Susie felt utterly defeated. Her lips were stretched tight in distress, reminiscent of a rubber band at the point of snapping. Her primary emotion of sadness quickly gave over to anger and Susie’s eyes filled with an inferno that displayed concretely her nearly uncontrollable fury.
Samuel and Susie, brother and sister, stood solemnly in the pouring rain. An umbrella hoisted above their heads kept the early June precipitation from soaking their hair but didn’t stop it from dripping onto their shoes. Samuel hated that. He disliked the splatter marks the drops made on his new brown loafers. He didn’t like rain. He hated the feeling of having no choice in whether or not he got wet. To him, the drops were a reminder that things were ultimately out of our control.
Both children were angry that day. They looked at each other with furrowed brows and irritated scowls. Ominous shadowy figures crept around them, and there was no need for words. They knew their day was spoiled. They weren’t going to get what they wanted, and this was not acceptable.
Sam wiggled his hand in his pocket, wrapped his fingers around a cool metallic object, and slightly removed it to catch a glimpse. He slid the gold key back into his pocket and spoke with resolve, “I don’t know who’s ruining our day, Susie, but we’re going to find out.”
…
The night before, the children sat in their favorite spot in the living room, behind the large brown recliner where Dad would often sit, conspiring about what to do the next day. It was the first day of summer vacation, and being outside all day was the best way to celebrate. The finest spot in the house for planning fun was the coobie, the area behind the large brown recliner. This hiding spot was deemed by Sam and Susie as a more than adequate hiding place for two small children.
Adjacent to the coobie was the grandfather clock, which had drawers and cabinets—that were perfect for hiding small treasures—and a large door on the side that was always kept locked. The children didn’t know what the purpose of that door was, or where the key might be kept, but they would often make believe that things lived on the other side of that door, mischievous shadowy things that would come and go when no one was looking. The children liked the look of the large longcase clock, and also enjoyed the comforting whirrling and clanking sounds the mechanized gears made. Strangely, however, it was not uncommon for the children to occasionally find themselves silently sitting on the floor at the base of the clock, waylaid from their activities, hypnotically watching the pendulum swing back and forth. During this hypnotic transience Sam would often be jolted back to awareness by a sudden movement in his periphery, a rapid shadowy movement that, no matter how hard he tried, could only ever be glimpsed.
In the coobie that night, however, on the eve of summer vacation, the children had conspired a full day’s worth of activities that would make them perfectly happy. So far things were going well. As planned, they woke up early in the morning around 6 a.m. or so and ate breakfast as usual—Samuel had his favorite cereal, Count Chocula, and Susie stuck to her familiar Honey Nut Cheerios. The two children loved nothing more than opening new boxes of cereal to see who would be the first to find the prize inside—on this day it was Sam who found the prize first. Wrapped in a thin foil package was a small, ornate golden key. Samuel unwrapped the prize quickly and studied it, noticing an illustration of a clock engraved on the front of the key. Without a doubt in his mind Sam decided that he knew exactly what this key was for.
…
“Where did you find it, Sam?” Susie asked the question with shocking glee.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam said dismissively, handing the umbrella to Susie while turning quickly to march back toward the house in the pouring rain. “We’re going to find out, once and for all, who is ruining our day!”
Susie followed closely, curious about the key.
Entering through the mud room, they took off their wet clothes. As they did, the room brightened mysteriously, as if the sun peeked from behind a cloud. The darkness was not outside, however, but with them, moving into the kitchen. The children, feeling fearful but resolute, looked at each other then they briskly strolled over to peek into the living room—upon doing this they both witnessed the shadowy, gloomy trail being absorbed into the grandfather clock.
“Now it’s time!” Sam yelled, pulling out the key he found just this morning in his box of cereal.
Sam and Susie walked over to the clock trepidatiously, Sam holding the key and Susie holding a plastic lightsaber. The children held their breath as Sam tried the key in the clock door. Neither child was surprised to find that the key was a perfect fit. Sam slowly opened the door to the clock and inside the children saw something that frightened them more than anything they could have imagined. Inside the clock were two terrifying, murky, shadowy versions of themselves who, prior to being interrupted, had just been diligently engaged in pulling levers, turning knobs, pushing buttons, and making adjustments of some kind while sitting at what appeared to the children to be a control panel of some sort. Sam and Susie, filled with dread, quickly slammed the door shut then ran to hide in Susie’s room, never stopping to look back, locking the door behind them.
“Did you see what I saw, Susie!?! Did you see what was in the clock?!?” Samuel asked his sister with hysteria in his voice.
“I saw something, Sam,” Susie said, panic-stricken but smiling, “and although I’m not exactly sure what I saw, this day has indeed been un-ruined.”
