◀ Prev • [ All parts ] • Next ▶
Part 1-13: Minutes
Like the hallway, the lights were on in the room. Except if you paid attention, you’d notice that there was no actual light source. The squares of the fluorescents above were visible, but they did not glow.
The grandfather clock in the corner was very apparent. But before I could process its existence, I saw something worse: Willy himself lay in the middle of the floor, spread eagle, eyes closed. I let Dack move past me with his weapon, and I stayed near the entrance with Fergus. Deluxe moved along the edge of the room, running her hand along the wall. Persimmon went over to Willy, then looked back at us.
“Feel better?” she asked. Her lips moved now.
“This him?” said Dack, pointing the bar at the man on the floor.
“That’s him,” I said.
“What is this place, lady?” asked Fergus.
Persimmon dropped into a cross-legged seat beside Willy and stroked his hair. “I don’t rightly know, if I’m being truthful,” she said. “Time has become so strange. Willy started to act odd… a while ago. He’d leave for hours on end and come home sweaty and sunburnt, and this was when it was still chilly out. It was like he was lost. So one day I followed him, and he came here. Then I couldn’t leave.”
“Couldn’t leave?” I said. I pictured every door I ever opened leading back into the same hallway. I told myself this would all go away as soon as the sun came up. It had to.
“It’s because I opened the clock, so don’t—” she glanced over to Deluxe, who had gotten close to the tall, dark sentinel in the corner. “—don’t do that.”
Deluxe cast us a guilty glance and moved away from it.
“How do you know this man?” asked Dack, eyes on the clock.
“Willy? Willy is my brother.”
“You don’t look related, Persimmon,” said Deluxe.
“Half-brother, technically, but mother remarried when I was two, so I don’t really make the distinction. And please, call me Persi. Persimmon is when I’m in trouble.”
“This isn’t trouble?” I gestured all around.
“You’re right. You’re right.” Persi’s face scrunched up, and she looked ready to cry. “Please, I need someone to help. He’s getting worse.”
“Boyo’s been… making some scenes about town,” said Fergus, who sounded stone cold sober now.
“It’s not Willy. It’s the clock.”
“The hell is this clock, then?” said Dack, and walked towards it, brandishing the crowbar.
“You can’t harm it. Go ahead, try. Mind you don’t knock open the latch on the front.”
Dack got close, but refrained from wailing on it. Deluxe also reapproached and clung to his arm.
I wanted answers. “Persimmon, or Persi, whatever. What’s this help you need? What do you mean he’s getting worse? I’ve seen this… your brother around town and every time I do something goes wrong.” I described the incidents.
Persi listened with her eyes closed. When I finished, she opened them and said, “When I first came here, the time on the clock was three minutes to twelve, you see? I opened it, because Willy asked me to, and then I woke on the floor, here.” She rapped the ground beside Willy’s head. He snored.
Deluxe and Dack turned to listen. I didn’t like the way the clock looked, peering over their shoulders. I felt it was probably listening as well. Fergus still hadn’t left the doorway.
Our strange host continued. “When I looked again, it still read three minutes to. It remained that way for a while, or what felt like a while. I realized I couldn’t escape, and near went half-mad, you best believe. Tried everything. Including…” she looked into the distance for a second, then shook her head. “Willy, he’d visit every now and then, or at least his body would. He couldn’t talk much, and what he did say made little sense. Then one night, I get this intense feeling in my gut. I haven’t eaten for ages, but you don’t get hungry here. Or tired. Anyhow, so this feeling is in me. It’s not a bad feeling, or a good one… only, like… raw and scratching and pushing, like maybe I was having an invisible piss or… I don’t know.
“I came back to this room, and there’s the clock, now at two to midnight, and there’s Willy on the floor, breathing hard and looking wild, unhinged. And talking! In clipped sentences about how he’d figured out ‘locks and keys,’ how good it felt, how much better he’d gotten. ‘What’d you do?’ I asked him and he starts saying, ‘more, find more.’”
She stopped rubbing Willy’s head, and now looked at him like one might regard a sleeping tiger. I squinted at the time on the clock. I noticed that the numbers were all on backwards. A small thing, yes. But it made me dislike it even more. The minute hand was a little more than halfway between the eleven and twelve. Still two to midnight.
“Then, about a week ago, he comes here all confused and muttering. Kept saying ‘wifi’ over and over, and then I’d heard a voice. Here, I still have it.”
Persi closed her eyes again, and we all heard a woman say, “Do you know if the wifi is down?” It was a familiar voice, and by the way everyone was looking at me, I had a good idea who it belonged to. Did I really sound that low pitched?
The girl on the floor gave me a sad look, and said, “It’s been obsessing over wifi and your voice for some time. I think—I don’t know—but I am hoping you can help get Willy back. And get me out. This is the only thing that’s seemed to bother it. And, of course, here you are. It can’t be a mistake.”
“I’ve her to thank for being here,” I said, pointing the flashlight at Deluxe. She stuck out her tongue. “But I suppose this visit was my idea. Look, I have no clue where to even begin with all this. I want it all to stop as much as you do, but what am I supposed to do?”
“How ‘bout say the magic word,” said Fergus.
“What magic word?”
“Wifi,” said Deluxe.
“You want me to say wifi? What good—”
We heard the clock crunch, then it began to tick.
◀ Prev • [ List of parts ] • Next ▶
📚 Readlist 📚
