Thirteen Strikes

Louis turned towards the clock, his heart pounding as he heard it chime again.

Dong! Dong! Dong!

The old grandfather clock continued chiming as he continued counting. Eleven, twelve … Thirteen. His heart jumped into his throat as he now understood what his night was going to be like.

When he had bought the old clock over a year ago, the man in the shop had told him that it could be unique. His crooked toothed grin had made Louis chuckle to himself, but the man wasn’t laughing. He remembered the old man’s warning vividly.

“This is the best clock you can own. It’ll help ward off bad luck, and you’ll feel yourself freed of any diseases or afflictions. But …” At this he raised a finger and pointed toward the clock, his hand trembling and the gnarled finger extended.

“But once a year, you’ll have all of the bad spirits escape the clock, and it’ll be up to you to stay safe. Once a year the clock will chime thirteen times instead of twelve, and you’ll know that it’s that night. So be prepared.”

The price on the clock was too good to pass up, and Louis was never one to turn down a good deal regardless. As he carted the clock out of the store, he wondered how it was going to fit into the house that he’d been renting.

The warning at the back of his mind, he’d trucked it home. As he rounded the corner right before his house, his truck had stalled. Cursing it out, since the blasted thing had never done anything like this before, he turned it over to get it started. The engine caught and cranked right up, and Louis started to continue on his way.

Before he could even put the truck into drive, however, he’d heard a terrible crash. Looking up, he saw the neighbors’ moving truck barreling towards the corner. It blew through the stop sign and caught air over the bump, then continued on down the street.
Louis was shaken. If his truck hadn’t died right then, he might have. Throwing a furtive glance back at the clock, the old man’s warning imprinted in his mind, Louis drove on to his house.

He’d gotten the clock inside, and had forgotten about the warning until another close call just a couple days ago. That’s why he was now hiding under a table, not knowing what to expect out of this clock now. So far, everything else the old man had said to be true had come true, and Louis was afraid that this would too.

Right at that moment, Louis heard the door creak open, and he knew that the old man’s warning was right. He also knew that he was in for a difficult night, if he survived at all. His heart beating wildly, Louis popped out and looked right into the eyes of his mother, who had died more than a year and a half ago.

The scream caught in his throat as she shuffled towards him, and he knew that he was going to be the next victim of the clock.