The Clock

It was dinnertime in Gibsons, a small town with nice people, sitting down to eat the evening meal. I was looking forward to my pork roast, potatoes and peas. Steaming hot on the plate, I opened the back door to the kitchen for the last breath of breeze till nightfall. Already the sun was winking its last goodbye, another beautiful day with the smell of the ocean wafting in. 

“Come on Joey” I yelled out the back door, my little black lab dog splashing somewhere in the creek. Mom and dad were laughing in the living room, all of us isolated because of COVID-19, the new virus, the unknown virus, the virus smaller than life itself but bigger than the entire world now. 

I poured some gravy on the roast ‘cause mom always cooked it to death. I ate it heartily anyway. On the microwave, the digital numbers read 7:39. I knew it was getting close to bedtime, my favorite time of the night when mom and dad went to sleep, hearing their chorus of snores from the other room. My favorite time of night because I stayed up most of the night, well into the morning, playing with my phone or my ipad, learning all about the world in ways no one else could teach me. Tonight, I was chatting on Skype with Amy, a friend who lived across the way. 

Funny thing about Amy is that we were never really friends when school was on. We’d see each other, we knew the other lived across the way, but I had my friends and she had hers. Amy was a real tomboy, she was always running with the boys or playing soccer. She even played hockey. 

I was the opposite. I liked my ribbons and my dolls and my baking, although I wasn’t really any good at it. I just learned that spring, finally allowed to use the oven on my own. I was best at cookies, they were easy to do and didn’t require much time. My cakes never worked and I did ask for a mixer for Christmas. 

I had the strangest birthday party when I turned ten this year. I was supposed to take all my friends to Sechelt, another town just up the coast and we were supposed to have a beach barbeque. I had sent out the invitations just after Valentine’s Day much to everyone’s delight. I had had it all planned, me and mom and dad and even Joey helped, even though he was just a dog.   

It never turned out that way. I had my party with just mom and dad in the house so to feel better I put a paper hat on Joey. Mom and dad made it the best tenth birthday I could have, I was now a decade old. But it lacked something. The cake was good (mom made it), the pinata was good, I got to have all that candy to myself. I think I got more presents than if I had had a real birthday with real people. It was never fun alone. I so missed my friends. I even missed school, my teacher Ms. Sandara. We did Skype and talk online but it just wasn’t the same. The smell of the classroom. The little pieces of candy I hid in the corner of my little desk. The smell of our wet shoes from the back, dripping the morning rain onto the floor. The playground. The cafeteria. The other teachers prodding us about. “What do they think, we’re cows?” we used to joke. I even missed the sickening smell of sawdust on the playground. 

I realized I ate all my dinner. There was nothing else to do but play and eat and play with Joey and do computer. TV was so boring although mom and dad watched it all the time now, at first, none of us used to being at home together and now, not knowing how we will be apart. My parents both made me sick and made me loved. I did have a crush on Ari, a boy in my class I sometimes chatted with at night, my folks asleep and me wide awake. 

I decided I would just go to bed. Joey ran in from the creek, not really muddy but I wiped him down with his old purple towel. I rinsed off my dish automatically, put it in the sink and got some milk and cookies to take to my room. 

I put on my pajamas and lay on top of the bed. Ping ping ping went my ipad but I was sleepy tonight. I just ignored it. Joey hopped onto my bed with me and cuddled in. I was asleep before I knew it. 

Bong! Bong! Bong! I woke up with a start. It was pitch dark. Joey startled a bit, too and came and licked my face. Bong! Bong! Bong! I heard this noise off in the distance. I didn’t know what it was as I had never heard it before. Like a chime. Like music of some kind. 

I got out of bed and followed the sound. Bong! Bong! Bong! It was clearer now, coming from the basement. I looked over into mom and dad’s room and they were fast asleep. I wasn’t scared because if it was anything weird Joey would start barking. He was so good at telling me what was going on. But he seemed okay with it so I followed the sound, creaking open the basement door and snapping on the basement light to go downstairs, Joey at my side. 

I went down the steps and definitely, the sound came from the deepest corner in the back. I hadn’t been in there for so long, I think it was just before Christmas as we kept our decorations and stuff down there. Bong! Bong! Bong! Certainly, it was coming from the box from grandma’s old house.   

I never really knew what was in that box, just that dad had packed it up with tape five years ago. He had given away most of grandma’s things but just kept a few things in that box, along with the other box of photographs of my family from long ago, family I had never known, family that would never know me, but there they were. Serious, never smiling. My dad had told me that once people didn’t smile in photographs because they wanted to be seen as serious people and people didn’t just smile like they do now. I thought, what would those people think now with everyone taking pictures of themselves all of the time, smiling away, looking like they didn’t. What would they have thought about a selfie?   

I sneezed because the dust was really thick in that corner. I no longer heard that sound but I couldn’t help myself. Joey had found an old squeaky toy and was chewing on that, probably something he had put down there sometime, he always did that, put toys all over the place to find later. I pulled the box from the back and peeled the old tape off it, once glued right on, now easy to just peel off. 

I put the box under the basement lightbulb, a bare bulb so I could see. Joey was chewing away on his old duck, squeak, squeak, squeak. I pulled open the top flap and saw a bunch of red velvet fabric, worn fabric, then when I pulled it out it turned out to be an old dress. I shook it out of the box and realized it was a child’s dress, a dress that was a bit too big for me but really old-fashioned looking. It smelled like dried roses and then these rose petals fell out of it. Faded, brown but still pink from some long ago spring. 

I put the dress aside. It must have been grandma’s dress maybe when she was my age or older. I looked into the top of the box and saw another box. That one was made of wood and that one was really old, too. I pulled out the wooden box from the paper box, it was only about the size of a shoebox. I didn’t care about the rest of the stuff because it just looked like old clothes, some old papers and magazines.   

The wooden box was very plain, no markings or writing on it, just a lid with hinges and a strange half hook that clasped into a lock. I turned it sideways. It opened and I saw a strange type of brass machine. 

I pulled the machine out of the box. It was an old clock but not just a clock. I decided to take it to my room and look at so I tucked everything back into the paper box, tried to make it look like I never opened it, shoved it back into the corner and hid the box under my shirt in case mom or dad were awake.   

Joey followed me up the stairs, I quickly snapped off the light, scared now as maybe I shouldn’t be looking at this box in the first place but I had to see what their weird clock thing was. It was a clock and it wasn’t a clock. I went into my room and shut the door but didn’t close it so I could hear if mom or dad were going to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom just across the way from my room. 

I used my phone to look at it. It was a clock with weird discs on it but it also had a date thing, spelled out, not like on the computer but spelled out in old-fashioned handwriting. The side of the clock had a dial. I turned it a bit and the hands moved to set the time. I wasn’t sure what I had just done as the sound went off again, bong! Bong! Bong! I dropped it to the bed. 

Just then, my door opened and in walked a young girl, she must of have been a bit older than me. 

“Who are you?” I whispered to her. I flashed my phone at her and could see right through her to the other side of the room! “Oh! Are you a ghost?”   

The girl never said anything to me. She came over to the bed and picked up the clock. She turned another dial on it that I hadn’t seen before, one tucked under the face. It changed the date to May 29, 1937. She then set the clock to the time, the little hand on twelve and the big hand on 3. 

She looked at me, took the clock with her and walked out of my room. This time, the door opened, even though I could see right through her! For some reason I wasn’t even scared, I just followed her. Joey was nowhere to be seen which was probably a good thing as he might start barking. I wasn’t scared of this girl, this girl in, I realized, a similar dress to the one I saw downstairs from the box but this one was white. With pink ribbons. She had really long dark hair. I tried to follow her but she just floated down the hallway into the kitchen. I must be seeing a ghost I thought to myself but somehow it wasn’t like any ghost story I had ever read. 

She opened the back door of the kitchen and in poured sunlight, quickly looked over at the microwave and it said 12:15. Then I realized it was just afternoon but only seconds ago it was night.   

She went out to the backyard and it was decorated with ribbons, odd tables with tablecloths, with odd little horses and stuffed toys and the strangest dolls I had ever seen. Dolls that looked real, like real people. There was also a carousel with brightly painted horses and poles, other children, all dressed in these kinds of dresses, with curls, with waves, with little gloves on. She turned to me and smiled. 

“Do you talk or am I dreaming?” I asked her. Just then I heard the sounds. The sounds of a fair, of a party in the backyard. Mothers came out behind trees, people of the past coming to life. Little girls were jumping woven rope skip ropes, boys playing marbles in shorts, throwing stones, whistling, jostling each other around in very rough ways. There were flowers everywhere with streamers. 

I then heard their voices, talking happily, softly, carefully. The sound of some other time from the past. The girl still holding the clock, I grabbed it from her and ran back into the house. I slammed the kitchen door and looked around, with the clock still under my left arm.   

It was pitch black. The microwave clock read 4:07, I knew it was 4:07 in the morning because when I looked at the kitchen window, the sun was no longer shining through it. 

I went back to my room. I was not only shocked but completely confused. 

What had I just seen? A party from the past? Someone else’s memory?   

I looked at the clock and the time had changed. The date now read May 23, 2020 and the time was 4:10, the big hand on ten and the little hand on four. Bong! Bong! Bong! It went off three times again. 

I wrapped the clock in a pillowcase, then wrapped a sweater around it and stuck it up into my closet. I went to bed. It was now early morning and as I drifted off, I thought I could hear a muffled sound of ticking.