The clock!
That was the thing that bleached and ruined life, jerked people out of bed, hounded them to schools and graves! Not Quartermain and his band of old men, or Braling and his metronome; it was the clock that ran this town like a church.
Even on the clearest of nights it was misted, glowing, luminous, and old. It rose above town like a great dark burial mound, drawn to the skies by the summoning of the moon, calling out in a grieved voice of days long gone, and days that would come no more, whispering of other autumns when the town was young and all was beginning and there was no end.
‘So it’s you,’ whispered Douglas.
Midnight, said the clock. Time, it said, Darkness. Flights of night birds flew up to carry the final peal away, out over the lake and into the night country, gone.
Doug yanked down the shade so Time could not blow through the screen.
The clock light shone on the sidings of the house like a mist breathing on the windows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘Boy, I just heard the craziest things.’ Charlie strolled up, chewing on a clover–blossom. ‘I got me a secret service report from some girls.’
‘Girls!’
Charlie smiled at how his ten–inch firecracker had blown the laziness off his pals’ faces. ‘My sister said way back last July they got old lady Bentley to admit she never was young. I thought you’d like that news.’
‘Charlie, Charlie!’
‘Burden of proof,’ said Charlie. ‘The girls told me that old lady Bentley showed some pictures, junk and stuff, which didn’t prove nothin’. Fact is, when you think on it, fellas, none of these old ginks look like they were ever young.’
‘Why didn’t you think of that, Doug?’ said Tom.
‘Why don’t you shut up?’ said Douglas.
‘I guess this makes me a lieutenant,’ said Charlie.
‘You just moved up to sergeant yesterday!’
Charlie stared hard at Douglas for a long moment.
‘Okay, okay, you’re a lieutenant,’ said Douglas.
‘Thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘What’ll we do about my sister? She wants to be part of our army – a special spy.’
‘To heck with her!’
‘You got to admit that’s great secret stuff she turned in.’
‘Boy, Charlie, you sure think of things,’ said Tom. ‘Doug, why don’t you think of things?’
‘Darn it!’ cried Douglas. ‘Whose idea was the graveyard tour, the candy, the food, the chess pieces, all that?’
‘Hold on,’ said Tom. ‘The graveyard tour, I said that. The candy, yeah, was yours, but I gotta tell ya, the food experiment was a failure. Heck, you haven’t said anything new in a coupla hours. And all the chessboards are full of chess pieces again and those old men are busy pushing the pieces – us – around. Any moment now we’ll feel ourselves grabbed and moved and we won’t be able to live our own lives anymore.’
Douglas could feel Charlie and Tom creeping up on him, taking the war out of his hands like a ripe plum. Private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant. Today, lieutenant; tomorrow captain. And the day after?
‘It’s not just ideas that count.’ Douglas wiped his brow. ‘It’s how you stick ’em together. Take this fact of Charlie’s – it’s secondhand. Heck, girls thought of it first!’
Everybody’s eyebrows went up.
Charlie’s face fell.
‘And anyway,’ Douglas went on, ‘I’m puttin’ ideas together for a real bang–up revelation.’