Tick Tock

Written by: Kaidon (25-I1)

Designed by: Avelyn (25-A2)

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Tick-tock. The old grandfather’s clock in the study had been stuck for years. Paused in time, like a long-forgotten heartbeat frozen in stasis. But tonight, it ticked again.

A single click. Then another.

Dylan froze, every nerve prickling. His foot hovered over the floorboard, ready to step back, but curiosity pulled him forward. The house had been silent for so long, only the groan of old wood and the occasional wind sneaking through the cracks filled the rooms. But now… now the clock was ticking.

Tick.

He glanced at the study door. Heart hammering, he inched closer, fingers trembling over the doorknob. One slow twist, and the door creaked open.

Tock.

The hallway stretched ahead, dark and narrow. The tick-tock sounded impossibly loud now, bouncing off the faded wallpaper, over the warped floorboards, until it felt like the sound was inside his own chest. Dylan took a step back. Then forward. His body refused to decide.

Tick.

The clock loomed in the corner, taller than him, eight feet of carved mahogany curling with ivory-like detail. Its pendulum swung with a hypnotic steadiness, though no one had wound it. No one had touched it.

Tock.

“Hello? Anyone there?” His voice barely rose above a whisper. The air was thick, musty with the scent of old books and dust that hadn’t been disturbed in years. The room looked the same as always—frozen in time. A large mahogany desk sat against the wall beneath a window sealed shut with yellowed lace curtains. Faded photographs lined the shelves. Its face bore Roman numerals dulled by time, intricately carved decorations and dials for seconds.

He crept closer.

Tick.

“Mom said it stopped after Grandpa died,” he murmured aloud, as if speaking could make the eerie sensation lift. He had visited this house so many times as a child, but never after the funeral. Not until now. Not until his parents sent him to retrieve a box of old letters. He reached the clock and stared up at its face. The hands pointed to 11:58. He blinked.

That couldn’t be right.

He’d just checked his phone—it was only 9:17. The clock was running, but it wasn’t keeping time.

Or maybe it was counting down.

Tock.

The sound swelled till it seemed to fill his skull, and suddenly Dylan was seven again. Knees scraping across the carpet as he chased his windup toy car, he glanced up at his grandfather who winded the clock with experienced cautiousness, almost like the clock was alive.

“Never let it reach midnight, Dylan.” His voice was sharp, not like when he read bedtime stories. Serious, urgent. “You must always stop it first.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. Grandpa was always saying weird crap like this.

Don’t whistle at night. Don’t answer the door if you hear three knocks. Whatever.

His grandfather’s eyes didn’t meet his. They were fixed on the pendulum as it swung back and forth. “Because midnight is when it remembers.” “Remember what?” he’d asked, just to humor him.

The old man finally looked down, his eyes darker than Dylan had ever seen. “Us. Everyone who’s ever lived here. Everything we’ve done. It doesn’t forget. And when it remembers… it chooses.”

Dylan laughed but it died in his throat as the pendulum suddenly jerked in its arc.

For half a second, the brass weight wasn't brass at all—it was a face, stretched and warped in the metal, mouth open in a silent scream. His grandpa's face.

Then it was just the pendulum again, swinging smooth as ever.

Tick.

Dylan was wrenched back into the present.

That creepy face. That was no trick of the light…It was real!

The clock's hands now read 11:59.

A cold sweat prickled his neck.

I should leave. Right now. Just grab the stupid letters and get out.

But his feet stayed rooted to the floor.

Tock. The sound rang in his head and suddenly the musty scent of the study was gone, replaced by the clean, damp smell of rain on grass.

He was ten and in a stiff ugly costume of a suit. His face felt hot and tight from crying, but now he was just empty and confused. Grandpa was in the box. In the ground. It didn’t make any sense.

The world had gone soft and blurry at the edges. Rain fell in sheets as he sat at the back of the gathering. Faces with sombre expressions all whispering about “a long life well-lived.” He couldn’t listen to the droning of the priest and his relatives anymore.

He turned his head, looking for something real to focus on, something that wasn’t this awful, quiet wrongness. His eyes drifted to the house. His grandfather’s house. It looked empty and sad.

And then he saw it.

Through the study window, the clock was watching silently in the dark room. The pendulum was swinging.

A cold jolt went through his body. It was not supposed to do that. Not since Grandpa… His inner thoughts died down as he stared at the clock from afar. In the reflection of the distant glass, a tall, skinny figure stood perfectly still. It wasn’t staring at the funeral. It was looking directly at him.

A cold and bony hand clamped down on him suddenly and he screamed in terror, thinking that the figure he saw had gotten him.

He was yanked around so hard he nearly stumbled and he came face to face with his grandmother. “Don’t look at it, Dylan” she hissed, her voice a terrified rasp in his ear. Her face was pale, eyes wide with a fear he had never seen before in an adult. His normally calm grandmother had abandoned all composure in that instant, and that made Dylan’s blood run cold. “Don’t let it see you watching. If you do, it will remember you, too.”

Tick.

The memory shattered and he found himself back in the study, gasping for breath, the musty air in his lungs, still feeling his grandmother's hand on his shoulder.

The final second clicked into place. He watched as the thin black minute hand completed its journey, meeting the hour hand in a perfect, vertical line.

12.00

Midnight.

For a heartbeat, there was only silence - a silence that could be cut with a knife