There’s this old, grandfather’s clock that stands right outside my bathroom door. I think mom said we inherited it from her sister, who mysteriously disappeared, and that it was antique, a ‘treasure’. It didn’t matter to me; the only thing I was concerned about was that the thing scared the living daylights out of me.

It was huge this clock, towering a good foot or so above my head, and it looked ever so threatening from my vantage point. The wooden frame was hollow and every tick or gong was maximized in volume ten times so that it echoed all around the house. And our house is pretty big so to cause a noise to be heard all around is quite a feat. But it wasn’t even that which disturbed me so much, it was the weird scratching noises that came from the brass, clock head.

I swear that every night, at exactly 1:00 AM, on the thirteenth toll of the bell, there’s this muffled, background squeaking that my ears pick out. No one else hears it, not even my brother who shares the same room as me. Every time I would ask, my family dismissed it as my imagination or something I’d dreamed, never anything serious. I brought up the fact that it could be a mouse, eating away at the already rotting mahogany and my dad cracked the clock face open to check. The operation revealed…nothing, absolutely nothing; just a big, gaping black hole with a bunch of cogs and wheels turning, ticking. That settled the matter for everyone else and I eventually gave up trying to convince them. But I knew what I heard and developed the habit or avoiding the upstairs bathroom all together.

For a while, the sounds actually stopped and I grew to accept that there really was nothing to worry about, that my mind had been playing tricks on me. Months passed with no more disturbances since my dad investigated the clock interior; I forgot all about my old fear.

The scratching has started again. It’s March and the grandfather clock has just started announcing the thirteenth hour of night when my ears catch the all too familiar sound of nails on metal and wood. I blank and freeze up under my covers. Even though the weather’s already starting to warm and my comforter is extremely warm, I start shivering like mad. My fingers are clenched so tightly under the pillow that my nails are digging into my skin and I know without looking that there was now a perfect semi-circle of red half-moons on each palm. I don’t want to believe it, I try to block out the noise and go back to sleep, but still it seeps through my defenses to reverberate in my skull. If I stay like this, I’ll go mad.

The bell is already silent, but for some reason, this time, the scratching continues. Careful not to disturb Jack whose bunk is right above mine, I climb out of bed and set my already numb feet to the even colder floor. I can’t find my slippers anywhere so I set off without them. I never thought I’d be thankful for having the bathroom attached to my and my brother’s room, but right now, I’m quietly thanking God that it is. Otherwise, I would have missed the door in the dark. Standing in front of the large mirror, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the dim nightlight and that really my face? Why is my skin so chalky pale, like paste? And were my eyes always this big? My hair, did it usually stand up the way it was, in un-kept spikes? I examine the other me a while longer, then shake my head and turn back to the little doorknob that seemed to be too much for my hand to handle. On the other side, the scraping was getting louder and faster, as though anticipating my arrival. I gulp and open the door.

Directly across from me, not five steps from the narrow frame where I stand, looms the grandfather clock, its face eerily reflecting the bathroom light from behind me, and if it had any features, I can swear it would be sneering. All of a sudden, the noises stop and all is silent, as it should be. For some reason, this scares me even more than hearing the harsh scratching, possibly because the silence does not feel natural. Rather, it was oppressing, like the atmosphere that may surround a predator and prey before the latter is ripped to pieces. This is not reassuring and I half turn, ready to bolt; the clock creaks.

I whip back around to face the dreadful thing and find that where the white, metallic clock head should have been, there was an awful hole, the same one my father had revealed earlier in the year but only, more sinister somehow. Unbidden, I start to think more carefully about what mom said in regards to my aunt’s disappearance. Apparently, my mother’s sister didn’t like the clock either and claimed that she heard noises coming from it when it was just past midnight. Her parents didn’t believe her either and for half a year, things quieted. Then, without warning one night, she went missing. No traces were left of her anywhere; nothing was to be found that might hint at where she had been taken.

Musing over these thoughts, I begin to wonder if my aunt had been confronting the grandfather clock as I am when she was wiped from the surface of the Earth. As though in answer, there are further squeaks and groans and something starts to appear in the hollow before my eyes. I can’t move, my feet are rooted to the ground and my legs refuse to obey my screaming brain. All I can do, is watch as out from that abyss, creeps a long, slimy white blob, reaching for me. Too late I realize that it was a hand, a hand that was covered in dried blood and wood shavings, a hand that had been tearing away at its cage for decades, desperate for human flesh. And I was to feed it tonight.

I make one last desperate attempt to escape, and fail entirely. My mouth can’t even open to scream as I am strangled by the pale fingers and engulfed in the foul, reeking Hell-hole that is to be my final resting place.

Jack woke the next morning and stretched lazily, yawning as he did. Thank goodness for weekends, he thought. Had he woken up that late on a school day, he would have missed not only the bus, but first period as well. He rolled over onto his stomach and bent his head down to see if his brother was awake yet.

“Hey Mike,” he started to say, “you up…"

His voice trailed off as he stared at Michael’s empty bed. That was odd, his brother never got up that early on Saturdays. Frowning, Jack dropped down form his bunk and, walking past the bathroom, found the door on the other side opened to the hallway beyond. And right there, in a halo of morning light, was the grandfather clock, looking, strangely, ‘full’. Shrugging, the boy walked downstairs to confront his mother.

Something inside the clock began to scratch.