Prologue: John Lake's Journal January 1, 2020

There are many things unseen in this world. Yet the modern enlightened man will say if you cannot observe something it cannot exist. You cannot observe the Divine therefore he cannot exist they will say. Or they will say there is no such thing as perfect. As if we, being flawed beings, could comment on such a thing? If indeed something were perfect would we even recognize it as such? Within the orderliness of the universe and the complexities of life, it is very possible much of what we take as mundane and flawed is indeed perfect in it's function; though we will never recognize it. Yet today people will turn down “heretical” thought refusing dogmatically any other explanation based upon the same evidence. They hold fast to their own ideology, enlightenment, or science. Foolish indeed is the modern man so convinced they know everything they cannot conceive there are notions they do not understand, mysteries of which they are still blissfully unaware. Indeed as it was once said, “there is more to Heaven and Earth than our philosophy.”

I come from a more narrow, but open minded school of enlightenment, a more classical form of liberalism. Perhaps because then science was young and the possibilities it held far more endless. Just how old a school though I cannot say. There are memories of mine that I can state with great confidence state are indeed real. Others seem rather faded more like dreams. Of these I am less certain.\

There are only two beings who can probably say how old I am. My wife who maintains a silent vigil perched atop the mantle in her final resting place; needless to say we are not on speaking terms. Though perhaps even she cannot. If indeed the faded memories are real. The other is a being not of this world whose name it shakes me to think of. The mere mention of the name threatens to return him to this mortal plane. I should shudder to make his acquaintance again until my dying day. I know he listens still for his name. He listens through the horrible and phantasmal red crystal he planted in my mind; that he may be returned to this world. His name I shall not mention. He is the King of Twilight a Grim Reaper. He knows for certainty my history.

But I have been led astray from the matter at hand and the hour is late. The point is that few peer behind the glitzy, carnival veneer of this world to see the ugly, twisted gears of human society churning beneath. Not one to be charmed by meaningless platitudes I have never turned away from such horrors. It is better to know of the evils lurking beneath the surface and plan for them than be caught unawares after all. Perhaps It was this initial delving into the inner working of the human world that opened up to me the inner workings of the natural world. A world which human minds were never meant to comprehend and human eyes were never meant to see. The inner workings and realm of time itself.

Time effects all men in different manners. It flows like a river finely polishing some, while completely eroding others into dirt. Then there is the exception like myself the rough and rugged stone at the edge of the waterfall daring the churning, spectral waters to push it over the precipice into the eternal abyss; and perhaps one day it shall.

This insight into time was unfortunately born of tragedy during the Second World War of this I am certain; for the events both during and after have left me scarred physically and mentally down to this day, and perhaps until I die.

At the time I was the head engineer of a company working out of my office in Providence. We were carrying on our affairs in utmost secrecy, as we were working on a rival to the Manhattan Project by maximizing the effect of conventional explosives in unconventional ways. We were so convinced of the charnel and malignant effects of radioactive fallout upon our world. Our minds recoiled in horror at the thought of a possible warned threat of a nuclear chain reaction eradicating life on the entire sphere of the Earth. We completed our device before the first test on the bikini atoll on July 1, 1946.

I was of the mind to drive myself to Washington D.C. as at the time my new wife had fears for my safety regarding any aviation adventures. We were newly married and any percieved threat to my saftey caused her great worry and anxiety. However, my superiors insisted that time was of the essence. So bags packed and briefcase in hand I boarded the first, and for a long time last, plane in my life.

Things had proceeded smoothly apace for a time. Attendants walked the aisles performing seemingly menial tasks to improve the mood of some passengers and allay the fears of others. Strangers made awkward conversations, and the few children on board stared awestruck through the windows. I myself was afforded a window seat but quickly grew bored of the mundane clouds and miniature scenery below so I traded seats with the child next to me. I struck up conversation with the child's mother to pass the time. Her husband it seemed had gotten caught up in the war effort and risen to relatively high rank only to have perished in some unnamed combat. She was flying to Arlington to attend his burial.

It was about that time an explosion rocked the cargo area of the plane. I did not have time to ponder it then, but subsequent events would set it firm in my mind, I was the target of that bomb. The reason those people died was the secrets my briefcase held. As the plane descended towards the ground I became aware of the curious sensation of time beginning to slow. Believing this to be for certainty the phenomenon of "life flashing before your eyes" I said what I believed to be my final prayer and thought of my wife for the last time. Then about 5 ft from the ground it happened. I shall endeavor to describe just exactly what happened; though it is wholly unbelievable.

The terrible cries of those being burnt alive ceased. They were still ablaze but no longer did they scream. The heat from the fire now a few feet from my seat had most curiously dissipated to near nothingness. Although a mere second before it felt as if my very sweat was all that was keeping me from bursting a flame myself. Most disconcertingly everyone and everything about me had stopped moving completely as if frozen in an instant in time. Drinks were stuck in mid air suspended in droplets. Passengers were frozen in various stages of panic, some yet to register exactly what had happened. The unaware were the lucky ones I had thought. Sent to oblivion, oblivious as to the terror that dragged them there with everyone else.

It seemed fate had deigned to save me alone from what was soon to be the twisted, morbid horror of that wrecked plane. While I was a stoic and believed that there were some things beyond our control... “What has to have happened must have happened to bring us to this moment in time” and all that. I also believed we must do what our lot in life allows us to.

So I was determined to save the mother and son I had spent the better part of the flight in company therewith. First I reached for the son and tried to undo his seat restraints but they would not budge. Like everything else they appeared to have been stuck. I judged his frame to be small enough to slide from the restraints I grabbed him under the arms and with increasing strain attempted to move him as if he were Excalibur itself! However it was to no avail despite my Herculean effort. With growing frustration and panic I turned my attention towards his mother. Her seat belt too refused to budge. My previous attempt at moving the son had shewn the likely result of trying to move the mother. The result of utter failure and frustration. I unleashed my mounting tension into a single blow to the back of her seat. To my surprise the structure proved exceedingly fragile and shattered like broken glass falling to the ground; temporarily freed from the restraints of suspended space and time.

I thought about striking her lap belt as well, but dared not for fear she too might shatter. Rather I wrapped my arms beneath her chest determined to drag her backwards from her now broken seat. It was only then I became aware of how uncharacteristically hard and cold she was. It was as if she were a statue hewn of marble. Despite my best efforts she too refused to budge held to her seat by some unseen force.

By this time I had become nervous as to how long the plane might remain frozen as it was. For if fate was indeed real, even in part, it was not wise to tempt it. Self preservation kicking in I gave up on the ill fated mother and son. However determined to save at least someone, lest I go mad with some sort of survivor's guilt, I turned my attention to one final target of opportunity on the way to my escape.

A single flight attendant floating in mid air, blond hair askew, suspended in time among a globbing cluster of drinks thrown from a cart not far behind her. On my descent from seat to shattering seat I grabbed at her, and though I found her to be as hard and cold as the rest, to my great surprise she moved freely with my momentum. It was as if fate devoid of all reason bound by physical law as to why a body free of restraint should not move had surrendered to my will. Or fate perhaps knowing I was but a hairs breadth from becoming unwound decided to do me a favor. Either way I proceeded quickly apace my new companion held carefully in my arms. Upon reaching a level I deemed safe enough to risk jumping to the ground I kicked the side of the plane which too shattered curiously like glass and fell from it's prison in space and time.

Upon hitting the ground things proceeded quickly, the further I got from the plane the faster it crashed into the ground. Eventually a horrible, and deafening explosion filled my ears. I dove to the ground and covered the body of my still hardened charge with my own lest she be shattered from falling fragmentation. For this effort I was to be rewarded with a piece of shrapnel to the shoulder. The scarred wound from which still hurts in the rain to this day. Fate would not let me off easy for denying her all her victims that day. Indeed for everything there is a price.

My next recollection was waking up next to a burning field choking on the acrid, black smoke of burning fuel. The flight attendant had thawed out of frozen time completely. In the time I was unconscious she had fully dressed my wound as best she could using fabric from my already torn shirt. Upon observation I decided our situation was untenable, and chance of rescue rather remote in this seemingly isolated place. I urged that we move east towards the road I had remembered seeing from the air on the other side of the thick wood which spread out before us.

On the first day all went well enough. Neither of us spoke much as we both contemplated the unexpected and unexplained events of the day from our individual perspectives. I was however in great pain as streams of molten fire cascaded through my shoulder and down my arm. I also walked with a slight limp. On the second day there developed a fullness of conversation between the attendant and myself as we compared notes. There also developed a greater fullness to my limp.

By the third day my wound had become infected and I became feverish. On the fourth day the trees became more twisted to my sight than they had been at the outset of our journey and my limbs felt heavy as if made of lead. My companion found for me a stick on which to support my, at the time, quite average frame. In my delirium I am sure I muttered a great many things. What I do not recall. They did however drive us on. Although whether it was out of any motivational content or fear for my declining condition I have no way to tell. On day five we heard the sound of cars. Upon clearing a thicket of weeds we emerged to the rush of traffic of what I imagined to be an interstate opposite a gas station and it was there I finally collapsed.

It was two weeks later I awoke in a Providence hospital my wife keeping a bedside vigil. Upon awakening I was rushed through a battery of tests. I was told by my wife Kate I was extremely lucky to be alive. Most men would have bled out from such an injury as I had sustained within hours of it occurring, let alone the days I had marched on. It was an unfathomable miracle in the doctors opinions.

All that remained of the stewardess, whose name I never did get, was a card thanking me for saving her from the plummeting aircraft. It also advised that due to stress she was seeking a change in careers. It seemed a fear of flying was something we had both inherited from the ordeal. Then in a few days my convalescence was deemed sufficient to return home.

Having survived the events of the past few weeks by virtue of two miracles I found myself in unusually good spirits. So that night I gave my wife our first present since our honeymoon. It was a key to our new home. Hardly what one would describe as opulent yet it had it's own small fenced in garden, a rarity in the city and a far cry from our current row house I had inherited. It boasted as well an attention to detail only found in the architecture of a previous age. In short everything Kate had wanted in a house since we had been dating, and everything I could ill afford until I got this job.

That night we drank wine and put on a record not caring for whatever acoustic intrusions we made on our neighbors and we danced. Perhaps it was the alcohol or the music that dulled my senses so. It may simply have been being wrapped in the arms of the woman I thought I'd never see again. Whatever it was I did not hear the loud pop in the road, nor the shattering glass window pane. I was aware of blissfully little save the smile on my wife's face until time froze for the second, and final, time in my life. My wife still wore the smile on her face and her blood and a bullet were mere millimeters from my chest.

I stood there begging to God, fate, mercy, and any higher power that may hear me to let that bullet pass through me as well. I stood for what must have been hours though for naught. Only when I stepped aside did the bullet proceed along it's path with malicious intent towards a target that was no longer there. As I watched my wife crumple lifelessly to the floor I stared at the mockery of a clock nearby, not even a second had ticked by.

Of what happened next little is important. A friend of mine within the company had after the funeral services for my wife made me aware of other company executives having “accidents” recently. We both resigned and cashed in our stock options a few days before the CEO was assassinated and the company crashed; by who knows not which conspiratorial hand.

For a time I moved into our new home and joined the local constabulary, determined as I was to bring justice to those who could not otherwise find it. Slowly I had begun to unravel the mysteries of time such as they would open up to me. I learned how to revert crime scenes and objects including people to previous states and iterations albeit temporarily. Though when one can talk to a murder victim and observe the crime as it happened one can learn much even if the effect is only temporary. That however, does not make one a better officer as a rule. The word of the dead and the happenings of temporal ghosts and specters do not hard evidence make.

However, much did I learn much in the macabre art of murder in my career as an officer. Countless hours viewing the maligned specters of the damned go about their debauched trade provides for quite the education. As a result while I made a mediocre officer I did get justice for all my victims in other more morally ambiguous and terrifying ways. The trail of human detritus that disappeared behind me grew ever longer, then longer still as time wore on.

Never could these disappearances be traced back to my hand directly since I learned from the best of my "suspects" overtime. Some of my superiors and coworkers were however taken to regarding me with suspicion. Many a furtive gaze was cast in my direction as I passed in the hall and I was near universally avoided less the ill fortune that followed me rub off on anyone. For I was the pale rider and behind me Hell swallowed all in my wake from the plane crash, to my wife, to my former work associates, and the long trail of suspects. I became known as a grim reaper in my own right I suppose. So much so that when assigned to many cases, before I eventually left the force, suspects would often turn themselves in when I started asking around as to their activities, associations, and whereabouts.

So why weave these tales of over a half century long since past? For one I walk among you still much untouched by time. Still I stare into the face of those spectral waters and still I defy them for all they have taken. Rarely do I thank them for what they have given in return. But this goes beyond myself, beyond my fears. For I am of no special naivety to believe I alone am special in my gift. Just as no man of special intelligence is wise to think they alone are the only intellectual on Earth. Indeed across this world there are men of genius creating technological marvels men of my era would not have dreamed to behold. Marvels of terror, of absurdity, of whimsy and of wonder. So why then should I and my gift be any different?

There is indeed one other more pressing reason for my having committed all this to writing as well.

I have had much time, due to certain fortuitous financial investment, to pursue researches into antiquity before I rejoined the world in this modern era. I can speak only for our own world; for yes there are indeed many others. In this world, in times of civilization's rise and in times of collapse men of extraordinary abilities arise.

Some become warriors of great strength, others kings and conqueror's, still others deign to fancy themselves god's and demigods. These trying times of dying old dragons and phoenixes rising to replace them I have come to refer to as Era's of Judgment. Whether the existing structures and hierarchies of civilization remain or fall and what replaces them largely rides on the back of these gifted individuals. Present civilization past it's nadir some time ago, drowned now in a petulant morass of guilt and navel gazing. Already there are others I suspect to be like me although different in ability walking among us. Indeed if you are reading this you too, whether you know it or not, are such an individual and have an important role to play... Find me.