They stood up from the table. As he moved his chair back, Dave saw a shadow shift in the corner. He put a hand on the table. It felt cold to the touch, and getting colder.
“I think we’re in trouble.”
Maggie blew out a forced breath. It condensed in the air in front of her face, only to be quickly dispersed as a wind blew through the room. An engine revved up. Headlight beams crossed the room slowly.
Maggie dropped the envelopes on the table and pushed Dave towards the door.
“Run!”
Wind and engine noise filled the room. Maggie and Dave fled, heading for the front door. Dave threw it open…and nearly knocked over a cop who had his hand raised, ready to knock.
“Sorry, can’t stop,” Dave said, and pushed past the startled officer. With Maggie’s hand still firmly in his, they ran down the street, expecting a shot to follow at any second. The cop gave chase. Police sirens wailed in the distance, and when Dave chanced a look around he saw that two cops now followed them, some distance behind.
The wind howled in their ears.
“I thought you said it would be over?”
Maggie struggled for breath.
“Not until the Cosmos answers. We need to get our envelopes back first.”
The running policemen were catching them quickly. Even as Dave looked for an escape route, two squad cars screeched to a halt beside them. Cops got out, guns were pointed at them. Dave and Maggie stopped running. They had nowhere to go.
“I hope you asked for something that’ll come in useful in the long years we’ll be spending inside,” Dave said as his hands were pulled roughly behind his back to be cuffed.
Maggie half-smiled as they were led into separate police cars.
“I’ll see you later.”
The wind howled up several notches, then died to a whisper.
An engine revved, then fell silent.
June 12th
“That’s it?” the cop said. “It’s past midnight, we’ve been at this for hours, and that’s your story?”
Dave nodded.
“And what about these?
The cop threw three white envelopes on the desk.
“Three?”
“Two from the Barr’s house, and one from the coat of the deceased, Jane Barr. I take it these are your requests to the Cosmos?”
Dave nodded again.
“And now that you’ve got them back, if your story is to be believed, it should be all over?” the cop said.
“That’s the theory.”
“And a pat one at that. All very convenient. Your friends all die and no one gets the blame?”
“I’ve told you. It was my fault. I asked the Cosmos.”
“And nobody will believe it, will they? Once more, all very convenient for you. But then again, you’ve got a history, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me about the accident, son,” the cop said softly.
“The accident? What does that have to do with anything?”
The cop picked up one of the envelopes, opened it, and read.
Dear Cosmos. Please let Dave admit the real cause of the accident to himself.
“She wrote that? Maggie wrote that? I hardly know her. And she hardly knows me.”
“Maybe so, but it wasn’t her doing. Mrs. Barr wrote this one.”
“Jane? No. She wouldn’t.”
“But she did,” the cop said. “And now she’s dead. So, once more for the cheap seats, tell me about the accident, son.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Dave said, almost shouting.
“Change the record, that one’s getting tired.”
Dave put his head in his hands.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said again, but even as he spoke he knew he sounded like he was trying to convince not only the cop, but himself.
“OK. We’ll get back to that,” the cop said. “But first, let’s see what you asked the cosmos for.” He opened one of the two remaining envelopes.
Dear Cosmos, I get the message. Please leave me alone now.
He looked over at Dave.
“Please leave me alone. Not, please leave us alone, not, please stop killing my friends. That tells me all I need to know about you.”
“I loved her,” Dave said.
“Who? Jane Barr? No, you didn’t. You blamed her, didn’t you? Blamed them all for everything.” He patted Dave’s file on the table in front of him. “You blamed them, for the crash, for having to quit med school, for the drinking, and for the shitty jobs you’ve been doing ever since. You blamed them all. And it ate away at you so much, year after shitty miserable year, until you finally cracked and you killed them, so that you wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.”
“That’s not how it was.” Dave said, his voice rising into a shout. “It was the Cosmos.”
“And tell me, how does the Cosmos manifest itself? But you’ve already told me that. It sounds like a car, an engine howling on a cold windy night.”
The cop paused and looked Dave in the eye.
“Tell me about the accident, son.”
* * *
Dave wasn’t sure what he was going to say until he opened his mouth. When he started to talk it was little more than a whisper.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d drank. And everything happened so fast. It was a really shitty night, I was driving too fast, an angry drunk raging at the world. I wound the window down, the wind ruffled my hair and whistled in my ears, joining the roaring of the engine as the only things I could hear.
“And then suddenly there she was. A young girl. She stepped in front of the car, eyes wide in terror.”
Dave stopped and looked up at the cop, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“She was right in front of me. I couldn’t get out of her way.”
“You killed her,” the cop said boldly. “She was just ten years old. And you blamed everybody but yourself. You still do.”
Dave shook his head.
“There’s nobody left to blame. Just me. And the Cosmos.”
“But you said already. The Cosmos has done its thing. It’s finished. Now there’s only you.”
“Only me,” Dave whispered.
A wind whistled through the room in reply.
“It was only ever me.”
A car engine revved up.
“It wasn’t the Cosmos.”
Headlights with no apparent source swept through the room. The cop had time for three words. “What the fuck?” An invisible force threw him across the room to land in a still, crumpled heap against the wall.
“No,” Dave shouted. “It was finished.”
Blood poured from the cop’s head and pooled on the floor. Dave immediately had a flashback to the night it all started, and to the too-red blood pooling on the Barr’s dining room table.
“It was only ever me,” he whispered.
He headed for the interview room door, calling Maggie’s name. As he reached it, a young cop opened it from the outside. Before the cop could speak, the wind whistled, an engine revved up and the young officer flew, screaming, down the length of the corridor to smash, headfirst into a wall. Headlights washed the scene.
“Maggie!” Dave shouted.
The wind rose to a howl, the engine revving alongside it. Lights washed the corridor, strobe-fast.
“Maggie!” he shouted again. A door opened and she stood there, eyes wide, wind tossing her hair in a mane around her head. Dave almost fell into the room beside her, pushed in by the force of the wind.
“It was me all along,” he shouted, struggling to be heard.
“I don’t understand. We undid it,” Maggie shouted back.
“No. It wasn’t the Cosmos. It was me. All this time it was me.”
He lifted a water glass from the table and smashed it against the wall. “Back at the dinner party. I wasn’t angry when I wrote to the Cosmos. I was angry when I banged the table. Remember?”
* * *
You s
tole my life, you bastards. And I want it back. I want what I deserve!
Glasses fly, tumble and break as he bangs his fist on the table.
Blood pools.
* * *
The noise of the engine howled through the room. Ice ran across the windows. The headlights washed around the room, faster and faster.
Dave dropped a large piece of glass on the table.
“It was my years of self-pity, blaming the people around the table, the police, anybody but myself. All that despair, focused into a moment’s rage. That is what we have to undo…what I have to undo.”
He raised his fist.
“No!” Maggie shouted, and put a hand on his arm before he could bring it down on the table.
“You don’t understand, Maggie,” Dave said. “I blamed everybody around the table…including you. You have to let me do this.”
He pushed her away and raised his fist again.
“No, Dave. Don’t!”
Dave banged his fist down on the table.
“It was all my fault. I want what I deserve.”
A shard of glass went deep into the old wound. He pulled the glass out, and blood pooled on the table.
“It was all my fault,” Dave shouted.
The wind rose to a wailing gale, an engine revved. Something struck Dave so hard that he flew across the room, hitting the wall. Maggie ran to his side. He was barely conscious. She knelt beside him and took his head in her lap.
Dave coughed, bubbles of blood at his mouth.
“Looks like the Cosmos was listening this time.”
Maggie tried to smile.
“It always is.”
Dave looked up at her, straining to focus.
“You never told me what you asked for.”
“Do I have to?”
She kissed him, lightly. The wind died down. The headlights went out. The engine revved, once, then fell silent. When she looked up again he was dead, eyes staring blankly from a smiling face. She closed his eyes, tenderly.
About the Author
William Meikle is a Scottish writer now living in Canada.
He has fifteen novels published in the genre press and over 250 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work appears in many professional anthologies and his ebook The Invasion has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts.
He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at www.williammeikle.com.
About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
June 11th
May 13th
June 11th
June 5th
June 11th
June 10th
June 11th
June 10th
June 11th
June 10th
June 11th
June 10th
June 11th
June 11th
June 12th
About the Author
About the Publisher
Clockwork Dolls Page 6