The Moonlit Road - The Ticking Clock

Written by Craig Dominey and Lanny Gilbert

It's now past midnight and I have yet to fall asleep. I haven't slept more than two hours a night for the last couple of weeks, and even then it's a fitful sleep - tossing and turning, dreading the moment that I suddenly hear those noises downstairs again, and my childhood fears come to pass.

"Why can't you sleep?" my wife asks me each morning as I stare blankly into my third cup of coffee, eyes bloodshot. And I'm too ashamed to tell her the real reason.

But perhaps you will believe my story.

It all began when my Great-Aunt Elspeth passed away. I was only 10 years old at the time, and the nights we spent sitting up with her body were very disturbing to me. You see, her death occurred in the old days when the mortician would prepare a person's remains for burial, and then bring the body back to the family homeplace for viewing. I remember thinking how weird it was that we were in Elspeth's house together with her lifeless body. I made sure to avoid the dark corners of Elspeth's home during those nights, for fear that she would come back to life, leap out of her coffin and chase me around the room. I also didn't stray far from my Dad, because I knew he had a knife in his pocket to protect me from all comers, be they quick or dead.

Clock

After the funeral, my Granny and the other siblings went to my Great-Aunt Elspeth's house to begin dividing up her possessions. Since both my parents worked, I tagged along with Granny to help her. One thing she was intent on getting was a dusty old manual-wind clock with a glass door on the front. On the glass door, there was a worn painting of a pointer bird dog. The clock was about three feet tall and two feet wide, made completely of cherry wood, with the exception of the glass door and the actual workings.

After looking at the clock and discussing the matter amongst them, Granny's siblings said it was okay for her to have the clock. Together, she and I struggled to get that heavy old clock into her car. We then went back inside, and within an hour or so, we had everything Granny wanted loaded into the car.

We went back to Granny's house and unloaded her new things. She took special care with the clock, polishing the wood and cleaning the glass, taking care not to damage the picture of the bird dog. When she had finished her cleaning, and we had placed the clock on a mantelpiece in her back room, I asked her why she wanted the clock so badly. She then told me the following story:

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