"The Clock"

My father took us, my two siblings and I, on a trip to his hometown, which was in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. We lived in the New York suburbs, where my mother grew up, but my father wanted to take my siblings and I on a little adventure.

As we started driving away, my mother waved us goodbye, and I had a strange sense it would be goodbye for a long time. My father drove us out of the suburbs and on to the highway, and towards the end of the drive, we found ourselves in the middle of misty mountains. The view was incredibly beautiful, the view of endless green trees all around, the vast sky, and the black birds flying so far in the distance.

The door to our room was hard to open and hard to close. The walls were dull white and had scratches all around them. One of the beds had a dried coffee stain on it. My siblings and I looked in horror and shock at this place. We were not expecting our trip to start out as melancholy as this.

“Well, guys,” our father told us, “I know this hotel doesn’t seem that nice. But tomorrow we’ll have some fun adventure and trust me, this trip will be totally worth it.”

We felt reassured by our father’s words, but little did I know that he was unfortunately very wrong.

*     *     *

We left the hotel next morning to go on a nature hike. My father used to go on it with his own family, and now he was having us go on it. We drove to a park and walked to the beginning of the hike’s destination. In front of us lay a bridge, very long and wide, made out of wood entirely. This attracted my attention immensely. It looked so mysterious and beautiful. Yet, I had a strange thought wondering what would be on the other side of this bridge, as if someone or something was waiting for us there. We started to walk on the bridge, my brother walking first, then me, then my sister, and last, my dad. We walked, holding on the giant handrails, when one of the pieces of wood my brother walked on suddenly cracked and broke. He nearly fell, but he held on to the piece in front of him, and I immediately helped him back up. We were all very concerned at this point. My father told us to be super careful and quickly make it to the end of the bridge.

We safely finished crossing it, and then we continued walking on the path. We were walking in a forest for quite a bit. I felt like I was being watched, as if faces in the forest were staring at me. It seemed as if I heard voices whispering through the wind blowing across my face. I started feeling quite uncomfortable, and I hoped this hike would end soon.

We eventually reached an abandoned house on the trail. My father wanted us to go in it and explore. He said his family would never do so; the park did not allow anyone to go in the abandoned house, but he decided to ignore that rule today. He had us go in and see what was inside.

“Did you see that?” I asked my brother.

“No,” he replied. “See what?”

“Never mind,” I responded.

I was getting very creeped out. My sister and I saw each other, and we decided to walk up the second floor together.

“Andrew,” she said, “I’m finding this place a little eerie.”

“Me too,” I said. “I hope we’ll make it out okay,” I joked.

We walked up the second floor, the stairs creaking every step we took. We found ourselves approaching a long hallway at the top of the stairs. We started to explore the rooms to the hallway’s left and right. Each room I went in, I was getting closer and closer to the end of the hallway. I was going in a zigzag direction on the floor. As I was getting closer to the end of the hallway, I started to hear what sounded like a clock ticking. It seemed to have a steady beat, slow and loud and heavy. The sound was first very faint to my ears, but as I was getting closer to the end of the hallway, the sound was getting louder and louder. It started to disturb me. The sound was painful to my ears and heavy on my mind. Eventually, I explored the last room before reaching the end of the hallway, the clock ticking very loudly. I left the room and approached the hallway’s end. It led to a single room. The room had nothing in it except a giant grandfather clock. The ticking was ringing in my ears now. I stared at the clock and its awful hands. The ringing was getting louder; the clock was approaching me. I suddenly started seeing images in my head. I saw the same shadow again I saw in the bathroom, and then I saw someone holding down a bloody knife. The knife disintegrated into the clock hand, which hit 6. A loud noise followed, the sound of a bell, and I immediately fell down on the floor and lost consciousness.

I woke up to find myself in the back of our car, my father rushing to the hospital. There was blood all over me and a deep wound in my stomach. I had no idea what happened.

I stayed at the hospital several days and nights, but luckily, I recovered. I healed from the mysterious wound I had, one in which the doctors thought someone must have stabbed me. Perhaps that man in the figure of a shadow did so. After I got out of the hospital, my father took us home immediately.

I fell into some strange phase, some hallucination, but whatever it was, it was the most dreadful experience in my entire life. Looking back on that trip, that dull hotel, that awful bridge, that horrible house, and that excruciating clock! It all makes me go insane even to this day. I will never travel to that area again, nor see the grandfather clock, which was worse than the wound itself, that caused this terrible phenomenon on me.