The Ticking of the Old Clock

I was seventeen and living in a small, dusty town in the high deserts of Arizona. My grandfather had passed away two weeks before, and I’d inherited his old wooden music stand and his prized possession: a gleaming, silver soprano saxophone. I spent my afternoons in my cramped bedroom, its walls lined with peeling floral wallpaper, practicing scales and trying to learn the complex melody of a jazz piece he’d loved. The room’s only other notable feature was an antique grandfather clock that had belonged to my grandmother, its pendulum swinging with a steady, hypnotic tick that always seemed to mock my rhythm.

On that particular day, the heat was oppressive, a dry furnace wind rattling the thrift-store blinds. I was leaning against the footboard of my bed, saxophone in hand, my back to the wall, sweating through my thin t-shirt. I’d been playing for nearly thirty minutes, lost in the intricate runs and sudden pauses of the piece. The clock ticked, my fingers moved, and for a moment, the world outside vanished.

Then I felt it: a distinct, light tap on my right shoulder. It was cold, almost like an icicle, even though the room was stifling. I froze, my breath catching. I was alone. The door was locked, the window above my bed was shut and sealed with dust. I slowly turned, my heart thumping in my ears, expecting to see someone, anyone.

But there was no one. The room was empty save for the furniture and the relentless ticking. My eyes scanned the area, and then they landed on the wall behind my bed. Tacked above my headboard was a tattered calendar from 1987, the year my mother had died. Its corner hung loose, fluttering slightly from the air conditioner’s breath. But that wasn’t what made me gasp. Dangling from a rusty nail, right where my shoulder had been, was a tarnished silver watch on a broken chain. It was my grandfather’s watch, the one he’d worn every day, the one that had stopped at the exact time of his death. I had placed it in a drawer the day of the funeral. How was it here? And it was swinging back and forth, as if it had just been set in motion.

I stared at it, my mind racing. The tap couldn’t have been from the watch; it was too small and dangling. But there was no other explanation. I rationalized it was a muscle spasm, a trick of my imagination, a subconscious manifestation of grief. I forced a shallow breath and returned to my saxophone, trying to lose myself in the music again. But the notes felt wrong, sour. The clock’s tick seemed louder, more insistent, as if it were counting down to something.

After a few minutes, the tap came again, harder this time, more insistent. It felt like a finger, but also like a bone, and it pressed into my shoulder, turning me slightly. I whirled around, a shout caught in my throat. This time, the watch was swinging wildly, hitting the wall with a sharp click. And on the floor, just below it, lay a single black button, the kind from a man’s dress shirt. I didn’t own any dress shirts. My grandfather had been buried in his.

I bolted upright, my sax clattering to the floor. I grabbed the watch, its metal cold and biting. The chain was broken, but the glass was intact, and the hands were frozen at 3:33. I remembered that time all too well. The afternoon my mother had her accident. The evening my grandfather had his heart attack. It was always 3:33.

Suddenly, the grandfather clock began to chime, a deep, resonant bong that filled the room, even though it was only 4:00. The chimes went on, each one a hammer strike on my eardrums, and with each one, the watch in my hand grew colder, heavier. On the fourth chime, the bedroom door slammed open, revealing the dark, empty hallway that led to the living room. My heart was a frantic bird in my chest. I dropped the watch and backed away, but the ticking of the grandfather clock grew so loud it became a roar. The pendulum swung faster and faster, a blur of brass.

I ran out of the room, down the hall, past the living room with its faded photographs, and out the front door into the blinding desert sun. I didn’t stop until I collapsed in the gravel of the driveway, gasping, my skin prickling with goosebumps. I told myself it was grief, heatstroke, a hallucination. But when I finally returned to the house hours later, the watch was gone. The button was gone. But the calendar on the wall had a red circle around the date, a date I knew well: February 16th, the day this all happened. And in shaky handwriting, my grandfather’s handwriting, it said: ‘Again.’

From that day forward, I never practiced saxophone in that room again. I sold the instrument. I gave away the clock. But even now, thirty years later, I sometimes wake in the middle of the night, hearing the chime of that old clock, and I feel a cold tap on my shoulder, as if someone is trying to remind me that time is never really lost. It just waits.