The Fly-Swallowed Clock

I never believed in the supernatural. Not truly. I was a man of science, a mechanical engineer who found comfort in the precise ticking of clocks and the predictable laws of physics. When my wife, Clara, and I moved into the old Faraday house, she was the one who felt uneasy. I dismissed her concerns as the jitters of a new start.

The house stood at the end of a cul-de-sac, a relic from the 1970s with its wood-paneled walls and sunken living room. It had been empty for a decade, and the agent was eager to unload it. We got it for a steal. The first few months were bliss. We painted the walls, ripped up the shag carpet, and installed new appliances. Clara’s unease faded, and I thought we had made the right choice.

But then the flies came. It started in the living room, near the grandfather clock that had been left behind by the previous owner. I would find dead flies on the windowsill, their tiny bodies crisp and dry as if they had been baking in the sun for years. I cleaned them up, but they kept appearing. Clara joked that the house had a fly problem, but I noticed a pattern. They always clustered near that clock. And the clock, which I had wound every week, began to lose time. I adjusted it, but it always ran slow.

One night, I woke to a strange ticking. It was not the clock in the living room, but a rhythmic tapping, like fingernails on glass. I traced it to the hallway, where a small antique clock sat on a shelf. It had been a wedding gift from Clara’s grandmother. It had never worked, its hands frozen at 3:47. But now, the second hand was sweeping, and the minute hand was moving. I picked it up, and the ticking stopped. I shook it, but nothing. I set it down, and it resumed. I felt a chill run down my spine.

Clara started having nightmares. She would wake up screaming, clutching her chest. She said she saw a man in the corner of the room, tall and thin, with eyes like black pits. I held her, told her it was just stress. But I noticed that her eyes would water when she stood near that clock in the hallway. She never noticed, but I did. And I found more flies, always near the clocks.

One afternoon, I decided to open the grandfather clock. I had been avoiding it, but my curiosity got the better of me. The pendulum swayed, but the mechanism looked pristine. But behind the face, I found a small compartment with a single dead fly. It was still intact, not dried out. I touched it, and it crumbled to dust. I felt a sudden dizziness, and the room spun. When I came to, I was on the floor, and the clock was ticking loudly, almost aggressively.

I told Clara we should move. She agreed, but we couldn’t afford it. So I became obsessed with the clocks. I spent hours watching them, waiting for something. At night, I would lie in bed, listening to their ticking, like a heartbeat. And then, I started to see it. A shadow, just in the corner of my eye. A man, tall and thin, standing by the grandfather clock. When I turned, it was gone.

One night, I woke to find Clara standing in the hallway, staring at the small clock. She was motionless, her eyes glazed. I called her name, but she didn’t respond. I touched her shoulder, and she flinched. She turned to me, and I saw that her eyes were bloodshot, tears streaming down her face. ‘He’s here,’ she said. ‘He’s been here the whole time.’

I packed a bag, but before I could leave, the lights went out. The ticking grew louder, a cacophony of timepieces all striking at once. I heard Clara scream from the bedroom. I ran, but the hallway seemed to stretch. I burst into the room, and she was pointing at the wall. I looked, and there, scrawled in what looked like dried blood, were the words: ‘You can’t outrun time.’

We fled that night, leaving everything behind. We stayed at a motel, but the next morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw a dead fly on the pillow. I brushed it away, but more appeared. They were on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I grabbed Clara, and we ran to the car. But as I started the engine, I saw a reflection in the rearview mirror. The tall, thin man, standing behind us. He smiled, and I saw that his teeth were black, like the flies.

We haven’t stopped running since. We change motels every night, but the flies always find us. And the clocks, they follow too. In every room, there’s a clock, and it ticks wrong, always wrong. I know now that we brought something with us. The house was just the beginning. It’s in the clocks, in the flies, in the spaces between seconds. And I’m afraid that we will never escape. Because time is patient, and it always catches up.