yep, here it is.

CHAPTER THREE
STITCH IN TIME

Heinrich Knobel walked at a stately pace, dragging the metal personal shopping cart behind him, the large black plastic bag tied shut and the excess plastic waving in the breezy morning air. His morning rounds were nearly over. His last stop was the corner store, where he hoped they might still have a copy of yesterday’s Herald.
As he entered the woman behind the counter looked up and smiled. “Hi Henry! I saved a paper for you. New juice in the back.” Heinrich nodded at the woman, and smiled, then headed to the rear cold storage box to retrieve his orange juice, the final ingredient of the morning. Returning to the counter she rung up the price, and turned to take the dollar and change that he already had ready for her. “Have a good day, Henry!” She was convinced he was hard of hearing. It wasn’t that, he knew. He just couldn’t for the life of him remember her. Hadn’t for years.
Outside the sun beat down on him, warming his shoulders and making his bare head sweat under his hat. He adjusted his tweed cap and smoothed his polo shirt over his chest, subconsciously smoothing out the wrinkles underneath as well as on the surface. Time had snuck up on him, and the flesh under his polo shirt, under his tee shirt, was soft and delicate again. He stopped his self-inspection and continued on through the last few blocks. Manicured trees caused the light to dance and flicker, and the fine houses around him were almost uniformly large, Victorian-esque, even if they hadn’t been originally, and well cared for by hired staff. Some of the people he saw were paid to be outside, trimming hedges and lawns, and others were amateurs, posing for their neighbors, watering green and full grass against their gardeners’ express wishes.
A woman in a gray jogging suit, blazoned with name brands, jogged by. “Hi Henry, how are things holding up?” she asked, as she slowed.
“Well enough, I suppose.” He responded in his slightly accented tongue. It rolled out in measured tones, efficient and cultured-sounding. Where he had learned to speak in such a tone eluded him.
“Take care.” She responded, not listening, but feeling her duty done. She jogged past. Another nameless figure in his ever-moving world.
Turning onto his street he saw the new neighbor, Mr. Reyes, a handsome man who was intending to marry the fine lawyer he was living with after the new addition was finished, waving to him. “Mr. Knobel! How was your constitutional?”
“Good thank you.” Heinrich responded. Then he pursued the thread. “Do you expect the new bath tub to come in today?” Reyes had paid for it a month ago, and had yet to see it.
Reyes shook his head. “No. I just got a call in to tell me they needed to ship it in from overseas. So much for them having one in the warehouse.” He smiled wryly.
“Perhaps you should tell them you’ve retained the services of a lawyer to go over the deed of sale.” Heinrich suggested. “I’ve heard that litigation is quite hard on the profit margin.”
Reyes waved away the comment. “I’d think about it, but I expect to have more business with them someday, and suing people usually makes that harder. I’m sure it’ll be alright.”
Heinrich smiled. “I sure it will be. If you’ll excuse me, I need to put my orange juice in the refrigerator.”
“Oh! Certainly!” And the conversation seemed to be at an end. Heinrich turned to go, when Reyes called to him “Wait, Mr. Knobel, I have a silly question you might be able to clear up for me.”
Heinrich smiled at the formality. “Call me Henry. Everybody does.” It makes it easy to be friendly with them after I forget them, he reflected.
“Sorry, Henry. Emily and I were talking the other day, and she insisted your late wife’s name was Marta. I disagree. If you don’t mind me asking, what was her name?”
Heinrich felt instantly confused. His head was a whirl. His wife? Vague phantoms, like shadows in darkness, seemed to describe a memory, a delicate hand, but no face. He grew angry. If he had had a wife, he’d remember it, wouldn’t he? Something like that would be too important. “I believe you are both mistaken, Mr. Reyes. I never married.”
“But…” Reyes look struck, and again Heinrich hesitated. But nothing came to the elder man, and Reyes nodded, seeing the resoluteness in him. “I’m sorry. I must be mistaken.”
Heinrich nodded. “Perfectly understandable. Give my best to Emily. Good day, Mr. Reyes.”
He slowly crossed the street and then made his way up a cobbled path to another refurbished Victorian home. His home. He walked up the short flight of steps to the porch, and then fished in his pocket for his keys. Finding them, he opened the door, edging his shoulder in to hold it as he dragged the cart inside. Then he himself entered, and hearing the door whir to a close, allowed the darkness of the front hall to surround him.
* * *
“So, how’d you get it?” Blake leered at Evans unpleasantly. The man was a brute of a thing, large bald head, pale skin almost bone white, a grizzled face with errant black stubble over most of it, except where it was marked by scars. Both ears were missing, and his forehead was covered with scar tissue, an old burn gone nasty before it healed, and even when he wore his bandana, it looked lumpy in wrong ways. His lantern jaw sealed the look and made his natural jaw set predatory. He towered over Evans when standing, but now he was slouched on the edge of a table, making him only loom.
“How the hell should I know?” Evans responded, irked.
“Ah, come off it. It’s like AIDS, you know… You usually only get it from fucking with someone.” Blake laughed his harsh, barking laugh, rocking his body with its spasms. He crossed his tattooed arms, covered with snakes and demons mating in a sea of flame, and eyed Evans. “Seriously. I want to know whose shit-list I get on by helping you out.”
“That’s just it,” Evans retorted. “I have no fucking idea. I’m not sure when it glommed onto me. Musta been in the last few days, because I’m still with it, you know? The only person I know of who could have done this to me should be dead. I put a motorcycle engine through her, for Christ sake.” Evans massaged his temples subconsciously. His head pounded almost constantly now.
“Who?”
“Cass.”
“Cass Streetly? Shit! You’re still after that fucking harp, aren’t you?! What the hell are you, a lunatic? Those objects are some of the most valuable shit out there. You got the watch, why the hell do you keep looking for more?” Blake stood up and moved moodily across the waiting room. “Who knows who put the leech on you, then. Hell! If I were any one of the nutjobs who’re chasing those items down, I’d put the fucking thing on you myself.”
Evans watched the larger man pace. Evans himself was of average build, and height, his head ruled by unruly black hair that refused to accept imposed order, dark eyes, and a ‘sweat-heart’ smile. It made him seem a pretty boy at times, which he didn’t mind with the women, and which usually caused people to underestimate him. Watching the man, Evans fidgeted, thinking there was something that he should do, but he was at a loss to figure out what. His intuition, which he depended on, wasn’t working too well these days.
Evans took in the waiting room, the walls layered with patches and strips of tan leather, inked with leering beasts and things with too many teeth, horns, eyes. Samples. A leg-less couch huddled in a corner, its tattered and stained brown weave full of holes, looking as feral as the wall coverings. The place smelled of sweat, machinery, and perhaps faintly of urine. Blake covered the small space in a few steps, then turned and crossed it again. There was nothing Evans had to say.
He did want the harp. And the disk, and the lamp. Hell, he’d heard about a rat that was supposed to be made by the same guy. The watchmaker, Evans thought of him. He rubbed his thumb over the lucky charm in his pocket. He felt the ridges of the etching, and swore he could feel the ticking of it. He’d also come across some kind of head that could read books that you placed it on. He’d bought it off of a boozehound for the price of some expensive vintage wine. The boozehound showed him that if you said “Laut lesen auf Englisch” it would read to you. When you wanted it to stop, you said “Halt!” If you didn’t say “auf Englisch” the thing would read to you in German. It had the same marking underneath as the watch had on its face. The same maker. But the watch was Evans’s special find. It was a total accident that he had even found it. Evans didn’t have any idea how many other items were out there, but Evans wanted them.
Blake finally answered. “Fuck it! I’m on so many shit lists I’m fucking swimming in crap already. Sure, I’ll take it off of you. You sure you don’t want to just let it fall off?”
Evans shook his head. “Who says this one will do that? Do you remember Woczyk? That isn’t a gamble I’m willing to make.” Woczyk had made a play for Cass Streetly’s former lover. When he started noticing the signs, he just laughed about them. Petty revenge he called it. Except he never came out of the coma. The doctors all said that his brainwaves just dropped to nil. Even if he came out of it, he might be a vegetable for the rest of his life.
Blake frowned. “It ain’t gonna go cheap. I’m gonna need the plates, and I need them yesterday. You get them for me, and you’re golden. AND you’ll owe me a big one. Got me?”
Evans stifled a sigh of relief. In a previous life, before he knew anything about the watch, or adepts, or supernatural creatures that drained you dry like walking pneumonia, he’d been a Treasury man. Some things you hold on to, for security reasons. And though he really didn’t want to let go of them, he wanted to live more. “Sure. Ok. What do you need me to do?”
“First one’s easy. FedEx job. Take them to this address.” Blake scribbled something on a piece of paper. “Talk to Mr. Hong. He’s the manager there. Hand him the plates, bring me back the package. It’s my special shit, you know, so don’t mess it up.”
“Second thing you need to do is get me a scapegoat.” Blake’s eyes glittered in the fluorescent light. “I’ll tell you more about that when you come back.”
* * *
Heinrich rested on the stool in the tower, a relic of the Victorian design, which, if the windows were un-shuttered, would give him a view of much of the neighborhood he lived in. He had stood at the windows many times, marveling at the orderly way that cars drove through the neighborhood, how people left for work, and returned from it. He found the orderly peace deeply satisfying and to him it underlined the importance of his work. Order, peace, and perfection. Heinrich returned to the work at hand.
He pondered the onion paper sheets covered in crabbed writing, scribbling figures on the tabletop with a stick of charcoal, then eyeing the clutter on the floor. Already it was taking shape, the feet from the Christmas tree stands now re-laved, attached to the wide ring which suspended most of the growing mechanism. The mainspring was already in place, the beautiful gears, some cast here, others salvaged from restoration sites at excessive cost. Already the work had eclipsed any of his previous projects in sheer cost and time. Then he turned to the amber globe. One tinted glass globe section sat firmly attached above the main cog, waiting for its mate to be finished. The clasps still needed to be affixed and then the two halves would be joined. Two pronged segments of copper wire were to be threaded into the globe at the base, and a small hole at the top would allow Heinrich to fill the globe with ether. Beyond the globe the nickel rods were in place, the angles already set, the bulk of the outer spheres already affixed. He sighed. There were a number of things yet to do.
He reached into the plastic bag that he had dragged here and removed an antique globe, wooden faced, hand painted with the countries as they had been during the height of the Austrian Empire. Taking knife in hand, Heinrich probed the base, working the bottom peg from its seat in the globe, and freeing it. The globe he dropped to the ground, letting it roll away. He began to work at the arm, and soon had both pegs free, as well as the gilded outer edge of the arm. These he placed reverently on the table, the rest he discarded into a corner of scrap.
The next object was a glass beaded Victorian lampshade, a precious find, each lozenge of glass an important piece to his project, a valuable facet of the total design. Each one was freed from the frame with judicious use of tin snips, each one examined at length, then sorted into 3 piles, none by size or shape, but by some quality which Heinrich’s eye alone seemed to perceive. One required scrutiny in front of a gas lamp before he placed it alone, separate, on a small brass music box, recently gutted for spare parts. Eventually the lampshade, a bare skeleton of brass and frayed wire ends, joined the detritus in the corner.
The process was one he was intimately familiar with. He had, after all, been doing this his whole life. Silver chain, clip each loop, and set them aside to be heated and remolded. Each aspect built on the other, creating the whole, which was more than the sum of the parts. It was part of the natural march of creation. Part of the way of things. And from his hands sprung life.
The bag slowly disgorged its contents, brass doorknobs yielded up strips of circular metal. A lever from the stock of an antique pistol. The spools of copper tubing, the protective rubber scraped off. Each component was worked, the detritus sent to the corner, the useful measure retained. Eventually the bag emptied. And then Heinrich was quiet again, the only sound in the room the white noise crash of the lead buckshot in the polisher, which had been running for more than a day. Heinrich meditated over the objects. Something was missing. He examined his notes. The missing item eluded him. It will come to me, he thought. And he arose to work.
* * *
All I want to do is sleep, he reflected. It’s like I’ve been up all night. He shrugged off his weariness, and promised himself lots of caffeine later.
The plates were heavy in his pocket. He had scotch taped them together to keep them from getting scratched, and they sat in a security envelope. Still, Evans kept his head pointed towards the ground, his eyes scanning the street. It was irrational, but he couldn’t help feeling paranoid, as if policemen were around every corner and they knew what he was carrying. Federal Felony carried heavy time, and anyone who worked at the Mint was intimately familiar with just how angry Uncle Sam could get when printing plates were stolen. He was giving away a fortune to this Mr. Hong, but what did it matter, in the end? Evans didn’t have the materials to start printing, himself, and unless a printing press was another of the watchmaker’s inventions, he wasn’t about to come across one any time soon. He’d kept the plates because he needed a trump card. One hand clutched the watch reflexively.
The address turned out to be a storefront restaurant: the Number One. The entire window seemed covered with writing, declaring the name of the place, the address, and telephone number, so Evans could see little of the interior. Inside there was a small waiting area, graced with tables covered in false Formica tops, the covering pealing back on the edges to show particle board underneath. Along the window wall a faux leather cushion ran, and the tables were pressed up against it, with a single metal chair on the opposite side of each. Across from the tables was a counter, and above the counter was a display panel with pictures of food prepared in a way you weren’t likely to find at anyplace like the Number One. In the back cooks worked impassively at the food, going through the motions with a placid efficiency that bordered on martial. A boy stood behind the counter watching Evans.
“I need to speak with Mr. Hong,” Evans said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the boy replied, unfazed.
“Don’t bullshit me. Get Mr. Hong now. I’ve got the artwork he wants.” Evans had no patience for games.
“Give it to me. I’ll see if anyone knows a ‘Mr. Hong’,” the boy answered with a sly remark.
“Fuck it. You wanna dick around with me and wreck Mr. Hong’s deal that’s fine, but he’s the one who’s going to be pissed if I walk out of here.” He wanted to grab the boy and shove his head into one of the woks, but, with a supreme act of will Evans turned to go. The impulse, Evans noted, showed how on edge he was. Once this was all over, maybe he should take a vacation.
“Wait here,” the boy answered. Evans turned to watch the boy walk into the back, and open what Evans had taken to be a freezer. The boy entered the steaming cold room beyond, and the door slammed closed. And he was left alone at the counter, watching the cooks. It was almost lulling.
Absentmindedly, he pulled the watch from his pocket, and he felt his way along the etched picture of a columnar, marble building on a river, before turning it over and examining the non-reflective golden surface. He depressed the stud in the stem, and a panel opened, revealing the face, the elegant hands working their way across the alabaster surface, each number inked and punctuated by a silver stud, and, in elegant script across the bottom of the face, the words “Knobel Kraft”. He depressed the stud again, and the back panel opened, showing a polished glass face, and within the busy gears, spinning away, rocking back and forth in perfect timing, gold upon silver upon brass in constant motion. At the center of the surface, holding the main gears together, was a golden pin, topped by a curious opal. It whirred and clicked to him, barely audible above the hiss and clack of the cooking.
He’d had it appraised when the Antique Road Show had come to Pittsburgh, the appraiser seeming eager at first to look it over. The man examined it at length, careful not to depress the stud three times after many warnings from Evans. ‘How often must you wind it?’ He asked. Evans responded that he had never wound it. The man frowned. ‘Have you had it long enough to determine the rate of inaccuracy?’ he asked. Evans didn’t understand the statement. The man explained that all pocket watches had some inherent inaccuracy, due to their nature, of being fast or slow. Evans responded that it had never been off, one way or the other. The man frowned again. He asked how long Evans had had the watch. Three years, Evans responded, it was an inheritance.
In a way, it had been. If you consider a hit and run a way to inherit something. He’d been bombed out of his skull after a bad day on the job, and coming home he’d hit the man. At first it looked as if the man was going to make it away. He moved with unnatural agility, seeming to have started dodging before he could have seen the car. But Evans still struck the man, and in a drunken stupor he stopped the car and tried to help the man. Too little, too late. Evans crouched over the dying man when he spotted the watch. Maybe it was a moment of weakness. Maybe it was just curiosity. But Evans picked up the watch, and had never let go of it since. He took off before the cops arrived, and no one ever fingered his car. Evans found he could live with himself if he didn’t think about it much. Things he had done since made hit and run look friendly.
The appraiser examined the face of the watch and then handed it back to Evans. ‘It’s a fake,’ the man told him. ‘An ingenious one, but it must have been made in the last decade.’ The man sited the company name, Knobel Kraft, as being a well known but obscure watch making family business in Austria that eventually died out in the 50’s. The materials, he noted, all seemed to be in excellent condition, and the lack of needing to be wound and unfailing accuracy pointed at a modern component that must have been hidden behind the visible gears. ‘It’s a fake,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know why someone would want to fake a pocket watch the would have so little intrinsic value, but I wouldn’t value it at more than $15 dollars.’ Then he asked why Evans didn’t want him depressing the stud again.
‘It’s broken,’ Evans told him, sweeping up the watch and leaving.
Evans closed the panels slowly, sliding it back into his pocket. He turned and watched one of the cooks joggle a wok, while tossing vegetables and chicken around the edges. At first he had been mad at the assessment. He’d been made to feel as if it was worthless. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized what it meant. The person who had made the watch was likely still alive. And if he was still alive, there could be more watches, or even other items like the watch, around, just waiting to be picked up. And used…
The freezer door opened in the back, and an Asian man with coke-bottle glasses came rushing out. “I’m sorry for my boy. Blake told me you were coming. Do you have the items?” He seemed agitated and eager.
Evans removed the envelope from his pocket. It had taken years to isolate them, and months to secure them. The records had to be doctored, and then there was the security inspection. He could never have done it without the watch. He handed it over to Mr. Hong. Hong’s fingers were icy on contact.
Hong glanced in the envelope, and smiled. “Wait here.”
He disappeared into the freezer. Evans half felt like leaping after him, but he restrained himself. Shortly afterward the boy came out of the freezer, clutching a plastic bag with a stapled shut paper bag within it. “Your order, sir,” he said, and then turned as the door opened and a young couple walked in. Evans grabbed the bag, found that it was evenly heavy, and walked out.
* * *
Jupiter, King of the Gods, his baleful red eye glaring, sat in judgement above Heinrich. Heinrich had a screwdriver braced in the socket, and another one was levering the brass spindle towards it. At last, with a rocking motion, the spindle rammed into the socket, and a twist of the screwdrivers left it firmly in its seat. Saturn, God of Madness and Old Age, was complete. Heinrich took a deep breath and then placed it on the test engine.
Slowly the rings began to spin, each band a different metal, burnished to varying shades. Many moons spun around the planet, curving arms clicking softly as they described perfect arcs around the ringed world. The shepherd moons were the hardest, Heinrich felt, watching them move without hesitation. Engineering them to exchange orbits had been a work in itself, and the rolling pivots he designed from the can tops seemed to be working fine, their size greatly reduced, but the metal still strong and durable. He tilted the engine slightly and watched with satisfaction as the model lost none of the smoothness with its new position. Excellent. He shut off the engine, it’s simple gears winding to a halt with a clacking of wood on metal, and then he took the footstool from its previous place, and used it to insert Saturn into its new perch. The model clicked into place, and then was still.
He sighed. They were done. From Mercury to Pluto they sat in their places, each planet a testament to time and dedication. Each gleam of metal carried a fresh memory for him; each stain on his hands a segment of his past. The lead shot, polished to gleaming fitness, now acted as bearings for the entire structure, and the last touches were all that remained. In the freezer the ether awaited. The lozenge of glass that had been set apart was now machined and ready to be placed into the top of the Sun. But there was one last piece, one last component that Heinrich couldn’t seem to remember.
The notes were vague. He’d reviewed them a number of times as the last few planets were completed. The veil of stars had been established, the mainspring was wound and awaiting release, the sun had been fastened and smoke tested.
Anxiety gnawed at him. He could not afford to spend all this time and then be balked by a missing component. As he walked down the stairs to the freezer for the ether, he wracked his brain.
* * *
This country is too big, thought Agnes, not for the first time. She got back in the car and turned the ignition. The white Mustang thrummed into life, and she pulled quietly away into the dark night. She had just refilled in Zanesville, and checked the oil to be sure. Only a few more hours. She glanced at the lists and addresses next to her. Two of them in Pittsburgh, then she’d move on quickly and hit the seaboard. She rolled the names around in her mind. Damien Blake and Heinrich Knobel. Damien was a bastard, who was binding demons and other spirits to people and setting them loose. A fleshworker, he would likely be tough to kill, unless she could drain him dry quickly. The picture she had of him showed him to be a big lout, but she knew ways of dealing with louts.
Knobel, on the other hand, had been hard for the organization to track down. His address wasn’t listed anywhere, as he wasn’t registered to vote, didn’t have a drivers license, and didn’t have a phone. The man had a minor family fortune in banks overseas, which he wired funds from periodically. Eventually, by process of elimination, they determined his likely residence, but if he played true to form, he was likely to be deeply entrenched and hard to get at. Agnes didn’t relish going up against clockworks, mainly because they weren’t her main targets, and they took too much ammo to take down. Still, he needed to die. A few of his clockworks had made it to the street, and the fighting in the underground over them was intense. Her superiors felt that it was only a matter of time before one of the items would hit the public market. And some of the items appeared to be quite powerful, if subtle.
The sooner she killed these two, the better it was for all involved.
* * *
It was a strange club, with colanders over the lights on the ceiling, and they burned cooking oil or some such shit to make it all smoky. The air was acrid with the scent, and the light from the colanders lanced out, turned strange colors by judiciously applied cellophane. The bodies of many patrons writhed and twisted on the dance floor, moving to the low sonics of the rumbling speakers, a local version of techno called Heap. Evans felt out of place, but he’d been to two other clubs already, and it was surprising how hard it was to find a scapegoat. Blake had named a number of qualities, no tattoos, no facial blemishes, preferably a virgin, although a non-virgin was all right if she hadn’t been active in the last month. Why Evans needed to look in clubs was beyond him and this place… the name escaped him, didn’t seem like any place that he’d find a person like that. He glanced around, trying to look at people’s faces, but all the pot smoke in the air that made it hard for him to pick out many details. His head swam.
He trolled the bar, looking from face to face. One girl he approached quickly turned her back on him, and he saw the edge of a rose tattooed on her shoulder. No good. Another started feeling him up as he sat next to her, but a punk came over, and pushed Evans out of the way. The territorial look on the punk told him enough. No virgin there. Then he spotted her.
She sat at a table, sipping a bright green drink, her mouse-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked around, wary and uncomfortable, laughing with the couple that came back to the table periodically to talk with her. She wasn’t beautiful, and some might not even think her pretty, with her heavy eyebrows, and strong chin, but she sent out a vibe that said innocent to Evans’s eye. He approached her, and she nervously turned to him.
“Hi! My name’s Kyle. You look like you aren’t having much of a good time.” He watched her face, searching her reactions.
“It’s okay, I guess,” she responded non-committaly.
“Mind if I join you?” He smiled as ingratiatingly as possible at her. She debated internally. It was all plain on her face. ‘No,’ he heard in his mind’s eye.
“Sure,” she responded, smiling.
They talked for a long time, and the couple she came with stayed away. She was out visiting a cousin, looking for a chance to see the city and maybe check out a college or two, looking to get her Masters. No boyfriend, hadn’t had one for more than a year. Too intense. No tattoos. She thought they were trashy. She was from Youngstown, she confided, and wasn’t used to all this. Kyle kept the liquor flowing.
He complimented her, he told jokes, he tried to be as witty as he could be. And after a number of hard mixed drinks, not to mention judicious doses of second-hand pot, he suggested that they leave. She hesitated only a moment, and then left with him.
Outside, the weather was tepid. They both piled into his car, and left The Strip, windows down to enjoy the cool air. They laughed together, the chemicals in her system lulling her into comfort and drowsiness. Evans smiled at her and he felt his chest ache with anticipation. He popped the question.
“Hey, want to do something crazy?” Again the internal debate, this time sped along by the cocktail in her bloodstream.
“Ok. Why not?” She settled back. “What did you have in mind.”
He giggled. It escaped him before he could think about it. Too much pot and anxiety, he realized. I’m losing control. “You’ll see.”
Blake’s wasn’t all that far away. The neon sign lit up the street with orange light, and the lights from the inside made it look strangely appealing. The curtain, walls, and ledge of the window were covered with symbols, demons, leering skeletons, and screaming skulls. The front displayed the business name, Something Wicked, and not for the first time did Evans find the name disturbingly appropriate.
He parked and nodded towards the sign. “Look at this place,” he said. So she looked, her eyes slightly glazed. “This place looks evil,” he added. No flicker of reaction. Perhaps things were all right, he hoped. “Let’s take a look.” He stepped out, and she followed, reluctantly.
The place was warm, almost humid, and Evans abandoned her in the front room, telling her to look at the examples on the wall. “I’ve gotta hit the bathroom, you know?”. In the next room he caught Blake’s eye, as Blake was finishing a rough sketch on a piece of paper. “She’s here,” he hissed. His skin felt cold, clammy. His self control was draining away.
“Let me see,” Blake said, somewhat surprised. Evans followed, waiting by the door.
The large man now sported a bandana to cover the bulk of his burns and was wearing a tee shirt that made him look more muscular. He approached the girl. “Looking for something new?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had one before.”
He smiled a grim, thin-lipped smile. “Ah! First timer, huh? Great! It’s always more fun the first time.” He leered at her, and she shrunk away.
Evans stepped into the room. “I want to get something. How about it?” Scripted and rehearsed line. It fell dead on his own ears. He smiled almost pleadingly at her.
She hesitated, waiting a long time. The demons leered at her, and ink blood seeped from hellish symbols on the sketches. But his smile seemed to push her over the precipice. “Ok. Yeah.”
Blake smiled. “First time’s on the house tonight.” And she smiled. “Come sit down. I’ll see what we can arrange.”
Blake turned around and eyed Evans with a funny look. Then he touched him on the upper lip, and Evans felt immense pain. “Man! You got a nosebleed! Go take care of it before you mess up my floor.” Blake grinned at him. Evans nearly screamed from the feeling of pain. And he rushed to the bathroom, to staunch the bleeding.
He heard Blake lead her into the workroom, and seat her in a chair. Blake made small talk, asking her what kind of tattoo she wanted (‘a butterfly’), and getting her to help him roll up her sleeve. “That tickles,” she said, and Blake laughed.
“Here’s where we’ll put it,” Blake said “It won’t show too much here.”
Evans tried to stanch the bleeding, but it soaked through a lot of paper towel before it died down. In the stained mirror he saw a small gash on his upper lip, raw and angry, but starting to clot up. The pain seemed to galvanize him, though, cutting through the haze and fatigue. ‘Bastard!’ he thought.
Outside her heard her say, “I’m just going to close my eyes.”
And when he came out, she had.
* * *
It came to him in a jolt. The seal! He paused in pouring the ether into the sealed globe. Inside the gas licked at the glass surface, tendrils trying to climb the slope. He stoppered the bottle, and placed it on the ground. As long as he worked quickly, he might have enough time. Heinrich began to sift through the castoffs, looking for something golden, pure gold.
But nothing was there. He knew instinctively that he had the gold in mind when he started collecting the items for this project, but he couldn’t recall what he’d gotten. The notes simply described ‘anulus aureus’. Ring of gold, ring of gold, ring of gold. And yet the pile yielded nothing.
Then a glint of gold flashed in the corner of his eye. He turned towards it, and saw what he sought. On his left hand, on the ring finger, a simple band of gold, unembellished, seemingly pure. Heinrich looked at it in wonder. Why had I put it on? That he had it on his finger all this time seemed a complete miracle. He walked slowly towards the workbench, where he set a crucible to heating. Slowly, reverently, he twisted the ring from his finger, and considered it.
Was it pure? He glanced along the inner band, looking for some marking of purity. And he found writing, engraved in a simple script: Für Heinrich, zu unserem Hochzeitstag: Unsere Liebe ist unvergänglich. He paused, rereading the script. For Heinrich, on our wedding day. Our Love is everlasting. The miniscule hand looked like his own, but… It made no sense. He stared at the writing for a long time, wondering. He knew the perils of his work, how each work required equal experiential sacrifice, but still, he felt nothing about this. No stirring of phantom recognition, no remorse at memory lost, no emptiness. Whatever human emotion one might expect to feel wasn’t evoked. Just a desire to finish the orrey. To realize his dream.
In any case, this was obviously the ring that was called for. He shrugged the confusion off and scored the inside edge with a knife, easily bending the metal and showing the yellow gleaming beneath. It was pure enough. He took the ring and dropped it into the crucible, turning the flame up to increase the heat. The seal would go around the stopper, and help to close off the globe, making it airtight and complete. Slowly the metal began to warp. He fixed the lid on the crucible, and then searched for the tongs, so that he could apply the seal in safety.
And in the heat and darkness the metal forgot its form, becoming shapeless and impressionable again, ready to be remolded.
* * *
“What the fuck were you thinking with that stunt?” asked Evans angrily. It was dangerous, he knew, to explode at Blake, but he was pissed. His head felt hollow, and his ears rang.
Blake ignored the anger in Evans’s voice. “I needed some of your blood for the ink. And you were getting annoying.” The tattooing needle hummed as it stitched a strange pattern across the girl’s inner arm while she slept. It made little sense to Evans, but he knew that the shape was according to some internal pattern that only Blake understood.
“The shit I got for you from Hong…” started Evans.
Blake interrupted him, “Is none of your fucking business. But if you have to know, some of it was for this, and a lot of it was for me. Mostly high-grade heroin, crystal meth, mescaline, and a ritual pipe I asked for. Now shut up so I can finish this.” Blake leaned over, concentrating on the form, while Evans paced back and forth. “There,” Blake said finally. “Get over here, we’ve gotta draw that bastard out and put it in fast.”
Evans moved over by the chair, and Blake produced a new needle, a simple sewing-type needle, only white, like bone or porcelain. Blake plucked a hair from Evans’s head, knotted one end, and slid the other through the needle. Then, before Evans could move, he plunged the needle into the wound on Evans’s lip, and then looped it back out again. Somehow, although the initial prick hurt, he didn’t feel the punctures, and as the needle pulled away he saw the hair was covered by some sickly clear-white jelly that continued to trail from his wound even after the hair ended. He felt frozen in place, unable to comment or move. Slowly Blake drew it out, and then he inserted the needle into the tattoo on the girl’s arm, sewing along the edge of the pattern, and leaving a moving film in the needle’s wake. A sickening feeling, like inverse nausea, rushed through Evans and the film continued to be drawn out.
Slowly Blake threaded the needle along the ink pattern, and as he did, the jelly like substance filled out the space between. It writhed independently from the needle’s pulling, and seethed back and forth along the connected region. When Blake was halfway around the tattoo, Evans felt a tug, and then the substance completely stopped coming out him. The last segment seemed dark, a small ball of black that waved madly as it was dragged along after the needle.
“Oh God! Was that it?!” He could move again. The hollow feeling was gone, and, though he still felt tired, so was the ringing.
Blake nodded. “Let me finish.”
“Why isn’t she waking up? Can’t she feel that?” Evans felt a dark wave of revulsion welling up within him.
“At this point a bomb wouldn’t wake her up. Now shut up!”
Evans wanted to run away, but he stayed in place, watching as Blake continued to sew with the unnatural being, binding it to the flesh of the girl. Evans’s eyes strayed to her face, placid in drunken sleep. And he thought about how much this had cost him, and how much it would cost her. And suddenly he felt very sick. He was thinking too much. He stood up, to go to the bathroom, to get away, regain perspective, and he was almost there when the blond came in through the door.
Sunglasses at night. Evans instantly marked her as a heavy enforcer. One hand held a knife, and she sprinted across the floor towards Blake with incredible speed. Blake barely had time to look up and she was on top of him.
Evan’s hand shot to his pocket. The watch was in his hand, his finger poised over the stud. With the other hand he opened the bathroom door quietly. He had no gun, there wasn’t any weapon within reach. There was no other way to protect himself.
Blake rolled off the stool with the impact, using her momentum to avoid the knife. The needle he was using dangled from the girl’s arm, the sewing not complete. The white mass roiled and seethed. Blake was far too occupied to care. He tried to avoid another swipe, but couldn’t get away, and the knife went right through his chest, scraping against the ground. As soon as it withdrew, though the flesh flowed back into place. Blake laughed his barking laugh. “You ain’t gonna get me that easy, girl.” And he threw a backhand at her that she parried with the knife, it tearing through the arm, but doing no visible damage. The woman dropped the knife, and pulled a gun from inside her coat. Her other hand came up with something squat and black.
“Damien Blake, you’ve been very blatant, and your actions threaten to reveal the truth about magick to the world. Consider this your Execution Day.”
Evans clamped down on the stud once. The cover from the face opened quietly in his pocket
“Fuck You!” Damien grabbed the nearest object and threw it. A vial of ink tumbled through the air over her shoulder, as she dodge under, bringing the squat black object up in an uppercut. Her fist buried itself in his midriff, and Blake began to laugh, but was caught short with a gurgle. A hideous rapid snapping noise erupted, and Blake began to jerk and convulse, his body seemingly out of control. Then the woman’s other fist came up, and she started shooting at Blake point blank in the face. Each shot splashed through his head as he convulsed in agony, rippling his grimaces as the bullet passed through and into the wall behind him.
Evans’s thumb slammed into the stud the second time. The back panel opened in his pocket, showing the working mechanism.
“Die, bastard. So I can get on to the Knobel and finish this up.” The blond hissed quietly. And then a shot put a solid hole straight through Blake’s skull, and as he slumped to the ground, the woman removed her fist from the dead man’s gut, trailing blood and bits of meat as she did. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air. The object in her hand was a taser, he now saw.
The woman’s head shot up, having finally noticed the other person in the room. “You!” she shouted. And fired. Evans felt an explosion of pain in his chest, then a sick emptiness start to flow through him. Evans, his nerves ratcheted to the edge, slammed the stud down the third time. And things grayed out for a moment. He felt the air forced from his lungs, his blood sucked back through his veins, his eyelids blinking to scour the moisture from his eyes. The rasping of bullet against bone as it was drawn back through the wound, flesh crowding in behind it. And then there she was shooting the hole in Blake’s skull.
This time Evans didn’t hesitate. He moved quietly into the bathroom, the door of which he already had open. So far he hadn’t been seen. This time he wanted to keep it that way.
* * *
Agnes looked up, wiping the gore from the taser on Blake’s shirt. Agnes frowned at the corpse, and kicked it once. Then she looked up at the girl.
The girl was asleep, likely drugged, and something mottled lay on her arm. A needle hung where the large man had dropped it, and if the line on the girl’s skin was any indication, the process was almost finished. Another victim. He was finishing up with another victim. She recovered her knife and prodded the mass, but there was no immediate reaction. Likely she’d have to kill the girl, Agnes thought. She ejected the pistol clip, and loaded a new one.
And she looked at the girl again. And wondered who she was. And how she had gotten here. She didn’t look like the kind of person to be in a place like this. Agnes found herself wanting to have a reason not to kill the girl. She clamped down on the sentiment, reminding herself that she was working for a higher cause. Cold impartiality returned.
Then the thing moved. It writhed and stretched, and Agnes reacted with a swipe of the knife, seeming to do nothing to the mass but nicking the girl underneath. The blood pooled and the thing shuddered. Agnes drew her blade along the inner forearm, and behind it a trail of blood ran, causing the thing to shudder and try to pull away. There was no reaction from the girl. She was in a serious condition. A bullet would be a mercy. Whatever held the thing sewn in place prevented it from evading the blood, and the thing thrashed in frenzy. And this was when Agnes made a mistake. She got too close, and the thing came in contact with her.
There was a flash of light, and the smell of ozone. And a searing pain in Agnes’s arm. When she could see again, she saw that the mottled mass was gone, leaving an ugly welt, an ink-stained patch of skin, and a long bleeding cut on the girl’s arm. Agnes’s arm, however, had a similar welt, and a spot of ink-stained skin. As she rubbed it, she realized the pain wasn’t in the spot of ink. It was in a long line, on her arm. Exactly where the girl’s cut was. Quickly, using materials at hand, Agnes bound the wound and she felt the pain ease in her own arm.
This is not good, she thought to herself. This was a complication she didn’t have time to figure this out. “What am I going to do with you?” she added, aloud. She had to kill her, and how was she going to do that with this pain link between them. If only she knew whether the girl had any clue what was going on.
And in a flash, Agnes knew. The girl’s name was Cheryl. And she had no idea what was going on. She had been brought here by some guy named Kyle, and had passed out before anything weird really happened. The fact that Blake had an accomplice disturbed her. She’d have to tell her superiors.
Of course, they would ask how she found out. And she found she wasn’t sure what she would tell them, if it came to that.
First things first. She had to find the girl a place to sleep this off, preferably close to her next target. She pulled out a cell phone, and dialed the local operator. “Operator, I’ve got a friend who’s really sick. Can you give me a list of clinics in the Carrick area?”
“Do you want me to send an ambulance, Miss?” the operator asked, anxiously.
“No. I have a car, I’m just really concerned. I’m on Pandora Way.”
“One moment.” The operator placed Agnes on hold, and shortly returned. “There’s one on Brownsville road near West Woodford. Do you need directions?”
“No. Thank you so much,” Agnes replied. And she hung up.
Quick dial rang another number, which picked up to silence. “Hangman reporting in. The meat has been packed. Proceeding to the Tinker.”
“Your lucky day, Cheryl.” Agnes said as she lifted the girl from her chair. “You’re going to get fixed up, and I’m going to go visit Knobel.” Agnes carried the girl out to her car, settled her in, and sped off.
* * *
In the bathroom Evans’s head was spinning. Had she said Knobel? He shook with excitement and fear. If she had… And if that street name meant anything… Then Evans finally knew where the watchmaker was. And if he moved quickly he might have a chance.
* * *
The globe was filled with ether, and the stopper, gold-sealed, fell into place and held fast. All that was left was to trip the mainspring. Heinrich walked around the machine, switching off the lamps, until he came to the gas lamp, which he took in hand and used to guide him back to the hand crank at the base of the machine. Laying the lamp on the ground, he snuffed it, and then set to work, cranking in the dark, drawing the spring tighter and tighter until his arm ached to hold the crank steady. He applied the foot lock, removed the crank, and then kicked the lock, setting the orrey into motion.
A tone like a chime pierced the darkness, and Heinrich scrambled to the edge of the room. There was a flicker and darkness. Then a flash. Slowly the sounds of movement filled the room, accompanied by a whirring sound and click-clacking of metal.
It’s done, he thought. And knowing that it wouldn’t be ready for a short while, he went downstairs to rest. He felt tired, drained, and alone. Terribly alone.
* * *
The old house on Pandora Way was dark. She parked on the opposite side of the road, and crossed the street, taking in the Victorian design, the stately tower, the wide and shady porch. She carefully ascended the steps, and pulled the submachine gun. . She felt warmth on her arm, punctuated by a prickly feeling. The clinic doctors must have been doing something to the wound. Then it started to tickle. Agnes grimaced and forced the phantom sensations out of her head with conscious effort. She tested the door.
The lock engaged, but she slipped a special key into the slot, a key she kept for these occasions. As soon as it entered the lock the tumblers turned over in a row and the handle rolled easily. It helped to have an adept on her side once in a while. She grinned, feeling the mask of cold killer descending. She stepped in, and the door quietly whirred to a close behind her. A glance, before she was left in darkness, told her a clockwork device closed the door behind her. He was an old clockworker, she knew. And he’d been around long enough to make all sorts of frivolous things.
Somewhere in the house, Strauss played. The Blue Danube. It echoed with a curious tinny quality. She made her way slowly towards it. These clockworkers always had some bizarre kick. So often it had something to do with music.
The music rose and fell in drama, and the dark hallways soon lead Agnes to a room with a simple table, with a lit candle on it, where sat an old man eating a meager meal. Around the room were a number of silver and bronze devices, some looking like flowers, others like monkeys or rats. Not a good sign. She decided to announce herself quickly and take him down before he could activate the devices. She stepped out of the darkness. The man looked up.
“Heinrich Knobel, I’ve come because your devices threaten the security of the mundane world. Already the pieces you’ve let get out have caused havoc in the underground, and it’s only a matter of time before someone mundane comes across one and realizes what it is. We can’t allow that.” She raised the gun. And she saw the desperation in his eyes.
“No!” he screamed. “Not now!” He flung himself from the table, pointing to her. “Abfall! Ungeziefer!” And the room came alive with movement.
Agnes felt the cool calm take over as she took on the mantle of Walking Death. The gun came up with preternatural speed and stitched a line of bloody red in Heinrich’s shirt, ending neatly in the throat. Blood tie. Then she turned her attention to the machines.
They were everywhere. The flower-like things had somehow taken flight, and were moving towards her, their silver petals now looking razor-sharp in the dark. One spun past her, and hot fire lanced across her chin. She sucked in air, stifling comment. Then flame shot at her, from the ground, and she saw one of the rat things moving at her to incinerate her. She sidestepped the burst, surveyed the approaching threats, and opened up, sending bullets at the rats and flowers as best she could. She backed down the hallway quickly, counting bullets and realizing that she didn’t have nearly enough. She had to get creative.
One of the rats rushed her, mouth open and ready to breathe fire. Time truncated as she executed a careful shot to its throat, and the rat went up in flames. More flowers flew by, plucking at her coat, leaving warm lines of sensation on her shoulders. She turned just in time to see some returning, and a quick roll put her under them and out of their way. Then she was rammed by one of the monkeys. It pummeled her with its arms, nailing her again and again in the stomach and back, rolling her sideways down the hall. She turned, controlling her roll, pumping shots into it until it froze. 13 bullets. Way too many. She kicked it over, and the rats ran into it, bumping and struggling to get around the mechanical corpse. Her body ached. Those monkey creatures were strong, and she felt winded. Time to leave. She turned and dashed for the door. A whirring sound told her the flowers were following. The entrance appeared suddenly on her left and she dodged, the flowers whizzing by her. She slammed straight into the door, wrenched it open, and dashed outside.
In moments she made her way into her car, and was on the phone. It rang for a while, and then dead silence. “Hangman to Judge. The Tinker is down, but some toys are still moving. Request the Gleaner pay a visit.” And that was it. She brought the car to life and spun off, to find her hotel and lick her wounds. Scratch two off the list.
* * *
A woman dashed across the street not far away as Evans cruised down it for the second time. Blond, sunglasses, long coat. She disappeared into a white Mustang, and it thundered to life. The car pulled away from the sidewalk, and Evans toyed with pulling in front of her and dropping out of the car. Except she might survive, and he wasn’t sure he could take her then and there. The .38, which he picked up on the way sat heavily in his pocket, but it gave him no comfort. She was very fast, very capable, and a crack shot. She didn’t know him from Adam. He allowed her to leave, speeding past Evans, and rounding the corner to disappear into the night. No need to take on more enemies right now. Evans released the breath he had been holding, pulled over, and turned the car off. Likely, Knobel was dead. But there might still be something left.
He crossed the street warily, and he ascended the steps. The door was unlocked. He stepped inside.
The whirring of clockworks filled the house, and somewhere nearby something was playing music. Something classical, and stately. Then he saw them. The flowers, spinning in the air at the end of the hall. Instinctively he yelled, “Halt!” And they fell to the ground. In the hallway metal rats scrabbled to get past some kind of mechanical ape that was full of holes and unmoving. “Halt!” he cried. The rats stopped. He walked into the dining room, and on the floor an old man, shirt front doused in blood, lay on the ground, unmoving. In the corner a strange kind of record player played the music. He was about to say halt when he restrained himself. He’d proved that these devices were just like the reading head. He’d likely have to learn a bit of German to get these things to work again, but Evans felt confident that that would be the easy part. He let the music play through for a while. It was the least he owed the old man.
When the piece ended, a strange sound could be heard, a sort of whirring and crackling noise. Evans halted the record player, and made his way back through the house. Many of the rooms he looked in were empty, or filled with old furniture, and he noticed that the noise was louder the higher up in the house he went. At last he made his way up the spiral staircase, and found a closed door, light creeping out from the bottom. With reverence he opened the door, and walked inside.
It was the tower room, cylindrical, the ceiling recessed into the tower top. But Evans’s eyes were riveted to what stood in the center of the room. A huge device, which nearly filled the space, spun and whirred in confident splendor. Many balls of metal, glittering, spun on arms, and Evans quickly recognized them as the planets. Moons circled every planet but Mercury, each one travelling in unison, each one in perfect time, entering and leaving visibility with perfect timing. And in the center of it all a great yellow globe, obviously the sun, roiled in constant conflagration, the insides somehow mimicking swirling flame, the light deep within not the cold blue of electricity, but a powerful yellow, like flame, like the sun. On each wall a myriad of stars twinkled, little jewels reflecting the light of the sun back upon viewer, and patterns danced among them, cast from some glittering patch on the top of the sun-globe itself. All of it moving in perfect harmony. All of it spinning flawlessly in the tower attic of the dead watchmaker’s home. As the heavens moved about him in perfect majesty, Evans felt a deepening sense of immeasurable joy.