A Matter of Time
By Erika Maginn
Madison’s cell buzzes as she drives north on highway 62. She sees the caller ID and groans. “Where are you?” Sarah demands by way of greeting.
“Miss you, too. My mid-term went great, thanks for asking.” “Funny. Please tell me you’re on the road already.”
“I’m on the road already.”
Sarah sighs dramatically like it’s some sort of miracle. “You remembered granddad’s pocketwatch, right? Did they have any trouble fixing it?”
Madison glances guiltily at the package on the passenger seat. “So here’s the thing …” “Maddy!” Fixing the antique watch was Sarah’s idea. She’d found the specialty repair shop in Kingston weeks ago. Madison’s only job was to bring it in, but she’d procrastinated until three days earlier and found the shop closed for a family holiday.
“Relax, okay? I found another place. I’m on my way there now.”
“You found somewhere that can fix a 1920s Longines 19.75 pocket watch?” Sarah’s voice oozes sarcasm. It’s moments like this that Madison feels justified for decapitating her sister’s Barbies when they were little.
“I did,” Madison responds coolly, but actually she’d been lucky. She’d searched online for hours before her roommate, editor for The Queens Journal remembered the longstanding ad in the classifieds: Cullman Horologists. Same day clock and watch repairs. Horary Crossing.
“Horary Crossing? Never heard of it,” Sarah says doubtfully. “I’m sure the townspeople will be devastated. I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay. Just don’t be late. Granddad’s party starts at six.” Madison glances at the time and steps on the accelerator.
The town’s population sign looms in the distance. As Madison gets closer she notes that spraypainted letters have rechristened it “Horror Crossing.” Lovely. She parks in front of a single-screen movie theatre. The paint on the building’s facade is cracked and faded. “For_est G_mp” is lettered on the marquis, and judging by the sun-blistered poster in the window it’s the original showing.
The next store is also abandoned. A thick layer of grime covers the window and an upended stool lies broken on the linoleum floor. A simmering unease takes root in Madison’s stomach. She continues to the main street and the feeling intensifies. She hasn’t passed a single person.
BONG! BONG! The clock tower rings out. Solid and grandiose, it exudes a sense of permanence that seems to have evaded the rest of the town. Madison frowns. For the clock to work, wouldn’t someone need to maintain it? She scans the street for signs of life. A fluttering motion catches her eye: an Open sign swings inside a shop door.
Cullman Horologists is stencilled in gold on the window. She expects the door to be locked but it opens smoothly on well-oiled hinges. She peeks inside. “Hello?”
There’s a man behind the counter and she’s startled by his youthfulness: he can’t be more than a couple of years older than herself. Cute, with curly brown hair and grey eyes. Madison lingers in the doorway. “I saw your ad in the classifieds,” she says. “Do you do same-day repairs?”
“I do.” He nods at the watch in her hand. “Shall I take a look?” Right. Granddad’s party is in a few hours and if she doesn’t show up with a working pocketwatch she’ll never hear the end of it.
He takes the watch, pops in an ocular lens and begins to dissect the timepiece with the precision of a surgeon.
“You work here long?” she asks.
“Generations,” he replies, glancing up at the stencilled window. “Edward Cullman, at your service.”
“Maddy,” she replies. “The town’s a little, uh –,” she’s searches for an inoffensive way to say creepy as hell.
His mouth twists in a half-smile. “Sleepy?” “I was going to say dead,” she admits.
“It can seem that way to outsiders, but the town grows on you if you give it some time.”
Madison’s phone vibrates: Sarah again. She presses ignore but when it returns to the homescreen she sees she’s missed several text messages, each with increasingly aggressive versions of Call me. CALL me. CALL ME NOW! The phone rings again.
“Seriously Sarah, dramatic much?” “Where are you?” she demands.
“I told you. Horary Crossing getting grandad’s watch fixed.” “I looked it up to see how far away you are–”
“I told you I’d be home in time–”
“Shut up for a second!” There’s an urgency to her sister’s voice. “The town doesn’t exist.” The queasiness returns in Madison’s stomach. She moves away from the counter.
“I’m listening.”
“Horary Crossing was a big industrial town in the 1920s. They made clocks for the railway, but demand slowed. The factory closed and people moved away.”
“It’s pretty quiet around here,” Madison admits.
“That’s not all. The town was already struggling, but what finished it off was a serial killer.” Madison’s breath catches. “What?”
“Dozens of women, all murdered in Horary Crossing. They never arrested a killer. The townspeople didn’t feel safe and left. It was declared a ghost town in 1971,” Sarah finishes.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I have a bad feeling, Maddy. You should leave.”
“Ah-ha!” Edward exclaims from across the room and Madison jumps. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I figured out what’s wrong with the watch.”
Madison reddens, embarrassed for being spooked so easily. Those murders were in the previous century. “Sarah, you listen to too many true crime podcasts. I’ll call you later,” she promises and returns to the counter.
“You need a new balance staff,” Edward says. “Can you fix it?”
“I’ll see if I have the part in the back. Gimme a sec.” He disappears behind a curtain just as her phone chirps again: an article from her sister: Unsolved crimes: Was factory owner Charles Cullman Canada’s most prolific serial killer?
Madison starts reading and doesn’t notice Edward return until he’s standing next to her. “They never proved it was him,” he says quietly. She nearly drops her phone. “Oh! I, um–”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve lived with the speculation all my life. It’s terrible what happened to those girls. The town needed a scapegoat, but it ruined my family’s reputation for generations.”
“I’m sorry,” is all she can think to say. “He was never convicted?”
Edward shakes his head. “Never even charged. The victims were all Jane Does so the police couldn’t prove any connection between them and my family.” The macabre history lesson hangs in the air. “Any of these catch your eye?” Edward taps the display case and Madison welcomes the change of subject.
She points to a slender, barrel-shaped watch with a gold casing. “That one’s beautiful.” He unlocks the case and hands it to her to try on. “You have good taste. That’s an original
Cartier Tonneau. Very popular in the 1920s.” She shivers and Edward flushes. “Back to the pocketwatch. I can repair it, but it’s finicky. Can you wait while I fix it? An hour or so?”
Madison shakes her head, disappointed. “I’m already running late.” She glances at the watch on her wrist. One o’clock. “That can’t be right,” she says, but her words are drowned out by the clock tower.
BONG!
Madison frowns. “Something wrong?” Edward asks.
“No. Just … I could have sworn it was after two …” She checks her phone. 1:01. “I guess I have time after all.”
Edward smiles. “Excellent. I’ll get started. Why don’t you wander around town while you wait?”
Madison nods and starts to unfasten the watch, but Edward touches her wrist, stopping her. “You should wear it awhile. See if you like it.”
“That’s very generous of you but I could never afford something like this –”
“–Please,” he insists. “A timepiece like this can have a transformative effect. You should experience the feeling at least once in your life.” And because he seems so earnest and sincere she agrees.
Madison admires the watch out in the sunlight. Edward is right: the beautiful timepiece does make her feel different somehow. She passes a row of stores boarded up with planks and rusted nails. She takes a selfie in front of the clock tower and tries to send it to Sarah to reassure her she’s fine but her phone signal now reads NO DATA. Strange. She’ll send it later.
A side road leads into a residential neighbourhood. Cookie cutter houses with gingerbread rooftops and picket fences line up in pretty rows and Madison feels a twinge of sadness that this picturesque little town is little more than an architectural graveyard. Or is it?
Bleep. Bleep. Madison scans the rows of empty houses and spots a small boy sitting on the front steps of one of them. Who leaves a child alone in a ghost town? He’s six, maybe seven, and his brow is furrowed in fierce concentration as he stares at the noisy device in his hands. “Hi,” Madison says. “Are you lost?”
He ignores her. Madison comes closer and tries a different tact. “Is that an original Gameboy? I haven’t seen one of those in years.” He looks up, eyeing her coldly. “I had one when I was your age. Used to play for hours,” Madison says encouragingly.
“Liar! It just came out this year!” he yells before jumping up and disappearing inside. “Wait!” Madison chases after him. A little kid shouldn’t be running around in an abandoned building. Except, the house isn’t empty. Air conditioning lifts the hair on her arms. The scent of cookies baking tickles her nostrils. In a distant room she hears a television gameshow. She retreats back outside, confused. The boy isn’t lost. She’s trespassing.
Madison returns to the street and tries to make sense of what’s happening. She’d assumed the entire town was abandoned but that’s clearly not the case. She meanders further into the neighbourhood, watching with uneasy fascination as it comes more and more to life. On the next block children with hockey sticks and a makeshift net flood onto the street. Dog walkers and joggers begin to pass her on the sidewalk. She notices with surprise that not a single person is carrying a cell phone.
Maybe there’s something to this simpler, small-town life, she thinks. Though the town’s collective fashion sense is wildly out of date – and oddly specific. In the first few streets everyone is wearing bright neon colours and baggy, low-slung pants. A few blocks later, the residents have adopted a more bohemian look: bell bottoms, fringed tops and platform heels. Is there some sort of themed costume party happening? Madison pulls out her phone to take a picture of a guy with a comically-large collar, but now her phone is completely dead.
A thought begins to nag at her. Sarah said the town’s factory shut down decades ago. But if that’s the case, what does everyone do for a living? Madison finds the answer a few blocks later. The abandoned factory sits at the edge of town. There’s just one problem: it isn’t abandoned.
Plumes of grey smoke billow from the chimneys. A whistle blows, and Madison watches with gnawing anxiety as dozens of workers – all men – stream into the parking lot to their cars.
The cars! Long, broad Buicks follow sleek Cadillacs with whitewalls and tailfins. Madison’s blood pulses behind her eyes. Something in Horary Falls is terribly wrong.
She sprints back toward the main street as fast as she can, but when she crests the hill she stops short. The once-abandoned town is alive with activity. The small, dilapidated buildings from hours earlier look brand new. A sign in the general store window reads, “Milk 33¢.”
Madison races back to the theatre where she parked, but in her heart she already knows what she’ll find – her car is no longer there. She shakes violently as her brain tries to make sense of the unimaginable. It isn’t here because … it’s difficult to even process the thought.
Because it doesn’t exist yet.
The theatre’s ticket window opens and men in pinstriped suits escorting women in drop-waisted dresses queue up for the evening’s show. Gone with the Wind is freshly lettered on the marquis.
What’s happening is impossible. This place was a ghost town just hours earlier when she walked into –
Cullman Horologists is exactly as she first found it. The gold stenciled letters in the window are as fresh now as they will be a century from now. Edward’s words come back to her: A timepiece like this can have a transformative effect. She rips the watch from her wrist and hurls it to the ground.
Hours pass. The theatre has long since let out and lamplighters have extinguished the last of the street lamps. Madison waits by Cullman’s shop, knowing he will come.
Light footsteps click on the empty street. Edward appears.“Amazing isn’t it? I told you the watch was special.” His tone is playful, as though the earth hasn’t reversed on its axis. As if he hasn’t stolen her life from her. Everything else has changed, but Edward looks exactly the same. Madison steps out from the shadows. “You must have questions,” he says with mock indulgence. “The others all had questions.”
“Is it reversible?” “No.”
“Are you Charles Cullman?”
“Nope, still Edward.” He smiles at Madison, a ghoulish grin. “It seems the police were - are,” he corrects himself, “more inclined to suspect an old man than his charming young son.” His hand twitches and moonlight glints off a shining blade. He slashes out and Madison jumps back, but not quickly enough. Hot blood soaks through the front of her shirt. She clutches her stomach and flees.
She staggers between two empty buildings and slinks down behind an abandoned skid to assess the damage. It’s bad.
“No one’s coming to save you,” he calls out in a singsong voice from the street. “Everyone’s tucked in their beds sound asleep.” He’s right. The residential streets are blocks away. No one would hear her scream, and she’ll never outrun him. An anguished sob escapes her lips as she realizes why Cullman’s victims were all Jane Does. Their families did come looking for them, just as her own will tear this town apart searching for her. They’ll be looking in the right place but not the right time. Here, in this time she’s completely alone.
His moon-made shadow creeps down the alley and she crouches low. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” he calls out, his honeyed voice almost a caress. “You already know how this ends.” His shadow slips past.
Blood seeps from the wound and Madison doubts she’ll outlive this night. Her hand searches the ground for some kind of weapon, her fingers closing around a rock the size of her fist. Her fate may already be written, but she won’t let this happen again, not to anyone else. She takes a breath to steel her nerves, then rises to follow him, clutching her bleeding stomach with one hand, the jagged rock in her other. Edward Cullman and his heinous legacy will die on this night. It’s only a matter of time.
Erika Maginn is a Toronto-based writer who enjoys travelling, spicy food and writing fiction that makes her family wonder if she's really a serial killer disguised as a mild-mannered advertising executive.
