The House

Chapter 22 - Day 3: Open Clock Surgery

I stare in horror at the twisted mess of bones and feathers lying between us on the scarred stone surface of the kitchen island. It is not getting up, so, whatever it is, it is definitely dead.

"What is that?" I ask the obvious question.

"Not sure," David says, picking it up, and I cringe away from him, drawing in a sharp breath.

"Don't touch it!"

"It's the cuckoo bird," he declares, giving me an amused look. He hasn't been staying in this strange house with its creepy noises and sleep-walking adventures; if he had, he wouldn't just go around picking up weird objects that got puked out of broken cuckoo clocks.

"Are you sure? It doesn't look like a bird to me, except for the bits of feathery fluff."

"It's missing its head and parts of its body, but it's made of wood and is more or less the right shape. Something gnawed on it."

"Gnawed on it?!" I do not like to hear about things gnawing on other things and instinctively lift my feet off the floor to wrap them around the legs of my chair.

"Yup, looks like teeth marks. Something was hungry."

David drops the bird leftovers and reaches out to open the little door leading into what used to be the home of the unfortunate wooden cuckoo bird, and I grab his hand, pulling it away from the clock.

"No!" I say, shaking my head. "Wait!"

I almost fall off the chair in my haste to get up, forgetting that I have my feet wrapped around its legs, but I manage not to face plant and reach the cutlery drawer unscathed. I pull it open, grab a sharp-looking knife from it and hand it, hilt-first, to David, nodding my approval for him to open the door now.

David sucks in his lips, and I'm not sure, but I think he is once again trying not to laugh at me.

"You want me to use a steak knife to defend myself against the clock monster? Are you sure it will be enough?"

I fail to see the requirement for sarcasm because he might actually have a point. He cannot be the only one who is armed here.

"Wait," I say again and open and close a few cupboards until I find a suitable weapon of my own.

David gives in to his laughter when I join him again, a rolling pin at the ready. He won't laugh at me when he realises that with my track record, I'm more likely to injure one of us with my weapon than I am to injure whatever comes out of that clock.

I give him a hostile look to silence him, but he is still grinning while he uses the tip of the knife on the edge of the little door.

The door pops open, and we both lean closer carefully, trying to see what is inside that could've caused the bird to get ejected like that. I drop the rolling pin with a yell of fright and back away from the kitchen island to crouch against the wall with my hands covering my ears when deafening noise erupts around us.

It takes me a few seconds to realise that the noise is not coming from the cuckoo clock; it is the well-known clamour coming from all the clocks in the house in a beautiful demonstration of my noise complaint. The only clock not joining in the announcement of multiple opinions on what time it might be is the cuckoo clock, still quietly lying on the counter.

Feeling stupid, I look towards the island where David is standing, petrified, his eyes huge with shock as he listens to the last bong vibrating away. He finally notices me on the floor against the wall between the pantry and the cellar, and with one stride, he is kneeling beside me.

"Are you alright, uhm... Miss... Emmerson?" he asks, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"It's Belle," I answer automatically and feeling foolish, I get my feet under me and rise, looking down at him still kneeling at my feet. All we need now is a nice shiny ring, and this will be a very romantic moment, except that my heart is beating a mile a minute, and I might've peed myself a little.

I'm not entirely sure.

"The bells, yes, they're really loud, and their timing is kinda... yes..." David gets to his feet as well, and I now notice that he sounds quite breathless too. I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only one that got frightened out of their wits by the unexpected cacophony.

"Yes, they are, but my name is Belle," I explain, offering him a hand in greeting. I cannot believe that I'm only introducing myself now. We shared an intimate embrace in the garden, he handled my underwear and mopped my spills, and we were just about to perform open heart surgery on a cuckoo clock, and yet he still doesn't know my name.

He must've gotten my surname from his grandfather, and I'm really glad he didn't remember the whole Lunabelle part of my name too, if his grandfather told him that as well.

David grins, taking my hand, causing it to disappear quite pleasantly in his. "Nice to meet you, Belle," he says and then, frowning, he puts his other hand on the back of mine, fondling my hand between both of his. "You're trembling."

"Yes, well, I thought the cuckoo monster escaped and was trying to kill us with sound," I giggle nervously, overly aware of the warmth of his hands surrounding mine. I'm liking it a little too much, so I slip my hand from his and step back to the kitchen island in an attempt to hide how nervous I'm feeling right now. David follows me and puts one of his hands on my shoulder again, turning me to look at him. I have to tilt my head back a little to do so.

"Are you sure you're alright, Belle?" I am touched by the level of concern I can see on his face. He really wants to know, and, oh, my soul, I'm drowning in the warmth of his eyes.

If he has a wife or a girlfriend, she is really brave, letting him wander around unchaperoned among mere mortal, somewhat depraved women like me.

"Yes, thank you, it was just unexpected," I smile and nervously run the tip of my tongue over my lips. I always get nervous around strangers, but that is not why I'm finding it hard to breathe with David this close to me.

Long, long ago... light years... something like three months... I got my heart broken by a man I thought to be the love of my life. I stopped thinking that about a month ago when I finally admitted to myself that he was really bossy, pretentious and quite boring. Right now, I can no longer remember the name of that bastard. I can barely remember his face.

"When we're done here, I'll see what I can do about the other clocks. I'm really sorry about this, Belle. They must've been driving you nuts."

"Yes," I say, trying my best to smile prettily. "I wasn't nuts before they started acting up."

I'm lying, but... whatever.

David chuckles and drops his hand from my shoulder. We both turn to bend over the clock, ready to investigate the mysteries behind its now open door.

"It's still ticking," he observes, sounding as mystified about the phenomenon as I am. "There's something in there."

I can see it too, but it's too dark in the hollow to make out what it is.

As a precaution, I pick up the discarded steak knife and get ready to defend us against any other dead wooden animals while I watch David bravely put two fingers inside the hole.

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