The Sandglass

In the autumn of 2014, my partner Lena and I, along with six friends from the photography collective, embarked on a week-long road trip through the remote highlands of northern Portugal. We were scouting locations for an upcoming exhibition, hoping to capture the region’s dramatic granite peaks and ancient forests. Our first stop was the village of Castrelos, nestled in a valley where the mist rarely lifted. We had booked a converted monastery, now a small inn, for two nights.

The inn was a labyrinth of stone corridors and low ceilings, lit by flickering bulbs that cast long shadows. The owner, a stooped old woman named Dona Maria, welcomed us with a thin smile and handed us brass keys that felt strangely cold. She warned us, in a gravelly whisper, to avoid the old chapel at the edge of the property after dark. ‘The saints there do not like to be disturbed,’ she said, and her eyes lingered on Lena’s camera bag.

We laughed it off, attributing her warning to local superstition. That evening, after a hearty meal of salt cod and roasted chestnuts, we gathered in the common room, toasting to our adventure with glasses of port. The walls were adorned with faded photographs of the region, and a large clock with a single, unmoving hand hung above the fireplace. I noticed Lena staring at it, her brow furrowed. ‘That clock hasn’t moved since we arrived,’ she said. Our friend, Miguel, a skeptical sort, tapped it with his finger. The clock chimed once, a deep, resonant sound that seemed to vibrate in our chests, and then fell silent.

Later that night, unable to sleep, I wandered the corridors, my footsteps echoing on the worn stone. I found myself in front of the chapel door, a heavy oak barrier bound with iron. Despite Dona Maria’s warning, I pushed it open. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of old incense and damp earth. The chapel was small, with a single aisle leading to a modest altar. But what caught my attention was the floor: it was covered with a thin layer of fine, golden sand, arranged in intricate patterns, as if someone had been drawing mandalas. In the center, a small hourglass sat, its sand frozen mid-flow. I reached out to touch it, but a cold draft made me pull back. I left, feeling a strange unease.

The next morning, we set out to explore the nearby hills. The landscape was stark, dotted with granite boulders and twisted oaks. As we walked, we noticed that every time we paused to take a photo, the wind would pick up, carrying a fine dust that clung to our lenses. By midday, we found ourselves at a high plateau overlooking the valley. The view was breathtaking, but there was an odd silence. No birds, no insects. Just the distant hum of the wind.

Back at the inn, we reviewed our photos. Every image showed the same anomaly: a faint, ghostly figure standing at the edge of the frame, always obscured by a swirl of sand. We dismissed it as a smudge on the lens, but Lena grew quiet. That night, she confided in me that she had a dream of the hourglass, its sand draining rapidly, and the chapel filling with a silent scream. I tried to reassure her, but my own dreams were troubled by the image of Dona Maria, her face contorted, whispering, ‘Time is not yours to keep.’

On our last night, we decided to have a small bonfire in the courtyard. As we sat around the flames, the wind died completely, and the temperature dropped. I looked up and saw that the sky was filled with stars, but they seemed to be moving, swirling like grains of sand in a cosmic hourglass. Suddenly, the chapel door burst open, and a gush of sand poured out, cascading down the steps like a waterfall. We watched, frozen, as the sand formed a shape—a tall, gaunt figure with hollow eyes, holding the hourglass. It raised its arm, and the ground beneath us began to shift, as if time itself was eroding.

We ran for the inn, but the corridors stretched and twisted, and our steps grew heavy, like wading through water. The clock in the common room began to tick rapidly, its single hand spinning. Lena grabbed my hand and dragged me into the chapel, now filled with sand up to our knees. The hourglass was on the altar, and the sand inside was nearly gone. I understood then: we had been in this place for far longer than we thought. Each day here had been a grain of sand falling, and now our time was almost up.

As the last grain fell, the golden sand vanished, and we found ourselves outside the inn, in broad daylight. But the inn was gone, replaced by a crumbling ruin. Our cameras were empty, our memories blurred. Dona Maria stood among the ruins, her face older than before, her eyes apologetic. ‘You were so eager to capture time,’ she said. ‘But time is not a thing to be captured.’

We drove away in silence, the engine coughing as if it, too, was tired. When we finally reached a town, we discovered that a week had passed, not the one night we thought. Our way home was marred by a persistent, fine sand that kept appearing in our luggage, our clothes, even our hair. To this day, I cannot look at an hourglass without seeing that chamber, and I know that somewhere in the hills of Castrelos, the hourglass is filling again, waiting for the next travelers who are foolish enough to try to hold on to time.