Here's **another very long, standalone story**—in the same dark, literary style.--

# **11. "The Timemaker of York"—A Story of Clocks That Shouldn't Run**

In the narrow streets of old York, where the city walls seem to remember every sigh and every fear, stood a clockmaker's workshop, said to never close. Not because the owner worked around the clock—but because at night, the clocks themselves **opened the door from the inside**, as if to let in the cold or invite someone you shouldn't look into the eyes of.

The workshop once belonged to Thomas Wainwright—a recluse who lived over a century ago. He was known as a genius for precision mechanisms, a man who could repair any timepiece, regardless of age, damage, or movement. They said that "time obeys Thomas," but no one knew at the time how true that was.

Thomas didn't repair clocks for their beauty. He fixed them, as he said, "so they'd remember." But no one understood **what exactly they were supposed to remember**.

### **I**

It began one winter night when a woman dressed in a black coat and heavy cape knocked on the workshop door. Her eyes were so pale they looked like silver. She brought a pocket watch, rusty and cracked, with its hands stuck at **01:13**.

She simply said,

"This clock won't work. It should."

Thomas looked at the mechanism and immediately felt cold, as if someone had opened a window in the dead of winter. The hands didn't move. The pendulum didn't chime. Nothing. As if the clock were dead.

The woman turned as if to leave.

"If you don't fix it," she whispered, "time will stop flowing as it should."

And she left before he could ask where the clock came from.

It left behind the scent of old paper and… ash.

### **II**

Thomas spent three nights working on the mechanism. On the third, he noticed that the clock was ticking, even though he hadn't touched it.

What's more, it only ticked when there was no light in the workshop.

In the darkness, the hands moved slowly, painfully, as if each second required an effort.

When he lit the lamp, they stopped immediately.

The clock lived only in the darkness.

And then he heard the first whisper.

It didn't come from the clock. Or from the street. Or from his own head.

The whisper said:

**— 01:13… 01:13… 01:13…**

For as long as Thomas covered his ears and ran out into the street.

### **III**

He decided to return the clock to the woman, but no one knew her. No one had seen her. No neighbor, no merchant, no passerby.

Then something even more disturbing began to happen in the workshop.

Clocks that had never run—old, abandoned, unrepaired—started striking the same hour.**

Always 1:13.

Even those without pendulums. Even those without hands.

And among the sounds, one thing stood out: a knocking from behind the wall, as if someone were **walking on the other side of the wall**.

Night after night, the knocking grew closer.

And louder.

### **IV**

On the fifth night, Thomas sat down at the table, placed the cursed clock in front of him, and covered the windows with heavy curtains. He wanted to see what would happen if he allowed it to walk *completely* in the dark.

The lamp flame went out.

The clock started.

The hands moved so suddenly that Thomas took a step back. And then the clock began to strike the hours—one by one, faster, faster, until it reached **01:13**.

Then it stopped.

And out of the silence emerged **feet** behind the wall.

Slowly.

Precisely.

Closer with each second.

The wall began to crack.

From the cracks, fog seeped in, thick and gray.

And then he heard a woman's voice, the same one that had brought the clock:

"You fixed it. Now… I'm back."

Thomas had nowhere to escape.

He was trapped in his own workshop, where every second had ceased to belong to the world of the living.

### **V**

When the neighbors arrived in the morning, the door was locked from the inside.

No sign of a struggle.

No body.

Only one item found:

The clock stopped at **01:13**. And beneath it—a slender hand imprinted in a layer of dust.

The workshop has been empty ever since.

But the locals say that after dark, you can hear:

* a quiet ticking,

* the footsteps of someone invisible,

* and the voice of a woman asking:

**—When was the last time you looked at a clock? Are you sure time is passing as it should…?**

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