The Monster Out Of Time

Lost extract from the diary of Samuel Pepys thought destroyed in The Great Fire Of London but saved and preserved by Chrononaut Frank Norman-

Saturday 22^nd June 1665

This day a strange man did come who called himself Frank Norman and professed to be a traveller in time from the year of our lord 3013. He spoke in a most peculiar tongue, scarcely resembling English, and with a strange accent like someone from the colonies but claimed to have read my diaries by means of some marvellous contraption of morrowyear he called ‘The outernet’.

 

When I inquired into the purpose of his visit, Mr Norman told me that he was a forger of antiquities, a time-pirate if you will, who made his money by placing fake historical objects in the past, by means of time travel before selling them off in the future.

 

Unfortunately, he further explained, his ‘ship’ had been attacked, on the edge of the Enlightenment, he said, by what he called a Chronimal or a wild creature that lives in time; that swims through time like a shark through water.

 

“Here, Mr Pepys”, he said, “Is where I will have to stand my ground. The beast has my scent now and because I have sealed off my past with paradoxes, I know that he will come from the direction of my future”.

 

I asked Mr Norman what form this curious beast would take.

 

“Like a ghost”, he replied, “Or, as we say in my time, a poltergeist”.

 

But then a sudden sharp gust of cold air blew out the flickering candle by my bed side and I felt the ground beneath my feet start a trembling like the tremors one feels just before an earthquake and

Mr Norman unfastened the bag he was carrying and produced from it a long glowing and humming device which he called his ‘4-Dimensional Spear-gun’.

 

And then, it was as if I had seen the creature before, for now I saw it’s terrible face, most vividly, not with my eyes but within that part of the human mind where memories are stored. It was almost a premonition of things to come and it was a vile, terrible feeling, like remembering a nightmare whilst knowing that it would very soon come true.

 

I remembered that the creature would appear, as suddenly as an explosion, from every angle simultaneously, its glowing eyes covering the walls like spots of blood; its clawed tentacles surrounding us like a forest of thorns; its snapping jaws, like crackling bolts of lightning, striking at us out of the air from above and below; front and behind.

 

“It looks like the very face of hell”, I said, my courage quickly disappearing.

 

“It moves so quickly through time”, Mr Norman explained, “That, when it attacks, it may seem to be everywhere at once. Even inside us”.

 

I started to feel a fainting spell come over me.

 

“Then how in god’s name do you intend to kill such a creature?”, I asked, “Are you going to be everywhere at once?”.

 

Mr Norman smiled and pressed his ‘Spear-gun’ into my trembling hands.

 

“You’re going to kill it, Mr Pepys”, he said, “I’m just the bait. Raise it, like a spear, and strike the monster down as if you were St Michael striking a blow against the devil”.

 

I was about to say ‘No, not me’ but the words got stuck in my throat.

 

And then, in the flash of a lightning bolt, it was too late to say no. The beast was all around us; it’s roar like a raging sea-storm or a choir of hissing demons, and I saw an army of long, disembodied limbs with slashing claws fly down, like hacking sabres upon Mr Norman and feared that he would become ripped to pieces in front of me.

 

But then, it was almost as if my actions were governed by destiny and not my own free will anymore and before I had even thought about striking the monster I had done it.

 

The creature screamed across time so loudly that I remembered hearing its scream as a child in bed and dismissing it as the peal of thunder and then I saw its claws, as quickly as melting icicles, become blunt and tarnished like well-used blades and its scaly flesh, with the rapid onset of aging, become wrinkled, withered and decayed.

 

Until, in a single tick of the clock, the abomination and all the havoc that it had wrought was gone or, perhaps, had never been.

 

Of even the wounds that its scythe long claws had torn into Mr Normans flesh there was not a trace, not a single rip or scar.

 

The time traveller turned to me, grinning and shaking with mirth.

 

 “I knew you could do it”, he said.

 

“How did you know?”, I asked him, scarcely able to believe that I had done it myself.

 

Mr Norman reached into his bag and drew, from it, a parchment, not made of paper but of some other substance which he called ‘Touch sensitive’ and, as he brushed his finger over it, I saw some sort of diagram appear which, upon closer inspection, I saw to be the Frank Norman family tree, near the roots of which I noticed my own name.

 

“You are my ancestor, Mr Pepys”, he explained to me, “The creature could not kill you without creating a paradox but you could kill it”.

 

Then I reached for my diary and began to scribble with my quill but Mr Norman warned me that I should not write of anything that I had just witnessed.

 

“Were you to put any of it in your diary, the entire course of human history might be altered”, he said, gravely.

 

“But I must write something or tell someone”, I insisted, “Such an experience as this is almost intolerable to bear without some outlet”.

 

“If you must write something”, he replied, “Then send your diary entry to a Mr Thomas Farriner of Pudding Lane”.

 

“The Kings Baker?”, I asked, recalling that I had not long earlier requisitioned a supply of ships biscuit from him for the Navy.

 

“Yes”, said Mr Norman, a knowing smile flashing across his lips, “I’m certain that your letter will be safe in his care”.

 

But then the strange traveller told me that he had to leave and I bid him farewell and then, I swear upon my honour, I saw him vanish before my eyes, crackling like a blue bolt of St Elmo’s Fire.

 

Yet though he now seems little more than a phantasm from some peculiar and dreadful nightmare, I still cannot shake his visage from my mind nor that of the terrible creature who came with him; the monster out of time.