The Clock Shop

Old Dong ran a watch-repair shop at the lane's mouth for forty-three years. Deep in the shop stood a huanghuali mantel clock, left by his father, stopped for a full twenty years—its spring broken, its pendulum rusted fast. He never repaired it.

The day his father died, the clock stopped. Dong said the clock could not bear to go on, keeping the man company to his last breath.

After winter came, he turned the back room into a bedroom. One midnight he heard a ticking. Not a wristwatch—that deep, wooden-cased tick, one beat after another, like someone walking on his chest.

He rose and felt his way to the back. In moonlight, the clock's pendulum was swaying, faintly. The seized axle had loosened; the swing was small but steady, keeping time.

He reached to stop it; his finger had barely touched the face when he heard a very soft "hah" from within—like a sigh, or a breath. It was the last breath at his father's bedside, which he had carried for twenty years.

The pendulum slowly stilled. He did not touch it again.

Next day he brought an oil can and gave the axle a little oil—no new spring, no setting of the time. From then on, every heavy-snow night, the clock walked a while on its own, its swing small as if afraid to wake someone.

Neighbors said he was mad; the old clock should have been thrown out. Dong ignored them. He only said, "My father was punctual all his life. At the end he missed a train and never saw my mother one last time. This clock has held that breath for twenty years, on his behalf."

After the new year Dong passed too. The shop was sold; the clock was cleared as junk. They say the new owner sometimes hears ticking at night, opens it, and finds the face clean—nothing there.