Uncle Shom | Part3

“Understand what?”

Hundreds of them. Padlocks, skeleton locks, combination locks, rusted iron deadbolts, tiny brass suitcase locks, a clock-face lock with no hands. They covered the surface from floor to ceiling, each one fastened to a ring bolted into the dark oak. uncle shom part3

“You didn’t tell me you had a third thing.” “Understand what

His house sat at the end of a gravel road that no one bothered to pave, a crooked Victorian with a porch that sagged like an old mule. Everyone in town knew Uncle Shom as the man who fixed clocks and never smiled. But I knew him as the man who, twice before, had shown me things that couldn’t be explained. “You didn’t tell me you had a third thing

“That lock was placed there the night your mother left,” he said. “She asked me to keep it closed until you were old enough to understand.”