We Don't Remember the Missing Hour

We Don’t Remember the Missing Hour

By [Javid Khan]

In the town of Elmsworth, no one talked about 3:17 AM. Not seriously. They joked about it, blamed it for lost keys, strange bruises, or the occasional wrong-number call that never showed up on their phone history. But everyone knew—though never admitted—that something was wrong with that time.

Every night, at exactly 3:17 AM, the clocks froze. And at 4:17 AM, they ticked forward again. The missing hour left no trace. People woke in their beds, in the wrong positions, sometimes with the blankets perfectly made again, sometimes soaked in sweat. One man even woke up outside, barefoot, with his keys in his mouth. No one remembered anything. Not even a dream.

At first, people thought it was just a strange coincidence—a mass delusion. Until it started happening to visitors. Outsiders. Tourists.

That’s when they stopped coming.

But no one ever left either. They tried. Packed bags, turned keys, booked flights. But something would happen: a blown tire, a sick pet, a sudden fire. And when the attempt was real—when someone made it past the town line—they’d return days later, confused, dazed, missing time again. Some didn't return at all. Their names slowly faded from conversation, as if their existence had been scrubbed.

It wasn’t until Jamie Belden, eleven years old, decided to break the rules that the truth was recorded.

Jamie wasn’t scared like the adults. He was curious. Ever since his dog, Baxter, disappeared one night without a sound—only to return two days later with milky white eyes and a limp—Jamie had questions. He read everything he could. Not just about memory loss and sleepwalking, but about surveillance, wireless setups, and motion detection. And when he saved up enough money from mowing lawns, he bought a night-vision nanny cam. Small. Silent. Hidden in a teddy bear on his shelf.

He set it to record starting at 3:00 AM.

The first night, nothing happened—just the usual: clocks frozen, and Jamie waking up with no memory of the missing hour. But when he checked the footage, the file was corrupted. Glitchy, static-filled. It crashed his laptop.

So he tried again.

And again.

On the fifth night, the footage played.

The screen was grainy, bathed in green. Jamie was asleep, breathing softly, curled up under his Star Wars blanket. At exactly 3:17 AM, the room shifted. That was the only word he could find for it. The shadows rearranged. The air thickened, like he was watching through water. A low hum filled the audio, and something peeled into the room.

Not through the door. Not through the walls. It just... appeared. Like it had been there all along, waiting behind a layer of reality too thin to notice.

It was tall, wrong-shaped, like a man drawn by someone who had only heard about humans in passing. Its limbs bent in places they shouldn't. It didn’t walk. It hovered.

And it wasn’t alone.

Four figures—identical—stood around Jamie’s bed. They didn’t touch him. Not at first. They stood perfectly still for seventeen minutes. Then, in perfect unison, they tilted their heads.

One leaned down and whispered something into Jamie’s ear.

At 4:17 AM, they all disappeared as suddenly as they arrived. The shadows unshifted. The air returned to normal. Jamie stirred in bed—but never woke.

He didn’t show the video to his parents. He knew they wouldn’t believe it. And when he woke the next morning, the file was gone. Not deleted—never there. Even the camera had been wiped clean.

But Jamie remembered the figures. Their whispers. One phrase repeated over and over in his mind like a virus:

“We’ve always been here.

You just stopped looking.”

That night, Jamie nailed his windows shut and taped over every vent. He placed salt lines at his door, just like he read in the old books from the locked section of the library. He wrote down what he remembered—everything. And hid it under a loose floorboard.

When Jamie didn’t come down for breakfast the next morning, his mother found his room empty. The bed made. The salt lines smeared.

The note under the floorboard was the only trace left.

“They know I saw.

They don’t like being seen.”

"Please... don’t fall asleep at 3:17."

To this day, in Elmsworth, the clocks still freeze.

And no one remembers the missing hour.

But sometimes, when the wind is quiet, you might hear whispering.

A voice not quite human, not quite gone,

saying:

“We’ve always been here.

You just stopped looking.”