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There were no deathwatches clambering up her body, no ink-faced monsters or fragmented ghouls gathered in shadowy corners or lurking in her open closet. No grim palace halls visible through the frame of her uncovered dresser mirror . . .
The ticking sound continued, though, the soft noise audible even over the hammering of her heart, the rushing of her blood.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Resonating louder in one ear than the other, the sound drew Isobel’s attention to her left, down to the open brass pocket watch that sat on the splayed, gold-rimmed pages of a familiar book.
Isobel didn’t need to read the tome’s cover to know its title. And she didn’t need to see the name AUGUSTUS inscribed on the inside of the watch’s little hinged door to know who the timepiece belonged to either.
But . . . if Reynolds was gone, how had the watch gotten here?
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Scooting to sit on the edge of her bed, Isobel plucked up the watch by its long chain. She brought it close and, catching it with her other hand, held it steady, following the movement of its spindly black second hand as it ticked along one space at a time, past the stationary hour and minute hands that pointed to midnight.
Frowning, Isobel leaned over and switched on her bedside lamp. She scanned her room again, searching for any evidence that might point to someone’s having been there.
There was nothing, though, and eventually her gaze wandered back to the book, which had been left open at page 119—a title page of mostly white space.
When Isobel caught sight of the name stamped in the middle, though, her frown deepened. Palming the watch, she took the book and drew it into her lap.
THE NARRATIVE
OF
ARTHUR GORDON PYM
OF NANTUCKET
COMPRISING THE DETAILS OF A MUTINY AND ATROCIOUS BUTCHERY
ON BOARD THE AMERICAN BRIG GRAMPUS, ON HER WAY TO THE SOUTH SEAS,
IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1827.
“Gordon,” Isobel whispered, tracing the middle name of the story’s protagonist with her fingers.
Next, her fingertips trailed to the ship’s name, which she’d also seen before. Grampus. Hadn’t that been the name written across the storm-tossed ship in the animated painting that had hung in Varen’s dreamworld house?
Hurriedly, Isobel flipped to the next page, to the place where the story began. She skimmed the first few lines.
My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New-Bank, as it was formerly called. By these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit the most of his property at his death.
Baffled, Isobel narrowed her eyes on the tightly packed blocks of text while her mind went on autopilot, deep-sea diving for something Reynolds had once said to her. About his having had a family . . .
Like you, I had a mother and father. And a grandfather, with whom I was particularly close.
“Arthur Gordon Pym,” Isobel muttered, speaking into the book. “By . . . Edgar Allan Poe.”
She’d said the names aloud for a reason. Now that she had, it did not elude her that they carried such similar-sounding beats. Quickly another memory resurfaced—of a time when Reynolds had mentioned his friendship with Poe. Two sides of the same creepy coin, Reynolds had said.
Well, Isobel thought, flipping back to the title page and its lines about mutiny and the Southern seas—at least that explained the whole pirate sword thing.
Curious, she hooked a finger to catch the next segment of pages, preparing to flip straight to the end and read the last paragraph, when a low click from somewhere downstairs made her look up.
Her door frame stood empty. Dark. Quiet.
Then: eeEEEEEeee.
