Hands Of Time, Part 9-10

How long I was unconscious I do not know? All I do know is that when I regained my senses all I felt was the chill of the cold sidewalk throughout my whole body. As I lay on my back on the sidewalk I could hear the sound of course laughing and then the closing of vehicle doors, the vehicle starting, and the vehicle driving away until its sound vanished into the black night. I could not move my body; it and my mind were numb, almost paralyzed. The pain that I felt upstairs, outside the attic, had returned with a vengeance and with double the intensity of my earlier attacks. The only sign of life that my body indicated was the involuntary heaving up and down of my chest as I desperately tried to catch my breath after my exerting race to this final destination point. As I lay on the ground with my eyes squeezed shut, I felt tears push their way out passed the corners my eyes and work their way down the side of my face, depositing finally in my ears. I knew that I would never see the child again, he or she was now beyond any hope of rescue, and my efforts were in vain, too late. I slowly opened my eyes and was confronted with a dazzling display of God’s handiwork, the billions of stars in all their splendid glory were shining on the black canvas of the night sky, and to think my eyes could only taste but a tidbit of this wondrous spectacle. I slowly pivoted my head to the side, so as to observe with my eyes what I already knew in my heart, the wire still binding my wrist. I continued to lie there in the cool night air, sobbing and staring at my wrist and its captor. I prayed with my whole heart that somehow I could be free from the restraint that held me steadfastly to the clock, knowing deep down in my soul that this wish would not be granted. If it were not for this bondage on my wrist, I thought to myself, then I very well could have had the chance to save that little child. But I knew that I was not free, from this impediment that bound me to the clock, and therefore also knew that no matter how great my desire was to save the baby that it was now too late. I moved my body into the seated position and stared at the empty space on the street in front of my house, the spot that just a few moments earlier was filled with the black van. Now, only thing that caught my eyes gaze was my own car that I drove home in. I struggled to stand up, my legs were weak and my body was aching from lying on the cold ground for too long a time. As I turned from the street my eyes fell upon the sight of my house and the thought of my own aches and pains vanished. My thoughts rushed towards my wife and little ones inside the house. My children were still hiding under their beds, terrified. My wife was probably beside herself in fear, thinking that the black van had taken me away, along with the child. As I hurriedly moved to the front door of the house I noticed that light was pouring out from all of its windows, all but one. The attic window was dark and lonely, there was no figure of a young woman there any longer, the light had been extinguished, and the window seemed tightly shut.

Part 10


When I reached the front door I found it locked. My wife probably locked it trying to protect the children. I started groping in my coat pockets, in search for my house keys, when all of a sudden the front door swung open revealing the face of my wife. I felt my knees begin to shake as she looked at me with a peaceful smile, followed by a hearty laugh and the question of how could I have misplaced my keys from my car up to the house? I wanted to turn away from her, running and screaming into the dark night but instead I quickly calmed myself, laughed along with her and shrugged my shoulders indecisively. As I came into the house I noticed that I had my coat on, but how could that be, I had taken it off before dinner over an hour ago? My lips met with my wife’s and then I faked a smiled at her as I began to take off my coat. It was at this moment that I noticed that I no longer had the wire binding me to our clock. “Now, how did that get off” I asked myself silently? I felt my head begin to swim in confusion, my stomach was turning, why was I reliving all of this again, why was I caught in this rerun of events? Was I losing my mind or was all of this but a demented dream? As these thoughts filled my mind I saw my wife’s mouth open to speak to me. Before a single word exited her lips I already knew exactly what she was going to say. When the words came out of her mouth I had to keep my own from flopping open in bewilderment. According to some unannounced cue my eyes automatically turned to look into old grandfather clocks’ face and I noted that it was for the second time this day, 5:26 p.m. This no longer surprised me; maybe I was starting to nicely adjust to my new condition of insanity. Crazy or not I played my part, like a true actor, and told her I couldn’t remember why I was late and didn’t know where I had been. I again spoke my lines, with repetitive accuracy, asking for a few minutes to try and recall my whereabouts for the last hour. Even though this time I really did have an answer to this question. My wife looked deep into my eyes, smiled sweetly at me and then turned her face towards the house’s bedrooms and called the children to the dinner table. My children were not cowering under their beds in terror but were laughing without a fear before me at our dinner table and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Not a mention of the events that went on previously, just hearty laughing, loud talking, and sloppy eating, like all earlier events of the evening had been erased from their memory banks. This time supper went by without a peep of a siren; there wasn’t any loud noises, any van, soldiers or any of the earlier events that interrupted our dinner. As the last of the children excused themselves from the table I heard the sound of the grandfather clock. He was announcing to all within hearing distance that it was now six o’clock. As the last bong of the clock faded into the annuls of history, I strained my ears, trying to detect the slightest noise coming from above. All of my most intense concentration could not generate the sound that I had earlier heard from the attic immediately following the sixth bong from the clock. As the children played in their rooms and my wife worked on one of her fancy art crafts, I sat at the supper table trying to understand what had happened earlier on. Was it a dream, was I losing my mind, I really didn’t know? I strolled over to the front window and looked outside, all that was there was my car, nothing else, no van. I felt my body begins to relax, it must have all been some hallucination or bad dream or who knows what.