James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

Burton stared down at the paper on the desk in front of him. “This newspaper. It’s…” Changed? But how?

“If you don’t mind my saying, Captain Burton,” said Ms. Angell with an air of motherly authority. “I think you should go out and get some fresh air. It would do you some good.”

Burton nodded and poured himself a brandy. He looked up from his troubled thoughts, half expecting to see Mother Angell still standing there doting over him, but she had disappeared. He scowled at the newspaper, then got up and wandered over to the window. It was a rare bright, sunny day over Gloucester Place, though gray storm clouds threatened from the east.

Isabel was gone. Just like that. Snatched away from him in Hyde Park. While he was gone on another one of his blasted adventures. Just one more jaunt to cure him of his wanderlust. And what a jaunt it was. He had boarded a submarine vessel and traveled backward through Time to confront alien horrors. He had returned with his sanity barely intact. He had hallucinated. He had fallen ill.

No.

Burton caught movement from the corner of his eye once more and searched behind him. No one was here. And yet he thought he saw something, a shadowy some one , lurking in the periphery of his vision.

“Bismillah,” he muttered. He drained his brandy, poured another and emptied it down his throat.

Something had changed. Their journey through Time had altered something. Perhaps several somethings. Maybe Isabel’s disappearance included. And Burton was the only one who had noticed.

No. Challenger. Herbert. They had gone on this strange voyage with him. They would notice anything that was changed as well. He had to speak to them.

Burton ran to his bedroom and hurriedly dressed. He shouted to Miss Angell that he was going out as he bounded down the stairs.

Burton walked up Gloucester Place toward Baker Street, rational thought setting in, slowing his steps. He stopped, looked around before realizing he had no idea where either man hung his hat. He supposed finding Professor Challenger would be easy enough. A short conversation with one of the members of the Royal Geographical Society would be enough to locate him. But what of Herbert? He didn’t even know the Time Traveler’s surname.

Burton tapped his walking stick on the pavement in thought. He recalled from a conversation he’d had with Herbert aboard the Nautilus that he resided near Kew Gardens. It wasn’t as specific as Burton would like, but it would have to be enough.

Kew Gardens was in Richmond, in south-west London. It would be mid-afternoon before he arrived, and he didn’t know how long it would take to narrow down the Time Traveler’s address. He decided to locate Herbert first, then worry about Challenger’s current whereabouts later.

Burton hailed a hansom and began his journey.

Lulled by the clop of the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, he let his mind drift, allowing the conflicting memories that filled his mind to bob up to the surface once more, both alien and familiar. He could not reconcile them. He wanted to choose one set of occurrences over the other, but he was increasingly finding it more and more difficult. The memories that had felt so wrong and out of place earlier—those involving Isabel’s mysterious disappearance—were now beginning to seem as if they were the right ones. And yet that other nagging notion—that Isabel was still safe and sound—felt out of place. He thought of himself as two Burtons, both fighting for supremacy of one body, one reality. And he was starting to feel crowded.

Using a Sufi meditation technique, Burton banished the feeling from his mind, at least for the time being. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring out at the entrance to Kew Gardens, the hansom having come to a stop in front of it.

Burton paid the driver and got out. As the driver and his horse clopped away, the explorer looked left, then right, considering his options. “Eeny, meeny, miney, moe,” muttered Burton and started off to his right. Just up the street was a cluster of buildings containing various shops. He introduced himself and started asking if anyone knew a young inventive chap with a passion for optics. A half hour later, Burton had Herbert’s address, after describing the Time Traveler to a kindly, withered old chemist who had delivered a tincture of what he called “nervous medicine” to the home in question that very morning. Burton thanked him and moved on.

It was a lovely day, and the home, the chemist told him, was nearby, so Burton had no qualms about walking. He had traveled on foot greater distances—and through much harsher conditions—than this, and it felt good to stretch his legs. He had been in bed too long, and still felt weak from the ordeal. The human body, he decided on the spot, had no place for lethargy.

Forty-five minutes later, Burton strode up the front walk of the Time Traveler’s house. He knocked on the door with the knob of his walking stick. After almost a full minute, an older, harried-looking woman appeared, wearing a crisp housekeeper’s apron. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Good afternoon. I am Richard Francis Burton, and I was hoping to call on the master of the house.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The master doesn’t feel well. You’ll have to come back another time.”

“Please,” said Burton. “It will only take a moment. He and I recently traveled together, and—”

“You did, did you?” said the housekeeper. “Well, I suppose you are to blame for his sorry state. Did you know he’s been wandering around here half mad since he returned? He’s saying the strangest things you’ve ever heard. Some rot about shoggoths and other things I can’t even pronounce. Strange, guttural things that no human mouth has any business sayin’, if you ask me. Why, it’s worse than the last time.”

“Last time?”

“Yes sir. No doubt he told you about it. He tells everyone else. Can’t shut up about it. And I had just gotten him back on the straight and narrow. Now this.”

“Can I talk to him, please?” asked Burton. “I think I can help.”

“Well,” said the housekeeper, eying Burton suspiciously. “I suppose you can’t make him any worse. He’s down in his basement laboratory, tinkerin’ with that bleedin’ contraption of his.”

“Tinkering?” said Burton, a dark thought crossing his mind. The memory of a brief conversation he and the Time Traveler shared during their return to England.

I should destroy it when I get back. It’s given me nothing but grief.

Burton reached up and pushed open the door, Herbert’s words echoing in his mind. “No!” He barreled past the protesting housekeeper and glanced around. In a moment he heard the sounds of banging coming from what must be the basement, and he ran down the narrow wooden steps as fast as he could.

In the middle of a dusty workshop stood the Time Machine, looking just as it had aboard Nemo’s submarine. Its brass fittings glittered in the late morning sunlight that filtered in through a set of glass doors on the basement’s far end. An ornate saddle sat in its center, fronted by a brass and wood inlaid console from which the twin crystalline control rods glittered. Behind this was the large dish that spun when the Time Machine was in operation, its polished surface studded with clockwork emblems. Its presence had a strange solidity, and it set the disparate memories warring for supremacy of Burton’s head once more.

Looming over the machine was the Time Traveler himself, standing there in his nightclothes, his face a mask of sweat and pain. He had a long pipe wrench raised over his head, which he was about to bring it down on the contraption with all the strength his frail form could muster.