James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

“I should destroy it when we get back,” said the Time Traveler. “It’s given me nothing but grief. I used to think too much knowledge was a good thing. Now…” He let his voice trail off.

Burton nodded.

“Maybe I’ll send it on ahead through time,” Herbert mused, “without a pilot. Just lean over and turn the dial forward. It could hurtle on into futurity, past the Eloi and Morlocks. Past the Palace of Green Porcelain. Past the Earth being swallowed by the Sun, on and on until the very stars grow cold. Until the death of the Universe, the death of Time itself.”

Burton thought about that for a long time. He pictured the Time Machine spinning through the endless dark and wondered if Cthulhu and his blasphemous ilk would be there waiting on it. He shivered.

The Nautilus made way for England at great speed, and made good time, slowing only to replenish the vessel with fresh air from the surface. Within four weeks’ time, they had arrived in the North Sea. It was near dark when they arrived, but Nemo bade them wait until midnight before making the journey up the Thames in the smaller submarine. Everyone said their goodbyes. Herbert remained behind, having a few arrangements to make in removing the Time Machine back to dry land in secret.

Burton and Challenger climbed into the stifling confines of the little submersible, once again piloted by Elizabeth Marsh.

“What for you now?” Challenger asked her as she guided the vehicle up the Thames Estuary.

“I will remain with Captain Nemo,” she answered, “at least a while longer. We still need to investigate the undersea ruins left behind by my…people.”

“Be careful,” said Burton. It seemed absurd once he’d said it, but it was all he could think of to say.

Elizabeth Marsh nodded. “I will, Captain. And you as well. Enjoy your appointment.”

Burton looked at Challenger. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’m going back to tending my museum. And, of course, I’ll now be on the lookout for one of those Elder Thing rotters to put in it.”

Burton chuckled. Same old indefatigable Challenger.

Miss Marsh soon guided the thing to a slow stop, and Burton knew that their strange journey was, at last, at its end. They said hurried goodbyes and climbed up and out of the little submarine, glad to be in the fresh air, though the fog and coal smoke-shrouded air hanging over the stinking Thames could hardly be called fresh. Up the rickety wooden ladder they went, and Burton found himself standing on dry land for the first time in…a hundred and twenty-eight thousand years. In weeks. Yes, weeks.

Burton and Challenger watched as the hatch sealed itself and the whole thing submerged and disappeared into the dank, green-black water, never to be seen by either of them again.

The two men walked together away from the wharf and toward a more hospitable and more populated area of town. They hailed separate hansom cabs and went their separate ways. Burton gave the driver the address of Bartolini’s dining rooms, where he knew the Cannibal Club would be convening. It would do him much good to see his old friends again before heading for the silence of his rooms at Gloucester Place. He gritted his teeth at the thought of what awaited him in that silence.

The driver, a slumped, hunchbacked gentleman, his features hidden under a black slouch hat, nodded and goaded his beast of burden into motion.

Richard Francis Burton entered Bartolini’s dining rooms and walked upstairs. It would be good to see his friends again after such a long, strange voyage. For the first time in his life, Burton felt like his long journey had ended. He had seen everything there was to see, and he was finally sated. He would marry Isabel. He would take his commission as British consul in Fernando Pó. He would write. He would be happy.

Burton opened the door to the upper room, where Cannibal Club convened. What he saw there chilled his blood.

“My hat, Richard! You’re back!” screeched a familiar voice from an armchair near the center of the room. The thing brushed a shock of red hair out of its face with a pale, scaly hand. Looking at him with bulbous, yellow watery eyes and thick, bluish lips was his friend, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne.

“Come,” said Charles Bradlaugh, beckoning to Burton with a claw-like hand from the far corner. His face was covered in green scales, his once familiar eyes now watery and reptilian. “Tell us of your latest adventure.”

“Algy?” Burton said, feeling weak in the knees.

“Is something wrong, Richard?” said Sir James Plaisted Wilde. He was bald and fish-belly white, his mouth working like that of a goldfish. “You didn’t start drinking without us, did you?”

They were coming toward him now, those horrid entities who had once been his friends. He thought of Challenger’s remarks about being able to change the future by affecting the past, using Time as a weapon. What had they done?

“Why, Richard,” said Bradlaugh, “you look positively green around the gills.”

Burton backed away from their cold, questing appendages, feeling his knees buckle under him. His mind reeled. He remembered the green, tentacled abyss, and the chanting of John Hanning Speke.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! ” Burton murmured.

“ Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! ” his friends in the Cannibal club answered in unison.

Burton’s last thought before sanity left him was this: In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

Richard Francis Burton stood in a hallway in Buckingham Palace, a feeling of existential dread enveloping him like a funeral shroud. Was he really to be knighted? It felt so strange, so surreal. And yet it was real.

Wasn’t it?

He felt disconnected, like he had forgotten something. He had the strange sensation that he was supposed to be somewhere else, like he had a prior engagement, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was.

Everyone had come to see him be knighted. What would they call him now? Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton? Bismillah, what a mouthful. Why did the British insist on such long, complicated titles for themselves? He was Captain Burton if one must, or Dick Burton. Ruffian Dick, if one had a bone to pick with him. Dick Burton the explorer. Dick Burton the apostate. But never “gentleman Dick.” And certainly not Sir Dick! The very idea seemed preposterous.

He walked past a line of his friends. To his left: Charles Bradlaugh. Doctor James Hunt. Richard Monkton Milnes. Sir James Plaisted Wilde. To his right: General Studholme John Hodgson. Charles Duncan Cameron.

Down at the end of this procession was the young poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, smiling up at Burton drunkenly, raking an unruly shock of curly red hair out of his face. Burton nodded to these men and continued walking.

Where in the deuce was he going? Part of him wanted to turn and run out the door. He thought he could still feel the blazing heat of a distant desert sun upon his back. His uncomfortable formal clothes itched, and he longed for his loose-fitting jebba . He needed to meditate, clear his head.

Where is Isabel? She should be here, by my side.