Destroyer of Worlds

by Daniel G. Keohane

  Sam followed her gaze. Of course, what else? On the kitchen wall beside the phone, one of the few adornments too big to bother storing away, a glass-framed painting of a pasture, impressionistic rendering of a cow grazing atop the first of many fading hills. The image was colorful, though the years had faded it—originally painted eighty years ago, according to Corey, the self-proclaimed art expert currently wandering around the woods. He said it was only a reproduction, which was how they could afford it, but nearly as old as the original. At the moment, it was bathed in sunlight pouring from the picture window facing the back deck and woods beyond.

  Sam tried to see what it was about the sparse painting that so absorbed her daughter every time she sat at the table. Always in that seat, night or day; no one else could take her seat.

  “Mom,” Abby said, blinking back to reality, “do you think Moomoo is lonely?” While she waited for an answer, Abby lifted the sandwich and took a bite. Sam gave the lone cow a prolonged gaze, then shrugged.

  “Maybe, but he looks happy enough.”

  “I’d be low-ly,” she said through a mouthful of peanut butter.

  Sam touched the girl’s head before returning to the counter, ostensibly to clean the knife and jelly spoon in the sink; slowly breathed in the roses; let her gaze linger on the green leaves, red petals. Smells and colors blended in her “poet’s mind,” a term her mother once used for her unique way of seeing the world. Red—that of roses; subtle smooth petals giving warmth, love, not the bright red of Cayenne pepper or valentines. That pepper-hot red was spicy, stressful. Yellow was frightening, though she never understood why, regardless of how often Doctor Reilly had tried to dig into those days gone by. Green was giving, life.

  Outside, tired wooden footsteps ascended the porch.

  “Daddy’s back!”

  Thank God, Sam thought and, as usual, cursed the relief at seeing her husband rise past the railing, knowing he was close again. Doctor Reilly had once accused her of being addicted to Corey, to his presence. No, that wasn’t the word. Dependant.

  Was that so bad?

  Sandwich forgotten, Abby watched her father through the thin curtains at the edge of the picture window. Last weekend, Corey had pushed the table against the wall for a better view of the woods. There were only the three of them, after all. Just three. Her daughter moved away from the window and opened the door, ran outside. In her excitement, she hadn’t noticed the large, black and white wasp on the screen door. It flew over her head. Sam was certain it would land and sting Abby in retaliation but it disappeared beyond the railing. She would need to look under the porch later, see if there was a nest. Abby wasn’t allergic; she’d been stung last year at preschool with no bad effect; but this wasp had been a bit too big for Sam’s liking. Probably every insect out here in the woods of northern Worcester County would be like that. Big, intimidating.

  She didn’t like wasps, or any other stinging creature.

  Standing by the door, she tried to catch a whiff of color, but was too far from the vase. Instead, Samantha followed her daughter outside to see what their hunter-gatherer had discovered. He held out something small in his hand to Abby, who stared at it with wonder as if it was a diamond. Probably another Big Bug.

  IV

  Corey spent the rest of the day making a dent in Samantha’s Hundred Things list, clearing away mountain laurel on the southern end of the yard with his newly bought chainsaw. That had been fun. Hacking and slashing was going to be one of the perks of living out here. After tucking the various implements of destruction back under the porch, he wandered into the basement. The room was refreshingly cool, drying the grime and sweat on his body. Before jumping into the shower, he wanted to find the clock.

  The house's foundation was built mostly above ground—water table too high, so sayeth the building inspector—with the only windows facing under the back porch. He flipped on the lights. The basement was cluttered with everything they’d trucked in from storage, boxes scattered across the floor with no real organization.

  The key was upstairs on the sill above the kitchen sink. Corey had given Sam an abbreviated version of his adventure—had to give some explanation for why his palm now had a key-shaped dent. But he kept the story light, not wanting to scare Abby too badly. Sam’s face had paled, then tightened. As he’d expected, she insisted Corey stay away from there. No objection from him. More importantly, they reiterated this to Abby as she turned the key over in her hand. Their daughter nodded absently; the concept of wandering into any dark, scary woods was the furthest thing from her mind, anyway.

  Corey closed the box labeled Misc Knick-Knacks and shoved it aside, fairly certain he’d packed the clock in one of the boxes marked with a Misc. On the second try he found it, wrapped in an old quilt his mother had given them the first year they were married. No sooner did he have it out than Corey wondered why he’d been so eager to find it. The base was a foot and a half wide, and the clock rose an equivalent height. On one side of the base was the clock itself. Standing on the opposite end, arms outstretched as if presenting the clock’s round face to the world, the blue boy. The only truly-blue feature was the figure’s baggy blue pants, but the name had been bestowed by some long dead relative. The boy wore a white peasant shirt over bright pink skin more fitting to a lawn flamingo than a human. The face was the most disconcerting, to Corey at least, caught halfway between a laugh and a sneeze. Maybe a scream. Looking at it now with adult eyes… no, definitely a sneeze.

  The clock itself was a gaudy piece of work, at its core wood but with polished iron accents at the corners and painted bright gold. Much of its sheen had been retained over the years, probably because it spent most of its life stowed away, out of sight. This was an ornament which never took much of a place in his childhood home. Mostly it lived a useless life on the shelf of his parents’ closet. The face of the clock, with its delicate Roman numerals, was pleasant enough to look at, its round glass intact except for a hairline crack near the six. The minute-hand was bent a little. Corey turned the adjusting knob in the back. It moved freely past the other hands. It would work, if the key fit. Which, of course, it wouldn’t. The odds were a million to one against it.

  He frowned. As a child, on those rare occasions he’d take it down from his father’s shelf, the thing was uncomfortable to look at and touch. Still was, for reasons he could never work out, except that it was an ugly, strange thing. Maybe someone in the past had thrown away the original key as an excuse to squirrel it away. Truth was, down the Union line, everyone probably hated it but never had the heart to toss it in the trash.

  He privately hoped the key wouldn’t fit as he tromped upstairs, leaving his saw-dusted work boots on the top step before emerging into the hallway with the clock tucked under one arm. It wasn’t something that blended well into a room. But it had survived all these years to become the Union family’s most cherished, or at least honored, heirloom. For all Corey knew, it was also the family’s most honored joke.

  Sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, Abby didn’t look up from the television when he passed. Can’t interrupt the cartoons. As long as her TV time didn’t get out of hand, they let her set her own schedule. As long as it was the Cartoon channel, not CNN. Corey had used the parental control on the remote to block any news channel. His daughter didn’t need to hear about other people’s misery. Well, none of them needed to hear it. Better to let stupid mindless cartoons fill your head than real monsters. Corey pushed these thoughts aside. He wasn’t going to ruin the day.

  Samantha was in the kitchen pressing thick burger patties onto a plate for a late barbeque. He set the clock in the center of the table and walked to the sill above the sink. Sam flipped the last patty between her hands and stared back over her shoulder. “I forgot how ugly that thing is,” she said, smiling in spite of her words. “We used to have a grandfather clock when I was a kid. It dinged at all hours, every day. It was nice, though. Do you think Blue Boy will do that?” Her brows furrowed i
n mock concern. “Or maybe it’ll just cough and gasp.”

  Corey laughed. “I doubt we’ll find out, but it’s been eating at me all day so let’s find out one way or another so we can tuck the thing back into its box before supper.” He reached past her and scooped up the key

  “You need a shower,” she said.

  He gave her a gentle bite on the neck. “Join me?”

  “Maybe after.”

  He returned to the table and turned the clock around so the back faced him. The pink-skinned boy stared with his screaming sneeze out towards the woods. Corey slipped the key into the hole in the back. “So far so good. Ready?”

  Samantha smiled, dropped the patty onto the plate. It landed with a smack. “Wind and see, Toy Boy.”

  Gently, he twisted. The key turned, just a few clicks. It was stiff, but it was turning. Dust had likely gotten into the housing over the years. Nothing a little oil wouldn’t cure. Three more clicks. The works inside were probably snapping apart. One more click, then the key turned more easily.

  No way, he thought. This could become the first time in generations… Corey continued turning the key, slowly until finally meeting some resistance. No telling how fragile the springs were in there. He stopped.

  And waited.

  The clock began to tick.

  V

  Vanessa

  The crow tilted its head, watching her first with one round eye, then the other, moving with a jerky, nervous motion. Vanessa ran a finger along the smooth handle of the coffee mug, stared back at the bird perched on the railing across the porch from her. Slowly, the crow opened its beak, leaving it open as if frozen in a yawn. Vanessa opened her own mouth, for no other reason than she liked how it looked on her companion.

  An intangible whiff of shadow rushed past them. The crow closed its mouth and flapped off from the table, leaving a small pile of turd on the boards as a parting gift. It sailed out of sight in the opposite direction from where the shadow had passed. Away from the woods.

  She remained in her chair, staring at the vacated spot. The shadow was likely one of the many hawks living in this wooded town, passing between the house and setting sun. How Corey might have interpreted it, had he seen or sensed it racing past, well… he would have given it a far darker origin, an omen or portent to the end of the world. It might have taken on a significant role in his world.

  But he hadn’t seen it. The shadow was for Vanessa alone, and the crow.

  She’d relaxed long enough. Corey had not been in the house long enough to establish many behavioral patterns. She needed to keep close tabs on his actions. Vanessa got up from the chair, a stiff-backed number she’d dragged outside to avoid displacing the wicker furniture already here when she’d moved in. Things pre-established in this house needed to remain as they were. She enjoyed being outside. It was warm, and the bugs didn’t bother her too much.

  She wandered to the railing, flicking the dried turd off the deck with her sandal and leaned forward. The wood felt cool under her bare arms. Last night, so late it was actually this morning, she’d quietly come out and lay naked on the painted boards, enjoyed the cool under her like running water with a million stars above. So many more stars than could ever be seen under the city lights of Worcester.

  This is what it is to be alive, how it feels to be human, she’d thought then, and for a few moments everything was going to be all right. Corey would be OK. His world was not going to end in a few days. The illusion lasted for only a few moments, but it was nice, until she regained some sense and put her clothes back on, moved inside.

  Now Vanessa turned around, leaned back on the railing, thought of the man she swore to protect. Twilight spilled across the woods behind the house like slow running ink. Unpainted toes curled under her sandal straps. She closed her eyes, breathed in the cool summer, and listened the symphony of nature around her.

  Ticking, too, faint like a wristwatch held to the ear, the clock sound floated above and below the thin current of the world, an underscore to everything. Not a true sound, because what Corey had wound was not really a clock, just an illusion, just an empty box, but the ticking… the ticking was there, always, a metaphor become reality in his world and in Vanessa’s simply confirmation that the story had begun.

  The clock would be the instrument of the world’s destruction. Leave it to the old man to choose something so clichéd. The proverbial doomsday clock. But of course, it was Corey who’d chosen it, as unwitting as the choice might have been. The chosen choose the tool for their own destruction… something like that, might have been from Ghostbusters, though.

  Tick, tick, tick…

  She breathed deeply, pulling evening air into her lungs, expanding her chest to hold as much as she could, let it out slowly, fighting the desire to pull more in before the last had been expelled. Deeper, faster, Corey’s clock was ticking. Vanessa wrapped her arms in a slow self-hug. Too much to do. Her role in his doomed world was beginning soon whether she wanted it to or not, and she had to be ready.

  VI

  Corey

  “Good night, Sweetie,” she said, and kissed Abby gently on the forehead. The girl’s eyes were heavy, struggling to stay open. She was probably asleep already. Samantha had let her help today marking the borders for the new garden, holding the small stakes while Sam hammered them in, helping her turn the soil over. Not much would grow this late into summer, but the process was important. Both Abby and Sam loved turning the soil over and digging in with their hands. Outside all day, sun and heat, sometimes stopping to watch Corey from a safe distance as he defoliated the yard with his new toy. Abby would sleep all night, always did after a day outside. She’d adjusted to the new house faster than her parents.

  Sam leaned forward until her lips brushed the girl’s ear, whispered, “Turn the earth over like a secret message; feel its response; speak to it like a friend; learn what lessons it has to teach; renew it with seed. We are all its lovers; we are all its family.”

  She’d written that in her spiral notebook earlier, while Abby gobbled a midday snack in front of the TV and Corey hacked and slashed outside. Samantha had sat on her bed, writing, crossing out, trying a new word, tucking the book back under the mattress—hidden away like a lover, she’d thought absently. Sometimes, on nights like this, with Abby drifting away to dream on her own, Sam would whisper these secret poems, feed her child’s dreams. Share her soul.

  She couldn’t do so with Corey, not share her writing. Even now, as she straightened and checked that the night light was on before closing the bedroom door, Samantha did not understand why this was the case. Afraid Corey might say something, react the wrong way, or not react, confirming for her that these secret words were nothing more than a whim, a pastime of his cute little wife. Nothing deeper. Nothing sacred. He knew she wrote them, knew also she preferred to keep her words, her small pieces of soul, private. She should trust him not to read it, but it felt safer, hiding them away, keep them safe from exposure.

  Doctor Reilly thought it was her way of controlling a part of her life, holding onto a piece of her soul no one else could touch. One of the many reasons Samantha stopped attending their semi-weekly sessions. Reilly had moved from being a helpful confidante, helping her through the miscarriage two years ago, to someone too intent herself on controlling Samantha, how she thought, labeling and categorizing her behavior with a series of whys. Samantha didn’t need to be told why she did anything. Not anymore. She did things because she did things, and she was fine with that. Now, at least. She loved her husband, loved her writing. Maybe she feared the two wouldn’t get along if they ever met and she’d have to choose; feared the choice might be harder than she cared to admit. She found some comfort in the knowledge that they shared the same room.

  The same world, the same woman.

  The bedroom door clicked shut. Sam waited; no sound from inside. Abby was out for the count. When she stepped from the hall, a freshly showered Corey hunkered by the clock in the living room. He stood
when she approached.

  “She asleep?” Arms moving around her, rubbing her back. Sam leaned into him, smelled clean skin. Ivory soap, no cologne, not this late. He hadn’t seemed to mind her suggestion that he take his shower a little earlier, without her.

  “Like a rock,” she said.

  The arms tightened, hands moving down over her rump, squeezing.

  In her ear, Corey whispered, “Think the bugs are bad outside?”

  She shrugged, turned slowly, leaned into him for a heartbeat before stepping forward, taking his hand. He had big hands, palms rough and calloused from the work he’d done today. She led him through the back door onto the back porch. A quick memory of this morning’s wasp returned, but she let it drift away. She’d checked. No sign of a nest. Just a stray, wandering too far from home.

  Abby’s room faced the front of the house, a deliberate maneuver to allow nighttime conversations out here without waking her.

  Samantha’s slippers hissed across the wood, moving to the edge of the porch. Corey’s bare footsteps were quiet but heavy. His arms moved around her again, this time from behind, pulled back against him.

  She whispered, “There are so many stars,” leaning her head back onto his shoulder, letting his hands explore her. “We should have turned off the kitchen light. I’ll bet we can see the Milky Way.”

  He grunted in agreement, hands teasing along her shirt, fingers finding the topmost button. She was wearing an old flannel shirt. She called it her “ratty outside gown.” Buttoned front, sleeves rolled up her thin arms. Corey worked the top button free, then the next. The air was cool against her skin and she liked it, felt her body responding to the air and his body hardening against her back.

  “First clear night since we got here,” he said, voice rough, eager. She pressed her butt against him, felt his arousal growing. He worked the remaining buttons loose with less tenderness. She had removed her bra earlier. His touch through the open shirt was gentle, but insistent.