Thirteen-year-old Tymon steps into Mr. Hector’s workshop and finds that the broken things inside aren’t just moving on their own. They’re watching him, waiting, and one of them knows his name.
The narrow cobbled street on the edge of town always looked a little forgotten, as if the houses had been left there by accident and time had simply failed to collect them. Behind a second-hand electronics shop stood Mr. Hector’s workshop, squeezed into a crooked brick building with a door that complained every time it opened.
Tymon had passed it a hundred times on his bike. He had heard the stories too: Mr. Hector fixed more than clocks, and anyone who went inside came out with less than they brought. He never believed them. Not really. But today was the thirteenth, the sky was low and grey, and his grandfather’s watch sat heavy in his pocket, dead as stone.
He pushed the door open.
Dust, old wood, oil, and something sharp and metallic drifted out to meet him. The room beyond was not a shop so much as a crowded museum of forgotten time. Clocks lined every shelf, some polished and proud, others cracked, tilted, or wrapped in loose paper. A lamp with a green glass shade glowed faintly in one corner. A globe with a torn map leaned against a cabinet. On the far shelf sat a samovar with a painted smile that made Tymon uneasy.
No one was at the counter.
Tymon swallowed and slipped his hand into his pocket, closing his fingers around his grandfather’s watch. It had stopped months ago, and no one in his family had been able to bring it back. He took one more step inside, and a faint rustling came from beneath a worktable.
He crouched.
A small brass alarm clock lay half-hidden in the shadows. Its face was scratched, one bell was crooked, and two painted eyes above the dial seemed to be staring straight at him. Then it twitched.
Tymon jerked back so fast he almost fell over.
The clock rolled onto the tabletop by itself and said, in a thin, ringing voice, “About time. Could you wind me up? Hector vanished again, and I’ve been waiting for days.”
Tymon stared.
From an old cupboard came a dry, irritated cough. A dusty teapot eased its spout around the doorframe and snapped, “If you’re going to stand there, at least fetch water. I’ve been empty for fifty years.”
His pulse hammered. Tymon looked from one shelf to the next, waiting for someone to laugh, for a hidden speaker, for anything that made sense. Then his grandfather’s watch gave a sudden, sharp rattle in his pocket.
He pulled it out.
The hands were turning backward.
A hoarse little voice leaked from the case. “Don’t trust the man in the workshop,” it whispered. “Not until you know what he’s really keeping.”
The front door creaked.
Tymon turned just as Mr. Hector stepped inside, thin and upright in his dark coat, smiling as if he had been expecting him all along. Behind him, the gramophone on the sideboard crackled to life, though no one had touched it.
Mr. Hector’s eyes flicked to the watch in Tymon’s hand.
“I see,” he said softly, and the clocks all around the room fell silent.
Then the gramophone hissed, the lamps shivered, and a deep metallic whisper rose from somewhere inside the workshop.
“Now it’s your turn, Tymon.”
Every clock in the room began to spin backward at once.