The chaos clock, p.2
The Chaos Clock, page 2
For my role in this, however unintentional, my guilt also grows exponentially.
I hesitate to even share the next with you, but I still endeavor to trust… despite dreams in which you show me your true wicked na [crossed out text illegible, paper torn] No, I shall not give credence to these delusions! Someone besides me must know, must believe, and tell others… assuming there will be any left capable of listening.
Pond has gone mad. This is not hyperbole; I swear it on the life I still pray we shall live together someday despite… He raves about the revelation of U.M.T. and the great power of the Chronometer, which he says has revealed to us the reality about time and space and our existence within—and the existence of things without. Understand these are his ravings, not mine. I merely relay them.
Pond insists that humanity is entering into an era pre-destined from before the beginning of time as we once comprehended it; before the familiar gods worshipped around the globe were even conceived. He rambles on about elder gods returning from beyond our realm that surpass our ability to conceive of their great and dreadful majesty. Our collective suffering is merely part of an evolution—or perhaps more accurately de-evolution—preparing us to serve them.
His lunacy, the constant night terrors, and fear for their families have driven away the Royal Observatory’s surviving staff. Some resigned, others simply fled or vanished. I fear an untold number may have met grimmer fates—genuinely, I no longer know. As for me, I have done my utmost to remain a viable aide to Pond and to continue trying to puzzle out the reasons (based on science, not deranged fantasy) for the ever-expanding thirteenth hour… alas, to no avail. I have scrutinized the Chronometer’s components and samples of the chronoaether under the most powerful microscope lenses, studied the movement of the stars and planets, poured over maps—nothing explains this phenomenon!
I even sought to remove the chronoaether converter, in which the disgusting stuff continues to burn and renew itself like the blessed oil in the ancient Hebrew tale, but Pond drove me back. It is true—my one-time benefactor, that wise and gentle soul, came at me screaming and thrashing until I was driven from the tower room in which the Chronometer resides. He has barricaded himself within, wholly absorbed by his psychotic delusions. When I tired of banging on the door and leaned against it, exhausted, I could hear him jabbering to himself about “outer darkness” and “the city shall rise from the ocean’s depths,” and “those who will come.”
Oh, God, what is coming?
Lately, as I lie exhausted in my room fighting sleep and the dreams for as long as they might be staved off, I find myself questioning… what if Pond is not mad after all? Given there is no logical, no scientifical, explanation for the expansion of time and the window into darkness it has somehow opened, forcing humanity to gaze into an abyss beyond comprehension and bear witness to the horrors eager to enter our crumbling domain… perhaps the only sensible thing to do is give in. To despair, and to await the eldritch ancients who will soon claim us as their own.
But then I remember you, my love, my innocent, and kind… and no, I cannot, must not yield. I must fight this darkest hour that plagues us all. I shall, I swear it, I shall fight on for you… even if it means battering through the tower room’s door and [crossed out text, might be ‘slaughtering’] subduing my former benefactor. It would be a mercy, really—if he could comprehend that his great mind has been rent by insanity, he would no doubt beg me to end his misery. A kindness, yes, I can save him, and in doing so, perhaps save you and the entire world as well.
Stay strong, my beloved, my heart, my reason.
Yours,
Thomas
***
My Etta,
Why am I writing this letter? A waste of time—ha, a pun without humor or intent! Doubtless you are no longer in this ruined world to read it or if you are, incapable of doing so. Yet here I am, spending the last of my sanity and likely my existence on this clearly fruitless endeavor because… well, at least I can pretend it will reach you, whole and healthy and safe… a comforting lie I shall tell myself for as long as possible.
In distant lands where they did not reset their clocks to Universal Mean Time, some survivors might someday find this and understand that I tried, I swear that I did. Of course, I failed, as you and millions of others know only too well. Knew, I suppose, or perhaps know… did They let you go, I wonder? Do you rest in a peaceful oblivion, devoid of the visions that singular hour inflicted upon us all… or do the sources of those nightmares yet hold you fast, trapped in an everlasting thirteenth hour of agony and screams?
I did get through that tower door, my darling, my lost love. I found a fire ax during my frenetic search of the observatory campus and used it to split the door apart, just wide enough for me to squeeze through. I found… oh, God, the poor wretch! Pond was there, curled upon the floor beside his greatest creation, groaning and clawing at his empty sockets, the jelly that remained of his eyes dripping through his fingers. The bones of his face were crushed to bloody pulp; broken teeth scattered along the floor. Judging by the blood and flesh stuck to the walls, he had smashed it against them repeatedly. Yet, somehow, he still drew breath through his torn, blood-filled maw. He chanted—prayed, more accurately—his voice hoarse from repeating words in a language I could not recognize, but when I heard it, it made my ears bleed and my mind retreat into a place without sense or reason or hope…
I did the only thing, the merciful thing. A single blow with the ax and the grey matter of the once most respected astronomer in all the kingdom, if not the world, lay exposed and stilled.
I turned to the U.M.T. Chronometer next. Oh, my heart, you would have been so proud of me! I did not hesitate—I swung the ax until every component that housed it, every clockwork that made it run, lay broken upon the floor next to its damned creator. I dumped the chronoaether out the window and destroyed the converter too. I know not how long it took, only that by the time I was done, my shoulders and back screamed in protest against my taking another swing and my chest heaved as I struggled to draw breath.
“Done and done,” I said and laughed, fool that I was, thinking I had stopped it somehow. That it would be so simple.
Perhaps it would have been, had we destroyed the thing as soon as we realized it was marking time out of time, when we noticed the extra second. Or perhaps we were doomed the instant we added the infernal chronoaether to fuel the clock. I suspect that once all timepieces were reset globally to obey UTM that the die was cast, permitting a new, distorted version of reality to seep in and warp our perceptions, our minds. Likely it would not have mattered whether we discovered the stretching of time and it all would have happened anyway without our realizing it. There is just no way to discern correlation from causation when it comes to an event so outside human experience.
And it does not matter, does it? Not to Pond, not to you, not to the world. Certainly not to me.
The last newspaper I saw relayed tales of mass suicides, whole families killing themselves, their neighbors. Dire predictions were made that open warfare across continents would soon follow as civilization buckled worldwide. That was quite some time ago, I think. I can only assume it has all come to pass, and worse.
I have survived so far by rationing what food I could find, but without steam in the pipes, everything has shut down including the iceboxes, so soon even what remains shall rot. Chaos reigns just outside the main tower in which I am holed up. The screams echo through these walls, sometimes punctuated by explosions and… other sounds… like the skies themselves are being rent apart. Blood drips frequently from my ears, my eyes… I try to stop my ears hearing, to stop seeing what They show me, but nothing works, for Their whispers and Their visions come from within my head… rending my sanity and my self until nothing remains but a husk in service to…
At least I still have the ax. I have only to figure out how to employ it to end my suffering and join you, my beloved, wherever you might have gone. I hope and pray that we shall be reunited, not as slaves to those unbound by time and space, but in a paradise far beyond their reach.
And there I shall drop to my knees before you and beg forgiveness.
Thomas
On the Face of It
Danielle Ackley-McPhail
“It began… with I…” his voice rasped from the deep shadows of the drawn bed curtains, breaking on the softest of syllables, only to ring out with the sharpness of honed steel, “but it ends with me.
“Oh?
“By God… it… did. It must! It will!
“One way or the other, aye?
“No! In a manner of my own choosing!”
I would have thought no less than three people conversed… or better to say, squabbled, had I not sat witness and heard each utterance pass the same man’s lips. His head—or perhaps just his hair—thrashed, the bright glow of his bandages remaining turned away as he went on in mounting vitriol, seemingly arguing amongst himself.
Again, subtle and peculiar modulations of tone caught my ear.
I shifted in the chair I had pulled up beside the bed, leaning ever so slightly closer, rapt by his diatribe. My efforts to glean the discourse for details of significance had thus far yielded nothing, until I grew desperate. Reckless, perhaps. The man stilled, his muscles taut, of a sudden alert, where before his attention turned only inward to his ever-fracturing turmoil. With slow deliberation, his head rotated in my direction. I swallowed a gasp at the two spots of faint rose hue seeping to the surface of the stark white gauze in mockery of what had once been his eyes.
A low, harsh rustle came from the bedding as the patient shifted.
“Oy! Back yerself off,” the orderly barked, his rough hand grasping my shoulder and yanking me away, chair and all, even as the damaged soul on the mattress lunged forward, his equally gauze-wrapped hand grasping for my arm. For the briefest of moments, the skin of his bare wrist brushed mine before the burly attendant drew me out of reach, depositing me safely behind him, close to the grandfather clock standing sentinel in the corner. My flesh burned like the cold of deepest winter, nay, like the everlasting void seeping into my soul. I shuddered and rubbed at my skin, the sensation dissipating as if it had never been, a fancy of the mind built upon rumor and speculation.
“Right, off with ye then,” the orderly pointed at the door, brooking no argument.
If he knew who I was, he never would have spoken so abruptly or without deference, but my… patient’s family wished none to know either their son’s standing or my own, lest their reputation be tarnished.
“But…”
The man’s broad brow furrowed into deep valleys, his eyes aglint with annoyance. “Ye weren’t to rile him. Ye has, so out ye go. It’ll take all day an’ half the night gettin’ him settled again.”
Quite uncustomary to my usual nature, my blue blood rose to the surface, a kindling flame that warmed my cheeks but left my gaze cold. I stood, shoulders back and spine straight, as only the strictest of Dunaway upbringings could instill, honed through twelve generations. Slowly, my head tilted just so as to gaze down the slope of my nose at this common man. The essence of a sneer toyed with the corner of my lip, but I did not indulge it. Without further word, I strode from the room, distinctly unsettled.
***
On the desk in my study lay a daguerreotype of Edward Moreton, first son and heir to his family’s fortune. A well-manicured gentleman of not much greater years than myself, slight and studious, I would hazard a guess, based on appearance. Until now, we were not acquainted, though in truth I could not claim to know the man he had been, only familiar with the fragmented remains I had so far observed. My brow furrowed as I noted a peculiar emblem pinned to his lapel. I could make out a small circle atop a larger rough circle surrounding a six-pointed star, but little else of the clearly ornate icon. It bore some faint familiarity to me, though I could not say why. Something from my studies, perhaps? Yet another puzzle to solve amidst all this madness.
No one could tell me what fractured my patient’s psyche. Or perhaps, no one would, to be more accurate. What horrors drove him to the depraved acts he’d committed I could only guess at, but for the mutilation of his features, which I am told were self-inflicted. The family—as old as my own, but of lesser standing—refused to furnish details, preferring to bury their shame. To pretend it had never been. Though how they expected me to proceed uninformed I could not say.
They had engaged my assistance by unofficial means, knowing, through our families’ shared circles, of my penchant for psychology. Long had I studied the works of Wundt and Freud and Titchener, among others, out of personal interest, rather than intent to practice. My devotion to this science had, in fact, brought me to reside—until now—in Boston, where I studied at Harvard under William James, who some already called the father of American psychology.
I found the workings of the human mind, both hale and broken, of particular fascination. Of late, I had also immersed myself in the study of brass instrument psychology and had even procured for myself a chronoscope and kymograph, along with assorted pendulums, gravity fall devices, and such, to better understand their function.
I would have perhaps rethought such dedication, had I known where it would lead.
Beneath the print bearing Moreton’s image lay a scant page or two of observations from the local inspector, written in broad, clean strokes, studiously vague on any details the family did not wish revealed. Regardless, I had requested more. The peculiar, the unsolved. Beginning from when the foundation of Moreton’s reason grew unstable. Anything I might connect with what transpired. I could not say if the constabulary would go against the family to honor my request, though I held high expectations, having consulted for the department in the past. For now, I poured over what I did have in the hopes of gleaning more understanding.
I found it difficult to reconcile that image, those accounts, with the individual I had myself so recently monitored. And yet, reconcile I must if I was to help knit the fragments of his mind back into one. Picking up the daguerreotype, I considered Moreton as he had been. We were contemporaries, by age and birth and standing. What happenstance led us each to this point, both divergent and unified at once? By what stroke of fortune had our paths not been transposed?
I shuddered as well-founded unease gripped my being.
And this is why I stood, at morning’s darkest hour, in the simple gardens of Pike’s Cliff Manor, the retiring house where Moreton’s family had sequestered their former scion, staring up into the sky in search of direction. I found a faint flicker of green light tickling the fading stars, but no more. Breathing a sigh, I slid my hands into the warmth of my trouser pockets and strolled the shrouded paths letting the cool darkness soothe my anxious thoughts before retiring to bed.
A futile effort.
***
Braced by a night of fitful sleep and a rather strong cup of tea, I entered Moreton’s chambers with strides both determined and confident. I was no dabbler. I had studied at the highest institutions of learning; I had consumed volume after volume on the science of psychology and was noted among the educated for my discourse on those studies. Cradled in my arms, the stout wooden box I bore contained the finest precision instruments of my chosen discipline.
I quite nearly dropped them.
Moreton’s chambers more resembled a tavern after a barroom row. My patient lay in his bed, unmoving, for once in full light, the torn bed curtains puddled on the floor, along with most of the bedding. On the far side of the room, by the seating area arranged before the fireplace, the orderly cleaned up the remnants of the grandfather clock that had stood in the corner. The clockface, with its hands bent awry, had been perched on the mantle, with the weights and their chains pooled around it, like an octopus nested among its tentacles. The rest of the cabinet lay like so much kindling on the hearth. Actually, nothing else in the room looked damaged, or so it seemed, until the orderly turned at my entrance, revealing bruises of deepening hue along his swollen jaw and climbing toward his ear. A single tendril of color crept out beneath his eye, which was not quite blackened but clearly tender.
“What happened?”
He gave me a look that bordered on stark hatred and his words of the night before echoed in my memory: Ye weren’t to rile him. Ye has, so out ye go. It’ll take all day an’ half the night gettin’ him settled again.
All he said now was, “T’were a bad night.”
I shifted my burden, my confidence momentarily shaken, but I had a task, and I would not retreat from it now.
“All right…” I responded in even tones as I set my box of precious instruments out of the way on a table beside the door. “Let’s get things into order and get to work.”
The orderly grunted and glowered and continued with his labor while I restored the bedding and tucked the drapery out of the way until the household staff could deal with it.
“Has he eaten?” I asked, trying to gauge how the morning would proceed.
“That blighter don’t eat.”
I frowned, all must eat and drink. Moreton looked haggard, tortured even, but not gaunt, and clearly had the energy for tantrums. My determination returned tenfold. Today I would take Moreton’s measure with my devices.
“Help me move him to the chair,” I said, pointing toward the seating area, where the side table by the wingback chair would serve nicely to hold my equipment.
