The Jesus Clock

a ghost story

Jonathan was visiting his sister. She lived in a flat in what had once been a large family home, and then a guest house catering to families taking their holidays by the sea in the 1950s. Now it was just a rather shabby block of flats, the sort of place with greying carpet in the hall and bills piled up for all to see on a table by the front door.

Jonathan was worried about his sister. Her name was Janet and she collected things, obsessively, accruing them from charity shops. She was what was once described as "soft in the head"; Jonathan wasn't au fait with her particular diagnosis, deliberately so. She looked and to an untrained listener sounded normal, and had been beautiful in her youth. But now she was middle-aged and living off her brother. She'd have been happy to claim welfare, but he felt an odd responsibility for her.

She was making him uncomfortable, though. Her latest obsession was religious paraphernalia. A large square "Jesus clock" sat on the mantelpiece behind a brace of electric candles. The clock depicted the Messiah in bold, primary colours, arms outspread towards wall-eyed sheep (a catchphrase of his teenage daughter, "braindead sheeple", occurred to Jonathan). Christ's own eyes held that faraway look that they do in portraits, staring beyond the observer and even the scene about them towards, you suppose, some everlasting truth.

'Good, isn't it?' said Janet, bringing in a tray with two mugs of tea and a packet of biscuits. She set it precariously atop a pile of women's magazines on the coffee table. Jonathan quickly relieved the leaning structure of a mug. He made a noise of non-commital assent. 'Have you seen your social worker?'

Janet flapped a hand at him. 'Janny...' he said, using a childhood nickname.

'I will, Jonny' she said, 'just not now, okay? I'm still missing Mike.' Jonathan was careful to not roll his eyes. Mike was a local leech, seventeen years her junior, who'd attached himself to her for cigarettes, drink, and occasional shelter. He was also a druggie, and Jonathan worried that he'd been giving her something more than the pleasure of his company. Imagining that long streak of wasted flesh mounting his middle-aged sister just for a place to sleep and some tobacco was bad enough.

If he’d been filling her with drugs as well… It was pathetically easy to get the better of a smackhead. He pictured himself wearing gloves to beat him senseless, the emaciated twenty-something’s skinny neck barely supporting his head.

Jonathan drank his tea and looked at Janet. She was staring at the Jesus clock. At first, he thought that this was her rather rude way of getting him to leave, but observing her expression he noticed a worrying rapture about it.

'I got it from the big St Helena's' she said, not looking at him. 'It belonged to an anthropologist who brought it back from Brazil. According to the locals, if you light five candles before it it opens a door for the saints to come through and hear your prayers. The church doesn't like it, though. Says it's devilry, as likely to bring forth Pazuzu as Saint Paul.'

She giggled. He made a mental note to liaise with her counsellor and arrange a welfare check when he went back to London.

***

He was in the area partly on business, and since staying at his sister's was cheaper than a hotel, that's what he did. He planned to return in the morning, but now it was gone midnight and a strange rattling from the living room was keeping him awake. He figured that it was the ancient radiator and, sighing, got up to smoke a cigarette on his sister's balcony.

On his way there he went to check the living room to see if his sister had gone to bed or fallen asleep on the couch, and on opening the door was startled. He dropped his cigarettes and almost yelped in surprise, eyes widening. The moonlight through the uncurtained window struck the Jesus clock, and something about Christ's downturned face struck Jonathan.

The figure looked as though its neck was broken, perhaps in an accident, and the candles - all lit - were placed around it in memoriam. The sheep in this bizarre tableau were like pallbearers, blindly bearing the dead unfortunate. The eyes appeared both dead and sinister, perhaps because of the mouth, which in daylight expressed the paternal calm peculiar to painted Christs. But in the light of a full moon on a balmy night, it seemed cruel and mocking.

'You're soft too, you know...' His sister's voice. He jumped. Turning, he saw his sister standing there in her loose dressing gown, under which it was painfully clear she wore nothing. 'Jesus' he said, and she wrinkled her nose at his blasphemy. 'What do you mean, I'm soft?'

She blinked at him. 'Soft? I asked what you were doing now. You've been up and about all night.'

'No I haven't' he said. 'It's only midnight, anyway. I just wanted to have a fag on your balcony.' He looked at her and felt a revulsion that he then felt guilty for. With her long dank hair, made up mostly of split ends, crooked teeth, sagging breasts, and potbelly, raddled with cellulite, she looked like what their granny would have called a slattern. What a charitable thought to have about your sister, Jonathan scolded himself, and walked through the kitchen to the balcony, before which an oak tree stood, outspreading its branches like Christ with His arms.

He stood there smoking and thinking about Janet's last breakdown, whether or not he'd be able to drop everything and support her if it came to it. He had a remarkably tolerant wife, but he still sometimes worried that maybe he was devoting more attention to his sister than his children. Janet was, after all, an adult. If only she'd agree to move to London with him, where he could set her up in a nice flat and keep an eye on her. But something kept her tethered to their home town.

***

The last breakdown had been a bad one. Jonathan dreamt about it in fits and starts when he went back to bed. She'd been found in a shelter on the seafront, naked and with cuts down both arms, clutching a book of common prayer that had belonged to their father. He saw himself standing there, watching her as she thrashed about on a bench below the concrete canopy, the early-morning sun still rising behind him. He wanted to help her but was rooted to the spot.

In one of her convulsions, he saw that she was no longer clutching the book of prayer, but instead a square glass ornament. And on looking closer he saw the face of Christ with a maddening calm, almost amused with patriarchal tolerance of what His daughter was doing to herself...

***

The next morning he woke around ten, much later than he’d wanted to, and on walking to the kitchen for some coffee heard a knocking on the door. He opened it to find Mike standing there in a baseball cap and sports fleece, like a caricature of an underclass scrounger. ‘Let you out, did they?’ said Jonathan.

‘Gimme a break, big brother’ said Mike, with a hand on his heart and what he supposed was a cheeky-but-charming grin.

‘I’m not your brother’ said Jonathan, who then grunted and walked away. As he prepared his coffee he heard Janet’s squeal of excitement and Mike’s ‘alright, little girl, where’s your mum, then?’ Protected from his sister’s gaze, this time he did roll his eyes. What did she see in him? She might be soft, but she wasn’t stupid. She must know that he’s using her. And it wasn’t as if she was beyond bagging a respectable man. She might be forty-five and overweight, but someone her age would have her, surely? Or at least someone young who wasn’t a smackhead.

He walked into the living room sipping his coffee. Mike had noticed the clock. ‘Gordon Bennet’ he said, ‘I can’t have that here, I wouldn’t feel right getting up to no good!’

‘Lucky you’re not staying then’ said Jonathan as he lowered himself onto the sofa.

‘Who says he’s not staying? It’s my flat’ said Janet. Jonathan could have retorted that it was actually his, given that he paid for it, but he didn’t.

***

It was six months later that the Mike situation came to an end. He received a call from her social worker, informing him that Mike had been arrested on suspicion of assaulting a friend’s teenage daughter at a house party. Jonathan put his head in one of his hands and groaned. Where is she now, he asked, referring to Janet.

She was in the hospital, resting. The incident had brought on another episode. She’d also started taking comfort in resumed church attendance, and her social worker had encouraged her to take a pet once she was strong enough.

Janet had always liked animals. Her weakness had been cats, but a few months after her hospital stay she settled on a rabbit that she kept in a hutch in the spare room, which some friends had helped her to convert into a light and airy space for the fluffy little creature to gambol about in.

The next time Jonathan visited he used his own key to enter and found her knelt in front of the Jesus clock, praying, three rabbits wiggling their noses and hopping about her.

The scene was disconcerting. She wore a black veil like an Italian widow. ‘More rabbits, I see’ he said. She didn’t answer at first, just carried on praying. She stood, made the sign of the cross, and turned to him. ‘They keep me company’ she said, ‘just like He does.’

***

He’d ended up all but begging her to come back to London with him. ‘Maybe’ she said in the end, which is more than she’d ever said previously, so even if it was non-committal he considered it a massive boon. Give it a year and she’d be safely ensconced in a nice little flat near him and his family. She might even get a part-time job helping out at a charity concern, like she’d had long ago.

He had such plans for his sister if only he could get her away from this godforsaken town with its ghettoes of bedsits and beachfront hotels, packed tight with the cases that other councils had given up on.

Janet rested her head on Jonathan’s shoulder as they watched a trashy talent show on TV. Her eyes were moist with tears. ‘I’m sorry’ she said. ‘I’m such a burden.’

He held her hand. ‘You’re my sister’ he said, and chuckled. ‘I’d be as lost without you as you are without me.’

That night he slept on the couch. He heard the rattling again and checked the radiator, which wasn’t even on. He frowned, then turned to the mantelpiece and locked eyes with Christ behind His electric footlights. Something about that damned thing creeped him out. He went over to it and switched off the lights one by one, watching His face as it fell to darkness.

***

Jonathan was in his office, a glass and chromium affair a million miles from home and childhood when the social worker called. He answered in his business voice, expecting a client or colleague. Instead, he heard a nervous woman explain to him that Mike had been released and according to local gossip moved in with Janet.

Janet had refused to let the social worker in, so now she was worried that Mike was abusing her. She wasn’t sure what to do. She’d tried the police, but when they’d visited Janet she’d looked fine, although she didn’t let them in either and they had no grounds to force entry.

Jonathan held his phone in a death grip. He realised he was shaking. ‘I’ll go down tonight’ he told the social worker, and after ringing off called his wife to explain the situation.

He left work early and made his way from London, calling a family friend who’d kept an eye on Janet from time to time. This friend was a local hard man, and Jonathan made clear that he wanted his help in ejecting Mike from the flat. The friend said he’d be glad to help, in tones that suggested that Mike might be in for a pair of concave kneecaps.

Jonathan would show up first and then call on the friend to come around. But when he arrived and rapped on the door he was horrified to see Janet nude, except for the veil. Her face was blank, holding no recognition. ‘Janny…’ he said tearfully, reaching out for her, overwhelmed by his pity for the sibling who’d never escaped.

She turned and walked back through the kitchen to the balcony, where she stood with arms outstretched to the sun, her body dappled in light through the leaves of the oak tree that guarded her home.

Jonathan followed but was drawn by a sight from the living room.

It was Mike. He lay on his back across the coffee table, eyes open and head lolled awkwardly to one side. Jonathan had the sickening feeling that if he lifted him his head would hang and flop about, the bones of his neck broken. His eyes were blank, his face held no expression whatsoever. He wore no top and his arms were covered with track marks, his rib cage visible through the flesh. He wore no bottoms either, and he was made decent only by a fleece tied about his waist like a Roman loincloth. In his side was a hideous gash that appeared to have been made by a kitchen knife that lay flung on the sofa, and through this wound trailed guts, on which a rabbit was breakfasting as others darted about. A mass of them, seeming to hold him aloft as his hands spread out to caress their fluffy backs.

Stunned, Jonathan looked away and saw the Jesus clock with its comparative scene, the candles before it all lit. Christ’s eyes remained half-closed and ethereally calm, but His smile had changed to a smirk, rendering His once paternal countenance a cold, sadistic blasphemy.

Jonathan heard his sister from the balcony, screaming at the bland morning. He knew her words without quite hearing them. It was a line from a prayer book that she’d owned for many years: what imp would make such mockery of thee?

And then, before going to Janet to lead her back inside, he recalled her words from when she first described the Jesus clock: as likely to invoke Pazuzu as Saint Paul. He rushed to the mantelpiece, almost tripping over Mike’s dead legs, and snuffed the electric candles.