The Clockmaker’s Due

My name is Elias, and I’m 22. I’ve always had a peculiar sensitivity to the unseen, a trait I inherited from my grandmother on my mother’s side. She used to say we were ‘touched by the thin places,’ able to feel the cold breath of the beyond even when our eyes saw nothing. I grew up in a small, creaking house in the town of Ashford, nestled against a forest that seemed to swallow the light. My mother, my two brothers, and my sister all shared this gift, but mine manifested differently: I could hear the whispers of objects, the residual emotions etched into wood and stone. It wasn’t until my grandmother passed that I inherited her most prized possession—an antique cuckoo clock, said to have been crafted by a mad clockmaker in the Black Forest. She’d warned me never to wind it, but her eyes held a fear I’d never seen before. I didn’t listen.

I placed the clock on the mantel in my study. The wood was dark, almost black, and the face was painted with a scene of a huntsman and a stag, frozen in an eternal chase. The carvings were intricate, but there was something wrong with the proportions—the huntsman’s eyes were too large, the stag’s antlers too sharp. For the first week, it sat silent, a grim decoration. But one night, as the wind howled outside, I felt an inexplicable pull. I found myself standing before it, the winding key in my hand. A whisper, like the rustle of dried leaves, seemed to come from the clock: ‘Wind me.’ I turned the key. It clicked, and the clock began to tick, a slow, deliberate heartbeat. I felt a chill crawl up my spine, and the room seemed to darken.

The next morning, the cuckoo emerged at 7 a.m., not with a cheerful call, but with a low, guttural sound that made my blood run cold. The tiny wooden bird had human-like eyes that seemed to follow me. It no longer looked like a bird; it was a grotesque, wrinkled thing, with a beak that looked like a withered hand. As the days passed, the clock’s presence grew. I began to hear other sounds—a scratching from within the case, a faint sobbing, and sometimes a voice that called my name in my grandmother’s tone. The rest of my family felt it too; my sister refused to enter the room, and my mother grew pale whenever she passed it. They urged me to get rid of it, but I was obsessed. I felt that the clock was trying to tell me something, to show me a truth I was meant to uncover.

One evening, I decided to open the back panel of the clock. It was stuck, as if sealed by time, but with a bit of force, it creaked open. Inside, instead of gears and springs, I found a hollow space filled with a thick, viscous fluid that smelled of copper and old earth. Floating within was a tarnished silver locket, and a small, folded piece of paper. I fished them out, my hands trembling. The locket contained a portrait of a woman with haunted eyes, and on the back was engraved: ‘Until time stops.’ The paper was a letter, written in a spidery hand. It detailed a bargain made by the clockmaker, who, in his grief over his dead wife, made a deal with a dark entity: he would trap the souls of the living in his clocks, granting them a semblance of eternal life, in exchange for his own soul and the ability to keep his wife’s spirit tethered to the physical world. The clock was one of his last works, and it was hungry.

I felt a crushing weight as the room grew colder. The clock’s ticking accelerated, becoming erratic. The shadows in the corners deepened, and I saw shapes writhing within them. The clock’s face seemed to twist, the huntsman’s eyes now weeping black tears. A voice, not in my ears but in my mind, whispered, ‘You opened the door. Now you must pay the toll.’ I tried to shut the panel, but my hands wouldn’t obey. The clock’s hands began to move backward, spinning faster and faster. I felt something tugging at my soul, like threads being pulled from my chest. I stumbled back, but the pull was irresistible. I grabbed a nearby poker from the fireplace and shattered the clock’s face with a scream.

The clock stopped. The room fell silent. But as I stared at the broken remnants, I saw something move within the wreckage—the wooden cuckoo, now fully animate, crawled out and scurried into the shadows. The letter’s final line echoed in my mind: ‘Each clock is a door. Once opened, it never truly closes.’

Now, weeks later, I’ve tried to dispose of the pieces, but they always find their way back. The ticking continues in my walls, soft and patient. Last night, I saw the huntsman standing at the foot of my bed, his eyes glowing in the dark. He didn’t move, but he pointed to the spot where the clock used to be, and I felt a cold breath on my neck. My grandmother’s voice whispered, ‘You’ve let him in, Elias. Now he’ll never leave.’ I know now that the clock was never meant to be kept; it was a doorway, and I was the key. Every night, I hear the stag’s hooves in my attic, and I know the hunt has begun. But this time, I am the prey.

I write this as a warning to others who may inherit such objects. If you find a clock with a tragic past, do not be tempted by its secrets. Burn it. Bury it at a crossroads. But whatever you do, never wind it. Because once you set the gears in motion, you cannot stop the inevitable. And the clockmaker always collects his due. Always.