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The Time Traveler's Diary Shaina Tranquilino September 17, 2024

The storm had raged all night, beating against the windows of Diane Holzer's quiet cottage at the edge of town. It was the sort of night that stirred unease, though she could never quite say why. The wind howled through the trees, and the rain fell in sheets, but there was something else—a feeling in the air, like a change was coming.

It was just after dawn when the storm finally relented. Diane, an avid collector of antiques, decided to visit the nearby estate sale that had been advertised. The house belonged to the late Professor Edward Harrington, a reclusive man whose death had sparked curiosity in the village. He was rumored to have been obsessed with strange theories of time, but no one ever took him seriously.

Inside the dusty old mansion, Diane wandered the rooms, browsing through relics of the professor’s life—old maps, stacks of books, tarnished silverware. In a corner of his study, beneath a pile of forgotten papers, she found it—a leather-bound diary. The cover was worn, but the pages inside were crisp, as if they had been written only recently.

She tucked the diary under her arm, paying for it along with a few other trinkets. Back at home, with a cup of tea in hand, she opened the diary, expecting musings on the professor’s eccentric work or perhaps personal notes about his reclusive life. Instead, what she found unsettled her immediately.

November 17, 2123

If you are reading this, then I know my calculations were correct. My name is Nicholas Harrington, and I am writing to you from 2123. You, Diane Holzer, are my ancestor—my great-great-grandmother, to be precise. And I need your help.

Diane blinked at the words, her heart pounding in her chest. This had to be some kind of elaborate joke. She skimmed the next few lines, her mind racing.

You will find this diary on the 17th of September, 2024, just after a storm. The estate sale of Professor Harrington, your neighbor, will bring you to it. I have no doubt that you will be skeptical, but I urge you to keep reading. The events I describe are real, and they concern your future—and mine.

Diane closed the diary for a moment, trying to catch her breath. The date was correct. Today was the 17th of September, and she had found the diary just as it described. But how could this be?

Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the diary again, continuing to read.

In my time, the world is on the brink of collapse. Climate disasters, political unrest, and technological failures are pushing civilization to the edge. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. History was altered, and I believe it has something to do with our family.

I am writing to you because you hold the key to preventing this future. In your lifetime, you will come into possession of an object—a small, unremarkable pocket watch. This watch, though it may seem ordinary, is anything but. It contains a mechanism that was developed long ago by a group of scientists working in secret—among them, our ancestor, Professor Edward Harrington.

This watch can manipulate time.

Diane stared at the page, her heart thudding in her chest. She didn’t own a pocket watch. Or did she? She hurried to her bedroom, rummaging through the box of trinkets she had purchased that morning. There, beneath the brass candlestick and faded postcards, was a small pocket watch—old and weathered, but still ticking.

The watch has the ability to create small tears in the fabric of time, allowing its user to see potential futures or even influence certain events. But it is dangerous in the wrong hands. In your time, someone will come for it—a man named Stanley Dodds. He will seem like a friend, but he cannot be trusted. He seeks the watch for his own purposes, and if he gets it, everything I know will fall apart.

Diane's hands trembled as she held the watch. The name Stanley Dodds was all too familiar. He was a charming historian she had met at a conference only weeks before. They had shared a pleasant conversation over coffee, and he had mentioned his interest in antique timepieces. He had even offered to help her appraise some of her collection.

Her phone buzzed on the table, and she jumped, startled by the sudden noise. The screen flashed with a message.

Stanley Dodds: Are you free for lunch today? I’d love to see your new finds.

Her blood ran cold. She glanced at the diary again, flipping through the pages.

When Stanley comes for the watch, you must not let him have it. You must hide it, or use it yourself. I have only been able to send this diary back through time, but with the watch, you can do more. You can change the future.

I know this is a lot to ask, but you must trust me. Your decision will shape the lives of generations to come—including mine.

Diane's mind raced. How could she possibly believe this? A time traveler’s diary? A watch that could control time? And yet—everything the diary had said so far had been true. The storm. The date. Stanley Dodds.

She stared at the watch in her hand, its surface gleaming faintly in the soft light of the morning. If what Nicholas had written was true, she had a decision to make—and quickly. Stanley would arrive soon, and she had no idea what he was capable of.

Taking a deep breath, Diane stood and walked to the window. Outside, the world seemed deceptively calm, the sky clearing after the storm. But inside her, a storm raged.

She didn’t know what the future held, but she knew one thing: the watch was hers, and she would decide how it was used.

As she turned the watch over in her hand, she felt a strange, shifting sensation in the air—a ripple, almost. The world seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then, in a flash, she was gone.

The diary lay open on the table, the ink on the last page still fresh.

November 17, 2123

Thank you, Diane. You made the right choice.

The Shadow House Shaina Tranquilino September 18, 2024

Dr. Marie Landers had always been drawn to anomalies. As a researcher specializing in quantum phenomena, she was used to puzzling through the inexplicable. But nothing had prepared her for the enigma of the Shadow House.

It was a sprawling, decrepit mansion on the outskirts of town, standing alone on a barren hill. Built in the early 1900s, the house had long since fallen into disrepair. The locals whispered about it—how it had never been occupied for long, how strange noises echoed at night, and most of all, how its shadow didn’t match its shape.

That was why Marie had come. For weeks, she had pored over reports from townspeople who swore that the house cast a shadow too large for its size, with angles and shapes that didn’t belong to the physical structure. Some claimed to have seen movement within the shadow, a flicker of something otherworldly. And yet, no one had ever dared investigate.

Until now.

Marie parked her car at the bottom of the hill, clutching her bag of equipment. The air was unnaturally still, and the sun, hanging low on the horizon, cast the house in an eerie light. From a distance, she could already see the shadow—a looming, dark mass that stretched unnervingly far across the land, its contours sharper and more jagged than the house itself. It bent at strange angles, as though the sun were shining through a different structure altogether.

Marie approached, her breath shallow with anticipation. As she walked around the perimeter, the shadow didn’t shift as expected. It clung to the ground in defiance of the sun’s movement, frozen in place like a dark stain on the earth.

She reached the front door, old and weathered, and pushed it open with a groan. The air inside was thick with dust, and the wooden floors creaked beneath her boots. Sunlight streamed through cracked windows, but even inside, something felt wrong. The shadows in the house were too long, too deep, as if they were not merely the absence of light but something more tangible.

Marie set up her equipment, a mix of sensors and cameras designed to detect electromagnetic anomalies and disturbances in the fabric of reality. She moved through the house, her mind racing with possibilities. Was this a quirk of physics? A natural phenomenon? Or something else entirely?

She paused in front of the grand staircase. At the top was a long hallway leading to several rooms. The floor plan didn’t seem unusual, but the shadow outside suggested something different. She pulled up the blueprints she had found in the town’s archives and studied them.

Then she saw it—a subtle but significant discrepancy. The house’s shadow was casting an image of a structure that didn’t exist in the blueprints. There was a room, a hidden section of the house that shouldn’t be there.

Marie's pulse quickened. She raced up the stairs, her footsteps echoing in the empty halls. At the end of the hallway, there was a door she hadn’t noticed before, one not marked on any map. It was small, unassuming, with an old brass knob. Her hand trembled as she turned it.

The door creaked open to reveal a narrow room, bathed in a dim, unnatural light. At first glance, it was empty. But as Marie stepped inside, her skin prickled with an electric charge. The shadows in the room moved. They didn’t simply shift with her movements—they reacted to her, pulsing like a living thing.

She reached out a hand, and the shadows recoiled, then surged forward. With a flash of realization, she understood—these weren’t mere shadows. This was a gateway, a threshold to something beyond.

Marie pulled a small, handheld scanner from her bag and waved it through the air. The readings went wild. The air here was charged with energy she had never encountered before—an energy that bent the rules of reality.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped further into the room. The shadows thickened around her, and for a brief moment, the world seemed to tilt. Then, with a soft hiss, the wall in front of her shimmered and peeled away, revealing a tear in the fabric of space itself.

Beyond the tear, she glimpsed a world that was both familiar and alien. The landscape was an inverted mirror of her own—a dark, twisted version of the house and the hill, with strange structures rising in the distance, all bathed in a faint, otherworldly glow.

Figures moved within that shadowed world. Tall, elongated beings with hollow eyes and shimmering skin. They moved with an eerie grace, watching her silently from across the divide. Marie felt their gaze on her, cold and penetrating, but they made no move to cross over.

Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t just looking into another dimension—this place was alive, aware, watching her as much as she was observing it.

Suddenly, the shadows around her began to swirl faster, and the tear in the wall started to close. Panic surged in her chest. She needed to gather more data, to understand what she had discovered. But the portal was shrinking, and the pull of that other world grew stronger. It felt as if it was calling her, beckoning her to step through.

Marie hesitated for only a moment. With a final glance at the strange beings, she turned and fled back through the house. As she burst out the front door, the shadow outside flickered, and for a brief second, it snapped into place with the true outline of the house.

Then, just as quickly, it shifted back, once again casting its distorted, impossible shape across the land.

Breathing heavily, Marie looked back at the house, now silent and still, but forever changed in her mind. The Shadow House was more than just a mystery—it was a threshold between worlds. And though she had escaped, she knew that whatever lurked on the other side was still watching.

Waiting.

And she couldn’t shake the feeling that someday, she might not be able to resist its call.