The Grandfather Clock
Dawn Newgate sat in the front passenger seat of her husband's Volvo, watching him lock the front door of their nineteenth century saltbox in Puritan Falls for the final time.
"I left the key under the welcome mat for the real estate agent," Richard announced as he got behind the wheel.
Dawn turned her head to the window so he would not see the tears in her eyes. She loved both the old house and the quaint seaside village where she had been born and raised. The idea of leaving them broke her heart, but Richard had been offered a professorship in the College of William and Mary's history department, an excellent career opportunity that necessitated the move to Williamsburg, Virginia.
"Having second thoughts?" her husband asked as he put the car in reverse and began backing out of the driveway.
"No, not really," she replied without conviction. "I'm sure I'll get used to living in the South."
"It's Virginia, a distance of about five hundred miles. It's not as though we were moving to Mississippi or Alabama."
Unlike his wife, Richard was not attached to the house, to the town or even to the New England area. A dedicated scholar, he was only truly at home in an academic environment: a classroom, a library or a lecture hall.
They picked up I-95 near Peabody and traveled south through the most densely populated and congested areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland. When they passed through the nation's capital and into Virginia, Dawn heaved a sigh of relief. After stopping for a late lunch in historic Fredericksburg, they headed for Richmond where they picked up I-64 and headed east.
"We're almost there," Richard informed his wife as he turned off the interstate at Exit 75.
It was a relatively short drive along the Colonial Parkway to the housing development where Richard had purchased a unit through a local real estate agent.
"Here it is," he announced as he pulled into the driveway.
Although Dawn would always consider the saltbox in Puritan Falls her true home, she had to admit that the two-story brick colonial in Williamsburg was a beautiful house.
"It looks like the movers have already been here," Richard observed.
While the interior of the place was as splendid as the exterior, the couple's antique furniture that had filled the cozy saltbox seemed sparse and inadequate in the considerably larger dwelling.
"I'm going to have to buy a few more chairs, an end table or two or perhaps another bookshelf," Dawn mused as she sized up the living room.
"What's wrong with leaving things the way they are?" her husband asked.
"Too much empty space."
Richard shook his head. Keen to begin his new job, he did not want to waste his time debating the matter.
"I'm going to walk over to the college and introduce myself to the rest of the history department's faculty," he announced. "Can you handle things here by yourself?"
"Sure, professor," his wife answered. "I'll tackle the unpacking, but first I want to go to Food Lion and stock up on groceries."
"Just don't bury us under a mountain of debt, okay?" Richard teased.
"I'm not making any promises."
After her husband left, Dawn went grocery shopping and then spent the rest of the afternoon emptying boxes and putting away the last of the clothing, books and household items. While she was arranging framed photographs and brass candlesticks on the fireplace mantel, she remembered that she had to put the chicken in the oven at three o'clock if she wanted it done in time for dinner. She wasn't wearing her watch, so she had to go into the kitchen to see what time it was.
"We have all this empty space," she remarked. "I ought to put a clock in this room."
A mantel clock would have been nice, she thought, but it would mean relocating the photographs. It then occurred to her that she could kill two birds with one stone—to use an old cliché—by buying a grandfather clock.
* * *
Dawn heard the tinkling of the overhead bell as she entered the door to Tidewater Antiques. The shop encompassed the first two floors of a rambling Victorian mansion, and Dawn, like a kid at Disneyland, was eager to take it all in. After carefully examining a milk glass pitcher and bowl, she haggled over a hurricane lamp but decided the piece was worth the price being asked. She was about to call it a day and return home, when she spotted a grandfather clock behind a dressmaker's form.
The antique dealer, sensing a possible sale, asked, "That's a beauty, isn't it?"
A savvy bargain-hunter, Dawn didn't want to appear too eager.
"It's not exactly what I had in mind," she lied, downplaying her interest.
"This is an Abraham Dutton eight-day movement long case clock, circa 1830, with a rolling moon face and mahogany case."
After hearing his sales pitch, Dawn asked the inevitable question: "What do you want for it?"
"A clock like this would normally set you back about three thousand, but this one is on consignment, and the owner wants us to sell it as quickly as possible. I'm willing to let it go for twelve hundred."
The price was more than a fair one, and Dawn had been willing to spend up to fifteen hundred for a good clock. Still, it was not in her nature to pay the asking price without trying to negotiate a better deal.
"I'll give you a thousand," she offered.
"Sold," the man agreed, reaching for Dawn's credit card.
* * *
The clock was delivered the following day, and Dawn had the deliverymen put it in the corner of the living room. After tipping the men and showing them out, she returned to the living room to examine the clock.
"There's not a mark on it," she pronounced with satisfaction.
She opened the cabinet door, set the clock and wound it. The steady tick-tock, tick-tock was a pleasant sound in the quiet room, much more soothing than the constant droning of the air conditioner or the occasional thrmmm of the refrigerator.
With the grandfather clock in place, Dawn returned to the manuscript she was editing for a small children's book publisher. She was halfway through the second chapter when the tick-tock, tick-tock of the grandfather clock began to lull her to sleep. She stood, stretched and downed a can of Coke, but the caffeine did little to counteract the soporific effect of the ticking clock.
As the minute and hour hands were approaching the final stretch of their slow but steady race to the number twelve, Dawn's head nodded and she fell asleep. The Westminster Quarters played. Then the noon hour began to toll ....
Through the veil of her dream, Dawn realized with a jolt that something was drastically wrong. Not only was her custom molding and wainscoting no longer on the wall, but her living room had shrunk considerably in size.
Where am I? she thought as she tried to take in the unfamiliar surroundings.
She felt no fear, just a profound sense of wonder possibly because in the corner of her mind that was still firmly rooted in logic she knew it was all a dream.
Dawn's thoughts were interrupted when a group of men wearing the blue uniforms of Civil War era Union soldiers burst through the door.
"Mrs. Mary Surratt," one of the men addressed her. "We have a few questions we'd like to ask you concerning the shooting of the president."
Dawn's heart rate increased dramatically. Why was she dreaming about Mary Surratt, a woman accused of and executed for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln?
"I ... I'm not Mary Surratt," she claimed. "My name is Dawn Newgate. I'm from Puritan Falls, Massachusetts. My husband is a history professor at the College of William and Mary."
The words formed in her mind but they never passed her lips.
While the military investigators were questioning Mary Surratt, a man carrying a pickaxe entered the Surratt boarding house.
"Who are you?" one of the soldiers demanded to know.
"I'm Lewis Paine. Mrs. Surratt hired me to dig a gutter."
"Before God, sir, I do not know this man and have never seen him, and I did not hire him to dig a gutter for me."
Even as Mrs. Surratt's denial echoed through her brain, the young woman from Puritan Falls knew the words to be a lie. Mary had been acquainted with Lewis Paine, also known as Lewis Powell, who had been to her house on several occasions.
While the presence of Mr. Paine planted doubt in the investigators' minds, it was a small photograph found hiding behind a calling card on the fireplace mantel that cultivated the seed into fully grown suspicion. It was a photograph of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who had shot President Lincoln.
Fearing certain arrest, Mary Surratt fell to her knees and began to pray ....
Dawn stirred and, upon opening her eyes, saw her own living room walls, wainscoting and all. She raised her head and ran her fingers through her hair. When she looked up at the grandfather clock, she saw that it was only two. At least she hadn't slept the afternoon away, she thought gratefully.
"That was some dream!" she exclaimed.
Then she retrieved the manuscript and red pen and went back to work.
* * *
"Why on earth would you dream about Mary Surratt?" Richard asked her before they went to bed that night.
Dawn shrugged.
"What was that manuscript you were editing?"
"It wasn't a history book, if that's what you're wondering. It was a mystery about a dog named Sherlock and a cat named Miss Watson."
"It sounds fascinating," her husband claimed sarcastically.
"It is. Not all books have to be about the American Revolution, the Reformation or the rise of the Third Reich."
Richard silenced his wife with a goodnight kiss. Then he turned off the light on his night table, closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.
Unlike her husband, Dawn was wide awake, so she picked up her James Patterson novel and read a few chapters. When her eyes began to feel heavy, she put the book down and turned off the lamp. Listening to the calming tick-tock, tick-tock of the grandfather clock, her breathing slowed. As though from a great distance, she heard the Westminster Quarters toll the midnight hour ....
This second trip to Morpheus' realm took her inside the old arsenal where a military tribunal had been convened to try the eight people charged with conspiring to assassinate Lincoln. Mary Surratt had been in custody aboard a warship since her arrest, where, despite the sweltering conditions, she was kept manacled and her head enclosed in a padded canvas bag to prevent a possible suicide attempt. With only a straw pallet and a bucket in her cell, she suffered greatly during her confinement.
The eight defendants stirred uneasily as the charges and specifications were read. Said charges and specifications, signed by the Judge Advocate General of the Army, by order of the President of the United States, charged Mary E. Surratt and her seven fellow conspirators as being enemy belligerents who had committed offenses against the law.
The room and its occupants faded momentarily but then coalesced again. A man, later identified as Louis J. Weichmann, was questioned by the prosecution. His testimony was particularly damning for Mrs. Surratt since he claimed that John Wilkes Booth had gone to the Surratt boarding house on several occasions, where he spoke in private with Mrs. Surratt. Most incriminating of all was his contention that Booth had spoken with Mary on April 14, the very day of the assassination.
Dawn wanted to scream but was unable to utter a sound, for she was a prisoner of her dream as much as Mary Surratt was a prisoner of the United States government.
The one hundred and thirty years that separated Dawn's time from Mrs. Surratt's quickly vanished when Dawn heard Richard shouting her name. Her husband suddenly came running up the stairs and into the bedroom.
"Where were you?" he asked. "I woke up, and you were gone."
"Don't be silly. I was sound asleep."
"Then you must have been walking in your sleep because the bed was empty."
* * *
When Dawn went down to breakfast the following morning, her eyes were red and puffy.
"Is your hay fever acting up?" Richard asked as he poured her a cup of coffee.
"No. My sinuses are clear. I just didn't sleep well last night."
"Must have been all that sleepwalking. You know, I still can't figure out where you disappeared to. I checked the bathroom, the kitchen and the living room."
"Maybe I walked into the closet," she suggested.
"I suppose so. It's big enough," he concluded and then promptly downed his orange juice and left for work.
Only after drinking two more cups of strong coffee did Dawn have the energy to go up to her bedroom and make the bed. She finally got dressed but didn't bother putting on makeup or fussing with her hair. She was far too tired to care how she looked.
"Time for one last cup of coffee," she declared, taking a detour into the kitchen as she made her way to the living room.
For the next two hours, Dawn read through The Adventures of Sherlock and Miss Watson, correcting the author's errors in grammar, usage and mechanics. She didn't realize she'd laid the pen down or that she had closed her eyes, but by the time the clock struck twelve, she was again fast asleep ....
She was back at the old arsenal. The government's prosecutor was questioning tavern keeper John Lloyd whose testimony did more to condemn Mary Surratt than Weichmann's had. According to Lloyd, Mary's son, John, had appeared at the tavern five to six weeks prior to the assassination in the company of accused conspirators David Herold and George Atzerodt. The three men dropped off two carbines, ammunition, rope and a monkey wrench, which they asked Lloyd to conceal for them. According to Lloyd, on the day Lincoln was shot, Mary Surratt met him at his home and asked that he have the shooting irons ready that night because someone would call for them. She also left a field glass wrapped in paper and requested that Lloyd have two bottles of whiskey ready for the callers. That midnight, only hours after the shooting in Ford's Theater, David Herold and John Wilkes Booth showed up at the tavern, announcing that they had assassinated the president and Secretary of State William H. Seward.
Dawn felt Mary's mounting horror as the case against her was becoming cemented. Unlike Mary, though, Dawn would eventually wake to the safety and security of her two-story brick colonial. All she had to do was remain calm ....
The insistent ringing of the telephone brought Dawn out of her bizarre dream of the past and back to the time of text messaging, speed dating and astronomical gas prices.
"Hello, Mrs. Newgate," a high-pitched female voice with a pronounced southern accent intoned. "I'm calling to let you know that your family has been selected to receive digital cable for the introductory offer of only $59.95 a month ...."
For the first time in her life, the young editor wasn't annoyed by the intrusion of a telemarketer.
* * *
Shortly after 9:00 p.m., Dawn announced that she was going to turn in early. Yet despite her good intentions to get some much needed rest, once her head hit the pillow she couldn't fall asleep. Rather than read the latest Alex Cross novel, she went to the closet and took out her laptop.
After googling MARY SURRATT TRIAL, she was able to find a website that contained the transcript recorded by chief stenographic reporter Benn Pitman and commissioned by the War Department. A shiver shook her body as she read through both Weichmann's and Lloyd's testimony, both of which matched that given in her dream verbatim.
How could I have known, even in my subconscious mind, what those two men said more than one hundred and thirty years ago? she wondered. Even though I married a history professor, I never had much of an interest in American history myself. I certainly never read any books or watched any television specials on Lincoln's assassination or the conspiracy trial that followed it.
"You're still awake?" her husband asked, popping his head through the bedroom door on the way to his study.
"I couldn't sleep," she laughed.
Richard entered the room and smiled the boyish crooked grin he reserved for his wife, a sign that the brilliant young scholar had something other than history on his mind. Dawn shut down her computer and put it back in the closet, temporarily forgetting about Mary Surratt, Abraham Lincoln and the bizarre dreams she'd been having.
* * *
Dawn lay sleeping in her husband's arms, feeling warm, secure and loved. Richard stirred beside her, and her eyes briefly fluttered open. The Westminster Quarters pealed and the hour tolled, signifying the actual start of a new day. With the last strike of midnight, the young woman was yanked out of a pleasant dream centered in her beloved Massachusetts village and propelled through time and space back to Washington, D.C., in 1865.
Dawn, psychically bound to Mary Surratt, was standing on unsteady legs, supported by her attorney as the verdict was read.
"After mature consideration of the evidence adduced in the case of the accused, Mary E. Surratt, the Commission find the said accused of the specification: guilty."
Mary was deeply shaken by the verdict but remained optimistic about the sentence. She was a woman, after all, and the court would likely show leniency. Besides, her crime was not one of murder but of conspiracy. It's not as though she had gone to Ford's Theater and shot President Lincoln herself. Most of the people following the trial shared Mary's opinion. Surely the government would not execute a woman! The sentence, therefore, took everyone by surprise.
"And the Commission do, therefore sentence her, the said Mary E. Surratt, to be hanged by the neck until she be dead, at such time and place as the President of the United States shall direct; two-thirds of the members of the Commission concurring therein."
Brrrr brrrr brrrr the alarm clock blared on her husband's night table, sparing Dawn having to endure Mary's reaction to the crushing blow when the sentence was pronounced.
"It can't be 4:30 already!" Richard moaned.
"Honey, is that you?" Dawn asked sleepily.
"Who else would it be?" he laughed.
"What time is it?"
"It's early yet. I have a breakfast meeting with the dean this morning. Why don't you go back to sleep. You could use it."
She mumbled something unintelligible and then drifted back to a peaceful, dreamless slumber.
* * *
Dawn didn't get out of bed until after ten. When she did, she put on her robe and headed downstairs with her laptop case slung over her shoulder. While Windows was loading, she poured her coffee and then sat at the table and ate her breakfast while she read through the Google results for MARY SURRATT.
She swallowed the last of her coffee and was about to shut down her computer when she came across a site with photographs, circa 1905, of the Mary Surratt house. Although of a slightly more modern period, the living room in the picture was eerily similar to the room in Dawn's first dream.
"There's the door where the soldiers and Lewis Paine entered and the mantel where John Wilkes Booth's photograph was found, and there's ...."
Dawn felt as though her veins had been flushed with ice water, and she began to shake uncontrollably. In the corner of Mary Surratt's living room was the Abraham Dutton long case clock.
"That's the connection!" she exclaimed. "The clock must be causing me to go back and experience Mary Surratt's arrest and trial."
A sudden terror overcame her.
"What if the clock has the power to ...?"
The Westminster Quarters sounded from the living room, the four quarters indicating the noon hour. Then it began to toll.
One, two, three ....
"I have to stop that clock before it tolls twelve."
Four, five, six ....
She pushed back from the table, sending the kitchen chair tumbling backward in her rush.
Seven, eight, nine ....
As she raced toward the living room, she slid on the small throw rug in the hallway and fell to the floor.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
It was the first time Mary's and Dawn's thoughts and emotions were one and the same.
"No, no, no," the two women whimpered in one voice.
"I'm afraid there's been no word from the president," the grim-faced man in the Federal uniform spoke. "I'm sorry, but I don't believe a pardon or a commutation of sentence is forthcoming."
A Catholic priest was led into the prison cell to pray with Mary during her time of tribulation.
Just after 1:00 p.m. the nearly fainting Mary Surratt and the three other condemned prisoners were led in chains through the courtyard, past their own newly dug graves, to the gallows. Mrs. Surratt, dressed in a voluminous black gown and veil, had to be supported by two soldiers as she mounted the thirteen steps to the ten-foot-high platform.
The prisoners were seated in chairs while their chains were removed and their wrists, arms, ankles and thighs bound with white cloth. Dawn shared Mary's terror as a hood was put over her head and the noose placed around her neck. General Winfield Scott Hancock read the death sentences and then clapped his hands three times, a signal for the release of the platform.
Mrs. Surratt fell roughly six feet, not a distance sufficient to break her neck. The poor woman bounced up as the rope went taut and then writhed and gagged for a few seconds, trying to free her hands. Mercifully, she quickly became still except for a twitching of her hands that continued for several minutes.
* * *
Richard came home from school early that day, wanting to surprise his wife by taking her out to dinner. As he unlocked the door and walked inside, he immediately noticed the silence. There was no TV or radio playing, no sound of Dawn typing at her keyboard or even the tick-tock, tick-tock of the grandfather clock, which seemed to have stopped at twelve o'clock.
"Dawn?" he called but there was no answer.
Richard searched the house and yard but found no sign of his wife. He went back to the kitchen where he found her coffee mug, half-filled with cold coffee, and her laptop. He moved his index finger over the computer's touchpad, and the screensaver disappeared.
"What's this?" he asked as he looked at the last website Dawn had visited.
When he saw the photograph of the Surratt house, he didn't pay particular attention to the details and thus failed to notice the grandfather clock that had once marked the passage of time in Mary's living room.
* * *
Lorelei Garland gazed with surprise at the antique clock her husband had given her as an anniversary gift.
"It's beautiful!" she exclaimed. "Where did you get it?"
"I bought it from one of the professors at the college. I got a good price on it because he wasn't sure if it worked properly. He confessed he hasn't wound it since ...."
"Since when?"
"It was his wife's clock, and she disappeared three years ago."
"Disappeared?"
"The poor guy came home from work one day, and she wasn't there. No one's seen her since. I assume she either ran off with someone or else she's dead and buried somewhere."
Lorelei shivered. She didn't want to dwell on the fact that her anniversary gift had once belonged to a woman who might have been murdered.
"Let's wind it up and see if it works," her husband suggested, hoping that should the clock not work, it wouldn't cost him too much to have it repaired.
He opened the cabinet door, wound the clock and set the hands to the proper time.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Lorelei Garland smiled, blissfully unaware that when the Abraham Dutton eight-day movement long case clock's Westminster Quarters sounded at midnight they would toll her impending doom.
My grandfather's clock has a bizarre effect on Salem: whenever it chimes, he runs to the kitchen to eat.
