BY DR. AGONSON
The clock had stopped, and I, afraid to move, remained within my chair as still as its unmoving hands. It seemed to me, as night had come, and come some hours heretofore, that it despised the fact that anything should with precise and counted steps mark out its coming end, for it had come upon the day as like a pouncing cat, which starved, played not but quickly gobbled up its prey. It had no time to make a soft invasion of the world, and now, not to itself allowing some remorse, and in some fear that it must likewise face a sudden end, harshly resented all the signs that man had made to mark the time. What is time but light? and what is light to night but death? And so with bated breath I held my peace unto the night lest it should suffer me likewise, which is to say, should not at all suffer a word from me.
Spellbound by these strange thoughts, I drifted in and out of sleep, and interrupted visions played before my eyes, for I, all wrapped by some soft cloth threadbare and hardly warm, was oft awakened by the cold.
These things I saw I’ll not retell them all, for nonsense is a crime in future days, but that which was of sense—of dreaded sense—I think it must be told. A man of shadow, hardly there, he walked within the room and faced the clock which I described ere now as having stopped.
He face to face with one dead clock within the night, and he himself, it seemed to me, was something of the night itself—a spirit of a darkish hue who’d never see the light—let me begin again: A dead man came into my room—I’ll not tell who he must have been, though friends may guess what souls reside within my halls—and this dead man came face to face with one dead clock.
And he, with longing, long looked to its face as if he waited for the time to start again, and like that until morning came he stayed; and I, no further dreams nor sleep allowed, as like he to the clock, I cast unbroken stare his way.
Until—dear reader heed this now—until a sudden notion came on me, and I saw that the light returned, the clock began again—as if ’twere never stopped—and the dread night was never really there. The ghost was gone as well, and I did rise and stretch myself and shivered in my lonely home.
Tale Told 