The Night Clock

by Paul Meloy

  IT WAS SHADY around the side of the building. We walked past the cellar doors, set into a sloping concrete bunker. They were chained and locked with a rusty padlock. There was a pile of dirty aluminium kegs spilled across the path like mines. We went through them and reached an area behind the pub.

  Bix stopped, and his tail went between his legs, and his muzzle curled up into a snarl.

  Sitting on a bench, his back to us, hunched over and shaking like a frame in a jammed projector, was the man in the parka coat.

  Bix let out a sudden, sharp volley of barks and bounded towards the man.

  As he did so, something broke away from the roof of the building above us and soared into the air, sunlit and glittering.

  The man raised his head, still encased within the hood of the parka, and let out a sound. It wasn’t a word, merely a harsh croak, but it had an effect on the creature hovering above the lot.

  It reared up, exposing a gleaming abdomen that shone like a searchlight bulb. At its heart a ball of fire glowed. It was small, the size of a fist, but to look at it hurt my eyes. It wasn’t the brightness that hurt, it was the quality of the light that felt wrong. It felt as if the photons themselves were strange, that they hit the backs of my eyes and crawled into my brain, making the nerves itch and inflame.

  It hung it the air, suspended there on wings that were panes of rippled glass. Its head was unformed, a cone-shaped tuber of softened glass pitted with a ring of dark, pest’s eyes.

  The man croaked again, more loudly, and stood up. He leaned forward, head down, his palms flat on the bench, his arms locked, shaking.

  I shielded my eyes as the creature dipped in the air and flew slowly over our heads. It made a nasty clanking sound, metallic and hollow; it sounded like a sack of cracked iron bells being shaken. And then it took off, tilting and swerving through the air, and disappeared down the alley we had just emerged from. I could hear its wings clattering through the high, overgrown bushes and brambles that choked the side of the alley opposite the sidewall of the pub.

  We followed, leaving the man in the parka standing beneath the sun in that weed-choked yard, and chased the creature back along the alley. As we emerged onto the ground in front of the building, the creature swung in an arc, out across the road and hung in the air, its glass wings moving in slow beats. Its head switched about and then it seemed to focus on something. I remembered that I had left the jar containing Dr Natus in the shade beneath the wall at the edge of the path and my breath caught in my throat. I moved forward but Bix said, “Wait.”

  We could hear voices in the pub garden opposite. We could smell the aroma of a barbecue and hear children laughing.

  The creature above the road dipped towards the jar behind the wall. Its wings gleamed and darted spears of sunlight.

  There was a sudden stillness. I could feel Bix breathing, my leg against his warm flank.

  And then the door to the pub across the road opened and a group of men emerged carrying pool cues. Les was there, and he carried a fire iron taken from the hearth.

  They walked as a group across the road and surrounded the creature as it tried to get to the jar, to either smash it or carry it away. It jabbed at it with the claws that had formed like spines at the ends of its fragile legs.

  And then it sensed that it had company and turned slowly, the blades of its wings humming as their speed increased. The light at its heart beat and fluttered. One of the men shielded his eyes and as he moved, the creature darted at him. He stumbled, his raised forearm taking the hit. He yelled and dropped to his knees, a splatter of blood raining down his shirt.

  The men swung their weapons.

  One of the creature’s wings shattered. Glass crashed to the pavement around the feet of the men as they closed in. They hammered the creature with blows. Les ducked beneath the smooth beam of the thing’s abdomen as it swung towards him, and came up dealing it a heavy blow to the heart. The creature collapsed in the midst of them, the sound of its defeat a sonic peal of ruined blades and edges.

  The men continued to pound it until nothing remained but a wide scattering of ground glass. When they were satisfied the creature was reduced to dust they scuffed the remains into the curb and toed as much of it as they could muster through the grille of a drain.

  The men stood in a huddle and then turned to us.

  Les lifted the hand holding the fire iron.

  “Hi, Bix,” he said.

  “Good work, lads,” Bix said.

  The men grinned. The injured man held his arm against his chest pressing a hand to the gash to stem the blood. He looked pale but smiled back at us.

  “How’s the arm, Andy?” Bix asked.

  “Flesh wound,” Andy said. “It’ll heal.”

  “Before you know it,” Bix said.

  “We’ll be getting back,” Les said. “I’ll see you later, then, Daniel. I’ll call you.”

  I nodded, my left hand resting idly on the fur at the back of Bix’s head.

  The men turned and went back across to the door of the pub. When they opened the door and went inside a huge cheer went up. The stillness broke and I could hear the bright sounds of laughter and children playing again.

  Bix trotted off towards the road. He stopped at the path.

  “See you again soon, Daniel,” he said.

  “Okay, Bix,” I said.

  The dog made to go but then stopped. “Remember Elizabeth,” he said. “Got to keep your friendships up.”

  I’m sure he was smiling as he ran off down the road.

  I SAT AT my desk staring down at the matchbox.

  “Close your eyes, Daniel,” the hermit crab said. I did as I was asked.

  A telephone rang. It was distant, as though coming from a deserted room somewhere else in the hospital, perhaps in one of the boarded up rooms along the corridor. An old bell system: ting-ting, ting-ting; it sounded ghostly, abandoned.

  “Hello,” I said.

  I heard nothing, but the ringing stopped. And then the sound of a door opening, and footsteps coming up the corridor. They stopped outside my office. I opened my eyes.

  A knock at the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Les walked in. He stood in front of my desk. His eyes were red and full of emotion.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  Les stared at a point above my head for a moment and then said, “Restless.”

  I understood.

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  Les smiled at me but his focus was still distant. I don’t think I ever saw him truly return from that place; he had left the hurting part there, I realise, where it was safe.

  “Soon,” he said. “Please.”

  “Of course,” I said. I had found a purpose for my madness and I was as grateful to Les as he was to me.

  “Well, then,” he said.

  “Well, then,” I replied.

  Les turned and walked out of my office.

  LES RETURNED MANY times over the next few months and each time I sent him back to the time he was last at his happiest. He never told me what had happened after that, what had tried to destroy him but I could make guesses. Whoever awaited him there in that sunlit village, in that place of friendship and good company, had been taken from him and Les had felt responsible and broken by guilt.

  And his contribution was his loyalty. In return for what I gave him he and those he had chosen to share that place with him protected it from incursions. I didn’t understand at the time what they were or why they came, but I do now, now I know it was real and not a delusion, that I had powers only time would enhance and reveal.

  But something had been sent to intervene; something dark that fed on despair. The incursions grew; men were lost. Something was rising from the pit in the heart of that old, dead pub and its influence was reaching out beyond the Quay I had created.

  As soon as it had begun, it seemed, my gift was gone.

  TREVENA HAD LISTENED for over two hours. He was a good liste
ner. It was starting to get light outside, just a quiet thinning of the night. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids.

  “More coffee, Philip?” Elizabeth asked.

  Trevena nodded. It was a tacit gesture for Daniel to go on with his story. Trevena wanted to hear it; he could guess some of what was coming. But he still needed to know where he fit in. “Why me?” he wanted to ask, but he waited, because he knew that was where this was all leading and he could be patient.

  “They closed the hospital completely three months later,” Daniel said. “And they moved what remained of us into flats out there.” He pointed out of the small kitchen window; at the estate, at the town, at the whole World. “And they started the ECT and it all stopped. That was what led me to try and kill myself. Despair, Phil. Black, rotten despair. It’s what it wants. That’s why it’s targeted you. Because you’re good at what you do and you give hope where there should be none. The darkness that wants to destroy, to putrefy the dreams of desperate men, it hates people like you. Do you have faith?”

  Trevena shrugged. “Not recently,” he said.

  Daniel said, “That’s exactly what it wants to achieve. If it destroys your belief, even in yourself and what you set out to do, then it takes you out.”

  “A force, something elemental, is trying to knock me off?”

  “Exactly,” Daniel said.

  “What are they?”

  Daniel paused, looked down at his hands.

  “They’re Autoscopes,” he said.

  “Couple of slices of toast for you, Philip,” said Elizabeth. “You must be hungry.”

  DANIEL STOOD ON the tracks as the line of light quivered in the air. It bisected the towering, blaring metal of the train as it thundered in temporary stasis.

  Daniel squinted, tried to discern what lay beyond. He saw movement. Something was reaching out towards him. It was an invitation, he realised. An offer of escape.

  Not knowing where it might lead, but hoping, truly hoping for the first time in years, Daniel went through the slot.

  There were people there, gathered on a beach beneath a high sun. Daniel blinked. It was a bay they stood upon, a narrow cleft between two shelving outcrops of land. The tide was out and the sand was dark and spongy.

  There were two other men, and a woman. The woman lay on the sand. She was bleeding from a wound in her side. She was pregnant. The others knelt by her and tended to her. She was alive, but barely.

  Daniel looked up at the man who had pulled him through. He was tall, broad shouldered and blond. His age was difficult to ascertain. There was something ancient in his palpable strength, his presence.

  “My name is Index,” he said. “Welcome to the fold, Daniel.”

  Daniel looked at the men gathered around the woman. One of them stroked her hair and wiped his eyes and nose and spoke softly to her. Another man, short and wiry wearing glasses soaked her wound with handfuls of seawater.

  “There are more atoms in a handful of seawater than there are handfuls of water in the ocean,” Index said.

  Daniel nodded. He understood.

  “Come over,” Index said.

  They crossed the sand and joined the group. The men looked up and said welcoming words, and then returned their attention to the woman. The younger of the two had rested both hands on her belly and was speaking, although Daniel couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “In there,” Index said, and pointed to the heavy bulge of the woman’s stomach, “is a very special child.”

  Daniel said nothing, but continued watching their tender ministrations.

  “We have lost a precious member of our group. A young man named Robin Knox. Something took him as we travelled through to this Quay. We can’t lose another.”

  Daniel could smell the ocean as it flung itself against the shore; gusts of salty air blew like sobs amongst them.

  “The baby?” He asked.

  “Yes. Right now she has created a safe place for herself but time is short and she is in grave danger.”

  As if in response, the baby kicked in its mother’s womb. The man scooping water over the woman gasped. “That was a good one,” he said. “Come on, Chloe.”

  “If we teach you, if we show you what you really are, will you go back for her?” Index asked.

  Daniel closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the sea air. He thought of his father, could see his face as clearly as he had as a child. He remembered his father’s words, that day of his birthday. He remembered the warning, but also the hope.

  “Of course,” said Daniel. “Of course I will.”

  Index smiled and put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

  “Who am I? Who am I really?”

  “You’re the missing part of our team,” Index said. “We can’t proceed without you. Not with any hope of success.”

  Daniel looked into Index’s intense blue eyes, saw the lines that ran from their corners; he knew what formed lines on a man’s face. It was not always laughter. He waited, stilled.

  “You’re the hypnopomp, Daniel. You can control Dark Time.”

  “WHAT IS THE true purpose of dreams? I believe they were given to us when we were created as a fulfilment of God’s ultimate gift of life. Were we created of matter to remain Earthbound, however perfect, however rich and varied that existence may have been? What if he wanted to give us even more, an experience beyond essential Laws and mathematics? Here, have it all: here you can fly, run like a deer, create for yourselves beasts and vistas and wonders. Sleep, rest, go beyond and know what it is to be like gods yourselves.

  “And that Dark Time, that flux above the linear, an even bigger reality for us to explore; truly limitless and eternal. A different substance of time flowing in all directions forever replenishing and infinite. A taste of Heaven before the re-creation of all things.”

  Trevena could appreciate this. His dreams had always been vivid, places of symbols and answers, but recently—recently they had become squalid and mystifying; dark, sensual reds and textures, a smell like sun-softened leather, brawls, hot bodies and open thighs. Perplexing sex from which he awoke at the moment of penetration, frustrated and trying to summon back images, trying to perpetuate the narrative. He’d put it down to age. Now he thought he knew different.

  “Daniel,” he said. “I’ve listened to all this, but can you prove any of it? I’ve heard so many things in my time, so much madness and delusion, and somewhere in it all there was always a germ of sense, something to maybe bring them back to. I always believed psychosis was a defence, a guard against total despair. But why Les? If he was your friend, if he believed everything you’re telling me, why did he kill himself?” Trevena felt momentarily defiant. He didn’t feel able to swallow everything Daniel was telling him without a fight, without challenging the story. How could he not, with his experience?

  “Okay,” Daniel said. He reached into his pocket and produced the matchbox.

  Trevena sat back on his stool and raised his eyebrows. “Really?” he said.

  Daniel slid open the drawer. “This is what I’ve been waiting for, Phil. You get to watch. Close your eyes.”

  Trevena shook his head in resignation. “I’ve come this far,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  AT A QUARTER to eleven that morning the nurse looked in on Les. Les was lying on his bed outstretched, his eyes closed. He opened an eye and smiled. Nice girl, that Cherry, he thought. Not for her, this game, though. She looks terrified. He waved and gave her a reassuring thumbs-up. Cherry reciprocated the gesture and asked if he wanted anything. Les shook his head. “I’m fine, love,” he said.

  Cherry withdrew, closing the door behind her.

  Les sighed and rested back on his pillow. He closed his eyes again.

  All morning he had been tormented by a coarse, critical, insistent voice coming from the en suite shower room. He had done his best to ignore it, using techniques he had been taught and listening to his MP3 player but it was almost too much to bear today. He knew what it was. It
was the voice of the thing he had blocked up in his chimney. It was speaking down the pipes. It was reminding him how he had lost his family because he was a nutbag too self-obsessed to see the danger they had been in.

  Les turned on his side, his back to the cubicle. He had closed the door and pushed a towel as far into the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door as it would go but still the voice raged, foul and interrogatory.

  As Les lay there, his eyes shut tight and the voice hectoring him, a narrow line of light opened in the middle of the room. It broadened, to the width of a door and a man stepped through.

  The man cocked his head. He turned and looked at the door to the shower cubicle. He took a single step towards the door and raised a hand, palm outwards.

  He spoke. It was a rebuke, and a binding. The voice stopped. It choked and with it a hollow, tubular sound, like scaffolding poles collapsing.

  The man turned and looked towards the bed.

  “Hello, Daniel,” Les said. “You’re back at last.”

  “Seems like five minutes,” Daniel said. “That’s Dark Time for you.”

  “Indeed. So, one last favour, Dan?”

  “If you think it’s time,” Daniel said.

  Les sat up and opened his arms. Daniel stepped forward and embraced his old friend, his Paladin.

  “I’d do anything for you,” Les said. “I love you, Daniel. With all my heart.”

  Daniel nodded, the soft, dry skin of the old man’s cheek against the flesh of his throat. He stepped back.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” A simple, unadorned affirmation, almost a whisper.

  Daniel closed his eyes.

  “I can stay there now?”

  Daniel smiled. “Yes. Forever.”

  Les put his head in his hands. He was weeping.

  “That thing in the pipes,” Daniel said. “It’s gone back. It’s enraged. It’ll break through. Is there something you need to do?”

  Les looked up. “I have to warn Phil.”

  “Okay. Close your eyes.”