A moment before the din of hundreds of bells joined in unison to knell and rip him from his sleep, Ethan Pyle felt the tower shudder within his dreams.
“Don’t turn on the lamp next to your chair, Ethan,” Cedrick’s voice spoke in the dark. “I’m sorry you’ll not find any real sleep tonight in my office. But keep the lights off. No need to make it any easier for any of them to see us so high in this tower. All the interlopers are coming out in droves now, and every one of them is ringing a bell.”
The cold squeezed Ethan’s breath as he moved to the window. He dreaded to consider how far the temperature must have fallen outside. But the knell of so many bells sounded crisp and clean in the chilled and thin wind.
“Your face tells me you sense the dread, no matter if your eyes have yet to truly recognize it.” Much of the fire again burned in Cedrick’s eyes. “Here are the binoculars if you’re brave enough to look into those lenses.”
Something pleaded in Ethan not to peer into those binoculars. Only, he was tired of glimpsing only fleeting faces all week when he was so certain trespassers surrounded him. Ethan wanted to look squarely on those interlopes so that uncertainty no longer festered in his heart.
Ethan gasped when he focussed those lenses upon what gathered below the tower.
The man who had earlier in the afternoon delivered Clavius Turner’s letter appeared in good health in comparison to his comrades who shuffled out of the warehouses to the ringing of the bells. Many sported ragged and wet bandages of recent leg amputations as they hobbled towards the tower with the support of canes and crutches. Many others lacked arms, ringing bells with the hand that remained to them. All of those marching to the tower dressed in such ragged garb looked to have lost some piece of themselves. Toothless grins smiled into Ethan’s binoculars. Terrible, sunken wounds marked where noses had been. Ethan’s stomach turned as he saw many among that crowd were missing arms and legs entire, those shunted individuals carried by their brethren upon canvas litters, or pulled upon carts and wagons scavenged from the warehouses. Those who lacked both their arms and their legs swayed their heads and rattled the bells suspended by their necklaces so that they too contributed to that cacophony of chimes.
“I suspect Clavius Turner asked for only a little from such fools at first,” Cedrick whispered into Ethan’s ear. “His is such a terrible charm, though, and the day likely arrived in that cold when those gathered in my warehouses were willing to give Clavius Turner anything he desired. Anything and everything.”
Ethan crawled to another of the chamber’s windows and again peeked through the binoculars.
“You’re not going to see him, Ethan,” Cedrick knew his grandson now shared his obsession with that boogieman named Clavius Turner. “We could give him our tower. We could give him everything. And still, we’d not see him.”
“We’d see only flashes. Only glimpses of his terrible face.”
Cedrick nodded at Ethan’s words. “The bells grow louder. They’re agitated now. I think Clavius Turner is about to reveal what he wants us to see.”
A dozen men pulled the roughly thirty foot spire towards the tower. The eyes had been torn out of the dark sockets of each man who leaned against the corroded chains of that spire’s locomotion. Such men pulled that spire’s framework blindly, guided only by the chiming of the throng’s bells. The peek of the long spire tapered towards the tower. The spire’s surface appeared too white beneath the dim streetlights of Mr. Pyle’s yard, and Ethan thought something burning within the spire provided it an independent incandescence.
Ethan better focussed the binoculars upon the spire and felt what air remained in his lungs freeze. Bone covered every inch of that spire’s surface. Fibula bones, femur bones, pelvis bones, ribcages and vertebrae adhered to the spire without pattern. The blind men on the chains pulled the spire directly beneath a streetlight, and Ethan looked upon skulls that randomly accented the spire’s decoration. Ethan could not rip his eyes out from the binoculars’ lenses. He knew that the crowd had supplied every bone set into that spire. He could not resist imagining the rituals which ruled the ceremonies responsible for gathering such pieces, the terrible sacrifices conducted for the gathering of such skulls. Ethan could think of no purpose for the creation of such a spire that did not originate from a dark and cruel world of superstition and blasphemy.
“I cannot let Clavius Turner cap my tower with such a wicked thing,” Cedrick hissed. “There’s no telling what such a spire might attract if set upon this tower’s height. Who knows what that spire might summon from the heavens or from hell. It’s too late to save the tower, but I’m not going to let it fall into Clavius Turner’s hands.”
Ethan thought Cedrick’s eyes must have looked like small, floating flames to those who ringing the bells chiming at the base of the tower.
“Get my rifle from the safe, Ethan.”
Ethan grabbed Cedrick's favorite hunting rifle from the safe, knowing his grandfather’s intentions the moment the old man requested the weapon. Ethan held on to no foolish faith that his grandfather cold resist the intentions of that crowd gathering with their bells at the tower’s base. He had always suspected the intense burning in Cedrick’s eyes was linked to the tower, that his grandfather would perish the day his tower toppled.
Ethan felt proud of Cedrick as he handed his grandfather the rifle. Cedrick would resist. Somehow, Ethan knew that resistance was enough to thwart Clavius Turner’s designs.
“Hurry now, son,” Cedrick shouted over the ringing bells between the roars of his rifle. “Get out while you can. I doubt any of those outside will notice your escape. It’s my tower they want. Clavius Turner and his brood are not going to take their eyes off of it.”
Ethan felt the the first, terrible shudder half-way down the winding stairs. The tower leaned violently to a side and nearly tossed Ethan, head-first, down the remaining steps. The ringing of the bells continued and grew louder, interrupted by the echoes of Cedrick’s rifle. Somewhere beneath such a din, Ethan thought he heard the gnawing of teeth scraping below his feet, the sound of monsters undermining the tower’s foundation.
Ethan crossed the threshold as rubble crashed around his shoulders. He stumbled as the earth shook beneath him. He prayed the tower might not fall on top of him. He darted into the cold wind. A roar filled his ears. Dust scraped at his eyes. Ethan felt a blow upon the back of his neck and fell into darkness.