🕰️ A Quiet Man With a Loud Past
In the fog-covered town of Greystone, nestled between forgotten hills and rain-slicked roads, lived a reclusive old man named Mr. Aldric Thorn. He was known only for one thing: repairing clocks. Not watches. Not phones. Only clocks—antique, grand, and often broken.
Locals would come and go, leaving their heirlooms with him in his crumbling shop on Whitmore Street. Yet despite living in the town for over 30 years, no one ever saw the inside of his house behind the shop. No one knew where he came from, or if he had any family. And no one asked—until the night he vanished.
🏚️ The Locked Door
It began when a customer returned to collect a clock Aldric had promised would be ready—but found the shop abandoned. Lights off. Door locked. The only sound was a faint ticking echoing from inside.
After two days, police forced entry, expecting to find a body. Instead, they found something stranger.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of clocks ticked in unison across the walls. All set to the exact same time: 3:17 AM. Each clock bore a strange etching inside the casing: a small, hand-carved symbol resembling an eye surrounded by gears.
Even stranger, behind one of the tall grandfather clocks bolted to the back wall, officers discovered a hollow space in the wall. Inside? A dusty journal and a collection of old photographs.
📖 The Journal of Aldric Thorn
The journal revealed Aldric was not a simple clockmaker—but once an engineer for a secret intelligence unit during the Cold War. He had been tasked with designing prototype “temporal disruptors”—devices that could supposedly distort small measurements of time to confuse enemy communications.
One of the prototypes, codenamed “ECHO-7,” had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Aldric had fled, changing his name and disappearing from his former life.
The journal’s final entries became increasingly erratic, mentioning strange patterns in time, “loops repeating,” and a constant reference to 3:17 AM—the time when “it always happens.”
🔁 The Vanishing Hour
Security footage from the night of his disappearance showed Aldric in his shop at 3:16 AM, standing still, eyes fixed on the largest clock. As the second hand struck 3:17, the footage glitched—and he vanished from the frame. No signs of struggle. No exit.
Only the clocks continued ticking.
🧩 The Unsolved Puzzle
Despite investigations by authorities, and later conspiracy theorists, no trace of Aldric Thorn was ever found. Some believe he was taken—by whom, no one knows. Others think he succeeded in triggering something far beyond our understanding.
His house remains empty. The clocks remain. And every night at exactly 3:17 AM, they all chime together.
⚠️ Lesson or Warning?
Whether Aldric Thorn tampered with time or simply lost himself to madness, one truth remains:
Some secrets are hidden not to be uncovered—but to protect those who might dare look too closely.
So if you ever hear the chime of a clock in the dead of night…
Don’t check the time.
