Chaos Clock

by Gill Arbuthnott

  In the dream, he’d been standing there for a long time, staring forward into nothing, afraid to turn his head, when from the corner of his eye, he saw something move on his right and automatically turned sharply to look at it.

  He woke with a start, breathing hard and sat up, fumbling for his bedside lamp. Yellow light filled the room, familiar objects all around him. He listened to his heart slow to its normal pace, shivering. The room was cold and David realised he’d forgotten to shut the window. Pushing aside the curtains to reach for the sash, he saw that it was misty outside, the street lamp an uncertain wavering glow instead of the usual clear yellow halo beyond the garden. He shut the window firmly and tugged the curtains together. Before he climbed back into bed he looked at his alarm clock. Quarter past two. He pulled the covers round his ears and shut his eyes.

  A QUIET NIGHT

  Gordon Syme was bored. He didn’t like doing the night shift. Some of his colleagues looked forward to it; money for nothing, they said. You could soon find a comfy wee corner and as long as you took a bit of a wander every so often there was no problem. There were alarms on all the really valuable stuff and a proper security man watching the pictures from the security cameras, and after all, nobody was likely to break in and steal one of the elephants now, were they?

  Trouble was, Gordon couldn’t do things that way. His conscience wouldn’t let him nap the night away, or maybe he was just too tall for the wee cubby holes so many of the others seemed to find.

  So here he was, ten o’clock at night, leafing through the diary at the Information Desk to see if anything interesting was coming up in the next few weeks, trying to pretend that he wasn’t going to be stuck in here all boring night long.

  There was a crew from some Arts programme coming in to film the clock on Wednesday afternoon. That might be good for a laugh, though they’d probably want everyone kept back out of the way and he’d have to spend the whole afternoon stopping people from going where they wanted.

  Looking further ahead, he saw there was going to be another sleepover in two weeks time. Now that was one time he did like doing night shift. Kids in sleeping bags all over the place and precious little sleep. You had to keep them from choosing a place to bed down that was too spooky mind you: chase them out from where the mummies waited, bandaged, for paradise, for example. Another place they’d stopped using was the gallery above the dinosaurs, the one with the elk and the ground sloth skeletons. There was something creepy about that place in the dead of night. None of the attendants ever kipped there, in spite of the padded benches.

  The shark display was popular with sleepover kids. Apart from the attraction of the sharks themselves, there was the rippling light that washed over the area, like sun seen through waves. It was a good place to get sleepy.

  There was a creaking rattle from the far end of the Main Hall. Gordon looked up sharply and caught a faint gleam from the clock-monkey’s golden collar in the dim light, as she turned her handle and the whole extraordinary edifice began to move in near silence. The music was switched off when the museum closed for the night, but you couldn’t turn a clockwork mechanism that size on and off so easily, so it went through the whole show without accompaniment.

  Gordon found it even more unsettling without the music. Its own bells were chiming now, the tortured figures near the top circling slowly, a clink from the whirling chains of the skeleton as the donkey heads shook the bells in their mouths. The thing was only supposed to have been here for three months, but the arrangements for wherever it had been supposed to go next had fallen through, so here it was for the foreseeable future.

  Ah well, time to go for a stroll. Gordon picked up his torch and looked at his watch. Five past ten. Oh no …

  ***

  Gordon looked at his watch. Two o’clock. “Better take a wander then, Sandy,” he said, draining his mug.

  “Aye, right enough,” said Sandy, making no move to get up.

  “Come on then.”

  With a theatrical sigh, Sandy rose and followed Gordon out from the staff tearoom and down to the bottom floor of the new part of the museum.

  They walked together as far as the metal men, then separated. This was an old routine and each knew without question which parts of the galleries were his responsibility.

  Gordon headed for the lowest room that was ever open to the public: the round chamber that held the carved Pictish stones, with their engraved animals and geometric patterns.

  The air-conditioning was a constant hum in the background, like half-heard whispers, and as he looked around Gordon was acutely aware of the seven museum floors above him, a sense of their weight pressing down on his head.

  As he left the room, the swinging torch beam caught an ancient wooden figure, with stones for eyes, imprisoned in a cage of oak twigs near the doorway. He walked up the sloping passage from the round room and felt her stony gaze in the small of his back, and made an effort not to quicken his pace.

  In the central area of this level, life-sized metal men were caught in the act of marching or standing or sitting. They were blocky figures, half robotic but with rib cages and unexpectedly human hands and faces. Set into the figures in various places were little glass cases holding jewellery of gold and silver, bronze and jet, amber and bone: all powerful things from olden times.

  Walking briskly Gordon turned into the room where, frozen in time, animals loped, flew and crawled through a Scotland that had disappeared thousands of years ago. How far did he walk during a night shift, he wondered? It always felt further than during the day.

  When he had finished there, he went into the biggest of the display areas on this level to meet up with Sandy. He could see Sandy’s torch beam moving among the cases at the far side of the gallery near a wall of cracked red clay with a snake shape twisting down it.

  He caught his breath. What was that?

  He spun round, eyes wide, skin prickling, breath caught. From the corner of his eye he’d seen something move down on the floor, flicking round the corner of a case.

  He aimed his light at the spot, but there was nothing. “Sandy, come here,” he called, his voice sounding strange even to himself, and heard hurried footsteps in response.

  “What is it, man?”

  “I saw something go round that case. A rat maybe, or a cat that’s got in somehow.”

  “Are you sure?” Sandy went round the case, sweeping the beam of his torch around.

  “It was just a glimpse, but there was definitely something. We’d better put the lights on, have a proper look.”

  He went to where the switches were, trying to lose the prickling sensation running down his spine, and put all the lights on. Sandy was crouched down looking between cases for any sign of what Gordon had seen. Gordon himself didn’t think it would have been likely to stay in the same place and walked to the far end of the big room.

  Once, a few years ago now, they’d found a rat like this and a couple of times a cat had sneaked in. Pest control came round regularly now, so he didn’t imagine that this had been a rat. It had been much too big for a rat anyway, nor had it looked like a cat, though he’d only had a glimpse.

  It must have been a cat.

  He still couldn’t shake off the feeling that all his hair was standing up. He and Sandy checked the gallery from end to end, but there was no sign of whatever it was that Gordon had seen. He looked at his watch. Quarter past two. It was turning into a long night.

  THE COLD DESERT

  “Kate!”

  Kate was jolted back to the here and now with a sensation as though she’d hit the ground from a great height.

  “Yes, Mrs Henderson?”

  “You were miles away there. Pay attention, please.”

  Kate shifted in her seat, and took a deep breath to try and shake off the half-asleep feeling that had dogged her since lunch time. She’d been daydreaming about Grandma Alice just now, even though it was nearly three years since she’d died. She felt a bit guilty that she didn’t thi
nk about her more often. They’d been special to each other; Kate had known since she was very small that she was the favourite grandchild, although Grandma Alice had never treated her any differently from the other three. She’d even treated David as a sort of grandson. It was only when she died and left Kate the gold necklace that she singled her out.

  There she went, back into a daydream again. She sat up extra straight and tried to concentrate on Maths. The sun didn’t make it any easier of course, reflecting off the frosted glass of the windows to her right and throwing dazzling multi-coloured snowflakes across her field of vision.

  Kate looked at Mrs Henderson, doing her best to listen, but although the teacher’s mouth was moving, no sounds came out. Instead, behind her, there was a noise like the sea rolling in across sand. She turned through the dazzle of snowflakes to see where the noise could be coming from. For a few seconds everything was blindingly white and then …

  ***

  She stood in a wasteland of blowing sand, cold and alone. When she turned round it stretched beyond the limits of her vision in every direction. Faintly, on the edge of hearing, was the sound of something howling. The noise made her shiver. She kept turning slowly, straining to see something other than the endless plain of sand.

  There was a figure. But where had it come from? It hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Against the sun’s glare reflected off the sand, Kate could make it out only as someone walking towards her.

  Now it was a woman wearing a long dress. How had she come so near so quickly? Three metres from Kate the woman stopped and stood silent, her dark green dress clinging wetly to her. Her long brown hair was wet too, darkened by moisture. Greenish water trickled without pause from her hair, hands and dress onto the sand and disappeared.

  She smiled, her mouth pomegranate-red, and held out a hand. “Kate, my dear.”

  Her voice was low and rich. Mesmerized, Kate watched the water drip from her long, pale fingers.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name does not matter for now.” She moved forward slowly, her arm still outstretched. Her eyes were the colour of smoke. Her red lips smiled. In the distance the faint howling continued.

  She moved forwards. “It is time for us to meet. We have been waiting for so long …”

  Kate moved one slow step away. “Who’s been waiting? How do you know my name?”

  Smiling mouth, smoky eyes, trickle of water. Outstretched hand.

  “Shhh.”

  A finger touched her forehead. Cold. Water trickled into her eyes, clouding her lashes. She blinked, trying to look through it and saw a dazzle of snowflakes.

  “Kate?”

  She put her hand up to wipe the water from her eyes, to push the cold fingers away from her.

  “It’s all right, Kate.”

  ***

  She opened her eyes. Mrs Henderson was looking at her, frowning. Mrs Henderson was looking down at her. She seemed to be lying on the floor.

  She sat up, confusion and embarrassment fighting for space in her head.

  “Take your time, Kate. How do you feel?”

  Looking round now, she saw faces turned towards her, eyes wide, David among them, his forehead furrowed in a frown.

  “I feel fine. I’m all right.” It was true. She did feel fine. She felt stupid.

  “What happened?”

  “You fainted, dear. Just for a few seconds. Nothing to worry about, it happens to lots of people. I sent someone for the nurse.”

  Kate got to her feet, Mrs Henderson insisting on helping, and sat down on her chair, so embarrassed she wished she could disappear. She knew her face must be scarlet and she tried without success to ignore Jamie Grieve sniggering behind his hands with a couple of friends. They’d tease her for days about this.

  The bell for the end of school came as a relief and Kate packed her things away quickly, anxious to get out of reach of Jamie and his chums.

  David seemed to take forever to get ready, but eventually they were out and walking across the broad, grassy expanse of Bruntsfield Links.

  “What happened to you?” David asked, looking at her sidelong.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You went really white and just fell down. I thought you’d had a heart attack or something.”

  “I don’t think people have heart attacks when they’re our age.” She fell silent, deciding whether to tell him about it. “I had a dream or something. Except it didn’t feel like a dream. I was in a desert, but it was really cold, and there was a woman … her clothes were soaking; it was as if she’d just come out of the bath, or out of a river. She knew who I was and I was scared of her, but I wanted to know how she knew me, and then she touched my head, and then I woke up. I suppose all that sounds really stupid?”

  David thought. “Not stupid. Just weird. Not your sort of thing.” He looked at her hard. “Are you sure you feel all right now?”

  “Yes. I was fine as soon as I woke up – apart from feeling like a complete idiot.”

  They crossed the road and opened the wooden gate to David’s garden. As he rummaged through his pockets for the key, Kate said, “Please don’t tell Claire or your dad, okay?”

  “Okay!” He pushed the door open. “It’s just us,” he called, dropping his bag and jacket on the floor. Kate followed suit.

  There was no answer, but when they got to the kitchen they found a plate of peanut butter sandwiches waiting and through the open door they could see Claire in the back garden, hanging out washing. They started on the sandwiches.

  As they ate, Claire came in with the empty laundry basket.

  “Hi, David.”

  He grimaced as she ruffled his hair.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  She put the basket down and watched them eat. “Do they not feed you at school at all these days?”

  “Hardly at all,” said Kate.

  “Just stale bread and water,” added David.

  “And grey porridge.”

  “And rotten meat.”

  “And lumpy custard.”

  “Bogey soup.”

  They dissolved into giggles. Claire rolled her eyes.

  “You’re a right pair of eejits sometimes. What time’s your dad due in?”

  “About six.”

  “Better get the tea on then. Are you staying for tea, Kate?”

  “Yes, please. My mum’s coming over for me about eight.”

  “Righto.”

  She moved about the kitchen, humming to herself, as Kate and David finished the last sandwiches.

  “How long d’you reckon that homework’s going to take?” asked David, round a mouthful.

  Kate shrugged. “Half an hour? Bit more maybe. We may as well do it now I suppose.”

  David heaved a theatrical sigh and carried the empty plate across to the sink. “Thanks, Claire. We’ll be in my room.”

  “Okay, Davie, just call me if you get stuck with anything.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Cheeky brat!” Claire said in mock outrage. Being rude was their way of showing how fond they were of each other. Claire had looked after David for nearly three years now and they knew each other inside out. Before she’d come, once it was only Dad and him, there had been a succession of women who’d cooked and cleaned and picked him up from school, but none had lasted longer than a year, and most for only a few months. The record shortest stay had been four days, but he couldn’t even remember that one; he’d only been five after all.

  They retrieved their bags from the hall, went into David’s bedroom and re-dumped them on the floor in there. Tiger, David’s cat, was curled up asleep among the tangle of clothes and duvet on his bed. He looked up when Kate and David came in and Kate went across to stroke him. “Hello, Tiger. Caught any mice?”

  To her surprise, Tiger flattened his ears and drew back from her, hissing. “Tiger? Come on, you know who I am.”

  But the cat jumped down from the bed and shot out of the room.

  “Why’d he do that?
Is he all right?”

  “Weird. He usually loves it when you stroke him. Maybe you smell funny or something.”

  “Oh thanks.”

  “Not that you do smell funny; well, not to me anyway, but maybe to a cat …”

  “David!” She threw a pillow at him and five minutes of cheerful anarchy followed, before they settled down to the awful maths.

  ***

  “Kate, that’s your mum,” called David’s dad.

  “Thanks, Alastair. I’m just coming.”

  “Lucky for you,” said David. “I was just about to bankrupt you.”

  “No you were not,” Kate replied, pulling on her jacket. “Leave the board set up and I’ll prove it next time I’m here.”

  “Are you going to tell your mum and dad what happened to you at school today?”

  “Of course not! Don’t you dare tell your dad.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  In the sitting room, Ruth and Alastair were chatting as they waited.

  “Thanks for tea,” said Kate as she came in. “Bye, David, see you tomorrow.”

  “Remember about Saturday.”

  “Oh yes. Mum, we need to go back to the museum. I can go with David on Saturday morning, can’t I? There’s no football this weekend.”

  “Can’t see why not. This project had better be good, the amount of time that’s going into it.”

  ***

  After Kate had gone, David went through to the sitting room again, where his father was emailing friends in Houston.

  “Want to say anything to Kevin?”

  “Nah.”

  “I thought you two were friends.”

  “We were, but what’s the point of just emailing each other if we won’t see each other any more?”

  “That didn’t stop you emailing Kate from America.”

  “That was different. Think how long I’ve known Kate. Anyway, I knew we were coming back.”