The Ouroboros Lock

by Mark William Chase

  I pondered the implications of this, but found myself just as dumbfounded as Mortimer must have been. The very order of the universe forbade the opening of this device, and yet here it was, fashioned not by a god, but by a mortal hand. A mortal hand indeed. Even as I considered this, I found another sketch buried under myriad notes and schematics: the Hand of Glory, drawn in exact detail to the one I now possessed, but with only a thumb—the fingers having burned away. Behind that sketch was another sketch, this one of the same Hand of Glory, but having a thumb and index finger, and then a third sketch depicting the same Hand of Glory with a thumb, middle finger, and index finger. There was a caption on the third drawing that read, “It moves backwards in time,” followed by the underscored words, “The Hand is the Key!”

  I looked to the Hand of Glory I held—three fingers and a thumb. My body shook with excitement and laughed out loud. But excitement turned to terror when I perceived a faint sound of footsteps and quiet creak of floorboards. The warlock had returned! Whether Mortimer had guessed my schemes or had simply returned of his own accord, I did not know. But no matter. I possessed an instrument that could freeze even a warlock in his tracks!

  The quiet footsteps continued up the stairs, and I held the Hand of Glory above me, touching my other hand to the Evil Eye around my neck.

  “Let all that’s hidden be revealed, let all that’s closed now be unsealed! Let those who guard more deeply sleep, let those who thieve their vigils keep. At the spell of the dead man’s make, dream as the dead for the dead man’s sake!”

  The flames on the hand shot up as though doused with oil and I felt an electric charge rush across my arm. Much to my astonishment, the Ouroboros Lock began to spin. Faster and faster the mechanism spun, until the device became a blur of golden light, roaring with a rush of air and the furious clattering gears. The clicking, ticking, and whirling of the Lock grew louder and louder still, until at last the wailing din permeated all my senses and drowned the world from my view. All too late, I realized the terrible mistake I had made. Rather than bewitching my adversary, the spell had activated the Ouroboros Lock!

  “No!” Mortimer screamed, bursting through the door into his study. “The Hand! Drop the Hand, you cursed fool!”

  The warlock’s voice gave way to silence as all eternity encompassed me. Time and space became meaningless, dimensionality collapsed into a singular point of infinitesimal infinity, and I screamed as I fell through a bottomless Void, the universe itself unwinding around me. Then, scarcely an eye-blink later, every atom in my body came to a sudden, soul-jarring stop.

  I blinked and opened my eyes. The room was dark, but I was no longer in Mortimer’s study. Upon the mantel above a dead fireplace sat the Ouroboros Lock, spinning down as its gears wound to a stop. What had happened?

  Still disoriented, I held out the Hand of Glory to look around and, to my surprise, I saw that the ring finger had crumbled to ash. I heard a noise behind me and whirled around, drawing my Lefaucheux. A man had just entered the room, but I could barely see him in the permeating darkness. At first, I mistook him for another thief, but then I realized where I was. As impossible as it seemed, I was back in Corbin Guissant’s cottage, standing exactly where I had seen the thief at the mantel of the dim fireplace where the Ouroboros Lock had been. Frozen in astonishment, I watched in horror as the man drew his own Lefaucheux—my Lefaucheux—with a quick, confident motion that was all too familiar to me.

  A deafening sound split my skull, and a blinding white filled my senses as the bullet burrowed like fire into the core of my brain. I dropped the Lefaucheux in the fireplace, my lifeless body falling limp to the floor. The white flash faded into the eternal darkness beyond, and I laughed at the once and future doom cursed upon my killer—the doom I had wrought by the Ouroboros Lock on this blackest of blackest nights, last October.

  Part III

  Clotho’s Lock

  or

  The Warlock’s Tale

  They came from the farthest flung cities of the Empire: from Zanzibar, Istanbul, and Bombay, as well as our own city of dreadful night—decadent men and women who fancied themselves privy to one secret society or another. All were trifling louts, connoisseurs of lust and excess whose pitiable claims of mystical lineage would make the even lowest dilettantes of the Great Art scoff with disdain. Yet, it was those same pompous neophytes who often proved the most useful—even such plebeian boors as Lord Voger and his servile hound, Mister Macey.

  Of course, Macey was the only reason that I had come to this ridiculous masquerade. Like me, Macey detested such gatherings, all the while silently tolerating his lord’s perverse eccentricity. In a way, I admired him for that. Any man who could so deeply revile his master and yet remain steadfast in his devotion was either a complete idiot or a cunning adversary worthy of my respect. And Mister Macey was no idiot.

  I placed my hands on the banister and gazed down into the ballroom. Saffron light glimmered from the brass chandelier above, melding with the coal-red glow of the great fireplace and transmuting its luster into a melancholic semblance of twilight. Myriad forms and colors flowed in the tumultuous sea of scarlet light and deepening shadows—ebbing, gyring, and flowing to the haunting melodies of the Confutatis Maledictis from Mozart’s resounding “Requiem in D minor.”

  I drew a deep breath and grinned, savoring the Grand Revel of Our Lady of Shadows. Yet no one could share my smile or perceive the keen exhilaration that I, in my knowledge, so profoundly savored. The face I wore was not my own, but nor was it a mask—for I had transfigured my visage through sorcerous powers, reforming my features into the very likeness of the Green Man. Here I stood, hideous yet maskless, amidst the whirling masquerade, with not one among them being the wiser.

  A gentle hand touched my arm. I turned and saw a lady in a gown as sheer has mist. The full red lips beneath her glittering butterfly mask parted in a thirsty smile that was as seductive as it was inviting. I knew her carnal desire, but my thoughts dwelled on more ambitious matters. What I wanted she could not give; she was of no use to me. I turned from her and continued along the perimeter balcony circling the ballroom, my eyes surveying the indulgent assemblage of gilded guests for the one adversary I had come here to meet.

  Macey’s attire would be black and his mask the very likeness of Death. He was a killer, after all—a brutish assassin who procured whatever treasure his lord demanded by any means. He never questioned and he never failed. I admired him for that as well. Admired, yet hated him with every fiber of my being.

  One week ago, Mister Macey paid a visit to my shop. I knew why he had come, for I had stolen from his master the most extraordinary artifact ever conceived by a mortal mind: the Ouroboros Lock. Fashioned by the master locksmith Avery Guissant in the abyssal depths of his tormented madness, the Lock had been designed with the sole purpose of opening a portal through time. Impossible as this seemed, I had studied its intricate mechanisms and interlocking gears, traced the paradoxical geometry of its unfathomable design, and calculated the conflicting equations governed by no laws of our rational universe. Nevertheless, the Ouroboros Lock did function. Indeed, I had used the device myself, though carelessly and inadvertently, and I considered myself a most fortunate man to have survived the fateful ordeal.

  It all began two years ago, in August of 1864, when the master locksmith Avery Guissant at last completed his masterpiece. He was an artisan of no small renown, and the case of his curious disappearance made at least the third page of most dailies and circulars. His wastrel son, Corbin, inherited everything from Avery, and within half a year he had driven the already-sinking Guissant business into complete bankruptcy.

  For most, that was the end of the story. But for me, that ending marked the beginning, for on the very night of Avery’s disappearance, I was awakened by a knock at the rear door of my shop.

  I quickly dressed in my robe and hurried downstairs, my mind racing as I wondered at who it could possibly be. When I flung open the door, still mutteri
ng curses about the small hour of the night, I found myself gazing down at a quivering, babbling man, his features twisted and deformed. Ordinarily, I would have slammed the door shut on such a miserable wretch, but he was clutching to his chest a severed human hand, covered in drippings of hardened wax. All four fingers had been burned to blackened stubs, but the thumb still bore the wick of a crudely-made candle. I immediately recognized the grisly artifact for what it was—Main-de-Gloire, also known as a Hand of Glory—and judging from its worn condition, it was almost entirely burned out of its power.

  I led the jabbering wretch inside and prepared a potent brew of mind-altering reagents: mandrake root, nightshade, and a toxic extract from the exotic Atelopus toad of French Guiana. After all, no one would miss this pitiable creature that had come to my door, and I had always wanted a thrall that would mindlessly obey my every command—what true Magus of the Great Art did not?

  After he had imbibed my potion, his fevered gibbering become marginally coherent, and I was able to discern the words “lock,” “hand,” and, to my astonishment, the word ouroboros—a word that could not possibly be in the vocabulary of such a plebeian simpleton. I demanded to know more, and he, now rendered my obedient thrall, blurted everything his poriferous brain could remember.

  The tale he told was short, broken, and scarcely comprehensible, yet, between his disjointed babbling, I discerned a wealth of tantalizing clues. Although the wretch was clearly amnesic, he remembered appearing suddenly in a mysterious workshop amidst a brilliant flash of light and terrifying motion. All he had were his clothes, the severed hand, and an ornate dagger with the letter’s “A.C.L.” carved on the hilt, which I found tucked in his belt. He spoke of a device in the workshop, a strange clockwork lock from which he claimed to have “fallen out of.” He kept repeating the word “Ouroboros,” and let slip the names “Macey,” “Voger,” and “Guissant,” which proved invaluable to piecing together of the facts of these strange occurrences.

  Confused, disoriented, and with no memory of anything that had come before, the man stumbled out of the workshop and into the night, somehow finding his way to my shop and residence here in the city. How he knew of me I could not fathom, for I would have recalled if such a deplorable and disfigured creature had ever visited my shop before. I could only surmise that he once heard of me or knew of my reputation, and some fragment of his shattered subconscious compelled him to seek me out in the faint hope that I could restore his memories. Very likely I could have, given time and the proper potions, but unfortunately for him I had far greater need for a mindless thrall.

  I named my thrall Limus, being the Latin word for sludge, and over the following months I labored to piece together the disjointed clues contained within the rambling story he had related. At the center of it all was Avery Guissant.

  Avery was a master locksmith and clockmaker, and he was also known for crafting mechanical and clockwork puzzles that were quite valued by the upper aristocracy. His wife had died some years ago during the cholera plague of 1849, and it was her death that drove him to obsession and madness. I knew Avery from his occasional visits to my shop, typically to purchase some exotic timepiece from China or to peruse my shelves of obscure books and esoteric texts. As the years went by, his interests shifted from matters of science, mechanics, and mathematics to the deeper realms of arcane knowledge, obscure notions of time and space, and the mysteries of those hidden dimensions beyond our own material reality. He purchased over two dozen books from me, both those on display as well as those I kept well out of sight, and placed orders for nearly a dozen more—some completely ridiculous, while others were of legendary repute. One of the more reputable books was the infamous 1826 edition of the Dictionnaire Infernal, which he ordered shortly before his disappearance. Notably, the 1826 edition was the only copy containing the precise instructions for fashioning a genuine Main-de-Gloire.

  This fact, along with Avery’s other apparent interests in time, space, and dimension, gave some hint as to what purpose the Ouroboros Lock served. As a locksmith, Avery Guissant’s interest in Main-de-Gloires was quite reasonable, for properly crafted and ensorcelled, a Hand of Glory could render unconscious all who were within a house and, perhaps more importantly, could open any lock no matter how complex. Most Main-de-Gloires were of dubious fabrication, but the one Limus possessed had been charged with a remarkable profusion of magical virtue. Had Limus been attempting to steal the Ouroboros Lock only to have something go horribly wrong? Was he one of Avery’s assistants, using a Hand of Glory as part of the locksmith’s experiments? Was he Avery himself, twisted and degenerated by the sorcerous energies he had unwittingly unleashed while dabbling with powers far beyond his control? More importantly, if the Ouroboros Lock was so impossibly complex that it could only be opened by a Main-de-Gloire, then what could such a lock possible open to?

  I scoured every text on magic and arcane lore that I possessed for anything that would advance my understanding: the Clavicula Salomonis, Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, even the copy of the Dictionnaire Infernal that Avery had placed on order with me. Avery had also purchased several books by Giordano Bruno and, after fetching my own copies for study, I found myself immediately drawn to his theories on the infinitum of worlds, the mutable geometries of space and time, and the mathematical proof of circular causality independent of the flow of time.

  Time, worlds, space, and causality... I pondered these subjects at great length, considering also the strange tale that Limus had told. Although Limus had not been able to recollect very much, he had described his sudden appearance in Avery’s workshop as having “fallen out of” the Ouroboros Lock amidst a blinding flash of light. As bizarre as this seemed, perhaps the Ouroboros Lock did not secure any kind of physical door, but rather was a gateway through those hidden dimensions of space and time that the writings of Giordano Bruno, Agrippa, and Collin de Plancy faintly hinted.

  Speculation was all well and good, but, in the end, no amount of theorizing would make any real difference. I either had to possess the Lock or surrender myself to the inequity of ignorance. My only error had been to involve myself with Lord Voger and his sycophant, Mister Macey. I did so because Limus had mentioned both of their names in his mindless rambling, and they were at least informed amateurs when it came to matters of the occult. After all, Lord Voger was a collector of the most exotic tastes, and I profited tremendously from his continued patronage. The Ouroboros Lock was a device of just such power, craftsmanship, and rarity that he would go to any lengths to add that singular artifact to his collection. And, as always, Mister Macey would be the one to procure it for him.

  With that in mind, my plan was hatched. I informed Lord Voger of the Ouroboros Lock and its speculated powers, employing a bit of showy cartomancy to “divine” the most favorable night for the larcenous undertaking. Then I waited, and on the moonless October night Macey broke into Corbin Guissant’s house, I sent Limus to swipe the device ahead of him, equipped with the Main-de-Gloire to enter undetected, seize the device, and quickly depart. At the same time, I dispatched a messenger to alert the authorities of the robbery, hoping the constables would arrive in time to catch Macey, letting him—and eventually, Lord Voger—take the fall. I had only one chance to pull off the heist, and I could not afford to fail.

  Yet, despite all my careful planning and precautions, something went awry. Limus never returned from the Guissant family home, the constables did not arrive until the following morning, and Macey successfully delivered the Lock to his master. A few days later, Macey came by my shop to thank me for assisting them in procuring the artifact. He wore an Oculus Malus talisman—fearful, no doubt, that I might place a bewitchment place upon him—and with insolent disdain he presented me with a wax-covered human hand: the Main-de-Gloire! Although I did my best to portray an outward display of affable calm, I was immediacy seized with a dreadful chill.

  Had Macey stumbled upon Limus in the middle of his burglary? Had he interrogated my thrall, killed
him, and made off with not only the Ouroboros Lock but the Main-de-Gloire as well? Had he come to my shop to show me the hand as evidence of my betrayal and to gloat before he put a bullet through my skull?

  But no... the hand was missing only the pinkie and ring finger, whereas Limus’s Hand of Glory had only a thumb. But if the man Macey had encountered and dispatched was another thief with another Hand of Glory, then who was he, from where had he come, and how did he get a Main-de-Gloire? And if Macey had not killed Limus, then where had my thrall gone?

  These questions perplexed me to no end, and when I inspected the Hand of Glory Macey had brought me, the mystery only deepened. The hand could not have been the same one, being that it had two fingers in addition to the thumb. Yet, as I compared it to the sketches I had made of Limus’s Main-de-Gloire, I found that its shape, size, and form were identical to the one Macey had brought me, down to the very crevices of the palm and the patterns of hardened wax.

  As impossible as it seemed, this Hand of Glory was indeed the same as Limus’s, only it was somehow from an earlier time, before it lost the other two fingers, leaving only the thumb. In that moment of rapturous realization, I stood utterly dumbfounded, holding before me unequivocal proof that time travel had been achieved.

  “Wine, sir?” someone asked. “Perhaps a vintage Beaune Clos des Ursules?”

  I blinked, shaking myself from my ruminations and looked at the dour-faced butler. “Yes, of course,” I replied, and took a silver chalice from the tray. I sniffed the wine and smiled, but only took the slightest sip. Far be it from me to inebriate myself this evening.