The Town Where Clocks Don’t Tick

Mira didn't realize she had stepped back until her heel hit the root behind her.

The figure moving at the edge of the chamber didn't look fully real. At first glance, it resembled Lucan same height, same jacket, even the slight tilt of his shoulders but the light from the golden leaves flickered oddly over its skin. Where Lucan's eyes were stormy gray, this one's were pitch black. Glossy. Like polished obsidian. And when it moved, it didn't blink.

"Lucan?" Mira said cautiously.

He turned. The real one.

"I'm here."

The figure moved when he did. A half second slower. Mimicking.

Mira pointed toward it. "Then who the hell is that?"

Lucan's breath caught. He took a step forward, but the tree's voice surged through Mira's mind like a warning bell.

Do not let him touch it.

"The key," she whispered.

Lucan followed her eyes. "What key?"

"You don't see it?"

He looked straight at the pedestal. "There's nothing there."

The second key the black one shaped like a crescent was still lying at the foot of the tree. Mira started forward, but the mimic moved too, faster now, angling toward the key with mechanical precision.

"No" she hissed, diving.

Her fingers closed around it just as the mimic reached out.

It stopped.

Frozen.

Lucan ran to her side. "What is that thing?"

"I don't know," Mira said, standing slowly. "But it's not just a copy."

The mimic twitched.

Its features warped skin shimmering like oil, eyes melting into different colors, flickering between faces. For a moment, Mira saw her mother's face. Then her own. Then Lucan's again, but younger.

Lucan stiffened. "It's a memory thief."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," he said. "But it's acting like it's learning us. Trying to become real."

The tree spoke again, more insistent:

Two keys, Two locks, Two choices, One must remember, One must forget.

Mira's head spun. "Forget what?"

Lucan was staring at her. But his face looked strange now uncertain, Cold.

"Lucan?" she said.

He didn't answer.

The mimic took a step closer.

Mira raised the key like a weapon. "Stay back."

But the mimic wasn't moving anymore.

Lucan was.

Toward her.

Too fast.

He grabbed her wrist and the world shattered.

She was standing in a forest of mirrors. Alone.

Each one showed a different version of her angrier, sadder, older, stranger. In one, she had no eyes. In another, she was wearing her mother's clothes, her voice echoing someone else's pain.

Which one are you? whispered the mirrors.

Do you even know anymore?

She ran.

The reflections shattered behind her as she moved. The ground beneath her twisted into roots and books and ticking clocks.

And then

A voice, Familiar.

Lucan's. But younger. Afraid.

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone, Mira."

She turned.

He was standing at the edge of a memory. Not a dream. A memory.

A younger Lucan, maybe ten, in a burning house.

Someone crying behind a closed door.

Flames eating wallpaper. A silver locket in his hand.

"Who gave you this?"

"She said I could keep it."

Mira reached for him just as the world snapped back.

She was on the floor of the chamber again, panting.

The mimic was gone.

Lucan was standing above her shaken, pale.

"I saw something," he whispered.

"So did I."

The black key was still in her hand, but now it had changed. A crack had appeared down its center, pulsing with light.

And on Lucan's wrist where he'd touched the pedestal there was a mark.

A spiral. Just like the ones on the stone walls beneath the house.

Mira stared at it.

So did he.

And then, almost too quietly to hear, he said

"I think I've been here before."