Still Ticking

The dead man’s watch was still ticking. A cheap Casio, the kind you buy at the kiosk by the ferry terminal in Split. It was on his wrist, and his wrist was on the concrete, and the concrete was slick with something I chose not to identify. I wasn’t supposed to be there. That’s the thing. I was just looking for a place to piss.

It was the summer of ‘98, or maybe ‘99, the war was over but the tourists hadn’t quite figured that out yet. I was working for my uncle’s construction outfit, which is a generous way of saying I was hauling bags of cement up three flights of stairs because the crane was broken and my uncle was too cheap to rent a new one. The building was a monstrosity, a villa for some German who wanted a view of the Adriatic and didn't care that his foundation was poured over an old fishing path. I think it was Tuesday, but it might have been Wednesday. The days blurred into a single, long, sweaty smear.

We were in a village called Slatine, on the island of Čiovo. You wouldn’t know it. It’s all pine trees and rocks and the smell of salt and diesel from the boats. And cats. God, the cats. They were everywhere, skinny and mean, with eyes that looked right through you.

The dig site was a mess. We’d been told to clear an area for a septic tank, which is a fancy way of saying a hole in the ground for shit. The backhoe had hit something solid, a slab of limestone that didn't look natural. My uncle, a man whose entire philosophy could be boiled down to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell, and get paid,’ told us to break it up and keep going. So we did.

The guy who found it was named Marko. He was a local, wiry, with a face like a dried apple. He was on the other side of the slab, swinging a pickaxe, when he stopped. Just stopped. The pickaxe hung in the air like a question mark.

“Jebote,” he whispered. It means something like ‘fuck me,’ but it’s all in the delivery.

I went over. The slab was cracked, and through the crack, I could see a darkness that wasn’t just a shadow. It was a space. A void. Marko crossed himself, which was rich coming from a man I’d seen steal cigarettes from his own mother. He backed away, muttering about not wanting to disturb anything, about the “old ones.”

My uncle came over, swearing about the schedule. He shined his torch into the gap. “It’s a tomb, you idiots. Probably Roman. Or Greek. Who cares. Get a sledgehammer.”

So we got a sledgehammer. And we broke the slab. The smell that came out wasn’t what I expected. It wasn't rot. It was dust and old air and something sweet, like figs left in the sun. Inside was a single, unadorned stone coffin. Not a grand sarcophagus with carvings of gods and battles. Just a box. We pried the lid off, and that’s when I saw the watch.

The body inside was little more than dust and bones, draped in the remnants of a coarse, dark fabric. But the watch was pristine. It was anachronistic. It was impossible. And it was on a wrist bone. A perfectly clean, white wrist bone, and the watch was ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick.

My uncle stared. Marko had already fled. And I, a nineteen-year-old kid with a hangover and a deep and abiding desire to be anywhere else, felt something cold and sharp slide down my spine. I wasn’t supposed to see this. This wasn't part of the plan. The plan was cement and sweat and a paycheck at the end of the week. This was a violation. A mistake. A crack in the world.

“You’re telling me,” my cousin Luka said, “that you found a dead guy. With a watch. A Casio.”

“A digital one,” I said. “With a light.”

“And you didn’t take it?”

We were sitting at a konoba in Trogir, the old town, the one that looks like a movie set. We were drinking bevanda, cheap red wine cut with water. The air was thick with the smell of grilled fish and cigarette smoke and the sound of a bad klapa band butchering a song my grandmother used to love.

I shrugged. “What was I gonna do? It was on his arm.”

“On his bone,” Luka corrected. He was a smartass, Luka. He was studying economics in Zagreb and thought he knew everything. He had a way of looking at you like you were a particularly slow-witted dog.

“Whatever. It was creepy.” I took a long drink. The wine was sour.

“So what did you do with it?”

“With what?”

“The watch, you idiot.”

“Nothing. We left it. My uncle said to leave it. He said it was bad luck. We just… covered it back up. Poured the concrete right over it.”

Luka leaned back, lighting a Drina. The smoke curled up into the string lights. “You poured a foundation over a Roman tomb. And a guy with a digital watch.”

“It’s a septic tank.”

“Even better. You’re shitting on history.” He laughed, a short, sharp bark. “You know what this means, right?”

“That my uncle is a philistine?”

“No. Well, yes. But no. It means it’s a hoax. Or a plant. Someone put it there. A joke. Probably Marko.”

“Marko was scared shitless. He ran away. He was crossing himself.”

“So? He’s a good actor. He probably found an old bone and a watch he stole off a tourist and put it there to freak you out. He’s been telling everyone you’re a soft city kid.”

I felt my face get hot. “I’m not a city kid.”

“You’re from Zagreb.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who cried when I saw a skeleton.” He grinned, a nasty, knowing grin.

“I didn’t cry.” I didn’t. I don’t think I did. My eyes stung a little, from the dust. That’s all. The dust was terrible in that hole.

“Look,” he said, leaning forward, his voice dropping. “Forget the watch. Forget Marko. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the tomb. Is it still there?”

“It’s under a ton of concrete, Luka.”

“The hole is there. The villa is there. If there’s one tomb, there’s probably more. This whole coast is one big graveyard. You know what a Roman villa goes for these days? The Germans would pay a fortune. We could be rich.”

“We?”

“You found it. I’m your cousin. We’re family.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Family shares.”

The band finished their song. A few drunk Germans clapped. A cat, a scrawny black one, jumped onto our table and stared at our fish bones. I shooed it away.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “My uncle would kill me.”

“Your uncle is a fool. He’s pouring concrete over a goldmine. We’re not going to dig it up. We’re just going to… document it. Get some pictures. Sell the information. No one has to know.”

And I knew, right then, that I was going to do it. Not because I wanted to be rich. I didn’t care about the money. I wanted to see it again. I wanted to prove to Luka, and to myself, that I wasn’t a soft city kid. I wanted to touch the impossibility of it. The watch. I wanted to know if it was still ticking.

The dig was two nights later. We went after midnight. Luka brought a friend, some guy named Duje who had a car and a face that looked like it had lost a fight with a wall. He didn’t say much. He just smoked and nodded. The whole thing felt like a bad idea wrapped in a terrible plan. The air was warm and sticky. The crickets were screaming. We had to park a half a kilometer away and walk through the pines, our torch beams cutting weak holes in the dark. I kept thinking I saw things. Shapes. But it was just the trees. The pines. The rocks.

We found the villa. It was a dark skeleton in the moonlight. The concrete foundation we’d poured was a fresh, gray scar on the ground. We found the spot. Luka had a sledgehammer and a crowbar. Duje stood guard, which was a joke, because there was no one around for miles.

Luka started swinging. The concrete was harder than it looked. He grunted and swore with each hit. It took us an hour to break through. Finally, the sledgehammer punched through into the void. The same sweet, dusty smell wafted out. Luka shoved the crowbar in and levered up a chunk of concrete.

“Give me the light,” he said.

I passed him the torch. He shined it down. The coffin was still there. The lid was still off. The bones were still there. But the watch was gone. The wrist bone was bare. There was just a clean, white ring of bone where it had been.

Luka swore. “It was Marko. I told you. He came back.”

“No,” I said. My voice sounded strange. “He didn’t.”

“Then who?”

I didn’t have an answer. But I knew, with a certainty that made my stomach clench, that it wasn’t Marko. It wasn’t a joke. I remembered the feeling I had when I first saw it. That feeling of a mistake. Of a glitch. I wasn’t supposed to see it. And now, by taking it, by showing it to Luka, I had… interfered. I had broken something. Or maybe it had just corrected itself.

“There’s nothing here,” Duje said, his voice a low rumble. “Just bones. Let’s go.”

“We can’t go,” Luka said, his voice tight with frustration. “We need to find it. He must have dropped it. Or buried it nearby. We need to search.”

And then, the off-topic aside that has nothing to do with anything: I have this thing about socks. I can’t stand the feel of them when they’re even slightly damp. It’s a specific, irrational hatred. I was standing there, in the dark, in the middle of a grave I had desecrated, and all I could think about was that my socks were damp with sweat and it was driving me insane. It’s a stupid, pointless detail, but it’s what I remember most clearly. The feel of the damp cotton on my feet.

We searched. We dug around the coffin. We sifted through the dirt. We found nothing. The watch was gone. Vanished. Just like it had never been there. Luka’s face was a mask of rage. He kicked the coffin. He was muttering to himself. I think he was already calculating the lost profit.

I, on the other hand, felt a strange sense of peace. A weird calm. The mistake had been unmade. The world had put itself right. I sat on a pile of rubble, and I waited for them to give up.

They argued for a while. Duje just wanted to go home. Luka wanted to keep looking. I was no use to them. I just sat there, thinking about the ticking. The steady, impossible tick. I think I was smiling. I might have been. I was tired.

Eventually, they gave up. Luka was furious. He wouldn’t even look at me. We walked back to the car in silence. The crickets had stopped. The only sound was our footsteps on the pine needles.

Duje dropped me off at the apartment I was sharing with two other guys from the construction crew. They were asleep. The place smelled of beer and sweat and socks. I didn’t wash my feet. I just fell onto my mattress, a thin slab of foam on the floor.

I lay there in the dark. I could still smell the dust. The sweet smell. I closed my eyes. I didn’t dream.

Two days later, my uncle fired me. He said I was useless. He said I was a bad influence on the other men. He probably knew something was up. He didn’t say anything about the dig. He just gave me my last paycheck in cash, a thick wad of tired-looking bills, and told me to get lost. I didn’t argue. I was ready to go.

I saw Marko on my last day. He was loading a truck with bags of cement. He looked older. He saw me, and for a second, his face went pale. Then he just nodded. I nodded back. We didn’t speak.

Luka didn’t come to see me off. I don’t think he’s spoken to me since. I heard he went back to the site a few more times, with different friends, but he never found anything. He’s a big shot in Zagreb now, I think. He does something with finance. I don’t really keep in touch.

The last thing I did before I left Čiovo was walk down to the water. It was early morning. The sun was just coming up. The sea was flat and calm, the color of an old coin. A fisherman was heading out in his little boat, his motor puttering. The smell of salt and diesel was the same. A cat, a different one, a ginger one, was sitting on a bollard, licking its paw.

I thought about the watch. The ticking. I thought about the clean white bone. I thought about how I wasn't supposed to see it. How it was a mistake. And I thought, maybe, that it was still ticking somewhere. Buried in the ground, or at the bottom of the sea, or on the wrist of some other dead man in some other forgotten tomb. A tiny, impossible machine, counting down the seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I never told anyone else. Not my wife, not my kids. It’s a stupid story. A kid’s story. A story about a watch I didn’t even take. But sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I hear it. The ticking. And I feel the damp cotton of my socks. And I’m back there, in the dark, in the pine forest, standing on a broken slab of concrete, looking down at a darkness that’s not just a shadow.

It was the last time I ever felt like I was in on a secret. The last time the world felt big and strange and full of holes you could fall through. Now, everything is just… cement. And sweat. And a steady, unending tick.

I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine. The ticks are just a clock.