Clockwork
by
J. Smith Kirkland
In
his 30 years as a clockmaker in his quiet town of Urd, Horace
Williams had been asked to repair and consult on some amazing time
pieces, but had never been asked how to remove a decapitated body
from one, until now. It seems someone had the idea that they could
steal the clapper from the Urd Tower Clock's bell. The attempt was
obviously unsuccessful. Horace stood in the tower with the Police
Chief and the Mayor, looking down at a body tangled in the clock
gears below the bell.
“So
what do you think, Horace? Any way to get that out of there in one
piece?”
Horace
looks at the Mayor, “That? Do we know who it is?”
“Not
really,” the chief interjects, “we found the head, but it's not
really identifiable by looking at it.”
Horace
studies the mechanism for a minute or two.
“Looks
like he is mainly held in there by the rack tail. If you loosen that
rack post you can probably lower him down. I probably have a tool at
the shop that can do that.”
Horace
comes back to the tower in his truck filled with an assortment of
large weird looking tool that he crafted himself. The police officers
help him loosen giant bolts, hold back springs, and finally lower the
body down to the next level.
“Thank
you, Horace,” the chief says sincerely, “I don't think we could
have ever figured out how to do that without you.”
Horace
is glad the body is free, but as he looks around at damage that was
done to the works even before he disassembled some of it, he can help
but feel bad for the clock. It was like an innocent bystander, or
even a victim.
“I
think I can fix her.”
The
next day, with the Mayor's approval, Horace was hired to reapair the
clock. It had some odd parts. It seemed half tower clock, half french
mantel. And the metal of some of the gears was hard for Horace to
identify. Especially the sun gear and the planet gears. Odd color
metals. What he could identify was the bloodstains still on the gears
where the body was stuff. He thought the police should have cleaned
all that off, but he got some old rags and did it himself. Then he
decided he was going to have to go over to Middleton to get some
material, and he would have to come back tomorrow and see about
getting a couple of the gears adjusted.
When Horace came back in the morning, he was ready to start adjusting the
gears that had shifted on their rods. He started unpacking tools and
gadgets for the job, but stopped when saw the blood on the gears. The
same blood he cleaned off yesterday. That's not possible. Blood
doesn't just grow back. Horace found some more rags and again cleaned
the gears. As he finished he had a feeling that someone was watching
him. He turned and looked at the door to the stairs. He knew it was
just a shadow, but for a brief moment he thought it was a person
standing in the doorway. As he studied the doorway to convince
himself no one was there, a loud clatter jerked him back to the
clockworks. His tool box was turned over, and a hammer and pry bar
were crashing down at the bottom of the tower.
Horace
had always prided himself on being a rational man, and he would have
found a rational explanation for how the toolbox turned over, but he
knew there was not one. He was alone in the tower, the box was flat
on the hard stone surface, it was by far too heavy to have blown
over. It would have taken effort to flip it over like that. He was
not one to believe in ghost, and maybe he was just thinking of the
recent death here, but Horace did not like this at all.
“So
tell me about the clock tower, Wiley.”
Horace
decided to go to the local historian, Wiley. He was not officially
the town historian, but everyone knew if you wanted details about
what happened in this town last week, last year, last century, you go
to Wiley.
“That's
not the first murder there, you know.”
“Murder.
It was just a bungled theft. An accident as far as anyone knows.”
“Call
it what you want, but through the years there have been multiple
unexplained deaths there. People all alone, decapitated, impaled,
skinned alive.”
“They
were by themselves? How could they have been murdered if there was no
body there?.”
“No
Body. Just the Tower.”
Horace
did have to admit the place gave him the creeps, especially working
all alone up there. But he was not buying a building could kill
people.
“Have
you ever heard about when they built the clock tower, Horace?”
“No,
can't say I have.”
“No
one has. There are no records of it's construction. It's mentioned in
the letters we have at the library from the first known settlers
here, but they never mention building it. There are records of the
first town hall, the homes of some of the prominent people of the
time, but not the tower or the old well in the square.”
“You
trying to tell me it just appeared?”
“No,
I think it was already here when they got here. Someone before them
built it.”
“Who?
“No
one knows. But the legends say it has a heart.”
“A
heart?”
“Or
Soul, whatever you want to call it. But it's alive in a way, and
anyone that tries to harm it, or discovers where it's heart is, dies.
So the legends say.”
Clock
towers with hearts. Murderous clock towers. Sprang into existence all
on it's own. He had been here all his life and never heard those
silly legends. If nothing else, this convinced Horace he had to get
back to work. He didn't have time for this nonsense.
Horace
has everything set and ready to raise the weight and start the clock
ticking. A job well done and complete. He wonders if he should call
the Mayor to make the final pull in the weight ropes. The Mayor does
love ceremony. He would probably have a crowd to watch. Horace like
the idea better of watching from the tower as the town hears the bell
toll again for the first time since the murder. Accident. Not murder.
Accident. Wiley has his brain all scrambled talking about the
murders.
Before
Horace decides whether to call the Mayor or not, he wants one more
look at that sun gear. It's such an odd metal. He really would like
to find out what it's made of.
“I
should replace you with a titanium gear,” he says to the gear as if
it's sentient, “and take you to someone who can tell me what you
are.”
he
is feeling of the metal when he hears the door to the stairs slam
shut. As he looks in the direction of the door, the planet gears
click once and snag his sleeve.
“That's
not possible,” he thinks, “the weight is on the ground.”
He
jerks back his arm, ripping the cuff of his sleeve. And quickly gets
away from the gears. He goes to the door, thinking that Wiley has him
spooked,and just he needs to get out of there for a few minutes. But
the door is locked. He looks back at the clockworks and is horrified
by what he sees. The gears, where the body was stuck, are covered in
blood.
Horace
goes to his toolbox and grabs the biggest hammer there. He bashes the
door handle to break the latch, and then knocks the door loose at the
hinges. It can't slam and lock on him now. Then he goes back to the
box and grabs a gear puller. As he makes his way back to the sun
gear, his toolbox is tossed over, a wrench flies past his head. But
Horace is intent on doing what he knows must be done.
As
he approaches the sun gear, other gears start to turn, releasing the
mechanisms that pull the bell. The bell yanks hard to the east. The
clapper pounds against the side creating a deafening sound. Then back
the other direction. Another clang. Horace is not deterred. He takes
the gear puller and with more might than he knew he had, pulls it off
it's rod. All the other gears are spinning rapidly as the weight it
being raised. Horace knows this is impossible, but he is seeing it
with his own eyes.
The
sun gear glows. Horace knows he holds the heart of the tower in the
claws of the puller, but he doesn't know what to do next. Before he
can decide, the weight has reached his level and is swaying back and
forth as it rise. He dodges and feels the wind from it as it passes
his head. He runs down the stairs. Stones are falling out of the wall
as if the building is throwing them at him. He gets outside and the
tower bell is ringing as if it's noon. He still does not know what to
do with the gear, but he remembers Wiley's words, “There are
records of the first town hall... but not the tower or the old well
in the square.” Maybe they are connected somehow. Maybe not, but
the bottom of that well was as far away from the top of that tower
that Horace could get the gear. He tosses the gear along with the
pullers into the well. He doesn't hear them hit, but he figures it
happened at the same time the bell stopped ringing.
By
this time, people have come to the square to see why the bell was
ringing. The Mayor approaches Horace at the well.
“What's
going on? You got it working?”
“Almost.
One of the gears fell down the well.”
“Fell
down the well?”
“Yeah,
I can get another made. I think I can fix her.”
The
Prompt
It
was easy to repair the clock in the tower after the headless corpse
was removed from the gears. Before that, it was thought to be a
problem due to the age of the machinery, but except for the
decapitated body, its mechanics were functioning perfectly.
Story
A Day Framework
An
clockmaker has to fix a tower clock after it beheaded an intruder.
So
clockmaker spends lots of time searching for odd parts and in the
tower working
and
because of that clockmaker notices some odd things happening in the
tower
and
because of that he consults a local historian about the clock tower
and
because of that his life is in danger
until
the clockmaker discovers the secret of the clock
and
destroys its heart.
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