“It is the end. You’ve finished it, haven’t you? Done what no one else would do. Done the worst thing you could have done. You’ve unleashed shit you have no idea about.”
But his eyes shifted as he said that, as if he was figuring out what shit I’d unleashed.
“Did you know about Harriet? Kept locked in the wall? You can’t do that. That’s not what we’re about.”
“Didn’t Burnett ever tell you? I guess he doesn’t care about you as much as you think he does. She’s there as a sacrifice. For all of us. To keep vigil over the town and over the tower.”
“She wasn’t watching anything. She was locked in a wall.”
“To keep vigil. To keep us safe. Now who’ll do that?”
“Whoever the next keeper is, I guess. That’s what we’re supposed to do. I don’t get what you’re supposed to do, though.”
“I’m just the next in line. We’re the real thing. We watch over the keepers, make sure they’re doing their job. I failed with you, though, didn’t I? That will be on me. You’ve actually fucked me up. We clean up the messes. Most of you are too caught up in yourselves to even notice. We keep the sacrifice safe. We watched over her.”
“That’s not the idea.”
“Of course it is. The prisoners are the reason we all exist, why this place does, why we haven’t fallen into the pits of hell.”
What?
How many of them came for me? Held me down? How many of my own people hated me so much?
They charged me with murder.
They charged me with the death of Harriet. The loss of our sacrifice.
They dosed me up.
They left me. They wanted to wall me up, but I said, too soon. Let me dry out first or your clean-up will be awful. I’ve learned a lot from the prisoners about manipulation and I talked them into letting me be free for a bit.
Idiots.
The ball drops
And drops
And drops
I have lost track of how many times. At first I counted, but I lost track. There is no day and night but
The ball drops
The ball drops
The ball drops
They don’t understand what I want.
I have been here a long time
I have been here forever.
I’m glad I killed the prisoners before this
If only
If only someone will come
And do the same for me
I feel my heartbeat shouting blood into my ear drums.
Fuck you
fuck you
fuck
you.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners.
Phillipa Muskett
Swimming.
It’s easier now. I need to take fewer breaths, can leave my face in the water for minutes at a time. I swam to shore one dark night, leaving from the blind side and going slow. Slow.
I made it to the old pier, and I rested there a long time. I was hungry, and glad of the vacuum-packed snacks I’d brought with me.
I rested.
The Ball dropped.
It took a long time to dry off. The sun was weak that day, muted. I craved heat, wanted to feel the burn.
There were no protestors. Their job was done, and I’d done it for them.
I found Renata at home. I had to wait for her mother to leave, because I didn’t want to see anyone else. Her mother had put on weight and I could see why; she sat in front of her laptop reading gossip pages, the debris of crap around her. Fast food, sweet wrappers, soft drinks. I wondered if she was lost without her mission to save the prisoners, and she’d chosen this way to an early death.
Finally, she went out. I walked in the back gate; they always left it open. Renata sat on a sun chair, reading a fat book. She looked great. Alive.
“It’s me! Don’t freak!”
She looked at me, stunned. “They said you’d killed yourself.”
“No. Just all of them.” I jerked my thumb at the Time Ball Tower. “They preserved me. Bastards.”
“You’re amazing. You’re incredible. I can’t believe what you did.”
“The rest of them hate me.”
“Fuck those evil arseholes.”
She was the one who got me out of there. She lent me a heap of money, knowing she’d get it back. My money was frozen for a year, but after that it could be distributed, and it would go to her. The protestors adored me, worshipped me, built a shrine to me for doing what they always wanted done. Renata gave me the funds they’d collected over the years. She didn’t tell them why; she didn’t give me up.
Over time, until she died, Renata sent me money. When she got sick, she deposited close to a million in an off-shore account for me. I didn’t need it by then, but it was a nice gesture.
I wrote away for my birth certificate. I wanted it to be true. Real.
Would I take revenge on my brother? I would not. As Burnett says, there is no survival in revenge.
Burnett. Burnett. I didn’t want to leave him to Renata to sort out. He didn’t deserve that. I lied to her; told her I’d do it myself. She dragged him out for me. We shoved him in the trunk of the car I bought and there he stayed. He came to all the funerals with me, although he didn’t know it. We traveled the country, but he didn’t know that, either.
We went to the funerals of family. Of the keepers, of friends. We went to Renata’s, and to Max’s. He kept his looks right to the end, even after a decade in jail, but he never married.
I hated attending; I just wanted the photos. The memento mori. The reminder of death. You Will Die.
I tell that to Burnett sometimes.
I’ve seen them all buried.
I’ve seen a war that brought mass funerals and I’ve photographed that.
I’ve seen the death of grass and the birth of the new grain. I’ve seen the loss of more species than will ever live again. I’ve felt the cold and the heat and watched towns collapse around me.
I did make a call to the federal police, about all those missing women. The teacher, the others, all of them blamed for going to the city and not returning, every last one of them murdered out there, perhaps.
That’s what the prisoners told me.
Would they lie about that?
I’ve been to Tempuston, fallen and lost. Little remains. The tower is empty. People moved away after the scandal of the murders and so many of the keepers in jail for it. The mission was gone, but so it should be. I regret nothing.
If I shift aside the rubble (and who has the strength for that?) perhaps I’ll find the armchair that Harriet’s cruel son died in, or my father’s favorite beer glass, or perhaps a whisky bottle with only sludge left, one last swallow he never took.
I can’t eat spicy food. I barely eat at all. It is a release, a freedom.
And now I sit.
The Ball drops. I don’t think they even hear it any more.
In 2022CE, I paid a boy to sail me out there and I set up a time-lapse camera, triggered by the drop. Such a beautiful thing. It captures the changing nature of life. Captures the end of things. The loss of place.
I’ve seen grand changes and nothing changing at all.
My jars are all yellow liquid now. Some globules remain but these too are dissolving.
If I offer you a taste, you should take it. But no more than a taste.
2150 CE Renata’s granddaughter buried; it feels the strangest at times like these. The death from old age of a person born seventy years after me.
2200 CE
Now I can feel it. The bone ache, the gentle stench of my skin, the hardening of everything from eyeball to sole. It won’t be long now until I am incapacitated and then what? I have to make the decision before it gets too late.
Toothless. They were loose a long time. I don’t wake up from this dream.
You just have to be patient. Wait long enough and you will be the oldest and the wisest.
Famous for being first at something is too hard. Famous for being last
is just a matter of survival.
Now I’m the one. Any story I tell is the truth; I am the keeper of facts.
My memories now. My way of telling the story. I am the keeper of history.
Gentle.
Gentle.
Do not go gentle.
But we all do, in the end.
About the Author
Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had stories in print every year since. Her stories have appeared in Australia, the US, China, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, and have been selected for both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’s Best of the Year Anthologies.
Kaaron has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Fiji. She has published four novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, and The Grief Hole) and six short story collections, including the multi-award winning Through Splintered Walls. Her next short story collection is A Primer to Kaaron Warren from Dark Moon Books.
Her novella “Sky” from that collection won the Shirley Jackson Award and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. It went on to win all three of the Australian genre awards, while The Grief Hole did the same thing in 2017.
She has stories upcoming in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatter’s and March Hares, Looming Low from Dim Shores, Nate Pederson’s Sisterhood, Cemetery Dance’s Dark Screams series, and “Bitter,” a novella, from Cemetery Dance.
She will be Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in 2018, New Zealand’s GeyserCon in 2019, and Stokercon 2019.
Table of Contents
Tide of Stone
Phillipa Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 2014
Burnett Barton:The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1868
Jackson Sheward: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1869
Tristram Barton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1872
John Barton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1873
Horace Ross: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1874
Allan Brennan: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1875
Charles Butler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1876
Nate Staunton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1877
Sam Stewart: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1878
William Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1879
Alexander Manning: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1880
Percy McCarty: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1881
Stephen Moore: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1882
J.C. Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1883
Freddie Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1884
Thomas Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1885
George Parsons: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1886
Ned James: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1887
Jack Barnes: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1888
John Sheward: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1889
David Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1890
Carl Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1891
Robert Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1892
Alfred Merton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1893
Stephen Cooke: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1894
Willie Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1895
Michael Dyer: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1896
Miles Barton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1897
Thomas Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1898
Phillip Ross: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1899
Logan Brennan: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1900
Ben Butler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1901
Roland Staunton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1902
Walter Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1903
Monk Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1904
John Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1905
Joshua Parsons: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1906
Marshall James: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1907
Ray Bailes: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1908
Oscar Sheward: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1909
Aiden Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1910
Morrison Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1911
Rufus James: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1912
Hitchens Manning: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1913
Spencer Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1914
Porter Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1915
Warren Bailes: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1916
Rossiter Styles: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1917
Henry Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1918
Walter Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1919
Marshall Moore: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1920
Ambrose McCarty: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1921
Percy Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1922
Ernest Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1923
Phillip Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1924
Gerard Cook: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1925
Donald Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1926
Carl Dyer: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1927
Ronald McKeown: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1928
Edward Carroll: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1929
Peter Rouse: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1930
Oscar Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1931
William Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1932
George Manning: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1933
Arthur Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1934
Leo Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1935
Max Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1936
Ernest Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1937
Frances Styles: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1938
Robert Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1939
Kim Adler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1940
George McCarty: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1941
Joe Madden: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1942
Rueben Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1943
Linda Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1944
Robert Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1945
Lee Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1946
Gray Cook: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1947
Peter Fenwick: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1948
Howard Dowling: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1949
Robert Andrews: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1950
Fred Webb: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1951
Patrick Curran: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1952
John McKeown: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1953
Michael Carroll: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1954
Bart Carroll: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1955
Donald Rouse: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1956
Brian Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1957
Nathan Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1958
Frank Ross: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1959
Stephanie Brennan: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1960
Luciano Costello: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1961
Roger Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1962
&nbs
p; Lee Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1963
Maria De Salvo: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1964
Ed Keeney: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1965
Chris Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1966
Charles Peacock: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1967
Chris Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1968
Earl Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1969
Martin Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1970
Jimmy Campbell: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1971
Leo Adler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1972
Leonie Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s report 1973
Tide of Stone Page 25
