# **30. "The Aldeburgh Clock" – A Story of Time Walking Its Own Path**

Aldeburgh, a picturesque town on the Suffolk coast, is known for its pebble beach and fishing boats drawn high onto the shore. Older residents, however, speak of another symbol of the town—the **Old Clock**, which stands not in any tower, but… at the edge of the beach, next to an abandoned house that has been unoccupied for decades.

They say the clock is cursed.

That it measures not minutes, but lives.

That time passes differently around it.

And those who stare at its hands for too long never return the same.

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## **I**

In 1923, a young writer, **Eleanor Wist**, arrived in Aldeburgh, seeking a quiet place to work. She stopped at a small fishing shack at the edge of town, where the waves were loudest and the wind harshest.

One afternoon, while walking along the shore, she saw a house standing alone at the edge of the dunes. The house looked as if it still dated back to the days when pirates moored offshore. Beside it stood a huge, freestanding clock with a metal face bearing no numbers—only long, thin hands.

Eleanor wrote in her journal:

> “The clock shouldn’t be working.

> Yet the hands kept moving, though I couldn’t hear any mechanism.

> As if time itself were pulling them.”

### **II**

The next day, she learned something strange:

The clock didn’t always show the same time for everyone.

While talking to a local shopkeeper, an elderly woman said:

“The hands move differently for different people.”

“What does that mean?” Eleanor asked.

“Some people see the time that’s yet to come.” Others—the one that's gone. It depends... on what you're afraid of.

Eleanor, though fascinated, decided to ignore it as superstition.

But curiosity returned.

### **III**

One evening, when the sea was rough, she returned to the clock. She approached and noticed something she hadn't noticed before:

Reflected on the metal surface were not her own features, but the face of an elderly woman.

Wrinkled, aged, tired of life.

Eleanor jumped back.

And the clock's hands suddenly stopped.

The wind stopped too.

The sea stopped roaring—as if the entire area were holding its breath.

After a moment, everything returned to normal, but Eleanor was certain of one thing: time didn't flow as usual around this clock.

### **IV**

Eleanor decided to investigate the history of the house. In the city archives, she came across the name of the owner: **Samuel Grentham**, a 19th-century clockmaker who moved here in 1850.

According to the documents, Samuel was a genius, but an oddity. He claimed to have built "the most perfect clock in the world."

One that measured not time, but **ends**.

Not the ends of hours.

Not the ends of days.

The ends of people.

Samuel wrote in his notes:

> "Everyone has an end.

> But not everyone knows when it's coming.

> The clock knows that."

Eleanor felt a cold that had nothing to do with the sea breeze.

### **V**

In the following days, strange things began to happen.

When Eleanor walked past the clock, the hands began to turn faster—not in one direction, but in both, as if they were fighting each other.

Sometimes she heard a ticking sound—quiet but insistent, even though the clock had no visible mechanism.

One night, as a storm was battering the coast, she was awakened by a loud bang. She went outside… and saw the clock **turning itself**, so that the face was looking directly at her window.

The hands were spinning furiously.

Eleanor whispered,

“What do you want?”

Then one of the hands stopped abruptly at the top of the face—exactly at midnight.

And from inside the house, next to the clock, came the sound of… footsteps.

### **VI**

The next morning, Eleanor decided to go inside.

The door was ajar.

The smell of dust and salt hung inside.

Dozens of mechanisms, springs, and gears lay scattered on the floor, and clocks without hands hung on the walls.

But one item caught her eye: Samuel Grentham's journal.

The last entry read:

> "The clock is already running.

> It shows their ends, but also mine.

> Time wants to be free.

> And I am its first prisoner."

Eleanor closed the journal.

She felt someone standing behind her.

She turned slowly.

In the center of the room stood a figure—tall, thin, dressed in a long, dark cloak.

Its face was smooth and featureless, as if made of porcelain.

The hands of the clock outside began to beat like a heart.

The figure whispered:

"Your time is mine now."

### **VII**

Eleanor fled, running across the beach toward the town.

The clock chimed louder and louder, though it had no bell.

Louder.

Louder.

It was as if the whole world had turned into a clockwork mechanism that was jammed.

When she reached her cottage, she looked out at the sea.

The clock… stood right by the water.

As if it had followed her.

Its hands slowly moved towards the bottom of the dial.

Towards the end.

Towards her end.

Eleanor screamed, but the sound She didn't hear—as if the clock had taken it away.

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## **VIII**

In the morning, the villagers found her cottage empty.

The journal lay open on the table.

On the last page, the words appeared by themselves—as if someone were writing them with an invisible hand:

> "The clock measures the end that is coming,

> and the one that should not yet come.

> Be careful when you look at time.

> Time may be looking at you."

No one found Eleanor.

But the clock still stands on the beach.

And when someone passes by it at night and looks at the hands, they sometimes see not the time, but... the date.

A date that belongs to it.

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