It was a Tuesday, about six o’clock, and Rudolfus Hugh was hiding in the clock tower. Again.
Hugh (for what boy with any dignity would go by Rudolfus?) had had the misfortune to wear a salmon-colored shirt to school that day. Immediately after school Samuel Bruce and Milo White had cornered him in the courtyard and proceeded to pinch him, tweak his nose, pull his hair, and inflict other such humiliations upon him, all the while calling him a “wimp,” a “fraidy-cat,” and a “girl.”
Eventually, Hugh’s tormentors grew bored, Hugh having curled into a ball with no tweak-able appendages visible. Bruce suggested tossing him in the river, and White agreed with noticeable vigor.
Hugh, hearing this, wriggled toward the gate. He popped up and ran once he was out of reach. Thus ensued a desperate dash through the city.
Behind him, Hugh heard the telltale curses of White or Bruce stubbing a toe or bruising a shin, but Hugh had no such problems. If anyone could have navigated the streets of Port Kinsmoor by night, it was him. Over the years, he’d spent all his spare time wandering the city, exploring its every narrow alley, tiny side street, extraordinary building, and invisible hiding place, such as the old clock tower he hid in now. Its entrance had been boarded up long ago, but Hugh had found another way, by scaling the bricks protruding from the wall and entering through the window.
Hugh walked up the stairs. The echoes of his footsteps bounced around the stairway; his shadow grew fangs from the light of the candle. Ever since he first discovered the tower, he had kept a few candles there, for though he could have ascended without one, he was afraid to. Hugh, despite White’s and Bruce’s name-calling, was not a coward. But, as he insisted to himself each time he lit the candle, there was something uncanny about the tower’s darkness. The shadows seemed malevolent. Hugh swore they darted at him, as if to attack, every time he looked away.
Though it felt like hours, it only took a few minutes for Hugh to reach the top. He crossed the room and knelt in front of the chest in the corner.
Small, wooden, and very old, it had been painted at some time in a distant past, but now only fading scraps remained. The squeak of the hinges made Hugh wince, as it did every time he opened it. Slowly, carefully, he reached inside.
He wasn’t afraid of the chest’s contents, you understand; he simply knew that, in dealing with the item inside, he brushed against something far bigger than himself.
For the pocket-watch was magical.
Hugh knew it sounded crazy; knew only the smallest children believed in magic. And yet Hugh knew, without doubt, that magic was all it could be.
Hugh gently lifted the watch from its newspaper wrappings, not one of which was dated less than fifty years previous. No one else had touched the pocket-watch for a very long time.
Hugh sat on the floor by the chest, holding the pocket-watch in his cupped hands. It was, as always, slightly more than eight hours ahead.
As he did every time he visited, Hugh took hold of the ornate knob on the side of the watch. He intended to correct the time, but paused. A noise, faint and small, wended its way up the stairs. He waited, head cocked. He was just about to turn away when the sound returned, and, upon closer listening, distinguished itself into footsteps.
There was someone in Hugh’s tower.
Hugh froze with the pocket-watch still in his hands. The tower that he had always believed his own now hosted someone else, someone other. Who had entered his sanctuary?
Within a moment, Hugh knew, and his heart slid into his toes.
“Hey, Bruce!” said White. “You see him yet?”
“Not yet,” said Bruce. A silence lasted far too short a time, and then: “Hey, Rudolfus! You better come out now! We know you’re in here!”
Despite the pointlessness of the action, Hugh, with the pocket-watch cradled against his chest, scurried into a corner and huddled there. With Bruce and White blocking the stairs, he had no way out; there were no windows in the clock-room. He couldn’t have left the pocket-watch behind to climb out, anyway. The things that Bruce and White would have done with it…
That was when Hugh came upon the solution, the most obvious and elegant solution. He, Hugh, was in possession of the pocket-watch.
The pocket-watch that was, almost certainly, magical.
Hugh had, naturally, never performed magic before. But he knew the pocket-watch, and there had to be a trick, if only he could find it.
Hugh pulled the knob out, but discovered nothing out of the ordinary. He tried sliding it to no effect. Finally, he pushed it.
The knob vanished into the interior of the pocket-watch.
Hugh’s heart skipped a beat, but he had no time to waste. He prodded the opening with his finger, and felt a brief sting. He lifted his finger to inspect it and found, at its tip, a gleaming drop of blood.
Though he would forever deny it, Hugh fainted.
He awoke seconds later as three things happened at once:
White yelled, “I found stairs!”
The knob reappeared.
And the pocket-watch’s hands spun wildly.
Bruce and White clomped upwards as Hugh wallowed in indecision. They appeared, like out of a portal, just as he touched the knob.
“Get him!” Bruce said, and they charged.
Hugh turned the knob.
The world became a whirlpool of images, light and shadowed clock towers swirling around him. The darkness churned. Hugh focused on a single tower, one that was only half-built and partly obscured by pounding rain. He thought of Bruce and White, and pictured them there.
And then they were.
The towers coalesced back into one, Hugh’s tower. It was silent again, the shadows still.
He need never worry about Bruce and White again.