Chapter 9: The False Drum

Mickey walked across the dining room and took the brass cylinder out of Vin's hand.

It was the size of a shot glass, with a screw cap.

Inside it was nothing but a smell of old clock oil.

"You opened it without me," he said.

"You were asleep."

"You had a rule, remember? 'When something scares you, tell me before you handle it alone.' That was your rule. For me."

Vin set the screwdriver down on the tablecloth very carefully.

"Yes," he said.

"So what scared you?"

Vin was quiet a moment.

"That it would be empty," he said. "And you'd be standing there when it was."

That took the fight out of Mickey faster than he wanted.

He pulled a barstool over and sat in front of the clock.

"Light," he said.

Vin swung the bar lamp down over it without being told twice.

Mickey looked at the clock.

Not at what's there. At what somebody did to it.

The movement was good German brass, a hundred years old, two mainspring barrels side by side.

Barrels are the drums the springs coil in.

A clock like this has two of them, one for the time and one for the strike.

The left one was real.

He could see the spring through the arbor hole, tight and brown with old oil.

The right one was the cylinder in his hand.

It looked like a barrel from the front, with the right teeth on its rim.

But it was hollow, a false drum, with a little cap where a spring should've been.

"He built it," Mickey said.

"My dad. This is his work. Look at the cap threads. Nobody cuts threads that fine anymore. He cut those by hand."

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