THE EXTRAORDINARY VERILSBERG CLOCK

Verilsberg was an ordinary town with an ordinary town clock. Nestled in the crevice between two alpine mountains, this sleepy little settlement was rarely visited and rarely reported upon. One exceptionally unexceptional aspect of the town was the town clock which stood atop a tower in the market square, visible for all to see. Every clock in the town was set to the one in the market square. The town’s inhabitants never expected anything other than the accurate time from this clock and quite rightly too; why would an ordinary clock ever do something extraordinary?

One day, the town clock began to slow down. It slowed by only three seconds at first but since all the townsfolk set the time by it, now every clock in Verilsberg was three seconds slow. The clock continued to slow by a few seconds at a time so that now, although no one noticed it, the butcher opened late, mass was delayed and even the man who maintained the clock fell behind schedule. Very soon, the entire town was several seconds behind the rest of the world.

Since the increments were minuscule, none of the townsfolk seemed to notice as the divergence grew steadily more and more profound. The cockerel, who also kept time by the clock, began to crow later each day and soon the morning sun, which kept time by the cockerel, did not reach the town until late evening.

One afternoon, a traveller passed through the town. Although he had just been walking in the bright sunshine, the moment he stepped within the limits of Verilsberg, he found himself plunged in nocturnal darkness. The traveller tried to dispel his bewilderment by convincing himself that it was just dramatic cloud cover. The possibility of a meteorological marvel, however, was dispelled when he discovered all the town’s inhabitants were asleep. After waking a local merchant, the traveller attempted to explain the peculiarity he had witnessed, but the merchant struggled to believe that the traveller’s rusted pocket watch could possibly be more accurate than the formidable Verilsberg town clock. For the merchant and for everyone else in the town, time appeared to march on at the same rate as it had always done.

The discrepancy grew but the passing decades were merely years to the townsfolk. Fashions changed and countries shifted but none of the Verilsbergers noticed the world outside moving faster. War broke out and all were required to enlist but once news reached Verilsberg the war was over. 

A mere twelve years had passed for the settlement when the traveller returned. Though he was in the twilight of his life, the town was unchanged and its people were unaged. The traveller could not believe what he had witnessed and so, in his final moments, he checked the time. It was an action that took him the rest of his life, for the old town clock could slow no more and, at that moment, the extraordinary Verilsberg clock stopped.

ANAX

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ANOTHER CASTLE

But Sir Galin of Eldridge, upon ascending to the summit of the tower, did perspire to such an extent that all the Lakes of Perilly would not have quenched the weary knight’s thirst. Though he had ventured to the top of near a dozen of these infernal spires, he still could not fathom their dark power. Such evil had not dispirited Sir Galin, whose valour had shone in the face of those waking dead who infested the tower’s base. So too did his strength endure the interminable climb up the structure’s spine. But it was Galin’s unwavering faith that permitted his crossing of the perilous bridges and crumbling pathways that plagued his journey. Now, he stood under the latticed sky, within a great garden such as those that adorned the top of all the lofty turrets. The cool night air refreshed Sir Galin, which was fortunate indeed because the final test of his might loomed ahead.

This citadel of soaring black stone was the bastion which confined the fair Princess Auralis and, upon entering that demonic stronghold, Galin was met with labyrinthine passages as dark as the moonless night. He trod with care so as not to disturb the foul creature that was sure to be creeping about these halls. Of that secret enemy, the intrepid knight knew little. Each tale of its nature was so wild that, in truth, the knight could not be certain of its existence. Legends abounded that the beast moved like a shadow, drank of flame for sustenance, stared into souls with its great ominous eye and bore limbed teeth. The knight had neither seen the beast, nor the princess, but although Sir Galin knew not the monster’s true form, he believed that it did inhabit each tower’s pinnacle, for when he had come within a hair’s breadth of liberating She-of-Noble-Blood, that invisible form did snatch her away once more to another realm.

“Should my sword stay true, I will not have it take her again,” Galin thought and he gripped the hilt of his heavy blade more tightly.

Sir Galin, being thus poised to strike, did advance down the winding galleries, charting every chamber should She-of-Royal-Birth lie within until he had ventured deep into the heart of that damnable abode. Presently, a faint echo travelled along those long, dank walls and found its way to Galin’s ear. And presently he did pause to consider the origin of such a strange noise. Such a smooth shuffle could only be the treacherous whisper of Galin’s unseen foe. The knight withdrew behind the pillar of an archway, slowed his breath and prepared for battle.

“Silently, now,” Galin murmured to himself as the fiendish creature drew closer.

Sir Galin’s eyes widened, his breath held in his throat and his heartbeat pounded as if it were a drum of war. The footsteps were closer now. Just a few moments more and… Now! Galin tensed his muscles and sprang from his place of concealment, weapon in hand. As the knight had prayed, his sword was true and through a whirl of linen, he pierced the white flesh of his nemesis. Blood pooled from the wound as Galin gripped the hilt of his sword, pressing its point deeper into the heart of that which he had long sought to destroy.

Then did Sir Galin, Knight of Eldridge, lay eyes upon the fiend he had slain. He gazed in awe upon its gilded locks, he looked with melancholy at the demon’s ruby lips, frozen in a silent cry of astonishment and he wept at the sight of the monster’s pale grey eyes, wide open with all hope of rescue now vanished.

ANAX.

FAREWELL OL' RIC

I’ll hear it again.

And when I hear it, I’ll know. You don’t forget a sound like that. Like a crack of lighting. Not the thunder, but the lightning itself, the way it looks. Not heard it before or since, but I heard it twice that day. I should have mentioned it then, but a lot happened very fast.

‘Course, I only really heard it the second time. Sites are noisy and Rico was blabbering. He made me laugh that guy. When he wasn’t cracking jokes he was dreaming about the lake where he grew up, always going on about how he’d retire with his wife to a cabin on its shore.

“If I had a time machine,” he’d always say, “I’d go back thirty years. I’d go back to my lake.”

We’d take the piss, but I envied him. Steady job, beautiful wife and a dream. Yeah, he had his life worked out.

Our job was in demolition and refurbishment. We were the guys you called to strip out a building if you wanted to start again. You wouldn’t believe the things we’d find hidden in the building work itself. There’d be layers of wallpaper going back decades, each one a different era, preserved like fossils. I’d come across newspapers from hundreds of years ago and occasionally we’d discover animal bones in places you’d never imagine. Ric used to joke about that. He said people used to find live animals inside rocks all the time. They’d be demolishing a building, crack open a rock that hadn’t been touched in years and out would pop a lizard, or toad, or cat or whatever. Of course, I didn’t believe him, which is why it was weird when it happened.

So anyway, we were ripping out this cladding and Ric was reminiscing so he didn’t hear the first ‘crack’ but I didn’t think nothing of it anyway. With all the noise from the work, could have been anything.

I felt bad for the old Saudade building. The department store was abandoned, had been for decades, but I always liked it. No one else agreed; I guess it looked out of place now with all the skyscrapers. Anyhow, it wasn’t coming down, but let’s just say it had an uncertain future.

We were gutting the place, prepping it for resale, and me and Ric were ripping out all the cladding and drywall, on the ground floor. This one panel by the door was giving us hassle, but we finally pulled it off and, well, I wish we hadn’t. If I’d known what was behind that panel, I would have walked away right then.

So, Ric yells, screams almost, and I look up and the wall’s all cobwebs and dust, but in the middle of all that, right there in the middle of the wall were fingers.

The fingers of a human hand, coming out of the wall.

Oh, and in these fingers, just resting in them, was this small white stick, like a pen or magic wand or something. It’s like the hand was reaching out the stone to offer it to us.

‘Course I thought it was a prank or some weird statue at first and I said to Ric that I thought someone had a strange sense of humour, but Ric didn’t believe me. He goes over and touches the damn thing and jumps back, like he’s been electrocuted, yelling, “It’s real! It’s real!”

I didn’t believe it, but I touched them and they felt just like real fingers. Soft and spongey, just like real skin. The only difference from my own hand was that this hand in the wall was stone cold. I calmed Ric down, said it’s just some trick or something. He wasn’t convinced, but I was trying to convince myself. I said I’d go get Jack and that he should wait there.

“Sure,” he snapped back, “I’ll make sure it doesn’t move.”

Our supervisor, Jack, was in her cabin, feet up just like always. She protested I was trying to prank her but I said if she didn’t take a look, I’d get her boss to look instead.

So, I finally get Jack over there, but as we’re getting close, I hear that crack again and I really noticed it this time, like the sound of your ears popping, but everywhere around you.

When we get there, Ric’s gone. He was right there when I left him, but when I get back, he’s nowhere to be seen. I should have gone looking, but at the time I didn’t question it. Why would I? I just thought he’d gone for a smoke. I should have twigged something was wrong though, because that strange white stick, which was in the hand, wasn’t there anymore.

‘Course, I didn’t have much time to question anything, because the moment Jack sees the thing it all kicks off.

“Is there, is there a body in there?” she says and she starts sweating, although maybe that was the walk over. She phones the police, radios for the site medic and then starts barraging me with questions. She’s got the wrong idea though, this building goes back to 1896, sandstone walls, you couldn’t get a body in there and even if you could, it’d just be bones by now. That flips her out and she snaps that it couldn’t be anything else. I tell her they were into weird stuff back then, death masks and that. It’s only there to freak us out.

I’m quickly proved wrong. The medic arrives and is dead calm about the whole thing. She snaps on some gloves and inspects the fingers, then turns around and says they’re real. How a hand got imbedded in stone though, she’s clueless.

The police appear not long after. They think it’s a joke at first, but change their tune when they see that Jack’s face is drained of colour, the medic is deadly serious and I’m not looking as brave as I was pretending to be. They have to assume the worst and they tell Jack to close down the site whilst they call in forensics and a doctor.

Me and Jack are taken to one side and they start asking us questions. I mention that it was Ric who first found it and they ask if I can go get him. So, I step to one side and give Ric a call on my phone. He doesn’t pick up, but he never does the first time. I try again and still no reply, so I drop him a message and go back.

By this point more police have shown up. Now there’s a whole gaggle of gloved scientists with toolkits and everything. They start scraping away at the wall around the fingers, digging slowly and carefully. I leave right around when they start arguing over what technique to use. I only found out later that it was because the body was so deeply embedded in the rock, they couldn’t tell the difference between the body and the stone. They work all night and only reveal the left arm. I’m told they eventually just cut out the whole section of wall out and took it to a lab.

The morning after all this I get a call from Jen, Ric’s wife, saying he hadn’t come home and isn’t answering his phone. I say I hadn’t seen him and explain what happened. I call Ric, still no reply, and Jack’s got no clue either. I get her to check the time sheets and it turns out he never clocked out. Jen searches for him, contacts everyone he knows, but finally she accepts something’s happened and calls the police.

More questions. Jen files a report then we wait a few days but nothing. No word from the police until maybe weeks later when the detective who was at the site, Miller I think his name was, he shows up at my house and says they’ve found a body. I could have been sick. I genuinely thought that he’d just up and left everyone and gone to that lake, but no. That would’ve been better than what actually happened. No, not better, easier.

Miller takes me to identify the body. I meet Jen outside, she’s upset, but trying to hide it. All she’s worried about is that Ric left his car at the site and he’s going to get a ticket. I tell her I’ll handle it.

We are shown in and I’m expecting a morgue, a body on a slab, but it’s more of a laboratory. There’s a body alright, but not like you’ve ever seen.

Maybe you’ve come across those pictures of people killed by a volcano in Italy somewhere. They were all preserved and you can see that they were writhing. You can see that they were screaming. That’s what was in front of me. A horrific grotesque; almost unrecognisably human. Skin made of rough stone, a steel girder growing out of the skull. It must have been fused with the spine all the way through.

I told Miller that there must be some mistake and said: “This is the body from inside the wall, isn’t it?”

“Just tell us if you recognise this person,” he says.

There’s a lot I still don’t understand, maybe I don’t want to. We were there together. Ric found the body, even touched it and now he’s become that body? I couldn’t believe it. But I looked again at that contorted face and despite knowing it was impossible, it was him. Mangled as hell, but it was definitely him. I stare but I don’t see Ric anymore, I see the lake from his childhood, the cabin and the little boat he’d dreamed of. All his dreams, all his thoughts, turned to stone. I cry. Jen’s the one comforting me. She is stronger than I am.

Another room. More questions. I ask how they knew it was him, how they found out. Miller shows me the ring they found on the hand and tells me how they tracked down the jeweller who confirmed it was Ric’s wedding ring. In reply, I tell them everything, back to when we first met six years ago. I tell them how we found the hand and the white stick it held. About the only thing I miss out was the sound; that crack, must’ve slipped my mind.

At some point, Miller’s tone changes. He asks me about Jen, my relationship with her. How much time was I spending with her now? Was I ever jealous of him? They were angling for a motive, but I wouldn’t give them one. Jack was my alibi. I was with her when he disappeared. Doesn’t make sense, but neither does a man preserved in a hundred-year-old building. Miller’s not convinced, says he’s still got questions and I say, “Don’t we all.”

They bring in this scientist. She’s some expert in electron-something and says she’s got a theory about what happened, but needs me to confirm a few things. She was really excited, like it was a new discovery or something. Wanted to run tests on the body. I thought it sick, but I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t have a better idea. She says it was… hold on, I’ll have to remember now… electron tunnelling, yeah, those were the words she used. Million to one, but it was possible. Apparently at any moment the atoms in the floor could line up and we could fall straight through. It’s only luck that we don’t. Ric was just unlucky.

Doctor put the time of death at around the time he disappeared. Killed from being melded into the wall. It sounds implausible, but it was the best theory they had. Well, it was the only theory they had. The scientist points out there’s only one thing that defies explanation and that was my testimony. I had said that Ric and I saw the hand before he disappeared. I hesitate, I want to say that’s what happened, but then I see Miller stood in the corner. He hasn’t believed a single word I’ve said and I start to realise that he needs to start believing or I’m looking at a very uncertain future.

That’s when I threw truth out of the window. There was no hand. There never was. We pulled down the panel and it was just a blank wall. I look away for just one moment and Ric’s gone, only the hand, his fingers are there and that’s when I went to tell Jack. I told Miller I was wrong, I was sorry, I must have got confused in the panic.

“What about the stick? The white stick?” Miller asks.

“I don’t know. I panicked. I thought I saw something, a tool in his hand that fell out- oh, yeah that was it. It was a screwdriver. He was holding a screwdriver. He fell through the wall, electron tunnels or whatever and he must have dropped it,” I said, or something close to it. They ate up the lie. The scientist leans back, big smile on her face. She must’ve been thinking her PhD was in the bag.

You can’t cremate a rock. So, they buried him. The coffin had to be specially made because of the strange shape he was in. It was too heavy to carry, so they hauled him in a truck then got a crane to lift him down. I wouldn’t have bothered, just put him up as a statue, call it modern art. He would have found that funny.

He’d saved more than you’d expect. Enough for Jen to retire on and for me to go with her. We got that cabin by the lake, the one he always wanted. And I sit every night on the back step, with a six-pack of beer, watching the sunset reflected in the water.

Some nights I try and make sense of what happened. I go around and around with a new idea each time. None of them make sense (especially not electron tunnelling) because none of them can explain that damn white stick. To be honest I’m starting to wonder if it happened at all.

The closest I got to an answer is this: Ric always wanted to go back and maybe, just maybe that little white stick let him. Don’t ask me to explain it, that’s just my theory. That stick let him travel back in time, that was the crack noise, he spends some time at the lake, tries to live the life he’d remembered but realises he can’t go back. Perhaps he misses Jen, perhaps he misses the dream of the lake, not the lake itself. He decides to come back to the present, CRACK and he’s back. But he’s misjudged it by just a few feet and reappears in the wall. Dead instantly.

Makes sense doesn’t it?  Except you explain to me where that stick came from.

I don’t know if I’ll ever know what happened, but I do know one thing. I’ll hear it again, just one last time. I’ll be sat right here; I’ll hear that loud ‘crack’ and when I hear it, I’ll know. I won’t say a word, just pass him a beer.

Yeah. I’ll hear it again.

ANAX.