My grandfather turned toward the lane, keeping one hand on the gatepost. Beyond the gap stood a man in a dark coat, water falling steadily from his sleeves although the rain had stopped. My father raised the lantern, but the light seemed to reach no higher than the man’s chest, where one button was missing. “I left it here,” the man said, and my grandfather looked down at the coat he was wearing, the old one my grandmother had found hanging behind the kitchen door. He pulled it open, feeling along the lining as though he had forgotten putting it on. In the cellar, his sister told the child to hold on, and the small hand tightened around her fingers.

My father offered to take the coat, but my grandfather shook his head and slipped it off himself. Its sleeves were dry on the outside; when he turned one back, water ran from the cuff over his wrist and pattered into the grass. The man came no closer, though the gate moved inward until its edge touched my grandfather’s knee. “What did you give me for it?” my grandfather asked. The man said nothing, and my grandmother came to stand beside him with the open watch, its single hand quivering against the pale face. When she held it toward the lane, the man lifted his own hand to shield himself, and we saw a narrow white mark across his palm, in the same place where the watch had pinched hers.

At the steps, my grandfather’s sister drew the child’s hand slowly into the lantern light. It was a boy’s hand, thin and pale, with a length of string wound twice around the wrist; my father knelt and loosened it while she kept her fingers in the boy’s grasp. My mother had brought the baby near enough to see, and the second watch lay against the blue cloth, its face uncovered at last. My grandmother read the name scratched there, but before she could speak it the man in the lane said, “That is mine.” My grandfather’s sister looked up from the steps and said, “It was his before it was yours,” then asked my grandmother to give it back to the child. My grandmother hesitated only long enough to close the watch in her palm, and spoke the name softly toward the doorway.

The boy below came out on his hands and knees, blinking in the lantern light, while the man at the gate reached for the coat. My grandfather held it out, but when the man took one sleeve, the child gave a cry and clutched at his sister’s dress. She gathered him against her, and my grandfather let the coat fall between them, where it lay crumpled and dripping on the bricks. The man bent to pick it up; inside the open cellar door, a second chair scraped across the floor. The child raised his head from her shoulder and looked past us into the dark. “She’s still waiting,” he said, and my grandmother’s watch began to speak again, this time in a voice none of us recognized.

My father started down the steps, but my grandfather’s sister caught his sleeve and held him back. “That isn’t the way he sounded,” she said, though she would not say whether she meant her brother or the missing child. Below them, my grandfather had turned toward the open doorway, the ring still in his hand and the lantern throwing his shadow across the cellar wall. The voice asked a third time, and he answered it with a childhood nickname that made his sister’s fingers tighten on my father’s coat. For a moment the only sound was water dripping from the lowest stair; then the child said, “That’s what she called you.” My grandfather looked up at his sister, and she shook her head before he could ask.

The boy slipped past her and sat on the top step beside my grandmother, who was trying to free her palm from the watch. He took the ring when my grandfather held it up to him, then laid it against the watch’s closed lid, fitting the notch over its catch. The metal gave a little click, and my grandmother drew her hand away, leaving a red crease across her palm. Inside, the brass pin had acquired a single hand, so fine that at first I mistook it for a scratch on the face. The boy touched it, and from the cellar came the scrape of a chair being pulled over brick. “He has to know who’s asking,” the boy said, and when my grandmother asked him whose name he meant, he pointed not toward the cellar but toward the house.

My mother had come into the yard with the baby, and the woman in the blanket went to her, taking the child carefully while my mother went in for the other watch. Its ticking grew louder as she carried it out, though my grandfather’s sister covered the baby’s ears with the edge of the blue cloth. My grandfather came up then, one step at a time, and my mother placed the watch in his open hand. He looked at its blank face and told us that when he gave his name to the man at the gate, the man had repeated it in a voice much smaller than his own. “I thought he was mocking me,” he said, and his sister took the watch from him and held it against the baby’s cheek. The ticking stopped, and a faint mark appeared on the face, like a letter written with the point of a needle.

The baby opened her fist and caught the watch chain, pulling it until the woman had to lower the watch into her lap. My grandmother bent beside them, and together they made out the beginning of a name, though the rest was hidden beneath the child’s thumb. Down in the cellar, the chair scraped again, followed by a soft knock against the open door. My grandfather’s sister called to the child to wait, as she had once before, but this time she went down the steps herself, leaving the blanket in my mother’s hands. At the bottom she put her hand through the doorway, and a small hand closed around two of her fingers. Behind me, the gate stopped tapping, and someone in the lane asked my grandfather to return his coat.

The boy let the string slip through his fingers, but he did not release it. My father lowered the lantern over the cellar steps, and its light found the line drawn taut across the wet bricks and disappearing beneath the open door. Something moved there, not enough for us to see, though the string trembled against the edge of the step. My grandfather held out the ring, and the boy took it without looking at him, working the worn knot through the notch in its band. When he had tied it, he set the ring on the ground and pushed it toward the cellar with one finger. The pull on the string ceased, and for a little while we could hear only the gate tapping against its post.

My grandfather’s sister came down from the house with a blanket around her shoulders, calling the boy back from the steps. He went to her, but kept his hand on the string until she knelt beside him and took it between her own fingers. “He waited because I told him to,” she said, looking toward the dark below the door. My grandfather began to say that the man had been waiting there too, but she shook her head and asked him what the man had looked like. He stood for some time with his hand on the gate, then said he remembered the man’s coat, and the water running from its sleeves, but not his face. “Did he give you yours back?” she asked, and my grandfather touched his mouth as though he had been struck.

My grandmother brought the watch to the head of the steps, and its lid swung wider in her hand. The faint breathing inside it stopped; then her own voice said, more distinctly than before, “Don’t open the door until I come back.” The boy looked up at her, and she lowered herself onto the top step, holding the watch where he could see it. “I haven’t been down there,” she said, though she kept her eyes on the little brass pin. My father offered to fetch the watch from the kitchen, but my grandfather took the lantern from him instead and went down alone. At the bottom he crouched and lifted the ring, and the string followed it up from beneath the door, wet and empty to its frayed end.

He was turning back when a child spoke from the cellar and asked him for his name. My grandfather caught the jamb to steady himself, and his sister rose so quickly that the blanket fell into the grass. He gave the name she had called him, the one he had surrendered at the gate, but the voice answered that it was not the right one. Behind us, the baby began to cry in the house, and my mother appeared at the back door with her held close against her shoulder. My grandmother’s watch snapped shut, pinching the skin of her palm, and at the same moment the other watch began to tick in the kitchen. The child below the steps called again, this time in my grandfather’s voice, asking us to let him out.

My grandfather held the ticking watch away from his ear, and my grandmother opened the one she had found in the coat. Its face was clear beneath the misted glass, though where the hands should have been there was only a small brass pin. She turned it over and pressed the catch again, but the lid would not close. From the kitchen the baby gave a sudden cry, and the ticking ceased until my mother carried her into the passage. The boy followed, still holding the corner of the blue cloth, and looked at the open watch without coming near it. “She had that,” he said, pointing to my grandmother, then lowered his hand when the woman asked him which grandmother he meant.

Daniel brought the ring from beneath the table and put it on the windowsill, where the lamplight caught a notch in its narrow band. My grandfather’s sister picked it up at last, rubbing the notch with her thumbnail, and said that the third child had worn it on a string because it was too large for his finger. “He was waiting at the gate when I took the others down,” she said. My grandfather told her there had been no child at the gate, only the man who had asked for his name in exchange for opening the cellar. She looked at him then, and he set his watch on the sill beside the ring. “You told me you had opened it yourself,” she said, and he answered that he had been ashamed to tell her the rest.

The baby reached for the watch in my grandmother’s hand, and as her fingers brushed its rim, a voice came from it, thin but unmistakable. It was my grandmother’s voice, saying not to open the door, followed by the sound of water and a child calling from a distance. My grandmother let the lid fall against her palm, but the words went on, and she carried the watch into the kitchen, where the boy could hear them better. He stood with his head tilted while the voice repeated itself, then said the child was calling to be let in, not out. At that, my grandfather took the ring from the sill and went to the back door, though my father moved ahead of him and lifted the latch. The yard smelled of wet ash and turned earth, and the gate stood open a few inches, tapping softly against its post.

They went as far as the gate together, my father with the lantern and my grandfather with the ring held between his finger and thumb. There was no one in the lane, but a length of string had been tied to the latch, its loose end trailing through the wet grass toward the cellar steps. My grandfather bent to pick it up and stopped when he saw the small knot at its end, worn smooth where the ring had once been threaded through. Behind us, the boy came into the yard despite his sister’s call, and my grandmother followed with the open watch, its voice now reduced to a faint, uneven breath. The boy took the string from my grandfather and drew it gently toward him, until something below the steps pulled back.

My grandmother eased the key from the small hand, though the fingers closed again around her thumb and held it fast. The woman bent over the bundle, wiping the child’s cheek with a corner of the blue cloth until a narrow line of skin appeared beneath the silt. “She wouldn’t let me put it down,” she said, and my grandfather, still standing on the bottom step, asked where the key had come from. His sister looked past him into the cellar, where a little water shone on the brick floor. “You left it in the lock,” she said. Thomas glanced at the key in my grandmother’s palm, then at the open door, and pointed to the empty keyhole on its outer face.

My father came down to carry the baby, but she tightened her grip on my grandmother and began to make a thin, rasping sound, so he took the lantern instead and led us up. The woman climbed slowly, with the other child beside her, and at the top she stopped to touch the blue door lying among the nettles. Peter had retrieved the ring and stood holding it out to her, but she drew her hand back when she saw it. “It belonged to the third one,” she said, and Peter closed his fingers over it. My grandfather asked her where that child was, and she turned toward the gate, though the lane beyond it was empty. Daniel went to Peter’s side, placing himself between him and the latch, while my father lifted the lantern higher.

In the house, my mother laid blankets before the kitchen fire and brought a bowl of warm water for the woman’s hands. The baby released my grandmother’s thumb only when the other child knelt beside her and offered his finger in its place; she took it, and he sat very still while my mother unwrapped the wet cloth. My grandfather opened the watch under the lamp, but its face remained blank, even when he wound it and held it to his ear. His sister watched him from the hearth, rubbing each of her fingers in turn, and at last he asked why she had warned him not to open the door. “I didn’t,” she said, looking up at my grandmother, whose hands had stopped moving over the baby. A board creaked in the passage, and my grandmother rose with the child in her arms before any of us had reached the doorway.

The silver ring slipped from Peter’s hand and rolled beneath the table, where Daniel caught it against his shoe. In the passage, the wet coat lay where we had left it, but its sleeves had been drawn together as neatly as if someone had folded them, and the grit around it was gone. My grandmother set the baby in my mother’s arms and knelt beside the coat; from inside one pocket came the faint chink of metal. She put her hand in and brought out a second watch, its glass clouded with moisture, and held it toward the lamp. Scratched into the back was her own name, in the same shallow letters we had seen on the cellar door. Before she could open it, the watch in my grandfather’s hand began to tick.