We Have Plenty of Time

We Have Plenty of Time "We have plenty of time," my father said as he glanced at the old brass pocket watch in his hand. He smiled the way only fathers can—calm even when everything around them is uncertain. I believed him. I was eleven. Children always believe the people who know the way home. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether he believed those words himself. Or whether he was trying to make sure I believed them. The train station at Waverly Cross was unusually quiet. Only six passengers waited beneath the soot-darkened roof. Rain drummed against the glass ceiling while steam curled lazily from the black locomotive waiting at Platform Three. Our destination was Ravenshollow Manor, an estate hidden deep within the northern hills. My grandfather had died a week earlier. According to the lawyer's letter, every surviving member of the Ashcroft family had been summoned for the reading of his will. I had never met the old man. Father rarely spoke about him. Whenever I asked why, he simply answered, "Some houses are easier to leave than to explain." The train departed exactly at seven. Outside, the city faded into rolling countryside. Fields became forests. Forests became mist. Mist swallowed everything. By midnight, the conductor announced our stop. There was no station. Only a lonely platform surrounded by towering pine trees. A carriage waited. Its driver never spoke. Ravenshollow Manor emerged from the fog like a forgotten memory. The house was enormous. Stone towers pierced the clouds. Hundreds of dark windows watched silently. Every clock visible through them showed a different hour. That should have frightened me. Instead... I found it fascinating. Inside waited five strangers. Or so I thought. A woman dressed entirely in black introduced herself as Evelyn. "My condolences." Another man with silver hair nodded politely. "Richard." An elderly priest sat quietly beside the fireplace. Two young twins stood near the staircase whispering to one another. Everyone seemed uncomfortable. No one smiled. The lawyer arrived shortly afterward. "My name is Charles Pembroke." He placed a thick envelope upon the table. "The will shall be read tomorrow morning." "Tonight..." "...you are guests of Ravenshollow." Lightning flashed outside. The lights flickered. Somewhere upstairs... A door slammed. No one reacted. As though the house often behaved that way. My room overlooked the gardens. Moonlight illuminated hundreds of marble statues. Every statue faced the house. Not away from it. Toward it. Almost as though they were waiting for something to happen. Sleep came slowly. At exactly three in the morning... A scream echoed through the halls. Everyone rushed downstairs. The lawyer stood frozen outside the library. The door hung open. Inside... The priest lay dead. No blood. No wound. Only surprise remained upon his face. Police could not reach the estate until morning because a landslide had blocked the only road. The telephone lines had also failed during the storm. We were alone. Father quietly pulled me aside. "Stay close." "Do you think someone killed him?" He looked toward the library. "I don't know." "But I think someone wants us frightened." Morning arrived. No police. No servants. No driver. Only silence. The lawyer insisted on continuing with the reading of the will. "My client anticipated unusual circumstances." He opened the envelope. The room listened. "To my family..." "If you are hearing these words..." "Then one of you has already died." Everyone exchanged nervous glances. "Do not leave." "Do not trust appearances." "Above all..." "Do not open the Observatory." The room became very still. "What observatory?" Richard asked. The lawyer frowned. "I wasn't informed." The twins exchanged a glance. "There isn't an observatory." "There used to be." Evelyn whispered. Grandfather had sealed it decades earlier. No one knew why. That afternoon curiosity defeated caution. The twins searched the upper floors. They eventually found a hidden staircase behind an old tapestry. At its top stood a massive iron door. Across it had been carved three words. DO NOT ENTER Naturally... Someone tried the handle. It opened. The observatory was unlike anything I had imagined. The telescope had long since collapsed. Dust covered every surface. Thousands of books filled curved shelves. Most were about astronomy. Others... About time. Ancient clocks lined the walls. Pendulums swung without making a sound. At the room's center stood an enormous mechanical device built from brass gears and crystal cylinders. Father stared at it. "I've seen something like this." "Where?" "My father was building it." Before he could explain further... The machine began moving. By itself. The gears turned. The room vibrated. Every clock inside the observatory struck midnight simultaneously. Outside... The storm stopped instantly. Not gradually. Instantly. Rain vanished. Thunder ceased. Even the wind disappeared. The silence felt unnatural. Then... Every clock in the manor began ticking together. For the first time. We hurried downstairs. The dead priest... ...was gone. The body had vanished. The library looked untouched. Only the overturned chair remained. Had we imagined everything? No. The lawyer still remembered. So did Father. So did everyone else. Except... The twins insisted no priest had ever arrived. "What priest?" "The old man." "There wasn't one." Evelyn looked confused. "There were only six guests." Father gripped the table. "There were seven." "No." "Six." That evening another impossible thing happened. Family photographs changed. Pictures Father remembered now showed different people. Portraits lost faces entirely. Entire rooms appeared in paintings that hadn't existed that morning. Even my own memories began slipping. I struggled to remember the priest's voice. Then his face. Then... His name. Father locked himself inside Grandfather's study. Hours later he emerged carrying several leather journals. "You need to read this." The journals belonged to Grandfather. Most described ordinary life. Gardens. Harvests. Weather. Until one entry dated October 1943. "Today I succeeded." "Time can be folded." "Memory cannot." Another page. "Every use changes history slightly." "Most people adapt without noticing." "Only blood relatives remember fragments of previous timelines." I frowned. "Timelines?" Father nodded slowly. "I think Grandfather built something impossible." That night, unable to sleep, I wandered the corridors. The manor seemed different again. Longer. Wider. As though hallways had shifted. At the end of one corridor stood a boy about my age. He wore old-fashioned clothes. He looked strangely familiar. "Hello," I said. He smiled sadly. "You shouldn't be here." "I live here." "No." His expression grew even sadder. "You haven't lived here yet." Before I could ask what he meant... He vanished. Not by running. Not by hiding. He simply ceased to exist. The next morning the lawyer failed to appear. His bedroom was empty. His luggage remained. His clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe. Every trace of him had disappeared. Only Father and I remembered that Charles Pembroke had ever existed. Everyone else insisted the will had arrived by post. No lawyer had come. Father finally admitted what he had been trying not to believe. "The machine isn't moving us through time." "It's rewriting it." "But why?" Before he could answer, a hidden speaker crackled to life somewhere inside the walls. A familiar elderly voice echoed throughout the manor. Grandfather. "If you can still remember me..." "...then you have already survived longer than I expected." The voice paused. "I built the machine to save our family." Another pause. "I did not realize..." "...our family was never the thing it was changing." The floor trembled. Deep beneath the house, enormous gears began turning again. And in that moment, my father looked at me with an expression I had never seen before. Recognition. Followed immediately by horror. "You..." he whispered. "You aren't my son."