When Lena inherited her grandfather's house, the lawyer handed her one rule along with the keys: "Never wind the clock in the hall."
The clock was ancient, black oak with a cracked glass face. Its hands had been frozen at 3:17 for as long as anyone could remember.
On her third night there, Lena woke to a sound. Tick.
She crept downstairs. The clock was still stopped, but the pendulum was swaying slowly in the dark, as if something had just let go of it.
The next night, she heard tick, tick, and the minute hand had moved to 3:18.
On the fifth night, the hands were racing. Floorboards creaked upstairs, in the room that had been locked since her grandfather died. Someone was walking.
Lena found a key taped behind the clock, with a note in her grandfather's handwriting: "If it starts, don't open the door. It only moves when someone is listening."
She stood at the locked door with the key trembling in her hand. Then, from the other side, came a whisper in her own voice:
"Lena... please. I've been waiting so long. Open it."
She didn't open it. She ran downstairs, tore the pendulum from the clock, and the house fell silent.
In the morning, she found the hall mirror covered with a sheet she had never put there. Beneath it, written in the dust of the glass, was one sentence:
"You stopped the wrong clock."
Lena looked at her wristwatch. It had stopped at 3:17.
Behind her, upstairs, a door slowly creaked open.