Cycles - A Short Story

Another time-travel horror.

This is one from my BuyMeACoffee archives, posted October last year. I wrote it for a university assignment, hence the limited word count.

I hope you enjoy!

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Photo by Vlodos Rozhkov on Unsplash

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Michael Callander was not the first scientist to be described as having his head in the clouds. He thought chiefly about the things that could be, rather than the things that were, those seemingly mundane events happening in his day-to-day. The lives of the few that chose to be around him held little interest for him. His attention lay permanently on the what ifs.

This had always been his nature, and the flame of passion that he had nurtured for most of his adult life was fanned to a terrific blaze in the wake of the nuclear attacks of the early 1940’s.

The terrible events that scarred man and dirt and air alike sent Michael into a state of jittering introspection. This visceral confirmation that modern technology held power in a way that man was barely beginning to comprehend was a moment of fate for him. It was in the aftermath of these events that passing ideas became full, planned-out projects, and scribbled lecture notes became huge, sprawling documents. It was in the aftermath of the bombs that shook the world that Michael Callander oversaw the construction of the first functioning Time Machine. His musings became a violent, pulsing certainty in his brain, and his blood ran like sand through an hourglass as all his plans came together, and he was finally ready. Ready to travel, alone, through the pristine fabric of time.

The unveiling was not public. His assistants, and immediate superiors and a few choice figures of high standing in the scientific community attended. He was strapped in, and the legal necessities read out, and the correct procedures completed, and then, at last, the machine was activated.

It is challenging to list all the possible risks and issues of time travel. Ethically, scientifically, and politically, there are too many to name. It had been decided that, to minimise said risks, which of course, had been discussed at length (at least, those few that were identified), Michael would travel into the past, not stopping at any one point, and then return back to the present immediately, not interacting with anything beyond the unavoidable physical impact of the machine. He would not step out of the thing, which would remain stationary, at least in space, and the hope was that this test-run would finish without any significant consequences.

In practise, what the man actually experienced was near-indescribable. Every event the spot of land that warehouse floor had ever witnessed was witnessed afresh by Michael, in the span of an instant. His brain took in the images of centuries in a matter of moments. The time before the building existed, the time before buildings existed, the time before the ground itself was solid enough to hold the weight of the machine, all before he could comprehend it.

Then he was back, the machine’s bottom firmly planted on the floor of the old warehouse. The quiet audience of scientists looked faintly impressed, and as Michael was retrieved from the machine, the buzzing of their questions filtered immediately into his ears. Upon seeing the man’s face, any and all speech in the room died. They understood that he would need, well, time, to recover from the ‘long’ journey he had just undertaken.

Michael Callander returned home and slept. It was a full day before he woke up, and subsequently it was quite early in the morning. He rose from bed quickly enough, though, and gazed out through his window. He felt something rise in his chest. Pride? Fear? Or a searing mix of both?

Unsettled, he turned his attention to the bird sat that had landed quite suddenly on the sill. It was a robin, fat and red and inquisitive. He stared at it. It turned its head, and Michael leapt back in shock. The thing’s skull was fully visible – not a single feather present on the side of the head now cocked at an angle toward the icy window. It had no eye, and yet the socket still seemed to stare at Michael, quietly observing his terror. The man sprang up and ran out the door to his house, bounding toward the back, where the bird had just been. It was gone.

He was shaken at this, and moved to return inside, but upon reaching the door, decided a brisk walk might shake him out of his now growing discomfort.

The road into town was silent, apart from the insistent chirping of birds. At each chirp, Michael tensed slightly, his mind still on the empty black socket of that robin. It was about five minutes into the walk that he came across a figure lying in the centre of the road, sprawled out along the frozen stones. They were covered over by a filthy brown rag, which Michael reached out for gingerly. Before he could pull it off, however, the figure beneath rose suddenly and propelled itself to its full height. It was a man, face coated in pustulous boils, skin steaming red raw in the cold air. A portent of plague, if ever there had been such a thing. Around the man, rats pooled in a warm lump, nibbling furiously at his ankles and exposed feet. Michael fell back in a panic, spinning wildly around to avoid this bubonic terror, only to find himself at the feet of a man dressed in full knight’s armour, face obscured by a shining silver helm. The knight suddenly split apart, and behind him another was revealed, brandishing some ancient weapon, now coated in gore, revelling in his victory.

Michael ran blindly, fear completely overcoming him. He had reached the town now, and all around him, figures appeared and disappeared, blinking in and out of his vision. Men in WW1 army uniforms, planting bayonets into one another, fighting alongside Norman invaders, faces coated in blood and vomit. The buildings of the town rose and fell in waves, now the tall-pillared bank Michael knew so well, and then all at once a hovel, dank and empty. The man looked down, cowering, and saw that beneath his feet, the ground churned and rolled. Looking ahead, he saw a great chasm spread across the Main Street and dug his heels deep into the ground. He skidded a distance, and pitched forward, screaming, into a belching hollow of magma, glowing and sizzling beneath him.

He hit the icy ground hard, and his vision flashed. After a moment, however, it returned, and he saw that the chasm was still beneath him, yet he seemed to float above it, hands and knees pressed against thin air as if on a layer of glass.

He screamed, and curled into a ball, looking desperately up to the heavens. They were black and starless, and the winter sun he had left his house under did not shine. All was dark.

Michael fainted.

He woke some hours later, still in a state of panic, and rose quickly, breathing rapidly. He looked down at the ground. Icy pavement. He looked upward. Bright clear winter sky. Relief washed over him. What on Earth had he experienced? Some half-baked delusion? Clearly a effect of the time-travel, that much was undeniable. He began to think hard and focus on his breathing. All seemed well, now, and he was alive, and uninjured. The best thing to do would be to return home and try to figure out what was happening.

Passers-by stared at him as he walked, wrinkling their nose at his dirty clothes and snotty, tear-streaked face. He did not meet their eye. At least, not until one called his name.

‘Michael, dear chap, are you quite alright? You look a dreadful mess.’

Nervously, he looked up. George Wilkins; a colleague of his. As close as Michael had to a friend. Wilkins looked concernedly up and down the man’s dishevelled figure, and proffered a hand, presumably containing a handkerchief for Michael’s face. Michael stared at it. The hand was no ordinary hand. It was rotten. Rotten and eaten away. Tutankhamun might’ve had a hand such as this, but not George Wilkins. Not the living, breathing George Wilkins who stood before him.

‘I’m quite alright. Must dash.’ Stammered out Michael.

He tried to walk away slowly but was hard pressed not to sprint back to his dingy house, gaze glued ceaselessly to the glassy pavement below. He slumped on the floor of the hallway the second the door opened, and pressed his back to a wall, putting his head in his hands. He was going mad, he thought. Something must have gone wrong with the machine.

Taking his hands away from his face he opened his eyes. At once, he cried out in anguish. He stared in horror at his left arm, or rather, the space where it ought to have been. Empty air. Nothing there. No sinew, or bone, or anything that made his arm his arm. He began to weep.

Now the reality was, for that poor, weeping man, curled up and juddering in his musty hallway, that nothing had gone wrong with the machine.

Michael Callander had travelled through time, and subsequently, time had travelled through him.

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A nice spooky one, if I say so myself.

If you got something out of this, let me know if you want my longest ever horror story, Francis, to be posted.

As ever, thanks for reading,

Until next time,

H.E.

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