When I was ten, I tried to run away. I had a plan, I knew exactly where I was going, and I would’ve gotten away too, if Aunt Nancy hadn’t known where to look for me.
I waited until dark. I slipped open my window, just low enough so I wouldn’t set off the security alarm. Luckily, I was small framed and with some careful maneuvering I dropped onto the soft grass. Stale rain soaked between my bare toes, I’d completely forgotten shoes.
I continued on anyway until I came to the place where Henderson Street met Crossed Avenue, the cemetery. The gate was never locked and I easily pushed it open, but not without a menacing, piercing squeak that cut through the taciturn night. It felt as if everyone in the world heard that horrible creaking.
The coarse gravel cutting open my feet; blood streaking behind me.
I had limited time before Aunt Nancy would realize my absence, it was a miracle I made it out the window. I ran, ignoring my protesting feet. I glanced at the tombstones, looking for any trace of my last name. Simmons. If I could find it, I would be happy. Why didn’t Aunt Nancy understand that? If only I could see where he was buried; find out who he was, find out where I came from, I wouldn’t ask so many questions. I wouldn’t want to run away.
I finally came to the very back of the cemetery, not finding a single tombstone with “Simmons” on it. A stream of light flashed into my peripheral vision. A flashlight. Nancy. I leaned against the back fence contorting my body so I was barely visible. I brought my knees to my chest and waited nervously for her to find me. She would eventually.
“You shouldn’t give up so easily,” a voice said. I turned my head to the right to see a man standing a few yards away from me. He was barely a man, his face youthful, yet angular, and his hair stuck up at obtuse angles, seemingly never brushed. His green eyes they looked different, like those of an old man, exhausted and pensive.
“Who said I’m giving up?” I asked him indignantly.
“Are you not?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows, wrinkles appearing on his forehead.
“No, I just failed. That’s not giving up. I’ll try again, sometime.” I straightened my back, trying to appear taller. It didn’t work.
“You know you’re pretty smart for a ten-year-old,” he said, smirking.
“How do you know how old I am?” I asked scooting further away from him. He was still yards away from me; he hadn’t moved any closer during our conversation.
“I’m a good guesser.”
A prickle of curiosity surged down my spine. There was something in his eyes; something that made me want to fight every instinct in my body and run to him.
“Oh my God!” a woman’s voice cut through the darkness. Nancy must’ve found the blood.
“If only you hadn’t forgotten shoes,” he said as he turned and walked away, vanishing into the trees.
“Adelaide!” she exclaimed. Aunt Nancy dropped her flashlight and embraced me in a warm hug. “Don’t you dare scare me like that again! I told you never to come looking for him.”
“But why? I don’t understand…” I said, standing up, feeling pain shoot through my feet.
Aunt Nancy sighed and rubbed her hands over my shoulders. Her expression grim.
“I was going to wait until you were older…” she said. “Looking for him is nothing but trouble, it’s dangerous. Please trust me. Now, promise me you will never go looking for your father again,” she said.
“I promise,” I said, my fingers crossed.
I’m pretty sure the trees chuckled.
***
It was around the same time of year when I tried again six years later. The rain falling lightly, the sidewalk turning from a light gray to a dark gravelly black.
I came to the same chain link fence, and pushed it open, still creaking, but I wasn’t worried about Aunt Nancy. She probably figured I was at piano lessons. I’d been stupid to sneak out at night; the daytime was much more concealing.
I took the same approach, walking up and down the rows of tombstones looking for “Simmons”. Nothing.
My eyes wandered to the patch of trees where the man disappeared before. It looked like he were still standing there among the trees, chuckling at me.
I moved closer and noticed a break in the fence and a pathway which led through the trees. I started down it, but immediately slipped. The pathway was pure mud. It seeped into my shoes and through my socks, to my bare feet. It got in my hair and splattered my face.
“Great,” I said, slowly taking off my shoes and socks.
I continued with my bare feet. It was much easier that way. I arrived at a tall iron arch with words welded on top.
“The Time Traveler’s Graveyard,” I said aloud. Just inside the arch sat four tombstones completely overgrown with grass.
I noticed a thick book chained to the arch. The cover was leather with gold lettering which read “The Time Traveler’s Graveyard”. I opened it to the first page. Inside, there was neat, slanted handwriting which read:
“If you have stumbled upon this place by chance, drop this book and run. It isn’t meant for people like you. The people buried here are dangerous because while their graves are here they are immortal for they can always avoid death with just the turn of the hands.”
The remaining pages were just lines, some broken, like those of a guestbook and some continuous like a journal. On one of the guestbook pages, the name “Butler Simmons” was written.
I noticed the leather bound pen attached to the side of book and carefully took hold of it. I began to write my name on the line below my father’s.
“No! Stop Adelaide! Don’t write your name. It’s for when you’re ready.” It was him, the man from that night six years ago. He looked exactly the same, his hair still stuck up, he even wore the same black, leather boots.
“What if I’m ready now?” I asked starting on the cursive loop of the ‘L’.
“Trust me, you’re not. I don’t think you’re ready to die.”
My hand stiffened and the pen slipped from my grip.
“Die?” I asked, slowly closing the book and setting it carefully back on the ground.
“Yes, this book is for the time traveler’s who will be buried here. When they are ready to die, they come here, sign their name. Some leave stories in the book too, if they have enough time.” He chuckled to himself. “What am I talking about? Of course, they have enough time.”
“So, everyone buried here, they’re time travelers?” I asked, staring back up at the arch.
“Yes, are you really that dense? Didn’t you read the sign?”
“Yes, but time travel doesn’t exist, it’s science fiction.”
The man smirked. His old eyes laughed, glancing at me as if I were a long lost friend.
“Well, if it doesn’t exist then why am I wearing the exact same clothes I was wearing six years ago? Why do I look like I haven’t aged a day? Why did you take an extra glance at the forest?”
The rain was picking up; it felt as if it were piercing my skin and going straight to the bone.
“So, you’re telling me, it has been only minutes between our last conservation for you, and six years for me?”
“Yes, exactly,” he said. He seemed completely unaffected by the cold rain, even though he was wearing just a thin jacket and jeans.
I stared back down at the book. It, too, seemed unaffected by the rain. None of the pages were wet and the cover remained dry. I ran my hand down the glossy pages, but the water just slid down the pages and back onto the ground.
“It’s a special treatment they put the book through. It’s resistant to rain, snow, mud, almost anything that could damage it. It’s from the future.” He brought the book into his lap and opened it. He ran his hand over the three names printed there.
“Wait, so if that treatment is from the future, what is it doing here?” I asked. Watching as he traced over one of the names with his finger.
“That’s a good question,” he said, not looking up. He was tracing over a name with his long, slender fingers.
I peered down at the name. “Emily Wellington” was printed in fancy cursive handwriting.
“Who was she?” I asked.
The man stiffened, however, he looked up, tears collecting in his green eyes.
“She was one of the most amazing women I’ve ever known. There was a time when I was going to marry her, but then I met someone, someone I couldn’t explain, someone fascinating,” he said, looking up at the sky. “She too eventually met someone. That someone was your father.”
“So, that makes her my mom?” I asked, my eyes growing wide. Aunt Nancy never mentioned my mother, only telling me that she too, was dead and long gone. According to her, my mother died in childbirth.
“You catch on fast, just like your father,” he said. “Now, that I’ve just dropped that on you. I need you to trust me, to believe everything I tell you is true, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.”
I nodded my head. I wasn’t completely truthful then. I wasn’t going to trust him just because he told me to; for all I knew he could be some weird stalker.
“My name is Henderson…” he was cut off by a sharp, screaming wind. Out of it emerged large figures in black armored uniforms. “Time police,” he whispered to me.
“Henderson!” their voices boomed as one. “You are guilty of crimes against time, including, manipulation, fraud, protection of a criminal, and crossing one’s own timeline. Prepare for conviction.”
Henderson took out a gold pocket watch, opened it, and turned the two hands around the face and on a secondary dial similarly turned two hands.
“Hold tight,” he said taking my hand. The Time police moved closer and closer, their robotic movements, becoming faster as they reached out and tried to grab us.
A gold dust swirled around us like a billion tiny fireflies. A gentle lifting sensation overcame me and I looked down, nothing but blackness under my feet. The voices and figures of the Time police were gone and the only thing which kept me from panicking was the feel of Henderson’s hand, if I fell, he was going with me.
My vision blurred and I was dizzy. I felt warm as my feet touched solid ground once again. At first, the room appeared completely white, however, as my vision cleared, small pops of color bounced out from their white background. The blue rug at the doorway, the red cupboard handles, and green curtains. Everything mismatched.
“Welcome to the year 2100. You did quite well for your first time, my first time I lost focus and I ended up in 1641. That was quite an adventure.”
“Focus?” I asked confused as to what there was to focus on while traveling through time.
“Time travel’s in your blood. I figured it came naturally to you.”
He closed the watch and stashed it away into the pocket of his jeans. Henderson looked different in that time. There was a different sparkle in his eyes, he loved it in 2100, and it was obvious.
“So, I get we’re in 2100, but where exactly?” I asked noticing the gold dust was scattered on the ground and on our clothes.
I brushed it off myself, trying to get it out of my hair. For a futuristic, time travel device, it sure was messy.
“New York City,” he answered, “in my apartment, or mine and Butler’s. Now, come to the window, I want to show you something.”
I walked with him to the green curtains. He pulled them open and outside was the skyline of New York. The only recognizable building was the Empire State Building which glowed with neon lights. A few others soon became visible, the Chrysler Building, Ground Zero, all were covered in bright neon lights, which turned the night into day.
“It truly is the city that never sleeps,” he said, “it got too afraid of the dark.”
“Why?” I asked, squinting to avoid the lights from burning my eyes. The lights looked tacky to me, large signs advertising restaurants and shopping malls, all trying to outdo each other with the brightness and amount of lights. However, no other building outdid the Empire State building with its airstrip-like appearance. Large arrows ran up the building, lighting up in rapid succession, changing color after each rotation.
“The epidemic always chose and took its victims in the dark. So, they thought if they could prevent the dark, they could stop the disease. People are just as foolish now as they have ever been.”
He stared straight at the lights. Henderson was accustomed to that skyline; the lights no longer bothered him. They reflected off of his features, making him look much older than before, like the lights showed his true age. Lines appeared around his eyes and mouth, his hair was lighter, and his face sagged towards the floor.
“How old are you, really?” I asked.
“In normal years I should be about twenty two. But because I’ve time traveled so much, I’ve aged faster, in reality I’m about fifty or sixty, maybe. It was worth it, everything I’ve seen is worth ten lifetimes.” He never stopped gazing out at the skyline.
“Tell me more about the epidemic,” I said turning away from the window. The lights had become too bright.
“It took over much like small pox. Many people became infected and quickly, no one, even the best scientists in the world could find a cure. Soon, it spread to Europe, Africa, Asia, and last to Australia. Most people believed the source was deep in South America, possibly from infected fruit. The disease struck at night, the victim waking up with black splotches all over their body, like gangrene. And, within a few days, the victim was dead.” He eventually turned away from the city, shutting the curtains, and ushering me over to the couch.
“How did you cure it?” I asked looking around the apartment, noticing scientific equipment strewn all over. Vials filled with yellow-y bile like substance and three microscopes placed side by side on the coffee table.
“Your father and me, we both went back to our times and researched diseases similar to the epidemic. Because it was much like small pox, I acquired the vaccine, and took it to your father. He took it and combined antibiotics with it. We came back here and experimented. We were in the middle of our experiments at this time; it will still be another million lives before he comes up with the right combination.” He looked down. “In January 2100, there were two billion people on the Earth, by December, there were one billion. A billion people dead. The greatest epidemic the world has ever seen.”
There was a knock at the door. Henderson’s eyes grew wide.
“The door next to the television, it’s a closet.”
I rushed over to it and pulled it open by the fluorescent yellow handle. Coats, Petri dishes, and test tubes were crowded around me.
“Hello Henderson,” said a deep voice. “I think I might have it now. I observed a patient with a fever of one hundred and one with inflammation of the sinuses. I’m thinking a normal antihistamine should help with that. I’m beginning to think this whole epidemic is just a new form of influenza.”
“That would make since,” Henderson said. “I noticed the samples turned a yellow color.”
“Ah, good observation, I should look at those just after I finish this next combination.”
The man was my father, Butler Simmons. Aunt Nancy never mentioned anything like this; she never told me he was extremely intelligent and caring.
“I can do it,” Henderson said, “you showed me what to look for.”
I heard a few clinks and finally the sound of glass shattering.
“Henderson!” my father shouted. “You’re so clumsy! You might’ve infected us all!”
His footsteps sounded further and further away and I finally heard the door slamming.
“It’s clear,” Henderson said.
I emerged from the closet seeing one of the vials shattered in the kitchen, the yellow liquid splattered on the floor.
“It’s my fault Emily got sick. Butler will discover the cure tomorrow, just in time to save her. He was onto something with the influenza,” he said staring sadly at the mess.
“Couldn’t you stop yourself from infecting her? You could just go back in time and change it,” I said.
“Yes, but I’ve committed enough crimes already. Well, my past self should be home at any moment now. We better get going.”
His face hardened. The lines on his face became deeper with every minute. He was becoming an old man right in front of my eyes.
Henderson grabbed my hand and took the watch from his pocket. He turned the hands and the golden dust began swirling around us once again.
I closed my eyes, knowing what to expect, not scared of the falling sensation or the warm just before my feet touched the ground.
“You’re probably wondering why I showed you the future,” he said fiddling with the watch.
I nodded, shaking the powder out of my shirt.
“I did all this because your father trusted me with the task of giving you the watch when you were ready. I planned on giving you the watch six years ago and showing you how to use it now, but I realized you were just a scared child, not ready. After meeting you six years ago, I thought you should know who your father truly was, how important he is.”
He handed me the watch. The casing was smooth and shiny enough that I could see myself in the reflection. I popped it open, seeing three different faces. The main one, which was a standard clock face, a medium sized one where the seven and eight o’clock hours should be, which held the numbers one through ninety-nine. And an even smaller face which also held the same numbers as the medium face except it started at zero.
“It is slightly limited. You can’t go past the year 9999 A.D. or before year 0 A.D. The largest face is for the exact date; the hour hand on the month, the minute hand for the first number in the day and the second hand, if you need it, for the second number in the day. The medium for the first two numbers of the year and the small for the last two.”
I nodded, studying the clock face once again, running what he said through my head.
“Don’t worry, I already programmed in your next destination. You must travel there, in order to ensure your own birth.”
The watch read ‘March 26th, 1864’. When I looked up, Henderson was signing his name in the book.
“No!” I shouted.
He turned around after walking under the arch.
“Just focus on me,” he said, his figure vanished, and the date on his tombstone appeared. It said he was twenty two. His epitaph read:
Time is a very tricky thing,
And a very fun thing to trick.
For some reason, the words weighed heavily on me, I felt like crying and I was quite sure why. I looked back down at the watch, and focused on Henderson, as he had instructed me to do. The fireflies flew around me. I closed my eyes and the next thing I saw were a pair of confused green eyes.
“Did you fall from the sky?” the owner of the eyes asked. He dressed in a Navy uniform, or at least what appeared to be, it was extremely outdated.
“No,” I said, “I…” How do you to explain time travel to someone from the 19th century who thought I fell from the sky? I, then, spotted his stick up dark hair and the way his body appeared sturdy, like it was growing out of the ground. “Henderson?”
“Yes, I’m Captain William Henderson,” he said, glancing at me oddly. “Where are your shoes?”
I looked down and noticed my bare feet which were covered in mud and the gold powder. “I guess I forgot them.”
Alisan Keesee 