Morning dawned with the gentle beat of a drizzle on the cottage windows. Silvery fog shrouded Lavender Lane, isolating the outside world and making the inside a private island in time. Toby's parents were already unpacking in the kitchen, muttering indistinctly, and Toby was in bed staring at the curved key on his bedside table.
It wasn't heavier, of course. But it did weigh more this morning. As if the key recognized that its destination was near.
He stuck it in his pocket and took Hidealong down the hall, thudding heart. The air felt cold along by the closet, abnormally damp. He opened the door creakily, and the smell of hall dust and old wood encircled him again. The clock loomed in shadow like a silent but vigilant guard.
Toby found the crucial key and knelt before the clock. He located the minute brass keyhole back of the door, beneath the gears. The key slipped in easily. Closing his eyes, he turned it once… twice… three times. The gearwork clung tightly, then bent with a click that echoed down the slender corridor.
Nothing. The clock remained silent.
Toby got up, disappointed but not thwarted.
The second hand jerked.
It shook again. And very, very slowly, very, very softly, the minute hand began to move… tick towards 12:01.
The pendulum, as rigid as rock yesterday, began to swing. Not jerky mechanical motion but a slow, hard-won swing. As emerging from deep sleep.
Then the chime.
A low, deep sound of a bell. Not loud, not musical, but dense one note vibrating in Toby's chest.
He moved back. The room. altered.
It hadn't shown at first. The hallway light was. different. Warmer. Wallpaper wasn't it brighter? The lion-faced knobs on the closet door now glinting, recently polished. And the dust on the clock face had vanished. Spotless, revealing dainty engraving Toby never saw.
He crept slowly into the hallway, suddenly apprehensive.
In the downstairs, his parents' voices had stopped.
He called out, "Mom? Dad?"
No answer.
A movement behind him caused him to turn quickly around. The clock was 12:06 then.
But his watch—still 8:47 AM.
Toby is shaken and frightened, bolting down the stairs. The house was unchanged—but changed. The pictures on the walls had changed. A Victorian-sett-appearing family portrait filled a place where a blank had been yesterday. The kitchen had a smell of coal smoke, not his mom's coffee.
And nobody home.
The vehicle that was parked in the driveway disappeared.
Fright galloped up his belly. He peered into the living room. The couch had disappeared. In its place was a settee that appeared old and velvet-upholstered. The television, disappeared. In its place was a cabinet radio which was enormous.
Toby paced circles around himself trying to figure out what was going on. He dashed to the front door and opened it.
What he saw rendered him speechless.
Lavender Lane existed, but there were no cars to be seen. The street was cobblestones instead, and a horse and cart drove by slowly, the wheels clattering over wet cobblestones. A man in a top hat tipped his hat towards Toby as he passed.
Toby shut the door behind him, out of breath.
He was within the same house. But a different age.
The key. The clock. The chime.
Had the clock sent him back?
He spun and glanced at the stairs.The corridor still had a nauseating heat. The clock had done something, no doubt about it. But why? And how far back in time had he gone?
Toby saw the cabinet radio. It buzzed softly, though no one had worked it.
Then a deafening sound is heard in Toby's ears.
> "To those who wind the Harrington clock,
Time warps where sense breaks.".
But be careful,
each turn costs something.
Toby panted for air and played at being shocked and frightened.
A price?
What price?
Then the attic clock tickethises again.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Something had begun.
Something...