The Night Clock

by Paul Meloy

  TREVENA STANDS ON the promenade and waits. The girl, Anna, is asleep in his arms. She is a good weight and his arms are tired, but Trevena doesn’t mind. He looks out across the sea. The waters are still, all their temper spent, and the tide is out revealing a dark, drenched beach of level sand. He hears something. The sound of feet on the concrete to his right. Softly padding. He turns.

  The tiger trots up to his side. There is blood beaded on its whiskers like eggs laid by some ghastly gore-fed louse.

  “Is she unharmed?” The tiger asks. There is concern in the voice. Tenderness.

  “She’s fine,” Trevena says. And as he speaks, the girl wakes. She sees the tiger and squeals. Trevena is startled and tries to comfort her, but she struggles and he has to put her down. “It’s okay,” he says, but need not have worried.

  The girl runs to the tiger and throws her arm around it.

  “Bronze John!” she says, her voice muffled in the fur at its throat. She pulls back and looks into its face. “Ugh,” she says, and grabs a handful of her black jumper and wipes the blood from the tiger’s mouth. The tiger grins, its teeth champed together like a lattice behind its manhandled chops.

  Trevena laughs.

  Then he stops, remembering the mirror and what it had shown.

  “The Doc?” He asks.

  Bronze John nods his huge head. “He’ll live,” he says.

  Trevena feels suddenly weak and bends his back, his hands on his knees. He breathes out long and slow. “Thank you,” he says.

  “Thank you,” says Bronze John. “It was your choice.”

  Trevena shook his head. “No. It was no choice. Cade made me do that. He wanted to destroy me.”

  “Yes,” said the tiger. “But he wanted more than just you. His sights were set high. If he could use you to kill Doctor Mocking then he thought he might regain the favour of the Autoscopes.”

  “The Doc? Why?”

  “He is a Firmament Surgeon. And Anna is one of his daughters. Cade took her from her sister’s Quay for leverage.”

  Trevena stands with his hands on his hips and puffs out his cheeks. He looks at the tiger, then at the girl.

  “Are we winning?” he says, eyebrows raised.

  “Almost there,” the tiger says. “Now take that coat off.”

  Trevena is surprised, and then realises he is still wearing the ratty old parka. His face screws up into an expression of disgust. “Oh, mate!” he says, mostly to himself, and uses his fingertips to un-toggle the coat. He drags it off his shoulders and bundles it up in his fists. He steps forward and throws it over the railings and onto the beach.

  He wants to say something ripe, healthily off-colour, to purge him of any remaining feelings of revulsion, but he minds his language for Anna’s sake, and only thinks it.

  “What now?” he asks, but the tiger is ahead of him. Anna is sitting on his back and looks like a doll up there. The tiger is truly massive. A Siberian would look like a kitten next to him.

  Trevena cocks his head. “Have you grown?”

  Bronze John looks him in the eye.

  “Climb on,” he says. “We’ve got to get somewhere and fast.”

  Trevena shrugs and clambers onto the tiger’s back. Anna turns and smiles at him. Trevena smiles back. “Hang on,” she says, and Trevena’s smile slips a bit.

  Bronze John heads off up the promenade, and soon he is running, with Trevena hanging on, bunches of pelt gripped in white fingers, with tears of both terror and elation streaming from his eyes.

  CHLOE STARTED BACK to the cave. She carried the ladder and the rope, which was arduous but she felt determined that day, vital. Her books were in her bag, slung over her shoulder and when she tired, she dragged the ladder behind, liking the rumble it made on the cobbles.

  She reached the meadow and stopped to wipe her face with her hand. As she stood there, something caught her eye. It was movement, a glimpse of something fleet darting from the tree line at the edge of the forest. She squinted, her heart beating a little faster. Her hand dropped to her belt and she pulled out the hatchet.

  Chloe knelt in the long grass at the edge of the meadow and waited. She was aware of how exposed she was. Despite the coolness of the air she felt perspiration spreading beneath her arms. She gripped the hatchet more tightly and tried not to imagine a horde of glass spiders crashing from the undergrowth and pouring across the meadow towards her. She glanced back, wondering what her chances would be of reaching the village at a run if she had to turn and flee.

  But she need not have worried. What emerged from the forest was no monster.

  It came running, its head visible above the grass, a long, feathery tail high and lively, wagging like a huge catkin in a breeze.

  Chloe stood, waited, and watched the dog come to her.

  THERE WAS A stream running through the meadow, its source somewhere high in the mountains ringing the town. Its course took it through a constructed stone gutter that ran through the town. Chloe had noticed it and thought it a pretty thing, bubbling shallow and clear. It was narrow enough to step over.

  From the silt and pebbles at the bottom of the stream something lifted a head, and a long body that ended in a tail equipped with a stinger like a cosh bristling with needle-sharp hooks. It rose from the dirt and used scaled, crocodile claws to paddle itself along the conduit. It swung jaws hinged like a swing bin, spewing water as its head came up, and the spikes that ran along the ridges of its spine, and the hooks on its lashing tail, filled with an electric blue poison like an array of syringes charging in preparation for a hundred lethal injections.

  It lowered its head beneath the water and pushed on upstream.

  THE DOG APPROACHED Chloe, its head up, panting. It stopped a few feet away and sat down. It barked, a soft, cautious woof and sat waiting, head tilted slightly to one side. Chloe smiled. She slid the hatchet back into her belt and held out her hand. The dog got up and came over and sniffed her fingers.

  Chloe fussed it beneath the chin. The dog closed its eyes and wagged its tail.

  “You want a hand with those?” It said.

  Chloe startled. “You what?”

  “Your stuff. I could carry the bag and the rope if you like. Get this done.”

  Not having an experience to the contrary, a talking dog didn’t seem, to Chloe, a particularly odd thing. It felt special, though. A connection, like when she had first touched Babur.

  “Ok,” she said. “How do you want to do this?”

  “Put the rope round my neck and strap the bag on my back and we’re good to go. You’ll have to lug those ladders, though, I don’t want to overdo it.”

  “Right, that’s good of you,” Chloe said.

  “I’m like that,” said the dog.

  Chloe hung the loop of rope over the dog’s head and began strapping the bag onto its back. She buckled it under its narrow but powerful chest.

  As she was working, Chloe felt the dog’s posture change. It tensed and leaned forward. She patted its flank. “There,” and she stood up.

  The dog stood alert, its ears back, nose in the air.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something in the water. It’s coming this way. We should go.”

  “In the stream?”

  “Yes. I can smell it. It smells off.”

  Looking over her shoulder, Chloe gripped one end of the ladder. It was an aluminium extension ladder with steps rather than rungs, and quite light, but it was still unwieldy to drag and she hadn’t expected to be doing this in a hurry.

  “Shall I leave this?” She asked.

  “Better not,” the dog said. “We’ll need it.”

  Chloe braced herself and yanked the ladder into the long grass. The dog trotted ahead, the rope swinging like a lasso and Chloe followed, walking backwards, dragging the ladder. The dog remained alert, sniffing the air.

  They reached the tree line and entered the forest, and as the canopies closed over them something low and fast shot out from the grass to the
ir right and clattered into the ladder, wrenching them from Chloe’s grip and sending her over onto her side. She sprawled against a tree trunk and shouted with surprise.

  She sat up and reached for the hatchet but it was gone from her belt. She looked around and saw it beneath some roots a few feet away. She started to crawl towards it but the thing that had come out of the grass was moving in the trees behind her. She held her breath. Where was the dog?

  “Dog!” She hissed. “Dog!”

  “My name’s Bix,” said Bix. He trotted out from behind a stand of trees, picked up the hatchet in his mouth and brought it over to Chloe. She took it and patted his head. She looked around.

  “Bix. Right. Thanks. What was that thing?”

  “Did you see it?” Bix asked.

  “Not really. It was fast. I don’t think it was a spider. It was sort of flat.”

  “Flat, you say,” said Bix.

  “Yes, you know, like a, like a...

  surfboard

  ironing board

  crocodile

  “And it had a tail, I think, like a...”

  scorpion

  “I think it was a scorpodile,” Chloe said, her face solemn with sudden conviction.

  “Ah,” said Bix. “I knew you’d get there in the end. So, we’re looking for a scorpodile.”

  “I reckon,” said Chloe. And then the undergrowth crashed off to their left and the scorpodile appeared.

  “Shit,” said Chloe.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Bix.

  The scorpodile crawled towards them, its reptile claws digging clods from the moist earth. Its belly dragged on the ground, segmented and muscular, and its tail swung above its back, curled and loaded with poison. Its jaws opened and closed on bulbous joints beneath its eyes, which were located on the sides of its pointed head, and orbited in six deep sockets, three to each side, in a triangular formation, two below and one above.

  Chloe hefted the hatchet. Bix lowered his head and shook off the loop of rope. Then he prowled forward, a low snarl in his throat.

  The scorpodile rushed them. Its jaw swung open and Chloe saw it was filled with row upon row of jagged glass teeth. Its tail arched and the bolus of hooks hung over its head, incandescent with venom.

  Chloe darted left and Bix skipped right. The scorpodile slithered between them, paddling crocodile claws through the mulch. Chloe raised the hatchet and swung it at the creature’s back but the tail lashed and connected with the blade before it could complete its trajectory and bounced it out of the way. A number of barbs had snapped off from the cosh, and electric-blue poison was spitting in furious little arcs from the damaged hollow points.

  Bix snapped and worried at the creature’s head, ducking and bobbing his jaws at the thing’s eyes. The scorpodile twisted and unhinged its mouth, scooping at the air where moments before Bix had been biting. It threw its stinger left and right but each time Chloe and Bix danced out of the way. Chloe was anxious for Bix; he was wary but seemed unconcerned for the proximity of that horrible stinger. He dashed in and bit, sprang back out of reach, and was in again. Chloe worked around carefully; she was much more likely to trip on a tree root or get caught up in brambles. The space between the trees was cramped and narrow and she dreaded falling and having that thing descend on her. She kept the hatchet tight in her fist and chopped and hacked, trying to do enough damage to perhaps see the thing off, if not destroy it. Could it be killed?

  Bix was in again, and this time he was gnawing at the thing’s eyes on the right side of its head. It made no sound, just the slap of its beaded feet and the rustle of its belly low in the earth as it thrashed but now, as Bix got purchase in the bony orbits, and shook his head like a terrier breaking some vermin’s back, it shrieked, an unearthly sound of outrage, and black fluid jetted in a thick pulse across Bix’s muzzle.

  Bix leaped back, shaking his head, flinging ropes of ichor from his mouth. He paused on trembling limbs, wired from the brawl, and looked up at Chloe.

  “Hit it,” he said. “Take that bloody tail off.”

  Chloe had a moment to wonder, with a chill that sent a quiver along every nerve, what an infusion of that steaming toxin might do to her. How quickly would it burn her up? Lock her immobile in the dirt while it hollowed out her organs? Reduce her to a drizzle of fluid while she died staring at the sky?

  Chloe measured her aim and dropped the hatchet onto the bludgeon with a sharp, precise downward hack. It shattered like a goblet, spraying flamboyant blue poison in a fan across the ground. It simmered in the mulch, bubbling down into the earth amongst the shards of the splintered cosh.

  Enraged, it shuttled towards Bix, its ghastly rocking jaws sawing back and forth, and it caught the dog by surprise. Bix tried to jump back but was already pressed against the difficult, twined roots of a bush and he found himself trapped beneath the wide, rearing throat of the scorpodile. He snapped at the fibrous flesh beneath the swinging jaws, ducking his muzzle away each time they shovelled at him, but it was strong and determined with its pure impulse to kill, and it rose up and opened wide like a bunker full of jagged edges, and dropped its shark-load of teeth onto Bix’s exposed chest.

  Chloe screamed. It was an effort-filled sound of defiance, and before the scorpodile could fasten its jaws, the ladder crashed down onto its back and pinned it into the ground.

  Bix kicked his legs and scrabbled out from beneath the scorpodile’s thrashing torso. He circled away and watched as Chloe stepped up onto the ladder and walked along it, pressing the scorpodile further into the earth until she stood balanced above its writhing head. She raised the hatchet and brought it down onto the bony ridge between its eyes, once and then again, each time cutting deeper, hacking at where she hoped the brain of the thing was located. Black fluid sprayed from the deepening gash. She could hear Bix panting. She lifted the axe again and gripped its shaft with both hands and brought it down with a shout. The scorpodile’s head split in two and its jaws dislocated with a wet tendinous pop. It stopped moving and lay beneath the ladder, venting the thick muck inside its head in a slow, mortal stream.

  Chloe stepped from the ladder and stood on wobbling legs. She knelt, breathing deeply, watching the scorpodile for signs of life. She wiped the gory edge of the hatchet blade on the leaves beneath her feet and slid it back into her belt. Bix stood at her side.

  “Nice work,” he said. “I thought it had me there.”

  Chloe put an arm around the dog’s neck.

  “Not on my watch,” she said. The dog laughed and licked her face.

  “Really?” Chloe said, standing up, laughing herself and wiping her cheek.

  Bix dipped his head. “It’s what we do,” he said.

  “Well, you can pack it up,” Chloe said.

  “I can’t promise,” Bix said.

  Chloe lifted the ladder from the back of the dead scorpodile and stood it against a tree. She hunted around for the rope and slung it over Bix’s head. She straightened the bag on his back, which had slipped during the fight, and she tightened the strap beneath his belly.

  “Good to go,” she said. She took hold of the ladder and started dragging it through the forest towards the foot of the mountain. Bix followed.

  THEY REACHED THE foot of the low mountain without encountering any further attacks. Bix trotted at Chloe’s heel, vigilant and alert, as she dragged the ladder through the trees and over exposed roots.

  Chloe pointed up through the trees to where the opening of the cave was just visible as a dark recess.

  “Home,” she said.

  Bix sniffed the air. “We’ll be safe here,” he said. “I can smell the iron in the rocks. Those things don’t like iron.”

  Iron

  Lifeblood

  “It’s my mother, isn’t it? The mountain?”

  “Yep,” said Bix. “Full of love.”

  “I can feel it,” Chloe said.

  She propped the ladder against the rock face and extended it out to its full length. It r
eached to about a foot below the opening.

  “Can you climb those steps?”

  “I reckon,” Bix said. “Tie the rope around me and you go up first.”

  Chloe did as Bix suggested, cinching the rope beneath his chest behind his front legs. She climbed the ladder slowly letting the rope play out behind until she reached the mouth of the cave. She hoisted herself up and sat with her legs over the edge and her feet flat on the top step of the ladder to stabilise it. She wrapped the rope around her waist and held the end in both fists.

  “Up you come,” she said.

  Bix put his front paws on the bottom step and allowed Chloe to take the slack. Then he climbed the rest of the ladder like he’d been shinning up and down them all his life. Chloe reeled the rope tight, laughing at the sight of the dog bounding up towards her.

  Bix reached the top and Chloe stood and took a couple of steps back into the cave so that Bix could jump the last few feet.

  “Easy,” said the dog.

  Chloe untied the rope and gathered it into a loop and dropped it on the floor. She knelt and undid the buckle of the bag and lifted it from Bix’s back. Then she hugged him and kissed his head and ears.

  “Really?” said Bix.

  “It’s what we do,” Chloe said.

  “Well don’t stop,” Bix said, tail wagging, and licked Chloe’s cheek.

  THEY SETTLED IN, and when the light started to fade, Chloe lit candles and stood them around the edge of the cave. They sat together on the rugs at the back of the cave and went through her bag.

  Chloe showed Bix her books.

  “Books are good things,” Bix said. “Good choice.”

  Chloe picked up Junction Creature. The picture on the cover unsettled her, the dark thing bulging from the tunnel gleamed in the fluttering candlelight and seemed to swell closer to the boy cowering on the tracks. He looked full of dread and hopelessness.

  “I know that book,” Bix said.

  Chloe looked sideways at him and raised her eyebrows.