Aisha and the Spider in the Clocktower
Sep 03, 2025
The clocktower had been silent for years. Its hands frozen at twelve, the old bell cracked down the middle. Most people passed it without a second glance, just another crumbling piece of the town’s forgotten past.
But Aisha watched it. Every evening from the park bench opposite, notebook on her lap, eyes on the tower.
She noticed things others missed: the way the shadows around the tower moved even when the sun didn’t; the whispery rustle that wasn’t wind; the strands of silver thread that caught the light just once before vanishing.
Her sidekick, Silk—a glossy black tarantula no bigger than her palm—twitched whenever they got too close.
One Tuesday after school, Aisha saw something new.
The tower door was open.
Just slightly. Just enough.
Aisha stood, heart knocking against her ribs, and crossed the empty street. The air was colder here. Stiller. She slipped inside.
The smell hit her first—dust, oil, and something older. Cobwebs coated the staircase like frost, stretching across the bannister and walls. She climbed slowly, step by step, her torchlight barely cutting through the gloom.
On the walls were scratches—dates and names, like a roll call. All children. All written in shaky hand. At the top: “THE WEB REMEMBERS.”
Silk crawled from her pocket and froze.
At the top of the tower, the floor was thick with threads. They pulsed softly, like veins. And in the centre, curled inside the broken bell, sat a spider the size of a chair. Its eyes glowed red, not with hunger, but memory.
Aisha didn’t scream.
The spider lowered a leg and dropped something onto the floor. A page. Her page. From her sketchbook, but aged and yellowed, showing a drawing she hadn’t made yet. It showed a figure—her—standing at the top of the tower, wrapped in webs.
A test?
She reached for the page. The web beneath her feet tightened. The bell shook.
Then she saw it: the mechanism behind the spider. Old gears. A switch marked “RESET.” Another page fluttered beside it with a clue:
“Time broken can be rewoven. But who will pull the thread?”
She looked at Silk. The little spider moved toward the mechanism.
Aisha took a breath, stepped forward, and flipped the switch.
The tower groaned. Time moved. The clock hands ticked for the first time in years. Outside, the chimes rang out across the town.
Below her, the scratched names began to fade.
But so did the floor.
The spider vanished into mist. The webs dissolved.
Aisha was falling.
Then—
Silk leapt.
A strand of thread caught her wrist.
She swung in the air, breathless, heart racing, as the mechanism slowed. She landed, bruised but whole, on the final step.
Outside, the sky was gold with morning. People stood still, staring at the tower.
The hands now read 6:47.
And on the ground beside her notebook, one last thread of silver curled into the shape of a question mark.
Published with Permission of Dixons Manningham Primary School
