The Ticking Attic

Eleanor found the antique pocket watch in her grandmother’s dusty attic, its brass casing etched with a faded name: E. Voss, 1927. When she wound it, the ticking echoed too loudly, like a heartbeat trapped in metal. That night, she woke to the sound—closer, rhythmic, coming from the hallway.
She followed it to the attic door, ajar. Inside, every clock her grandmother had collected—mantelpieces, wall clocks, cuckoos—ticked in unison, their hands spinning backward. On the floor lay a portrait: a woman in a 1920s dress, her face blurred, holding the same pocket watch. Eleanor froze as the woman’s eyes in the painting flickered.
A cold breath hit her neck. “You’ve awakened it,” a voice whispered, like gears grinding. She spun—no one there, but the pocket watch in her hand burned. The clocks’ ticking rose to a roar. The portrait’s woman stepped out, her form shifting, dress stained with dark smudges. “It needs a new keeper,” she said, her smile a clock’s gear.

Eleanor ran, but the attic stretched, stairs vanishing. The pocket watch’s glass shattered, revealing not gears, but a tiny human heart, still beating. When she screamed, the clocks fell silent. The woman’s hand closed around hers, and Eleanor felt her own pulse slow to match the watch’s tick.
Downstairs, her sister found the attic empty at dawn—only the pocket watch on the floor, its hands frozen at 3:17. In the portrait, a new figure smiled beside the woman: Eleanor, her eyes now as blank as the clock faces.