Chapter 2

The barn door let out a harsh scraping shriek when I pushed it open.

It was darker inside than outside. Moonlight slipped through the gaps in the plank walls, casting long, thin silver lines across the floor. The air was thick with the smell of rotting hay and sulfur mixed with burned hair—the trace a lingering spirit leaves behind. I held a flashlight in my left hand and a silver dagger in my right, my palms slick with sweat. The strap of my tool case dug into my shoulder. Inside were silver powder, saltwater, seance candles, and a portable silver mirror, all checked over by my mother before I left.

From deeper inside the barn came the sound of nails scraping across the wooden wall. Once. Twice. Then it stopped. My flashlight beam landed on an old feed trough lying upside down at the far end. I took one step forward, and the pocket watch against my chest suddenly went hot.

Not warm. Scalding—like someone had pressed a red-hot piece of iron to my collarbone. The second hand on the watch face started trembling violently, and the silver case gave off a faint hum.

Then an invisible force slammed into me from behind, exactly the same force that had shoved me out of the road all those years ago.

I staggered two steps to the left, and the flashlight flew out of my hand and rolled across the floorboards. In that exact instant, something inside the feed trough flipped it over with explosive force, and a mass of black mist wrapped in a dark red glow burst out, slicing past my right arm.

A lingering spirit.

If I had still been standing where I was, it would have gone straight through my chest.

The black mist twisted in midair, then lunged at me again. I switched the dagger to my left hand and pulled a vial of silver powder from the utility pouch at my waist with my right. I flicked the cap off with my thumb and dusted the tip of the blade. Then I traced the pattern of a defensive ward in the air in front of me.

Basic training. I'd practiced it hundreds of times as a rookie. My fingers didn't shake.

The wraith slammed into the ward, its dark red core flashing violently, the impact sending a jarring shock through my hand. The ward wouldn't hold much longer; the glow of the silver powder was already dimming under the second strike.

Then, the pocket watch lit up.

A layer of silvery-white light washed over the dial—not a reflection of the moonlight, but something bleeding out from inside the watch face, as if someone had lit a candle within the casing. The moment the wraith touched the silver light, it let out a piercing shriek. The entire mass of black mist recoiled, slamming into the wooden wall. It didn't dissipate, but its core was trembling—it was afraid of the watch.

I seized the split-second opening, switched the dagger back to my right hand, and lunged, driving the blade straight through its core. The wraith's black mist collapsed and dissipated, leaving behind nothing but the smell of burnt sulfur and a floor covered in sawdust.

I leaned back against the wooden wall, gasping for air. The heat of the pocket watch slowly faded, and the silvery-white light dimmed, leaving only a faint, lingering glow around the edge of the dial. I looked down at the watch face—the second hand was moving. Very slowly, ticking forward one notch at a time with a barely audible mechanical click. Then it stopped, resting at twelve o'clock again, as if nothing had happened.

I stood there holding the watch for a long time. The barn was dead quiet, save for the sound of the wind whistling through the cracks in the wooden boards.

"Who are you?" I asked the pocket watch.

No answer.

"I know you're in there. That was you just now—you pushed me. It was you on the street last time, too. You brewed the tea in my room. You folded the clothes in the closet." I leaned against the wall and held the watch up to the moonlight, the crack on the dial standing out starkly in the silvery light. "What's your name?" The second hand didn't move. "Where are you from?" The second hand didn't move. "Why are you protecting me?"

The second hand twitched. It didn't tick forward—it went backward. Slowly. One tick, two ticks, three ticks. Then it stopped. I didn't know what that meant. But it was the first time I had ever gotten a response after asking him a question. Not a vibration, not a light, but time—he had turned time back three seconds.

From that day on, I started relying on him.

He never spoke, never showed himself, but every time danger struck, he was right on time—using that silent force to push me away, pull me back, or shield me before I could even react. When heading into ruins, I'd say to the empty air, "Stay close," and the watch would vibrate once. When I got back to my apartment, I'd say, "Check if there's anything in the room," and the watch would vibrate once. Before bed, I'd put the watch on the nightstand and say, "Goodnight," and the watch would vibrate once. That was the extent of our communication. One vibration for "yes," two for "no," three for "danger." They were rules I made up, and he never refused to play along.

But I didn't know who he was.

I knew his shape—a male silhouette, with shoulder width and arm length that fit human proportions. But I couldn't make out his face. His features were blurry, like an old water-damaged photograph; the outlines were there, but all the details had been washed away. Every time I tried to focus on his silhouette in the dark, he would retreat into the shadows. I guessed he wasn't hiding—he just didn't know the answers himself. He didn't seem to remember his name, where he came from, or how he died. He only remembered one thing: to protect me. Whenever I asked personal questions, the watch stayed silent. Maybe it wasn't a refusal, but an inability to answer. A soul who had forgotten who he was, yet remembered to push me out of harm's way every time.

I dug through the occult tomes in the paranormal agency's file cabinets and found a ritual that could temporarily manifest spirits.

On a full moon, I drew the bedroom curtains, traced a summoning circle on the floor with silver powder, lit thirteen white candles, and placed the pocket watch dead center. After lighting the last candle, I knelt before the circle and waited a long time. At first, there was nothing but the flickering candle flames. Then, a blurry silhouette began to surface in the silver mirror. Shoulders, arms, dark hair. His face was turned toward me, but his features were obscured as if behind frosted glass. Only a pair of gray-green eyes shone through the blur with a faint, translucent light. I reached out to touch him, and my fingers passed right through his body. In that split second, I felt a temperature—not freezing cold, but something fainter and more distant, like winter sunlight. Then all the candles blew out at once, and the silhouette dissipated. I sat there on the floor until my knees went numb.

I tried a few more times after that, but the results were always the same. He seemed trapped by some set of rules even he didn't understand. Still, after every ritual, I would talk to the watch for a while, telling him about my day and asking if he remembered anything. He never answered, but the watch would vibrate faintly while I spoke—I guessed it wasn't a reply, just him listening.

A few months went by like this. I got so used to his presence that I almost forgot he was his own separate entity. Until the day a guy struck up a conversation with me on the street.

That afternoon, I had just closed a case and was waiting at a crosswalk. The pocket watch was hanging around my neck, warmed by the afternoon sun. A dark-haired man spoke up from behind me: "Excuse me, that's a very unique pocket watch. Do you mind if I ask where you got it?" I turned around. He was wearing a well-tailored dark gray overcoat, holding a hardcover book from a secondhand bookstore, with a perfectly polite smile. He introduced himself as Silas, the owner of the antique shop on the corner. He told me the engraving on the watch casing was hand-carved from the last century and extremely rare, adding that I was welcome to drop by his shop anytime if I was interested.

When I got home, I put the watch on the nightstand and said, "That guy today was pretty interesting." The watch didn't vibrate. I figured he was just being quiet like usual. "Goodnight," I said, and turned off the light.

At three in the morning, I woke up from a dream I couldn't remember. The moonlight was bright—no, the watch was glowing. A faint, silvery-white light seeped from the edge of the dial, blinking in the dark. I rubbed my eyes, and the light went out. I reached out, pulled the watch under the covers, and went back to sleep holding it. That night, he didn't stand at the foot of the bed for a while before leaving like he usually did. And the silver light never came back on.