The pocket watch was warm when I picked it up.
Identical to mine—except the crack.
Except the engraving.
> Riley Ward – Anchor #2.
---
Mara didn't say anything at first.
She didn't have to.
I could see the question forming in her eyes:
How many versions of you has the town burned through?
And the better question—
Why does it keep bringing you back?
---
I turned the watch over in my hands, half-expecting it to dissolve into smoke.
But it didn't.
It ticked.
Three ticks.
Then stopped.
And I swear I heard something breathe out from inside the tower—
like a sigh.
Or maybe a laugh.
---
Later that day, we went back to Ellis.
He hadn't moved from his desk at the library.
Books surrounded him, pages torn out and scattered like feathers after a kill.
He looked up as we entered, blood crusted around his nose.
> "I remember the first version of you now," he said.
> "You were here... ten years ago. Came to fix the tower."
> "Said you could stop it. Said time just needed... realignment."
> "Then you went missing."
He pointed at a gap on the town's census wall—a long list of names and faces on yellowed paper.
> "That's where your name was."
> "And now it's back."
---
Mara sat beside him, hands trembling.
"So the tower doesn't erase people. It just... forgets to remember them."
Ellis nodded slowly. "It overwrites reality. But not cleanly."
He pointed to the ceiling, where thousands of old clock faces were nailed upside down.
> "Sometimes it leaves echoes.
That's why we hear the singing."
---
I blinked.
"The... singing?"
Ellis smiled—sad, broken, distant.
> "It sings to the anchors before they dissolve."
---
That night, I heard it.
Not in a dream.
Not inside my head.
From beneath the bell.
Soft. Gentle.
A child's voice, maybe.
A lullaby I couldn't quite translate.
Each note plucked from the air like a thread unraveling time.
It came with a smell—burnt copper and old oil.
And a taste in my mouth, metallic and cold.
Mara woke at the same time.
She didn't ask what I heard.
She just said:
> "We need to go back into the mechanism room."
---
We climbed the tower together.
Halfway up, we passed the inscription we hadn't noticed before.
> "This tower is the throat of something buried."
---
The gears were turning again.
But not to tell time.
They moved like muscle.
Shifting in rhythm to the lullaby.
Inside the center ring, where the old anchor had sat, was now something new.
Not built.
Grown.
A knot of wire, bone, and flesh.
Pulsing.
Breathing.
And just below it, wedged into the base like a rusted nail—
> A third pocket watch.
---
I reached for it, but Mara grabbed my wrist.
"No," she said, eyes wide.
"It wants you to touch it."
---
We backed away.
And that's when the room began to shift.
The walls groaned.
The stairs behind us collapsed.
We were sealed inside the tower belly.
The lullaby grew louder.
The words almost made sense now.
---
> "Tick tock
The name was wrong
We changed his song
But still he comes
And sings along—"
---
From the shadows, something moved.
A figure.
Stitched-mouth, but taller than the others.
It wore a cloak made of watchbands and prayer beads.
Its eyes were empty sockets, and yet—
They saw us.
---
It didn't attack.
It sang.
With that stitched mouth still shut, it sang the rest of the lullaby in reverse.
And the tower cried.
---
Not metaphorically.
Actual water gushed from the walls.
Not rain.
Tears.
Sticky. Red. Time-thick tears.
The mechanism groaned again and again, gears turning faster, like a panic attack in metal.
Then, from above:
A voice. My voice.
Screaming.
> "Get me out—get me out—please, I can't—get me out!"
---
I looked up.
And there he was.
Me.
Another Riley Ward.
Trapped inside the bell's iron mouth.
Hands scraping at the inside, face distorted from years of screaming.
Mara shouted, "He's real! That's not a ghost!"
She ran to the base of the tower, searching for an access panel.
The stitched figure did not stop her.
It only turned to me, and pointed one long, cracked finger at my chest.
Then to the floor.
Then to its own chest.
---
I understood.
It was showing me what came next.
I was to take its place.
Sing the lullaby.
Keep the minute anchored.
Wear the stitched cloak.
Because this tower didn't kill anchors.
It kept them.
---
Mara pulled open a rusted hatch.
"Help me—hurry!" she screamed.
I ran.
I didn't look back at the thing.
At me.
At the thing I might become.
I only ran.
---
We pulled open the hatch and crawled down into the old bell shaft.
There, in the darkness, we found a room full of mirrors—shattered.
Each one reflecting a different version of the tower.
Gravesend in flames.
Gravesend submerged.
Gravesend empty.
And in every single one…
> I was in the tower.