Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

Sir Henry's disapproving eyes seemed to follow him and the king's agent felt himself gripped by a curious sense of disquietude.

The back of his neck prickled.

“What events did you set in motion, you old goat?” he asked softly.

A reply came from behind: a low, quiet note from the piano, as if a string had been gently plucked.

Burton froze. The chord lingered in the air. Chill fingers tickled his spine as the sound faded with dreadful slowness.

He twisted to face the instrument and saw that he was alone in the room.

He breathed out. The expelled air clouded in front of his face.

To his left, there was a closed door. Something-he knew not what-drew his attention to it, and as he looked, he jumped, and his lantern swayed, causing shadows to jerk over the walls and ceiling. Nothing material had jolted him-just the sudden sense of a presence behind that door.

Sir Richard Francis Burton was undoubtedly a brave man but he was also superstitious and possessed a dread of darkness and the supernatural. Patrolling the gloomy house had, for him, been unsettling enough. Now, although he was faced with nothing tangible, he found himself trembling and the hairs on his head stood on end.

Taking a deep breath, suppressing the instinctive urge to run, he crept to the door and put his fingers around the brass handle. He pressed his ear against the wood. It was cold.

He could hear no movement from the other side, yet the idea that the room was occupied persisted. With great care, he squeezed the handle and began to turn it. Clenching his jaw, he braced himself and applied his shoulder to the door.

He stopped.

What was that?

Had he heard something? A voice?

“Help! Help!”

Cries from outside the house! Again they came: “Help! Help!”

The voice was familiar. Surely that was Herbert Spencer!

Releasing the handle, Burton turned away and strode rapidly across to the patio door, drew the curtain aside, opened the portal, and stepped out of the house into the still air of a clear-skied night.

Herbert was running up the slope, thick milky mist swirling around his calves.

“Is that you, Boss? Help me!”

Burton hurried forward. “Herbert! What is it? What's wrong?”

The vagrant philosopher reached him and clutched his arm. His eyes were round, his lips drawn tightly over his teeth. He was plainly terrified.

“There!” he cried, pointing back at the lake.

Burton looked and saw the vapour, glaringly white beneath the rays of the moon, crawling languidly between the boles of the hunched willows like a living, amoebic creature.

“There's nothing there!” he exclaimed. “Herbert, why-?”

“Can't you see ’em?”

“Them? Who? What?”

“There-there was figures,” the philosopher stammered. “Not in the mist, but of the mist!”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“They was wraiths!” Spencer whispered, his voice quavering.

The king's agent backed away, dragging the philosopher with him.

“What are you talking about? Why are you out here at this time of night? Have you been sleepwalking?”

“No,” Spencer croaked. “I came to-” He stopped and pointed, his eyes wide and panicked.

“There!”

Burton stared at the lake. Was that a figure moving, or just an opaque surge of vapour billowing through the cloud?

“Let's get inside,” he said.

Spencer didn't need any further persuasion. They quickly made their way up to the house, crossed the patio, entered the music room, and closed the door behind them.

They looked at each other in terror, both suddenly overpowered by a sense that the chamber was already occupied. They pressed their backs against the door and looked this way and that, peering into the corners, seeing nothing but shadows.

“Mother of God!” Herbert wheezed, his eyes bulging. “Is the devil himself in here?”

Breathing was difficult. The room was frigid.

The light of Burton's lantern reeled across it and caught and lingered in the glimmering eyes of Sir Henry Tichborne. The portrait radiated evil, and for a moment, it appeared to the king's agent that the face in the painting had changed, that it was someone else entirely, someone gaunt and evil and filled with malicious intent.

The light sank down over the surface of the picture, and for a moment the eyes blazed through the shadow, then dimmed as the illumination retreated back across the room, slithering over the floor as if the clockwork lantern were sucking it in. It flickered and died, plunging them into darkness. Only a silvery parallelogram of moonlight remained, stretched across the floor, framing the two men's shadows.

Burton's heart hammered in his chest.

As his eyes adjusted, they were drawn to the door that he'd been about to open earlier.

Its handle began to turn.

Burton stood transfixed, unaware that Spencer, too, was staring at the door.

Agonisingly, little by little, the brass handle revolved.

From a great way off, the sound of the piano chord returned, coming closer and closer, filling the room.

The piano chimed.

The door opened.

A weird figure stepped in.

Burton and his companion yelled in fright.

“My hat! What on earth's the matter?” Swinburne shrilled, for the bizarre figure was his: small, slope-shouldered, his head framed by a corona of fiery red hair. He looked on bemused as his companions collapsed against each other, panting hard. “I say! Have you been drinking? And you didn't invite me? Blessed scoundrels!”

Burton let loose a peal of near hysterical laughter, turned to the patio door, then cried out and stepped back in horror as a demonic face glared at him from the darkness outside.

It was his reflection.

“Bismillah!”

“You're as white as a sheet!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“What-what are you playing at sneaking around at this time of night?” Burton demanded, failing to suppress the tremor in his voice.

“We agreed I'd take over at three.”

“It's three already?”

“I think so. My watch has stopped.”

Burton pulled his own pocket watch from his waistcoat and looked at it. It, too, had stopped. He shook it, wound it, and shook it again. It refused to work.

He twisted the clockwork lantern, only to find that it was also broken; there was no resistance in its spring.

“Herbert,” he muttered, “what were you doing out there?”

The vagrant philosopher swallowed nervously, wiped a sleeve across his brow, and shrugged. “I-I could-couldn't get any kip on account o’ Mrs. Picklethorpe's bloomin’ snoring. Her bedchamber is next to the kitchen an’ I'm two rooms away, but sound carries strangely in that part of the house an’ I swear it sounded like her trumpetin’ were a-comin’ from the walls themselves. Anyways, I couldn't take another blasted minute of it, so I thought to go an’ check on the swans. I hoped a spot o’ night air might encourage a visit from what's-’is-name-Morpheus. I was just headin’ back to the house when them wraiths surrounded me. Fair panicked, I did!”

“Wraiths?” Swinburne asked excitedly. “What? What?”

“Herbert thought he saw figures in the mist,” Burton explained.

“Of the mist,” the philosopher corrected.

“And the knocking?” the poet enquired. “Where was that coming from?”

“Knocking?”

“You didn't hear it? It was either from this room or the next, but it stopped when I came along the corridor.”

“Hmm,” Burton grunted. “Well, there was certainly a strange atmosphere in here and I haven't a notion how to explain it. It seems entirely normal now, though. Herbert, why don't you get yourself back to bed? There's no point in all of us losing sleep. Algy and I will have a poke around for a few minutes, then I think we'll call it a night.”