The snow was sticking to the shop window of the former watchmaker's shop below our tenement in Toruń. Christmas Eve smelled of borscht and cinnamon, but it became suspiciously quiet after my grandfather died. I was seventeen and could still hear his quiet, even tic-tac-toe in the walls. Mum was stacking wafers on plates, Dad was polishing an old star for the top of the Christmas tree. I went to the attic to get a box of baubles as the lights went out without warning. In the corner, under the old advent calendars, was a box with my grandfather's initials burnt on it. The paper had the notes of a carol printed on it, and inside rested a brass key and a folded piece of paper. It read aloud: "Don't let it stand. North. Three towers. Twelfth whisper." I ran downstairs to Cuba, my cousin a year older, who feigned indifference. "Sounds like a riddle from the riddle room," he muttered, but his eyes were as alert as a lantern over the Vistula. He typed the words into his phone and pointed to the map: the three towers of the Old Town Hall. "Whisper Twelve" sounded like a warning or an instruction that was not to be misunderstood. I kissed my grandmother on the cheek and slipped the key into my jumper pocket until it touched my skin. At supper, everything was as it always was: twelve dishes, an empty place, carols whispered by candlelight. Only the clock in the shop downstairs ticked differently, as if it had gone back a fraction of a second. My grandmother told me that once in the war the town hall had stood up and someone had fixed it on the night of Shepherd's Day. By the third fish I had stopped hearing conversations because the card was burning my pocket like a little compass. Before Shepherdess we slipped out under the pretext of air; the snow drowned out footsteps and blurred shapes. The town square was almost empty, only the illuminations trembled in the wind, as if winking at the latecomers. By the town hall tower we found a side door, ajar by a hand's width and unnaturally quiet. There was a ticking coming from inside that did not match the time on our phones. We looked at each other and entered, holding our breath as if the air would betray our every thought. The stairs spun upwards like a spring, smelling of oil, dust and winter pressed through the cracks. In the attic, the mechanisms stood open and an auxiliary clock with a blank face hung in the middle. I took out the key, it fitted the socket, though no one should have remembered it that night. The clock sighed with metal as I turned it once, and then the first of twelve whispers sounded. Someone downstairs closed the door and someone's voice, foreign and familiar at once, said: "Don't touch."