Time in the Clocktower

From beyond the face of the clock, the light of the moon shone through in a diffused glow so that the shadowed hands were reversed, mirrored and blurry lines passing over the translucent surface. The sound of huge gears turning in their slow revolutions, round and round, filled the silence, their quiet and continual rotations coming to my ears from every angle of the compass, from above and below: this was the music of the spheres, as far as I knew, and since I was a boy, since I had first climbed up here seven years ago, I had found no better spot wherein one might sit and think.

I needed to think. Below, I knew, madness was raging—not openly, not yet—a simmering ready to boil. A lunatic’s lunacy spread, and as the moon gained—waxed, I think is the poetic word—the horrible anticipation of what, of who, of where was building to that proverbial breaking point. Time, in my clocktower, might be reversed, if only as a joke, but it was still moving.

Three murders, three full moons, and three more days before the…before what? A murder, but who? A full moon, but why? Was it mere insanity or a guise, a covering? Was it the thing itself, and were witches and ghosts to come next? Then, for a moment, as I tried to understand, the whole thing reversed itself in my mind.

I saw it as though through his eyes: the irresistible need, hunger beyond reason, the hunt, and then that horrible anticipation, the falling moon, the change, the cold nakedness of skin, the weakness of the encroaching guilt. It felt so real, so much like a memory…