Clocktower Page 16

  “Turn that off,” Johnny ordered.

  “Mr. Tokisaki? Aren’t you supposed to be in there? Did you leave the congregation?” The driver rubbed his head with one hand and lowered the volume on his radio with the other.

  “Are there any other exits out of the cathedral aside from this one going down the main road?” Johnny asked.

  “No, sir. Just the one. Why?”

  “Wait.”

  Johnny scanned the lot for any sign of movement.

  “What am I waiting for, Mr. Tokisaki?” he asked.

  “There!” Johnny pointed at a black Bentley that emerged from the far side of the cathedral. “Follow that car, but keep your distance.”

  The driver squinted at the car as it drew closer, then shook his head as it started to make the turn onto the main road.

  “I can’t follow that car, Mr. Tokisaki. That’s Mr. Hanekawa’s! I’m not some kind of stalker out here to cause trouble!”

  Johnny slammed his fist down on the leather, then threw his door open before circling around to the driver’s side and flinging his door open as well.

  “Out,” he commanded.

  “Now, Mr. Tokisaki,” the driver tried to bargain, but Johnny had lost his patience. He grabbed the driver by the collar and threw him out of his seat onto the asphalt, then took control of the vehicle and sped off.

  Halfway down the hill of The Crown, the mobile phone in his pocket began to ring. Johnny fumbled with the unfamiliar device until he managed to click it on.

  “Good morning, Mr. Tokisaki,” the voice of Mutsumi Baba buzzed across the line. “You made quite an exit there. Half the congregation watched you leave.”

  “What do you want?” Johnny asked as he watched Ayano’s car slow at a stop sign.

  “Hah. All business with you, isn’t it?”

  “Ayano Hanekawa is supposed to be a corpse,” Johnny said.

  “She was,” Mutsumi Baba replied matter-of-factly. “And now she isn’t. It’s a miracle, don’t you agree?”

  “It’s bullshit. Either she was never dead, or that isn’t Ayano.”

  “Is it so hard to believe? People and their machinations, their bodies and their minds. Ayano was dead, but now she is here among us. And the service you just witnessed? A message.”

  “A message to whom?” Johnny tapped the brakes, furthering the distance between himself and Ayano’s car.

  “Who else? The Indices, of course. Ayano was dead. We all witnessed her beautiful dead body for ourselves. And now she’s there in front of them all to see. I’ll wager your employer was more surprised than anyone else, whichever one of my cohorts that may be.”

  Johnny licked his lips and exhaled. “So what, you’re wanting me to believe that Ayano is a modern-day Lazarus? That she just up and decided not to be dead one morning and carry on with it?”

  “Nothing so crass, Mr. Tokisaki!” She paused, and then her voice became no more than a whisper. “The power over life and death, the power to turn over one’s emptied hour-glass, that is the power that we created. The shinsei dasshinki. The Holy Escapement.”

  Johnny’s breath fled his lungs. His face was hot, and her words were a torch thrown upon his black-oil heart.

  “They gave one an escapement, and let the other escape.” The words of Mei Goto fell out of his mouth and into the phone.

  “I beg your pardon?” Mutsumi Baba asked.

  Johnny shook his head. Ayano’s car made a right at the first cross section as they entered The Bezel, and a few seconds later, Johnny turned after it.

  “It must be a lot to take in at once, I know. But when you’re done playing cat and mouse with young mistress Hanekawa, do give me a call. There is still the matter of our deal, and I would see it fulfilled.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. There was an emotionless beep in his ear, then only the sound of his foot on the gas.

  Johnny closed the phone and slammed it down into the passenger seat. “God damn it!” he screamed, slowing down again until Ayano’s car was just out of view. It was still early morning, but a thick layer of clouds had accumulated overhead, and it looked as if rain could begin to pour at any moment.

  As he continued his distant pursuit, the image of Mari’s two-day-old corpse flashed in his mind. All the cuts and slashes. The deep stab wounds that had robbed her of her life. Had they tried to do the same with Mari as they had done with Ayano? Was there some mechanical device lodged inside her heart, knocking on the door of her absent soul? The thoughts formed a cacophony of voices in his mind, and though he tried, he could not silence them.

  After making a few turns, the scenery began to look familiar again. He was driving down the road he had taken east from the school to the Goto residence.

  “Is that where you’re going?” he asked the empty car. “Tying up loose ends?”

  He reached into his coat and gripped his revolver once more, reaffirming its cold steel existence, then focused his eyes back on the road ahead.

  *

  Johnny followed Ayano’s car until they made the turn onto Mei Goto’s street. He parked the car at the corner and secured his belongings before jogging past the last building on the end, then peered around. Ayano’s car was parked just outside the Goto house, and Ayano, standing alongside Mr. Yama, was just being let inside. Johnny made a quick check of his surroundings, then hurried toward the Bentley.

  A light drizzle had started to fall when he reached the car. Thin, faint drops collected on the rear windshield, which Johnny glanced through once to see if there was anything of interest that he could take. Finding the car empty, he squatted down low and proceeded to approach the house from the east side, where the living room was.

  He kept his head down, squeezing past the white Honda in the driveway before resting against the wall. From here, he could make out the muffled sound of voices from within. He inched closer to a small side window, hoping the thinner glass would prove more audibly amiable, but here too he was able to make out no more than a few words here and there.

  Undeterred, Johnny kept low and moved farther down until he got to the home’s northeast corner. Unlike the tiny, mostly concrete backyard at Mari’s home, the Goto residence had a much wider, grassy space. Still minuscule when compared to homes around the Los Angeles suburbs, but grand in its own way. Two beds of roses flanked the back door, each of their planters lined with familiar red-and-white pinwheels that spun with the blowing wind.

  The voices from inside were barely audible here, and behind a sliding glass door he could see a tatami-mat room filled with paints and canvases. Johnny tested the door with a gentle push, finding that it gave smoothly. He opened the door a few inches, then put his ear to the room. He could distinguish between voices clearly now, but still could not hear enough of the conversation to understand what was being discussed.

  Reluctantly, he pushed the door open further. Outside, the rain had started to pick up, and he could only hope that the sound of falling droplets coupled with the distraction of guests would provide suitable cover for his entrance. He waited another fifteen seconds until he was satisfied that his ingress had gone unnoticed, then quickly slipped off his shoes and headed inward.

  It was a chaotically unkempt room. A stack of blank canvases stretched from floor to ceiling in one of the corners. Paintings—mostly of environments and nature—decorated nearly every inch of the walls. On an easel near the glass door rested a finished depiction of the clocktower as it appeared from the sea. It was incredibly detailed, even for an amateur piece. But one point of it struck him as out of place with the rest.

  The clocktower stood at the top of a long arch that thrust like a dagger into the Pacific. Or at least, that was how it should have been. In the painting, however, the end of the arch was missing, leaving only a long stretch of land that hung precariously over the ocean, upon which the clocktower was perched.
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  Below the clocktower, and beneath the half-arch it rested upon, was the shadow of a second tower, hung from the bottom and pointed down to the sea. It’s shape and size were roughly equal to those of the clocktower above it, but its features were much darker. It looked more like a misplaced shadow, and he would have been content to dismiss it if it weren’t for what was below the pointed edge of that mysterious obelisk: a grove of pink cherry blossoms along the shore of a village partly subsumed by the tide. A few buildings stood strong among the trees, but most of them were no more than tiled roofs teetering on the edge of complete submersion.

  The detail was enormous. Stray petals from trees swept away helplessly by the ocean breeze dotted the seascape, and the few buildings that still stood were wonderfully colored in oranges and reds. He would have admired it more if not for the sudden, piercing cry of Mei Goto from the other room.

  “Mei, calm down!” He heard the voice of Nana Goto. “Mei, what’s wrong?”

  There were a few loud thumps, followed by the muffled sound of weeping. Johnny snuck closer to the door and waited.

  “As you can see, this has all been one terrible misunderstanding.” The voice of Mr. Yama was weaselly authoritative. “There was no murder committed in Sonnerie. Ayano is right here in the flesh. And you, Ms. Goto, will be returning to work next week to resume your duties, is that clear?”

  “The ticking, make it stop, make it stop!” Mei Goto cried.

  “What ticking?” Nana replied. “Mei, what do you hear?”

  There was no response.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Yama, Mistress Hanekawa. She’s been out of sorts since she came back from the hospital. Please, let her rest.”

  “What’s wrong?” This time, it was a new voice that spoke. Younger and honey-toned. It could only be Ayano. “Don’t you want to teach me anymore, Miss Goto?” she asked.

  Mei Goto responded only in manic, incomprehensible words. It was as if her grasp of language had completely left her, and she was communicating as an infant.

  “You will be at work by next Monday morning. You will apologize to everyone involved for causing such a profound, disgusting rumor to spread throughout our city. Are we clear?”

  Silence.

  There was another series of thumps and cries. He could sense Mei Goto’s broken mind trying desperately to make sense of what she was seeing, but try as she might, it was impossible to comprehend. She spoke in her infant coos again until Mr. Yama cleared his throat and announced their departure.

  Johnny held his breath until he heard the sound of the front door opening, then tiptoed back to the door and slid his shoes on again. The light rain had turned into an outright downpour now, and he tried to stick close to the awning to avoid being drenched.

  He snuck back through the narrow alley and to the front of the white Honda in the driveway, where he caught a glimpse of Ayano kicking a foot against the sidewalk in front of her Bentley. The wind had picked up, spraying drops of rain all over him as he tried to listen.

  “We shouldn’t have to go through all this trouble,” he heard her say. “It would be easier to send them downstairs.”

  “Your father wishes it, and we must respect his commands,” Yama replied.

  “Hmph. Such a stick in the mud.” Johnny heard the door of the Bentley open, and he peeked out from behind the Honda to observe them. Yama stood with a large, gold-colored umbrella, shielding Ayano from the rain.

  “So who’s next on our little circus tour? The chief? Finchy?”

  “I will inform Chief Oda myself via phone later today. Zachary Finch has already been made aware. We’ll go to the school first to discuss this with Principal Itsuka. After that, you have a scheduled checkup with Dr. Tonimura.”

  “I have no need for the good doctor anymore, Yama.” Ayano smiled, showing a row of perfect white teeth. She spoke as if she were talking to a pet, or some creature that couldn’t quite grasp human communication.

  “Your father wishes it—”

  “And we must respect his wishes, yes, yes. Let’s get this over with, stick in the mud.”

  The car door closed, and a few short seconds later the engine started, and the black Bentley sped back the way it had come.

  Johnny retreated back to the awning, but the damage was already done, and he was soaked from head to toe. Rolling thunder boomed in the distance, punctuating the sound of Mei Goto’s cries from inside the house. There was something in him now that had lost the will to continue. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a still-dry cigarette, then set it between his lips and flicked on his lighter.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sky fall around him, then took a deep inhale, filling his lungs with smokey vigor. Unconsciously, he moved his right hand over the handle of his revolver and gave it a squeeze.

  “Just me and you, old friend,” he said, taking another drag. There was a flash of lightning from not far off, but just as he had made up his mind to stand and return to the car, he felt something that perked up the hairs on the back of his neck. A faint, mechanical ticking sound that stuck out like a needle among the raindrops. He turned his head and tried to make out its direction, but when he did, he was met with a whisper.

  “Mr. Tokisaki,” the voice of Mari Mishima echoed in his ear. “Help me.”

  Nineteenth Movement

  Rain

  Johnny whipped around, pulling the revolver from his holster as he did, and rested it an inch from the head of Mari Mishima.

  “Don’t! Don’t shoot! I don’t want to die,” she cried.

  “You are dead! I saw your body. I saw the holes Ayano put into your chest.” It was all Johnny could do to keep his voice at a whisper. “What the hell are you?”

  “I’m not dead! I’m not! I’m . . . I’m . . . I don’t know!” Tears streamed down with drops of rain on her cheeks, joining together and falling to the concrete below. Her whole body trembled and shook, as if the gun in his hand was a real danger to her life.

  Johnny ground his teeth together and kept the barrel of his .38 pressed to her forehead.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” he demanded.

  “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I find myself in places. I don’t know how I get there or where I come from. I don’t know how to make it stop!”

  Johnny closed his eyes tight and stuffed the rage he felt down his esophagus and into his belly until it was nothing more than a dull discomfort in his gut. He tried to put his mind elsewhere. On the rain that was falling on his hands. On the voices of Nana and Mei Goto still echoing from inside the house. But when he opened his eyes, Mari was still there, with nothing but palpable terror written across her face.

  “God damn it,” he whispered, lowering his revolver and returning it to his holster. “Why me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she repeated. “When I try to talk to the others, they just look right through me. My friends, my teachers. My father. I screamed at him, you know? ‘I’m right here, Daddy! I’m right here!’ I said as he tied the rope around his neck. But he couldn’t see me. He couldn’t—he couldn’t . . .” Her voice cracked and broke again, and she began to sob.

  Between her tears, Johnny began to hear something else. That same, mechanically rhythmic ticking that pricked the small hairs inside his ears. It was coming from somewhere on Mari. He looked her over, from her raven tresses down to her black blazer and plaid skirt. She was sitting in front of him, but she seemed somehow impervious to the storm that surrounded her. Her hair blew with the wind, and drops of rain stained her clothes, but all of that seemed immaterial to her.

  Without thinking, he began to move his hand toward the collar of her shirt. When the tip of his finger made contact with the cloth, it sent a shiver down his spine so profound that he froze. He could hear the ticking louder now. An incessant drum that drove his hands to peel back her white collared shirt, rev
ealing the top of her collarbone.

  Mari’s cries ceased upon the feeling of his fingers running across her flesh. “D-Don’t look,” she pleaded meekly, but the mechanical ticking was so loud in his ear now that he had to continue. He pulled her shirt down lower still, until something that wasn’t skin revealed itself above her left breast. A round, glass window, integrated seamlessly with her flesh, revealing a set of gears and cogs that spun with impossible speed. There must have been thousands upon thousands of pieces, moving in tandem with each other. A beating mechanical heart. A movement.

  The more he looked at it, the more it seduced him. His own heartbeat raced in a futile attempt to match the speed of the spinning tourbillons in Mari’s chest. It was here, when he was at the peak of a hypnotic fever, that there was a loud yell from the inside of the house.

  Johnny’s mind shot back to reality. He snapped his hand back to his side and pressed his ear against the wall.

  “Mr. Tokisaki?” Mari asked, but Johnny hushed her with a finger over his mouth. He listened intently, but outside the rain had begun to fall even harder, and the pitter-patter of droplets flooded his ears and drowned out the sound of conversation from within. Mei Goto was clearly suffering from some hysteria, and her sister was trying desperately to calm her down.

  Johnny shook his head and looked back at Mari. “I don’t suppose you can magically appear in there and eavesdrop, can you?”

  Mari shook her head. “I can’t. It doesn’t work that way. And if Ms. Goto sees me, I . . .”

  “I thought people couldn’t?”

  “They can’t. But with Ms. Goto and Ayano, it’s different. Especially with Ayano. I can feel her, and she can feel me. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like when I was a kid, playing hide and seek. When the seeker gets close, you can feel it. No matter how well you’ve hidden, there’s just a feeling you get, you know? When the seeker gets close, when you know the game is up.”

  “Like she’s a wolf and you’re her prey.”