My Husband Dies Every Midnight

The Clock That Counts Backward

The leather-bound book was as heavy in Elena's coat pocket as a stone. She quickened her pace, and Nathan kept up, his hand still gripping her arm as if he would vanish if he ever let go.

The streets of Denver were deserted, as it was already evening, and the sky had turned a shade of bruised purple, as if the city had been drowned in ink.

"Where are you taking me?" Nathan asked sharply. "You said the chapel beneath the chapel, but we left the church."

"It's not beneath the church," Elena said, her voice shaking. "The chapel is not beneath the church. It's underground. My mother said so in the book. The miners used to gather there before they went down into the tunnels."

Nathan's grip on her arm tightened. "Elena, I think we need to stop and reconsider. A priest we just met gave you a book telling us that we are cursed, and now you want to go chasing ghosts in underground chapels? This is not reality."

Elena stopped walking and turned to face him. Her eyes were still red from the tears but there was something else there now. A look of something that had been buried deep inside of her for the past sixteen years.

"Reality died with you last night," Elena said quietly. "When you died and when you came back and when the clock on the wall vanished for everyone but me." She took a trembling breath and pulled the ledger fragment from her coat pocket, holding it out for him to see. "This is real, Nathan. This is not a dream. Your name is written here and so is mine and tonight at midnight we will both be dead if we don't find what is hidden."

Nathan stared at the book, his face pale. He said nothing as he looked at the fresh ink on the page, at the names written there.

"Okay," he said at last. "Okay, let's go find this chapel."

Elena pulled out her phone and opened up the map. There was a red dot blinking on the screen, marking the location. "Here," she said. "There is supposed to be an abandoned chapel foundation in the Highlands. It was demolished in nineteen fifty-two but the entrance to the underground chamber was left unsealed and my mother marked the location on one of the journal pages."

Nathan looked at the phone in her hand, then up at the streetlight flickering overhead.

"Then let's go," he said.

They walked in silence, the city passing them by. Couples passed them by, laughing and whispering to each other as they held hands and steamed take-out coffee cups. A delivery truck rumbled past, its tires hissing against the pavement. Everything was normal, everything was fine, and Elena's world was spinning on its axis.

Her phone beeped again and again and again.

The entrance is locked. You need the key. Maris left it with the one who remembers the song.

Elena stopped walking and turned to face Nathan.

"The one who remembers the song," she whispered.

Nathan looked at her. "What?"

"My mother," Elena said. "She used to sing to me. She said it was a lullaby her grandmother used to sing to her before Denver was Denver." Her voice shook. "I haven't heard it in years. I don't even remember the words."

Nathan looked at her, his brow furrowed. "I remember the song."

Elena's heart stopped. "What?"

"It was last night, before I went to sleep," Nathan said. "You were humming it to yourself in the kitchen and I joined in because I remembered the tune from when you used to sing it to me in the shower." He frowned. "I don't know how I know the words, Elena. I've never heard you sing them."

"Sing it to me," Elena said. "Please."

Nathan's face was red. "Here? On the street?"

"Just the melody," she said.

He hesitated, then began to hum. It was a strange sound, at first, like he was unsure of the tune, but then it grew steadier and stronger, until the sound was filling the street, until the world around them seemed to hold its breath.

Elena stood there, her heart hammering in her chest, and watched as the streetlamps flickered off one by one. The traffic noises grew distant, muffled, as if they were underwater. The couple with the coffee cups stopped walking and turned to look at them, their faces blank.

Nathan's voice grew louder and louder until it was almost a shout and then the street seemed to shrink around them, to constrict, until the pavement beneath their feet cracked open.

Elena looked down and gasped.

"The entrance," she whispered.

Nathan knelt down and grabbed the edge of the square manhole cover. It lifted with ease, revealing a set of stone steps leading downwards into the earth. "How is this possible?" he asked, his voice barely audible.

"The song," Elena said, her voice thick with emotion. "It's a key, Nathan. My mother said the old miners used to use music to mark places of power. They believed the Warden was watching them, listening."

Nathan looked at her, his eyes wide. "You believe this?"

"I believe you died last night," Elena said. "I believe you're alive now. I believe the world is full of secrets and lies and the only way to survive is to stop pretending that nothing has changed."

She started walking down the steps, Nathan at her heels. The air grew colder with every step, and the walls of the tunnel seemed to close in around them. Strange markings covered the stone, glowing faintly in the darkness.

At the end of the tunnel, a soft blue light beckoned them forward. They walked until the tunnel opened up into a small chamber and in the center of the room stood a pedestal. On the pedestal, there was something.

A key.

It was an old fashioned skeleton key made of tarnished silver but the handle was shaped like a clock face, the hands frozen at 11:59.

Elena reached out and touched the key and suddenly she was somewhere else.

She was in the same chamber but it was different, older. Her mother stood at the far end of the room, her face gaunt with worry. She clutched the key in her hand, her tears staining the fabric of her dress.

"I'm sorry, Elena. I'm so sorry. I tried to break it. I tried to stop it. But the Warden doesn't forgive. It only waits."

Her mother placed the key into a lock on the far end of the chamber and suddenly another door opened, revealing a staircase going downwards.

"If you're seeing this, the debt has been called again. Go down. Find the ledger. And Elena, don't trust the Vales. They're not keepers. They're jailers."

Elena's vision began to blur. Her mother was standing at the end of the hallway, her face pale. "I'm still here," Maris said. "In the space between. Find me. Before midnight."

Elena gasped as the vision ended and she stumbled back, Nathan catching her by the waist.

"El? What happened?"

"She's alive," Elena choked out. "My mother. She's alive. She's trapped somewhere and we have to find her."

Nathan's face was pale. "Elena, your mother died sixteen years ago. We've been to her grave."

"Not a grave," Elena said, wiping her eyes. "A marker. A lie. She's in the space between. Like you were. But you came back. She didn't."

Nathan looked at the key in her hand, then back at the tunnel behind them. "How much further?"

Elena looked at the staircase her mother had vanished down and then back at Nathan.

"Deeper," she said.

They walked down the staircase and the air grew colder. The walls pressed in around them until suddenly the blue light was gone and a red glow was coming from deeper below them.

At the end of the staircase, a larger chamber opened up before them. Painted on the walls were scenes of miners offering scrolls to a shadowy figure in exchange for gold. In the center of the room was an altar made of obsidian and on either side of it, stood a woman.

The woman on the left was tall and willowy, her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. She was dressed in a black business suit and her eyes were the color of winter.

"Ingrid Vale," Elena said, her voice tight with anger.

Ingrid smiled. "Maris's daughter," she said smoothly. "I wondered when you would get here. And you brought the architect. How thoughtful of you."

Nathan stepped forward. "What do you want?"

Ingrid's smile widened. "I want what was promised. What your ancestors agreed to when they first set foot on this land. What my family has been sworn to protect for centuries."

She gestured to the altar. "The ledger is here. The ritual has been prepared. All that remains is the sacrifice."

Her eyes locked onto Elena's. "So tell me, little Hart. Which of you will give up tomorrow?"

Elena's fingers tightened around the key in her hand.

"Neither of us," she said.

Ingrid's smile didn't falter.

"Then you both die at midnight."

She raised her hand and the red glow grew stronger and stronger until something began to move in the darkness behind the altar. Something tall. Something with no face. Something that had been waiting for this moment for one hundred and sixty years.

Elena looked at Nathan and he looked back at her and she knew what he was thinking because she was thinking it too.

We don't have much time.

The clock on the wall, because there was a clock on the wall now, ticked once. It was 11:30 PM.

Ninety minutes.

Ninety minutes to find the ledger.

Ninety minutes to save her mother.

Ninety minutes to decide who would live and who would die.

Forever.