The Still-Faced Clock

It was the last night of the mountain retreat, and Cora’s legs ached from the dance-off that had ended just after midnight. She’d placed fourth, which was fine—she wasn’t there to win, just to feel the music pound through her bones. The lodge, a sprawling wooden structure from the 1920s, groaned under the weight of forty teenagers. Everyone else had already shuffled off to their rooms, leaving the great hall silent except for the hum of a dying refrigerator. Cora lingered, her sneakers scuffing the polished floor, before she finally decided to head to the bunkhouse she shared with five other girls.

She stepped outside, and the mountain air hit her like a cold slap. The moon was a sliver, barely illuminating the gravel path. Crickets sawed their legs, and somewhere a door slammed. She shivered, pulling her hoodie tighter. The bunkhouse was a squat building at the edge of the property, its windows dark except for one glowing on the second floor—the room she’d be in. She climbed the creaking stairs, her flashlight beam dancing over peeling paint and a crooked landscape painting. Her hand found the doorknob, brass and cold.

She opened the door. Two of her bunkmates, Lia and Priya, were huddled on the floor with a deck of cards, their voices muffled as if underwater. They didn’t look up. Cora stepped inside and closed the door behind her, the click echoing louder than it should. Then she turned to the right, toward her bunk, and froze.

On the wall, where a faded mirror hung, there was a patch of white. It was about two feet tall, translucent, and shaped like a child, but wrong—its limbs too long, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. It seemed to be looking at her, though it had no face, just a smooth oval. Cora’s breath caught. She tried to scream, but her throat closed. She tried to run, but her legs were lead. She couldn’t even blink. The room seemed to narrow, the walls leaning in. The sound of Lia’s laughter and Priya’s chatter receded into a distant hum, like a radio left on in another house. The creature didn’t move. It just hovered, its edges shimmering like heat above asphalt. Cora’s heart pounded in her ears, but that too faded, until all she could hear was a low thrum, like a clock winding down.

Then, the creature tilted its head, and a crack split the air—the mirror behind it spiderwebbed with white lines. Cora’s lungs burned, but no air came. The thrum grew louder, syncopated, becoming a ticking, like a clock’s hands moving faster and faster. She thought of the old grandfather clock in the lodge’s hallway, how it had always stopped at 3:03, no matter how often the staff fixed it. She was staring at that exact time in her mind when the creature raised a hand, fingers too long, and pointed at Cora. Then it opened a mouth that wasn’t there—a black slit—and spoke without sound, a word Cora felt rather than heard: *Still.*

As soon as the word formed, the room snapped back. Sound flooded in—Lia’s laugh, Priya’s gasp as they spotted Cora. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Priya said, giggling. Cora forced a smile, but her body wouldn’t stop trembling. She looked back at the wall. The mirror was intact. The creature was gone. But the clock on the nightstand read 3:03, and it hadn’t been working all week.

Cora never spoke of it. The next morning, they loaded the buses, and she left with the others. But that tick followed her. For weeks, she’d wake at 3:03, the sound of a clock in her ears. She began to notice things—a flicker in her peripheral vision, a white shape darting behind trees. She started writing the word *still* on her notepad without thinking. And a month later, she found herself in her apartment, staring at the bathroom mirror, her reflection not moving when she did. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. The thrum was back, and the clock on her wristwatch read 3:03. She realized then that the creature hadn’t left. It had just climbed inside her time, and it was waiting for her to stay still long enough to take her place.

The last thing Cora saw was her reflection smiling—a smile she didn’t make—as the ticking stopped, and everything went white.