We left the house at 11:41 PM.
The world outside was still pretending to be normal.
Porch lights flickered.
Pumpkins smiled with carved mouths just a little too wide.
Somewhere, wind chimes made of teeth jingled softly in the breeze.
No one else was awake.
No one ever was.
---
Mara led the way through the alley behind her shop.
We passed the rusted water tower and ducked beneath the grating at the edge of the woods.
A hatch led down into the old sewer tunnels—remnants of a Gravesend long since buried.
The anchor strapped to her back pulsed faintly.
I could feel it in my bones.
Ticking.
Counting down.
> 11:52 PM.
---
The tunnels smelled like mold and wet metal.
Old carvings lined the stone walls—spirals, clocks, names.
Each name scratched out violently.
Some of the scratches were fresh.
---
"How deep are we going?" I asked.
Mara didn't turn.
"All the way."
---
We reached a junction with three archways.
One led deeper. One collapsed. The third...
The third was bleeding.
Thin streams of black water trickled from the stones, and something pulsed behind the wall, like a buried heartbeat.
I stepped closer—and that's when I saw it.
My name.
RILEY WARD.
Carved perfectly into the wall.
New. Wet.
> "It's already started," I whispered.
Mara nodded grimly. "Then we're almost out of time."
---
We followed the deeper path.
The air grew colder.
The stone changed to something smooth.
Almost polished bone.
---
Then we saw the gate.
An old vault door sealed with six rusted gears.
Chains crisscrossed over its face like veins.
At its center, a handprint burned into the metal.
Without thinking, I stepped forward and placed my palm over it.
The metal hissed.
Burned.
Accepted.
The gate slid open.
And the skipped minute swallowed us whole.
---
The world changed.
We weren't in the tunnels anymore.
Not really.
Not fully.
The corridor stretched impossibly long.
The stone beneath us glowed with numbers, shifting—counting backward.
Shadows crawled across the ceiling like ants, but each shadow was shaped like someone we knew.
I saw my wife.
Mara saw her brother.
We didn't speak.
---
The room at the end was circular.
A stone dais in the middle.
And above it?
The broken mechanism of the original anchor—a mass of rusted gears and glowing blue wires that bent time like gravity.
Around the room stood twelve robed figures.
Stitched mouths.
Empty eyes.
Time ghosts.
They turned in unison as we entered.
> "Anchor," they whispered.
> "Replacement."
> "Repeater."
---
Mara stepped forward and dropped the new anchor onto the dais.
It clicked into place like it belonged there.
The room groaned.
The shadows screamed.
And then one of the stitched ones moved.
Not toward me.
Toward her.
Its face wasn't stitched like the others.
It spoke.
Not with a whisper—but with a voice Mara hadn't heard in years.
> "Sis."
---
She froze.
I grabbed her arm, but her knees buckled.
> "Caleb?" she breathed.
The figure nodded.
But there was something wrong.
The eyes.
Too still.
Too reflective.
Like mirrors without glass.
---
> "You brought it here," the thing said.
> "You woke it up."
> "You're the reason I never got out."
---
Mara fell to her knees.
"It was an accident… we didn't know what would happen—"
> "But you do now."
The figure stepped forward.
The other stitched ones parted.
> "And you still brought him." It pointed at me.
"The one who refuses to forget. The one who winds time wrong."
Suddenly the room twisted.
The floor bent.
The walls blurred.
Every second in the pocket watch on my chest stretched and shrieked.
---
I looked down.
The watch hands were spinning out of control.
Forward.
Then backward.
Then forward again.
I held it to my chest and screamed, "Anchor it! Now!"
---
Mara snapped out of it.
She jammed the final gear into the anchor's slot.
The dais pulsed.
The stitched ones screamed.
Caleb's face melted.
His skin slid off like wax.
And beneath—
There was nothing.
Just an empty mask carved from time itself.
---
The anchor spun violently.
Blue fire arced into the air.
The numbers on the floor froze—then cracked like shattered glass.
A deep bell rang in the distance.
> One chime.
> Two.
> Three.
---
"Go!" Mara yelled.
"Back to the gate!"
We ran, chased by a wind that carried names in it—ours—and promises of what would happen if we stayed.
---
At the threshold, I looked back one last time.
The stitched figures stood in a circle around the anchor, their forms flickering, burning, rewriting.
One of them turned toward me—wearing my face again.
And it whispered:
> "Midnight isn't over."
> "It's only been paused."
---
Then the gate slammed shut behind us.
---
The tunnels returned.
Real.
Wet.
Dark.
And silent.
---
We climbed back to the surface just as my watch ticked over to 12:01 AM.
The minute had passed.
We were still here.
And the town was… quiet.
No lanterns.
No cloaks.
Just wind.
And a distant church bell ringing thirteen times.
---
Mara collapsed on the porch.
I sat beside her.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Finally, she asked:
> "Do you think it worked?"
I looked at the watch.
Then at the stars.
Then at the shadows.
Some of them still moved a little too freely.
I didn't answer.
Because the wind whispered something only I could hear:
> "The town remembers now."