Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (71 page)

“Yes sir,” I said.
“I think I do.”

“So you
do
know
the place, right?” Kitt inquired. “You can take us there?”

The soft-spoken
man shook his head. “Take you?” he frowned. “You’ve already arrived.”

“What?” I
responded.

He apologetically
waved his hand at the pile of rubble.

“You’re here.”

My eyes widened,
and I realized that I was shaking. I lifted my foot to the refuse beside it and
pushed it away with the side of my boot heel. Revealed beneath were the singed
remains of the great paper clock face that had once stood tall over the former
shop.

“What happened?” I
murmured.

“It burned,” the
digger said. “The Magnates were removing the deceased’s former belongings when
it happened. A report was released. Said the fire sparked by pure chance, some
combination of weather and friction or something. Said it couldn’t be contained
in time to save the building. To save anything.”

I didn’t speak a
word. Kitt walked to my side and removed his hat. I foolishly did the same in
some warped act of memoriam.

“Were you boys
acquaintances with the man who kept shop here?” the gravedigger asked.

“Friends of the
family,” Kitt softly replied.

“I see. Well, my
sympathies to you both. I’m afraid I must take my leave now, and I’m sorry I
couldn’t be of more help.”

“It’s all right,”
Kitt said in a hush.

“I’ll let you be,
then. Hope to cross paths with you boys again someday.” The gravedigger made a
quiet laugh. “Well,” he added, “given my profession, hopefully not
too
soon.”

And with that joke
he left us. We didn’t bother turning to watch him leave. We stood before the
ant piles silently until the sound of the digger’s vehicle had completely
fallen away.

I bent down and
sifted some ash through the cracks where my fingers meet.

“So, when were you
going to tell me, Kitt?”

“Tell you what?”

“This.”

“I didn’t know.
Swear on my life.”

I dusted my hands
off against my pants.

“What about all of
that ‘research’ you did on the Doll? I would think that this would’ve come up.”

“I’d think that,
too. But it didn’t. Somehow. Believe me or not. I don’t care.”

“Hmph.” I seized a
shard of glass and pitched it into the distance.

“Damn it, Pocket,”
Kitt said. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I’ve done—”

“Good,” I cut in.

I began wading
through the waste, slowly clearing my way to where I could best determine once
stood the watch shop’s front room. I sighed and scraped away the pieces to
reveal the black-charred flooring beneath.

“What are you
doing?” Kitt asked me.

“Looking for the
way downstairs,” I replied. “There’s a good chance that the basement survived
the fire.”

“You don’t
actually
believe
that ‘chance burning’ story, do you?”

“Of course not,” I
said, still pawing at the floor, “but it’s still worth exploring for—“

“Pocket, the men
who destroyed this place did it for a reason.”

“I know that.”

“It’d be
ridiculous to think that that they’d just walk away with even an inch left
unscathed.”

“Well, what do we
do then, Kitt?!?” I snapped. “What do we do besides stand here, gawking at this
shattered wasteland?!?”

“We wait,” he
said. “We sit and we wait for Dolly.”

I exhaled and
nodded in sullen agreement. We would wait. The Doll didn’t deserve to be alone when
she discovered what had become of her home.

If she hadn’t
already.

No, I told myself.
She hadn’t. I don’t know what made me so sure of this, maybe just desperate,
wishful delusion, but there was a whispering voice, deep-rooted and instilled,
that kept saying to me, not yet. Not here.

My eye caught a
small, sharp corner piercing out from the rubble. Clutching it, I fished out a
small, framed photograph that had survived the burn, as some might say,
miraculously
.
It was the same portrait I had noticed in the basement during my first night in
the shop, the portrait of the young watchmaker and his bride. No, of Robert and
Violetta. Their eyes and smiles seemed all the more innocent, all the more free
as they stood on that sepia-toned pier before the captured sea of eternity.

If I were a more
talented storyteller, I would lie at this point and say that the encased
photograph had been horribly mangled in the burn, its glass pane broken, its
frame bent, and the portrait’s once crisp edges singed and eaten up by fire.

Or some such
dramatic exaggeration.

But as it was, the
blaze left Robert and Violetta only slightly dusty, and even that was soon
rectified by my calloused thumb.

I guess not
everything burns, after all.

I propped the
photograph up against an exposed beam as tribute and returned to Kitt.

We sat down and
awaited the Doll’s arrival.

We sat for hours.

When the sun began
to rise, I noticed Kitt start to anxiously tap his boots against the ground.

“Is there a
problem?” I muttered.

“We should go,” he
said.

“No.”

“Pocket—“

“We aren’t leaving
this spot,” I said in no uncertain terms.

“It’s a miracle we
haven’t been noticed yet. Now, I’m all for continuing the search, but to sit
around here in broad daylight, where the Magnates will absolutely—“

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care if
we’re found?!?” Kitt challenged.

“I’ll kill them
all if I have to.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” I
said, “but we’re staying here until she comes.”

“If she was
coming, she would’ve made it here by now.”

“Not necessarily.”

“She probably got
here before us.”

“She wouldn’t have
left.”

“You don’t know
that!” Kitt objected, rising. “We need to move along!”

“Sit down!” I
commanded. “She’s going to come and we are going to be here when she does!”

I violently
clutched his wrist and forced him down.

“You’re losing
your damn mind!” Kitt shouted, pulling away. “If you want to stay, be my bloody
guest! But I’m going back to the shuttle! If I’m lucky, it’ll still be waiting
for me!”

He rose again.

“The hell you
are!” I barked. “Sit down!”

“Goodbye, Pocket.”

I sprung up and
brought my gun out.

“Sit...
down!
”

“For Christ’s
sake, look at yourself!” Kitt rumbled at me. “Shaking that lump of metal around
like it’ll make any goddamned difference! Do you know how pathetic that
looks?!?”

“I’m not playing,
Kitt!”

“Keep saying that!
While you’re busy, I’ll go and do something helpful for the Doll!”

“No, you won’t!”

“You can do
absolutely nothing to stop me, Will Pocket! You never could and you nev—”

And the gun went
off.

The weapon stung
hotly in my hand. Smoke was vomited out of its barrel.

It was fired.
Someone had fired it.

Someone wrapped my
shaking fingers to the trigger and squeezed.

Someone had just
stood there and...and...

...shot Kitt. I
had shot Kitt.

He thrashed madly
about and howled. He was holding onto his right arm, just below the shoulder,
as it ran over with red. He swore, cried, swore some more, and staggered away
from the scene.

“C-calm down!” I
heard myself beg, more afraid of the man with the gun than the one with the
bullet in his arm. “I’m...I’m sorry!”

Kitt pivoted back
and, rapidly losing color, gave me one final, cold statement.

“I wish to God
that you were never thrown out of that bar, or at very least would’ve landed on
some other wretch.”

He ran off, and I
let the pistol fall from my grasp.

“Wait!” I finally
shouted, squeezing words up my throat by absolute force. “Please! Come back!”

The fox’s shape
did nothing but shrink into the scenery.

“I said I was
sorry, Kitt! Please! Don’t leave me here alone!”

But he did exactly
that, and honestly, who could blame him?

So I yelled and
shouted until hoarse from my own feverish panic, and dizzily turned to the
ruins of the watch shop.

“What now?” I
whispered.

“What
now?!?
”
I screamed to the sky.

Exhausted, I fell
to my hands and knees. Tears welled up and flowed like cheap beer. Sobbing
hysterically, I crawled, a truly pathetic creature, through the pile of debris,
searching once more for the basement’s buried hatch. I inched and dragged along
until my body eventually gave out. My chest flattened against the ground, and
in the process, toppled a mound of waste on top of me.

I closed my eyes
in dark hibernation, altogether covered in the heavy scrap.

Well, I conceded
to myself. At least I’ve found myself a place to hide. A quiet place.

Peace, as I had
said to the gravedigger.

And then,
remarkably, I fell asleep.

The rubble upon me
melted away, along with my consciousness. I felt simultaneously heavy and
weightless.

In my dream, I saw
red.

Red-orange, that
is. A pushing, pulsing glow. A great stretch of heat that circled me and an
otherwise blackened world in a single, fat stripe.

I felt warmth from
it.

Instinctively, I
lifted what I believed to be my eyes and sent them searching far and wide for
the Doll.

She wasn’t there.

I realized that
even though I dreamt, I was still lying on my stomach, still in the same
crumpled form I had left the waking world in.

I didn’t bother
getting up.

Instead, I became
quick-hypnotized by the rhythm and pulse of that red-orange glow, taking in
breaths in matched time and watching the focus of my vision slide in and out of
fuzziness.

This I did for a
great while. How long, I don’t know. I must’ve slept for hours.

Then at once, my
senses came back to me. I’m awake, I thought. No...not awake. Just aware...or
half-aware. A sharp rush of blood shot through me and the red-orange grew
brighter, nearly blinding my vision.

I rolled quickly
onto my back and felt a hard floor beneath my shoulder blades. For reasons
unknown, I threw my arms upward into the ill-defined sky of my dreams and clasped
onto something soft.

It felt like skin,
and in my sleep, I wrapped my fingers around it.

I heard the
slightest gasp as I dug my fingernails deep into it. With a fast jerk, I pulled
the softness forward. I felt the weight attached to that skin fall upon me and
press the breath out of my chest cavity. I quickly craved more and brought air
into my body.

The softness
wiggled and shifted above me. I moved my hands upward, felt hair, and gripped
it in tufts until the squirming subsided.

I felt something
bobbing up and down against my ribcage. No, not bobbing, more like...a
heaving...of say, a bosom...lifting and falling against my body.

Body. In my
strange sleep, I came to the obvious. There were now two bodies adrift in this
silly dream, myself and...

“Dolly!” I
mouthed, moving my fingers through the hair to the soft cheeks and jawline
beneath. “Dolly, please say that it’s you!”

Though a soft,
undeniably feminine form was now lying with me, I mean, lying above me, I
couldn’t discern any specific features.

“Doll!” I said,
holding the shape of an unseen face in my palms.

And then I felt
the cool touch from a pair of lips brush my wrist, and an image burst into
grand, electric clarity before me.

She was beautiful
as ever.

“Mister Pocket,”
the Doll said shyly, the strands of her hair glinting in my vision.

“I’ve missed you,”
I whispered, watching her locks float upward. The tips smeared into the
background. Her legs dipped into the shadows. Drops of her dress melted away.
The rest of her remained on top of me, and I held on tight.

“This is still a
dream, isn’t it?”

“Don’t think about
it.”

“Why not?”

“You have such
long fingers.”

“Dolly.”

“I wanted to see
your eyes once more.”

“Can’t you see
them now?”

“Not when they’re
closed.”

“They’ve never
been open wider.”

“Only in your
dreams.”

“Then wake me up
already!”

I pulled her head
to mine and tasted her. Shivering, she kissed back, giving no resistance to my
approach. We kissed a span three times over the history of man. I pictured the
ridiculous timeline of human events unraveling about my ankles like a great
spool of time overtaking itself.

I saw in my sleep
a human heart, transparent and spit-sloshing thin, bubbling blood through its
rubbery walls.

Pumping, pumping,
pumping away.

The blood poured a
red waterfall out of the muscle and pooled around our touching bodies. I took a
hand off of the Doll and ran it through the puddle. The wash was filled with
little watch gears, and as I dipped my arm, some stuck to my skin, rinsed by
that cherry red.

“I don’t think I
can make you wake up,” the Doll said,

I responded only
with my lips and hands, the former pushing forward for another sweet sensation
and the latter pulling the girl’s body down, down into the suddenly deep and
bloody torrents. I went with her and watched as our faces dropped beneath the
surface of the blood. We sank like proverbial stones, our limbs fused together,
lips spot-welded. My body’s shadow shook and dissolved in the ruddy liquid, and
as it vanished, I could only look at the girl’s form for confirmation of my
own.

We kissed. We
pushed. We twirled in the deep. I ran my world-weary tongue into the corners of
her mouth and felt the seam where artificial skin met artificial tooth.