The Ninth Hour

The ridge had a door in it. Eamon Roderholm stood 20 yards downhill, one boot braced against loose stone, staring at something that absolutely should not have been there. The rockslide had taken most of the eastern face with it sometime during the night. The old logging road had been closed since dawn, although calling the narrow track a road was generous. It twisted through the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota, miles from the nearest highway and farther still from anything Eamon considered civilization.

               Up here, the Northwoods had stopped pretending they belonged to people. Eamon liked places like that. Usually. He raised his camera. The doorway was nearly 20 feet tall and perhaps 12 wide, framed by blocks of black stone that did not match the surrounding rock. No mortar. No visible seams. Nine figures had been carved around the arch. Eight knelt. The ninth stood above the door. It had no face.

               “Jesus Christ.”

               Eamon photographed it. He had worked archaeological surveys for the state for eleven years. He had documented logging camps, mining ruins, graves, Indigenous artifacts, petroglyphs, and enough rusted shit abandoned in the Minnesota woods to know that old garbage was still garbage. This was different. He climbed. The temperature dropped as he approached the opening. Not gradually. One step was September. The next was winter.

               Eamon stopped. His breath fogged. He backed up. Warm again. Forward. Cold. “Okay.” He said it because there was nobody else to say anything to. The initial report had described an unidentified structure exposed by a rockslide. His supervisor expected photographs, coordinates, and an assessment of whether anyone needed to give a shit before crews stabilized the slope. Eamon looked through the doorway. Stone stairs descended into darkness. Someone definitely needed to give a shit.

               He radioed from the truck. Nothing. No signal. His phone had lost service miles ago. He should drive back. That was procedure. Instead, Eamon retrieved his pack, flashlight, helmet, and sidearm. Then he entered the ridge. The stairs were wrong. Not dramatically. Each was perhaps an inch too tall and several inches too deep. Walking them produced an awkward rhythm, as though whoever had built them possessed roughly human proportions but not quite.

               The passage continued downward. Thirty yards. Fifty. One hundred. His flashlight found carvings. Cities. Armies. Kings with elongated crowns. Men, or things close enough to men, kneeling beneath enormous circular objects suspended in the sky. There were two moons in several carvings. Eamon touched one. The stone was warm. He pulled his hand away. “Fuck this.”

               He turned around. Something moved below him. Eamon froze. Silence. He aimed his flashlight downward. Nothing. He climbed three steps. Then heard it again.

               Click.

               Click.

               Click.

               Something hard against stone. Coming from below. Eamon drew his pistol. “Hello?” The clicking stopped. His own voice traveled downward for several seconds. Then, impossibly far beneath him, something answered.

               “Hello?” It was his voice. Eamon ran. He made it perhaps 30 steps before realizing the entrance was gone. The staircase ended at a wall.

               “No.” He touched it. Solid stone. “No, no, no.” Behind him:

               Click.

               Eamon turned. Nothing. He had one choice. Down. The staircase eventually opened into a city beneath the earth. There was no other word for it. Buildings rose from an underground cavern so enormous Eamon could not see its ceiling. Towers disappeared into darkness. Bridges crossed black chasms. Statues stood hundreds of feet tall. His flashlight suddenly seemed ridiculous. Eamon descended into a civilization that should not exist. He found weapons almost entirely consumed by corrosion. Metal bowls. Stone furniture. Murals whose pigments remained impossibly vivid.

               Everything was slightly too large. Then he found the coffins. Eight feet long. Dozens of them. He opened one. The skeleton inside was human. Mostly. Seven fingers on each hand. Eamon closed it. “Fuck this.” He kept walking. He eventually reached a circular chamber with nine doors. Eight were sealed. The ninth stood open. Inside, someone sat upon a throne. Eamon raised his pistol. “Hello?”

               No movement. He approached. A corpse. Ancient. Its skin had dried against its skull. Long white hair hung across black armor. Something rested between its hands. Eamon nearly missed the ring. Gold. Plain. On the corpse’s left hand. He stared. There was no logical reason the ring bothered him. Eamon had never been married. Then he noticed the inscription. He leaned closer.

               S + E

               A date followed. He could not read it. The corpse held something resembling a pocket watch. Black metal. Nine symbols surrounded its face. There were no hands. Instead, beneath the glass lay a tiny severed human finger. It moved. Eamon stepped backward. The corpse opened its eyes. Eamon screamed. He fired twice. The chamber vanished.

               Eamon hit stone. His pistol skittered away. He scrambled for it. Then stopped. Torches burned along the walls. Not electric lights. Torches. The throne was empty. The corpse was gone. Outside the chamber, bells began ringing. Eamon walked toward them. The underground city was alive. Thousands moved through the streets below. Black armor. Robes. Animals with six legs pulling carts. Blue fire burning atop towers. Eamon stumbled toward an opening and looked outside. His mind refused what he saw. There was no Minnesota.

               No forest.

               No lakes.

               No ridge.

               An enormous valley stretched beneath a violet sky. A black city covered miles of it, its towers piercing clouds. Two moons hung overhead. One was cracked. Thousands of people filled a courtyard beneath him. Every one was kneeling. Toward him. A woman spoke behind him. “You came back.”

               Eamon turned. She was nearly six feet tall, with black hair threaded with gray and a scar running from her temple to her jaw. Blackened armor covered her body. A translucent blade hung at her hip. Her expression destroyed him. She looked at him the way someone looked at a dead husband walking through the front door. “Eamon.”

               “How do you know my name?”

               Her eyes filled. “No.”

               “Who are you?”

               “No.” She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, whatever hope had been there was gone. “My name is Sereth.”

               Eamon raised the black watch. “What is this?”

               She stared at it. “You should never have made that.”

               “Made?”

               “You made it.”

               “I found it on a corpse.”

               “I know.” Sereth touched his face. Eamon recoiled. She lowered her hand. “You always forget me first.” She removed her glove. A gold ring.

               S + E.

               Eamon looked at his empty hand. “What the fuck is happening?”

               “We were married for 73 years.”

               The people called themselves the Vordrathi. At least that was how Eamon understood the word. Sereth brought him through halls carved with histories impossible to reconcile with Earth. Their civilization had existed before the forests. Before the lakes. Before humanity. Perhaps before mammals. They had discovered that time was not movement. It was substance. Everything carried it. Blood remembered youth. Stone remembered mountains. Bones remembered flesh.

               The Vordrathi learned to make things remember. Sereth showed him a dead flower. She whispered something. A servant cut his palm over a silver basin. The flower rose. Its stem became green. Petals unfolded. The servant screamed. His hair turned gray. His skin wrinkled. Teeth fell from his mouth. The flower bloomed. Eamon backed away. “What did you do?”

               “Nothing returns without payment.”

               The servant collapsed, ancient and trembling. “You took his life.”

               “We took his years.”

               The Vordrathi had perfected the process. Buildings could be restored by sacrificing forests. Soldiers resurrected by aging prisoners. Kings preserved by draining generations. Eventually, they discovered the future contained more time than the present. So, they began harvesting civilizations that had not been born. “Our civilization?”

               Sereth nodded. “Among others.”

               Eamon stared at the impossible city. “Why me?”

               “Because you taught us.”

               His stomach tightened. “No.”

               “You came to us carrying the Hour.” She pointed toward the watch. “You showed our priests how to open what should remain closed.”

               “I haven’t done any of that.”

               “You have done all of it.”

               Eamon looked at the nine symbols. One was dark. Eight remained. “What do they mean?”

               Sereth grabbed his wrist. “Do not.”

               “What?”

               “Do not use it again.”

               Something screamed from somewhere beneath the city. Not human. The sound continued far too long. Eamon pulled away. The finger beneath the glass twitched. The world broke.

               Eight.

               Eamon stood beside his truck. Minnesota. Forest. Blue sky. The smell of pine and wet earth. He laughed. Then looked upward. Two moons. “No.” He touched the watch.

               Seven.

               His house. Night. His phone lay on the table. Photographs covered the screen. Eamon and Sereth. At restaurants. On the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Christmas. Sereth asleep beside him. Eamon dropped the phone.

               Six.

               “Daddy!” A little girl ran toward him. Eamon screamed. She stopped.

               Behind her stood a boy perhaps twelve years old. “Dad?”

               There were photographs everywhere. Eamon. Sereth. The children. A family he had never known. The girl began crying. “Daddy?” Eamon touched the watch.

               Five.

               Same house. Abandoned. Dust. Outside, cars rusted along the street. No people. A newspaper lay beneath broken glass.

               MASS DISAPPEARANCES ENTER FOURTH MONTH

               Something enormous moved among the trees beyond the houses. A pine snapped. Then another. Something was walking toward him. Eamon pressed the watch.

               Four.

               Duluth. Except bodies hung from iron frames overlooking Lake Superior. Thousands of them. Machines surrounded each body. Children screamed inside glass chambers. Old men walked free. Young people aged before Eamon’s eyes. The lake had receded far enough to expose miles of black mud. Something enormous had been built upon the newly exposed shore. A throne. Above the city flew banners bearing the faceless ninth figure. Eamon activated the Hour.

               Three.

               He returned to the chamber. Bodies covered the floor. His bodies. Eamon staggered backward. Hundreds. Different ages. Different clothing. One wore armor. One wore clothing made from something resembling silver skin. One was naked and covered in symbols. One wore a spacesuit. An old Eamon grabbed his ankle. Eamon screamed. The old man looked up. Same eyes. “Stop.”

               “What?”

               “Using it.” Blood bubbled from the old man’s mouth.

               “Why?”

               “Because every time you leave…” Something knocked behind one of the sealed doors. Once. The old Eamon began crying. “He gets closer.”

               Another knock. “Who?”

               The old man died. A third knock shook dust from the ceiling. Above the door stood the faceless figure. Eamon understood. Not because anyone told him. Because suddenly he remembered.

               The King Between Seconds.

               The Vordrathi had found him outside time. He did not exist yesterday. He would not exist tomorrow. He existed between. Every moment was a wall. Every second another locked door. Time travel forced two moments together. For an instant, the wall opened. And something waiting outside could move closer. Eamon looked at the watch. Three symbols. “No.” He threw it. The watch struck stone. The finger moved.

               Two.

               Sereth waited beside a fire. She was ancient. Eamon stared. “How long?”

               “For me?” She smiled sadly. “Long enough.”

               “Tell me how to stop it.”

               “You die.” Eamon said nothing. “Not somewhere else. Not somewhen else. You die here. Anchored to one moment.”

               “Then kill me.”

               “I have.”

               Sereth laughed. There was no humor in it. “I poisoned you once. Burned you twice. I cut your throat while you slept. Once I removed your head.”

               “Apparently not very fucking well.”

               “The Hour activates when you die.”

               “Then destroy it.”

               “I have.” She pointed toward his hand. Eamon looked down. The watch was there. “You built it to survive you.”

               “I didn’t build this.”

               “You will.”

               “No.”

               “You already did.”

               Eamon shook his head. “There had to be a first time.”

               “No.”

               “Someone made it.”

               “You.”

               “Then there was a first me.”

               Sereth stared at him. “That is what you never understand.” She moved closer. “There is no first Eamon anymore.” The fire bent sideways. “You traveled backward before you invented the Hour. Then forward after you died. Then backward before you were born. Eventually cause and consequence stopped applying to you.” She touched his chest. “You have lived millions of years.”

               “I’m 39.”

               “Sometimes.” The earth trembled. A knock came from nowhere. Sereth drew her sword. The blade looked like glass filled with smoke. “Please.”

               Eamon understood what she wanted. “Will I remember you?”

               “No.”

               “Is there anything after?”

               “I don’t know.”

               Eamon laughed softly. “That’s comforting.”

               “I have lied to you before.”

               “Why?”

               “Because sometimes it made you stay.”

               Another knock. Closer. Sereth raised the sword. Eamon looked at her ring. “Did I love you?”

               Her face collapsed. “Every time.”

               Eamon closed his eyes. “Do it.”

               The sword entered beneath his ribs. Cold first. Then pain. Eamon fell against her. Sereth held him. The watch slipped from his hand. One symbol remained. Sereth brought her boot down. The glass shattered. The tiny finger beneath it curled. Eamon felt himself dying. For the first time, he did nothing. Sereth whispered against his ear. “I will find you somewhere.”

               Darkness came.

               Eamon opened his eyes. His bedroom. He stared at the ceiling. Morning light. His clock read 6:14am. Eamon sat up. No armor. No sword wound. No watch. He looked at his hands. No ring. He began laughing. A ridiculous, breathless laugh. Dream. Some spectacular neurological disaster of a dream, but a dream. He reached for his phone. 6:14am. Monday. September 14. Normal. Eamon wiped tears from his face. “Holy shit.” The clock changed.

               6:14:01.

               He swung his legs from the bed.

               6:14:02.

               Something bothered him.

               6:14:03.

               The television across the room was off. Its black screen reflected the bed. Eamon. The window. And something standing behind him. He stopped breathing.

               6:14:04.

               It was tall enough that its head nearly touched the ceiling. Black robes hung from a body too narrow to contain organs. A crown rose from its head. There was no face beneath it.

               6:14:05.

               Eamon tried to turn. He could not. The reflection moved. Long arms unfolded.

               6:14:06.

               The King bent toward him. Eamon finally understood. The Hour had never counted his lives. It had counted the distance. Nine openings. Nine doors. Nine steps into the world. The final symbol had not meant one life remaining. It meant one second. The clock changed.

               6:14:07.

               Eamon’s alarm rang. Every clock on Earth stopped. For one impossible instant, there was no next second. No future. No movement. Nothing separating one moment from another. And in that endless space between ticks, something knocked from the other side of time.