Authors: Jameson Scott Blythe
Clock Work (5 page)
PROLOGUE
Kat ran from the house and into a wall of humidity. Overhead, the sky was cloudless and the sun bright. She was dressed in what she’d worn to bed the night before—a thin cotton t-shirt and gray boxer briefs. Jake’s clothes. A few minutes ago she’d felt sexy wearing them. Now, they disgusted her.
She shaded her eyes with a hand. The sprawling property ahead of her was as imposing as the house that loomed at her back. The green lawn stretched on for acres, broken up here and there by clusters of trees.
Kat looked over her shoulder, toward the house. From the outside, it resembled a fortress. She had exited through the glass doors in the kitchen, which opened onto a stone patio outside. The doors were still ajar, inviting her back in.
What do I do?
She thought of what she'd found inside and turned back to the property. She needed to get away from here. She needed to get to the police. She should have done that last night, but it was too late to think about what she should have done. She had to deal with what the situation was, not what it should be.
And she had to deal with what Jake was, not what she wanted him to be. He’d come to her when she was stranded and alone and in need of help. He'd seemed so perfect, but wasn’t that what they said every time they caught some psychopath with a collection of bones in his house?
He was the perfect gentleman, the perfect boyfriend.
She ran. The property was walled in by
tall iron fences and thick, thorny shrubs. She had nowhere to go except across the vast patchwork of lawns.
Soon
there were enough trees behind her that she could no longer see the house when she looked back. Another minute brought her to a clearing and a large, dilapidated shed. Kat peered out from behind a tree. The door to the shed was propped open with a board. Did this mean that Jake was somewhere nearby?
The doorway was too dark to see anything within. Kat watched and listened for any sign that someone was inside. When she was confident she was alone, she moved from her hiding place and through the open door. The air inside the shed smelled of gasoline and damp, decaying wood. The floor was cement and felt cold under her bare feet. Enough light reached through the doorway for her to find her way around. Old coffee cans filled with rusty nails, bolts, and screws sat on shelves. A broken-down lawnmower lay forgotten in a corner. An assortment of tools hung on the walls, looking like props from a horror movie.
Kat picked up a shovel. It was small, like something you might use for planting saplings. It would be useful if she needed to dig out some space to crawl under a fence. It was also light enough to swing, which meant she could use it as a weapon if she had to. She couldn't believe she was thinking these thoughts, but something wasn't right. Even without the thing she'd found in the house, something about this place unsettled her. She didn't want to be here anymore.
I don't even know where here is,
Kat realized. She didn't know the house's address, she didn't know what town she was in, she barely remembered the streets they'd taken to get here last night. She had no idea where she was, and no one else did either. No one, except Jake.
Kat continued to search for an avenue of escape.
Emerging from underneath the trees, she found herself in front of an old, stone wall. It was perhaps ten feet high, too tall to see over, and topped in a row of metal spikes. The ground in front was bare dirt and felt gritty beneath her feet. She knelt and rubbed some of the dirt between her fingers. It smelled of salt.
Kat walked along the wall, keeping it on her left.
Her mouth was dry, her saliva sticky.
I'm dehydrated,
she thought. In the hot sun and humid air, she had doubts about how much longer she would be able to keep going. Her heart pounded inside her chest like a warrior's hand beating a drum. She wished she'd found a better way out of the house. She'd made one bad decision after another: calling Jake, instead of the police; letting him take her to his house, where no one in the world knew where she was; rushing into the backyard, instead of finding a way to escape out the front; not turning around and going back when she was closer to the house.
One bad decision after another.
It was only another minute of walking before she found the gate.
It looked like the entrance to a cemetery. It was made of iron bars set close together. At the top, black iron stems had been twisted into letters that spelled out three words:
ABYSSUS DIMIDIUM AGRI
Kat contemplated the phrase for a moment. It looked like Latin. But it didn't matter what the language was. What did matter was that the gate was unlocked, and that it might lead to a way out.
Kat eased the gate open and went through.
It was like stepping into another world.
She found herself at the beginning of an elaborate garden. Everything was wild, unmanicured. It looked like a place that had been neglected for a long time. There was a large fountain, dry and stained with dead algae. Tangled in the overgrowth were Romanesque columns and piles of collapsed brick, even a few armless sculptures of men and women, their marble torsos restrained in vine.
She was no expert on plants, but it was obvious there was something unusual about the things that grew on this side of the wall.
The garden was too large and too dense for Kat to see very far. But the sun was bright and the sky clear, and across the tops of the trees she thought she could make out the opposite side of the enclosing wall.
Is there a way out back there? Another gate? Will it be unlocked?
Even if it wasn't, she could use her shovel to dig out enough space to crawl underneath.
A path of mossy stones led forward, past the fountain, disappearing into the foliage. Kat followed it. She was battling a fresh wave of exhaustion, but she forced herself to stay alert and conscious of her strange surroundings.
A short walk took her to a square with a tree at its center. There was shade under its thick branches, but crowded around the trunk was a collection of strange-looking plants. They looked almost like a fruit or vegetable, but one Kat had never seen. Their color was orange, like a pumpkin's, but their shape was oblong, each narrow at one end, wider at the other. They came in all different sizes. The smaller ones would have fit on her palm. Others were much, much larger. Most were intact, but some had been smashed open. The ground around them was stained a brownish red.
Kat kept her distance.
The stone path branched off in three directions. She chose the one that led straight back, deep into the garden.
She hoped it wouldn't be much longer till she reached the other side. Her dry throat was swollen with thirst. The shovel she was carrying felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. She would have left it behind had she not needed it for a walking stick.
The shade of the plants invited her to move closer, but some gut instinct told her it would be the worst decision she could make.
Then, alongside the stone path, there was a bed of white flowers. They were almost like roses, but they also reminded her of orchids. The head of each was large, twice the size of Kat's fist. Their silky petals unfolded around pink centers.
She only meant to pause for a moment to admire them—their beauty, their strangeness.
But when she breathed in, and their aroma filled her nostrils, Kat decided she would take one with her. That she had to take one with her. Their scent was like the best cologne she'd ever smelled on a guy.
Like Jake's cologne,
she thought, and there was the fleeting idea that he had made his cologne from these flowers.
But there was something else, something human about the scent—a hint of skin, of sweat. The aroma reminded Kat of what it was like to get close to a boy while dancing. Of breathing in the cloud of heat around a warm body. Of that rising excitement before a kiss.
The aroma of the flowers filled her head and spread through her body. Her thirst eased. Her blood hummed. Perspiration flowed freely from her pores. Droplets rolled between her breasts, along her spine, down the backs of her knees, caressing her like wet fingers. The humid air felt like hot breath against her ears and neck. Inside she felt an aching, almost uncomfortable desire. And on the surface, so much clinging cotton—the flimsy layer of clothing she wore: damp, begging to be removed.
Kat was reaching for the nearest flower when Jake was suddenly by her side. He seized her around the waist, pulling her body tight against his. One of his hands took her outstretched arm by the wrist.
"Don't," he said.
The thing she'd found in the house, her fear, her panic to escape—these disappeared from her mind the instant she looked in his eyes. Their concern was genuine. Their blueness reminded her of water; she wanted to drink from them.
He was as gross and sweaty as she was, dressed in cargo shorts and a dirty sleeveless t-shirt. His beard had darkened overnight. The silver chain with the key was still around his neck.
In her next breath, Jake's scent mixed with the scent of the flowers, and Kat was lost. She forgot where she was, how she'd gotten there, her own name. She knew only that she wanted him to kiss her, that she wanted to feel his dirty hands move roughly over her body.
She twisted toward him, but he stopped her.
"Watch," he said. He pried the shovel she was still holding from her hand. He extended the blade toward the flower she’d been reaching for a moment earlier and ge
ntly nudged the head.
Violently, without warning, two halves of a wide, green mouth snapped shut over the shovel's blade. The handle was splintered. The sound was like an ax splitting wood.
Jake held up the broken stake of the shovel's handle for her to see.
Kat looked at the ground, at the other flowers. Underneath each waited a trap—a set of green jaws with sharp teeth, ready to bite at the slightest touch.