The Clockwork House

by Wendy Saunders

  Ava whistled again but she flat out refused to move.

  ‘That can’t be a good sign,’ Kelley muttered as they took a deep breath and stepped into the house.

  ‘Hello?’ Ava called out.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Kelley turned to her with wide eyes, ‘because if someone answers back, I swear I really am going to pass out.’

  Ava chuckled as they began to check the rooms one by one. Although she knew some part of him really was scared, she also knew he’d protect her with his dying breath.

  One by one they checked all the rooms on the lower floor, but they found nothing. Finally, they arrived back in the study with the huge hole still in the floor where they’d fallen through. Standing at the top on reinforced planks of wood looking down, it seemed like such a long way down and she couldn’t understand how they hadn’t seriously injured themselves.

  ‘Seems a bit surreal now doesn’t it?’ Kelley mused as he too stood staring into the pit.

  ‘Is it safe down there now?’

  ‘Why?’ he asked suspiciously.

  She looked up at him.

  ‘NO,’ he shook his head, ‘no way. You want to go back into the creepy ass murder room?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ her mouth curved slowly.

  He hesitated, struggling with the curiosity versus the fear.

  ‘Yeah,’ he burst out finally, ‘yeah I do.’

  She grinned a little wider.

  ‘No flashlights this time,’ he told her firmly, ‘if we go down, we go down safely. They hooked up temporary lighting down there while they were bringing up the bodies.’

  ‘Okay,’ she nodded, waiting while Kelley disappeared back through the doorway. After a few moments the huge hole in the floor was flooded with light.

  ‘Is it on?’ his disembodied voice called from the main foyer.

  ‘Yeah,’ she called back.

  He headed back into the room and stopped beside Ava as they stared down into the hole. There was a ladder propped against the edge, descending down into the corridor below. There were also several sturdy canvas straps which they’d obviously used to haul the coffins up.

  ‘I guess we climb down then,’ Kelley muttered, his stomach flipping nervous somersaults.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ava frowned.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied quietly, her forehead furrowed in confusion as she looked up from the hole and glanced around the room. ‘There’s something familiar.’

  ‘Ava you’ve been in this room a dozen times.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘it’s stronger than that. It feels like Deja vu. There’s something about this room, something important. I just can’t remember.’

  It hovered at the very edge of her consciousness, like a shadow standing just outside her field of vision, a half-remembered dream. It was there, so close she almost had it.

  Kelley watched in silence as she stepped away from the hole in the floor, wandering slowly around the room, her fingers brushing along the surfaces of the bookshelves leaving trails of fingerprints in the heavy dust, like fairy footprints.

  ‘He was so scared,’ she whispered.

  ‘Who was?’ Kelley asked curiously.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said he was so scared,’ Kelley replied.

  ‘Did I?’ she frowned, that was weird. She hadn’t realized she’d said anything at all.

  She turned her attention back to the room. It was speaking so loudly to her now; she couldn’t focus on Kelley at all. It was almost as if he’d disappeared from her field of perception altogether. Her skin prickled with awareness. Her vision narrowed and there was a strange buzzing across her scalp making her feel almost dizzy. Without thinking she reached out to the bookcase in front of her and her fingers brushed the aged wood. Feeling a familiar indentation, she hooked the very tips of her fingers under the tiny concealed lever and lifted.

  The was a loud clanking and whirring noise, followed by a series of clicks. Stepping back, she watched as the bookcase slowly creaked open.

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Kelley’s eyes widened. ‘How the hell did you find that?’

  ‘Watched too many classic horror movies I guess,’ she muttered, her brow furrowing, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew they weren’t true.

  She’d found the hidden lever, because she’d known exactly where to look. Somehow the information was planted deep in her subconscious and she was at a complete loss as to how to explain it.

  Kelley whistled low as he moved to stand beside her, studying the concealed side of the doorway in fascination.

  ‘Will you look at that?’ his eyes widened, ‘it’s like a vault at Gringotts.’

  ‘What?’ she replied in confusion.

  ‘Harry Potter? Never mind,’ he shook his head as he continued to study the door raptly.

  The front of the hidden door was a bookcase but the back of it was like the innards of a clock. Hundreds of tiny cogs, spirals, springs and wheels, of brass, silver and gold made up the strange locking mechanism.

  ‘Look at the detail in this,’ Kelley breathed, utterly transfixed by the strange sight. ‘Can you imagine how long it must have taken to painstakingly create a concealed locking system this complex?’

  ‘It seems a bit like overkill,’ Ava managed as she swallowed hard. For some reason her heart was pounding with a kind of nervous trepidation.

  Kelley peered into the darkness. The space it opened up into had curved walls, just wide enough to accommodate a metal, spiral staircase, which wound down into the darkness below, like the descent into a deep well. At the bottom was a burst of light spilling into the turret-like room from the corridor below the study.

  ‘This must’ve been the original entrance to the passageway, until we crashed through the floor and made our own,’ Kelley mused. ‘You still want to go down?’

  She nodded slowly as Kelley slipped her cold trembling hand into his larger warm one.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he told her, noticing her pale face. ‘We can leave right now.’

  ‘No,’ she decided, swallowing hard. ‘I want to… I think I need to.’

  Stepping out onto the staircase, he tested it. Satisfied it was solid, he led Ava slowly down the stairs, circling and circling until he was beginning to feel slightly nauseous. Finally, they reached the bottom step and were greeted, this time, not with a doorway but an entire section of wall, covered once again in the intricate clockwork mechanism.

  The wall had slid to the side revealing the corridor stretched out before them. Stepping through they looked behind them to see that the wall blended in perfectly. Once the entrance was closed, it was undetectable.

  ‘Clever,’ Kelley clicked his tongue thoughtfully. ‘Unless you know it’s there, it’s completely invisible. I wonder how many more secret passageways and rooms there are?’

  Ava looked up at him silently.

  ‘Well, if you think about it,’ Kelley continued, ‘the legend of Luella and the missing children could be explained by hidden rooms beneath the house.’

  ‘I don’t even want to think about that right now,’ she shook her head. ‘We’ve already got enough bodies to worry about.’

  Kelley nodded as their hands once again entwined then they turned and began to move down the corridor to the doorway at the far end. The space was now well lit. Dozens of wires ran from the portable generators above ground, down through the hole in the study, and had been temporarily mounted along the walls either side of the corridor. From each of the old candle sconces on the walls, hung at intervals, were bright lights, the power cords looped along the wall, bunched together and strung out like entrails.

  The carpet beneath their feet was a faded crimson and covered, almost silver in patches, from thick decades old layers of spiders’ webs.

  Scattered at their feet were chunks of wood and nasty, spiky looking splinters, the only remnants of the desk which had crashed through the hole in the ceiling above them, nearly
crushing them. The desk had been removed and the way was now clear.

  They headed to the other end of the corridor without a word. The wires trailed down the second winding staircase, once again accompanied by thick canvas straps.

  It must have been a bitch to get those coffins out and winch them up the narrow staircase without breaking them.

  At the bottom, they stepped through the doorway, which was open a crack, with the wires from the lights winding around and through into the room beyond.

  The mortuary room was bigger than she remembered, but then again, she had been looking at it through the confined beam of a flashlight, Ava thought, as she stepped into the room.

  It was circular, something which had also slipped her notice the first time. She glanced around at the well-lit room. The porcelain table was still butted up against a deep rectangular sink fed by an old water pump. Beside it was the metal wheeled trolley which was now empty.

  Ignoring the desk and the stacks of books, and medical texts Kelley was pouring over, she turned instead to the shelving containing rows upon rows of apothecary bottles and jars of varying shapes, sizes and contents. Every so often she’d encounter a void, a tell-tale ring imprinted in the dust where bottles considered too dangerous had been removed and scheduled for destruction.

  Her gaze glided over the labels, which she struggled to read. The lettering was in faded ink and the penmanship dated, a curly slanted script that made reading the names even more difficult. Eventually she gave up, her gaze straying to another doorway.

  Again, the door was ajar from the electric wires, which lit the room beyond. Unable to help herself Ava slowly lifted her hand and pushed the door open fully.

  This room was square, but equally as large. Pushed against the far wall and facing out into the room was a huge, heavy wooden framed bed with a canopy. Tattered curtains in a heavy brocade hung from each corner, in the same faded emerald green of the bedding.

  As she stood in front of the creepy masculine bed, she turned slowly and in her direction line of vision were several huge gaping spaces in the wall alcoves, where the coffins had been set.

  ‘Ava?’ Kelley spoke from the doorway.

  ‘The sick son of a bitch liked to look at them,’ she muttered, a shudder of revulsion sliding slickly down her spine as a greasy roll of nausea churned in her belly. ‘Like trophies,’ she whispered as she turned back to the bed. For a split second she could see him. A filmy insubstantial image flashed through her mind, of one of the dead girls in his bed.

  She blinked, sweat beading on her forehead. Her stomach roiled treacherously as she stumbled back and in that second, she knew, she couldn’t say how, but she knew what he’d done. He’d brought the dead girls to his bed so he could play with them before he embalmed them, then he would stare at them for hours, sealed away in their coffins while he pleasured himself.

  The vomit was rising in her throat, almost choking her with disgust. She could smell him in the room, sweat and tobacco, could feel his sick, disturbed arousal.

  She needed to get out. It was too much, she felt like she was suffocating.

  She staggered past Kelley, through the mortuary room and out into the corridor, trying to take in a calming breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth so she didn’t throw up.

  She didn’t stop until she was at the top of the staircase and through the doorway into the corridor. Clammy sweat pinned her rain-soaked t-shirt to her back as she leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees as the wave of dizziness passed.

  It was the same as before, when Kelley had to carry her out. The same dizziness and nausea but this time the room hadn’t been filled with corpses and poison. It was as if the house itself was trying to tell her its secrets and she wasn’t sure if she could handle it.

  ‘Ava?’ Kelley called her name, his voice filled with concern, ‘are you okay?’

  She nodded as she swallowed past the tight dryness in her throat, wishing she had a bottle of water. Despite the lingering shakiness she pushed herself back to standing and looked up.

  Kelley had been standing in the doorway watching her worriedly, but suddenly, like an unlocked door, a window opened in her mind and she saw him, the strange man, standing in that same doorway. He had been huge and imposing, the sheer brute strength of him, dressed elegantly in a gentleman’s shirt and waistcoat, the chain of his golden pocket watch draped across the expensive silken material. His eyes were as dark as his jet-black hair, which was punctuated by two pure white wings at his temples.

  ‘Ava?’ Kelley grasped her arms; her face was so white she looked like she was about to pass out. ‘AVA?’ he called to her again.

  She blinked and her eyes cleared. Locking on Kelley she saw the rich forest green of his eyes, and the warm brown of his sun kissed hair, felt the soft gentle touch of his hands on her and it grounded her in a way nothing else could.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she whispered. Her eyes widened in a sudden realization and they locked on him determinedly, ‘but there is something I have to do.’

  ‘WHAT?’ he called after her as she turned and ran back down the corridor and up the staircase. Kelley was right behind her as they emerged from the hidden entrance into the study. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he followed her out the room, trying to keep up with her as she darted through the main foyer and toward the back of the cavernous house, where she finally ended up in the scullery.

  ‘I have to know,’ she breathed heavily as her gaze landed on a heavy wooden table pushed up against the wall.

  ‘Know what?’ he asked in confusion.

  ‘If its real,’ she looked up at him with wide eyes, ‘or if I imagined it.’

  Before he could question her further, she purposefully crossed the room and shoved the table a couple of inches. Going with it and curious at her determination, he helped her push the heavy old table out of the way, watching as she dropped to her knees and ran her hands over the rough brick wall.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  Her fingers felt a small groove, and she froze, looking up at Kelley. Reaching into her pocket she retrieved the pocket watch Baz had given her a few days earlier and which, for some unknown reason, she’d taken to carrying around with her.

  She pressed the little shell shaped button at the edge and watched as the lid flipped open, revealing the watch beneath. Drawing in a slow breath, her heart pounding in her chest, she turned the face counterclockwise. It moved smoothly as if it were well oiled, and with a small click a skeleton key appeared.

  ‘What the…’ Kelley muttered with a frown.

  She slipped the key into the groove in the wall with a small click and looked up at Kelley who was watching her silently. She turned the key and once again heard a series of clicks and whirs. The bricks split, a line which up to that point had been almost invisible, appeared and a tiny door opened.

  ‘You’re beginning to scare me a bit,’ Kelley said quietly.

  ‘I’m beginning to scare myself a bit,’ she replied with a heavy breath.

  She opened the door which was scarcely bigger than the door of a stove, revealing a tiny, uncomfortable looking space, barely three feet by three feet of cold hard stone. There was a small envelope shaped brass air vent but that was it. The space was empty.

  She was about to step back and close the door when she noticed Kelley’s eyes fixed on one of the walls inside the confined space.

  There were scratches and as she traced her fingers gently over them, she realized it was a named, etched into the stone.

  ‘Edison.’

  15

  New York City.

  Mar 1892.

  She restlessly paced the floor, her heavy skirts brushing the polished wood as she wrung her hands in deep concern. She could hear the ticking of the small clock on the mantle, the only sound in the room other than her frantic pacing. It seemed like an eternity had passed but her mind refused to focus on anything else.

  ‘Don’t let him die, please Lord don�
�t let him die…’

  She turned her head abruptly and ceased pacing, with the click of the handle turning as the door slowly opened.

  The doctor appeared, grim faced beneath his heavy moustache, his black case in one hand and his hat in the other.

  ‘Doctor?’ she rushed forward.

  He nodded slowly and she released the breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. She turned to brush past him, heading for the door to the bedroom but his raised hand halted her.

  ‘Madam, a moment if you will.’

  ‘What is it?’ she turned her worried gaze upon him.

  ‘A word of caution,’ he sighed, his voice a deep rumble, ‘to prepare yourself. His convulsions have subsided, but they will return, gaining in frequency and strength. A legacy of the injury to his head. As you already know, his body no longer functions due to the damage to his spine. Other than breathing, there is very little he can do. He will not return to the man you knew, there is no hope for his recovery. It is a mystery that he has survived this long. He cannot feed himself; his speech will deteriorate, and his body will waste away.’

  ‘You’re wrong Doctor,’ she replied fiercely, ‘the Lord spared him for a reason, you will see. He will prove you wrong.’

  ‘He will require more care than you are able to give on your own,’ he told her bluntly as he reached into his pocket and presented her with his bill.

  Unfolding the piece of paper, she carefully schooled her features not to show any emotion, as she’d been taught. Her back straightened and she purposefully crossed the room, opening the small chest on the bureau and retrieving a few dollars from their measly, dwindling supply.

  ‘Here,’ she handed it to him, ‘thank you for your time Doctor.’

  ‘Madam,’ he nodded, as he placed his hat back on and tipped it politely.

  She saw him out, closing and locking the door behind him, once again standing alone in the stillness of the room with only the ticking clock for company. The two rooms they rented were small but expensive. New York was an expensive city and with her husband no longer able to work to support them it would not be long before they would be homeless. She could take a job as a seamstress in one of the big department stores but then that would leave no one to see to his care. She could not afford a nurse and the rent, and food. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There was no other choice.