The Clockmaker’s Cadence

In the autumn of 2018, I worked at the Marlow County Records Office, a place of dust and dead paper. One of our archivists, a kind woman named Janet Harker, had passed away in September from a rare autoimmune disease that had turned her own body against her. She’d been a quiet soul, always wearing silver bracelets that caught the light, and a small, ticking watch on a leather strap. We’d all noticed it, the way it seemed to mark time a little too precisely, but we never thought much of it. Her desk was next to mine, and I missed the comforting regularity of her presence.

On the day of her wake, my colleagues and I planned to go after work. I took a personal day to prepare. I lived in a small basement apartment on Thornwood Street, a place with a single narrow window that looked out onto the sidewalk. As I was packing a change of clothes, I heard it: a faint, rhythmic ticking, like a clock, but it wasn’t coming from my own wristwatch or the wall clock. I paused, listening. The sound seemed to emanate from the corner near my bed. I searched under the mattress, in the nightstand, even inside the vent, but found nothing. The ticking grew louder as I moved toward the door, and softer when I approached the window. It was as if the sound was playing a game of hide-and-seek.

Frustrated, I ignored it and went to take a shower. When I returned, the ticking was gone. I shrugged it off as my imagination or a neighbor’s metronome. Later, as we drove to the funeral home, I asked my colleagues if Janet had always worn a watch. They nodded. ‘She loved that thing,’ said Maria, ‘said it was her grandmother’s, and she never took it off.’ A cold prickle ran down my spine.

The wake was held in a small, dimly lit chapel. Janet lay in an open casket, her hands folded over a rosary, but her wrist was bare. No watch. I mentioned this to the funeral director, who seemed puzzled. ‘We removed her personal effects to the family,’ he said. ‘But I don’t recall a watch.’ I tried to shake off the unease.

That night, back in my apartment, the ticking returned. It was louder now, more insistent, coming from the wall behind my headboard. I pressed my ear to the cold plaster, and the sound seemed to vibrate through my skull. I decided to do some research. I found an old journal that Janet had kept online, a public blog about her illness. In one entry, dated months before her death, she wrote about a dream: ‘I am walking through a field of silver clocks, each one ticking in unison. An old woman with a kind face, my grandmother, hands me a pocket watch and says, ‘When it stops, you will come to me.’ I woke up with the watch in my hand, but it wasn’t mine.’ The entry ended with a strange phrase: ‘The cadence is everything.’

I felt a chill. The ticking in my room seemed to match my heartbeat. I tried to sleep, but the sound was a constant companion. Around 3 a.m., it stopped abruptly. In the silence, I heard a faint, muffled ticking from inside my closet. I yanked the door open, and there, on the floor, lay a silver pocket watch, its hands frozen at 3:07. It wasn’t there before. My name was engraved on the back, but in a handwriting I didn’t recognize. I didn’t touch it.

The next day, I couldn’t focus. The watch was still there. I called my colleague Maria, who had been close to Janet. She told me a story: Janet’s grandmother had been a clockmaker. She had made a watch for each of her grandchildren, and she’d told them, ‘If you ever hear it ticking without seeing it, it’s a sign that time is running out. But if it stops, someone has passed the threshold.’ Maria laughed nervously. ‘Janet took that seriously. She used to say she could hear her own watch even when she wasn’t wearing it.’ I didn’t laugh.

The ticking returned that evening, but now it was synchronized with my own breathing. I felt a pressure in my chest, like a hand compressing my lungs. I knew I had to get rid of the watch. I took a plastic bag, intending to throw it in the dumpster, but as soon as I touched it, the ticking became a loud, frantic cacophony, as if dozens of clocks were going off at once. The watch hands spun backward, then forward, then stopped at exactly the time of Janet’s death: 11:42 a.m. I dropped it, backing away. The bag seemed to move on its own, the watch inside pressing against the plastic like a trapped insect.

I ran to the bedroom and slammed the door. But the ticking was everywhere. It was in the walls, the floor, inside my head. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it only grew louder. I remembered Janet’s journal: ‘The cadence is everything.’ What did that mean? Suddenly, I understood. The watch wasn’t telling time; it was dictating my heartbeat. Every tick was a beat, and if I missed a beat, I would die.

I forced myself to calm down, to match my breathing to the ticking. It was a slow, steady rhythm, almost soothing. But then the pace quickened. My heart raced, and I felt dizzy. I stumbled out of the apartment, desperate for fresh air. The street was empty and silent. No cars, no people, not even a stray cat. The world seemed to have stopped. I looked at my own wristwatch: it also showed 11:42, and the second hand was not moving.

In that frozen moment, I heard a voice, soft and familiar, like Janet’s. ‘You have to take it back to the shop. That’s where it belongs.’ I turned, and there was a shadowy figure at the corner, wearing a long coat. It pointed toward the old clock shop on Meridian Street, which had been closed for decades. I knew its rusty sign: ‘Harker’s Timepieces.’

I ran. The shop was dark, but the door was unlocked. Inside, the air was cold and heavy with the smell of oil and metal. Hundreds of clocks lined the walls, but they were all stopped at different times. In the center of the room, on a mahogany counter, was a glass case. Inside lay Janet’s watch, the one from her wrist. As I approached, it began to tick, and all the other clocks followed suit, a deafening symphony of ticking. The hands of Janet’s watch spun, and the sound grew to a climax, then stopped. The silence was absolute.

I looked down, and in my hand was the silver pocket watch, still ticking. A voice whispered from everywhere, ‘You found it. Now you must wind it forever.’ I tried to put it down, but my fingers wouldn’t release it. My own heartbeat began to sync with its tick. I knew I was trapped.

The next morning, a neighbor found me standing in front of the clock shop, staring at an old display of watches. I was unresponsive, my hand clenching an invisible object. My colleagues saw me at Janet’s wake, but no one noticed the faint ticking sound emanating from my chest. On my desk at work, a new watch appeared, identical to Janet’s. It has never stopped ticking, not even when I sleep. And sometimes, when I look out the window, I see a woman with silver bracelets standing across the street, watching me. She smiles, and I feel my heart skip a beat. The cadence is everything.