What Happens at 9:15...?

Issue #21 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, March 17, 2024

The ticking. Always the ticking.

And the waiting.

There used to be smells and strong odors shoving their way into my nostrils, trying to reach my brain I think, but they have given up. I can no longer smell a thing. The same has happened with the noises from the world outside that would occasionally find their way past the thick glass window that has been closed tight ever since I began my vigil. Or was asked to.

For one year, four months, three days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, and endless seconds ticking away like sand, I have been sitting here in this empty room in my hand-carved wooden chair, the one my father made, staring at the clock on the wall at the far side of the room. There is nothing especially unusual about this clock, at least not when it comes to appearance. It is neither ugly nor in any way attractive. It is simply functional. It does what it was made to do.

But it also does something else. I think the clock is a guardian of sorts. I believe it was built to stand watch, to sound the alarm when someone - or something - is trying to gain entry from the Other Side.

This is why I don’t refer to the clock as mine, because it is not anything that was purchased at a store. I was entrusted with this particular clock on the day before my vigil began by a small man wearing a black top hat that was almost as tall as he was. The man knocked on my door repeatedly until I finally answered, and I let him know I was not glad to see him and who the fuck was he and didn’t he know it was not even five o’clock in the damned morning and ... and…

The small man smiled, then handed me the clock.

“When 9:15 arrives, you must let us know immediately. Immediately. It is imperative that you do not leave your room until 9:15. That is when they will attempt to come through. But they cannot be allowed to do so. Do you understand? This cannot be allowed.”

“Wait…I don’t want…”

But then the man turned away and disappeared through an opening in the air that pulled aside like a tent flap, exposing briefly another world that I do not have the words to describe. When I closed the door and turned to go back into my living room, the living room was gone. So was anything and everything that I recognized. All that was left was an empty room and my father’s wooden chair sitting in the middle. Somehow the clock was now on the wall. The only numbers on the clock were 9 and 3, directly across from each other on an otherwise blank oval. The two hands began to spin in the same way as most clocks, except that when it came time for them to reach the time of 9:15, which normally comes after 9:14, those two hands would start all over again marking time that did not exist.

Every day they have been marking this perversion of time for one year, four months, three days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, and endless seconds. And I have been sitting here, dutifully observing. And waiting. Standing watch with the hands of time.

Because one day, they will come.