James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

The Time Traveler donned his clothes and stepped out of the little dome-shaped structure. He felt safe and secure, even at night. There had been no sign of the Morlocks since he had set fire to their underground caverns and freed the Eloi—including Weena—from their clutches. His eyes followed the path of the Thames, which inevitably, even in this far distant time, led out to sea. He hoped to build a sailing ship someday, venturing across what was left of the English Channel to the Continent to see what time-ravaged remnants of humanity he would find there. Perhaps there were other pockets of docile Eloi who needed freeing from the cruel Morlocks. He would free them all, and they would be a great civilization once more. What the descendants of the Time Traveler’s kind had wrought he would single-handedly undo. Even if it took the rest of his life.

He heard a slight rustle of the grass behind him and spun round, his heart hammering. Fearing a Morlock, he reached in his pocket for his pistol.

“Hello? Herbert? Is that you? Don’t shoot. It’s me. Burton.”

“Who?” said Herbert, stepping around the hut and back into the moonlight. A figure stood there, tall and somewhat gaunt. As different from the short, pudgy form of the Morlocks as he was from the diminutive, lithe bodies of the Eloi.

“It’s me, Burton,” the figure said again.

The Time Traveler stared at the apparition, blinking. Could it be true? Or was it some Morlock trick? The man standing before the Time Traveler was older, wearing a dark greatcoat and top hat that, while right at home in the London of his time, was out of place and stifling in the humid hothouse the world had become over the succeeding millennia. What most easily identified the figure as Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was the long, Y-shaped scar that ran down his left cheek, a souvenir from his army days. “Captain Burton! By Jove. I never expected to see you again. What in God’s name are you doing here?” He stepped closer, extending his hand.

“Bismillah,” said the figure, “you look a sight, man.” They shook hands.

The Time Traveler raked his hand through his long beard. It was itchy at first, but he was getting used to it. “I suppose I do. But you are a sight for sore eyes. What brings you to the End of Time? And how did you arrive here?”

“The how is simple,” said Burton, pulling his coat sleeve away from his right wrist. “I came here with the help of this.” Attached to the explorer’s wrist was some strange apparatus that glittered in the moonlight. Herbert turned Burton’s wrist this way and that, examining the contraption. As his eyes adjusted to the moon glow glinting off brass, he made out more detail. A tiny brass disk gleamed atop what appeared to be an ordinary wristwatch housing. In place of the winding mechanism were two small nodes that protruded from the side of the device. A chill fled down the Time Traveler’s spine.

“Good God. Is that what I think it is?”

“If you think it is a miniature, wrist-mounted version of your Time Machine, then yes,” Burton said.

“But how? Who made this?”

“You did,” said Burton. “After a fashion. It is based on your original design, constructed in the year 1945 or thereabouts.” He pulled his sleeve back down, covering the device. “As for why I’m here, that will take a bit longer to explain.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said the Time Traveler.

Burton smiled. “No, I don’t suppose you do. Don’t worry, old friend. I’ll get you up to speed as best I can. Let’s go inside your little hut there and have a drink.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any spirits.”

“I suspected as much,” said Burton with a grin. “That’s why I brought my own.”

He produced a small bottle of brandy from his back pocket and showed it to the Time Traveler. The amber liquid burned gold in the early morning sunlight that had just begun to peek over the horizon.

“Well, come inside, then,” said the Time Traveler. “It appears you and I have much to discuss.”

“Thank you for accompanying me, Captain Burton,” said Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline. “I know you are under no such compunction to do so. This isn’t Shadow Council business.”

“Think nothing of it, my friend,” said the explorer as he held the lantern steady so the policeman could do his work. “When you said there was a cannibal on the loose, I couldn’t resist. The grisly practice has long been an interest of mine.”

Abberline ceased his labors and turned to glare askance at the explorer.

Burton laughed. “Not as a participant, old friend, but as an observer. Though now that I say that I suppose that doesn’t sound much better.”

“You have some strange hobbies, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Captain. But what do I know? I’m just a simple copper.”

Abberline redoubled his efforts on the brickwork, inserting his pry bar into the small crevice and pulling the implement toward him. There was indeed a door here;.Abberline’s unusual informant, the famous novelist and protege of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, had reportedly escaped from what he described as an underground chamber of horrors presided over by monsters. The fact that Mr. Collins had been suffering from severe laudanum withdraw at the time did not make his story any less credible, as there had been similar tales of abduction, monsters in the sewers, and bodies found with signs of human predation.

Abberline gave a final grunt and the secret door opened, blasting them with a cold draft of air.

“What now?” said Burton, heart hammering at the prospect of encountering an actual cannibal. His one regret from his travels in Africa, morbid as it may have been, was that he had never gotten to witness the practice firsthand.

“Now we call my men. I’m not about to go in there just the two of us. You remember what happened the last time we did that.”

Burton nodded, lowering the lantern. “Shoggoths.”

“There are worse things in this world than shoggoths,” said the detective, stepping around Burton and blowing on his whistle. Burton turned as a dozen lanterns bobbed up and down in the darkness as Abberline’s best men lumbered up the hill of the cemetery toward the secret crypt. He looked at the hole, eager to see what was inside.

The whole thing had begun when a half-eaten torso was fished out of the Thames. The city’s coroner examined the remains and determined that, however the poor fellow had died, his body had definitely been gnawed on by human teeth, though from a very small mouth and with strangely pronounced canines. When Wilkie Collins was found wandering the streets, naked and delirious, Abberline called Burton at once, knowing of his interest in cannibalism. Burton had never before seen the man so in his element. He was back to chasing monsters of the human variety, and it clearly suited him. Neither of them had heard anything from Mycroft Holmes in several weeks, and there had been no more shoggoth sightings since that night at the Theosophic Society. This suited Burton just as well, and he and Isabel were once again planning their long- postponed nuptials.

“All right, Captain,” said Abberline. “We’re ready. Just stay by me.”

“Certainly, Frederick. Lead the way, please.”

A dozen policemen, armed with truncheons and lanterns, flooded the opening. Abberline pulled the grate open with a rusty squeal and they entered the dark aperture. Burton had to duck low to keep from bumping his head as he walked hunched over through the tunnel of crumbling brick. The lanterns the coppers were holding swayed with their movements, throwing strange shadows. Burton imagined he was an explorer once again, journeying into a land as strange and exotic as any Persian oasis or African veldt. And it was underneath his feet every day.