Chaos Clock (11 page)

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.

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.

Kate and David looked at each other, and then at the clock, a huge, brooding presence. Against the glass of the roof and windows the fog flattened itself, seeking entrance. Gordon and Mr Flowerdew were already lost to sight in the gloom at the far end of the hall.

Kate took a shaky breath and started towards the clock, David hanging back a little. They reached the thick brown rope that kept the public at a distance from it during the day and paused.

In the dim and patchy light only some of the clock’s detail was visible, so that while the great curved mirror shone like a ghostly eye, the top of the tower with its agonised figures was no more that an indistinct bulk rearing up towards the night sky.

The monkey’s golden ornaments gleamed softly, utterly still. Kate stepped over the rope and edged towards her, fear rising in her throat. “David, come on!” she hissed.

Reluctantly he moved to follow her.

Cautiously, Kate stretched out a hand and touched the monkey’s wooden paw with one fingertip. Nothing happened. The paw was indeed wood, lifeless as it should be.

More boldly, she moved her hand up and down the monkey’s arm, then tried to lift her paws from the handle. There was no movement at all as she threaded one end of the necklace in a loop around its wrist and got the other end ready to go round the handle.
Finished, she took a step back, and bumped into David.

“Kate, look.” His voice sounded odd.

She turned around and froze. Not five metres away stood Tethys, streaming water that drained away into the marble floor. The wolves circled her restlessly as though waiting for her to release them. Her smile was gone, and in its place was a look of ferocious anger. “Kate,” she said in a commanding voice, “stop this now. You do not understand what you are doing. Give me the necklace.”

“No! Go away and leave us alone!”

David watched the exchange, wide-eyed. How could Kate defy this terrible woman?

There was a laugh from further down the hallway, and a low growl of thunder. The Lightning King drifted nonchalantly a little above the floor, his robes blowing in the non-existent wind. Everything about him – his robes, his skin, his hair – was filigreed with lightning, crawling over him like tiny snakes.

“David, who is he?”

“The Lightning King – the man from my dream.”

He heard Kate whimper, and remembered how frightened he had been of the King at first.

“It’s all right. He won’t hurt us.”

“He is right. I have no desire to hurt you.”

Lightning flew up from his hand, and a wolf howled, and they heard glass break far above them, but he made no move to come closer to them. Tethys too kept her distance.

Somehow, Kate made herself turn back towards the monkey, and what she saw shocked her anew.

All the golden ornaments were still in place and the monkey still gripped the handle tightly, motionless; but
where there had been wood, now there was flesh, and instead of paint, there was hair.

“David!” She tugged urgently at his sleeve. “The monkey’s changing. This is when we have to do it.
David!
”

He hung back, watching the King. There was more lightning, and he heard another pane of glass shatter high in the roof. He could imagine the fog creeping in.

Kate had the end of the necklace in her hand, looped and ready as she watched the monkey blink as though in slow motion. Tethys called out something in words that Kate didn’t understand and the monkey turned its head towards her, teeth bared. She realised that her wrist was constrained and shook her arm, growling as Kate held tight to the end.

“David! Help me!”

But David was watching the wolves padding towards them on silent paws, fangs showing.

The monkey lifted her paws off the handle and made to claw at Kate’s eyes, snarling. She screamed, but held tight to the necklace, and David, like someone waking from a trance, forced his gaze away from the wolves, and rushed to help her.

He grabbed the monkey’s wrists and forced them back towards the handle as she twisted and bit at them. Thunder rolled around them and lightning flashed and Tethys’ shouts reached a crescendo as Kate managed to slip the loop of gold over the handle.

“Now!”

They both brought their weight to bear on the monkey’s arms as she screeched in fury. Down and down they pressed and as her paws touched the handle, Kate saw
from the corner of her eye one of the wolves gather itself to spring, and in the same moment the monkey changed, no longer flesh and angry blood, but wood and paint again. Around her wrist and around the handle looped the subtle golden manacle that would keep her tied to the clock. Even as they watched, it seemed to melt away into the wood.

Around them, there was a profound silence. The wolves were gone. As Kate watched, Tethys shimmered and dissolved like a reflection in rippled water.

Further away, the Lightning King too was growing indistinct, merging into the fog that had poured through the broken panes of glass. His blue eyes were fixed on David.

“You have another chance,” he said, and was gone.

Kate and David stood shakily, panting as if after a race.

“What did he mean?” she managed to ask.

“I don’t know.” The lie came out glibly, disguising the turmoil of his emotions. He should have stopped Kate; he had meant to, but then when the monkey was clawing at her he’d acted without thinking, and by the time he’d realised what he was doing it was too late.

But it was all right; the King had said he had another chance. What it was he didn’t know, but he would make no mistake next time. He couldn’t; everything depended on getting it right.

They stepped back over the rope. Fog trickled in from the roof, pooling on the floor here and there. Moving round it, they set off to find Gordon and Mr Flowerdew.