Bloodwood's Click

A mysterious clock begins to appear around a teen girl, her boyfriend and others near them. It works its magic for twelve hours with horror at every bend. This is centered around the sound 'Click!'.

 

Bloodwood’s Click: The Truncated Version

“Hey! My name is Mikey,” the kid in the gold wizard robe said to the store keeper, “What’s your name?”

“Tom.  Would you be interested in a clock today, Mikey?”

“Yep.”

“Which one do you have your eye on?” the storekeeper asked the four feet high, dull blue-eyed eight-year old.

The boy in his odd garb looked around across the gray, black marble counter. There were about seventy clocks lining the back wall with an additional twenty on the other walls.  The clocks were made with a number of wood types: mahogany, oak, maple, pine, rose wood and more.  The shop was a light blue, with a hard mahogany floor.  The clocks chimed in their unusual chorus, ticking, popping and grinding.  The store windows were covered with midnight blue drapes that hung and swept the floor just barely.  The drapes made the room dark, which covered up some smudges and cracks dispersed throughout.  Behind the counter and behind Tom was a door that was labeled Exotic Clocks and had an eerie magenta hue seeping from the corners of the doorframe.

Mikey pointed to the back door with the glowing seams, “Can I see what’s in there?” still pointing and eyeing the sign on the door.

Tom looked at the kid and asked, “Do you have the money for that stuff?”

“How is this?” The boy held up four odd looking gold coins to match his even stranger golden costume.

The shopkeeper took the coins in his hand and felt the surprising weight of true gold. “These will do just fine,” said Tom, now quite suspicious of the little boy with those big dull blue eyes.  The two walked through the door and into a room of magenta and black lights.  Tom turned off the magenta and black lights and turned on the usual white lights speckling the ceiling.  In the dimly lighted area hundreds of clocks were sitting upon gray steel shelves along the sides, but the two did not stop walking.  After what seemed an eternity the two of them reached the back.  There were some grandfather clocks made of exotic woods like cocobolo and desert ironwood.  The clocks were intricately designed with carvings of lions, eagles and even monkeys.  The clocks varied from large to small, square to circular.  The kid’s head shot towards the darkest corner of the room and grabbed a seemingly regular circular clock.  The clock was round with a ripple in the wood design.  There was an inscription on the bottom in white marble inlay that read click.  The clock had fine gold roman numerals on its face.  The bloodwood clock felt alive as the kid picked it up.

Pay and run…Click! The boy heard in the back of his head.  Mikey dropped all four gold pieces and bolted running out of the store and continued running, clock in hand, through the autumn view of the ‘Big Apple’.  Mikey kept running and running past buildings and boutiques until he got to his family’s apartment in Manhattan.  The little eight-year old with the golden robe didn’t stop there, he continued till he was in his room and the clock was on the wall.  Mikey fell to the floor.  He was exhausted and became comatose; he remained so for the next three days (from four o’clock on the fourth to the same time on the seventh).

It was the seventh of November on the thirty-first floor in an apartment building on the outskirts of New York where a magnificently beautiful girl had her boyfriend over to help comfort her.  The girl, Sena, was five feet eight inches and thin, but not bony, she had longish macchiato-colored hair and mischievous light hazel eyes.  She was indeed beautiful.  Her face was young and usually seemed untainted, but today she did not look so.

Her boyfriend was a tall lean teen with a seemingly odd and light sense of humor.  His name was Joseph or Joe for short.  The two teens were in her room.

“How are you holding up?” Joe questioned as he pulled Sena close and embraced her.  She seemed hardly present and a little ragged.

She replied after several moments “I’m…fine…I guess…”

On an impulse Joe pushed Sena on her back and locked eyes with her and in the instant where she started to move in for physical comfort, Joseph contorted his face to look as strange as possible, which made Sena giggle and essentially brought her ‘back’ to planet earth.  She pushed Joe up and rolled over and in that moment hit something flat and round that seemed to click.  The Brazilian Bloodwood clock lay there on the bed, ticking away.  Sena couldn’t remember seeing it before.  They both looked at the clock, Sena grabbed it and read the inscription “Click”.

Joseph looked at it.  “Nice clock, I think it would go well right there.” He was pointing to the yellowish, white wall across from them.  Joe took the clock from her and walked to the wall to show how the clock looked.  The second the clock touched the wall Sena began screaming in agony.  Joe dropped the clock, which made a clunk as it hit the floor. He ran to Sena, “Are you okay?” She stopped screaming.

“I just got a serious headache.” she replied panting.  “I am fine now.”

Joseph turned around sitting next to Sena and looked up towards the wall.  Across from the bed, there was the clock hanging on the wall.  A thousand horror stories flashed through Joe’s mind.  He grabbed Sena roughly and pulled her out of the room into the living room.

“What are you doing!?” Sena shrieked.  They entered the living room.  Joe looked right then left and directly above the doorway to the left… the clock! Joe pointed to the clock.

“Look! You seen ‘that’ somewhere?”

Sena saw the clock, which had almost reached one o’clock.  She began to freak out after noticing the clock was the same one that had hit the floor in her room just a minute ago.  The two of them both ran the other way into the kitchen and looked left and right, there was no clock.  They had a second of relief.  There was a ticking sound coming from behind them.  Joe swung around and saw that above the kitchen door was that Bloodwood clock Joe saw as the clock struck one.  There was a loud Click! Joe swung around to pull Sena out of the kitchen.  He had turned just in time to see Sena lunging at him with blank eyes and a cleaver in her hand.  Joseph caught her hand just above his left shoulder.  The cleaver left a small trickle of blood oozing from his shoulder.

“Sena!” Joe howled, “Snap out of it!” She did, dropping the cleaver behind him.  It clanked to the ground.  She looked at the blood seeping out of his shirt and screamed.

“Why are you bleeding!?” she shrieked. 

Joe grabbed and held her till she stopped shaking, “Let’s go.”  They ran to the elevator outside the apartment and clicked the button in the maroon hallway on the red, wood surface.  They looked both ways anxiously and watched as the numbers above the double doors of the elevator moved up towards them.  The number above the elevator hit thirty-one; the two of them flooded to the door and jumped inside. Joseph hit the ground floor button and looked up, briefly enough to see the clock ticking away inside the slowly shutting box.  The doors were closing.  Joe grabbed Sena and leaped head first out of the door just before the door closed.  They hit the floor and ran to the green fire escape door and knocked it open where they flew down thirty-one flights of stairs holding hands on the way down. 

Joseph and Sena entered the lobby in a storm.  There was a royal-red carpet with white and gold fringes on the floor at the main desk.  The walls were a solid brown wood that was nicely finished and glossy.  The desk was white marble and behind it a woman of about five and a half feet with reddish hair in light gray business apparel.  Across from the desk stood a tall, husky security guard who was wearing a black suit and tie.  Joe and Sena scanned every inch of the room for a clock and found none besides the brown clock above the desk.  The elevator was on the side of the room opposite them.  Seeing no clock, the two of them, out of breath sat on the bench against the wall across from the elevator.  The two held hands, Joe looking toward the brown clock above the clerk counter and Sena staring intently at the elevator.  They both thought that maybe they were being overly suspicious, but Joseph’s bloody shirt was proof otherwise.  They sat there in the lobby hearing the agonizing ticks of the brown clock.  Joe noticed it was almost two on the clock, a woman walked in through the door to the lobby and onwards to the elevator.  She pushed the up-arrow button and waited.  The elevator doors opened, the woman stepped inside and directly above her was that same bloodwood clock.  Sena yanked at Joe, but his eyes were intent on the brown clock above the clerk desk.  She kept yanking at him.  He turned to her, “What?” She pointed at the elevator just as the Bloodwood clock…Click! The sound echoed through the room sounding two o’clock.  The security guard leapt towards them and grabbed Sena’s throat with his monstrous left hand.  The clerk meanwhile started throwing pencils, staplers and whatever she could find in the desk at Joe.  Joe saw Sena being choked and punched the blank-eyed guard directly in the face leaving blood on Joe’s hand and the guard’s nose.  The guard let go of Sena and took his monstrous right hand in a fist pummeling Joe in the ribs.  There was a crack sound and immediately after, Sena was pulling Joseph out the front door of the building.  Joe hobbled with Sena tugging him along the sidewalk.  Behind them a security guard was checking his nose confusedly and a woman was wondering how her stuff had ended up spread across the lobby floor.

 There was a thought that, maybe, just maybe, that clock that seemed to cause these troubles only resided in that building.  Joe and Sena kept walking along the alleyways and started to notice regular clocks everywhere they went and despite this constant scare one thing about them couldn’t lie; they were hungry.  Hobbling along they searched for a bakery or deli without a clock.

After searching for about half an hour they found a small Jewish deli at the beginning of Park Avenue.  They walked in.  The place was bustling with customers.  The two of them were famished and quickly ordered two bagels with shmear and lox.  Due to the famous New Yorker “ignore all” attitude, nobody seemed to notice two tall teens that were bloody and beat up.  The waiter, in this dimly lit, yet busy, red-walled deli, approached them with their meals and two cups of water.  They started to chug the water and half way through his cup Joe started coughing.  He pointed behind Sena to the doorway…déjà vu hit Sena like a bludgeon.  She turned slowly agonizingly while Joe continued to cough and point.  That clock with the white marble clock face and bloodwood base was above the doorframe ominously blending into the red walls.  Click…click…Click! The clock hit three sending a fork from the hand on the neighboring table straight into Joe’s already wounded arm.  Sena screamed and almost began to whimper.  The coughing fit ceased as two more forks flew towards them just barely missing the two teens.  Joe threw the table sidelong into the next table over creating somewhat of a domino effect with the blank-eyed people encompassing the restaurant, falling and scratching, stabbing or hitting the person next to them.  It was a bruising, blood-crazed event that lined the once pleasant walls of the restaurant and its Picasso-like art with gore. Sena and Joseph leapt from their seats and headed for the door.

They were nearly there when Joe pushing Sena out the door felt a searing pain on his left side finding the slightly bloody stiletto of an Asian woman’s shoe against his rib.  The woman then fell unconscious.  Joe hobbled along with Sena propping him up along the sidewalk.  They walked away still missing the bagels they never took a bite from.  They heard the sounds of screams coming from the deli as they turned the corner with a fork still sticking out of Joe’s left arm.

Joseph saw a man inside a store at about three-thirty in the afternoon.  This man was only about five feet seven inches and kind of plump and jolly looking.  In the man’s hand was a prized possession for the hungry and nearly lifeless, a granola bar.  Joe pulled Sena towards the toy store that the man was stationed in.  She was hesitant to go inside, but the granola bar in some odd way gave her hope.  They went inside and confronted the man in the blue shirt and black pants that held the exalted granola.

“What the hell happened to you two!?” the man exclaimed as the two of them approached in their gory determination for food.  “Oh! GOD! Seriously!”,  he gasped.

“Do you have any spare granola bars?” Joseph moaned.

The man dished over his current granola and two more that he took from his pockets, “You okay?” Sena and Joe were already gobbling the bars.

“Ya.”

“NO!” Sena howled, crumbs falling from her mouth.  She ripped the fork out of Joseph’s arm releasing four small trickles of blood and pointed the bloody fork at the man.  Joe howled in pain with the un-wedging of the utensil.  Click…They all heard the sound and the couple winced with each click… Joe raised his fists, bloody and not, to the man and a third time click…

“What arrr…” The man started to speak and then the fourth click came, the click of the hour went…Click!

The man’s eyes didn’t go gray, and he didn’t leap at them to attack.

Confused, the couple asked in unison, “What’s your name?” as their heads bolted from side to side trying to see something wrong besides the bloodwood clock ticking away up on the far wall.

“Gregory.  Why?” he replied suspiciously. Then he felt a soft tap on his right leg and another smaller harder tap on his left.  Greg looked down and saw a porcelain doll on his left leg and a one-button-eyed teddy bear.  He bent to pick them up and put them back where they had been.  He heard the girl scream and he shot around to see what was happening.

Crawling one by one out of the sides of the bins surrounding the toy store were several dolls and teddy bears.  The girl and boy he had just met were flailing as two or three toys clamped on to their arms and legs.  Gregory looked down at the doll and one-button-eyed bear he held.  The teddy bear’s head began to slowly pivot on its body to look at its captor.  The head made a complete 180 to show its blank button stare and out of the bear’s unfinished arm slipped a silver glossy sewing needle with thread attached.  The bear lifted its small woven arm, glint of steel protruding… The teddy stabbed the needle straight into the man’s arm sending a jolt of pain through Greg’s body.  He dropped the bear and the doll.  The doll splattered into a thousand plaster pieces and along with the porcelain was a large sum of blood that spread from inside the doll to the floor.  Greg looked at his hand that had held the doll; it was nearly completely skinned and bloody.  Even the sight of tendons was not spared.  The rubber that had been his shoes had oddly vanished.  The couple had not been spared this mysterious occurrence either.  All the dolls around started creeping towards the victims, inch by silent, screaming, inch.

“I’M JOSEPH, THIS IS SENA!  HELP! …US… PLEASE!!?”  Joe screamed.

In a hospital in New York a boy previously in a golden wizard robe, the brother of a girl named Sena, woke up from a three-day coma again as his creepy eight-year old self.  On the wall he noticed one thing, a brown clock, doing its typical, ticking away.  An hour could change the world whether you are in golden attire or the typical white patients wear.

Two teddy bears with their cotton stuffing falling out lunged at Sena and Joe with needles raised as several other dolls of varying sorts held the couple to the spot, while the living toys from the bins seemed to be closing in on them ever so slowly.  The two bears thrust with their needles as they leapt to the couple.  One was kicked away by Gregory, however the other with a single button eye hit its mark in Joe’s lower calf.  Gregory was ripping the toys from the couple’s body even with the pain of his nearly skinless palm.  Sena had started stabbing all the dolls and plush she could reach with Joe’s bloody shoulder fork.  The bear that had pierced Joseph started to sew itself closer in to Joe’s skin, one prick followed by a slide of the needle and thread and an occasional slip of blood between strands of unweaving fabric.

Joe howled from the pain and started shaking his leg to get rid of the bear.  Gregory started pushing the couple towards the door until they all started running.  Porcelain dolls began streaking across the floor towards them in their odd pink dresses and blonde, brunette, red and black hair flying backwards from their speed.  The toy eyes stared, emotionless, with the fake and eerie smiling lips that only a doll or plastic surgeon can make possible.  The little monstrosities ran towards the three people.  A small Teddy bear leapt from one of the bins and found its target.  It plunged its fat sewing needle through the side of Greg’s pants and pierced silently and painfully into the man’s thigh.  Greg howled, but forged further onward pushing the couple towards the door, while the Teddy bear sewed and pinned itself more comfortably into his flesh.  The dolls had caught up to them now and ran straight toward the legs of the people.  The group shook off the rest of the toys excluding the ones that had sewn themselves into their flesh.  The porcelain figures screeched as each one slammed into the legs of their victims and shattered along with skin and blood from their targets.  Creating a grotesque path of porcelain shards, skin and blood, the dolls hit the people one after another.

The group reached the door and shot outside, all with raw feet from the porcelain and two with plush toys sewn into their flesh.  The second they got outside of the pink store the toys fell dead, silent, still.

Gregory waved for a taxi, but it took a while since most got scared off by the sight of him and his bloody hand.  One taxi driver finally pulled up and Greg let Sena into the car first and then helped Joseph slide into the cab, followed by him.  Gregory offered more money for getting the seats bloody and the taxi took off toward the nearest hospital.  Surprisingly enough the cabby asked no questions and didn’t even try to start up conversation.  They could see the hospital approaching near.  Something round and red seemed to be on the side of one of the stores, the clock.  A cement truck was coming fast in the opposing lane.  Everything happened in a matter of a few seconds.  The truck sped forward approaching, along their lane…Click… Greg yelled, “STOP!” to the driver, the driver wouldn’t.  Meanwhile the opposing truck and the cab had almost reached the intersection…Click…Sena screamed and began to push at Joseph to get out of the car.  Greg pushed with all his might on the door defying wind resistance and his own limits and pushed the door out which unhinged and went flying into the traffic behind.  Click!  The world seemed to go in slow motion.  The boutiques barely crept by.  The driver turned around towards them with hands out stretched to Gregory and finding their place at his throat.  The cement truck swerved into the cab lane.  The cabby’s eyes were a blank gray that slowly pushed into the back seat.  The car behind rear-ended them sending a jolt through their spines.  With the cabby still grabbing his throat, Greg grabbed Joseph’s uninjured arm and let all his weight fall backwards out the door.  The cabby went with, still grabbing Greg’s throat.  The men flew from the car and rolled onto the sidewalk where every bump felt as painful as using a cheese shredder to eviscerate your skin.  The cement truck continued shooting straight toward the cab now with only Sena.  She reached toward the door-less side of the taxi and was shot back into her seat as the car behind bumped the back of the cab again.  She reached the door-less opening and prepared to jump with the truck only one foot from the cab now.  The tons of steel from the concrete truck made contact with the cab as Sena leapt through the opening.

The cabby had broken Joe and Greg’s fall, but remained clutching fiercely to Gregory’s throat.  Greg was loosing strength and breath; his face was nearly blue from the lack of air and he was starting to cough up blood.  Joe looked for something sharp and saw the gory teddy bear’s needle.  He grabbed the needle and ripped it out of his skin wincing all the while.  Blood spurt from his leg in a light trickle, he was light headed, but took the needle and with tears of pain, Joseph jabbed the needle into the cabby’s right eye.  The previously solid gray eye burst with red and the cabby screamed having in that instance reclaimed his mind.  The cabby man pushed the blue faced Greg off him, scrambled to his feet and ran for the hospital with his bleeding eye.  Joe turned around and saw the cement truck and taxi make contact.

“JUMP SENA!”  Joseph screamed.

The each of the two cars bulleted towards the other, and the vehicles’ collision sent a shock wave through Sena’s body.  She leapt towards the almost tempting sidewalk.  She hit the asphalt just before the sidewalk and rolled.  Behind her the cab scrunched up like a tin can and flipped into the opposing lane.  Traffic stopped.  The group took a breather then hobbled and supported each other over to the hospital.

The lights were starting to dim outside as it got close to six in New York’s afternoon.  The group of Sena, Joseph, and Gregory hobbled rapidly into the hospital with its baby-blue tiled floor, white walls, and the smell of an overly air-conditioned bookstore.  They got to the front desk and were taken into emergency care based solely on their current state of appearance.  They all went into the same office to be tended to.  A cute nurse flirted with Greg as she wound his injuries in a light cloth.  It hurt like salt cuts at first, but the flirting made it bearable.  Both he and Joseph got the teddy bears cut from their skin and removed.  The wounds on their feet from the porcelain they had walked on were nearly bathed in hydrogen peroxide, which boiled over with white foam signifying the plentiful supply of infectious germs.  Joe got a cloth wound around his chest to create a makeshift brace.  They were neatly wound from head to foot, but still remained recognizable in all their, now rough, features.

Greg left the room with the nurse to be checked on further and to elaborate a plausible story for the group’s incident.  The adults left the two hormonal teens in the room.

“Are you holding up alright?” Joseph questioned, sliding his hand gently over her bruised, slender, ever so delicate neck and moving her soft, brunette hair behind her shoulder.  Supporting the beauty’s head, he let it fall lightly back onto the paper covered blue-cushioned patients’ table.  The paper made a light crinkle that seemed almost out of place.  “Is it wrong to seek reality, right now?”

“Hardly.”  Sena pulled Joe down towards her with her hand that was now cushioned in his hair.  The movement sent a pain through Joe’s left side, but was soon replaced by a pleasant pressing of soft lips on one another.  A light tingle and lust remained present on their lips.  The sensation relieved tension and let slip a small smile from them both in their welcoming of this bit of reality.  He pulled his right hand up to her left arm around his neck and pulled it over her head as he kneeled over her and pressed his lips against hers again with more push.  She received the kiss and pressed her head back towards him, both with more conviction at every pressing interval.  He slid his injured arm, with pain in every movement, down her right side along her smooth welcoming, slightly pained flesh.  They shared the pain and pleasure with every caress as they locked lips and found comfort in each other’s moist mouths.  She moved her free hand up the center of his exposed abdominals and chest along both bandage and skin.  Their flesh continued to warm.  She reached the same arm over his shoulder and down his back aware of every ripple, notch and muscle.  In response his injured arm slipped under the bottom of her plain white and slightly gory shirt.  He moved his hand up her feverishly hot stomach and slowly, eventually up to her chest and then back again to repeat.  He moved his lips down to her lengthy neck and pressed at every inch going down it.  Her breath became more exaggerated letting her chest rise and fall and pulse.  Her head fell backward as he nibbled his way down her neck letting his tongue and teeth begin each movement and his lips closing in to polish the area.  Her other hand was freed and found its way to the back of his head and pulling him closer, her first hand was soon accompanied by her second.  His uninjured arm moved down her left side until it reached the bottom of her shirt along with his injured arm on her right.  He pulled her shirt free and up over her head.  Her arms were lifted into the air to help with his endeavors.  The shirt slid off nicely.  She slid her Jean shorts down from side to side and off her bandaged, but smooth, legs and feet.  She then helped him slip out of his pants and their lust resumed.  They kissed, thrusting and twirling their tongues into each other’s mouths in intervals.  Leaning over her, his injured arm’s hand moved up to her ample breasts and his other hand down to her hips and her supple buttocks.  Her hands followed suit down to his behind.  They continued in their lips’ pursuit of each other as they massaged each other’s available erogenous zones.  His wounded arm found the white and red polka dotted bra’s clip that was gently undone.  She lowered his white under shorts.  They unlocked lips and looked at each other in lust.

Click… The sound cut through them.  Click… Again it sounded, they looked up and saw that clock on the wall, that bloodwood clock.  The second hand struck the Roman numeral twelve directly above the minute hand… Click! It had sounded.  They both froze, naked and in horror.  It was darker outside, and the hands were on six and twelve of the clock.  Four minutes went by, all the time feeling each other’s warm heartbeats.  The clock… had vanished.

They kissed each other quickly, but did not continue with their prior actions.  Nothing dangerous had happened, but what had happened was enough to scare them.  They could welcome reality, but at this time, only so much.

They each fixed the other’s bandages and got dressed.  They left the room and found Greg who looked rather happy as he buckled up his pants and left the room of his prior ‘engagement’.  The group took their time and then found the room that held Sena’s little brother.  It had a curtain that covered half of the room.  There was a little girl with a large black spot along her arm in the room without the curtain.  She was playing with a Game Boy.  They pulled back the curtain and to their surprise saw Sena’s younger brother jumping next to the wall with the brown clock and trying to reach it.  Mikey knocked the clock from the wall finally and let it hit the floor.  He began to stomp on it as hard as he could.

“It is just about seven.  I don’t want to go to heaven…” Mikey said and repeated under his breath.  He was still trying to smash the clock, but was failing.  Sena ran to him and tried to stop him, but he just slapped and shrugged her hands away then continued his jumping.

“STOP! MIKEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!?” Sena yelled at him, he was still repeating his previous phrase.

“Dumb dumb, you’ll lose your head or heart not your thumb.”

“Excuse me?”

Mikey looked up at her and tears were running down his face,  “Time to hear the sign!”

…Click… It rang from the clock on the ground, which now looked reddish.  It had become the bloodwood clock.  Sena grabbed Mikey and started to pull him out of the room hurriedly with the help of Joseph and Gregory.  Mikey screamed, “NO! DUMBIES!”

…Click… The little girl dropped her Game Boy.  The group looked at her.  They looked to the side drawer and prayed that what they were thinking wouldn’t come true.  They looked at each other briefly…Click!

The little girl’s eyes turned a dull gray.  She reached into the drawer by her bed and produced…a scalpel.  She leapt forward with it in hand.  The little girl stabbed at Greg who was pushing the others out the door.  He dodged the first two swipes, but felt the third pierce his thigh.  They were out the door.  Joe reached for the door and slammed it shut in the little girl’s face.  She ran to the back of the white room and charged towards the glass door.  The door shattered and shot shards of glass everywhere as the gray-eyed girl came crashing through.  She had fallen on the floor and was now back on her feet.

Author's Note

feel free to give me critique on how to make it better. Requesting critique from any exceptional horror novelists (as in you have given reader's nightmares). Grammar help and word choice comments are good, but don't go overboard. Enjoy…particularly hour four at the time