Free Eleven New Ghost Stories by David Paul Nixon Page B

swine; a
fat banker with no patience.
    I waited impatiently, tensely,
as time ticked on. I finished the jigsaw, paced up and down, played
marbles on the carpet… I kept looking over at the museum door, half
expecting it to open and for the one-eyed man to step through at
any time. By the time Towney turned up I was virtually climbing up
the walls, I was so wound-up. I remember that he complained that
the watch wasn’t wrapped up, like a gift, but people like him
always had to complain about something. He gave me the money, I
dropped it in the till, which was empty, and then locked up the
shop and got out of there. It was ten to four – I’d already decided
that if he’d been longer, I’d have locked-up and gone before the
dreaded half-hour.
    I didn’t stray far though. I
wanted to see what happened at four-thirty, so I went around the
alley, behind the shop and climbed the wall into the back yard.
There were windows into the museum, but they had been painted over,
leaving only the top windows, the narrow panes that opened, clear.
It wasn’t easy to see in, but I tried my best. I climbed onto the
roof of the outhouse and tried to peer in. But I’d made an
elementary mistake; I’d forgotten to take a watch with me! I lay up
on that outhouse roof for more than half-an-hour, I must’ve done,
and it started to rain, a real downpour. I only knew the time from
the church clock, which was hard to hear in the rain.
    The rain made it even harder to
see anything, or hear anything for that matter. Although the
ticking clocks could still just about be heard outside. If the
clocks stopped or the black-clothed figure returned, I could not
tell.
    I sheltered in the outhouse for
a little while and then went back inside to dry off in front of the
best fire I could make. There wasn’t much more to do there in the
evening than there was in the day time. At least my meals were
still paid for at the inn and I ate there handsomely, but was not
encouraged to hang around in the evening, as in those days drinking
houses were not open to children. I think I persuaded one of the
regulars to play darts with me, but I was chased off by the
landlord soon after.
    I skulked back to the shop and
passed the evening with a book. The place was cold; I couldn’t get
it warm. The rain had stopped, leaving the whole place quiet. Well,
quiet except for the ticking. Even in the upstairs you could hear
it through the floorboards. I began to think of it as being like
woodworm, like creepy-crawlies munching their way through the
walls. I would forget it was there for short periods, but then I’d
notice it again. I really grew to despise the sound. You won’t find
a ticking clock in my home, not even today. Never been able to
stand them since.
    I slept in Guillam’s bed; it was
the only one in the house. It was awful, he had these two great big
curtains, too long for the window, which dragged on the floor. And,
of course, in the dark of night, with the moonlight shining
through, what did they look like?
    It was a terrible night; every
time I woke up I thought there was someone there. Some great
cloaked figure, standing at the end of my bed. I’d jump up from the
under the sheets – but of course it was nothing.
    I barely slept a wink. And you
know what it’s like when you’re unsettled. Every creak of the
floorboards, every clank of the pipes, every… bird on the roof; the
slightest of sounds makes you startled.
    But the most frightening thing,
the thing that really shook me up, was that at one point everything
was calm; calm, quiet and silent – no sound at all. There was no
ticking under the floorboards, no creepy-crawly sounds in the
walls. The clocks had stopped again.
    I leapt out of bed, I rushed to
the door; I swung it open…
    …And everything was fine. The
rustling rumble of the incessant timepieces was going again, just
as usual. Had I imagined it? I don’t know. I didn’t know what time
it was, because I couldn’t see in the dark.
    The