A Short Tale | Gabriela Leão

The Old Clock Should Tick

My grandma was one to tell stories. When I was a kid visiting the old manor house in the country, where she used to live, grandma would gather round all the children in a dark room and scare us with tales of ghosts, demons and monstrosities. I used to tell myself she was just a very creative woman. My beliefs have changed after many a summer spent inside these sombre and oppressive walls, with heavy dusty curtains so thick they refuse the sunlight a way in, the cold stone floor uninterested in the temperature outside. The power is constantly out, as rain comes often and anytime it’s just a little stronger we find ourselves relying on only candles to endure the long nights, shadows trembling everywhere. And, as if I could expect any different, there’s still no phone reception and the land line never works. No escape.

It was the perfect environment, and us grandkids the perfect victims, be us six or sixteen years old. She'd sit by a window facing the garden, the moon shining and casting long and twitching witch hands as the shadows from branches, hands ready to grab us and snatch us away. I was the youngest, but age mattered little and none of us were brave enough to dismiss her tales as just that. A semicircle around her, each kid holding a candle stuck inside a mug — there were never enough candlesticks — and this elegant old lady in fine clothes looking like she'd crawled out of a history book, white hair neatly done up, recounting tales of murder, blood and death. How our parents allowed this, I'll never know.

Maybe I saw the truth in what grandma said even then, and I was just too scared to take it seriously. Still, I was cautious and never ignored the warnings, not completely. I never go into the woods around midnight, that's the dead hour, the hour of souls, when they take over the rule of the land. I sprinkle salt under my bed to keep away the little creatures made of thick shadow, dark as the deepest black, tiny bodies full of tar. They live in the ground, under the floorboards, behind the walls and stairs and they creep out at night to suck the blood of the unsuspecting. I never finish a bottle of wine, as the last sips belong to the witch, alongside a piece of bread, so that she will leave me be. No curses. I never break spider's webs, the critters are sorcerers in disguise who'll only harm those who have harmed them. And, anytime I come back to this house, I greet Mister Afonso Joaquim de Medeiros, its first owner, whose painting hangs still at the entrance and whose eyes follow you not due to the artist's technique, but because his ghosts lingers there and is resentful when we don't acknowledge his host status.

All this grandma taught me, so that I could find ways to be on good terms with the house's hauntings. With the exception of the monster inside the grandfather clock. She never told me what to do about that.

I might be saying this due to my current position but, to me, it was the worst tale. “The monster inside the grandfather clock” may be an inadequate name, that's not how grandma referred to it, I'm certain. Just a kid's mind at work.

It's actually a story about a woman: Maria Betina, no surname. She was a bastard child and could not have her colonel father's family name, and her mother, a slave descendent from those dragged out of Africa, did not remember hers.

Maria Betina would matter little in her father's life under normal circumstances, but it so happened that she was born an uncommon beauty, so spectacular, so attention grabbing that the Colonel saw in her some kind of value, far greater than he’d normally see in a bastard child bore by a slave.

Her skin was brown and golden, eyes shining a deep green, black hair growing full in perfect locks. Being so pretty, she was put to work at the Master's — her father’s — house. Serving meals, bringing whatever was asked, cleaning, tending the grandfather clock. She didn't mind that last bit, she was enchanted by the clock, its wood carvings and detailed craftsmanship. They were pleasing to the touch.

The older Maria Betina got, the more that men desired her. Every single one of the Colonel's unmarried — and some married — visitors wanted her as a mistress. Never more than that, with her being both a bastard and a slave. No marriage interest would come from those who saw themselves as noble men. Maria Betina denied any advances, she had no wish to be more of an object. If she was to not have love, better die chaste. Her father allowed this, again, thinking only of how it could be valuable.

Maria Betina was certain of her uninteresting future, that was, until the foreigner arrived. A man of unknown family and origins, but of whom the Colonel had heard much about - especially regarding his money, his new manor and all the servants and slaves he procured to work on the sugar cane fields. This man, rich but scorned by the colony's "royalty", asked the Colonel for Maria Betina's hand in marriage. The master, having nothing to lose other than a pretty slave, agreed, and acknowledged his bastard daughter a little more in order to have a wealthy, although unimportant, son-in-law. It was always nice to have a rich son-in-law.

She had no say in the matter.

The foreigner bought Maria Betina's mom and moved them both to his new house surrounded by the sugar cane fields. They had a small and unpretentious ceremony, just for the household, but Maria Betina's future had never seemed so bright. The foreigner looked ragged, with a sullen face, but revealed himself a kind husband, agreeable and gentle towards Maria Betina and her mother.

Within a week of their wedding, as they strolled around the main street at the nearby village, Maria Betina confided to her husband her one material wish — which now did not seem as distant as a faraway dream — to have a grandfather clock just like the one she used to tend to at the master's house.

The foreigner set out to look for one. A wedding gift. It arrived soon after.

The following years went by as if enchanted. The foreigner, little by little finding a place in that society, began to host wondrous balls and Maria Betina was the star of these parties. With her atypical beauty, enhanced by the passage of time, she'd display marvellous dresses, beautifully sewn by her and her mother, inspired by the culture her mom refused to forget and would insist on passing on to the daughter. Maria Betina and her husband would often dance together; and she discovered a love for waltzes, so he'd hire orchestras to play for her. A happy life. Happy summers sparkling with smiles. Eventually, the mother got sick and died in her sleep, laid in a comfortable bed under silk sheets, and the daughter was sad to see her go but glad of how it happened. The bastard went on, satisfied with life, humming and singing ancestral melodies through the hallways of that big house.

Maria Betina was a woman not only of uncommon beauty, but also unknown strength and will and magic. She carried a secret which could only be glimpsed behind her deep green eyes. Men tend to fear women who hide behind beauty. They fear loss, lack of control.

And the foreigner got jealous.

Maria Betina, as she did when single, disregarded any advances, but there was nothing she could do to stop the looks. She had no control over the whispers that followed her in the streets, nor the extravagant dinner invitations which were often not extended to her husband. So, the jealousy. One afternoon, Maria Betina took longer to return home from her usual visit to the village. She spent too long chatting with Madam Antonieta, the old widow who took care of the bakery and whose loneliness was so blatant in her weak smile that Maria Betina felt pity, and would spend as much time as she could with the woman. The husband did not believe this was the reason for Maria Betina's tardiness. Husbands never believe in their magical wives.

He got mad, acted on impulse. He had a dagger on him, it was his custom due to travelling so often in unknown and uncharted lands, and this dagger, meant to save him from danger, he carved into his wife's chest.

Oh, how he regretted it. Not killing her, not exactly. But killing even the bastard daughter of a powerful colonel could have consequences, especially with no proof of adultery. So the foreigner decided to hide her body. He carried her to the kitchen, empty at that time of night, and shoved her tiny body inside the wood oven and let it all burn to ashes. What remained he hid inside the grandfather clock, alongside the blade stained with blood.

The clock, the only possession Maria Betina had in life which was truly hers, broke. It stopped ticking. The hands frozen at one thirty three.

What the foreigner did not understand was that Maria Betina refused to die to undeserved jealousy. Her secret, the brightness in her eyes, was nothing more than will. It didn’t need to be more than an intense will. After having received a worthy existence, Maria Betina was not going to easily accept death. She was not to die in such a cruel and unjust way.

My grandmother told me as soon as the moon turned and disappeared from the sky, Maria Betina rose from the grandfather clock. She and the dagger, still stained in dried blood. As the husband slept, she crawled into his room. The foreigner had little time to scream as she slit his throat. No one heard a thing.

And the clock suddenly began to tick.

The farm, with no master and no heir, soon was auctioned, as well as everything inside. That's, supposedly, how Mr. Afonso Joaquim, the very same whose ghost still lingers here, obtained the grandfather clock that stands in the hallway of the second floor, right above the stairs.

Now I'm here. Inside this ancient manor lost in the mountains, where the rooms still carry the smell of my grandmother's perfume. She, however, is not here to tell me what to do. I feel like the grandfather clock is staring at me.

I keep thinking of the weird deaths throughout the decades. Accidents and unsolved murders. Whispers, accounts of a burned and decrepit creature, a badly reconstructed skeleton roaming the hallways dragging a knife. A clock that should be ticking and suddenly stops.

I don't know if I believe in it, the same way I don't know if I believe in the tiny monsters made of shadow and tar living behind the walls or the witch that enjoys wine and bread.

What I know is that the grandfather clock stopped ticking.

It's stuck at one thirty three.

Tonight is the first with a new moon since it broke.

I am alone here, a stupid refuge I planned so that I could run away from the deadlines and the city and all that madness. To focus on my paintings. The house is not mine, this heritage was given to my parents and uncles who never step foot inside. They're smarter than me. I thought the mountains would ease my mind and allow me to focus on a canvas. I forgot about grandma's stories. And now I am alone in this manor, and I've checked off all the telltale signs that its worst monster is about to come out. The car won't start. I've considered simply walking down the road but I spent too much time staring at the clock and it is now dark and late, and following a mostly empty road at night seems as dangerous as dealing with a monster.

I might be safer here.

After all, it was just my grandmother's wild imagination. Wasn't it?

Nevertheless, the clock hasn’t ticked in three days. Tonight the moon has turned and disappeared in the sky.

I stand at the door, hand trembling, a few millimetres away from the handle, uncertain. And I begin to notice an almost inaudible sound.

Quiet.

Like the timid humming of a slow waltz.

I don't want to look up but I can't control myself. The song seems louder and my hand shakes and I can no longer pretend it was all just a story. Just imagination. Slowly, my head turns to the top of the stairs and I see…

But it is not a monster who looks down at me. No crumpling skeleton nor putrefied and burned rearranging of a body.

It's just her.

A young woman.

And a sad smile.

And eyes that seem to have lost everything.

And seek desperately for something new.