The 13th Hour

A man unknown to most resides in the crime ridden Amber city, south of Detroit. He lives in a room behind the clock tower, counting the seconds, the minutes and the hours till his curse disappears, or when the good lord of the heavens forgives and absolves him of the sin.

What sin it was no one knows, and may never know for the tortured soul who keeps it a secret, but what is known is the nature of his punishment that befell him for that sin . A demon exists inside him, a demon of a region the great Turkish general Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī once dreamed of, and he cried and weeped in fear. Such horror rests in the soul and the body of this Amber City resident, and for that he begs for mercy and forgiveness. Begging because of the monster he had been turned into, and the name he was given, Doctor Eerie.

At the beginning it was worse, as his physical appearance had changed as well. Doctor Eerie's resemblance to humans was far lass, more akin was his to the diseased dreams of our forefathers, when they fought those nameless beings from the pit underneath Earth. Maybe it was his repentance, or maybe it was God deciding that no mortal man should endure such pain, and the horror that lay within him was hidden, in place Eerie was given a pocket watch.

The pocket watch was odd. It was made of gold and looked pristine, with an emerald block in the middle, but a strange sight surrounded the object, inside it the numbers didn't stop at 12, it stopped at the unholy number 13. It was told to him that on all hours of the days and weeks and months he may walk like a free man, but on the 13th hour a demon will unveil itself through him. That's when the hands on the watch will go past 12 and move towards 13.

In that 13th hour, the maddening demon shall run amok, revealing the true intent of the lands it hails from, causing mayhem and misery to all that fall beneath its eyes. And the demon shall not return until the clock strikes 13.

It was that very hour that brought upon the 1770 Bengal famine, when the Doctor migrated from the burned London, to live in the land of Hindus. But little could he foresee that with him he brought death and destruction that rivaled the great Ma Kaali.

More dire was the North Atlantic tsunami, which took beneath its waves the Zandarian islands. A culture that survived for more than thousand years was drowned in the blue abyss when the clocked struck 13, and the abomination from behind the shadow crept up.

It was the demon's roars that James Fenimore Cooper dramatized in his 1850 short story "The Lake Gun". In stories and poems often truth lies hidden, and the demon of Amber city hides in all of them.

Doctor Eerie lives in fear and without love, fearing whoever he loves may fall victim to the 13th hour. The London of 17th century got a glimpse of the hour when the entire city was engulfed in flames. The angel of death walked the streets of London on that night, giving salvation to all save the the damned Doctor Eerie. If one was to read records from that era, of people talking in the aftermath, he or she may find statements describing the clocks pointing towards the 13th hour.

The man from Amber city lives in solitude and silence, away from love and happiness, to harbor the harbinger of humanity's nightmare, hoping for a day when his soul is set free of the ball and chain of the yonder.