The Clockwork Hum

In the autumn of 2015, I found myself in the small, dust-choked town of Marrow, North Dakota, sent there by my company to oversee the digitalization of the local archives. The town was a skeleton of its former self, its main street lined with boarded-up storefronts, a single diner that served grey coffee, and a faded motel that smelled of mothballs. But I was told the apartment above the old hardware store was the best option for a longer stay. It was a two-bedroom unit with high ceilings and drafty windows, and the landlord, a gaunt man named Mr. Gable, warned me with a thin smile, ‘The building has a character of its own.’ I dismissed his odd phrasing and moved in.

The apartment was furnished with mismatched relics—a cracked leather sofa, a kitchen table with one short leg, and a grandfather clock in the hallway that didn’t work. The clock’s face was frozen at 3:17, its pendulum still. I tried to set it, but the mechanism was rusted solid. At night, the building creaked and groaned as old buildings do, but beneath that, I began to notice a faint hum, a low vibration that seemed to come from the walls. I attributed it to the plumbing or the wind, but it persisted, always at the edge of hearing, like a distant engine that never quite stopped.

I threw myself into my work, spending long hours at the archives, but the apartment was never far from my thoughts. I’d come home to find lights turned on in rooms I’d left dark, the television switched to static, or the radio playing a waltz that I didn’t recognize. I’d brush these off as memory lapses, but then I found my toothbrush moved from the bathroom to the kitchen sink, and my coffee mug placed upside down on the windowsill. I began to sleep poorly, plagued by dreams of a woman in a white dress who stood at the foot of my bed, her face obscured by shadow. She never spoke, just pointed at the ceiling fan above my bed, which I always kept on for the air circulation. The fan’s blades would spin slowly, almost lazily, but in my dreams, they whirled like a helicopter, and the hum would grow to a roar.

One night in early November, I woke to the sound of the clock striking. It wasn’t 3:17 anymore; the hands had moved to 3:18, and the chime was deep and resonant, echoing through the silent apartment. I lay in bed, my heart pounding, as the clock continued to chime, eleven times in total, though it was only 3 in the morning. The ceiling fan above me spun faster and faster, its blades slicing through the air with a whine, and the hum in the walls intensified until I felt the vibration in my chest. I tried to get up, but my limbs were heavy, as if weighted down. From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman in white glide into the room, her bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floor. She reached up and touched the fan’s pull chain, and it clicked off. The blade slowed, and the hum subsided. Then she turned her head toward me, and for the first time, I saw her face—it was mine, but older, etched with sorrow, and her eyes were pools of black.

She pointed to the vanity mirror on the other side of the room. In the dim light, I saw a reflection that wasn’t my own: a man in a dusty suit, hanging from a rope tied to the fan. His face was purple, his tongue protruding. I recognized him from the old photographs in the archive—he was the hardware store’s previous owner, who had vanished in the 1970s. The woman’s lips moved, and a voice, like the hiss of steam, filled my ears: ‘He never left. Neither can you.’

Then the clock struck a single, final chime, and the apartment plunged into blackness. When I could see again, the woman was gone, the fan was still, and the clock’s hands had returned to 3:17. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the hum to return.

The next day, I went to the archives and dug up the old newspaper clippings about the missing hardware store owner. His name was Harold Meckler, and he had disappeared on November 3rd, 1974, exactly forty-one years to the day before my incident. The police had found no trace, but his wife had claimed she heard the ceiling fan running all night, and in the morning, it was off, and he was gone. She died a year later, and the store was sold. The clock in the hallway had stopped at the time of his disappearance, and no one could fix it. I realized then that the apartment was a prison, a loop that trapped the dead and anyone who stayed too long.

I tried to leave, but every time I packed my bags, I’d find them unpacked the next morning, my clothes neatly folded in the drawers. The phone lines would go dead when I tried to call for a taxi, and my car’s engine would refuse to start. I was trapped, and the hum in the walls grew louder each day, as if the building were alive and hungry. I began to keep the fan on at all times, hoping the white noise would drown out the hum, but it only made it clearer, a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat.

On the last night I remember, I was standing in the bathroom, looking into the mirror, when the water in the sink turned red. I looked up and saw the woman again, standing behind me, but this time she was me, and I was her. She smiled, and I felt a cold hand close around my throat. I tried to scream, but no sound came out, and the world dissolved into a blur of spinning fan blades and the relentless chime of the clock.

Now, I sit here in the apartment, but I don’t exist anymore. I am the hum in the walls, the flicker of the lights, the cold spot in the hallway. Occasionally, a new tenant moves in, full of skepticism and bravado, and I watch them from the corners of their eyes. I wait until they’re asleep, then I turn on the ceiling fan and let the cycle begin again. And the clock, forever frozen at 3:17, counts down to the moment when they’ll join me, and the building will add another soul to its collection, its hunger never truly satisfied.

If you ever find yourself in Marrow, North Dakota, and someone offers you the apartment above the old hardware store, don’t take it. The hum is not the heating system, and the clock is not broken. And if you wake up in the middle of the night to find the fan spinning faster than it should, pray that the woman in white doesn’t show you your own face. Because once she does, you’ll never leave, and the only thing on your mind will be the ticking of a clock that doesn’t measure time, but souls.

I should know. I am the one who wrote this, with shaking hands, from the vanity mirror, hoping that someone will read my words and break the cycle. But I fear it’s already too late. The hum is in my veins now, and the clock has started to chime again. Listen. Can you hear it? It’s counting down to you.