Sharon had little trouble finding the party, what with so many cars parked around it. The house sat back a ways from the street, nestled between two rows of tall, narrow trees, the kind that lined so many boulevards in southern California. As the hour was dark, the neatly trimmed trees seemed to stand guard over the boundary between the house and its neighbors. As the next to the last house on the street, it was the only one on the end with a streetlight to illuminate its porch.

Only one side of the trees that separated it from the last house was visible, so dark and dense were the bushes and the knotted and twisted branches of pecan trees that stood beyond them. Sharon wondered if the owner of that last house had been a pecan farmer who fell upon hard times, had sold the land around the house, and then had let the ground go to weed.

She turned her attention to the party house. The front door was wide open and light beamed from the interior. A cacophony of party voices escaped from inside, inviting her in.

With no one to greet her, she ventured in. To her right was a sunken living room, occupied by perhaps a dozen adults, some with white paper plates in their hands filled with party food. All seemed to be engaged in conversation. The whole house echoed with the voices of its guests.

“Sharon!”

She turned to see her old friend, Ann, the hostess. Ann’s trademark red hair fell in loose curls on the sides of her mature woman’s face. As she approached, Sharon saw a sliver of white hair on one side. No one knew how old Ann was and she, of course, never told. The two women shared a hug.

“So nice to see you could make it.”

Sharon smiled. “I had to break away.”

Ann frowned. “Still working those awful hours? Shame on you! Come. Let me introduce you to George.”

She sighed as she allowed the hostess to literally pull her by her arm deep into the interior of the house. Ann was always trying to match her up with eligible bachelors, ever since Paul passed away two years ago. Sharon had dived into her work as the Chief Acoustical Engineer on the Segerstrom Auditorium.

Ann led her into the kitchen. The party had been obviously well on its way for quite some time, as empty bottles of wine stood on the counter. They edged their way past a portly man and woman who talked while feeding their faces with cheese hors d’ oeuvres. Everyone seemed to be talking loudly.

“George!" shouted Ann, "I’d like you to meet Sharon, the engineer I talked to you about.” People packed even the kitchen for Ann was a very popular hostess.

George, it turned out, was also an engineer, but of the software kind. A tall man, he wore dark rimmed glasses and a Hawaiian shirt that covered his expansive belly.

Sharon chatted with him for a few minutes before he invited her to grab a plate of food. They made their way to the row of tables covered with dishes, bowls, and trays of slices of meats, what looked a spinach salad, two kinds of beans, and different varieties of chips, dips, nuts, fruit, etc. One smaller round table held nothing but sweets of all sorts. Ann was also famous for putting on a great spread.

Sharon filled a plate with food and made her way to the pool area out back, where George had told her she could find some beer in a cooler. She selected a John Adams, which a man graciously opened for her.

As she sat down on a lawn chair, she faced the last house on the street. A light was on in a room near the back and she could see a small man silhouetted from interior lighting. He seemed to notice her and to her surprise, raised his fist and shook it.

Several others saw him too and stopped talking. One woman said, “Kinda creepy, you know. What does he want? Does he wanna join us?”

One young man, with a nearly empty beer in his hand, stood facing the house. “He’s been staring at us like that for a long time. Creepy son of a bitch.” He tipped the bottle to his mouth, emptied it, and yelled to him, “Get a life, you old fart!”

“Leave him alone,” said a woman on Sharon’s right.

Sharon studied the occupant of the house, half hidden between pecan trees. Despite the man’s displeasure, his posture suggested a very lonely person. When Ann came up, Sharon pointed and asked, “Who is he?”

Ann glanced his way and sighed. “Peterson, I think his name is. Gustav Peterson. Used to be a magician, so I’ve heard. There’s quiet a tale going around the neighborhood.” She took a seat beside Sharon and held up a glass of red wine.

Sharon touched the glass with her beer. “And?”

Ann sipped the vintage before replying. “Seems he was a magician in his younger days. Traveled all over the world, too. But twenty years or so ago, tragedy struck his family.”

“What happened?” Sharon asked.

“Some say he had been quite a party man himself in his day. I’m not sure of the details, but reports are that his act was getting stale. He was no longer in such demand. He isolated himself in the house and worked night and day to develop a whole new trick, one that he claimed would make him famous around the world.

“Then one day his son up and went missing. They never found him. His wife went crazy and ran screaming through the house every day, wailing for her lost child. One day, she fell silent. No one heard her screams. When they looked for her, she too was gone. The old man would say nothing.

“The police figured she left looking for her son and never came back. She had vanished without a trace.”

“A magician, he? Then why doesn’t he wave his magic wand and get a life?” asserted the young man. “And leave us alone. Look at him. He just stands there, staring at us.”

“God, you’d think the old man hated parties,” said a woman.

“He never comes out. A genuine recluse,” said Ann. “Hates noise too. You’d think someone of his age would be hard of hearing. But whenever we run the lawn mover or run the power saw to trim the trees, he comes to his window with a scowl.

"Rumor has it that he murdered his son and wife and hid their bodies, but of course, the police checked into that and found nothing, nothing at all. Some say loud noises remind him of his wife's screaming and he feels guilty.”

Sharon took the last sip from her beer. "I don't know. I think he's just lonely."

“Let’s ignore him,” added the young man. “He’s probably jealous. We’re having fun and he’s not.”

Sharon couldn’t help but look toward the house again and indeed, the old man, stooped with age, stared back. She decided she needed another beer and got one from the cooler. Feeling a need to think of something besides the old man, she went back inside.

George met her in the hall way and offered her a small plate of baked clams. Sharon had another beer and really enjoyed the party, the old man next door long gone from her mind. A half hour later, she came out of the bathroom and wondered why the folks in the living room had become quieter.

In the open doorway stood the old man, wearing a dark brown cloak. Ann came to the door and greeted him. All eyes watched as he opened his cloak to hand her something. So wrinkled was his face that not one part was smooth. So deeply recessed were his eyes that one could surmise he had no eyelids at all. His pale face and hands showed lack of exposure to the sun for far too long.

Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared at him.

“Why, thank you, Mr. Peterson,” said Ann. “Won’t you come join us?”

Ann stood there, hardly moving. When he neared the end of their front walk, she yelled after him, "Thank you!"

Ann's husband came up beside her. "What is it, Ann? What’d he give you?”

She turned and carried into the living room a wood clock, which she placed upon the coffee table.

Soon, the evening's chatter started up again, but Sharon, ever the engineer, studied the clock instead.

Made of stained dark wood, it stood about a foot tall. The top part was shaped like the roof of an old European house, with steep sides. The front held a small white clock face. The base beneath the clock face was round, shaped like a cylinder. What an odd shape for a clock, she thought.

The first thing she noticed was that it ran awfully fast. For every sweep of the second hand, the minute hand moved forward one number. But since there was no hour hand, the minute hand would make a complete sweep once every twelve minutes. “The Twelve Minute Clock,” she said.

She marveled at the realistic details of the carvings on the lower cylinder part. She counted two rows of carved figures, twelve in each row. Each figure was of a man or woman joyfully laughing or dancing. A happy clock. “A nice gift for a party,” she said. Except on the back of the clock, opposite the clock face, was a hooded figure, bent over, leaning on a staff with a curved blade at the end.

“What a weird old man,” said Alisa, the painter, wearing a bright red beret and matching red and white flowered pantsuit.

Ralph, her husband and a banker, stopped munching on chips long enough to add, “Maybe he’s the Tuesday Killer.” Hardly a week had passed since a strangler had last slain a lone woman in a park, always on Tuesday night.

“But it’s Saturday,” commented a portly fellow on the sofa whose name Sharon did not get.

Ralph replied, “Well, he’s got the live somewhere the other days of the week.”

That started a new game and they rivaled each other to come up with the most bizarre story to explain the old man. None seemed as enchanting a tale as being a magician and soon Sharon tired of their banter.

She went downstairs to the billiard room and watched six people play a game of pea pool. Each player selected a red colored pea which had a hidden number on its bottom. That number would be his ball and if someone sank his ball, he had to pay to the pot. But if his ball was the last remaining, he would show his pea and collect all the money in the pot.

Sharon had to wait out the game as it was already in progress. So she walked up the back steps to the back yard, but there were only three people there, none of whom she particularly liked, so she got another beer from the cooler and returned to the living room.

The party seemed to have quieted down a little and the house seemed half empty of party guests. Only four remained in the living room. When Ann walked by, carrying a white garbage bag and stuffing discarded paper plates and cups in them, Sharon called out, “Have you seen George?”

“Kitchen,” was all Ann said.

Sharon turned toward the kitchen. “But I just came from there and he’s not…” When she turned back, Ann was out of earshot.

So, Sharon took a seat in front of the clock and studied it again. Only this time, she noticed the bottom row of figures. Or maybe her memory, long washed by beer, was not up to par. She could have sworn all the carved figures were of party people, but now, upon closer examination, she saw that some of them were different. One looked like a teacher holding a piece of chalk in front of a blackboard. Another was a shoemaker. A third was a tall man bent over what looked like a computer. A fourth was counting money and looked to be a banker.

Alisa called out from the door to the pool area, “Has anyone seen Ralph?”

Sharon tried to remember what he looked like, but could only remember Alisa had said he was a banker. She looked up, “Have you tried your car?”

“Ah,” replied Alisa, who turned to go outside.

Sharon recalled the bowl of shrimp dip and went into the kitchen again. When she returned, there were only four people in the living room. The house seemed quieter and she asked, “Did Alisa find her husband?”

Heads shook but did not answer, so she shrugged and went looking for George again. When she could not find him anywhere, she returned to the living room, where only two people remained, a woman sitting in a man’s lap. The two of them paid her no attention, lost as they were in giving their full--and affectionate--attention to each other.

Curious, Sharon looked at the rows of figures on the clock. Now the whole bottom row was full of people representing various professions. When she saw one that looked like a female painter, she remembered Alisa and wondered if she and Ralph had decided to go home.

The clock’s minute hand now stood at nine while the second hand continued its slow race around the face.

It seemed awfully quiet for a party, especially since everybody was having so much fun. She wondered where they all were. Must be downstairs. But when she walked down the steps, there was only a man playing billiards by himself. Other than him, the room was empty. “Where is everybody?”

The pool player paused and shook his head before making his shot.

She went out the back door and up the stairs to the pool. But nobody was there either. “What the…?”

She rushed inside, only to find the kitchen was empty. She called out, “Ann?” No answer. A sense of deep concern, bordering on panic, seized her and she searched the whole house, but found no one. She was alone.

She shivered in the warm night air and rushed into the living room. The lovers were gone too.

Stunned, she sat down.

The clock chimed and she glanced at it. The hands were at the top. After six chimes, she noticed movement and saw the last figure change. The background morphed into a writing desk and the figure of a woman sat down at it and took up a pen in hand, before it froze.

She screamed. Something was horribly wrong here! She stood and ran towards the door but stopped when she saw the old man standing there, silhouetted by the street lamp. His deep set eyes stared at her.

When the clock chimed again, she disappeared in mid air.

#

When the clock finally fell silent, the old man entered the room, walked over to the coffee table, and picked up the clock. He returned to the front door and paused. He waved his hand in a circular motion. All the lights went out. Then he closed the door behind him.