Every evening at exactly 7:13, the clock in the abandoned lighthouse on the edge of Blackmoor Bay would tick backward. No one knew how long it had been happening, but those who lived nearby whispered about it, never daring to approach the structure themselves. The lighthouse had stood empty for over a century, its light extinguished and its corridors filled with dust and silence. But every day, at that strange hour, the clock would reverse, as if time itself was being unraveled. Old Mrs. Larkins, the town’s only remaining librarian, once claimed she saw a man standing in the lighthouse’s doorway when she was a child. She said he wore a long coat, his face hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and he never moved. When she ran to tell her father, he laughed and told her she was imagining things. But years later, when she found an old photograph of the lighthouse, she noticed a figure standing there—just like she remembered. The photo was dated 1923, the year she was born. The townspeople avoided the lighthouse, not out of fear, but out of a quiet understanding that some places were meant to be left alone. Still, curiosity often got the better of them. A group of teenagers once tried to explore the building after school, armed with flashlights and bravado. They found the clock, which was indeed moving backward, and they took pictures. But when they returned to town, the photos were blank. Not just dark, but completely devoid of any image. None of them could explain it, and none of them ever spoke of the night again. One summer, a young artist named Eliot came to Blackmoor Bay to find inspiration. He heard the stories about the lighthouse and, despite the warnings, decided to visit. He arrived at dusk, the sky painted in shades of violet and orange. The lighthouse loomed in the distance, its windows dark, its silhouette jagged against the horizon. As he approached, the air grew colder, though the sun had not yet set. He felt a strange pull, as if the place was calling him. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of salt and decay. The walls were lined with rusted metal, and the floor creaked under his steps. He found the clock in the central tower, its hands spinning backward with a soft ticking sound. He reached out to touch it, but before his fingers could make contact, the room went dark. When the lights flickered back on, the clock had stopped, and the temperature had dropped so suddenly that his breath formed visible clouds. Eliot left the lighthouse that night, but something had changed. He couldn’t sleep, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw the same vision: a man in a long coat, standing at the edge of the sea, watching him. The next morning, he asked around town about the lighthouse, but no one seemed to remember the man. Some said they had never heard of such a thing, others claimed they had seen him before but never spoke of it. Weeks passed, and Eliot began to notice oddities in his own life. His reflections in mirrors would sometimes move before he did. His shadows would stretch in unnatural ways. Objects would shift positions when he wasn’t looking. He started drawing obsessively, filling pages with images of the lighthouse and the man in the coat. But when he looked at the drawings, he realized they weren’t his. The lines were too precise, the details too accurate, as if someone else had drawn them while he slept. One night, he returned to the lighthouse, determined to uncover the truth. The clock was still moving backward, and the air was heavy with an unspoken presence. As he stood in the center of the tower, he heard a voice—not loud, but clear, speaking in a language he didn’t understand. Then, the clock stopped, and the man in the coat appeared, standing just a few feet away. Eliot didn’t run. He simply stared, unable to move. The man raised a hand, and in that moment, the lighthouse seemed to breathe. The walls pulsed, the floor trembled, and the world around him blurred. When the sensation passed, he was back in his studio, the clock on his wall showing 7:13. The drawings were gone, and the lighthouse had vanished from his memory as if it had never existed. But in the weeks that followed, people in Blackmoor Bay began to whisper again. They spoke of a man who had walked the shore, his coat soaked in sea mist, his eyes reflecting the light of a clock that never moved forward. And in the quiet hours of the night, the lighthouse clock would tick backward once more, waiting for someone to hear its call.