What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower: Being An Adventure Of Your Own Choosing

by Margaret Killjoy

“The gates to Hak’kal are just around the corner,” she says. “I’m not getting close. Good luck. And if you tell them about what we’re doing up above, in your clock tower, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

  Go to Forty.

  Thirty-One

  Gu’dal tells you where you’re going and you set out, reasonably sure of your direction. You’ve only been in the city for about a year, but the two towers aren’t far out of the area you know well.

  The moon peeks through clouds above you, shining gibbous and pale. A few stars are out, calming you. What a horror it would be to live underground, you think, to spend your days without the heavens above.

  Your mind wanders as the two of you walk in silence down the empty boulevards of your adopted home. You think about England, a land that is likely to be forever behind you, a land you honestly don’t miss. And you think about your elder brother, whose footsteps you followed by moving to France. Then you think of him, deported to French Guinea, doomed to spend the rest of his life in the prison colony, and your mood turns sour. Perhaps there is something to this talk of revolution, you decide.

  But your thoughts are soon interrupted.

  “Police!” Gu’dal calls out, dragging you into the shadows of a nearby alley. As soon as you are off the street, she upturns a trash can and holds it up to you. “Put it on! Hurry!”

  Before you have time to question to the sanity or hygienety of such an action, you obey. It’s a tight fit, but you’re able to sit on the ground, completely covered. Soon you hear several sets of boot steps approach. A high-pitched voice calls out in a language you don’t understand and the police—as you assume them to be—begin to search the alley. You hold your breath as they come within inches of discovering you. And while you’ve committed no crime, being discovered under a trash can in an alley at this hour—with a goblin for a companion no less—would certainly be uncomfortable.

  But the gendarmes don’t find you, and a few minutes after their footsteps recede you uncover yourself and stand.

  By some miracle, you smell no worse than you did when you started, and in no time at all you find yourself at the door to the first clock tower on your list.

  Go to Thirty-Three.

  Thirty-Two

  “Hak’kal?” The city’s name is guttural, like the sound of someone about to spit, or like something the Dutch would say. “It’s the gnome’s cultural center, to hear them tell of it. It’s an impressive place; all kinds of towers spiring from the floor like stalagmites, and there’s a huge university where no goblin may study. It’s a city, a bit like the ones you’ve got up there. You’ve got to talk to ’em, you’ve got to tell them to let us goblins free. We can’t work like this forever. Every generation is getting more and more used to slavery. It’s just not right. Please.” Gu’dal looks up at you, perhaps on the verge of tears.

  “Alright,” you say, “I’ll do what I can. I’ll try to talk the gnomes into letting you go.” As soon as you say it aloud, you realize that you mean it. Sure, the goblins are strange and feisty and dangerous. But so are most of your friends. It won’t do to have them stay enslaved.

  “Well,” Gu’dal says, “the gates to Hak’kal are just around the next corner. When I tell you good luck, I mean it. They’re a deceitful bunch. I’ve no doubt they’ll try to win you over to their side. We goblins have a saying, ‘You can tell a goblin doesn’t like you when they’ve stuck a knife in you. You can tell a gnome doesn’t like you when they’re offering you wine.’”

  Gu’dal thinks for a moment, then continues. “Actually, that’s kind of a racist saying. There are some good gnomes. It’s just that good gnomes tend to wind up dead, at least in Hak’kal.”

  Go to Forty.

  Thirty-Three

  The first clock tower on your list is squat and old, the stonework tarnished the color of smog, the clock face a mere ten meters above the cobbles. The door at the base is of iron-banded oak, and a padlock of thick steel holds it shut.

  Before you’ve the chance to despair, Gu’dal removes a set of lock picks from a place of concealment in her hat and begins to work at the lock with the manual dexterity and finesse you’ve seen exhibited only by thieves, contraptors, and clowns. (Although most of those you’ve met in one of those categories might easily be lumped into the other two as well!)

  While you keep watch in the pre-dawn fog, Gu’dal sets the wards into place, and the door opens before panic has a chance to overcome your slightly addled mind. You slip into the darkness beyond and find your way up the circular staircase until you reach the dimly-lit belfry.

  The scene inside is similar to the one you have so recently left: workgoblins of all manner and of every shade of green are working at a ponderous speed to contrapt some device. But what stands out to you, aside from a certain solemnity, is the human gentleman of very advanced years who appears to be guiding them.

  It is this man who approaches you—or rather, approaches Gu’dal. He hobbles over, making heavy use of his cane, and begins to converse with Gu’dal in a not-unpleasant tongue.

  “Pardon me, sir,” you interject, as the fellow looks remarkably English.

  The man looks at you, his face contorted to mimic the look of a frightened dog that had been recently jabbed with the point of a cane.

  Gu’dal, in turn, looks at you in obvious annoyance and pulls you aside for a moment’s conference. “Mr. Babbage was a prisoner in Hak’kal for a decade before we effected his release. His taskmaster was an Englishman. I would leave the conversation to me.”

  Thusly chastised, you stand a bit away for the rest of the brief encounter. You see a wild animal buried under the gentleman’s eyes, but Gu’dal manages her business and shortly you are out the door towards the next clock tower.

  Half done, you are thinking, and not a bad bit of work. “The hero of goblinkind,” they said, and you’ve never heard of a hero who pays for his or her own drinks.

  But as your footsteps lighten at the prospect of goblin-financed hedonism, a patrol of policemen stop your path.

  “Arrêter-vous!” they say.

  You look up frightened, and what you presume to be a gnome steps out between the legs of two cops. “You’ve been tricked, human, and we’ve been tailing you. The goblin you escort is a wanted revolutionist, a terrorist. If she and her friends would have their way, this city and mine would fall into ruin and anarchy. Whatever she may have told you, she can’t be trusted.”

  To turn Gu’dal over to the gendarmes, go to Forty-Two.

  To fight, go to Forty-Seven.

  To try to appeal to the human police officers, go to Fifty-Three.

  Thirty-Four

  “No thank you,” you say, “I think my place is here.” You pointedly avoid mention of how obviously garish their clothes are or how clearly backwards they are for believing the gibberish you’ve been spouting.

  The pair shrugs in unison and walk away.

  “You fighting or not, British man?”

  You turn around to find A’gog hopping up and down, his cane pressed into the cave floor, his long ears flapping so that he looks curiously like a green, talking rabbit tied to a stick. In fact, the image is so strange that you begin to giggle—quite rudely—at the sight.

  A’gog bounces away, and the horde leaves the cavern. Somewhere, a great creak and moan of machinery shudders in the walls and you are left in total darkness, quite alone, not even a sound to keep you company.

  You sit down on the warm stone floor, remove a flask from your vest pocket, and sip. Three long sips later, it’s drained, and you lie down—quite logically, you feel—to sleep.

  You do not even dream. And when you’re roused by a pale, rude child wearing a diver’s helmet and wielding a frighteningly complex rifle, you decide to take your lack of dreams as evidence that you are, indeed, dreaming this whole mad adventure. Thusly, you ignore the child.

  Until he jabs you in the neck with the barrel of his gun.

  “Bugger off,” you say.

  “G
et up.”

  “I don’t feel like it,” you tell him, and pull your bowler down over your eyes, resuming a supine position.

  “I will kill you, human.”

  “You’re a human too,” you say, growing ever more irritable. What’s more, your head is pounding and your throat is quite dry.

  “Get up!” The gnome bellows this in a voice deeper than any child’s, deeper than any grown man’s. It seems to shake the whole cavern, and for a moment you fear a cave-in. Then, when you realize you’re almost never this hung over in dreams, you fear the rifle pointed into your throat.

  “I’m sorry,” you say, rising to a sitting position, “I had thought I was dreaming.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I suppose you’re a gnome, then?”

  The child—correct that, gnome—in a diver’s helmet nods.

  “Well your whole war is foolishness. It’s simply nonsensical.”

  “How is that?” the gnome asks, forcing you at gunpoint to stand and begin to leave the cavern.

  More gnomes—in their absurd helmets—join you as you are marched down the hallway and you launch into your oratory. It is perhaps the finest speech of your life, using logical and emotional appeals that would bring tears to the eyes of even the most evil of humans. You begin at the source of all conflict—the lack of compassion and cooperation that is a plague upon sentience—and work your way to the specifics—or what you can muster, which is very little—of the present conflict between gnomes and goblins.

  The guards laugh, and soon one runs off and returns with a second band, so they too can hear you and be amused.

  They speak amongst themselves in a language you can’t understand, and you’re led into an underground zoo, a terrible menagerie full of creatures that, like you, can only suffer if denied sunlight.

  A cage is opened, and you’re thrown in. The only other occupant is a pile of bones and the dry-rotted garb of a mime.

  In addition to the mighty lion, the fearsome golden eagle, and the ponderous sloth, there are cages holding creatures you’ve never set eyes upon, many of which walk upright and wear clothing. But none speak to you.

  You scour your cage for a way out, to no avail. You scream, just once, a catharsis that rattles the cages and wakes all the creatures sleeping in the place, and then you sit down, once again, to drink yourself into a stupor.

  At some point, a guard comes and makes your position clear. You are to be displayed as a pacifist, the most rare and least capable of nature’s creatures. You will be well fed, cared for, and drugged at your wish. But only as long as you continue to orate.

  It’s up to you, dear reader, how you spend the rest of your time in that terrible cage, a league beneath the surface of the earth. Will you play their jester and amuse them, eating fine steaks and drinking absinthe? Or will you starve yourself out of pride? Will you go mad? Madder than you are? Or will you adapt, somehow, and attempt to make company with the few gnomes who visit the dusty, cruel cave that holds you?

  No matter what you choose, you have reached

  The End

  Thirty-Five

  “So, do you actually have a plan? Or are you just going to charge at the city gates, me swinging my cane?” you ask.

  “I’ve got some leverage I’ve been thinking about,” he responds.

  “Good enough for me,” you say. “Brandy?”

  You pull a flask from your boot and the two of you make short work of it. Your vision adequately blurred, your movements pleasantly fluid, and your brain somewhere taking a nap, the two of you pull open the steel gates and work your way through narrow service tunnels.

  You crawl on your hands and knees, until A’gog convinces you to stand up. It turns out that the ceiling is actually above your head, despite what your drunken mind had convinced you.

  Eventually, you find your way to an underground menagerie, a bizarre zoo filled with sad creatures.

  “Here’s the plan,” A’gog explains. “We set the lion loose, and wait for someone to come by. Then, while they’re busy fighting the lion, we steal their keys or take them hostage or do something else that seems clever like make a gnome-suit from their skin.”

  “Of course,” you say, because there isn’t too much else that one could say to such a proposition. “Just one question. Why won’t the lion eat us if we set it free?”

  “Aren’t you British?” A’gog asks.

  “Well, by birth, though certainly not by allegiance.”

  “Can’t you Brits stare lions into submission? I thought it was part of, you know, your deal.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well you climb up onto that one,” A’gog points at an empty cage that’s decorated like an 18th century French bedroom, “and I’ll just ride the lion. Lions don’t eat goblins.”

  His logic impeccable in your altered state, you clamber up the cage after only three failed attempts. A’gog enters the lion cage and mounts the beast as though it were a horse (or, for size comparison, an elephant). And you set about to wait.

  It’s not long—well, maybe it’s long, but you’re drunk so you don’t really know—before a gaggle of gnomish children wander into the zoo.

  “Now,” A’gog yells, and bursts out of the cage, barreling down on the hapless kids.

  To jump down into the midst of your foes, cane swinging, go to Forty-Five.

  To argue that the gnomes are only children, and should not be slain or even injured, go to Fifty-One.

  Thirty-Six

  “I think what we need right now is a good rabble-rousing. A speech. That’ll test the waters, and we’ll find out soon enough what the kabouters are made of.”

  “We’re made of carbon, same as a human.”

  “It’s a metaphor.”

  “No, a metaphor is when you say one thing is another. Like ‘kabouters muscles are mushrooms and their brains are nightmares.’”

  “What?”

  “I’m not certain. I think we are both speaking the same language, but yet we are not speaking the same language, yes?”

  “Well, my name is Gregory,” you say, and stick out your hand.

  “And mine is Sergei,” he says.

  Russian indeed. Quite curious.

  “Now, Gregory, let us go into Underburg—as you no doubt have heard it called—and I will gather up everyone who will listen at the… the best word is ‘church.’ And then you will be disappointed when no one joins your glorious revolution but me and one or two of my friends.”

  You hand A’gog the light, and begin to descend the ladder. A’gog caps the lighter and joins you. You climb in darkness.

  You count one hundred rungs or so before you are too distracted by the creepy, echoing shrieks that bounce throughout the darkness about you. It seems forever before your foot touches the floor. You stand and stretch to your full height, your bones creaking, your muscles sore, and you’ve a bit of a headache coming on. Then A’gog’s foot is on your head, then his whole weight, and the two of you drop to the ground.

  “Sorry about that. Thought you was the ground.”

  “I’m not the ground,” you say.

  “Well I know that now.”

  “Mind striking a flame?” you ask, as you get to your feet.

  “I do mind, matter of fact. It’s a bad idea.”

  “Why? I thought no one here can see? What’ll it matter?”

  “This whole city is pretty flammable, and the kabouters don’t like fire.”

  Suddenly, you hear a screech right next to your head, disorienting you. You realize, of course, that it is just Sergei getting a sense of his surroundings.

  “Follow me,” the kabouter says, and grabs your elbow. You reach back and grab A’gog by the hair, and the three of you traipse off into the invisible city. Well, it’s not really invisible, of course. You just can’t see it. By that standard, you’re invisible too.

  Sergei calls out in a language that sounds like Yankee, if Yankees spoke gibberish,
and you hear at least a dozen voices respond.

  “They’re gathering,” he says.

  “I’ll interpret,” A’gog says to you. “I like interpreting. Only thing I’m good for, really.”

  You try to think of something to raise his spirits, but you really don’t know the first thing about him except that he’s old, he’s a goblin, and he’s small as hell. And that he likes alcohol.

  “Want a sip of gin?” you ask, offering him a flask you had strapped to your shin under the cuff of your pants.

  “Of course,” he says. “Now, what are you going to talk about?”

  “Oh, that.”

  To give a speech about how cruel the gnomes are for how they treat the kabouters, about how oppressed the members of the middle class are, go toFifty-Four.

  To instead appeal to them as powerful folks who can lay their privilege on the line to aid the poor goblins, go to Fifty.

  Thirty-Seven

  “You know, I’ve had a really great evening, all told, and have learned quite so much, but I’m afraid it’s getting quite early and a gentleman must have his rest, you see.”

  A’gog looks at you, and nods. “Coward, then. Fair enough. I suppose it’s not your fight, now is it? I suppose you can live quite happily on the surface of the world, sunlight on your face, free from the government of your birth but not the despots of your adopted country, no reason to be bothered by the agony that we slaves suffer right beneath your feet. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Quite right,” you say, “I’m so glad you understand! Now, if you could be so kind as to direct me back to my tower? I quite look forward to sleeping.”

  But rather than answer you, A’gog pries the steel doors open a crack and disappears through.

  You leave him to his fate and count on your sense of direction to lead you home.

  Eight hours later, at the edge of desperation, you stumble up the stairs to your tower, trigger the secret door, and collapse on the floor of the tower’s entryway. The door slams shut behind you, and you pass out, sober and exhausted.