When we stepped back through the tower's lower corridor—our way home—it wasn't like before.
No mirror.
No flash of light.
Just one long staircase winding upward through gears that no longer pulsed with madness, but ticked in unison like a real machine.
Time had remembered how to move.
And it was waiting for us.
---
At the top, we emerged into the tower's observation room.
Mara shielded her eyes.
The windows were clear. Sunlight poured through.
Not fog.
Not storm.
Not crimson cloud cover.
Just morning.
Clean. Golden. Real.
---
We ran down the rest of the steps and out into the town square—
—and froze.
Everything was wrong.
Or rather—right in a way it hadn't been for years.
The streets were full.
People walked in pairs.
Children laughed as they carved pumpkins.
Old storefronts, once shuttered and crumbling, gleamed with fresh paint.
It was Halloween morning again.
But the first Halloween in over a decade that Gravesend had remembered.
---
Mara turned in circles, eyes wide.
"I don't believe it…"
"It worked," I whispered.
We looked at the clocktower.
The hands ticked.
The chime rang once, sharp and strong.
9:00 AM.
---
Ellis, the librarian, stepped out of the bakery holding a hot coffee.
His face was smooth.
No shadows under the eyes. No twitch of trauma.
He waved to a passing boy. "Happy Halloween, Jonah!"
Mara whispered, "He should be dead. He died the second year the skip repeated."
And yet—
There he stood.
---
I took out the watch.
The one from the mirror.
It was ticking steadily.
The crack in the glass?
Gone.
The engraving?
Wiped clean.
And for a moment, I thought we'd made it.
That we had broken the loop.
Saved the town.
But then—
The wind shifted.
---
The laughter quieted.
The shadows under the trees twisted.
And I heard it again:
A hum.
Faint.
Hidden in the breeze.
Not mechanical.
Musical.
Like a lullaby.
---
Mara stopped walking.
She turned toward the alley beside the pharmacy.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Do you hear that?"
"Yeah," I said. "It followed us."
She didn't respond.
Her gaze stayed locked on a child standing in the alley.
A boy.
Barefoot.
Covered in ash.
Staring at us.
Not blinking.
Not breathing.
Just holding… something in his hands.
A doll made of gears.
And stitched into the doll's chest—
> A ticking watch.
---
"That's not a kid," Mara said.
"No."
"It's a leftover."
---
The boy tilted his head.
And smiled.
A mouth far too wide.
With no teeth.
Only numbers.
---
Then he turned and walked into the fog that now slithered back between the houses.
And behind him, something moved.
Something big.
A tall shadow that brushed rooftops.
A silhouette made of clocks.
A time-hollow creature that had waited too long in the skipped minute and now had followed us home.
---
We backed away.
The sky flickered—once, twice—and the townspeople kept walking like nothing had happened.
Some repeated greetings.
One man dropped his newspaper, picked it up… dropped it again… picked it up.
Looping.
Only slightly.
But enough.
---
"It's unstable," I said.
"We anchored the origin," Mara replied.
"But the others…"
"They never got erased."
---
We reached her shop and ducked inside.
The place was clean. Polished.
Just as it had been before the loops corrupted everything.
Mara locked the door.
"I think the town is fractured."
"We fixed one version," I said.
"But the others bled through."
She nodded, pulling the shades.
"And now they want to be remembered too."
---
Suddenly, the clock above the register cracked straight down the middle.
Time stopped.
But just for a second.
Just long enough for a whisper to bleed through the wall:
> "One fix is never enough."
> "You buried us beneath the bell…"
> "But the bell remembers."
---
We turned toward each other.
Mara's eyes were wet. But she was steady.
> "We can't leave it like this."
> "No," I said. "We stopped one moment. But the town's full of echoes."
> "And someone's going to have to dig them all up."
---
I pulled the anchor watch from my coat and opened the dial.
Inside, the gears spun.
But now they weren't counting seconds.
They were listing names.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Every person the skip had touched.
Some dead.
Some looped.
Some still waiting.
---
One of the names blinked in red:
> Mara Thatcher.
And another below it:
> Riley Ward.
We were still part of the system.
Still inside the story.
---
I looked at her.
"We've got work to do."
She smiled, despite the chill running through the shop.
> "Let's make time hurt."