"The Clockmaker's Secret: A Small Town's Curse That Ticks in the Dark"

They say the dead don’t tell time. In the town of Millhaven, that’s not true.

No one visits the old quarter of Millhaven anymore. The houses lean as though whispering secrets to one another, their eyes dark with broken glass. But at the heart of the decay stands a curious shop—"Wickers & Time: Precision Clocks Since 1841." No one’s entered it for 35 years, yet the clocks inside still tick.

And every night at 3:33 a.m., they all chime.

I never believed the stories. My grandmother used to speak of it when I was little, how she heard the bells when she lived near there. She’d whisper of Isaac Wicker, the original clockmaker, a man who walked backward and only ever spoke in riddles. She claimed he made a clock so precise, it could measure the moments between a soul leaving the body and the devil taking it.

She also claimed that clock never stopped.

After she passed away, I inherited her journal—and the key to the shop.

It was a brass thing, aged with grime and etched with strange markings that seemed to change when I looked too long. I tried to throw it away once. I found it the next morning under my pillow.

So, one cold October evening, I went to find the truth.

Millhaven’s Old Quarter was colder than the rest of town.

Time had frozen it in sepia. As I approached the crooked shop, the sign creaked above me like a warning. The door opened with a sigh, the key almost eager in my hand.

The shop’s inside was immaculate. Dustless. Hundreds of clocks—wall clocks, pocket watches, grandfather clocks—lined every surface, ticked on every shelf, their rhythms overlapping like whispering voices.

A musty smell hung in the air: oil, wood, and something else—like the coppery breath of something sleeping.

Then I saw it.

In the back of the shop, enclosed in a glass case, was a massive contraption. Not a clock—not exactly. It had gears and pendulums and rotating rings of brass inscribed with words I could almost read but not quite. It had no hands. Only a black dial with twelve notches, and a single red line painted at 3:33.

The journal mentioned this device: “The Reaper’s Clock.”

My grandmother believed it didn’t tell time—it took it.

I should have left then. But I didn’t.

That night, I stayed in the shop.

At 3:32 a.m., the clocks began to tick louder. The glass on the counters trembled. I watched the Reaper’s Clock as the red line approached.

Then the world stopped.

Not just paused—ceased. The air hung heavy like a held breath. The clocks silenced in unison. The shop was tomb-still.

That’s when I heard his footsteps.

Slow. deliberate. Coming from the basement.

A figure emerged—thin, tall, dressed in old-fashioned suspenders. His face was all wrong—eyes too far apart, mouth too wide. He looked at me like he recognized me.

“You opened the gate, child. It runs again.”

He pointed to the Reaper’s Clock. It had begun to turn.

“Time is hungry.”

The clocks resumed ticking. Faster. Louder. A shriek filled the air—metal on metal, like screaming gears. I turned to flee, but the door had vanished. In its place was a mirror showing not me, but my grandmother—young, terrified, in the same shop.

She mouthed: “Don’t let it tick.”

I smashed the Reaper’s Clock with a fire poker. It cracked—once, then shattered, spilling black dust and what looked like teeth.

Everything stopped again.

Then the shop vanished.

I awoke outside, in daylight, in front of a collapsed ruin. Just bricks and vines.

No clocks. No Isaac. Nothing.

Except the ticking.

Always, somewhere behind me, I hear it.

They demolished what was left of Wickers & Time years ago, said it was unsafe. But no one lives near that street. No one builds on that ground.

My grandmother’s journal burned itself in my fireplace two nights after I returned. The key? Still under my pillow.

And every morning, at 3:33 a.m., the clocks in my apartment chime. Even the ones without batteries.

I tried moving. I tried therapy. But time... follows.

Isaac Wicker built a clock that measured death.

But now it’s counting down.

And when it strikes zero, I don’t think it’s my time that ends.

I think it’s ours.