What the Clocks Know

by Rumer Haven

“The thing is…” she began.

  Finished preening the outdoors from her scalp, Rand occupied his fingers with stroking her tresses instead.

  “The thing is,” she repeated, “I am worried about me. I am now. And it scares me.” She hiccupped with a sob, hating to undo her progress in one fell swoop. But as the corners of her eyes moistened, her face broke, and she poured out in a higher voice, “You were right!”

  “About what?”

  “I’m unbalanced.”

  His arms curled beneath her, hands cupping her shoulder blades as they raised her to an upright posture where he could embrace her more fully. He rocked her slightly until the worst of her fit ran its course. “Margot, try to breathe.”

  “I’m sorry!” Her voice rose again with a renewed outburst that Rand muffled by holding her tighter, rocking her harder. She knew he was scared, too. “I didn’t write that entry, though. I mean—” She caught herself in her earlier lie and tried to backtrack in an honest way. “I mean, I didn’t write it as a threat to myself. You have to know that.”

  Decelerating his sway, Rand nodded into her shoulder. “I know.”

  The dull remains of his musk mingled with the sweetness of his natural oils, aromatically soothing her mind as she inhaled. Together, they slowed to stillness.

  She was the first to detach, and, looking out the window beside the bed, she shook her head with purpose. “It has nothing to do with my menstrual cycle, or stress, or whatever other lame-ass excuse I could make. You were right. You and Gwen. Both.” She now nodded rapidly. “Right.”

  “I don’t want to be. And maybe I’m not.” Rand cupped her ear and ran a thumb over her wet cheek. “But you know I’m here for you, right?”

  Nodding slower this time, she still stared outside.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  She glanced down and fingered a small hole forming in the soft denim at his knee. “You’ve been so great. I just…maybe I need…more support, like…” She let the silence drag out, as though saying therapy out loud would concede defeat.

  He bobbed his head. “Possibly.” Another pause. “If you think it would help.” His tentative gaze appeared to wait for her to flare at his agreement.

  Margot just bit her upper lip and stared back out the window. Then, deflating her shoulders, she looked him in the eye. “I think…yeah.” She nodded with a new tear blazing a trail down her skin. A knot had loosened in her chest, though. There was now a goal, a plan. That was something more familiar to her.

  Giving a quick tremble as if to shake the situation off, she muttered that she probably ought to shower and rinse away the mausoleum dirt. To her surprise, Rand laughed.

  “Amidst the dust and decay of bygone generations, you, Margot, you slept soundly.” He pinched the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, wiping the sleepless crust from them as he shook his head and continued to laugh merrily.

  She caught his contagious smile and broke down again—this time in a giggling fit. The sensation was so foreign, yet once started, she couldn’t stop. Clasping her hands over her mouth, she keeled over, and Rand joined her as his own laughter overtook him.

  Lying side by side, they cackled themselves to exhaustion. Rand wiped tears from his eyes, and a few more chuckles bubbled out of his chest before he wrapped his arms snugly around her again for one last affirming hug. “Aw,” he sighed, punctuating it with a peck on her head.

  After a comforting moment, Margot rolled off to the side and met his eye. He looked so good lying there, relaxed at last. A toned swathe of skin peeked out from where his distressed tee had bunched up a bit, and Margot reckoned she’d be aroused if it weren’t for a sudden pressure on her bladder. She hadn’t used a bathroom since the previous afternoon, but she wanted to address a more pressing matter first.

  “That time we were standing there,” she said, nervous but staying the course, “at the door, talking about ghosts and the afterlife. You remember, that night.”

  He squinted an eye as he nodded with an expression of mock pain.

  “What were you getting at?”

  With a pout, he shrugged. “I was only teasing that a ghost had opened your door.”

  “Nooo. I’d forgotten, you twat, but you were about to explain it before Gwen buzzed up.” She looked at the doorframe then back at him. “You had a reason.”

  Looking less relaxed, Rand hesitated before sitting up. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. And I don’t want you taking the piss out of her.”

  Margot didn’t have to ask who “her” was. Her own leap in logic had already tightened her jaw. “Of course not. Tell me.”

  He rolled his eyes and drew a preparatory breath. “You’ve brought it up before, how Gwen is never here. Well, now we both know she is here sometimes during the day, but never at night. She never comes at night anymore. Even the one we’re speaking of, she only came as far as the second landing to meet me.”

  Margot sat up now, too. The idea of Gwen frozen on the landing, refusing to climb any farther, ignited all sorts of Victorian Gothic fancies.

  She cleared her throat. “Is she…afraid to meet me or something?”

  Rand wetted his lower lip. “Well, she is afraid, but not of you. She’s quite reasonable, really, almost skeptical to a fault.”

  “All right.” Margot twirled her finger as a sign for him to move his story along. She really was desperate for the loo now.

  “So, ah, actually…” Cough. “It so happens that she doesn’t, ah…” Sniff. “Well, she doesn’t sleep here anymore, you see, because she…believes this flat to be, uh…”

  “Stop stalling, Englishman. Just spill it already.”

  “She thinks the flat is haunted.”

  As it were, the one who spilled it was Margot. She bolted to the bathroom before her mortification could spread any further.

  After his revelation, Rand didn’t have to worry about Margot making fun of Gwen. Partly out of respect for him, but mainly because she believed Gwen’s fears were true—and “taking the piss,” as he’d said, would’ve been outrageously hypocritical on both literal and figurative levels at the moment.

  Rand promptly laundered her bedsheets with only concern, not judgment, after Margot had fled to the bathroom in her soiled leggings. When she rushed back to the bedroom in a bathrobe, he handed her a change of clothes through a small crack in the door—a purely chivalrous gesture, as she obviously had her own clean clothing on hand. He also offered to reschedule the rest of his day’s meetings if she didn’t want to be alone.

  But as she started to get dressed, Margot insisted through the door that he finally start his day. She had an afternoon lecture anyway and wanted to look into both an optometrist and therapist—the latter all the more pressing if her depression was now causing incontinence.

  Nonetheless, as she heard Rand swing open the unit door, she wanted to rush out and make him stop, make him stay. But she didn’t, and she didn’t have to. All she did was open her bedroom door, wearing nothing but fresh knickers and his Joy Division T-shirt. In her haste, the boxers she’d meant to put on, too, remained bunched in her hand.

  Glancing over his shoulder at her as she leaned against the doorway, Rand ran his gaze up and down her height and stopped mid-step.

  “Are you sure you want me to go?” he asked.

  Margot grinned and nodded. “Go to work, Bread Winner. It’s just…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Never mind.”

  She couldn’t have said it more unconvincingly, and Rand was already backtracking into the foyer and closing the door.

  “All right, fine,” she said. “But it’s going to delay you a few more minutes.”

  Shutting the door behind him, he guided her to the living room. She would’ve slipped on the boxers then, but his shirt hung low enough to cover her fanny in both the British and American senses of the word—front and back—and Rand hadn’t exactly lodged any complaints of indecent exposure. So they sat together on the s
ofa, where Margot tucked both of her legs up on the cushion before interrogating him for all the details.

  He hesitated, but the long and short of it was that Gwen had seen a weeping woman in his bedroom.

  “Your bedroom.”

  “Yes, my bedroom.”

  He continued to describe how Gwen had woken with a start on more than one occasion and, gathering the duvet to her chest, sat propped on her knees and pointing to his bedroom window.

  “Your bedroom window,” Margot whispered.

  “Yes. Stop repeating everything I say.” Rand offered a fleeting grin, then explained how Gwen had frozen in this way, just pointing. On the third night of the occurrence, she’d elaborated that it was a woman, standing right before the window and weeping. On the fifth night of the sighting, now that Gwen had grown used to the routine, she’d admitted there had been another presence, but not anything she could see.

  Until the fourteenth night.

  On the fourteenth night of her visions, Gwen had described the other being as less defined in form but tangibly present. It exuded a bluish, effervescent vapor that at times extended around what she’d come to name Lady Grey.

  And from that night forward, Gwen had ceased staying at Rand’s flat at night.

  She’d implored him, of course, to stay at her place until he could sell or rent his. She could quickly take some pictures and list it with the local branch of her lettings agency for no fee. At the rate property was moving, he could expect it to be snatched up by a tenant within a week’s time, if that long.

  And yet Rand hadn’t seen anything. He didn’t question Gwen’s sanity, but he himself hadn’t been bothered by a single inconvenience in the flat beyond ordinary home improvements, so he didn’t see any point in renting it out and moving. As for selling the property altogether, that wasn’t an option. He would hold on to his place as long as he could to build equity. On that stubborn point, Gwen grew resentful. As Rand saw it, he was retaining a long-term investment that would contribute stability to their future together. As Gwen saw it, he was clinging to his single life, a bachelor pad at his disposal even if they did move in together elsewhere.

  This had become a bone of contention, and the “ghost” was an all the more convenient excuse for Gwen to fall back on during every successive argument they’d had—tackling the inevitable relationship question of where they were going as a couple.

  “So that’s the real reason I never see her,” Margot said. “I have to say, it’s insane that I still haven’t after almost two months. I mean, I get that she wouldn’t go out of her way to meet me, but still. If I were your girlfriend, I’d want to.”

  “Well, true. But we’ve been going through a strained time. As you said when you spoke of James, it’s ‘make or break.’”

  Margot reasoned she ought to take one for the team and stand by her fellow female looking for more commitment, but she found herself sympathizing with the opponent this round. She stayed silent.

  He, on the other hand, seemed to want to say more but faltered, and Margot perceived an inward struggle between his mind and heart. “The thing is,” he eventually said, “there’s more that ties me to this property.”

  She watched his eyes glass up.

  “I’m doing all right on my own, financially, but in this city, I needed a little help. The money I put down on this place came from my sister’s trust.” He pressed his lips as he stared sideways at the window. “My parents decided that parceling out the fund between their living children would be an appropriate way to celebrate Sophie’s memory. Her death left us grieving for such a long while, they thought this was one way to help each of us begin to breathe easier.” He gazed up toward the molding that lined the walls near the ceiling. “This flat…it’s something solid. Something visible. This house has stood for a hundred and fifty years, and I think it could stand for the next hundred if tended to properly, if given the attention it deserves. I wasn’t there for her. But I can be here, can’t I?”

  He’d spoken so quietly that Margot had watched his lips to be sure she wouldn’t miss one syllable. She wanted to console him, but all she could say with certainty was “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Beyond that, she simply leaned in to wrap her arms around his shoulders, holding him tight like he’d comforted her earlier. More than anything, she wanted to communicate to him that she understood—everything. If not his tremendous loss, then his vulnerability, his need to hold on to the past, his relationship quagmire. And his ghost.

  Though it was afternoon, the living room’s shades were still drawn low, dimming the room. It had a sedating effect on them both, given neither had really slept the night before. For their best of intentions to get on with their respective days, they slumped into a mild stupor while still enveloping each other. Dazing halfway into sleep, she slid down a little, feeling his heart thumping against her chin. For an unrecorded measure of time, they both drifted to sleep.

  Margot became vaguely aware of her face nuzzling into soft fabric, pleased to pick up where her dream had left off. The warm body rising and falling with heavy breaths felt so real. She perspired with the acute sensation that had been building in her core, close to release.

  Wrapped in her phantom lover’s arms, she felt their grip loosen as hands slid down to the small of her back, holding fast there while lips buried into her hair. Grinning and tingling in a hazy limbo of half-sleep, she spread her knees and slid up until she could feel a pressure right where she wanted to, as palms skimmed over her hips to secure them in place.

  Then Margot heard a rapid sniff and jolted up to meet Rand’s equally bemused expression.

  Oh God. Tell me I was only dreaming.

  Blinking twice, Rand ran his fingers through the waves of his hair as his cheeks flushed, possibly thinking the same thing.

  “Ah, good kip,” was all he said. But even at half-mast, his shifting eyes betrayed he was just as baffled if not embarrassed as she was. Hopefully it was just over the fact they’d fallen asleep hugging like that. Nothing more.

  Careful to avoid more contact, Margot eased her leg over Rand’s lap to dismount and liberate him of her warm, sweaty weight.

  “Right,” he grunted as he sat up. Appearing thoroughly disoriented, he stood to fetch his laptop bag and keys. But before he headed to the door, he backtracked to Margot and briskly kissed her on the forehead, suggested she put on some trousers, and then promptly left for work.

  In the cooling effect of his absence, she walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. Sipping it meditatively, she was ashamed of what she may or may not have just done on top of her friend. It was bad enough she’d caused him so much worry and made him late for work. Yet niggling on the outside of this shame was guilt over Gwen. Not only because Margot was pretty sure she’d just half-consciously dry-humped the woman’s boyfriend, but also for not validating Gwen’s ghostly fears to Rand when she’d had the chance.

  As she sucked a stream of water through her teeth, she looked at the shaded window’s beige light. No, what had happened between her and Rand was just a fluke. Neither knew what he or she had been doing, so chalk it up to dormant hormones that will play while the conscious mind is away. If anything had even happened. But one thing she did know: she didn’t want to restore his confidence in Gwen. Not yet.

  The water ran right through her. Pounding the glass on the countertop, she strode to the bathroom and pushed the door shut out of habit, as though it mattered with no one else home. She relieved herself in a more civilized manner this time, and, rinsing her hands afterwards, she ran them up and down her face, finally beginning to calm.

  Until she heard the bathroom door push open.

  She immediately looked at its reflection in the mirror to see it was still closed. But just as she exhaled, wondering what the sound could’ve been instead, she heard it a second time as she watched the door nudge open, scraping on the carpeting. It stopped for a second until a third shove swung it open. Margot instinctively bound
ed up the steps to slam the door back shut against a palpable force.

  When she heard the door fasten in its lock, she realized she might not have fully closed it the first time. Opening it, in that case, wouldn’t have required turning the handle—just a push.

  Standing on the steps, she felt a cool breeze caress her legs. The larger window above the bathtub was still cracked open a few inches—she’d raised it earlier to air out the steamy room after her shower. A thought struck her, and, tentatively, she reopened the door. As she did so, she saw no one was in the hallway, and stray strands of her hair floated atop another chilly draft that blew from the front of the flat.

  Of course.

  Margot had also opened one of the living room windows earlier, where she’d positioned a drying rack to better aerate her hand-washed leggings. So, the culprit was only cross-ventilation.

  This calmed her a little.

  The sound and vision replayed in her mind, though, and she couldn’t shake how deliberate the door’s motion had seemed—not like the swift force of airflow but a rhythmic heave-ho on the count of three.

  With terror creeping back in, she treaded back to Rand’s bedroom, needing to confront it again. The fact remained that he still slept there and she herself had to sleep just a few yards away, so she needed to get over it. She’d just spent the night in a cemetery, for God’s sake. Daylight was no time to be a coward.

  Rand still kept his door closed, and now she understood why the room was out of bounds—for Gwen’s peace of mind if not Margot’s protection, regardless of what he believed. Maybe he still questioned the phenomenon himself, keeping an open mind given his faith in Gwen. Which would also explain why he was so keenly interested in Margot’s convictions on the afterlife. He hadn’t been interrogating. He was searching.

  How can he keep sleeping in here, though, she wondered as she entered the room for the first time in weeks. Feeling a prickle at the back of her neck, she braced herself to look over at the window. Her head swiveled first, her body trailing after.