Tick.
Tick.
The sound of the pocket watch was unusually clear in the quiet restoration room.
Thalia sat at the worktable, her eyes fixed on the silver watch without reaching for it.
She had already examined its mechanism during the day.
The mainspring had lost its tension, and one of the gears was badly worn.
Under normal circumstances, there was no reason the watch should have been able to run at all.
Yet the second hand was moving steadily before her eyes.
Ivan set down his coffee and walked over to the worktable.
He didn’t touch the watch, only observed it for a moment before glancing at the clock on the wall.
“Eleven forty-seven.”
Thalia nodded.
“Exactly where the watch had stopped.”
Mrs.
Bennett had only remembered that the pocket watch had started running sometime after eleven each night.
She had never paid close attention to the exact time.
Now it seemed possible that it had been starting at eleven forty-seven every night.
Thalia picked up the notebook beside her and carefully wrote down the time.
Neither of them spoke as they waited.
A minute passed.
The pocket watch continued running.
At around eleven fifty, a faint warmth suddenly spread through the obsidian ring on the fourth finger of Thalia’s left hand.
She instinctively glanced down.
Ivan noticed immediately.
“The ring again?”
“Yes.
About the same as earlier.”
Thalia lightly turned the ring around her finger before looking back at the pocket watch.
“It’s not very strong, though.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she put on her gloves and carefully picked up the watch.
As soon as the metal case settled into her palm, she could feel the faint vibration of the mechanism through the gloves.
The ticking was clearer now as well.
She pressed the button at the top, and the cover sprang open.
The hands that had remained frozen at eleven forty-seven for thirty years had moved on and were now keeping pace with the actual time.
Thalia watched the dial for a moment.
At first, she heard nothing unusual.
Just as she was about to return the watch to the table, a faint murmur brushed past her ear.
The sound was distant and indistinct, mixed with a layer of soft static that made the words difficult to understand.
Thalia immediately stopped moving.
Ivan noticed her reaction but said nothing, remaining quietly beside her.
Thalia closed her eyes and focused entirely on the watch in her hand.
At first, all she could hear were broken fragments.
After a while, the faint murmurs gradually became clearer.
It was a man’s voice.
He sounded old and weak, his breathing heavy between the words.
“…go back…”
The same words she had heard earlier that day.
Thalia kept her eyes closed and continued listening.
After a long pause, the man’s voice came again.
“The key…”
Another long silence followed.
“…is in the watch…”
Thalia’s eyes opened at once.
Ivan immediately noticed the change in her expression.
“What did you hear?”
Thalia looked down at the pocket watch in her palm.
“He said the key is in the watch.”
Ivan’s gaze shifted to it as well.
They had already opened the back during the day.
Apart from the old mechanical parts, there had been no key inside.
Thalia had obviously reached the same conclusion.
“There’s no key in there.”
“Maybe he didn’t mean an actual key.”
“Maybe.”
Thalia didn’t try to decide what the words meant yet.
Instead, she focused again, hoping to catch whatever remained of the voice inside the watch.
After a while, the old man’s voice returned, weaker than before.
“Go back…
to the old house…”
Thalia frowned slightly.
The old house?
Mrs.
Bennett had told them earlier that she had rediscovered the pocket watch while clearing out their old home.
Thalia tried to keep listening, but the faint vibration in her palm suddenly stopped.
The ticking ceased.
Without the steady sound of the watch, the restoration room fell silent again.
Thalia lowered her eyes to the dial.
Eleven fifty-five.
She gave the watch a gentle shake, but the second hand didn’t move.
It had started at eleven forty-seven and stopped at eleven fifty-five.
Exactly eight minutes.
Ivan glanced at the wall clock.
“Broken again?”
“More like it’s gone back to the way it was.”
Thalia tried turning the crown.
The mechanism behaved exactly as it had during the day, with no indication that it had somehow repaired itself.
Those eight minutes of movement felt less like the watch had started working again and more like something had briefly brought a piece of its past back to life.
Thalia returned it to the worktable, removed her gloves, and immediately wrote down everything she had heard.
11:47 p.m.
— began running.
11:55 p.m.
— stopped.
Go back.
The key is in the watch.
Go back to the old house.
Ivan stood beside her and read the notes.
“Looks like we’ll need to contact Mrs.
Bennett again tomorrow.”
“Yes, but let’s not tell her about the key yet.”
“Why?”
Thalia lightly tapped the words with the tip of her pen.
“We don’t even know what they mean.
He might have been trying to tell us something, or it could simply be part of a memory Adrian left behind.
Let’s ask about the old house first, then decide whether there’s anything else to investigate.”
Ivan considered it and nodded.
Thalia put her gloves back on and turned the pocket watch over.
During the day, she had mainly examined the mechanism.
She hadn’t taken apart the entire case in detail.
Now that she had heard the words the key is in the watch, it was worth taking another look.
She pulled the work lamp closer and picked up a magnifying glass, examining the case little by little from the edge of the front cover.
There were countless small marks left by years of use, most of them completely ordinary.
When she reached the inner cover near the hinge, however, her movements slowed.
“Ivan, look at this.”
He leaned closer.
Beside the hinge was an extremely narrow seam.
Without adjusting the light and looking from the right angle, it would have been easy to mistake it for part of the normal join in the case.
Thalia changed the angle and examined it again.
“Something about this doesn’t look right.”
“A hidden compartment?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Pocket watches from this period could have double back covers, so the presence of a seam didn’t necessarily mean anything had been hidden inside.
Still, this particular join seemed slightly out of place, and there were faint traces along the edge suggesting it had been worked by hand.
Thalia selected an appropriate tool and carefully tested the seam.
It didn’t open.
She stopped immediately rather than forcing it.
“It’s too tight.
If I use more pressure, I could damage the case.”
Ivan checked the time.
“Then leave it until tomorrow.”
Thalia looked up at him in surprise.
“You’re actually telling me to wait until tomorrow?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
Ivan gestured toward the clock on the wall.
“And a certain someone only disappeared for an entire night yesterday.”
Thalia had nothing to say to that.
“How long are you planning to keep bringing that up?”
“At least until the end of today.”
“…”
Knowing she had no ground to argue, Thalia put the tool away.
She took several close-up photographs of the seam and carefully recorded where she had found it.
By the time they finished cleaning up, it was already past midnight.
Ivan locked the pocket watch inside the small cabinet used for valuable artifacts and checked the door once more to make sure it was secure.
Thalia stood nearby, still thinking about the voice she had heard.
“Do you think that really was Adrian?”
Ivan closed the cabinet and looked at her.
“You’re the one who heard the voice.”
“I can hear them.
I can’t exactly see who’s talking.”
Thalia leaned lightly against the worktable.
“But Mrs.
Bennett said her husband really did keep saying he wanted to go back before he died.
If the voice in the watch belongs to him, then whatever this is probably has something to do with his past.”
“We’ll know more after we ask tomorrow.”
Thalia nodded and stopped speculating.
The following morning, Mrs.
Bennett arrived at the gallery soon after receiving their call.
She had clearly spent the entire night thinking about the watch.
The moment she sat down, she asked, “Did it really run last night?”
“It did.”
Thalia placed her notebook on the table.
“It started at eleven forty-seven and stopped at eleven fifty-five.
Eight minutes in total.”
Mrs.
Bennett looked surprised.
“It was that precise?”
“We stayed beside it the whole time, so we were able to record everything.”
Thalia paused before continuing.
“And I heard the voice again last night.”
Mrs.
Bennett’s hands tightened slightly in her lap.
“What did he say?”
“Besides telling me to ‘go back,’ he mentioned the old house.”
The woman stared at her.
Thalia watched her reaction before asking, “You said yesterday that you found the watch in your old house.
Was that the home you and Mr.
Bennett shared?”
“Yes.”
Mrs.
Bennett nodded.
“We lived there from the time we were married.
After our children grew up and I got older, my daughter didn’t want me living alone anymore, so I moved in with her.
We never sold the old house.
I just don’t go back very often.”
“Did Mr.
Bennett die there as well?”
“Yes.”
That only made Thalia’s question more obvious.
She thought for a moment before asking, “When he kept saying that he wanted to ‘go back’ near the end of his life, was he already living in that house?”
Mrs.
Bennett had been about to answer, but the question made her stop.
For the first time, she seemed to seriously consider what those words meant.
After a while, she slowly nodded.
“Yes…”
Confusion gradually appeared on her face.
“We’d already lived there for decades.”
Which meant that when Adrian repeatedly said he wanted to go back, he hadn’t been talking about his own home.
“Then where did he want to go?”
Mrs.
Bennett looked instinctively toward Thalia.
Thalia didn’t try to give her an answer she didn’t have.
“We don’t know yet.
But since the watch started running again after you found it in the old house, there may be something else there connected to him.”
She paused briefly.
“Mrs.
Bennett, if you don’t mind, could we take a look at the house?”
The woman seemed surprised.
“You want to go there?”
“Only to look through some of the things Mr.
Bennett left behind.
We might find something connected to the watch.”
Mrs.
Bennett considered the request for a moment before nodding.
“All right.
I was planning to go back today and continue sorting through things anyway.
If you have time, you can come with me.”
Thalia was about to agree when Ivan spoke first.
“We’ll both go.”
Thalia turned to look at him.
Ivan calmly added, “You’re not going there alone.”
Remembering that she had disappeared for an entire night only the day before, Thalia wisely chose not to argue.
Half an hour later, they left the pocket watch secured at the gallery and followed Mrs.
Bennett to the old house.
It stood on the other side of the old district, a two-story home that had clearly been there for many years.
Ivy covered large sections of the gray-white exterior, and the garden hadn’t been properly maintained in some time.
Weeds had begun growing between the stones of the path.
Mrs.
Bennett unlocked the front door and led them inside.
The house wasn’t as neglected as Thalia had expected.
Most of the furniture was simply covered with dust sheets after being left unused for so long, and the air carried the faint smell of dust and old wood.
Mrs.
Bennett opened several windows to let in the morning air before turning to them.
“I found the pocket watch upstairs.”
“Which room?”
“Our old bedroom.”
Thalia followed her up the stairs.
The old wooden steps creaked softly beneath their feet.
At the end of the hallway was a half-open door, which Mrs.
Bennett pushed fully open.
“This one.”
Most of the room had been left as it once was.
An old writing desk stood near the window, while a wooden chest of drawers sat against the opposite wall.
Its lowest drawer had been left partly open.
Mrs.
Bennett walked over.
“The pocket watch was in here.”
Thalia crouched beside the drawer.
Some of its contents had already been sorted, but there were still old envelopes, photographs, and various small objects inside.
“Did all of this belong to Mr.
Bennett?”
“Most of it.
He never liked anyone organizing his things, so I rarely touched this drawer.”
Thalia nodded and was about to put on her gloves when something beneath a few old letters caught her attention.
It was a faded black-and-white photograph.
Several young people stood together in the picture, with a much older building visible behind them.
Mrs.
Bennett followed Thalia’s gaze and quickly recognized it.
“Oh, that photograph.
It was taken when Adrian was young.”
After receiving permission, Thalia carefully picked it up.
She examined the front before turning it over.
A faded line had been written across the back.
1968 — Eremon Estate.
Thalia quietly read the name aloud.
“Eremon Estate?”
“I think that was where Adrian lived when he was young.”
Mrs.
Bennett thought for a moment.
“I only heard him mention it a few times.
He rarely talked about his childhood, so I don’t know very much about it.”
Thalia had been about to return the photograph to the drawer, but her hand slowed.
She looked again at the writing on the back.
Adrian had already been in his own home during the final years of his life, yet he had repeatedly said that he wanted to go back.
The voice left behind in the pocket watch had repeated the same words.
If the place he wanted to return to wasn’t the house where he had spent decades with his wife, then perhaps the place in this photograph was the real answer.
Thalia looked up at Mrs.
Bennett.
“Do you know whether Eremon Estate is still there?”
Mrs.
Bennett shook her head.
“I don’t.
It’s been many years, and I’ve never been there myself.”
Thalia didn’t press her for an answer.
Instead, she looked at the photograph once more.
Adrian was still young in the picture, standing near the right side of the group with a faint smile on his face.
The estate behind them was slightly blurred by the age of the photograph, but its tall entrance and rows of windows were still visible.
Her gaze remained there for a moment before returning to the name written on the back.
Eremon Estate.
Perhaps that was the place they needed to understand next.