Chaos Clock

by Gill Arbuthnott

  Kate and David managed to lag behind on the way so that they could carry on their conversation.

  “If we are right about the tremor, it must be a bad sign that so may people felt it, mustn’t it? I mean, it’s become real now. The other things that have happened have sort of faded away or only affected a few people.

  “This must mean the Lords of Chaos are getting stronger, and that means we’ll have to do something soon. Oh David, what’s happening to us?”

  They had stopped walking and stood now staring at each other, both truly frightened at last.

  He looks ill, thought Kate. He’s so pale. Do I look like that? What’s wrong with him?

  ***

  After they’d cleared up the remains of their stall, which had been stripped bare of cakes – even the really grotty ones – in just over an hour, Kate and David walked along to the newsagent’s. They had to wait while the shopkeeper hustled a teenage girl – homeless by the look of her baggy, tatty clothes – out of the shop before they could buy a copy of The Edinburgh Evening News.

  The earth tremor was the main story.

  They stood in the street heedless of other people, scanning the page, looking for clues, hoping that there would be something to explain it that would fix it firmly in the normal present day, but the article had the opposite effect.

  Scientists were baffled. The seismic traces were the sort that would have been typical in the Central Region when its great chain of volcanoes had been active, millions of years before. No one could explain why this had happened now.

  “Oh no,” said Kate. “It’s starting to come apart, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds like it,” said David absently, still reading.

  They stopped at a call box to telephone Mr Flowerdew and arranged to meet in Luca’s café that afternoon. He was hopeful that Gordon would be there too. He sounded grim.

  “Time, as we understand it, is running short. The Lords of Chaos are gathering their strength. Be on your guard.”

  ***

  They sat at a purple table tucked into a corner and ordered delicious ice creams that they didn’t feel like eating. Gordon was already there when they arrived, looking ill at ease and suddenly much younger without his museum uniform. Mr Flowerdew arrived a few minutes later, looking flustered; something they had never seen before.

  “I’m afraid there is no doubt,” he said, “that this tremor is what we feared: evidence of a rip in time. We have no choice but to act in the next few days, or it will be too late. I have been in contact with some of the other Guardians. They are as well prepared as they can be to draw some of the Lords away from this battleground to fight them elsewhere.

  “Gordon; how soon can you get the keys that we need to get in to the Hoard?”

  “I’m not on until Tuesday morning. I’ll get all the information then, and arrange to swap a night duty with someone.”

  “How easy will that be?”

  He gave a small smile. “That’s the one bit that will be no problem at all. What night do you want?”

  “The longer we delay, the more dangerous things will become. I can be ready for Wednesday.”

  “Right. I’ll see to that.”

  “Kate, David …” Mr Flowerdew looked at them, searching for words. “The need to act has come sooner than I hoped. I am sorry, but there is no help for it. Be dressed and ready at midnight on Wednesday. Watch from a window until you see my car, then come out quickly.”

  “But what if someone sees one of us waiting? They’ll never let us go out with you at that time.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I can make sure that they sleep soundly throughout that night, and won’t know you’ve gone. If everything goes well, you’ll be back in your beds in a couple of hours, and they’ll never know anything has happened.”

  “It’s going to be difficult to do what you need to in the Main Hall without one of the lads walking in on it,” said Gordon.

  “That too is something I should be able to control. As Guardians, we have some power over time. When we are in the museum we will be in our own bubble of time, and no one should be aware of us. I wish there was another way though – any interference with the flow of time weakens it; and that makes it easier for Chaos to disrupt it completely.”

  “What will happen to us,” said Kate, in a voice that sounded very small, “if things go wrong? Will we die?”

  Mr Flowerdew leaned across the table and grasped her hand briefly and sighed. “No, my dear. If Chaos wins, you can never die, for there will be no future. The flow of time will stop; there will only be the past and the present, swirling together with no end. I am glad that you cannot truly imagine it, for it is terrible beyond words.”

  The past and the present, swirling together with no end. David heard the words and a picture formed in his mind of his mum back with him and his dad again. They would always be together, and all that he had to do was …

  “What exactly do we do?” he heard himself ask.

  “Gordon, can you let us in at the wheelchair entrance at the rear of the building?”

  Gordon nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem. That’s the best place.”

  “Once we are inside we will go together to the Main Hall, and Gordon and I will keep watch while the two of you chain the monkey. Let me see the necklace, Kate.”

  She pulled the little box out of the pocket of her fleece and handed it to him.

  “It’s changed,” she said.

  He took it out and studied it closely.

  “Yes,” he said. “Power calls to power. These signs have stayed hidden for many years, but now the chain shows its true nature.”

  He showed her how to pull the fine chain back through the fastening ring at each end to make a double loop.

  “Once you have it ready like this,” he said, “you must wait for the monkey to let go of the handle.”

  “What?” asked David, incredulous.

  “But you said it didn’t move,” protested Kate.

  “And that was true. But the forces of Chaos will be focused on us, and that will bring the power to such a pitch that she will be able to free herself physically from the mechanism. That is the moment – the only moment – at which we can trap her.

  “As soon as her paws come off the handle you must slip one of the loops over it and the other over her left paw, then force both paws onto the handle again so that the right one stops the chain slipping off. Do you see?”

  They nodded.

  “As soon as you have the necklace on her and return her hand to the handle the power we face should diminish. Then Gordon and I will take the hoard from its case and together we will return it to the bottom of Duddingston Loch. And then we shall see if it is enough.”

  “Why can’t you put the necklace on?” asked Kate.

  “When it was made it was tuned to your grandmother. Later, when you two were born, it was retuned to the pair of you. Neither one of you can use it on your own; only together can you activate its binding power. In my hands, or Gordon’s or anyone else’s, it is just a piece of jewellery; in yours it becomes a weapon.”

  He pushed the box back across the table to Kate, and she put it back into her pocket in silence.

  “There is little more that we can do to prepare. It is probably best if we do not meet again before Wednesday night. Gordon, telephone me once you have been to work. We need to know if there is any reason why we cannot act on Wednesday night.”

  Gordon nodded.

  “I know I am asking a great deal of each of you. I wish it was not necessary. Things may get worse quickly now, and the Lords will redouble their efforts to stop us. Be on your guard.”

  FINIS

  Andrew Nixon settled down in front of the fire with Sir Edmund Shackleton’s biography.

  Life had improved, he had to admit it. That stupid hallucination incident had let him see what a threadbare existence he led. His sister had talked good sense about how he needed to take better care of himself and had persuaded him to
hire the housekeeper he had talked about for so long.

  He’d seen her giving the birds and animals some sidelong glances as he showed her over the house during the interview, and for a while he had thought she might not turn up, but she had started on Monday, having explained proudly to her friends that she was going to work for an eccentric gentleman who kept a house full of dead beasts, and even after only two days the difference was obvious. The house was bright and clean and smelled of polish. The fire was lit when he came home and there was a meal waiting for him in a slow oven. He’d cut back on the hours he worked as well, and started going for walks – he knew he didn’t take enough exercise. He didn’t exactly feel like a whole new man, but the beginnings of one at least.

  In fact, he thought, he might just take a turn along the shore now – it was a lovely winter evening – and drop into the Cramond Inn on the way back for a sociable whisky.

  He marked the place in his book, put the guard in front of the fire and went downstairs. He checked in his jacket pocket to make sure he had his keys and let himself out.

  It was a crisp, clear evening with a full moon burning cold above the trees. He walked past the building site without his heart rate even rising and strolled along the sea front looking at the jumbled necklaces of light, which marked the town centre. Away ahead on the beach, he could just make out a couple throwing sticks for their dog, which dashed in and out of the surf yelping with pleasure.

  As he watched, the lights winked out.

  A power cut. Must be a big one: there were no lights anywhere ahead. He imagined the chaos there would be in town; traffic lights out, pubs, cinemas and houses plunged into unexpected darkness, the scramble for torches and candles.

  He turned back towards the village. There were no lights here either unless you counted the moonlight. He’d been looking forward to a drink in front of the pub fire, but now he may as well just go home. He started for the Tower House.

  The lack of any light other than the moon was disorienting. He couldn’t make out quite where he was in relation to his home. He saw a light ahead and made for it, to get his bearings. He was quite close before he realised it was a fire, and even then it was a few seconds before his brain caught up with his body and stopped him walking towards it.

  But by then, it was already too late. He pressed a hand over his mouth to stop himself screaming as he stared in horror at the impossible Roman camp around him. His legs shook so badly he thought he would fall. He tried to run, even to walk, but he couldn’t move, and it was with a curious sense of detachment that he watched one of the soldiers jump to his feet, sending the knucklebones flying, as he noticed him.

  Four of them were on their feet now, hands making the sign against evil as they reached for their swords. They came at him moving as though in slow motion and yet were upon him with terrible swiftness. As they came, Andrew Nixon thought he saw a figure behind them, dressed in black rags, that blew in a wind that wasn’t there; smiling as he watched.

  The swords rose and fell, rose and fell, then were still.

  THE BLOOD MOON

  Kate sat by her bedroom window, fully dressed but shivering, staring out into a world white with fog. It was ten to midnight on Wednesday. The necklace lay coiled in its box in her pocket, her hand wrapped around it.

  The last three days had passed in a sort of numb daze, about which she could remember almost nothing. She knew she must have gone to school, eaten meals with her family, talked to people, but she could recall no detail at all. The only thing she could remember clearly was the blank, sick look in David’s eyes; much like her own, she supposed.

  She had noticed the increasing number of strange local news stories: a dog, which looked identical to the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, had taken up residence in Greyfriars Kirkyard; residents in a city centre street swore their milk had been delivered by a horse-drawn cart; tours of the tunnels under the Royal Mile had been suspended after eighteen people on five different tours had to be brought out, almost hysterical, claiming to have seen the ghosts of men and women pointing at them and screaming in fear; an elusive group of new age travellers were believed to have set up some sort of Bronze-Age-style camp somewhere in Holyrood Park, but the authorities couldn’t find them; and the soldiers garrisoned at the Castle were being disturbed night after night by sounds of shouting and artillery bombardment that no one could explain.

  To Kate and David, it made dreadful sense.

  She started as something slipped across the patch of indistinct yellow light from the street lamp: it had looked like a large rangy dog. She held her breath, waiting for howling, but the night stayed quiet.

  ***

  From his window, at exactly the same time, David watched mist tracking across the face of the full moon, dimming its light. He didn’t know how he felt – not excited, not fearful – it was as though he was a machine on which someone had pressed the pause button.

  He hadn’t been to sleep. It was the first night he’d missed seeing his mother since the dreams began. He wondered if she was waiting on the shore. Was she there if he wasn’t?

  A car stopped outside and he recognised it as Mr Flowerdew’s. He went out of his room and bent to scratch Tiger under the chin as he passed. The cat purred deep in his chest. As quietly as he could, David unlocked the door and pulled it shut behind him.

  A few seconds later he was in the back of the car, where Kate already sat, pale and tense. Mr Flowerdew nodded in greeting, but didn’t speak. Fog swirled cold around the car, bouncing the light from the headlamps back at them. They set off slowly.

  Although there wasn’t very much traffic on the roads, it seemed to take forever to reach the museum. The fog swirled about them erratically, making it difficult to judge distances and the speeds of the few other cars that were about.

  By the time they reached the Meadows it seemed they were moving hardly faster than walking pace, and the fog clung malevolently to the car in great wet sheets. In the back seat, the children edged closer to each other without realising, keeping as far away from it as possible.

  Kate found her voice. “Is this just ordinary fog?”

  “No indeed,” said Mr Flowerdew. “It is a fog such as no one in Edinburgh has ever seen. The Lords are trying to delay us.”

  Whether it was coincidence, they never knew, but as he spoke, the fog rolled back from the car for a moment and they caught a glimpse of the trees and paths of the Meadows and above them a cloud-pocked sky and the full moon.

  Kate let out a gasp, and heard the others exclaim.

  The moon was blood red.

  “What is it?” David managed to ask. “What’s happened to the moon?”

  “It is an eclipse – but it should not be happening now. We must hurry; they are close to breaking through.”

  Even as he spoke however, the fog closed in again, hiding the disfigured moon and forcing them to slow down again.

  David clutched at Kate’s arm. “Look!”

  On one side of them, where there should have been the level grass of the Meadows, there was a rippling body of water, and on the other, so close that twigs scraped the windows of the car, the edge of a dense tract of forest.

  “What’s happening?”

  Mr Flowerdew kept his eyes on the non-existent road as he replied, “This is what used to be here hundreds of years ago. The past is breaking loose.” Around them, the fog had closed in again.

  They crawled on, drawing closer to the incongruously visible traffic lights. As they reached them, the fog thinned once more to show daylight, and a crowded huddle of huts and tents where a moment ago there had been water. Everywhere people sat or lay, thin and ragged, indifferent to their surroundings. The stench from the camp penetrated the car; a terrible smell of rotting bodies, not yet dead.

  Mr Flowerdew drew in his breath sharply and increased the car’s speed. “A plague camp,” he said, almost to himself. “I had hoped never to see anything like that again.”

  A woman looked up and seemed
to see them properly for the first time, and pointing, began to scream. Others followed her glance, and the camp erupted like a kicked anthill. Even as it did so however, it flickered and disappeared. It was night again, and everything around them, including the moon, looked as it should.

  “They are distracted. Now we have a chance.”

  He threw the car around the corner and they sped through the quiet streets until they pulled up a few minutes later at the top of the lane that ran up one side of the museum.

  The fog settled back thicker than ever as though someone had thrown a blanket over them. They held hands as they moved through it towards the door where Gordon should be waiting.

  Mr Flowerdew knocked sharply three times. It opened immediately and Gordon nodded them in silently. He closed the door, holding the fog at bay, and they relaxed a little in the faintly-lit corridor that lay behind it.

  “Is everything ready?”

  Gordon nodded. “I’ve got the keys. How was it, getting here?”

  “More difficult than I had hoped. Is there somewhere that we can talk for a moment?”

  “In here.” He opened the door to a room that was little more than a store cupboard and switched on the light.

  “The power is nearing its zenith. We don’t have much time. Gordon – you and I must go straight to the Hoard. David, Kate; you know what to do. We cannot be with you while you do it – time is too short.”

  “But …”

  “You can do this. Have faith in yourselves.” A wisp of fog crept under the door. “We must go now, or there will be no more time.”

  Gordon led them down an unfamiliar corridor, across a lecture theatre and then through the dark, silent café out into the Main Hall. A light glowed at the Information Desk where Sandy sat.

  Gordon stopped.

  “He can’t see us. He will not know anything is happening,” said Mr Flowerdew. “Come, we must hurry.” He turned to the children. “Don’t be afraid. You know what to do.” And they went off down the hall, past the oblivious Sandy.