It Strikes Three

Fiction by Rosie Etheridge

It was the kind of night where the lamplighters could see their breath in curling whisps, when a traveller entered the Three Eyed Crow.

He removed his rounded black hat and placed it on the bar top. The first few flakes of snow had settled on the tops of his broad shoulders; he brushed them off. Setting his polished leather briefcase on the floor, he rang the bell on the bar.
“May I help you?” A woman appeared in the doorway with a face crinkled like long forgotten fabric. She smoothed her doughy hands across the front of the apron that was tied at her neck and studied the man.
His hand found his briefcase with the ease of habit. “Yes. I have a room reserved. I sent word ahead.”
“Ah yes! Mr Holt! It is all arranged. Sit down, I should bring you some of this evening’s food-”.
“First I should like to take care of things.” He raised his case up, the three locks glinting against the muted candlelight.
“This way.”

The woman took up a plain candelabra, lighting each wax candle in turn. Motioning behind her, she led him down towards the basement. He traced his hand against the wall to find his way. It was thickly clogged with cobwebs that clung on like sinew to bone. Then, after what seemed to be many minutes, they came to an opening. A cavernous abyss stretched out before their eyes punctuated only by a monstrous safe. On the last step, she
stopped and turned to him.
“This is the safe.” On the same breath, she thrust the candelabra into Holt’s hand and began her ascent up to the light.

He waited until he heard the thud of the closing door before stepping closer.
Examining the locks, the requested three bolts and the extra lined walls of the safe, he heaved open the door. The shelf was padded a deep red velvet colour; he nestled the briefcase onto it. Again, he checked if the case was locked. If you had been there, in the dark corner, perhaps you could have heard a low thudding, like what can be heard when placing your head on your lover’s chest. As the door swung shut, the noise seemed to die. He swaddled the safe in a silk fabric sheet and made his way to his room.

There was a chill in the morning’s air that left ice over the water buckets for the
horses. All the same, the gentleman washed himself, shaved and dressed as if he was heading for a funeral. His tie, black, and elegantly knotted, had a slight fraying quality to the edges. His shoes were polished, and gleaming like the ice sheets that plagued the morning, but on closer inspection a small hole could be noted growing on the bottom of the left sole. He held a walking cane in his left hand, the dented top silver and sagely decorated, the body lacquered and black. Each step he took was echoed and purposeful. Making his way down to the safe, he placed his black, brimmed hat firmly on his head.
He shed each layer surrounding the case until he was left with only the flesh, the
safe.

The keys clicked into place. Reverent fingers found the case and clung like vines.
Cradling it, he carried it up the stairs, up into the light. Floorboards seemed to quiver beneath the weight of the case and he could have sworn he felt a slight vibration pass up his cane from them. Perched upon the bed he checked a scratched, silver pocket watch. He drummed his fingers against the bed frame.
Each time his eyes left the case, even for a moment, he would feel a relentless gravity drawing them back. It reminded him of seeing a great carriage overturned into a ditch once upon his way to London. There was a great conflict then, as there was now, between his eyes and his brain. Between the heart beating with sympathy and the brain dabbled with curiosity.

The keys twisted in the three locks, each falling to the floor with a hollow clatter.
When the final lock fell, the case seemed to fling itself open. He gasped. Holding it aloft like a baby at a christening, he placed the clock on the mantelpiece.

The clock was carved in deep red wood, the colour of beetles crushed under foot.
The curving structure was laden with intricate gargoyles and churning bodies heaped upon each other. He traced the peculiar symbols that were indented upon the clock face. His lips failed to form their swooping shapes. In the middle stood a priest, cloaked, sacrificing a stag. The priest held a bowl aloft. The bowl was being filled. The bowl was being filled with blood from the sacrificed stag. It seemed to really be trickling, a flowing blood stream. The clock smith stood gawping. Dipping his fingers in the bowl, he found it was wet, red, oozing.
“My god.”
It began to chime three o’clock, although that was some way off. With each chime of the clock, the priest’s knife plunged across the stag’s neck. Its eyes seem to drain, whiten in fear and blood spurted out into the bowl.
“My god.”

Holt approached the clock, fingers stretching out, as if to touch a drying painting. He made to discover the mechanism so as to correct the time. The door to his room flung open with such force he was shocked to see it remained,
rocking on its hinges.

In front of him stood a man. His cape pooled black around his ankles. The hood was pulled far down obscuring a deathly pale face nestled deep like the moon against the sky on a chilled October night.
“I told you not to touch it.” His voice was an almost guttural grumble. It seemed an effort for him to speak at all, like he’d just climbed many a staircase. The man made no reply and found his mouth had dried up completely, leaving his tongue foolishly suspended in his mouth. He recognized the words from the letter he’d received many weeks prior. They had been underlined and repeated many times throughout the correspondence with the peculiar,
yet wealthy buyer.

The man took a swishing step forward. The material of his cloak parted and briefly
exposed a carved, red cross decorated with a stag, that hung limply around his neck.

“I told you not to touch it”
Holt raised his finger to the cross, eyes wide.

The man took another step forward, placing himself between Holt and the clock.
From the billowing sleeve of his cape, something silver and slender dropped into his hand. The hilt was intricately carved and deep red. The silver caught the candlelight in the tiny room and Holt realized far too slowly what it was. From the blade it came, dripping onto the floorboards, worming into the cracks. Red.
Red. Red.

When the man had finished his work, the clock chimed three again; the knife was
raised and the stag’s throat slit in one callous motion. He knelt below the clock and murmured a prayer, his eyes cast towards the heavens. Careful not to touch the river of blood that was ever flowing, the intruder placed the clock in the case. In turn he bolted all three of the locks and carried the case out of the inn.

Upstairs Holt lay upon the floor, the gash in his throat dripping. Red. Red. Red.