Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(34)
When she was gone, I realized my aunt looked even worse than before. Drawn, and so, so pale.
Unsettled, I moved to the table and began thumbing through the journals. They began with Jonathan Carlyle, son of the Viators’ founder, and my mom’s great-grandfather. Though difficult to follow at first, I was soon tearing through the looping Victorian script.
January 1895. Tesla’s machines are a marvel. To think technology could come so far. Julia understands it better than I. My darling bride has an acute mind, while mine is that of a plodding historian. Nikola believes his alternating current disrupts the strange power flowing through the cavern below, causing the cyclonic rift. He is less certain of the opal’s significance. Yet after MacPherson’s illness, we dare not travel without one.
Had we only known. I can hardly bear to render this account. I do so now only to warn future travelers.
My father, Dr. Alvarez, and Julia’s brother, Luis, were due back. Three days is all the time this majestic power will lend. I was almost to the cavern when I heard the cries and the rush of the dark cyclone.
As I entered the cave, the sight before me was unimaginable. My father, on his knees with a rucksack clenched in one hand, weeping like a child. Julia’s father, on his feet, Luis clasped to his breast. And I—I can barely put to page what I saw next.
I’m ashamed to admit my knees went weak. For though Julia’s father held on to his son desperately as he howled his grief, from the waist down my beloved’s brother was simply gone, as if a cosmic force had ripped him in half. Blood rained down from Luis’s lifeless torso. And, as I looked on in utter horror, his entrails slithered out upon the tiles. I heard Julia’s tread upon the stair, heavy with our first child. I could not let her see such a terrible thing. I could scarcely stand it myself. What awful power do we play with?
I frowned as I turned to the next entry, dated five years later. From what I could tell, Dr. Alvarez had already left the group, who now called themselves Viators. Julia’s idea, and something of a joke to the early travelers. At first, Jonathan spoke only of the advancements his friend Tesla had made with the machines. A ticker tape now sprouted from the back of one of the mechanisms, which displayed the pulses in the lines of power. Matching the pulses with a log of their previous travels, they could determine the general place and era in which they would arrive.
I skimmed through several volumes. Jonathan eventually regained his sense of humor and wonder at the sights they encountered, and I fell again under his spell as he described what they’d seen and the riches they brought back.
Partway through 1910, the handwriting changed. Blots of ink now dotted the pages. Some of the lines were smeary and smudged, as if they’d gotten wet. My gut knotted as I deciphered the cramped writing.
On a journey a hundred years into their past, husband and wife—along with their friend Archie McPherson—found themselves near a tiny, secluded loch only a few miles from their current home. Though they’d traveled there to see a local baron about some kind of painting they hoped to purchase, the three were delighted when they arrived in the year 1801, close to the exact spot on which—a hundred years in the future—they would build a holiday cottage. As the sun shone down on the trio, they decided to play hooky and simply enjoy the beauty of the as-yet-unspoiled countryside.
March 17, 1910. I report the account, Jonathan wrote, to warn of the evil we’ve unleashed. I shall not look upon my Julia’s face again until I can repair what we have broken. She has left, claiming she cannot bear to be near me without thinking of them. Our precious girls. We played God that day. And now we suffer for our sin. I must find it. This mysterious opal Tesla believes is the key. I must find the stone and get them back. For I think Julia shall die without them.
Even blurry and dotted with water marks, Jonathan’s words made my mouth go dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I was desperate for a drink. But I couldn’t pull myself away. I had to finish it.
My Julia had looked so merry that morning. In her peasant’s gown, she was as beautiful as the day we wed. I played the gallant, casting my cloak on the ground for her to sit upon. Afterward, Archie and I stripped to our undergarments and went splashing into the loch, shouting like children at the cold.
It was she who first pointed out the young saplings near the water. In our own time, the trees had grown gnarled and ancient. An eyesore. “You know,” Julia mused as we munched on freshly picked blueberries that burst in our mouths like a gift from summer herself, “that is the very tree from which our impetuous Penelope will fall.”
Penny’s arm had never healed right, and I’d always resented those blasted trees.
“Well, then.” I stood and in amused retribution wrenched one of the infant trees from the ground. Not to be outdone, Archie did the same to its sister, who’d dared drop a hornet’s nest on us during a summer picnic three years later. “That’s done for them, I’d say.”
Julia, do you remember how you kissed me then? With the summer sun bright on our hair and the sweet juice on our lips?
I will never be that warm again. Oh, that I could take it back. Holy Father, let us take back that one reckless moment.
Home. Thrilled as ever to be safe and of sound limb in our loving house, we flew upstairs, caring not that we had played truant, without thought to our mission. If only we had gone on that long walk to the baron’s home instead of dripping water on the carpet, all of us sun browned from our lazy follies. With Archie following, Julia and I called out to our children.