyors of unseen worlds and unknown hells who ended up here, marooned, at this Dead City.
She pulled back from the window and crossed the sticky floor. The Dread Clock had opened itself to her; its innards, those fleshy gears and the tendon-like pendulum, were on full display. They throbbed with time.
From behind, Trent said, “I had no idea this was all here.”
Camilla turned around. Her husband was standing in his yellow rain slicker, holding the LED lantern. There was a fat snake hanging out of his pocket. A bald child with a dead, conjoined twin attached to its face hugged Trent’s leg. It was crying because the skin on its face between it and its twin was like a tunnel. And squirming through that tunnel, out of the dead twin’s skull and into the face of its crying brother, were scores of hungry leeches.
“That slicker looks smart on you,” Camilla teased, nudging him.
The snake hissed and then went back to sleep.
“I just saw my father out back,” Trent said. “He was giving flowers to my mother.”
“That’s sweet. Honey, you should invite them in. We don’t really get a chance to see them enough.”
Trent waved off the offer. “Nah, let’s let them have their moment.”
Camilla cocked her head. What is it? The Dread Clock was speaking again. She leaned into it, her cheek to its heaving wood. Sweaty exhalations felt like heavenly exultations from this new god of hers. I hear you, she thought. And she did. The voice, which ground words together like gears.
She went down on her hands and knees. She pressed her head inside the pendulum case. “Babe?” she said to Trent.
He came up behind her. “What’s up?”
She stuck out her tongue. The swaying pendulum grazed against it. Every time that it did, it deposited a tangy seed of insanity into her mouth. Vague, violent visions reached into her mind and broke it open.
“Is it time?”
A playground surrounded by a wrought iron fence. A plastic slide covered in razor blades. Children shredded at the bottom. Parents rejoicing at the top.
“Hey, Camilla?” Trent nudged her. “Hey, what’s it saying?”
Reptiles in the street. Tender mercy in a hospital bed. Gemma waving goodbye, fanged and furious. Red Death marauding in spacious marshes. A field. A stranger. Heartbreak. Ecstasy masquerading as euphoria. Paul Smith’s party, Trent nowhere to be—
Trent grabbed Camilla and pulled her back. Her tongue left the cancerous surface of the pendulum. Instantly, the images drained out of her brain and came out as bloody snot down her nose.
“I had no idea.” Camilla stretched her jaw until it nearly unhinged. “Wow. Wow, Trent. You have to try it.”
Confused, Trent simply shrugged and said, “What? What did it show you?”
Camilla whistled, the brief experience having taken a large toll. She stood up, clamped her hands down on his shoulders, and said, “Everything. Everything. Anything and everything. If we looked in there long enough, we could right every wrong. You have to try it.”
Trent grinned like an idiot. The conjoined twins on his leg finally exploded, sending a bloody shower of baby body parts and spider legs all over the living room.
Peeling off the remains of the Black Hour conjuration, he asked, “What about the tribute?”
Camilla slapped her head. “Duh! I totally forgot.” She pulled her hair back to tie into a ponytail. But she pulled too hard, and a handful of hair, thick and oily, tore away from her scalp. “I’ll go get him. But, love, seriously. Taste the Dread Clock. With what it shows us—” she kissed his lips, ground her teeth against his, “—we’ll be together forever.”
“Hey, Camilla?” Trent called before she disappeared upstairs into Gemma’s room.
She stopped on the staircase. “Hmm?”
“Do you think anyone is going to miss Gethin?”
“No. Don’t be silly. Everyone is going to be so happy for us, they won’t even realize he’s gone.”
Camilla blew him a kiss.
Trent caught it, and it branded his hand.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
He crawled on all fours towards the Dread Clock and went shoulder-deep into the case. He turned around, so that he was on his back, looking up at the pendulum from below it. It reminded him of some of the church services he used to attend as a young boy. On special occasions, the priest would come out with what looked like a metal egg—a censer—and swing it back and forth while reciting prayers. He remembered how smoke would pour out of the egg from the incense inside and how tired and at peace he became from its warm aroma. For the longest time, he imagined that’s what it felt like to be in god’s presence.
And now as he lay headfirst inside the Dread Clock, the pendulum above him, quivering out mist, and the gears behind him, cranking out unrealities, he felt that same feeling again. That same kind of calming grace. And god damn did it feel good.
Trent opened his mouth and eyes as wide as he could to let the pendulum’s mist fill him. But the visions, or whatever Camilla had experienced, weren’t coming.
“What do you need me to do?” He tipped his head back to the tendons that ran sideways across the case. “Tell me. I’m ready. I want this so bad. You’ll have your tribute.”
For the first time since they had brought the Dread Clock into their house, it went quiet. The gears ground to a halt, the pendulum slowed to a stop.
“No.” Trent turned onto his belly, so that he was face-first with the viscous folds at back of the clock. “No, no, no. No, we’re getting Gethin. Please, don’t. Please—”
From the glistening folds, a large, burnt, scorpion-like pincer shot out and clamped down on Trent’s neck. He gasped. His eyes bulged from their encrusted sockets. The pincer forced his face into the floor of the case, making him taste the muscular growths that covered it.
“Gorge. Indulge,” a voice rumbled from inside the folds. It sounded like metal, and a cat wailing in unfathomable pain.
Trent strained his neck to have a better look at what was holding him down. There couldn’t have been but an inch or two between the folds and actual back of the clock. How could anything fit inside there?
“Gorge.” The pincer shoved him down harder, crushing his nose against the case. “Indulge. Get fat and fuck and feed me the girl.”
“Gemma? No, no!” Trent gripped the pincers. “Leave her out of this.”
“All of this—” the pincer squeezed harder, breaking the skin on his neck, “—has always been for her.”
“Trent?” Camilla’s voice. “Hey, love, what’s going on?”
The pincer let go of Trent and snapp
ed back inside the viscous folds. At once, the Dread Clock started up again. He craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the grotesque thing that lived inside the Dread Clock. But by the time his eyes had refocused, the folds had sealed shut and the creature that lived beyond them was gone.
“Did you see?” Camilla persisted, kicking his leg as he slid out of the Dread Clock’s pendulum case. “Did it show you?”
It can’t have Gemma. He pushed himself off the ground to his feet. All of this is for her. For us. Then he noticed the butcher knives, one in each of Camilla’s hands.
Camilla grinned. “Earth to Trent. Hello?”
“Ha, sorry,” he said, rubbing his neck where the pincer had started to bleed him. “Where’s Gethin?”
“Oh. Hmm. Yeah.” She held out one of the butcher’s knives, blade first. “Have to find him.”
“What?”
“There’s a hedge maze upstairs. He must have broken out of Gemma’s room.” She shrugged, flashed the knife. “Sh. Wait. Sh. Do you hear that?”
Trent strained his ears. A thick blanket of white noise had fallen over the house at midnight, but she was right. There was something else behind the drones. Pips of pain. Sharp peaks of whimpers warping into screams. Now that he knew what they were, had they always been there? In this Black Hour, had they become so accustomed to atrocity that they didn’t even recognize it as such anymore?
“That’s him. That’s definitely him. I know a rat when I hear a rat.” She pricked her finger with the knife. Sucking on its weeping tip, she said, “Ready to hunt?”
Trent glanced at the Dread Clock. It had started to rumble with a rhythmic beat, like that of a heart. Did this thing have a heart? Was the creature that lived inside it the source or the guardian of it? He hated this new doubt he felt towards the clock, but it had gotten inside him, and now he had a burning need to get inside it. To return to the womb of psychosis that had dreamed up and shitted out humanity.
“We can’t be too messy,” he said, coming out of his defiant daze. “For Gemma’s sake.”
Camilla nodded. She pricked her breast and flowers came out. “For Gemma’s sake.”
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
When it came to weathering the late hours, Jen and Addie had more in common with the elderly than their adolescent peers. By 1:00 AM, they were passed out on the basement couch, mouths wide open and warmly welcoming any wandering spiders. Thirty minutes earlier, they had put on a teen movie from the ‘80s that, more or less, acted as their lullaby. Short of having to pee, Jen and Addie wouldn’t be waking up until nine or ten. And even then, they wouldn’t be of use to anyone until eleven or twelve.
Gemma had ignored her phone all through the Black Hour, but now it had passed, and Jen and Addie were passed out. There was no way she was going to stay here, lay here, and let the Dread Clock have its way with her family. She couldn’t catch it in the act—she’d missed that show—but if she was quick enough—thirty minutes from here to home—she could catch it in the middle of the clean-up.
She had to be cautious. While Jen and Addie weren’t likely to wake, she couldn’t take any chances. She didn’t need them following after her, and she didn’t need them waking Jen’s parents and launching a full-scale manhunt, either.
Gemma, quiet as she could be, roamed the basement for blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. With enough materials to start her own plushy arc, she dropped them in a corner, built one of the “resting nests” she was known for, and filled it up until it looked like someone was inside.
Then, satisfied, she looked at Jen and Addie, the drool on their lips glinting in the television light, and wondered morbidly if she’d ever see them again.
There was something about being out at night in the wet dark, under the orange streetlights, that made Gemma feel like an adult. It was the smell of the pavement, and the cool wind that kept promising hints of scents she could chase and never find. It was the cars in the distance, filled with nobodies up to no good, and those emptier roadways, shaded and secluded, unseen and uncharted in brighter times. It was the impression of isolation and its promise of dangers. No Mom to rescue her. No Dad to protect her. Just her and the dark and the beasts that thrived in it, and the adult things she’d have to do to keep her childhood intact.
Gemma didn’t even realize she had left Jen’s neighborhood until she was half a mile down the road. From here, she didn’t have but a few miles of speed traps and sharp turns until she reached the intersection that would turn her homeward. If the police were out tonight, then that would be a problem. Janky as their town was, there was no way they were going to let some thirteen-year-old wander around in the dead of night. So she ran off the road for the fields beside it and prayed to god she didn’t end up in some ditch.
Not that any amount of sneaking would make a difference. The moon was on full-blast tonight, and ten minutes down the road, Gemma’s face was glowing. She had her phone out, and she was reading, once again, Connor Prendergast’s article on the Dread Clock.
“That has to be it,” she whispered. The uneven terrain twisted her ankles this way and that. “That has to be the clock. There’s no getting around it. This thing is real. Fuck. Yeah. Yes. This is it.”
Gemma didn’t truly see the Dread Clock for what it was, or for what this Connor Prendergast warned his readers it could represent. An otherworldly object that coveted, consumed, and converted evil into a form of reality? A brood parasite, like a cuckoo bird, that fed off Time and forced it for an hour out of its own nest? No, to Gemma, smart as she was, the Dread Clock and the Black Hour were nothing more than obstacles to be overcome.
Gemma stopped, ducked. A car backfired past her.
“The plan,” she said. “Get in, and then get them out. Concoct whatever bullshit story I have to so they’ll stay out of the house until this Connor guy shows up. Call Gethin. Maybe get him to pick it up, too.”
She rubbed the top of her hand raw. “I’ll say I’m sick. I’ll say we have bed bugs or lice. I could run away. Leave a trail for them to follow. Or maybe I can do something stupid. I’ll say I’ll kill myself, or tell the police what they’ve been doing if they don’t take me…” The self-inflicted cuts on the back of her leg start to itch. “Oh god, I hope I’m not wrong.” She glanced at the website. “No, I’m not. There’s no other…”
She spent the last stretch of the road home wallowing in self-doubt. Supernatural clock? Or just her parents finally falling apart? She didn’t know. She didn’t. If it was the Dread Clock, and she did get them away from it for good, would they go back to fighting every night? Even before the antique arrived, things hadn’t been normal.
“Grow up,” she said, chastising herself. June bugs crashed against her body and got stuck in the fabric of her shirt. “God, what do I do? What is it? Two days, and I’m losing my fucking mind.”
Gemma stopped. She was dripping sweat. Ahead, the intersection sat empty. The stoplights that guarded it went through their motions. It wasn’t too late to turn back. Or maybe it was. Maybe she lost that chance years ago, when Dad gave Mom a black eye, and Gemma didn’t do anything about it.
She punched the side of her head, inadvertently smashing a mosquito that had been drinking there. “I’m just looking for an excuse.”
She nodded, as though responding to herself. “Stupid freaking website just made it easy.”
She sighed, clenched her eyes shut. “What am I doing? Erg. God.” And then: “No, no. There’s something wrong. It wants me to doubt myself. No. No way. I know I’m right. I am, Scram. I am.”
Like most thirteen-year-olds who’ve come face-to-face with an object of pure evil, Gemma, in the end, didn’t know what to do. So, like the two paths that led to her cave, she chose the more dangerous one. She considered there would be pain and anguish, but death itself didn’t get much more than a few seconds of her time. Even in the presence of the Dread Clock, her immortality seemed secure.
She sprinted to the intersection and went west, where the choppy
horizon looked as though someone had taken scissors to it. The closer she came to home, the darker the road got. The streetlights were fewer here on this narrow ribbon. And the moon wasn’t any help anymore, either. It had lost its light to the storm clouds, which were so thick it was as though they meant to smother the sky.
As the land gave way to sand and sharp grass, a dark shape emerged in the distance. Framed by the ocean and the roiling firmament, Gemma’s house stood lightless and lifeless. She had never known her mom or dad to turn off all the lights in the house, so she picked up the pace and prayed to god—this time for guidance.
Her legs wobbled and buckled as she gave everything she had to get to the front door. She tried to peek in the windows, but the curtains were closed. Not having a key to get in, she checked the doormat and under the conch shells beside it. But there was nothing. No spare. She tried the door anyway, but when her hand touched the knob, she almost threw up.
Gemma hurried over to the garage door to punch the passcode into the pad next to it, to open it. But there was something wrong with it. It was sticky. She took out her cell phone, shone the camera light on the pad. Red fingerprints were smeared across the buttons.
She recited the code as she pounded it in. “241641.”
But the garage door wouldn’t give.
“241—”
She paused. Footsteps. Inside the house, on the second floor. Like someone was running.
“-641. 241641. 24164… Fuck!”
Gemma abandoned the garage and ran around the house to the back. She checked every window she passed, but she still had no luck seeing inside. If the curtains weren’t closed, then there were boxes or furniture pressed against the glass. What was going on? Were her parents trying to keep something from getting out? Or trying to keep someone from getting in?
She rounded the corner and wound up falling against the house. Gemma drew closer, teeth chattering. The back deck was covered in blankets, sheets, and wet clothes. They were dangling over the railing, hanging low and dripping from the overhead lattice. And they were hers. All of it.
“What is this?”
