MicroHorror

Emma found the cuckoo clock in her grandmother’s attic in Quedlinburg on her latest visit. This looked rather elaborate, with a small village spread across the clock’s front. Her grandmother was very confused now, but seeing that cuckoo clock brought a smile to her face. Emma attached the weights, set the wheels to the correct month and day and time, and it worked! On every hour, two cute Bavarian children rotated out a door and cycled through the little town. She hung it on her grandmother’s mantle, and its chiming was one of the few things her grandmother responded to. On subsequent visits from her apartment in Hamburg, she noticed that the clock was running slow. Emma found a watchmaker in the phone book–Emma was amazed the profession still existed–and dropped it off for him to examine. The next day he called back, and calmly asked Emma to come into his store. She did, and he took her into a back room where the clock was hanging. He turned the month to November and the day to 9, then pushed the minute hand to the top of the hour. The clock’s gears whirred, but not in the way that signaled the children’s emergence. A different figure came out, with a khaki uniform, a red armband, and a hammer. He rotated to a window that had now sprung a yellow Star of David symbol, and his hammer hit the window for each hour chimed. He rotated back into the works, where he sat the 364 days his figure wasn’t automated to come out. The watchmaker said he wasn’t going to call the police, but that Emma ought to put her grandmother’s clock back in the attic.