SOUNDLESS MOVEMENT
Published 'Heliocentric Net' 1993
Graham had all he could stand from digital alarm clocks. They often went off at the wrong time, and, what with power-cuts, leaking batteries, dozing devices, lack of hands and, above all, buzzers instead of bells, he found them little better than useless. And useless was only a notch neater than nasty. So he sought to buy a good solid wind-up model.
Surprised how cheap it was, he obtained one in an old-fashioned hardware store that you once often discovered in out-of-the-way shopping parades. The clock seemed to have been standing for years, nay decades, behind the various grades of electronic timepiece in the showcase. The shopkeeper appeared to have been leaning behind the counter for at least just as long, with brown-speckled skin and milky eyes. At first, she claimed that she had sold the very last wind-up model to a Mr Donkin before he passed away on night-shift some twelve years before. But her hand had soon pounced upon the dusty case with splayed heavy-duty feet, with large face, wide wind-up eyes and curlicue hands of seeping time. Graham thought that the loud ticking had started as she removed it from the cabinet.
Good heavens, he could never sleep with that racket going on, as he heard the cranking parts moving behind the incessant Chinese-burns of its rhythm. He considered changing his mind, but, on second thoughts, he didn't have the heart to do so, since the shopkeeper had gone to so much trouble. He would indeed take it for what it was - an honest ticker.
He was relatively pleased to see there was a good deal of change from a tenner. Its box also proved a delight, with a design in the Forties utilties style on the lid. Art Deco, he thought. He could keep odds and ends in there, once he had removed the contraption to his bed-head table. And, as she placed it upon the squashed-up tracing-paper inside the box, he heard that it was still ticking loudly. Incredibly, it showed the correct time.
Graham shuddered at the uncanniness of the whole transaction. He felt like walking straight out of the shop, without another word. He still did not have the brass neck to say to the shopkeeper's face that he didn't actually want the merchandise at all. He wouldn't mind just the box, however. And the weighty winding-key was a work of ancient art in itself.
As he drove home, he could hear it ticking in the boot where he had stowed it, sounding out above the engine - which was impossible. Like a bomb. Yet he reached home, just before dark, it being one of those winter evenings that draw in faster than you drive. The house was quiet - that was, until he brought the clock inside. Then, he placed a record on the turntable. A fad to listen to 78's, he knew. He wound the wonky handle at the front, so that the heavy black record would play at near enough the right speed. There was a crack which, together with the ticking of the new clock, created a peculiar counterpoint to the jazz rhythms actually between the grooves. As the music finished, Graham shuddered, for no particular reason, except perhaps because of the sky darkening through the window where he had forgotten to draw the curtains.
The fireplace, beneath the mantelpiece, with its grate of congealed brown teeth, yawned wider, he imagined, as he heard scrabbling noises further up the flue. Then, someone was tapping at the window. Only the onset of heavy rain, he decided - until he decided that might mean it was someone tapping after all. The law of averages, after all, was not an average law.
Taking the initiative, he grabbed the weighty clock and carried it up the steep stairs to the dark landing. He felt it throbbing in his hand, as if it were trying to impart something. Easy to believe that all the die-cast shafts, fly-wheels and cogs were teetering on the brink of tangled grinding, ratchetting, meshing - until the brazen clangour of the alarm-bell erupted. The hammer oscillated violently between the ringing walls of his skull, mistaking dark for deafness.
The workings of the clock eventually wound down with soft springy whimpers like a beloved pet dying - simply sensed by the hands rather than the ears. Graham was, of course, unaware of the creatures with winding-hole eyes that wanted shelter from the rain, summoned by the bell down the chimney, moving like furry clockwork toys, snicker-snacking up the dim stair-well behind him...
The shopkeeper smiled mischievously in her sleep. Nearby were the bare luminous numbers of her own Art Nouveau alarm-clock, one with soundless movement. Mr Donkin snored beside her.