Gravesend didn't feel like a town anymore.
It felt like a stage.
Everything had its place. Every movement rehearsed. Every streetlamp and sidewalk and smile programmed to distract from one impossible fact:
This place was not bound by time.
It was bound by ritual.
---
Mara let me sleep that night, though she didn't.
She sat in a chair facing the door, holding a rusted wrench like a weapon.
"Why a wrench?" I asked as I faded into unconsciousness.
She didn't look at me.
> "Because bullets don't work on things that remember the first time they died."
---
I dreamt of clocks.
Bleeding from their hands.
Their gears turning into teeth.
A thousand versions of me, stitched-mouth and hollow-eyed, each whispering the same question:
> "If you were never supposed to be in the skipped minute… then who were you when it began?"
---
I woke up screaming.
The sun was out.
Birds were chirping.
Normal.
But too normal.
Outside, people walked their dogs. Raked leaves. Chatted on porches.
But they all wore watches.
The exact same one.
Same face. Same band. Same tick.
Every wrist moved in unison. Every hand synchronized perfectly. Every person glanced at them every few seconds—as if afraid they'd drift.
---
Mara noticed too.
She was already dressed.
"Never seen them this early," she muttered. "They're preparing."
"For what?"
She opened her palm.
A page torn from a ledger. On it, just one word:
> ANCHOR.
"I found this under my pillow," she said. "It means the skipped minute is growing teeth. It wants to root itself in someone. You, probably."
"Anchor... like your brother?"
She nodded.
> "It needs someone awake during the fracture. Someone tied to the old time. Someone to bleed between the seconds so the rest of the town stays asleep."
---
We walked through the square just after noon.
Children skipped rope—except their jump rope was braided hair.
A woman was painting a fence that wasn't there.
The town's preacher stood in front of the closed church, staring at the sky with black tears running down his cheeks.
No one else seemed to notice.
---
"I don't think we're in the real day anymore," I said.
Mara didn't answer.
She was too focused on the clocktower.
The gears were spinning—in reverse.
She cursed under her breath.
> "We're losing time already."
---
We made our way to her mechanic's shop—a rusted building behind the fire station. Inside was chaos. Old parts. Scrap metal. Welding tools. Blueprints tacked to the walls with thumbtacks that bled ink.
She pulled open a tarp and revealed what looked like a coffin of brass and wires.
"Is that—?"
"Yeah. My brother's last project. The original anchor."
The device hummed softly, like it was alive.
On the side, scratched into the metal, was the phrase:
> "Midnight is not empty. Just hungry."
---
She pointed to the gears inside.
"We need to rebuild it. Strengthen the anchor. Reinforce the field before tomorrow night."
"And if we don't?"
She looked at me with something between sympathy and fear.
> "Then the skipped minute won't end."
---
That afternoon, I helped her build.
We shaped metal. Wired dials. Repaired the cracked memory plates.
I wasn't a mechanic—but I understood timing.
We calibrated the system to the only clock in town that hadn't lied: my pocket watch.
Mara called it "the last true second."
---
But outside, the world was unraveling.
A man walked past the shop without his reflection.
Children played with dolls that whispered things too clearly.
And the pumpkins?
They were smiling now.
Every one.
Even mine.
---
At dusk, we went to Ellis—the old librarian.
He lived above the library now, surrounded by torn books and clocks with no hands.
When he saw me, he flinched.
"You're the one," he whispered.
"The one who wasn't born here. The one whose time wasn't taken."
I nodded. "What happens if I stay awake again?"
He looked away.
> "Then it finds your real name.
And if it knows your name...
it can carve it into the next version of the town."
---
"Version?"
He nodded toward the window.
"I've seen at least twelve Gravesends."
> "Each one made from the leftovers of the last.
The skipped minute resets it all.
Burns the old script. Writes a new one.
But the people don't remember."
He leaned in, eyes shining with fear.
> "But you do."
---
We left with a map Ellis drew—of the town beneath the town.
Old sewers. Forgotten tunnels. The original clock chamber.
The first anchor point.
That's where Mara said we had to go tomorrow night.
To plug the new anchor in.
To force the skipped minute closed.
To trap whatever lived inside it—forever.
---
Back at the house, we took shifts watching the window.
I looked at my watch.
11:32 PM.
Mara tightened her grip on her wrench.
She whispered, almost too soft to hear:
> "This is the last night Gravesend forgets."
> "After this… time remembers everything."