The space between the beats

A spider only knows that you’re lying if the moon is in its first quarter and the cat’s milk has turned sour overnight. That’s what my great aunt always said when she suspected me of telling less than the facts. Though it always confused me as to the purpose of a spider and the divination of the truth.

Six tall pine trees waved skywards towards their cloud companions that summer as I idled away the hours at my Great Aunt Dorothy’s large house. She was accompanying an elderly friend on a long desired excursion to Egypt and with no children of her own, she had asked me, her only nephew, in a position of unemployed leisure, to keep an eye on the old place whilst she was away.

This involved feeding her various cats, of which I believe there were nine but could never be entirely sure, and ensuring that her beloved mahogany long case clock in the hallway was wound each day. She was highly specific about that. The clock had never stopped in over forty years, striking the hour, every hour, ever since her long deceased husband Hector, had set it running on the day of their wedding.

Poor Great Uncle Hector had come to a particularly sticky end eight summers ago when a rogue combine harvester had somehow strayed beyond the neighbouring field and onto the front lawn of the house. Since then, it had been essential to Dorothy that the cogs should never cease to turn and the clock never fall silent.

And so, I spent the days journaling ideas for the novel that I had always believed I could write, and meandering through the house and garden, savouring the beautiful objects and furniture that my great aunt had curated over the years and enjoying the pretence that I was a successful young author in his country pile.

It was on the third night of my stay, a Tuesday, or perhaps a Wednesday, that I forgot to wind the clock. This oversight was not intentional. I had gone to bed earlier than usual, lulled by an oddly heavy dusk.

The cats, who were typically a rowdy bunch at twilight, were instead silent little silky creatures and had arranged themselves in a perfect half circle on the drawing room rug, each one facing the fireplace as if waiting for something I was not intended to witness.

I was far too tired to question such a peculiar feline congregation, and left them to whatever it was they were doing, climbed into bed and drifted into a heavy sleep filled with the scent of lavender and something that reminded me of wood smoke, but dry and brittle, almost perfumed, unlike the logs that burn in my great aunt’s fireplace in the winter months.

The following morning, there were only eight cats. At first, I thought perhaps one was under a bed, or crouched in one of the many dark corners of the house. But as the morning wore on, it became apparent that the large black one, I called him Obsidian, though I’m not sure that was his real name, was nowhere to be found. The dish of milk I’d put out the evening before, sat untouched, curdled and cheese-like on the kitchen floor.

It was then that I noticed the silence. The hallway clock, normally so constant, ticking away the days in the background, was still and silent. Its pendulum hung motionless, the hands frozen at precisely thirteen minutes past three. I opened the case and wound the mechanism with a shiver of panic that I could not explain. The chain clicked as I pulled the heavy lead weight back to the top of the casing, but something inside the mechanism clicked in a way I had never heard before. I closed the door, opened the glass to reset the hands, chiming through the lost hours of the morning. Then something caused me to quickly step back.

A dark brown spider, the size of a tea cup sat just behind the clock, motionless by the skirting board. Its legs bristled with fine hairs that caught in the light as if they had been dusted with powder, and its body bore a distinct marking, not quite an eye, but oval in shape with a dark centre. As I crouched to get a better look, it withdrew behind the case with astonishing speed, vanishing into the narrow gap between the clock and the wall.

I eased myself back to my feet, making a mental note to be wary of eight-legged creatures in small spaces, and then turned to see a line of eight cats, their tails perpendicular, walking in procession down the hallway towards the front door, where a mackerel tabby who headed the entourage, yowled the instruction to be let outside.

That afternoon, the first postcard arrived from Aunt Dorothy. It was postmarked from Luxor with a black and white image of Karnak Temple. Her message, written in her unmistakable hand, was in dark blue ink.

‘The sun is too large and too hot here, but in the cold of the nights, I dream of ticking. There are statues of Bastet everywhere. You’d love them, darling. They look like they know something. Our next excursion is to the Valley of the Kings. All those bodies! Do keep the clock wound.

Your loving Aunt, D.’

That evening, after checking each room of the house and calling out his supposed name across the gardens, I gave Obsidian up for lost. But I left a bowl of milk out all the same, even though the others never touched it, and I made sure to wind the clock with extra care.

Two nights later, I saw the spider again. It was no longer in its usual place, lurking behind the clock. I spotted it at the top of the stairs, on a small oak table, poised beside a vase of dried lavender. It stood up high on its long legs, not flat as you would imagine a spider should be. When I moved towards it, it didn’t flinch. Instead, it lifted two of its brown hairy legs, as if rearing on all fours, which a spider can’t do but the effect was the same. Then it turned and slipped down the side of the table and shot between the banisters, vanishing with an almost menacing silence.

I had not intended to follow it. I am no fan of spiders, but as long as they leave me alone and don’t crawl over my face in the night, I am content to let them be. But I found myself descending the stairs in the direction of the increasingly familiar arachnid. The hallway was dark. None of the cats were around and they hadn’t carried out their geometric pursuits on the drawing room rug again as far as I was aware. All was quiet except for the clock, which ticked away, the heartbeat of the house.

I sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited. I didn’t know what for. Perhaps it was for Obsidian but he didn’t come and the spider had retreated, I supposed to the space behind the clock. Eventually I retired to bed where I dreamed of a huge empty sarcophagus floating down the Nile, Great Aunt Dorothy at the helm, and a tall dark cat perched at the opposite end beside the gold painted feet.

During this time, between cat duty and clock management, my notebooks and journals were gradually filling themselves with thoughts and notions. The odd part was that I could not recall having written them, though they are quite certainly in my hand and scribed with my preferred brand of ink.

Everything seemed to be written in a manner that made no real sense, as though taking the truth of a matter and bending it so that it no longer resembled anything familiar. But there was something in it, and I kept my books carefully secured in the cupboard of my room where they could come to no harm.

The second postcard arrived the following Monday. This one bore an image of Bastet the ancient cat goddess, smooth and sleek, carved from basalt with gold earrings and the eyes of a creature that had watched for many years. I brushed off the sticky cobweb that had somehow attached itself and read my aunt’s latest news.

‘There are so many cats here, and they don’t run off when you watch them, they just stare. Sometimes I think they are not cats at all. One stood in the middle of my hotel room last night and simply looked at me and the air smelled of something quite ancient. Please don’t forget the clock. It’s not just about the time, you know dear. It’s about the space between the beats.

Much love, D.’

I didn’t quite like the sound of that. I turned the card over again and again, as if some hidden meaning might suddenly appear. The ink of my great aunt’s words had smeared a little as if she’d been in a rush and when I brought the postcard closer to my face, I noticed a faint scent of dried wood and lavender.

The moon was dark that night having in previous days waned to a faint sliver that had now completely disappeared. The cats yowled at the front door for a while, then appeared to canter anticlockwise in wide circles across the lawn and between the pine trees, for a good half hour. Then, stealthy and dark, they wound their way back towards the house where they sat in a line outside the French windows of the dining room, staring in, amber and green eyed.

The eight cats watched me from the shadows. I counted them twice to be sure. No more, no less. None of them blinked and eventually I opened the French windows and they filed in, each glancing up at me before heading into the hallway, where they sat in a semi-circle around the ticking old clock, counting the hours.

And later that evening, just as the clock struck midnight, the spider reappeared. Not in its usual place by the skirting boards, but as I opened the door to wind the clock, it was now on the inside of the long case, crawling slowly across the pendulum as if looking for something I could not see. Riding time as it beat its rhythm. And the cats sat and watched.

It was at that moment that a loud thump sounded from the kitchen and as I turned to look down the hallway, I was surprised to see the dense feline shape of what I imagined to be Obsidian, strolling towards me as if he’d never been away.

The ninth cat made his way through the semi-circle and positioned himself beside me, where he fixed his eyes on the spider, still swinging back and forth on the clock’s pendulum.

With all the peculiar happenings of the previous few days, I half expected the black cat to speak, to explain where he had been and what the meaning was behind the mysterious antics of his fellow cats. But he did not. He seemed to ponder the situation for a moment, as if he could feel the eyes of his companions on him, sitting still and expectant in their feline arc.

And then, the spider leapt from the pendulum. Obsidian struck out a glossy black paw, but missed and the spider shot down the hallway, disappearing into the drawing room, where it was followed by the cats in a stealthy procession. Obsidian glanced at me and then followed.

This was all becoming too much. The cats seemed to have the measure of things and knew the peculiarities of the house so much more than I ever could. It seemed sensible to leave things in their capable paws, so after ensuring the clock was fully wound, I took a sleeping tablet and went to bed.

That night, I dreamed again but this time not of the Nile. My fitful sleep took me into places where I was alone except for the clock itself, standing tall and open like a doorway. Inside, instead of cogs and chains, I saw a staircase descending into somewhere of complete and utter darkness. A single golden cat waited at the top, unmoving and silent.

I awoke at three thirteen exactly. The night was quite black with clouds that scudded across the waxing new moon allowing just a smattering of intermittent moonlight to be caught within the walls of my room. The air felt heavy as though full of voices that made no sound, and compelled by something I could not discern, I put on my gown and descended the stairs to the hallway. It was there that I found that the clock had stopped again.

And this time, no matter how I wound the chain, no matter how many times I reset the hands, it wouldn’t start.

The cats did not come when I called them. The house felt hollow, thick with waiting and watching. Only Obsidian remained. He was sitting in the hallway, watching the clock with such intensity that I could not look away from his gaze.

I am unsure how long the black cat and I sat in the hallway, nor am I sure as to why I did not return to the warmth of my bed. I can only be sure that I was there and that this is my truth.

I was woken by the clatter of the letterbox. Stiffly I rose from the floor, noting the clock still pointing to thirteen minutes past three. Thick cobwebs had appeared around its pointed black hands and a thick layer of grey dust covered its mahogany casing. From the kitchen I could hear a cat yowling.

A single postcard lay on the door mat. A picture of the great pyramid at Giza on one side. Great Aunt Dorothy’s unmistakable handwriting was on the other.

‘Tell the spider the truth, or it will keep asking.’

And below that, in the same ink, a bizarre picture. The ink was quite smeared but I could make out that it was a drawing of nine cats, circled around something too dark and obscure to see clearly.

Dazed and bewildered, I returned to my room. But when I opened the cupboard where I kept my journals and notebooks, I found the top one open. All the pages that I had not yet written in, were filled with a dark red ink, from corner to corner in my hand. Not my words. Not my ink.

I leafed through the pages with trembling hands. Words that spoke of unheard and unseen reckonings. Prose that shook the earth in thick waves as the script seeped across centuries.

And on the last page, in a thin, web-like script that wasn’t mine at all, were the words:

‘It knows now. And all nine remember.’

A soft creak came from downstairs in the hallway. I turned from my room and stepped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. My body suddenly rigid as my eyes scanned the shadows below. But all was still and nothing was there. And then, in a wave of cold terror, I heard it through the deafening stillness.

A dull rhythmic sound. Not quite mechanical. Not quite natural. But unmistakably… ticking.

In the hallway, the clock stood as it had before. A sentinel, its hands still at thirteen minutes past three. Its pendulum hanging motionless.

And yet, the hollow ticking sound persisted. Not from the clock, but from somewhere deeper and further away. Somewhere beyond the house.