The Time of the Clockmaker

by Anna Caltabiano

  DEDICATION

  To all of us who are sure they were born in the wrong time and place

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Anna Caltabiano

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  THE NORMALLY OVERCROWDED streets of New York were even more packed than usual that day. Everyone was pushing and straining to get the best vantage point. I relentlessly made my way through the throng on Seventh Avenue, past the transfixed people wearing bright green sweatshirts, raising their phones to take photos, while waiting for the annual parade to begin. I was searching the crowd for her.

  One face after another passed by, and still there was no sign of her. It was like looking out upon a sea of interwoven greens—kelly green, chartreuse, lime green, forest—every possible variation was present. I was wearing white, as I had been instructed. I imagined it was to better stand out, so she could spot me. I believed she was to be dressed similarly. It didn’t help my concentration that my mission had me tied up in knots. There was tension around me as people pushed and shoved against one another, doing their best to hold the observation points they had staked out as their own.

  None of that mattered to me in the least. I was not here for some infantile parade, annual tradition or not. This grossly overcrowded setting was merely the meeting point to which I had been directed. I knew I had a purpose, and though this green-tinted mob was less than navigable, I pressed on. My eyes darted, scanning to find that one familiar face. Babies cried, old people complained about the crush, and children alternately screamed and laughed—a cacophony of invasive sounds. Tuning it out completely was no easy trick, and since there was too much overlapping noise to count on sound to guide me, I was forced to trust my sense of sight above all else. So I continued searching the ocean of faces and the sea of green, but to no avail. Although I wanted more than anything to get out of that maddening crowd, I knew that was not an option.

  Redoubling my resolve, I pushed on. The parade’s music and announcer were within three, perhaps four, blocks from what little I could distinguish above the observers’ noise. There was no sign of them yet, just the noise that heralded their approach. The parade seemed to be mocking me, its appearance as elusive as my intended meeting. Why did she want us to meet here?

  As I bolted, trying to dodge around people, the people I bumped hollered after me. I feigned ignorance or deafness and doggedly pursued my search. Systematically examining every form with the proper height, build and hairstyle with no luck made me feel quite discouraged, and so I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and calm my nerves, but I never stopped scanning the crowd.

  After taking several deep breaths, my head felt a bit clearer, so I once again began walking among the observers, determined to find her before the parade was in full swing and further movement became impossible. As I bumped into people who looked at me with disgust, as though I didn’t belong in the crowd, I could only think If you only knew the half of what I’ve been through!

  I pressed onward. I could see no one I recognized until I glanced to the left across Fifth Avenue and suddenly there she was—the woman I’d been trying to find for so long. She was across the street from where I had been not five minutes before. I began running toward her, through jeers and more shouts saying that they were waiting all day for a front-row position.

  Something hit me in the stomach. I stopped short. Looking down, I saw that it was the metal barrier meant to keep the crowds out of the street and out of the way of the parade. There was no way around, and no way over.

  I waved my arms and shouted in her direction, but her eyes were fixed elsewhere, and I realized that no one could have heard me from where she stood, not over the roaring swarm. I was relieved to see her at long last, yet at the same time, now that I’d found her, my apprehension heightened and I yelled louder.

  I kept pressing against the barrier with my weight, but all of a sudden, when I looked up, she had disappeared once more. I felt my heart catch. I had glanced down for only a second—where could she have gone? I began to push harder against the crowd now, hurrying as best I could to a spot where I could hopefully have her within my sights again. It became hard to move against the people as the parade drew closer and the mob continued jockeying for position.

  Suddenly, I spied her again. I was pressed up against the metal barrier, and across the street, she was too. I smiled and started to shout her name, but the look of utter bewilderment upon her face at that moment was something I had never seen before. What’s the matter with her? The thought had no sooner crossed my mind before I followed her gaze downward and saw a stain of red coloring her shirt.

  I tried my best to get to her. The crowd roared as the parade started on the street. I clambered awkwardly over the barrier, running into the street. No one was looking at me, so entranced was the crowd with the parade. With every step I took, I saw the red stain spread faster and faster. As I got closer I made out a knife sticking out of her stomach and though I thought I would be sick at any moment, I knew there was no time. Everything was happening so fast, but it all looked slow motion to me. Never taking my gaze from her as I ran, I saw her eyes widen; then her natural pale complexion became almost ethereally transparent. It reminded me of how static on a television back in the days of antennas, before cable or satellite, could make ghostly images out of real figures. I extended my hands, trying to will myself to get to her in time, but I knew it was futile. Each second felt like an hour as she literally began to fade right before my eyes.

  She crumpled backward, and the crowd was oblivious to her as she fainted against them. I watched helplessly as she made one brief moment of eye contact with me, that puzzled look still upon her face. I wanted to scream, but my voice was frozen in my throat. She managed a very brief smile, as though to let me know it was somehow going to be all right—I could almost hear her tell me that I must find a way to go on. And then she disintegrated into mere specks of dust before she hit the ground. Still, no one around her had taken notice, all eyes on the approaching parade. It was as if she had never existed. I knew I couldn’t have possibly heard the dull clatter of the blade hitting the sidewalk, but I swear I did. It was coupled with a piercing screech that I at first could not identify, until I realized it was my own voice. I stood frozen in my tracks, terror flowing from my open mouth, horrified by what I had just seen.

  “Come now, miss, it can’t be that bad.” A jolly, overweight policeman smiled as he took my arm.

  I hadn’t realized that I’d frozen in the middle of the street.

  “I know it’s just the high school bands leading the way, but they’re trying their best to sound good, y’know.” He tipped his hat at me. He walked me toward another officer, who stepped aside to let us through a gap in the barricade. The jolly officer winked before he walked off, having escorted me to what he thought was the safety of the sidewalk.

  I stood there in stark disbelief, in the same spot where she had just dematerializ
ed. I somehow found the presence of mind to find the glittering knife lying near the gutter. With all eyes upon the parade and not me, I picked it up, thinking to slide it into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. Maybe it would provide some clues. I just couldn’t leave it there for someone else to find.

  It all felt so surreal. I stood there in the mass of bodies feeling only one thing—the brutal cold of the knife blade in my hand, still slick with blood.

  ONE

  THE DAY BEFORE

  MY FINGERS FUMBLED with the keys for a few seconds before I managed to unlock the door. I propped it open with my hip, clutching at two large grocery bags.

  “Good God,” I muttered as I struggled to get the heavy, handleless paper bags through the door.

  The more eco-friendly Manhattan became, the more of a pain it was. Don’t get me wrong; I thought going green was a very admirable thing, but there was such a thing as too green.

  I shuddered as I recalled the look the cashier had given me when I told him I had forgotten to bring my reusable cloth bag. He glowered, looking down at me past his fleshy eyelids. His condescending stare immediately brought back memories of Christine—a girl I had known a long, long time ago.

  As beautiful as Christine looked, with her Southern-belle golden tendrils of hair framing her dainty face and azure eyes, when it came to dirty looks she seemed to have mastered every variation. Last summer—or a little bit more than a century ago, since that was practically the same thing to me now—Christine had believed that I was stealing her future husband away from her. Henley. Oh, Henley. That summer I had received far more than my fair share of her scowls. But it was worth it. I just couldn’t think of it now. It hurt too much.

  There were still memories to chuckle over. I walked to the kitchen and set the bags down on the countertop. In the end, the man Christine saw as essentially her fiancé had married her sister. My smile dissolved into a long sigh as I remembered Eliza.

  If Christine was one of the most unpleasant people I had ever had the misfortune of meeting, Eliza had to be one of the best. She was unassuming and didn’t have lofty expectations about life. She wasn’t resentful that she wasn’t as pretty as her sister. She wasn’t bitter that a sickness in her childhood had left her blind. Eliza was content merely with her devout thoughts. She found God in everything, and she believed in a greater plan that he created for all of us. . . .

  All of us except me, I reminded myself.

  Eliza believed in heaven—a heaven that would take all good people.

  I thought back to a time long ago, a time that felt both foreign and familiar. I remembered walking into Eliza’s room to see her kneeling in reverent prayer. When she had finished, she told me something that had stuck in my mind ever since.

  “I’ll see you in heaven someday, I know it. It doesn’t matter whether you believe, you see,” she had said. “God loves you whether you believe or not.”

  In that moment, hearing Eliza’s devotion, I had wondered whether that might be the case. Was there someone out there looking out for me? Was there really a greater plan that we all fit into?

  I had desperately wished for that. I had wished that I wouldn’t always be as lonely as I felt, and Eliza’s words only fueled that dream. Maybe there really was a greater plan in which I just needed to trust. Maybe there was a reason for all the strangeness in my life.

  But I knew now that wasn’t the case. Eliza might be in a place she called heaven, but I would not be joining her. She hadn’t known everything.

  She hadn’t known I wasn’t like her.

  She hadn’t known I wasn’t meant to be there.

  She hadn’t known that I wasn’t human.

  I slumped against the countertop, feeling the cool tiles against my palms. She hadn’t known that I would never die. Although Eliza has now been dead for almost a century, I was immortal.

  “Miss Hatfield?” I called out in the empty kitchen. I quickly corrected myself, remembering that she would sometimes refuse to answer if I didn’t call her by her first name. “Rebecca? I’m home with the groceries.”

  A silent house responded.

  Realizing that Miss Hatfield was out again, I put away the groceries leisurely, all the while wondering what I would do to occupy myself till she returned. My body seemed to answer my question for me when I found myself staring at my keys on the counter again. Next to them was a simple ring with a blue stone set in the middle of it.

  I was surprised. Not because I had never seen the ring before—no, it was a ring I wore often, practically every day—but because I thought I had put it away. It had been a gift from someone a long time ago. Someone I wanted to remember and someone who wanted to be remembered. Henley.

  Shaking my head, I put it on and grabbed my keys again. I knew I had to get out of the house. It was as if I couldn’t think clearly while inside.

  Miss Hatfield’s house certainly wasn’t unpleasant. It looked like a normal New York brownstone on the outside. Perhaps a bit run-down, with cracks leading up the cement steps to the worn-out front door, but it looked like all the other houses in the neighborhood.

  Maybe that was the reason I hadn’t suspected anything when I had first met Miss Hatfield. The house seemed like an ordinary house, and she seemed like an ordinary woman.

  The year was 1954 when I first met Miss Hatfield. I was eleven years old and everyone called me by a different name from the one I used now—Cynthia. Perhaps I was gullible, being so young. Perhaps Miss Hatfield had perfected her lies. . . . Whatever the case, I accepted when Miss Hatfield invited me for lemonade in her house. Agreeing to that changed everything.

  Once she had me inside the house, Miss Hatfield adjusted a large golden clock she had hung on the wall and snuck the last drop of an odd clear liquid into my drink. I noticed her doing these things with great curiosity—even a bit of suspicion—but, not wanting to be an ungrateful guest, Cynthia—I—played along. Little did I know that by turning the hands of the clock, Miss Hatfield had advanced time, aging me in my mortal body, before putting a drop of the Fountain of Youth’s waters into my drink, making me immortal.

  I didn’t find out until I looked into a mirror. I laughed to myself now as I remembered how I had at first believed that Miss Hatfield had somehow put me in another person’s body. The real answer of time travel and immortality seemed as silly as body swapping, but in that moment, I was terrified.

  Bit by bit, Miss Hatfield explained to me how I could never go home again. My parents wouldn’t believe that this mature body was now me, and I wouldn’t be able to stay in one time period for long either. She explained how I was now a visitor in all time periods. I didn’t have a time or place in which I belonged.

  When she had first explained it all to me, I felt like my head was going to implode. I still felt like that sometimes, but I was slowly getting accustomed to it—well, as accustomed as one can get to never aging.

  I opened the front door for the third time that day. I was greeted by the same ruckus of the streets as that morning. The cars honked, and the people, huddled in spring coats, pushed past. There seemed to be more people than usual. Everyone went about their lives, choosing to ignore everyone else, and they were happy.

  How many couples would I see today? Thankfully, Valentine’s Day had come and gone, but I still spotted at least three couples on the opposite side of the street.

  I looked closer at the pair nearest to me. A tall man in a gray coat with a blond woman on his arm, throwing her head back as she laughed at something the man must have said. They were walking away from me. Arm in arm. Hands entwined. Steps in sync.

  I shook myself out of it and started down the street. Police officers were helping put up metal bleachers to close sections of the street. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade was tomorrow—of course! That also accounted for the extra people who had seemed to descend upon the city out of nowhere.

  I let myself blend into the crowd as Miss Hatfield had taught me. Act as they do. Walk as they do. Feel as they
do, and you become them. I didn’t pause. It was just like being in a play. I was merely acting different parts, but somehow that made me feel less alone. For once it was as if I knew what was expected of me, and what I had to do. The half hour walk was a familiar one, and the cold spring air made me walk all the faster. I passed St. Paul’s Chapel at a brisk pace, dodging the tourists.

  The concrete gave way to what looked like a small park in the city. Surrounded by trees as it was, you wouldn’t know it was the New York City Marble Cemetery until you entered it. There was only one path through, as if those who built it didn’t want people lingering and loitering about, but I knew my way well.

  I didn’t even have to count the rows of headstones to know where to turn. I hadn’t memorized it. It was instinctive.

  At last, finding the large gravestone with its marble slightly worn away, I let myself fall to my knees. My head hung low. I was unable to bring my hands up to cradle it.

  I knew the words on the tombstone by heart. Henley A. Beauford, they read. Innovative Businessman & Loving Husband.

  My fingers found the ring I wore on my left hand and fiddled with it, turning it quickly three revolutions.

  It felt as if it hadn’t been that long ago. A few months, perhaps? But in regular, mortal time it was almost a century ago that I had met Henley.

  I let my fingers come up to trace his name. I felt I had known everything there was to know about this man when I fell in love with him, but I still found there were little, trivial things I knew nothing about. Like his middle name. What did the “A” stand for? I hadn’t thought to ask him.

  I turned to the tombstone beside his. Eliza P. Beauford, Loving Wife & Daughter. I smiled because Eliza would have known those things about her husband. She would have taken good care of him, too.

  If there was a heaven, I wondered if they were both watching. Did they forgive me for keeping so much from them? Did Henley forgive me for all that I put him through?

  I turned away from the graves and looked around. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. All I saw were trees around me, and all I heard was the wind.