The Deep Hours of the Night

by Jonathan Schlosser

  “But I didn’t kill her, did I?” Sammy asked Buckner. This time Buckner didn’t even look; he was asleep. “I just let her do exactly what she wanted. Just let it happen.”

  That had been more than enough. The birthing had gone badly from the very beginning. The labor had been short and intense, bursts of pain that had caused Karen to scream and wrench her body around and remember the one thing she’d forgotten: Hospitals were able to give you painkillers. Sammy had given her a handful of aspirin, but that was hardly the same thing.

  Next had been the bleeding. Sammy had little idea how a birth was supposed to work, besides what she’d made him learn. But Karen was bleeding out, whether that was normal or not. Sammy had done what he could, but he didn’t have a lot of options. He’d shrugged and smiled and held her hand, telling her it was going to be all right and thinking about his bank account.

  In the end, getting the child out had been like pulling up the roots of an extremely large and ancient tree. A tree whose roots probably extended further into the earth than you could dig in one day. Sammy had pulled and Karen had pushed and the child had finally come out with a scream and then died. Karen was already dead, and Sammy couldn’t say if she ever knew he’d gotten the little, screeching thing out of her at all.

  And now he had to bury them both, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Sammy rubbed his temples; his head was swimming with the scotch now, a feeling he usually loved but which was at times a bit annoying. Like now, as he mulled over the proper proceedings and procedures of a religion he had never followed. He’d grown up with it, but that was far different than following it.

  So why did he care? That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Sammy rubbed faster, harder, but it didn’t help. He wasn’t sure why he cared, except that maybe he wanted to save himself. Maybe some deep, secret part of his heart knew that he’d done wrong. Or, at least, knew that he felt good about it, desired it, when he should have been crushed by grief. Maybe that corner of his heart knew and wanted absolution. So that when he died, if he joined them, they wouldn’t be on such unpleasant terms.

  The marriage had been full of enough of those, hadn’t it? Karen had liked him, but not nearly enough to marry him. But he’d snagged her, pulled her in, and that had been malicious in itself. Another thing she didn’t know. But she’d resented her situation; of that fact, he was and always had been brutally aware.

  Sammy stood, flipping the scotch bottle from hand to hand. Of course, all that was over now. He could travel, if he wanted, maybe to someplace where the winter didn’t last for six months and range from a sickly black slush to bitter temperatures that would freeze you in bed. If nothing else, he could buy a bigger, better house in town. One with three stories and a tower on one corner and rocks around the baseboards. One with a sweeping yard and a mailbox on the street and a television in every room. And then he could drink scotch all day, maybe even eighteen-year, and he could never work and talk to Buckner and forget all about North Dakota. It would be heaven, but it would be on earth and it would be all his.

  He’d done it. He’d been wanting to do it since the shovel, since he’d bought it to fill in the potholes, and he finally had. Amazing.

  Sammy flipped the bottle over one more time, then threw it against the wall. It shattered with a huge explosion of glass, shards flying like shrapnel from a hand grenade. Buckner was up off the table and screaming and running first under the table and then under the couch and then back under the table again. Sammy, his grin as wide as ever, just watched. He would never have to pick up that glass now; he’d simply move out and burn this place to the ground.

  5

  The truck wouldn’t make it. Just looking at the tire, the way the rim sat on the ground, Sammy knew it wouldn’t. He cast a glance over at the shed. The window was boarded up so that he couldn’t see in; the glass had blown out in a storm one night and he’d never cared to replace it. But, boards or not, he knew what he’d find. He wondered briefly if she’d care about being buried with the proper ceremony, then decided it didn’t really matter. Some people had funerals and graveyards. Some just burned the bodies. Others stacked them up on platforms and left them out to grow bloated and rot under the sun. But when you got right down to the bottom line, they were all dead. So it didn’t really matter.

  He began digging the grave. He went around behind the shed to do it, so it would be somewhat out of the way. The forest was thick out there, and the ground was hard with the cold, and he had to be at least that close to the little clearing so that he’d be able to dig at all. The shovel was sharp and solid, even after all this time (the rest of Karen’s lifetime, as it was) and Sammy dug through like a soldier into a foxhole. He moved with strong, deliberate swings, never exerting himself too much, but keeping a steady pace. The moon was bright overhead, and he could see well enough.

  Sammy hit rocks below the surface, and his progress slowed. He pulled them out by hand – it was easier that way, when they were so big. He piled them next to the grave, to the side of the dirt, and saved them. They’d do well keeping scavengers from digging up the bodies while he wasn’t watching. He at least owed Karen that much, Sammy figured.

  They would only get one grave. The child was small enough to fit on top, and they were practically the same person anyway. Hadn’t the child been inside her not a day before, inside her swollen stomach? Of course it had, and so in that way it was almost fitting. The scotch was making it hard to dig, and Sammy really couldn’t stand the thought of having to do it twice.

  When he finished the grave, he sat down to rest. Part of him wanted to get her, right now, and throw her in. To pile on the child and then the rocks and then the dirt. But he knew, no matter how strong that desire to act now, that it would happen even if he didn’t. It would happen tonight, if not this very moment. And so he sat down to rest and to think and to dream about the life that was ahead of him.

  Buckner came up, having slipped out the little door Sammy had cut for him in the cabin, and sat by his side. The cat’s hair was ruffled up a bit, matted down on one side, but he looked like he’d gotten over his fear. Sammy scratched his neck, and Buckner purred.

  The night was cold, but Sammy wasn’t. Not now. He was too keyed up to think about something like the temperature.

  “This is it,” he told Buckner. “This is when we finally make it.”

  Buckner didn’t say anything.

  The money would be his now. Karen had put that in her will, and he’d read it. The money was hers, given by her father, more or less, and it was to become his when and if she died. But that if had become an after, and the when had a specific time, down to the minute, attached to it. All of that wasted money, just lying around in some account somewhere, would soon be his. And he would not ignore it; no, sir. He would take it and use it and not care a bit about being the prodigal son or any other son at all. He’d just be Sammy, and he’d still have Buckner, and things would be better than he could even dream.

  Finally, the cold began to leech into his skin. He stood up, flexed the knots out of his hands, and walked over to the shed. He eyed the boarded-up window for a moment; it looked like it was looking back. Like it was a giant eye that saw all, one that he’d tried to cover and hadn’t been able to. Then he shook the feeling and went inside.

  He decided to do the child first, because it was small and looked unhappy and weighed less. Dead weight was more than live weight, a fact that had always made no sense to him but could not be denied. So he grabbed the child, holding it by one leg (its skin was clammy and loose and didn’t fit the body right) and carried it to the grave. When he dropped it in, there was a soft thud and it was gone.

  He went back. His wife lay there and it really sunk in. She was gone; she was dead. Knowing it, intellectually, was not the same as seeing it. He slid his arms under her, scooped her up, and carried her out to the grave. Buckner trailed at his ankles, watching. The moonlight reflected bright off of his eyes, slanted little eyes like balls of fire.
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br />   Sammy stopped, looking at her face. At the way her hair fell over her brow, something he’d thought was cute back when he’d needed sandpaper and she’d known where to find it. At the way her dress clung to her perfectly, because she’d prided herself on that and fitted it with a needle and thread until it was exactly how she’d wanted. At the way the foot of that dress was stained in blood, her blood and the blood of a dying child clawing its way into the world.

  He thought about kissing her, but didn’t. He tipped his arms forward and she rolled off and into the hole. She spun once and landed on her back, on top of the child. Her skin looked as white as paper now, contrasted with the dirt and the night. But not yet that sickly gray.

  “That’s it,” Sammy said, looking for Buckner. He scooped up the shovel, dipped it in the pile of dirt, and then he saw the cat. Buckner was crouched on the far side of the hole, the hair on his back standing straight on end, and he was hissing. He looked like he’d cornered a snake, or like he’d been cornered by one.

  Sammy ignored him. The cat was probably just unnerved, on edge from such a strange and eventful night. Or maybe he’d forgotten that Karen had died, but now he remembered because he saw her body. Sammy tipped the shovelful of dirt down onto Karen’s chest. It pattered softly in, darkening her dress in patches. The grave was shallow, not six feet at all, but it was what he’d been able to manage. He wouldn’t live here long, anyway. He got another shovelful of dirt, opting to give her a layer of cushion before he threw on the rocks. He was about to dump it in, this time onto her face, when Buckner leapt.

  The distance was short, and Buckner landed right where Sammy’s dirt would have. His claws were extended and he cut large furrows into her cheeks, crying out like he had when the scotch bottle had broken. He raked his claws down her face, blood swelling up in the cuts, and Sammy was too stunned to move.

  Then her mouth opened.

  Her teeth came together, clamped on Buckner’s foot.

  The cat was trying to run now, trying and unable. Karen hadn’t moved save for her jaw, but she had him. Buckner writhed back and forth, scratching away with his other three feet. Then he must have done something to her tongue, because she let go and Buckner scrambled away. There was a small spray of blood from her mouth, a fine mist of thin red.

  Sammy still hadn’t moved. The shovelful of dirt sat poised above her, ready to seal his new life.

  “Water,” Karen said. It was a choked word, a barely-rasped request, but he could understand it. “Water.”

  Sammy’s first thought was that he should get her the cup of water, and his second was that he should drive the blade of the shovel down through her throat. That was the one he settled on.

  The Work of Clocks

  1

  Alexander Peyton O’Callaghan went missing on the same day that the Great War ended, back in the lake country where the fire had gone through a year before and cleared out the underbrush. We found his boots, just off the road, lying on their sides in the half-frozen mud of early November. The laces were untied and the mud had splattered up onto the toes, presumably from his dismounting his horse in a hurry. Of the horse, there was no sign. We took the boots, covered them in a blanket on the floor of the car, and drove back to Harrison as dawn cracked the sky.

  We didn’t speak, Gamble or I, as we drove. Gamble just stared out the front window, his eyes sharp and lined with tiny creases like crows’ feet. His lips were set into such a tight line that the blood was forced from them, turning them white and pallid. I imagine I looked the same; I know for a fact that I was squeezing my notebook so tightly that it was bowed in the center for the next month. It looked like a tiny boat, one that would sink immediately for the open ends, and I still think of that day every time I see it. The day we knew that something Alexander had said, at least, had been true.

  The shop was locked when we arrived, and Gamble let us in with his key. I didn’t have one, being sixteen and an apprentice. I’d always thought my age a benefit before, my not being sent to the front because of it, but on that day I found myself wondering. The war had ended, after all; I could have survived it. And some things were more dangerous than German bullets, more dangerous and less avoidable. Of course, hindsight now taints my perception to such an extent that I’ll never be sure how I truly feel, which is an odd phenomenon indeed.

  Perhaps, I think every now and then, I would have been better off hunkered down somewhere near the Hindenburg Line. Or even going over the top, though I’d never fired a rifle in my life.

  Gamble set a pot of coffee on to brew. It smelled rich and black, filling the shop with its scent in minutes; the shop was not large, and thus clustered with tables and cabinets and benches, all of them covered in what looked to be – had I not known the vast importance of everything, at least in Alexander’s mind – a lot of junk. There were gears from clocks, electrical wires of all colors and lengths, countless books with diagrams and maps, and a great lot of other mechanical pieces. I took the boots, still wrapped, and set them under a table layered in such junk, where they would not be noticed.

  Officially, we were a clock repair shop. We specialized in foreign pieces – which we hoped would be brought back from the front by the soldiers, now that the war was done with – but did most of our actual work with domestic ones. That was the reality of it: clocks died and people needed to have them fixed. Exotic or not. But saying we enjoyed such foreign work gave us reason to have some very peculiar things, which provided sufficient cover if wandering eyes began probing into our business.

  “He’s done it,” Gamble said at last, coming into the main room. He stood there, the sun falling through the windows and turning the shoulders of his suit a dark orange, holding a coffee mug. He looked past me, but didn’t really seem to be looking at anything.

  “Do you think so?” I asked. I couldn’t get my head around that, not at all. “Really?”

  “Yes,” Gamble replied, as if that should set my mind at ease. He crossed the room and sat in one of the three chairs that faced our largest windows. That glass gave a superb view of the river, winding its way through town not so much like a serpent but a worm, sluggish and mostly straight. Usually the sunrise off those waves was worth watching, but I could tell that Gamble wasn’t seeing that, either.

  I got my own coffee and joined him. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, perhaps more, but I let him think instead. He was a full partner, had been working with Alexander since before I was born. If he could reason it out, he could do it without help.

  Myself, I had my own ideas. Alexander, you see, had been fairly obsessed with something he called the “other side.” He didn’t seem entirely clear on what this meant, and was closed-off about it even when talking to Gamble and I. As if he believed that to give voice to everything he believed in would jinx it. Or maybe curse him. But he’d dropped hints, and we’d seen his work.

  For the most part, we were inventors. Or fancied ourselves to be such, anyway. Alexander, I knew, had been more than a head and shoulders above his peers in every school he’d attended, and his résumé was impressive. Gamble had been of a like mind, though not possessed of the brilliance that Alexander had. I, of course, had actually thought I was applying for apprenticeship at a clock-repair shop.

  We had invented almost nothing. Gamble’s coffee pot would turn itself on and then pour the coffee into separate mugs, which was convenient but hardly groundbreaking. Alexander had a car that could set its own speed and hold it and even decelerate on its own with the push of a button. I had been attempting to create a blanket that would warm itself in the winter – my family was far from rich and the cold was oppressive in the deepest months – but so far I had only succeeded in causing a number of small fires. But still we kept on, repairing clocks only to pay the bills, because something about the process of inventing called to us. There was more out there, more we could do; the feeling was so thick in the shop’s dusty confines that one could almost taste it.

  And Alexander, as I’ve
said, had his “other side.” It was something spectral, of a supernatural nature, and it was, in essence, his religion. He attended church, as we all did, mainly to keep up appearances. In the small business world, that is of the utmost importance. And, to some extent, the Bible played into his thinking. But it was his own version, Gamble and I knew, his own version in which something or someplace lay just on the other side of the air.

  And it was to this place that he had been trying to go for the past eleven years.

  “He’s done it,” Gamble said again. “He’s finally done it.”

  This time, I said nothing.

  2

  We stayed in the entire day, waiting for the cover of night, and then drove back to the lake country. No one came by the shop, which was no small miracle since we were both too perplexed to have appeared normal. Had someone come to talk to us, I’m sure they would have taken one look at our glassy eyes, our tight brows, our pursed lips. They would have taken one look at the way we wandered about with our shoulders hunched and our fingers clawed and declared us mentally insane. I know I wondered it as I watched Gamble load his pistol. I wondered because of the way we looked into the shadows, as if expecting to see Alexander’s face peering back, and the way we jumped every hour as the clocks rose in an uproar.

  “Why here?” I asked Gamble as we came to a halt. The place where Alexander’s boots had been lay just to our right; we were deep in the woods and there hadn’t been another car for miles, or even a horse and rider. It was desolate area, secluded and tucked away and forgotten.

  “He always thought he’d want to do it somewhere unpopulated,” Gamble said. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “So that there’d be less interference. And less of a chance that someone would come across him.”