Chaos Clock (12 page)

As they made their way down to the round chamber at the root of the museum, Gordon and Mr Flowerdew did not speak. The air brushed against them heavily, as though trying to slow them down, and they seemed to move with painful slowness towards their destination.

It was even worse when they got there. The air smelled as it does during a storm, crackling with unseen electricity, and buzzing with angry, indistinct voices.

Gordon had disabled a security camera in the hall with the striding figures, and now all there was to do was unlock the display case with the key he had pocketed earlier that day.

At the threshold of the room Mr Flowerdew put a hand on his shoulder to stop him for a moment. “The presences in this room are waking. I will do what I can to hold them at bay. Open the case and put all the pieces of the Hoard in the bag. Do not stop, whatever seems to be happening.”

Gordon threw him a rather wild-eyed look, but went to the cabinet without comment.

Mr Flowerdew stood in the centre of the room, eyes half-closed, face tilted towards the ceiling.

Gordon unlocked the cabinet and slid the door open.

There was a sound that was not quite a human voice, not quite singing. It made the hackles rise on the back of
Gordon’s neck as its keening noise grew, rising higher and higher. He glanced round at Mr Flowerdew, standing erect in the centre of the room. The old man hadn’t moved, his face turned to the ceiling, arms by his side.

Gordon forced himself to turn back to the case and with clumsy fingers began to lift the hoard of broken weapons into an open holdall.

Angry voices swooped about him like birds trying to strike at his head, and unconsciously he hunched lower as he transferred the fragile pieces of metal.

Above everything rose the dreadful inhuman keening.

Gordon found he was panting for breath, though his movements seemed slow as a swimmer’s.

As he put the last of the weapons in the bag there was a new sound, as if something heavy was breaking through twigs and branches.

“Hurry! I cannot hold them.”

The old man’s face was running with sweat. From across the room Gordon could see him trembling with exertion. He forced himself to lift the bag and walk towards him.

Just as he thought the noise was so loud that the walls must start to crumble, everything stopped.

The absence of sound was a physical relief that brought him momentarily to a halt before he lurched forward again to offer his arm to the old man, who looked on the verge of collapse.

“Thank you,” he said shakily. “The children must have succeeded. They have won us a little respite, but we must leave this place.” They left the circular chamber
on uncertain legs.

Gordon looked back once and suppressed a cry. The ancient carved figure from Ballachulish lay half out of its case in a welter of broken glass and twigs.

By the time they reached the children in the Main Hall, they had regained some of their composure. The children were wide-eyed with fear, but calm. Fog poured in through the broken roof panes, pooling on the floor and sending out tendrils. Gordon led them back a different way so that they could avoid it completely.

They opened the door on a world run mad.

Around them, buildings flickered in and out of existence, and the light shifted and changed constantly. At one moment the blood moon stood in the sky; at the next, the sun. Trees appeared and disappeared around them. Only Mr Flowerdew’s car remained a constant among the bewildering maelstrom.

They rushed to its illusory safety and shut themselves in, speechless at what they could see happening outside.

“Time is unravelling.”

Mr Flowerdew started the car, which sat, at the moment, on a windswept moor, and it moved off, bouncing slowly over the uneven ground. Gordon sat forward, gripping the dashboard, peering out. Kate and David huddled in the back seat, speechless.

Buildings and roads flickered around them. It was night-time; gaslights, a horse-drawn cab. The horse shied at the unfamiliar mechanical horror bearing down on it and the cabbie yelled with fear, jumped down and took to his heels.

A forest now, the trees close enough to touch, but somehow a clear path always opening just in front of them. Dappled light and soft rain.

The light thickened to the colour of honey and they saw men stripped to the waist building a great wall of dark stone.

Fog again, their own time returned for a few moments, and they found themselves by Holyrood Palace, at the entrance to the great park.

David glanced at Kate, saw her face was glazed with fear, wondered what his own looked like.

It’ll be all right
, he thought.
I’ll stop them and Mum will come back forever and everything will be all right
.

Now that they were in the park, although the sky changed every few seconds, the shifts in the landscape around them were less marked. Holyrood Park had stood virtually unchanged for thousands of years, since the hill tribes abandoned it.

The road disappeared again, and Mr Flowerdew slowed the car to negotiate a narrow track across a steep slope.

“Why does the car stay the same?” asked Gordon, breathlessly.

“Because I force it to remain,” said Mr Flowerdew shortly, his face gaunt with strain.

They could see Duddingston Loch now, glimmering ahead and to the right of them. The blood moon shone in the sky again, but it was not the sky of their own time. The loch was much bigger than it should have been, and there was no church at its far end, no building anywhere in fact.

The track petered out, and Mr Flowerdew stopped the car. “These will be the hardest moments. Be brave and we may still succeed.”

To leave the tiny measure of safety provided by the car was almost more than they could bear, but somehow they did it, Gordon picking up the bag of broken weapons and helping the children out.

“This way.” Mr Flowerdew led them through
hip-high
grass down towards the loch. There was just enough light to see that at this end it extended into a narrow tongue of silvery water.

Gordon put down the bag a little way from the edge and unzipped it.

“What the …?”

He reached into the bag and pulled out a spearhead, whole and gleaming; nothing like the fragile and corroded fragments he had taken from the museum.

“In this time the weapons are newly forged,” said Mr Flowerdew by way of explanation. “Now we must each return something to the water.”

He went first, scooping up blades and spearheads. He walked to the water’s edge and threw them, one by one, as far as he could out into the loch. They flew in silvery arcs against the sky.

As he turned back to the others, Gordon called, “Over there, look.”

On the other side of the inlet stood three men, dressed in skins and carrying spears and bows. The two groups stood motionless watching each other for a few seconds, then the men melted away into the undergrowth.

“Pay them no heed. We are in their time. It was men such as them who left the Hoard here in the first place. Come along … hurry!”

Gordon went next, then came back to where the bag lay to help the children.

As Kate waited her turn she looked around. “What’s that? What’s happening?”

In the sky on the other side of the loch, lightning flashed and a glow of golden light spread up from the ground to meet it.

“It is the battle for which the weapons were made. Quickly. This must be done now.”

Kate turned and took a bone-handled knife and some spearheads from Gordon. The knife began to glow with the same golden light that was leaping in the sky.

“What should I do?”

A wind had suddenly risen from nowhere and Mr Flowerdew had to shout.

“Throw them in. Now!”

She flung them and watched the glow disappear beneath the dark waters of the loch.

“It’s your turn, David,” said Gordon.

He hesitated, then dug his hand into the bag and pulled out the last weapon, a golden, glowing sword. It was cool under his fingertips, though it looked as though it should have burned.

“Now comes the moment when you must decide, David.”

He looked up sharply, into the eyes of the Lightning King, barely five metres away, in the opposite direction from the loch. He was drenched in lightning and now
it ran down, not up, pooling around his feet, to form a miniature silver lake.

“Throw the sword in here, and your mother can be with you for ever.”

Beside him, Gordon stood frozen. At the loch side, Kate and Mr Flowerdew stood, appalled.

Kate found her voice first. “David! Quick! Throw the sword in the loch.”

He didn’t move.

Mr Flowerdew and the Lightning King locked gazes.

“You are an old man, Guardian. A weak old man,” said the King, smiling his wolf’s smile. “And you have failed.”

With an obvious effort, Mr Flowerdew turned his eyes to David. “David, please, think about the things I told you. Think of what you have seen tonight. Would you have this happen to your world?”

“I’ll get my Mum back.”

He heard Kate gasp. “But she’s
dead
, David.”

“Not if time comes apart. She’ll come back. We’ll be together forever.”

The King spoke again. “It is time. Throw the sword to me. See, here is your mother.”

He lifted his head and saw his mother, her red fleece bright even in the ruddy moonlight, walking down through the grass towards him. He swung his arm back.

“Wait, David!”

He lowered his arm again and waited for her to reach him.

She was crying.

“Don’t cry, Mum. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. In a minute it’ll be all right and you’ll be back with me and
Dad forever.”

Her hand was on his arm, preventing him from throwing the glowing sword. “No, David. Throw it in the loch. You mustn’t do this.”

“What?” he shouted in disbelief. “You don’t understand. If I throw it in the loch you stay dead. If I throw it into the lightning, you won’t be dead anymore.”

“No, David.”

He had never seen her look so sad.

“I won’t be dead anymore and I’ll be here somewhere like this, but I’ll be here every day that I was ill as well, and you and Dad will have to go through it over and over again … for ever. Don’t do that to us. Let me go.”

It was as though she had asked him to tear out his own heart. “No. I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that.”

“You can. Remember, I told you before: I am here,” – she touched his heart – “and here,” – his head – “always. Close your eyes and I’ll be there. You don’t need this. Be brave. You know what you must do.”

“No.” He whispered, his head against her chest, wrapped in her dear arms. She was asking him never to stand like this again. “I can’t.”

She tilted his head with her hands so he had to look her in the eyes. “You can. Come on, I’ll walk down to the water’s edge with you.”

She took his free hand and led him, no longer protesting, to the shore of the loch, paying no heed to Kate or Mr Flowerdew as she passed them.

Through tears she smiled and bent to kiss him for the last time. “I’m so proud of you. My brave son.”

Then she turned him to face the water and stood
behind him as he hurled the final piece of the Hoard in a golden arc into Duddingston Loch, and when he turned back she was gone.

He fell to his knees with a sob.

The ground under him shuddered as the Lightning King gave a great cry of rage and the silver pool about his feet began to boil. Around him, Kate saw figures flicker in and out of time: Tethys and others whom she did not recognise, some human-looking, others horned or animal-headed, called from whatever other battles they had been fighting elsewhere, too late to help in this one. Howls and shouts split the air. The King began to waver, but as he did so he raised his arms and launched a tremendous thunderbolt at them.

There was a noise so loud it was like a physical blow, and Kate found herself on her knees in the wet grass. Gordon was struggling to rise to his feet, David still at the water’s edge. Mr Flowerdew lay sprawled on his back.

Gordon reached him first.

“Are you hurt? What should I do?”

“Send Kate to fetch David so that we have a moment to talk.”

When he was sure she was out of earshot, he went on:

“I am dying, Gordon. What happened in the museum weakened me too much to withstand this.”

“No! There must be something. I’ll go and get help.”

He grasped Gordon’s wrist with surprising strength even now. “There is nothing to be done. I have known all
along that this would happen. It should have happened during the first battle here, all those years ago. Listen to me. You must look after the children. Take the car. Get them home. Then bring the car back and leave it here. Later, they will need to talk to you about everything; you are the only one who will understand now. With the rip in time healed, no one but us will remember what has happened tonight.”

Kate arrived with an arm around David’s shoulders, too stunned to speak.

He turned his head towards them. “Thank you, both. No one else could have done what you did tonight. David, I know you have paid a terrible price. If there had been any other way…” He paused for breath, speaking now with more effort. “Go with Gordon now. You will not see me again. Accept what you hear about me.”

“No,” said Kate. “We won’t leave you alone here. We’ll get help.”

He raised a hand and briefly touched her cheek. “Dear Kate. I have told Gordon already, I am dying. It is part of the price for our success. Truly, I don’t mind. I have lived for a very long time.

“Go now. Goodbye. Thank you.”

He closed his eyes.

Gordon pushed open the creaking gate and unlocked the front door. The hall was warmly welcoming after the December chill outside.

The big clock stared silently at him. He’d accepted now that no repairer would ever set it going again. It had died with John Flowerdew that night.

He was getting used to the idea of calling this place home, although the terms of the old man’s will hadn’t put it quite like that. A “life interest” he had, “holding it in trust until such time …” Such time as what, he still didn’t know.

It was almost a week now since he’d seen the children. He sensed they were all drawing back from each other a little, trying to heal. No one else seemed to notice anything odd about them. Another part of John Flowerdew’s legacy, he supposed.

To everyone else, he’d died of a heart attack; a good age, no need to mourn too much. His funeral had been well attended, for he’d had many friends. Two funerals he’d been to in that same week. Poor Andrew Nixon was the other one, murdered outside his house in Cramond by some madman with a sword, they said, and the police with no idea who’d done it.

When Gordon had been asked to go to the reading of John Flowerdew’s will he’d been surprised, and when he’d understood why he was there, shocked out
of speech for a while. Kate’s mother and David’s father had been there too, for there had been bequests for the children: a little money and a memento for each of them, he didn’t know exactly what.

He’d weathered the inevitable comments and speculation at work; that was nothing, compared to what he’d been through.

It was still strange to go into the museum and find everything serene and normal: no shattered glass, no rumours of animals and no hint that such a thing as the Duddingston Hoard had ever existed. Another cache of relics filled the place in the round chamber, and the Ballachulish figure stood, as usual, in its cage of twigs.

He often looked at the clock, seeking a hint that he hadn’t imagined everything, but the monkey stared ahead with inscrutable wooden eyes and gave no clue.

Kate drew her bedroom curtains, yawning. Tomorrow was Saturday, so if Ben didn’t wake her by bursting into her bedroom there was a chance of a long lie. Not too long though: football practice to go to.

Just before she got into bed, she opened, as she always did now, the little box that used to hold Grandma Alice’s gold necklace. Mum had been terribly angry at its loss for a while, but now it was as if she’d forgotten about it completely. Kate lifted out what the box held, and tilted it to catch the light. It was the little carved sea otter, the twin of the one in the museum. Mr Flowerdew had left it to her and when she held it, she felt somehow that he
wasn’t far away. Her memory of that dreadful night was being smoothed out a little as time went on, but she sometimes felt very old, not eleven at all.

She put the otter back in the little box and turned out the light.

“Bedtime, David.”

“Okay. Hang on a minute. I’m just having some toast.”

He brought the half-eaten slice through to the sitting room and flopped on to the sofa beside Alastair.

“Football tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Kate’s coming round at half past nine.”

Alastair looked up at the painting on the opposite wall.

“I wish I’d known him better. He obviously knew us.”

David too was looking at it. It still made his heart ache every time he did.

The painting was his legacy from Mr Flowerdew. It showed David as he now was, and his dad, and Mum was with them, in her red fleece, happy and healthy and smiling. With them … forever.