The Grandfather Clock

by Phyllis Wheeler

The Grandfather Clock is copyrighted 2020 by Phyllis Wheeler. All rights are reserved. Illustrations by Elisabeth Curtis.

🎧 Listen to the audio story 🎧

📖 Read the story 📖

Chapter 1

“You, young man, may not sit there.” The crisp, accented voice came from behind me. “Ach, vat do young people think these days?”

I jumped up from the wooden stool and whirled around. With my elbow I knocked one of the dozens of ticking clocks to the floor, and it landed with a clatter.  

A short older man with very little hair stood at the back of the shop. He wore a black cloak with a bit of white at the throat. He waved a finger at me. “The one who breaks it, buys it,” he said.

 “Sorry,” I said as I picked up the fallen clock, put it to my ear, and put it back on a shelf. “I think it still works.” This clock shop shouldn’t even be here, in this normally vacant warehouse at the north riverfront of St. Louis. I’d stumbled onto it today in one of my after-school walks. My head buzzed with disbelief.

He frowned and stepped forward to pick up the clock. As he examined it, I looked around. The dusty shop was so cluttered I could hardly move without bumping into something. The clocks ticked, tocked, whirred, and otherwise filled the silence. Could he hear my heart pounding?

 He frowned at the possibly broken clock. “Did you come in to buy a clock, young man? If so, I suggest you do so and be on your vay.” His accent?  I couldn’t place it.

“I’m looking for my father.”

“Ah. You must be my appointment, then.” He sounded irritated.

“What?”

“Just what I didn’t vant, a call to leave my rest and studies. I’m really going to have to have a talk with whoever is doing my appointments.”

“What?”

“A joke. Never mind. Here I am. Continue, please, young man.”

I scratched my head. This mysterious man didn’t make sense. But my life wasn’t making sense. “My father vanished three weeks ago, standing next to a grandfather clock in our entry hall. He was talking to me from the next room one minute, gone the next.” I twisted my hands.

“Did you go to the police?”

“My best friend Eddie’s mom took me to the police.  We filled out paperwork, and they’re supposed to be investigating. But I haven’t heard from them.”

“And today you noticed the shop and stopped in.” He sighed.

“Normally this building is empty,” I said. “And then there’s the name of your shop. Guardians of Time Clock Shop,” I said. “I never heard of such a name.”

“Ah,” he said.

“So, how did your shop just show up out of nowhere?” I asked.

He pursed his lips. “I told you, I had an appointment.”

The skin on the back of my neck felt tingly. “With me?”

Chapter 2

“Yes. Now, let’s get down to it,” he said. “Your age?”

“Twelve.”

“Who is your father?”

“Jonathan Bosch, sir. He’s a judge.”

 I don’t know why I was so upset about my father, who was always absent. He’d cared for me and played with me—when I was little. But as I grew older, he was usually away doing something else.

I remembered the day I learned how unimportant I was to him. Dad may have been known in the community, but he couldn’t make it to see me in the starring role of our fifth-grade play. Since Mom had passed away when I was four, that meant nobody came to the play to see me.

But at least Dad took me to a baseball game once a year. He knew how much I loved baseball. Warm summer evenings in the ball park. A parade of people, salted with the scent of chips and beer.

The man cleared his throat.  “So, your father being a judge, there are people who don’t like him.”

“Yeah.”

“People who could sneak into that room where he vas and vhisk him avay.”

Could that be? Was Dad in the hands of kidnappers? I shook my head. “No. He was alone for only a few seconds. There wasn’t time.”

He pondered. “What vill you give me if I help you?”

I slowly pulled my one treasure from my pocket. I hesitated. Could I trust this man with it? “I’m sorry. What is your name, sir?” I asked.

 “An unpronounceable German name. You won’t have to remember it. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.”

I stifled a snicker.

He flared his nostrils and went on, “They call me Paracelsus. I am from vat you call Switzerland. And from ven you call the Renaissance.”

“Really?” I said. “I haven’t met anyone from the Renaissance lately.”

“Really,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

It’s true the clock shop had somehow appeared in a formerly empty building. Maybe I’d best go with the flow. I handed him the key. “I’m William Bosch,” I said.

He snorted. “And you have a funny Dutch name.”

He took my treasure, an ornate silver key blackened with age.

Then he went into his office. Hearing nothing, I followed.

He wasn’t there.

Chapter 3

So where was he? Nervously, I searched for a closet, a spot under a desk, any place he might have hidden himself. Nothing. I fidgeted as I stood in the office doorway.

Three minutes later, he reappeared and held up the key. “I have returned,” he said.

Did I just see someone step out of thin air? I shivered and hugged my churning stomach. “Where were you?”

“Ven were you, you mean.”

“Right.”

“I am not sure. Many hundreds of years ago, in this same spot. A native American village, part of a sprawling city, I believe. It was evening, and the adults were coming home.”

“Coming home?”

“From building big mounds that used to be all over the place in this area, my boy. Mounds for vorshipping, for burying, for root cellars, I don’t know. The people carried baskets of dirt on their heads, long lines of them, headed northwest away from the river. Just now it vas dusk, and they were released to go home. There were a lot of happy children, and a few grandmas, pouring out of their huts and greeting the papas and–.”

“How did you get there?” I blurted out. “Did you see my father?”

“There was no grandfather clock there to serve as a vector, of course,” he went on, as if I had not interrupted.

“Huh?” I said.

“It was because of your key, young man. I did see your father, the judge.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He was in a wooden cage in the village plaza, an open place among the huts. He was so glad to see someone who could speak to him.”

 “Why didn’t he come back with you?”

“I tried to find the way to unlock his jailhouse door, but someone noticed and called out. I grabbed his hand through the bars and turned the key in the air. But your key transports only one.”

“We have to go get him.”

“It’s your key, young man. I give it back to you.”

He extended it to me, and I took it. My hand shook, and then my arm, and then my whole body, even though it wasn’t cold. My grandfather had given it to me with lifted eyebrows when I was five, months before he died. I’d suspected the key was special. But I never knew.

“To use it,” Paracelsus said, “simply hold it up as if you are unlocking the front door of a grandfather clock. Turn it to the left. You are unlocking the front door of the invisible Great Clock. It’s the one that transports people in time.”

My shivering increased. I had played with the key for all these years. I could have accidently sent myself away to who-knows-when in time. Did Grandfather know that when he gave it to me?

Using this key required courage. And what kind of courage did I have? I’d been walking alone around the nearly vacant neighborhood. I thought I was bold. But was I bold enough to turn this key, on purpose?

“One person can time-travel with this key at a time,” I said.  “So I could go to my father, and only one of us could come back.”

“That seems to be the case.”

“How did my father get there?”

Paracelsus shrugged. “Your grandfather clock must have done it. Clocks have interesting properties.”

“If I do this, how can I be sure I’ll end up where my father is? When he is, I mean?”

“You can’t.”

“How did you get there, to when he is?”

“There’s a guiding hand in the universe.” He looked at me from beneath bushy gray eyebrows. “A sending hand, you might say.”

“You were sent,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Sent to him.”

“Yes.”

“Sent to me also.”

“Yes.”

My spine felt like a highway for centipedes.

Chapter 4

The next day after school, I went to Eddie’s house next door, where I’d been living since Dad disappeared. I Googled the native American village that was St. Louis long ago. I found out that it was part of a huge city centered just across the Mississippi River. Eight hundred years ago, Cahokia was bigger than London was.

My insides churned. I told Eddie’s mom I was going out for a walk. Eddie, playing a game on his phone, hardly looked up. Again I took myself through the maze of vacant and underused warehouses on the near north side.

The Guardians of Time Clock Shop had vanished. The warehouse storefront, full of cobwebs, looked like no one had been inside it for years. The battered door held a battered mail slot. “March Coffee Company” said the faded sign painted on the brick high above, and next to it some graffiti that I couldn’t read.

My hands felt damp.

Paracelsus had been sent to me. Me?

I followed Broadway to downtown–a place of tall buildings, endless concrete, and a few people on foot.

I had to decide. Was I willing to go to my father, hand him my key, send him home, and stay in the village? Where my pale skin would make me stand out, and no one could understand me?

And yet, there was my father, kept in a cage in the village square. Why did they do that to him? Were they afraid of him? What were they going to do to him?

I had to turn back. Eddie’s mom would start to worry about me. I looped around the stadium and dodged a beggar as I headed north again.

I didn’t want to be a stranger.

I didn’t want Dad to be a stranger, either.

Chapter 5

For breakfast I ate toast at Eddie’s house and washed it down with milk. Eddie slurped his oatmeal and grinned at me. Then he noticed my agitation. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, I’m just about to leap into the unknown. Down some kind of time corridor or something. Maybe I’ll find my father.”

“Cool,” he said. “What game is that?”

“The Time Game. If I don’t come back, it’s because I landed someplace dangerous. Or maybe it wasn’t dangerous but I couldn’t get back.”

Eddie nodded, wide-eyed. “I haven’t heard of that one. That’s some game.”

“Yeah.”

I left Eddie to his oatmeal and went next door to my house.

I wanted Dad back.

But I was mad at him for putting his job first.

In fact, I loved my dad. I had to do this.

Clenching my teeth, I faced the grandfather clock in the front hall.

If there was a guiding hand in the universe, I needed him now. I held the key in the air in front of me, squeezed my eyes shut, murmured “help me,” and turned the key to the left.

***

Noisy voices greeted my ears. I slipped the key into my pocket and opened my eyes.

I gazed at an open plaza, surrounded by thatched huts made of wood posts and stucco. The sweltering sun beat down from overhead. It must be mid-day. Not far away, children shrieked as they chased and tossed a brown ball with what looked like tiny, long-handled badminton racquets.

There, under a large awning, was the cage.

It was empty. I got closer and looked inside. Definitely empty. The door hung open, in fact.

I stood motionless in the shade, hiding as best I could in plain sight. The kids chased their ball farther away. Where was everyone else?

I spied two lightly clothed adults sitting cross-legged in the shade of another huge awning, not far away. A third person wearing what could have been a regular white shirt appeared to be stacking wood in the merciless sun nearby.

Was that my father? Or was it someone who killed him and took his clothes?

Holding the key in my fist in my pocket, I walked closer. I took deep breaths to calm my beating heart. I could leave any time.

Shade should come from trees, not awnings. Where were the trees? All cut down? A twinge passed between my shoulder blades, even though I was sweating.

My father, clad in very worn dress pants and the tattered, untucked white shirt, dropped a load of cut wood onto a pile and straightened up. “Will!” he called. “You came!”

The other two individuals, a man and woman, took a good look at me and launched a lot of animated words at each other and my father.

I ran and grabbed my father in a sweaty hug. “Dad,” I said. “Dad.”

My father squeezed. “My son,” he said.  Then he repeated some words I didn’t know. The other two nodded.

My handsome dad could get anybody to like him. And he was smart, smart enough to pick up another language quickly. He already knew French and Spanish.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

He took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot these past six months.”

“Six months? It’s been three weeks.”

Chapter 6

The kids started coming back, tossing the ball back and forth with the sticks. A shout went up when they saw me. My heart started pounding.

I raised my voice. “I want you to come back, Dad.” I shoved the key into his hand. “This will take you home. Hold it in front of you, turn it to the left. Don’t worry about me. I can stay here. I’ll be fine.” I swallowed a lump in my throat.

The kids surrounded me, chattering. They touched my skin, my clothes and my hair. My hair was wavy and brown, compared to theirs, straight and black. They wore clothes that covered less of themselves than my tee shirt, shorts and tennis shoes did.

They crowded me. I wasn’t used to so much touching. If I stayed here, how would I ever become one of them? 

I had to do something. I pointed to my chest.  “William,” I said. Then I pointed to the tallest boy’s chest and lifted my eyebrows.

“Mo-GOK-si,” he said.

“Mogoksi.” I repeated his name as I stepped away from my father, not looking at him. He had to accept my gift. He had to leave.

I pointed to the ball. “Ball?” I asked.

“TAH-bay,” said a small girl, giggling.

I sneaked a glance at the adults. They still stood there.

I picked the ball up and tossed it down the path. The kids and I took off after it.

After they found a racquet-stick for me, we played ball. I learned the names of twelve more kids, and of a number of other useful body parts and things around us. All the while I refused to look back toward my father.

Finally I looked over. He continued to slowly move wood from a storehouse to a heap in the town square and paused to glance over at me.

Soon I got a chance to take a breather next to Dad. The man and woman sat watching from a bit of a distance. Were they supervising? The man wore a white hat that looked like a bird with wings. Nobody else had one.

“I’ve been thinking,” Dad said. “About that grandfather clock.”

“Tell me.”

“I was standing next to the clock changing from my shoes into slippers. Something I always do, but usually not right there. I leaned against the clock case with my hand. Twisted my hand to the left as I bent down. Then, suddenly I was here, surrounded by first an ocean of kids and then by some very suspicious adults.”

“Ah,” I said. The ball bounced up to me, and the kids cheered. I had to take a swat at it. As I moved away, I felt inner bonds to my father, stretching and stretching. All I wanted, all I’d ever wanted, was to stand next to him, be with him. And, as usual, I couldn’t do it.

I stopped at the water station, a tree stump that held a large bowl of water and a dipper made of wood. I slurped water, and my new friends watched. “William,” said a younger girl, pointing at me.

“William.” I nodded. Then I pointed at her.

“No-mi-TSAY-see.”

I repeated it and nodded at her. She grinned back.

As my new friends took turns sipping water, I walked back to Dad.

“Here,” he said, handing me the key. “You go back. I’m not going to use it without you.”

“Dad, I won’t leave you.”

“Go back.”

“But Dad–”

“You need to go back. Live your life. Go.”

“Dad, I can’t leave you.”

“Go.”

 My shoulders sagged. I’d failed. I sighed, pulled out the key, and turned it to the left.

And stood again in the entry hall of my house, next to the mysterious grandfather clock. The silence of the old house seemed even more suffocating than before. The tall old clock wasn’t even ticking.

My mind raced. I had to figure out how to rescue my father.

Chapter 7

I could time-travel in two ways. One way involved turning my ornate key in an invisible keyhole of the Great Clock, to the left. The other, from my father’s report, involved putting my palm on our grandfather clock case and twisting my hand to the left. Somehow the grandfather clock in our front hall had special time-travel properties.

But how could I rescue him? I had a way for only one person to get back. There was no grandfather clock in St Louis eight hundred years ago. Only the key, in my pocket.

My eye fell on a skeleton key in the tall, slender lower door of the grandfather clock. If it was a time travel key, it could solve my problem. Or, it could take me to some other time where my father wasn’t.

Did I dare turn it?

I needed all the help I could get. I took a deep breath. My belly felt tense and strong.  I was done being afraid. I’d already decided the matter. I wanted my father to come back home, without me if necessary.

“Help me,” I murmured. “Send me.” I turned the key to the right. The cabinet door fell open, and I could see the still pendulum.

I felt deflated. I hadn’t gone anywhere or anywhen.

Then I closed the cabinet and turned the key to the left.

The door locked, that was all.

So I pulled the key out of the clock. I held it up and turned it to the left in the air, as if turning it in the lock of the Great Clock.

***

I stood at a distance in the village square, and an evening breeze ruffled my hair. “Thank you,” I breathed out to whoever and whatever had sent me to him. Dad’s pale back gleamed in the evening sun as he stood under an awning, wearing only some sort of a parchment kilt, facing away from me. His hair had lengthened into a pony tail.

I could see my dad, and I had the two keys in my pocket. It wouldn’t be long now before we’d get back to our creaky old house. He was going to look odd at home, until he could get his clothes changed.

The square was crowded. Villagers gathered outside their huts around small fires, one group only twenty feet away. I smelled something like corn fritters, and my mouth watered.

Three children at a fire noticed me, pointed, and shouted.  Adults took up the cry, and three men started running in my direction.  A muscular man reached me and grabbed me, slinging me over his shoulder. Kids shrieked, “William! William!”

Though the man’s shoulder poked my stomach, a name came to me. “Mogoksi!” I cried. I pointed at the boy in question. I barely noticed that he looked a lot bigger than last time.

I felt myself being dumped onto my feet, and I turned around. Now I could see Dad walking resolutely toward us, his face unreadable. Others followed him. A crowd filled the plaza.

The man who had carried me frowned at Mogoksi, who appeared to be giving a breathless explanation of our afternoon playing ball. Months ago? Years ago? Judging from Dad’s beard and new clothing, it had to be a long time.

Dad stopped in front of a woman with large, dark eyes. He draped an arm around her, and the two of them turned toward me.

What did this mean?

I took deep breaths and closed my eyes as my plans crashed around me like pieces of broken glass. All I’d ever longed for was my Dad.

Mogoksi, still talking, paused for breath.

Dad stepped forward and spoke in the new language. He sounded like the real thing to me. He gestured toward me and then put his arm around my shoulder. We stood there for a few minutes, and the crowd started to wander away. The woman moved back up to his side.

I faced him and pulled out both keys. “Look, Dad, we can go back. I found another key. Just hold it up and turn it to the left, like you’re unlocking an invisible grandfather clock. We’ll do it together. Let’s go home.”

He shook his head and lifted the woman’s hand. “I’ve found peace here, son,” he said. “A low-stress life. The love of my life. I’m not going back.”

“But … aren’t you a prisoner?”

“Not any more. They’ve come to trust me, even given me some leadership tasks. The chief that runs the place, the fellow with the white hat, has taken me on as his assistant. This is his daughter, now my wife.”

I swallowed hard. I’d never, ever imagined that I would have a stepmother who spoke a different language. “She could come to St. Louis.”

“No, son,” he said. “She would never make the adjustment. I couldn’t do that to her. Besides, I like it here. You would, too.”

What? Me, too? Me, stay here?

Well, on the last trip I’d been prepared to do it, to rescue him. I took a deep breath and looked around. People were standing around fires and eating supper. The aroma of roasted corn and some kind of meat—deer meat?—tickled my nose and set my mouth watering.

The dark-eyed woman smiled at me and said something.

“She’s inviting you to eat,” said Dad. “Dinner’s ready.”

“I, I don’t know.”

“So, you need to decide,” said Dad. “Stay here or go back?”

“Give me a minute.” I turned my back and took a little walk down the dusty path and turned a corner.

There in the shade stood Paracelsus, his black cloak clearly the wrong thing to wear in this warm evening. Beads of sweat hung on his bald head.

“Will,” he said. “I’ve overheard everything. This is so unusual, that an accidental traveler vants to stay elsewhere.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” I scuffed my tennis shoe in the dust and sighed. “He’s pretty good at building a life that doesn’t include me.”

“You’re not trapped here, if you stay. You have two keys.”

“So I could go back and forth, live two lives?”

“No, not really. Remember, you have little to no control over where you land. It’s the Guiding Hand that moves you. Most likely you would be leaving your old life behind.”  

I blinked.

“It’s possible,” he went on, “you might get bitten by the travel bug. There’s a group of us who help those who get into difficulties. The Guardians of Time. Perhaps you’d eventually like to join us.”

Wow, that was a lot to take in.

“Make a good decision, Will. Maybe I’ll be seeing you.” He stepped into thin air.

Chapter 8

I turned around and stopped.

What did I want to do? Stay with my Dad and my new stepmother in the year 1200 or so? Or return to the 21^st century to live with Eddie? I’d go to college, become a lawyer or something, and play lots of video games …

Soon I stood in front of my dad again. My dad. The person I wanted to be with, more than anything.

“You have a decision to make,” he said simply.

My throat clogged. “Dad …” I croaked.

“Will, in the past year I’ve had a lot of time to think about my life, about what I wasn’t accomplishing with the time God gave me, about what a terrible father I’ve been.” A tear trickled down his cheek.

I blinked.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I, uh, when your mother died, I.” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t do what I needed to do after your mother died.  Be a father to you, I mean. I was only looking at myself. My broken heart.”

I swallowed hard, afraid to look him in the eye. Was he really—

“I guess what I’m trying to say is … I’m so glad you’re here. I want to act like a real father now.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“We can’t go to baseball games here. But there is another kind of game they play,” he said. “Chunkey, with sticks and stone discs. We’ll go to chunkey games.”

Suddenly I knew, deep in my gut. I belonged with Dad, wherever he was.

“Chunkey it is,” I said.

The End