The Day My Grandfather's Watch Ticked Backward

I never planned on going back to the village. Not after the funeral. Not after the inheritance meetings. And definitely not after everyone else in the family had scattered back to their lives in the cities, leaving the old house behind like a shed snake skin.

But someone had to sort through his belongings.

The thing about being “the quiet one” in the family is that people assume you don’t mind doing the jobs that require silence. So I went. No arguments. No second thoughts. Just a train ticket and a key left for me at the post office in town.

The house looked exactly like I remembered — sagging under its own history, still holding on to the smell of wet hay and old tobacco. I unlocked the front door, and the creak of the hinges felt like a welcome and a warning.

In the center of the living room, on the table where he used to read the paper every morning, sat the pocket watch. His pocket watch.

It was an antique silver thing, small enough to lose but loud enough to remember. He used to carry it everywhere, even after it stopped working sometime in the early 2000s. The glass was scratched. The numbers slightly faded. The second hand always stuck between 9 and 10.

As a kid, I once asked him why he still carried a broken watch.

He chuckled and said, “Time isn’t just numbers. It’s memory. This watch remembers more than we do.”

Back then, I thought it was just one of those strange grandfather things — like whispering to plants or turning off the radio at exactly 11:11. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t touch the watch. Not yet.

That night, I slept in the guest room, the one with the lumpy mattress and a window that refused to shut completely. I figured I’d pack a few things in the morning and head back before the weekend. But sleep didn’t come easily.

At 2:17 a.m., I heard ticking.

Soft at first, like the shuffle of distant footsteps, then louder — more deliberate. I sat up. The house was silent, except for that steady tick… tick… tick.

I walked back into the living room. There it was. The pocket watch — ticking. Not forward. Backward.

The second hand moved in reverse, slow and mechanical, as if trying to pull the night back with it.

I picked it up, half-expecting the ticking to stop. It didn’t.

Then I noticed something stranger.

The photo frames on the wall were changing. The colors faded into sepia tones. Then into black and white. Then one by one, the photos disappeared completely, like memories being unwritten.

The ashtray on the table emptied itself. The air freshened. The curtains, once dusty, began to look new. It wasn’t just the ticking. It was everything around me — rewinding.

I spun around when I heard footsteps.

He was standing there.

My grandfather.

But not the man I last saw in a hospital bed. This version of him was younger — strong, wearing his old cricket vest and puffing on that ancient pipe. He looked exactly like he did in the stories he used to tell about “the good days.”

“You’re early,” he said, calm as ever, as if this was normal. As if time reversing itself was part of his evening routine.

“Grandpa?” I asked, my voice cracking from disbelief or emotion or both.

He nodded. “You turned the watch. I figured someone would.”

I looked down. I hadn’t wound it. I hadn’t touched it. But maybe, just being there was enough.

“I have a few minutes left,” he said, “before it all sets again.”

I wanted to ask him everything. Why the watch ticked backward. What this all meant. Where he had been.

But he just smiled, reached out, and gently turned the winding dial on the watch. The ticking stopped.

“Time isn’t just numbers,” he repeated. “It’s memory. And memory needs a keeper.”

He vanished.

Just like that.

I stood alone in the silent house, the watch in my hand now completely still. The second hand was once again frozen between 9 and 10.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

In the morning, everything was back to normal. The house was dusty. The photos were back. The air smelled like hay again. No one would believe what I saw.

But that’s okay. I wasn’t meant to prove anything.

I was just meant to remember.