Two and Twenty Dark Tales (27 page)

– The End –

Tick Tock

Gretchen McNeil

There’s a neat little clock,

In the schoolroom it stands,

And it points to the time

With its two little hands.

And may we, like the clock,

Keep a face clean and bright,

With hands ever ready

…To do what is right.

– Mother Goose

“T
HIS
can’t be right.”

Shannon eased her car to a halt at the top of the hill and flipped on the interior light. She held the torn corner of her mom’s newest celebrity magazine in front of her eyes. It had been the only scratch paper within arm’s reach when Shannon answered the call from the Mommy’s Happy Helpers babysitting service for whom she occasionally gigged, and as she squinted to read her mostly illegible handwriting scrawled across a photo of Nicole Kidman’s Golden Globes dress, she secretly hoped her mom would blame the destruction of her favorite bedtime reading material on Dad.

“2201 Hillcrest Road,” she read aloud. Shannon glanced up at the street sign dully illuminated by her headlights. It clearly indicated that the dark, windy road which quickly disappeared up the side of the canyon was, in fact, Hillcrest Road.

Shannon drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. It had been only fifteen minutes since she’d turned off Pacific Coast Highway into one of the older Malibu neighborhoods and started winding up into the hills, but it felt like she’d left Los Angeles’s most exclusive beach community behind her. The modern estates with security gates and twenty-foot-tall hedge rows had at first thinned, then disappeared altogether as she climbed farther up the hill. As the road opened up onto a plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Shannon thought her Garmin had guided her to a dead end. But, no. The green and white street sign clearly indicated that the dismal, abandoned Hillcrest Road continued, and since the last house she’d passed at least a half mile back had been numbered 2190, her destination must lie farther up the hill.

Shannon lifted her foot from the break and maneuvered her car into the narrow, winding lane, trying to fight back the uneasiness growing in her mind.

It had been a weird, last minute assignment. Her parents were at the Metzgers’ for bridge night, and Shannon had just changed into her PJs and settled in for a marathon of bad reality television when she saw Mommy’s Happy Helpers pop up on her cell phone. She’d almost let it go to voicemail. The lure of Snooki and J Wow was strong, and besides, between work and studying for finals, it had been weeks since she had a night all to herself.

But Debbie, her boss and the owner of MHH, always gave Shannon first crack at the best assignments, which usually meant a big fat tip at the end of the night. She thought of her college fund, which needed a serious shot in the arm if she was going to afford anything other than a JC, and so with a stoic sigh, Shannon had picked up Debbie’s call.

“Shannon, thank God you’re home.” Debbie sounded out of breath.

“What’s up, Deb?”

“Annie didn’t show for an assignment.”

“What? I don’t believe it.” Shannon had a hard time believing that her best friend had bailed on a job. “She didn’t call or anything?”

Debbie clicked her tongue. “I got a garbled call about five minutes ago. I could barely understand a word she said.”

“Is she okay?”

“I don’t know!” Debbie snapped.

Shannon flinched. Debbie wasn’t usually this wound up. More cool, everything-happens-for-a-reason hippie than Type A control freak.

She heard Debbie take a deep breath, then after a few seconds, she exhaled slowly. “Look, this is a brand new client. A biggie. Heads a huge film production company out of Australia and just moved to Malibu last month. I needed five referrals just to land him so Annie not showing up is a mess for me.”

Shannon pursed her lips. She’d known Annie since they were in preschool. Always on time, reliable to the point of an obsessive compulsive disorder, Annie wasn’t usually a flake. But ever since she’d started dating Cam Hunter, she’d pretty much lost track of everything else in her life. Grades, soccer practice, even Shannon had fallen by the wayside as Annie paraded around school in Cam’s white Hollister sweatshirt as if she’d been branded by her new relationship.

And now her flakiness was going to ruin Shannon’s TV night.

“I know, I should have called you first,” Debbie said, clearly trying to butter Shannon up. “But Annie begged me for some extra gigs and… well…”

“It’s fine,” Shannon said. Whatever. Debbie would make it up to her later. For now, she sensed time was of the essence.

“Good,” Debbie said quickly. “Thanks. The house is way up in Malibu. Can you make it there in thirty minutes?”

Shannon glanced down at her cotton pajama bottoms and threadbare tank top. Thirty minutes to change and haul her ass from Topanga to Malibu? It was a stretch to be sure, but she could just make it. Assuring Debbie she’d be there by eight o’clock, Shannon hastily wrote down the address on the nearest paper she could find, then scribbled a note to her parents and hustled out of the house.

Thirty minutes later, Shannon found herself on a road right out of a horror novel. The scraggly foliage crouched over the narrow roadway, practically squeezing it out of existence. The single paved lane of Hillcrest Road seemed to cling to its independence, maintaining its domain from the encroachment of nature. The surrounding trees were dense, but held at bay by recently resurfaced asphalt, and though Shannon was half-convinced she was going to drop off the face of the earth at any moment, there was something comforting in the fact that the road, however remote, was meticulously maintained.

Hillcrest Road took a precarious ninety degree turn and suddenly the trees thinned, giving way to an expansive front yard. The sweet smell of newly mowed grass wafted in through her open windows as Shannon pulled her car into a quadruple-wide driveway.

“Whoa.” Whatever Shannon’s horror movie influenced subconscious expected to see at the end of Hillcrest Road, the house before her certainly wasn’t it. She
should
have been staring at a dilapidated mansion, complete with spiky iron fence, broken windows, and a family graveyard conveniently built on an old Indian burial ground.

This? Not so much.

2201 Hillcrest Road was a sleek, modern estate. Austere in its glass and steel façade, the house was brilliantly lit, flooding a soft yellow glow down onto a meticulously manicured lawn. Beyond the house, Shannon could see the glittering lights of the Santa Monica Pier far in the distance. She could even make out the slowly rotating lights of the Ferris wheel, flickering in and out as the massive wheel hauled tourists around for iconic views of the southern California coast.

As she climbed out of her car, Shannon caught movement in one of the second-floor windows. The silhouette of a head and shoulders standing at the pane. Must be her charge for the night. Shannon started up the walkway, then paused. There were two silhouettes in the window now, both the same height and the same build.

Then, multiplying like amoebas, the two became four.

Shannon blinked a few times. Had her eyes gone completely
schizo
or was she actually staring at four kids in the window? Four bodies who stood shoulder-to-shoulder like conjoined paper dolls in almost perfect symmetry. Same height, same build, same age.

Quadruplets?

Cha-ching!
Four kids meant double her rate, plus with a house like this way up on a private Malibu road, the family must be swimming in cash. An Australian film producer? Dude must be loaded to have moved his whole family out here. Shannon smiled to herself, picturing a fat, hundred-dollar tip in her hands at the end of the night.
Thank you, Annie, for bailing tonight to make out with your boyfriend. Your loss, my gain.

With an expectant grin, Shannon rang the doorbell.

She waited for the sound of rambunctious kids careening down the stairs, each desperate to be the first to open the door. But instead, the house was oddly quiet. Disturbingly so. Not a voice, not a yell, not even the sound of a television or radio cranked up to max volume.

Nothing.

Shannon took a step back and gazed up to the second-story window. The silhouetted children were gone. She
had
seen four of them up there, hadn’t she? In Shannon’s babysitting experience, four kids in one house are rarely quiet at the same time unless they’re all sound asleep. Maybe they didn’t hear her ring the bell? Huh, weird, since all four of them had watched her walk up to the house. Maybe they were just shy?

A light ocean breeze gusted across the front yard, whipping strands of dark blonde hair across Shannon’s face. Despite the warmth of the evening, a chill crept up the back of her neck. She shook her shoulders with unnecessary force, as if attempting to extricate herself from an unwanted embrace.

Don’t be stupid.
Shannon reached her finger toward the doorbell.

Before she touched it, the front door swung open.

Shannon gasped. She couldn’t help it. The whole evening had an air of the surreal and the sight before her was no exception. A child stood in the doorway. He was eight or nine years old with thick, black hair worn long over the ears in an outdated style that reminded Shannon of early photos of The Beatles. His outfit also felt anachronistic, though from a different era: a bright red polo shirt tucked into belted khaki shorts that came just to the knee, and a pair of unnaturally white socks and sneakers.

The boy kept one hand on the doorknob, while the other hung lank at his side. His face was oddly devoid of expression, and Shannon couldn’t tell if he was scared, bored, or confused at the prospect of a stranger at the door. He just stared at her, silent and still, until Shannon shifted her feet, uneasy at the way the kid looked right through her.

After what seemed like an eternity, Shannon cleared her throat. She was being stupid. He was just a kid.

“Hi,” she said, in a light, airy, I’m-your-new-favorite-babysitter voice.

Silence. The boy just stared.

“Um, I’m from Mommy’s Happy Helpers,” she continued. Was there something wrong with this kid? “I’m the replacement babysitter.”

Nothing.

Great. This gig was going to be more work than she thought. “Are your mom and dad home?” Shannon took a step toward the door. “Maybe you can tell them—”

Without a word, the boy stepped aside, swinging the door wide open. Clearly, it was an invitation to enter the house, but Shannon hesitated. Why was she so nervous? She’d babysat for dozens of families, many of whom had large houses tucked away in the hills. She’d always been safe. One of the reasons she liked working for Debbie was that all the clients were vetted in advance. So why was she suddenly apprehensive about this one?

She was just tired. That had to be it. She was letting her imagination get the better of her.

Shannon forced the muscles of her face into one of her brightest, most inviting smiles, and stepped inside the house.

The entryway was practically as large as the entire home Shannon and her parents rented in Topanga Canyon. It was two stories high and ran the entire length of the house, stretching fifty feet in each direction. The hardwood floor was a geometrical mosaic of dark and light triangles, waxed and polished with an almost painful glean. Sconces blazed along the walls, and three enormous chrome chandeliers hung from the rafters of the ceiling, illuminating the space in such dazzling light that Shannon had to blink a few times until her eyes adjusted to the brightness.

And yet the room felt cold—intimidating and uninviting. Twin staircases curved up the wall directly opposite the front door, but with the exception of the red-shirted boy who stood like a sentry at the door, there wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the space.

Except one.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Directly opposite the front door, centered on a wall between the staircases, stood an enormous grandfather clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Wow,” Shannon said. Not “wow” as in “awesome!” but “wow” as in “what the hell is that?”

The clock was grotesque. Eight feet tall and wide enough for two adults to stand comfortably inside the body, the clock was an imposing presence in the room. The exterior was a mix of dark and light inlaid wood that, while matching the pattern of the parquet floor, seemed out of place in the sleek, modern home. Two massive pillars flanked either side, and the square face that housed the actual clock mechanism was decorated with curved flourishes that looked almost like devil horns. The face itself was a gothic mish mash of twisted wrought iron and Roman numerals, complete with a barometer and a dial which showed the current phase of the moon.

She took a few steps toward the clock. “That’s bizarre.”

Shannon felt a rush of air behind her, then the door slammed shut. She spun around. Red Shirt still stood beside the door, but a second child—a girl—stood by his side. Like her brother, she had jet black hair, close cropped around her face but longer in the back. She wore the same belted, khaki shorts, but her polo shirt was lemon yellow.

“Hi,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’m Shannon.”

No answer.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Shannon glanced back at the clock. It was ridiculously loud, its rhythmic tick echoing off the high ceiling and wood floor. As she stared at the face, she noticed the second hand was frozen in place. The clock wasn’t moving.

“Hey,” she said, walking up to the clock. “Did you know this clock doesn’t work?”

“There’s a neat little clock,

In the school room it stands.”

Shannon spun around. There were three of them now. Another child had appeared as if out of thin air. Another boy. Same haircut and uniform as his brother, but he wore a blue shirt.

Where the hell were they coming from?

“And it points to the time,

With its two little hands.”

They recited it together—Red Shirt, Yellow Shirt, and Blue Shirt—in perfect unison.