Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (73 page)

Please do not be
sad for me.

Here ends the
Diary of the Watchmaker's Doll. Goodnight, Mister Pocket. 

In the summer of
the year 1850, the Parliament of Great Britain handed over the power of the
kingdom to a man named Alexander Renton. They called his blood royal, his
spirit fated, and his judgment absolute.

Thirty-eight years
later, that same man called for my execution, a decree made in response to a
picnic I took with a beautiful girl.

And do you know
something? The decree was fulfilled.

Will Pocket died
that year.

You who have
followed this, my wonderful and maddening story of the turnkey girl, from
beginning to now, will no doubt wonder how a dead man could sit in a bar and
relate his tale over warm beer. And to you I say that the dead can do
miraculous things. The man whose fingers crafted the girl I’ve loved ceased
living long before I stepped into his shop, yet his role in my life has been
immeasurably great.

On the night
before Will Pocket’s death, the young man opened his eyes in a cobwebbed tomb,
with only fading candlelight to hold vigil.

And only a girl’s
diary for company.

Will Pocket didn’t
realize, as he sat with those pages, hungrily taking each word into his being,
that he was already dying.

Of course, dear
reader, I’m not so untalented in my role of storyteller to close the book with
the simple image of a dying man sitting in the dark. Not when I’ve promised you
a “big flash” to go out on. So let’s once more rejoin the story and chase after
it to its final conclusion.

Here begins the
end, my friends.

“Dolly,” I
whispered.

“Dolly!” I
shouted.

“
Dolly!
” I
bellowed into the papers I held. I kept repeating the word—Dolly, Dolly,
Dolly—as if I thought she would materialize from the text to answer my calling.
One would think that a man in my position would be overtaken with lament upon
finishing what was essentially his beloved’s suicide note. And I would love to
tell you that I was, that my initial response was a deafening outflow of tears
and tortured screams. But the first emotion to find me, I’m ashamed to say, was
an overwhelming irritation, a feeling of childish insult. How dare she, I
thought. How dare the Doll even consider something so incredibly selfish and
heartless, yes,
heartless!
After the blood and sweat shed to
preserve
her life, to keep it
safe!
The great lengths I’ve, no, we’ve
all
gone
to spare her the suffering!

But that’s why, I
then thought to myself. The acts of others. That’s the reason, isn’t it,
Pocket?

I was dizzy with
all everything her words had taught me. The revelation she had meant to give me
the morning of her capture, that she not only was aware of a world beyond her
dreams, but had also occasionally drifted out and occupied
my own…
it…it
was more than I could comprehend!

I slid my fingers
up the curved, collective back of the Doll’s diary, brushing up against the
paper like it was a tightly-bound corset riding the soft-skinned spine of every
pubescent boy’s daydreams. I squeezed my fingernails into the paper so hard
that it left marks.

“Damn it, Doll,” I
spoke, crumbling in the dark. “Do you really think sacrificing yourself is
going to spare me any pain? Do you really think yourself that worthless?”

That’s when the
grief hit, and I nearly forgot the necessities of life.

How to breathe, to
stand balanced on two feet.

How to feel.

My knees buckled
for a moment and I slid into a miserable lump on the floor.

She takes the fall
at dawn.

Another horrible
thought struck me as I lie there. I had no idea of knowing how long had passed
as I slept.

I sprung up and
began breathing in a panic. The diary said that I had spent days upon days
sleeping in the Watchmaker’s basement. That was up until the point that the
Doll had stopped writing. Could further hours, days, weeks have gone by? The
vile morning my girl was awaiting, had it already passed?

Had the
Watchmaker’s Doll fallen from the sky?

Was she, at the
moment of my awakening, already…

“No!” I yelled,
not a plea or a lament, but a demand of Creation. I began furiously pawing at
the vacant walls for some sign of the date or even just the present hour. Of
course, the place had been practically licked clean by the King’s men, picked
and looted and emptied. There was no reason for me to believe that I would just
happen to find a working clock sitting around.

But logic didn’t
seem like an optimistic path to be taking, so I tossed it aside. I panted like
a dog and babbled like a madman, constantly telling myself that I wasn’t too
late, that there was no way that I could be too late.

I rushed through
the emptied basement once again, feeling along the barren walls just as I had
upon waking. I don’t know what I expected to be there that hadn’t been less
than an hour before, but I kept searching. And of course, I found nothing, and
ended back at the unfinished ship that was built into the room. The only trace
of the Watchmaker not seized by the Crown. In the dimness, I pressed my palms
to the planks and read those words again.

THE LADY VIOLETTA:

TO WORLDS UNKNOWN

They were as
deeply carved into my mind as they were into the wood. I dropped my head and
slid slowly down to the floor, still pressing onto the ship that never was.

Worlds unknown,
eh?

Maybe I’ve already
reached them. Maybe that ship wasn’t unfinished at all. Maybe it just sailed so
calmly that its passengers didn’t even realize their voyage had begun. I curled
my head inward to my knees. Maybe that was it. Everything I had witnessed,
everything I’d encountered since I first stepped onto this ship had been
completely foreign and unknown to me. A world of shadows. A world unfit for the
terribly ordinary man. In my head, all I could see was the
Lady Violetta
rising
from its basement tomb on that first night, carrying Kitt and Dolly and myself
upward through the fabric of real and unreal, through known and unknown, time
and timelessness. I saw the
Violetta
bouncing waves through a million
reflections of London, eventually tossing me ashore of one fraught with mystic
teas and oil seas.

So where was I
docked now? Some dreary stain of the London I’d left behind?

I had nothing left
but questions. More even than when I started.

And what way is
that to end a story? Pathetic. Both literally and figuratively in the dark,
huddling in the distance of a melting candle.

“A…melting…candle…”
I whispered aloud, the hairs on my neck standing stiff. “Wait!”

I snapped my head
up and glared at the dripping wax.

“My God! Of
course!”

I crawled back to
the flame and nearly singed my nose in it.

“Of course!” I
repeated, my breath making the fire dance. “Of
course!
How could I be so
stupid?!?”

A candle was
burning. I know I’m repeating that observation an obnoxious amount of times,
but it’s important.

Because I wasn’t
the one who lit it.

If days, weeks,
months, years, or lifetimes had passed, all I would’ve awakened to was a burnt
lump of ashes.

But this fire
danced onward.

Which meant, I
told myself, no more than a few hours could’ve passed…right?

I began excitedly
pacing, wishing I held a greater knowledge of the properties of burning candle
wax in relation to time.

But it could be
possible, I told myself. Possible that dawn hadn’t risen yet! Possible that the
Doll hadn’t yet thrown herself to...to…well, thrown herself down!

She could still be
alive. Or intact, I mean, or constructed.

No.

Alive.

As long as it was
still night.

I grabbed the
diary, concealed it in my overcoat, and jogged to the staircase that led up
from the basement floor to the world above. I looked at the closed, square
hatch in the ceiling. I knew that if I put my eyes above the ceiling and night
still hung over the earth, the Doll would still be alive.

And I would still
have a chance to find her.

I brought my
weight down on the first step and promptly, heroically…

Stood there.

What? No…

I shook my head,
took a deep breath, and…

Just stood there.

My stomach twisted
as I realized that I was afraid. Not just of leaving. Not just of failing. Not
just of death. I was in that moment completely paralyzed by everything that
existed outside of me and everything within.

I closed my lids
and saw Tekcop, that bastard incarnation of myself born out of my tea dream. In
my mind’s eye, he clucked his tongue and chewed on it.

“And this is your
concept of heroism?” he sneered. “Of motivation? Hmph. What a complete and
utter bore.”

I opened my eyes
solely for the satisfaction of erasing his image. An utter bore? No. Slowly, I
climbed the stairs. Being afraid is one thing, but I won’t stand for being
boring.

There’s nothing
worse than that.

I approached the
ceiling hatch and peered upon those thin boards that awaited my touch.

They did not have
to wait long.

Pushing all of my
weight against the door, I moved upward. As I did, an unexpected counterweight
smacked against me.

“Damn,” I
whispered. A considerable amount of debris must’ve toppled upon this hatch
after Dolly had cleared it for her exit. But I was sick of looking for excuses
to be deterred.

“You wanna see
determination, Tekcop?” I spoke in the dark. “Feast your eyes on
this!
”

I shouted a primal
growl and burrowed my shoulder into the wood. As it stubbornly succumbed to my
advances, a slit of fresh air split open, and I raised my arm to it.

It was time at
last for me to ascend.

With a resounding
crack, my hand broke through the layers of death that stacked upon the
mausoleum I had slept away in. As I gradually pulled myself up, inch by
miserable inch, my heart squeezed itself into a clenched stone. I knew that the
first thing I would see would irreversibly affect the rest of my life as I knew
it. If the sun shone down from the heavens, then all would be lost. Dirt and
soot rained down my shoulders. I gritted my teeth and felt my veins tighten
like thick bands beneath my skin. I raised my eyes to the sky an impatient
moment too soon, and was blinded by the airborne soot. My right eye was
watering over, and I could only stare through the green-tinted lens that
protected my left. The green sky above me framed a large glowing orb that hung
menacingly overhead.

“Sun or
moon?!?”
I screamed across my broken mind as I quickly clawed away at the
eyeglass to reveal…

Night.

It was still
night.

My cracked lips
made the weakest, widest smile.

That green ball in
the sky was still the moon.

The dust of the
urban graveyard settled silently into place. Amongst the wreckage I found the
gun I had shot Kitt with, blanketed by scuffled dirt but otherwise unaffected
since I dropped it out of my hand like an offering of flowers before a
weather-worn tombstone.

It seemed an omen,
no,
a
reminder
. Of what still remained before me.

I still had a
weapon.

It was still
night.

And I still had
time.

Pistol in palm, I
stepped out of the land of the dead and started running.

You know what’s
stupider than the boy who fell in love with the end of the world?

When that boy
tried to stop it.

I hurried along, a
piercing sting of fear in my chest. I kept pushing it away, refusing to
acknowledge unwanted possibilities. A cathedral. That’s where she would be. A
tall cathedral. But which? And where? The tallest ones I could remember were
closer to the center of the city. Maybe I’d find some trace of Dolly if I began
in that direction.

I hurried.

I had only half of
a fading memory of the gravedigger’s path to the watch shop, and tracing it
backwards felt like trusting a dying firefly to light your way home, but it was
all I had.

I got only a few
blocks away from the dirty rubble I had slept under before getting noticed.

A night patrolman,
a mustachioed servant of the city police, called me aside, presumably because
an unshaven maniac running around in the dark with an openly-brandished firearm
seems the sort of fellow that a well-meaning night patrolman ought to give a
second look.

“Something I can
do for you?” I uttered, making no attempt to hide my irritation.

“The road ahead is
blocked off,” the man said, tugging impatiently at his collar. “Best turn back
the way you came.” He was dressed in the dull, faded blues of the police force,
and bore the unique strips of lead that New London officers wore sewn across
their uniformed chests.

“Turn back, you
say?” I responded with absolutely no interest. To greaten the insult, I turned
my glassy eyes away and continued walking in the same direction. My boots
clanked a sound of metallic, mocking laughter at the patrolman.

“Hold on, you!”
the man soon said.

I obeyed in the
simplest manner. I stopped walking and kept my back to him.

“Yes?” I replied.

“Exactly what
business do you have on these streets at such an hour?”

I made a sad and
tattered smile where I stood. Sure, I could’ve quickly hidden my weapon and
made up another outlandish alibi, but that Will Pocket, as I’ve already said,
was dying, and his successor hadn’t a tenth of the patience.

“Those strips
you’re wearing,” I seethed, “they’re for stopping gunshot, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Good.” I pulled
my gun, twisted around, and fired. The shot sparked against the metal and the
man fell backward. I’d only wanted the momentarily distraction to take off, but
when the patrolman hit the ground, his head met brick, and it knocked him
straight out.