A Night Of Feral Inventions

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When I was young I had a nightmare and woke up in the uneasy darkness of my house. I was sweating. I can't remember now what I'd dreamt of, but the fear of it paralyzed me and I lay there, staring into the dark hallway outside my door, wishing I could sleep so that it would be morning. Nearby, my parents were asleep behind closed doors, a short, impossible distance down the hall; my brother and sister too. When you're the only one awake, you're the only one alive. Then the grandfather clock at the end of the hall began to chime.

It always made a metallic hissing noise just before it began to strike and the moment that that slithering sound reached my over-sensitive ears, only one thought came to my mind: Don't let it be midnight.

Then the chimes started to ring down the empty hall, one after another, and I lay in bed, sweating and counting the chimes as they shook my prepubescent skeleton in its sheath. Lay counting the tolls, one after another, always hoping the cacophony would subside into silence, but knowing it wouldn't, until finally the climactic ritual rang to its conclusion and silence descended, deep and disheartening, in the wake of the twelfth chime.

Midnight.

When you're the only one awake, you're the only one alive.

There are things in this world, that aren't quite right. Normal things. Man-made things of exquisite form and functionality. But things, just the same, which don't ring soundly with us when we're all alone and a stiff breeze whips up, bringing with it the scent of earth and decay. Things, which upon a midnight dreary put an icy finger to our warm-glowing pumpkin souls. This seems like the right time to talk about those things.

Allow me then to be your guide tonight, on this short somnambulant cruise. I'll dust off this old top-hat I found and we can see some things that we'll never un-see. Settle in, light a candle, and I'll show you roughly one witching hour's worth of things that are more than they were meant to be.

Let's start with clocks.

Clocks. Maybe only a child is afraid of a clock when it's quietly fulfilling its duties with miserly efficiency, but let it stray too far from its boundaries and it becomes something else entirely. Let it run fast, for instance. Not fast as in you show up ten minutes early for dinner because your clock was fast. Fast as in you can see the hands moving. Even worse, fast as in the hands wildly spinning with demonic frenzy.

That would be bad.

There's something not right about it. If you're all alone in your house on a cold, moonless night and suddenly the hands on your trusted grandfather clock begin to spin with maniacal abandon, you can't tell me that you wouldn't feel just a little unsettled. You couldn't reputably claim to think only of mechanical failure. Even though that's what you should think.

Here's something worse. What if, in the lonely, isolated depths of your hallowed home, with nobody present but yourself, that clock started to run backwards? What if, by the light of your reading lamp, you looked up to see the hands twirling round in a violent, counter-clockwise betrayal of all things sane and rational. Would you be able to look at those skeletal arms in perverse motion and not wish someone else was home with you just then?

Yes. There's something about clocks. They're wonderful as long as they do what they should, but when they violate the rules so closely prescribed for them, they somehow become a barometer of things beyond the senses' reach. A warning sign of things quietly going astray. The problem with having an alarm in your home is that it might go off.

And what are you going to do about it?

You could get rid of all your clocks and watches. But can you function without them? Do you dare get rid of them? Probably not, so you live with this Faustian reminder. Live with it and secretly hope that, in the dark-lonely depths of the night, when you're by yourself and your hearing has become more acute than you necessarily want it to be, your trusted timepiece doesn't do something unexpected. God forbid.

I found this cane somewhere, last night. It's not mine, but it goes with the hat, and it just feels right, doesn't it? I think I'll bring it along with us now – use it to poke and prod a few things that I'd rather not touch, myself. It seems like the correct instrument with which to tap on a well at midnight – it'll allow us to stand back a little bit; not get too close to the object in question. Frankly, I'd prefer that.

Let's talk about wells, then.

Wells are important. Wells are functional. Wells are a testament to man's ingenuity and adaptability. And wells are troubling.

How would you feel about sleeping in a room with a well in it? Probably not great. There's something just a tiny bit disquieting about those inky-dark holes in the earth. Horror movies like to make use of them. There's a reason for that - if people weren't already just a little afraid of those life-giving portals then they wouldn't be such popular film devices. Have you ever wondered why people who rely on wells for water typically build their houses at a respectful distance from those critical fixtures?

Wells aren't just holes. That's the problem. If a well was just a hole we could slap a cover on it or fill it in and sleep comfortably right by its cavernous side. Not wells though. The trouble with wells is that they don't end at the bottom. A well is a gateway. A gateway to an unknown, never explored, subterranean world of perpetual darkness. My friend, Reece, has a gateway to an unknown world of perpetual darkness, under his porch.

He hates it.

Wells may be a triumph of science, bringing us the water that we need to survive, but they connect us to a dark place with no known boundaries. Anything could be down there. And there's no reason that what's down there might not come up here some night. Not if there's a well handy to let it in.

Clocks and wells and a thousand other devils in improbable places. I could go on all night while the moon scrapes across the raven sky, but there's no sense labouring the point. Sometimes the things we build get away from us. Sometimes they become more than we intended, and much more than we wanted. Look around you after the sun has failed and you're sure to find some of those things. Things that remind us that the devil may not be real, but he's always near.

Sleep tight, wily nomads.