by Scott Hale
Her favorite T-shirt from her first concert. The blanket from her bed. Her panties and bras. And Scram, her stuffed bat. He was sitting on the table they sometimes ate at surrounded by more stuff from her room. Jewelry and books. Notes to boys, and notes from them.
Gemma, panicking, ran to the opposite end of the deck and found, propped up against it, her mattress and box spring. They had been stabbed, ripped open, and filled with shoes, posters, and yearbooks.
Everything. It was everything. Her whole room, out here, in the dark, desecrated and destroyed. She started crying. She couldn’t help it. Her jaw was quivering so bad it hurt. Why would they do this? Her face was hot, and her mouth tasted bad. Why would they kick her out like—
Gemma swallowed a glob of snot and remembered back to the windows. Each one of them had been shut tight and covered up or reinforced by furniture. And then this right here? Mom and Dad were trying to keep someone out. Her. Gemma. This wasn’t some mean-spirited act of madness. This was a warning. Probably the only one the Dread Clock would let them send out. Turn away, turn back. Don’t come home, baby. Save yourself, honey. You’re safe by yourself. Not here with us.
Gemma considered their warning, and then ignored it, anyway. She shook the shit out of the back door, but it was locked and braced by the couch, as well as the coffee table stacked on it.
“There has to be a way in,” she mumbled, walking backward, away from the house. She surveyed it as though it were her first time seeing it. “I could call the cops, but what if they see something they shouldn’t?”
The kitchen window over the sink. The idea forced itself into her head and stuck in it like a shard of glass. The kitchen window was too small and too inconveniently placed to put anything in front of it, and it couldn’t be locked.
Gemma went wide around the deck, to the opposite side of the house. She grabbed the box spring in passing and hauled it with both hands through the grass until she was under the kitchen window. Laying it down, she carefully stood on top of it and reached upward. Her hands fumbled on the sill until they found purchase at its corners, where, yes, the window was still slightly cracked open. It would be a tight fit, but like her dad always said, she was just skin and bones, anyway.
She let go and took out her phone. She dialed 911 but didn’t make the call. Instead, she left it on the screen, ready to use at any moment. If the Dread Clock was as Connor Prendergast said it was, she wasn’t sure what a few police officers could do. But it was better than nothing.
Gemma reached upward again and took the corners of the sill in her hands. She gave a bounce off the box spring and pushed against the bottom of the glass, sending it high enough for her to fit under. She then jumped again and grabbed the window frame.
“I have to help them,” she said, dragging herself across the sill. “No matter what.”
Gemma went headfirst into the house and then dropped, her arms and legs like a pretzel, into the sink below the window. Her hip caught on the faucet. A grimy fork pricked her calf. She untangled herself and fell gracelessly from the counter to the floor.
Still too dark to see, she took out her phone and, again, turned on the camera light. Stunned by what she felt and saw, she wondered: Is this my house? Is this the right one?
There was something wrong, something missing. The table was there, the refrigerator, too. Even Dad’s dirty shoes from when he used to work the construction sites, right by the laundry room door. And Mom’s novel she had been reading, by the microwave. Some stupid vampire novel that it seemed all moms were required to read nowadays. It was all here, and yet it wasn’t. Everything felt so fake, so empty. Lightless and lifeless, like the house had looked on her way in from the road. It was as though something had taken a picture of the kitchen and tried to recreate it to pass it off as something it wasn’t, or had never been.
Gemma took a deep breath and proceeded forward. Mom and Dad couldn’t be far. She had heard footsteps upstairs, so either one or both of them were up there. The only problem was that, if she wanted to get up there, she’d have to go past the living room, which meant going past the Dread Clock.
She double-checked the time. 2:00 AM. Two hours out from the Black Hour, twenty-two hours until it struck again. Bleeding chaos or not, the clock couldn’t do much to her if it wasn’t midnight. That’s what the website said. That’s what it had to be. In the ways of weaknesses, it was the only one she had to use against it.
Shining the camera light on the hardwood floor, she left the kitchen and crept down the hall. The ceiling moaned. A loud thump. A burst of footsteps. And then another pair of feet. Heavier. Giving chase. What the hell was going on?
Gemma continued down the hall and came to a stop. On the floor, there was a smudge. A kind of red line. She cocked her head and pressed her phone towards it. Painted on the center of the floor, there was a red line that started here in the hall and ran further ahead into the darkness.
Heart fluttering, she dug her shoe into the line. No matter how hard she tried to scuff it with her toe or grind it with her heel, the red line wouldn’t be broken. How long had it been here? Had it always been here? She dropped to one knee and clawed it with her nails. How did it know? How did it know? She clawed and clawed until her fingers were bloody and raw. How did it know? Did it always know? How did it? How? Gemma put her face to the red line and started to gnaw on the ground. How long? How long?
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Gethin Yates didn’t agree with Camilla’s stomach. While she sat on the toilet, a hot rag over her face, Trent was running around outside the bathroom, trying to escape the Dread Clock’s Keeper. What did he do? She groaned and strained her bowels. Stupid Trent. Probably saw something he wasn’t supposed to see and made a big deal about it. If her husband was good at anything, it was at ruining a good thing.
Camilla sighed and took the wet rag off her face. I feel sick, she thought. The bathroom became a blotchy blur that hurt to look at. This must be what it feels like to be purified. To have all the sin sucked out of you. I don’t know how all those priests and nuns do it.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Trent pulled on the rope. The attic ladder shot down from the ceiling. The end cracked his jaw. He stumbled and bounded up the ladder. The steps creaked and sagged, but held his weight. He threw himself and the LED lantern he was still holding into the attic.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
The Dread Clock’s Keeper wasn’t far behind. As he grabbed the ladder and pulled it up, two pincers clamped onto the bottom steps and tore it free of the ceiling completely.
The yellow rain slicker tangled itself around Trent, as though to ensnare him. He took the LED lantern and hurled it towards the back of the attic. Long shadows exploded around the boxes there, as though the lantern were a grenade of light. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore. Up here was the last place he wanted to be. But if he kept it distracted long enough, maybe Camilla would come to her senses and run while she still had the chance to.
A long, narrow, segmented tail stretched into the attic opening. At the end of the tail, a two-foot barb covered in bristly hairs secreted a curdling substance.
Trent scooted backward on all fours, like a crab, and turned away. He had only seen the Dread Clock’s Keeper once and that had been enough. The sight of it had been so terrifying, it almost blinded him. It was after they had shared a meal of Gethin that the creature emerged. Camilla had broken down in tears and showered it in prayers. But it was to him, Trent, the Keeper turned its attention. Because for a moment, he had doubted the clock and chose Gemma’s welfare over its wishes.
Vibrations rocked the attic as the Keeper hurled itself through the ceiling and onto the rickety beams. Trent cried out, tensed the muscles in his neck until they tented. The creature’s gaunt, rubbery shadow was cast onto the wall in front of him from the LED lantern he’d lobbed.
“Please,” Trent begged. He curled over, his back still to the Keeper, and gripped the floor. “Please. I’m sorry.”
T
he Dread Clock’s Keeper slithered forward. He remembered it had feet, but because it hovered slightly, it did not step, but propelled itself forward. The only hint anyone could have of it hunting them was the sound of its toenails scraping across the ground. And that’s what he heard now. Those long toe nails, sharp as knives, digging at the floor as it came to kill him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
The Keeper’s tail stuffed itself between Trent’s quivering legs. He screamed, but didn’t dare move. The tail slithered across his calves. It dragged the stinger over his crotch, catching on the tip of his prick.
“Stop, stop. Please. I appreciate—”
The Keeper’s tail continued to work its way past his hips and stomach. The bristly hairs that covered its roach-colored segments broke free and brushed against Trent’s face. His skin went numb, and his senses became confused. Suddenly, he could taste what he smelled and feel what he tasted. An overload of information assaulted his system. He buckled onto the tail and held onto it, as the texture of the attic, the curdling poison from the stinger, and the chaotic discharge out of the Keeper overwhelmed him.
“We can do better,” Trent reasoned. Part of him wanted to look at the Keeper. The other part knew that, if he did, his sensory psychosis would tear him apart. “We’ll get more tributes.”
The Keeper laughed and closed its pincers over Trent’s arms. “I’ve seen almost all the suffering your clan has to offer.”
It yanked him upward, spun him around so he had to face it. Trent squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
“Don’t be hurt. The Heart knows what’s best for you and yours. Now, open your eyes.” The Keeper used its second set of hands to pry open Trent’s lids. “Your daughter is here. Downstairs. I want you to know what she’s up against.”
Trent’s eyes shot to the side, refusing to behold the beast. “It’s not midnight. How can you do this?”
The Dread Clock’s Keeper clicked out a chuckle. “It’s always midnight somewhere.” It wrapped its tail around Trent’s face and turned his head, as though he were a doll. “As an alcoholic, I’m sure you can appreciate the sentiment.”
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Gemma’s head shot up from the floor, her teeth sore from biting the red line, as she heard something barreling down the stairs. A jagged, black mass wheeled around the banister, two humans in tow.
She directed her cell phone light down the hall. “Mom? Dad?” Disgusted with what she had been doing, she wiped her mouth and jumped to her feet and called again. “Mom? Dad?”
The black mass stopped in the hall, at the front door, right before the living room. Just out of her light’s reach, she stepped forward, the maddening malaise in the house infecting her with a deadly strain of stupid courage.
“Oh my god,” Gemma whispered as her light lit up the darkened horror.
The Dread Clock’s Keeper was seven feet tall. Its body was an oily, runoff-colored carapace that warped around the creature’s limbs like leather. Its arms were serrated and hard, like the surface of some alien planet, and fitted with massive pincers. A second set of arms, smaller but no less feeble, protruded from its sides—the fingers upon them fused and deformed. Its legs, riddled with scabby gears, dangled limply from its emaciated waist. Long toenails, sharp as talons, dragged on the floor, much like how a prisoner’s might after the hangman released the lever.
But perhaps what frightened Gemma the most were the features she refused to focus on. The tail, emerging like an elongated spine from the creature’s back, and the stinger that crowned it, that pulsating murder organ. And the face, the Keeper’s horrible face. A dusty, pitted chunk of chiseled meat that had more in common with a wasps’ nest than a head. The creature had no eyes, no nose or ears; just one large mouth, hollowed-out, with no tongue, and toothless, as though it took more pleasure in engulfing its prey than in the act of eating itself.
The two humans in the Keeper’s pincers stirred. Gemma, stunned by the creature, quickly snapped out of that hellish awe and recognized they were her mom and dad.
Gemma, bawling uncontrollably, said, “Let them g-go god d-damn it!”
Mom craned her neck. In a low drawl, she said, “Gemma? Oh, Gemma. What are you doing here?”
The Keeper shook her mother to shut her up.
“Didn’t you see outside?”
I did, Gemma thought and wanted to say. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say anything. Her body wasn’t hers anymore. It belonged to fear.
“It’s not time.” Camilla coughed out the curdled liquid the creature’s stinger was secreting. “Our Black Hours aren’t over yet.”
“M-mom!” Gemma cried.
The Keeper bolted forward, through the hall and into the living room. Gemma hesitated and then scrambled after it. She rounded the corner, entered the living room, and gasped.
The Dread Clock stood unlocked, the truth of the creation laid bare. The horns that jutted from the pediment had curled downward and were drilled into the living room floor. The clock face and moon dial had merged into one metal sheet, where time was depicted not by numbers, but by sinister celestial bodies, instead. The glass case was engorged, both wide and tall enough for a creature like the Keeper to pass through. And at the back of the case, beyond the pendulum, which hung like a flaccid uvula from the roof of the opening, was a swirling mire of light and marbled imagery.
The Keeper laughed, as though it already knew what was going to happen next. With her mom and dad in its grasp, and its tail swinging wildly to hold Gemma at bay, the creature went down on all fours and sprang forward like a panther at the Dread Clock. The engorged case widened to accommodate its girth and sucked the Keeper and its prey down that wet corridor, until they disappeared into the portal plastered at the back.
Gemma took a deep breath, because she had no time to take anything else, and did the same. As the case’s swelling went down, she went to her hands and knees and scurried into the Dread Clock. The corridor of fluid and wet, gasping wood closed in around. She hurled herself forward.
“No, no, no!”
The portal ahead was closing. If she didn’t reach it, then the Dread Clock was going to crush her alive. It was reconfiguring itself. The walls were tightening up, the floor of the case shortening. Space that had been there before disappeared, as though strands of reality were being snipped away right in front of her.
A great, splintery pressure bore down on her back. She could feel gears against her bones, trying desperately to find a groove to work off. Breathing became impossible, as though there was no more oxygen left to breathe. So close to the portal, just out of arm’s reach, and she couldn’t have been further away.
Gemma threw herself forward, tearing a muscle in her arm. She winced, gasped. She reached out to the portal. The Dread Clock’s innards squeezed against her, locking her arm into place, while ramming a piece of wood against her neck.
No, she thought. So close. She wiggled her fingers, which were only an inch away from the portal. The Dread Clock continued to reduce in size. Her legs bent and bunched up. A corset of wood and clockwork braced her belly. She closed her eyes, too constricted to cry and thought: I’m going to die.
And then something cold grasped her hand. Her eyes snapped open. Around the tips of her finger, a dirty puddle with a kaleidoscope of experiences rippling across its surface. The portal had reached out to her. It could have let her die, but it reached out to her. Was this pity? Or was her family’s suffering only a mere pittance? A bitter disappointment only the taste of a thirteen-year-old girl could wash down? Now was too late to reconsider what she—
Gemma stood in a field that could have been any field, under a blue sky that could have been any blue sky. The sun was there, and clouds, too. She could hear birds calling to one another and the hurried rustling of animals moving through the grass. But inside the hot breeze, which wreaked havoc everywhere it went, another sound was contained. One which she knew and yet couldn’t place. It was as though the sound had been
trapped there or had become a part of it. It was a kind of shoveling and picking, in between low grunts and shallow breaths.
Gemma turned in place. As she did, the field rose and fell, rose and fell, until it tapered away into something maintained and organized. There were rows of crops as far as Gemma could see, and tending them were people. Africans. Slaves. Old and young, men and women, and sometimes even children. They were scattered across the field and dressed in clothes that didn’t fit them. Several glanced over at Gemma, but their darkened eyes didn’t see her. For their minds were elsewhere, in better places.
More sounds sent Gemma spinning, until she settled on a sight gargantuan and white. A three-storied plantation, not far off, where a porch full of white people watched their workers from behind tall hats and sweating cups. But it was to the second-floor balcony to which Gemma’s eyes were drawn. Because, standing there, under a sign that read “Carpenter,” out in the open, to gaze upon the field and the miseries it had sown, was the Dread Clock.
Gemma darted across the fields. Slaves stepped out of her path, but dare not address her in passing. A man rode in on a horse from her periphery. With a raised whip, he lashed a woman and a child until they fell to the ground.
“Stop it,” Gemma shouted, but the man on the horse paid her no mind. He whipped them until they turned to pink dust, until their color was lost in the soil’s.
She kept running, because she believed that what was happening here wasn’t really real. While no one else appeared as though they could see her, two people, a man and a woman, on the porch of the plantation clearly did. They stood from their rocking chairs and stepped out of the shade. She recognized them immediately.
“Mom! Dad!” Gemma waved her arms. Clouds of dust swirled around her. “Mom! Dad!”
Her parents had a look of caution to them. Didn’t they recognize her?
Panting, the southern heat having scorched her lungs, Gemma dropped to her knees beside an African man digging in the dirt. He glanced at her and then nodded at the hole he’d made. Rubbing her eyes, Gemma leaned over and saw inside it a black tree. The African man smiled and quickly covered the tree, as it needed more time to grow.
