Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 (19 page)

“Hello, Chris!” he shouted, leaning out his window.

Chris took out his plastic teeth. “Hello, Mr. Ridgecomb!”

“That’s a nice costume you got there. Let me guess. Dracula, right?”

“I prefer
Prince of Darkness
.”

Mr. Ridgecomb laughed. “Actually, the
Prince of Darkness
is right behind you.”

Chris whirled, cape billowing.

His friend wore red makeup and pointed ears and leaned against a pitchfork, which bent under his weight. “I told you!” the Devil replied, glancing at the gypsy.

“Who are your friends?” asked Mr. Ridgecomb.

“This is Mitch,” Chris said, draping his arm around the Devil, “and this is Sarah.” He motioned to the blonde gypsy girl wrapped in red and orange linen, silver glittering on her smooth cheeks and nose.

“Well, it’s a delight to meet all of you! So, how is the evening treating you bunch of ghouls and goblins? Get a lot of candy?”

“Tons. My bag is almost full!” Chris held up his bag, and Mitch and Sarah held theirs up, too, and then they argued about who had more.

“Why don’t you three come on in for a while? Greta is gone for the evening. She baked some cookies and I can brew up some hot chocolate. You can be my ghoulish guests on Halloween!”

Three faces lit up.

Mr. Ridgecomb, cane in hand, closed the window and went to greet his three young guests.

*****

Mr. Ridgecomb passed
around a plate of sugar cookies and gave them each a cup of hot chocolate. They thanked him and sat on the living room floor, next to the fire. The sun was just beginning to set beyond the oaks and pines, and the sky was filling with reds and oranges.

“Mr. Ridgecomb is great at telling stories,” Chris said after finishing his first cup of hot chocolate. “Last year he told me a story about a town that doesn’t age. Everyone gets younger. And there is this shadow that collects their souls in a glass jar. You should tell that one again.”

“Do you know any stories about gypsies and Egypt?” Sarah asked. “That’s where I want to go when I grow up. I want to travel to the pyramids and find lost treasure and marry a handsome pharaoh and...”

“I like stories about sprites and leprechauns!” Mitch interrupted, fending off a push from Sarah. “They live in the woods and eat fruits and berries and hide pots of gold coins. You should tell a story like that.”

“Hold on,” Mr. Ridgecomb said. “One at a time. Now Chris, you want to hear the story about the Timekeeper, right?”

“Yes! The Timekeeper! Tell that one!”

“And Sarah, you want to hear about gypsies and fortune tellers, right?”

“Yes!”

“And Mitch, you like stories about sprites and good luck?”

“Yes!”

“Well, how about I tell a story with all three?”

Three kids stared back in disbelief.

Mr. Ridgecomb laughed and filled his pipe. With a wooden match, he lit the tobacco and blew out a few smoke rings. The sky outside was beginning to turn dark. He saw Old McMurphy’s clock across the street and pointed with one crooked finger.

All three kids craned their necks.

“See that clock?” he asked. “That is a very special clock. Some say it is the heart of Sterling Springs. There’s also a legend behind it. A prophecy. Some say the clock is haunted by a shadow called the Timekeeper. As legend predicts, one year on Halloween night, right at the stroke of midnight, the shadow will stop time and the clock hands will begin again in reverse. For each day in reverse, the townspeople will become a day younger.

“But there were three kids who didn’t want this to happen. They wanted to experience the world ahead of them, not what was behind. They decided to stop the Timekeeper before it could complete this transformation.”

All three kids were leaning forward, glancing at the clock, then back at him, waiting.

And then Mr. Ridgecomb began his quite unusual tale.

Chapter 1

Clocks, Seasons, and Thereafter

The three kids
waited under the old clock.

Chris watched the clouds swirl across the autumn sky. The land was pretty, especially this time of the year, with all those oranges and golds covering the parks and forests. Those colors were a sign of age, of decline, and he relished feeling the leaves in his hands, the crispness, the smell. All around, leaves rustled and scraped, and he loved the sounds they made. He buttoned up his jacket, breathing the moist air, and waited for the echo-chime to signal their departure.

Two minutes to midnight.

Sarah regarded Chris while twisting a strand of blonde hair between her fingertips, the edges of her mouth turned down, in worry. She had never been out of Sterling Springs before, but she knew what was ahead. And it excited her. She had read enough books to know there was an entire world outside. She wanted to travel throughout the world, to see beautiful lands and taste exotic foods. Not to remain grounded in this place—a cell made of forests and meadows. She glanced at the clock and couldn’t help but smile in anticipation. Then she elbowed Mitch.

One minute and thirty seconds left.

Mitch snacked on a sugar cookie with creamy frosting, teeth and tongue stained orange. He said “ouch” under his breath from the little jab to his ribs, and then he glanced at the clock, stuffing the last of the cookie into his mouth. He loved cookies and cakes. He also loved hot fudge and chocolate, with or without nuts, caramel and pecan clusters, banana sundaes and chocolate chip cookies and just about anything else that tickled his sweet tooth. He had twenty-four of them. Twelve on top and twelve on bottom.

The second hand ticked past eleven-fifty nine.

They watched the clock hand circle, mechanical and lifeless, round and round. Then the clock, all moonshadows and gears, struck midnight and chimed once.

The clock stopped ticking.

On the clock face, a trap door opened and a progression of statues emerged. Old gears and pulleys dragged a sun and a moon and a dozen other statues across the clock foundation. The last shape was an hourglass.

The Timekeeper yawned inside the hourglass, wiping quartz from its eyes. It would be back inside within moments, in
un-time
. It peered through the clouded glass from its concave throne and laughed.

Then it stopped moving.

The Timekeeper pressed its face to the glass, saw each kid set an hourglass down on the ground, saw their displacement-sands sift, silver-moon flashes filtering through the funnel middle, separating two glass oceans.

It gouged at the glass with claws and smoke, counting the synchronized grains, three by three.

Because
un-time
had stopped for the three kids
.

And the Timekeeper, trapped for the next hour, watched them ride out of the dark valley.

*****

The kids rode
their bikes for close to an hour and stopped on a hill that overlooked the valley below. The cemetery walls rose out of the distance like an encompassing fog. They pedaled down the twisting road and halted in front of the creaking gates. Chris tried to open the gate, but it was locked. After studying the grounds, he decided they should climb over. Finding a suitable oak tree, they each climbed onto a thick branch, one by one, and lifted themselves over the barricade.

Here, the moonlight shone off the pale stones as shadows twisted and taunted them.

“You know what?” Sarah said. “This is the best time for witches to call upon the dead.”

Mitch covered his eyes.

“See,” she continued, “the night is the best time for the skeletons. They like to dance before dawn.” She wiggled her thin body around like a skeleton dancing. Her flashlight illuminated the stones in eerie flickers. “Then they go to sleep in cold crypts and catacombs. But not before dawn. And they like chubby little seventh-grade kids, too. Ones who eat a lot.”

“Stop it!” Mitch sputtered, hiding his chocolate bar. “You’re lying!”

And then they saw a small light down the path and heard a voice, far off. The light grew closer and bobbed up and down and then disappeared. Before they could run and hide, an old man emerged from the darkness, dressed in dirty clothes and black boots.

“So, what have we here?” he asked, stopping in front of them and scratching his thick beard thoughtfully. “Some vandals, eh?”

“No sir,” Chris said. “We’re on a journey. We’re looking for dirt from a grave.”

His eyebrows arched in amusement.

“We don’t mean any harm,” Chris added.

“The grounds are closed. Didn’t you notice the locked gates? We open at dawn.”

“We can’t wait,” Chris said. “We’re in a hurry.”

The old man laughed. “I believe you. Now, what do you youngsters want with dirt from a grave? Let me guess…a practical joke, or maybe for brewing a little potion?”

“We need it for a spell!” Mitch squealed. His eyes grew big as balloons and he covered his mouth with his hands.

The old man frowned. “Sounds like tricky business.” He glanced toward town. “I think you better come with me.”

*****

The Groundskeeper had
a small house in the center of the cemetery surrounded by a garden of withered vegetables. A scarecrow with a grinning pumpkin face stared back at them. Green vines entwined around the red brick of the house, seemingly in an attempt to pull the aged stone into the soil, to rest along with the ancient coffins.

They followed him up to the rickety door. A silver key sparkled in the lamplight. The door creaked open. They entered and sat down next to the fire. The Groundskeeper, who enjoyed the late-night company, brewed them each a cup of hot chocolate.

“So,” he began, “what kind of spell are you looking to make?”

“It’s a secret,” Chris said. “We need the right spell components.”

“Of course. Spells are a serious business. I don’t blame you for not telling. But I might be able to help you. Is there a certain reason you’re constructing this spell?”

“Yes,” Chris answered.

“Is something following you?”

“Yes. But it’s also in front of us.”

The Groundskeeper nodded. “Ah…a
time
spell. You need dirt from the freshest grave in the cemetery.” He walked to the window and stared outside at the gravestones.

“In May the sun shines brightly. Flowers blossom and birds sing lovely tunes. School ends. Boys can’t wait to play that first summer game. Girls can’t wait to pick that first summer flower. But it’s not like this for some adults. Some look back to summer, not forward. They want simplicity in their lives because autumn makes them ponder each step. They trample the leaves and breathe the winter droplets. They see their gravestones silhouetted against the November dawn. And they are scared.

“But time is circular, like the moon orbiting the earth, like the earth orbiting the sun. Time can also spin in two directions. For some, autumn can come before summer and spring can come before winter. It all depends on the Timekeeper. And the town.”

“You know about the Timekeeper?” Mitch asked.

“Yes, I know of the Timekeeper. All manner of folk travel to Sterling Springs, from all over the world, begging to be let in. Why do you think this graveyard is so big? Now tell me…who taught you how to escape? Those who are bound to Sterling Springs cannot leave.”

Sarah spoke up. “I found it in a book.”

“A book?” the Groundskeeper asked.

“A book about Atlantis,” she continued. “It’s about how the people exist today, even though the ocean covers them up. They have a magical hourglass that repeats years over and over so they live in a…
stasis…
of time and memories. The only way to leave and collect new stories is through a portal, and you have to trick it, set up a decoy so you can travel outside in spirit form, and…”

The Groundskeeper stopped her. “Where did you buy such a book? Surely not in town. The Timekeeper would never allow it.”

“From a peddler woman with eyes like frost and hair long and black. She told me I should read it. That’s where I got the idea.”

The Groundskeeper turned to his three new friends. “You need something more than dirt from a grave to thwart the Timekeeper. You need dirt from a grave that
defies
time. And the only way to find magic is by using magic. I will show you where you can get what you seek. It’s not far, but you had better go now. Autumn is almost at an end.”

The Groundskeeper rummaged around in a desk drawer, and then handed Chris an empty glass vial.

“Take this vial and follow the path to the heart of the cemetery. You will come to a withered tree. Climb the tree to the top. This is the home of a grave-faerie. It will guide you to what you seek. But don’t be afraid. The spirit is my friend and keeps me company on long digs. It will not harm you.”