The Clockwork Throat

The first time it happened, Mara blamed the exhaustion. She had been working double shifts at the clinic, her eyes burning with the particular fatigue that made the world seem to hum at a lower frequency. She had collapsed onto her bed in the late afternoon, the curtains drawn so tightly that the room was the color of a bruise. She was drifting, half in and half out, when she felt a hand close around her wrist. It was a firm grip, not painful, but insistent, as if someone were trying to wake her for an urgent matter. She opened her eyes, and there was a shape beside her bed—a tall, dark figure that seemed to absorb the scant light, a solid absence against the gloom. It had no discernible features, only a suggestion of a head and shoulders. She blinked, and it was gone. Her wrist still tingled where it had been touched.

Mara told me about it the next day, trying to laugh it off as a sleep paralysis hallucination, but her voice wavered. She asked if I had ever heard of something like that, and I mentioned the story of Condie Cunningham, a local legend about a woman who disappeared after seeing a shadow figure. Mara had never heard of it, so she decided to look it up, her curiosity piqued. She was sitting in her living room, the TV playing a rerun of some cooking show, and she found the story on her phone. She started reading aloud to herself, but the moment she got to the first paragraph, the TV flickered and shut off with a soft click. She paused, frowning, and turned it back on. She started reading again, and the TV cut out again. This happened a third time, and by then, her pulse was quickening. She set the phone down and stared at the black screen. Then, from the kitchen, she heard a sound—a faint, rhythmic ticking, like a clock, but she had no clock in the kitchen. The sound was coming from the direction of the table, where she had left a glass of water. She walked in and saw that the glass was vibrating, the water rippling in concentric circles. The ticking grew louder, and she realized it was coming from inside her own throat. She swallowed, and the ticking stopped.

That night, Mara couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, listening to the house settle, but every creak seemed deliberate. She kept replaying the moment the hand touched her, and the way the figure had stood so still, as if it were waiting. She got up and went to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face. In the mirror, she thought she saw a dark shape behind her, but when she turned, there was nothing. She looked back at her reflection, and her own eyes seemed too deep, the pupils too large. She leaned in, and for a split second, she saw something move inside her mouth—a flash of metal, like a gear. She recoiled, gagging, but nothing came up. She told herself she was imagining things, that the heat was getting to her.

The next morning, she called me, her voice slightly hoarse. She said the ticking was back, a constant, faint sound in her chest, like a watch. She went to the clinic where she worked, and during a routine check-up, she asked a colleague to look at her throat. He peered with a flashlight and saw nothing unusual, but when he pressed on her larynx, she felt a sharp pain that made her gasp. He said it was just inflammation, but Mara knew better. That evening, she tried to distract herself with a book, but the words seemed to rearrange themselves into patterns she couldn’t follow. She heard the ticking again, more insistent, and she realized it was coming from her phone. She picked it up, and the screen was showing a video of herself, but it was not a video she had ever taken. It was from a security camera angle, showing her sleeping, and in the corner of the frame, the dark figure stood, motionless, watching. The timestamp was from three nights ago, the night before she first felt the touch. She hadn’t set up any cameras.

Panic set in. Mara tore out of her apartment and drove to my house, banging on the door at midnight. She was pale, her hands trembling, and she told me everything. As she spoke, I noticed that her voice had a strange, mechanical undertone, like an old recording. I asked her to open her mouth, and I shined my phone light in. At the back of her throat, I saw something glint—a small, metallic object, nestled behind her uvula. She gagged as I touched it, and it retracted further. She started to cough, and with each cough, the ticking grew louder, until it filled the room. Then, suddenly, it stopped. Her eyes widened, and she pointed at my chest. I looked down to see a dark handprint on my shirt, right over my heart. She whispered, ‘It’s in you now.’ I felt a cold, sharp pain in my throat, and when I swallowed, I tasted copper. The ticking resumed, but this time, it was accompanied by a low hum, like machinery coming to life.

From that point on, we were both part of the mechanism. We found that whenever we spoke to each other, our words would occasionally glitch, repeating a syllable or a word, as if something were replaying our voices. We tried to tell others, but they couldn’t hear the ticking, and they insisted we were suffering from mass hysteria. We started to research the Condie Cunningham story in earnest, desperate for a clue. We found an old newspaper article that mentioned a clockmaker’s shop that had burned down in the early 1900s, and the clockmaker, a man named August Bell, had been accused of witchcraft. He was said to have built a ‘timekeeper’ that could steal a person’s voice so he could speak through them after death. The article claimed that his daughter, Condie, was his first victim, and that her spirit haunted the site. The shop had been on the corner of the street where Mara’s apartment now stood.

One night, we decided to visit the spot where the shop had been. It was a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds, and a single rusted lamppost stood sentinel. We stood in the center, and the ticking in our throats became synchronized, a steady duet. We looked at each other, and I saw that Mara’s eyes were almost entirely black. I knew mine must be the same. We opened our mouths to speak, but no words came out, only a stream of mechanical clicks and whirs. The lamppost flickered, and in its glow, we saw a figure emerge from the lot’s shadows—the same dark form, but now it seemed more defined, wearing what looked like a long coat, its face hidden. It raised a hand, pointing at us, and we felt a pull, as if our internal gears were being wound. The ticking stopped, and before we could react, the figure spoke. But it was not its voice; it was ours, layered together, saying, ‘You will carry my message.’ Then the figure dissolved into the night, and the ticking returned, faint but constant.

We realized we were not just haunted; we were was a conduit. The clockmaker had found a way to extend his existence, using our bodies as batteries and our voices as speakers. And we were powerless to stop it, because the mechanism was already inside us, ticking away the seconds until we would become just like him—shadows, eager to touch the living and pass on the curse. Now, we wait, listening to the ticking, knowing that one day, we will stand beside someone’s bed, and we will pull their arm, and they will swallow the clockwork, and the cycle will continue. And in the silence between ticks, we pray for an end, but all we hear is the relentless machinery of the throat. Twice a day, we check our mouths to see if the metal has become visible, and each time, it has crept closer to our lips. Soon, we will not need to open our mouths to speak; the voice will come from our chests. And the ticking will be all that remains of us.