The Clock Maker

The Clock Maker

I was born in Sweden near the end of the 18th Century. My mother died as she gave birth to me, Douglas Cairns. My beloved father was a humble clock maker; I loved him and followed in his footsteps. On my 21st birthday he was found in a field, gutted and brutalized, some twenty miles from our family home. I was shattered and a piece of me died that day.

After my father passed I took over the family business. I became obsessed, tinkering with my clocks until all hours of the night; I would lock myself in my workshop for days immersed in my work. The years glided by in a haze, and as they did the pain of my loss dissipated. Eventually I found myself, once again, drawn to the allures of society’s pleasures. When I was 26 I met the love of my short life; a woman with flowing locks of blonde hair and a voluptuous figure by the name of Cynthia Darches.

Years passed and our love for one another blossomed. When I was 29, Cynthia and I were married. These times I look back on with so much fondness. My business flourished and my family grew. By the age of 36, I had a bustling business - and four children: two boys and two girls. It was at this time that the voices began to return.

It began late in the night while toiling away the hours with my clocks. The voices whispered of hideous and violent things as I worked. I feared the loss of my mind as time passed and the maddening racket continued. I dreaded the foreboding messages passed in the night on invisible lips. Months passed; I prayed for relief from my torment, but the voices only grew louder and more aggressive.

My 37th birthday was only several months away when the voices began to whisper malice and cruelties about the joys I could find if only I were to bathe in the blood of my wife and children. Frightened, shaken and exhausted I awoke from torrid nightmares that fateful September 22nd. I stalked through my daily routine that day; feeling not quite myself. Those who saw me would eventually say, “He spoke to himself as if a man possessed by demons.” “His face was contorted with anguish and sorrow.” “He seemed driven but the look in his eyes made me question for what.”

It was this tragic September 22nd that the people of my village last saw me, that my family last saw me. That night I stalked home, driven mad by the voices which had been tearing at my mind. I found my wife sleeping soundly. With tears in my eyes I held her close. Cynthia’s warm and loving skin pulsated against my own. I kissed her softly; breathing in her warm scent I slipped my blade into her heart and twisted it fiercely. Tears streamed down my face as her warm life force poured out over my hands. I was outside of myself, watching me cling to my wife as she quietly gasped her last stuttered breaths.

I watched myself leave her there, alone, cold and dead. I tried to fight the actions I was taking but I could only watch, filled with horror and sorrow, as I staggered from room to room until I was covered in the blood of my children. The towns’ folk say that I ran screaming into the night and was consumed by whatever demons drove me to commit such atrocities that night. That is where my story ended, at least to the rest of the world.

In reality, as I sat crying amongst the bodies of my family, the malicious voice returned to me. It sang praises of what it called, “my great deed” and cooed gently of my ensuing freedom. My weeping came in great heaving gasps, but subsided as I took notice of the pale gentleman with the stringy, shoulder length, black hair. His attire was finely tailored, and the material was a majestic red and black satin, adorned with golden lace.

He appeared in a shadowy corner of the now dank and bloody room; standing quietly he grinned ever so malevolently. From his lips sprang the voice which had haunted me for so long and led to the demise of my own family. “Come and walk with me into the darkness; for it shall give you consolation in these trying times,” whispered the fragile silhouette in the corner. Possessed by something other than myself, I stood. Still bathed in the blood of my wife and children, shaking, I took the death cold hand of the seemingly familiar stranger. Laughing uncontrollably we made our way into the depths of the night; my new home, for eternity.