I showed up to Evergreen Park at around 11:45. It must have been 30 degrees out, but I was still sweating through my sweater vest and pleated trousers. I was so nervous. I don’t know why exactly, I didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, worst case scenario they try me as a witch and I’m burned at the stake I guess? I didn’t know what would happen if people found out where and when I was from, I just knew the reaction wouldn’t be good.

  Evergreen was no Griffith Park, but it wasn’t small either. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been there since I got to Elk Valley, but I’d walked by it plenty of times. It was a couple blocks from the main drag, on the way to the drive-in. The wrought-iron gate a the southwest corner creaked open like it was straight out of a horror movie, doing nothing to settle my nerves. The dark path ahead was illuminated by the dim yellow bulbs of iron street lamps. I walked the path, my head bouncing around at every breaking twig or falling leaf. There’s something about a cold night that seems to amplify the volume of every little sound. Or maybe it’s just that there’s less life making sounds to fill the quiet. A lone owl somewhere in the park asked about my identity. I have questions about that too, pal.

  Eventually I came upon a boathouse at the edge of a large lake. Even in the dark I could see the unmistakable outline of those two-person paddleboats shaped like swans, tied to the dock outside. I looked out on the lake as I walked, catching the glint of yellow light reflecting off the still water through the reeds. When the lake ended and the path curved to the right, I saw him. My heart raced. He sat on a bench overlooking the lake, facing me. He wore a large trench coat with the collar turned up and a fedora, which gave a particularly menacing silhouette. A lamppost on either side of the bench outlined him in a soft yellow glow. As I got closer, I could see him a little bit better. The massive trenchcoat nearly swallowed up his slight frame.

  “Fritz?”

  “Shh!” He looked panicked. “They could be listening.”

  I looked around at the completely empty park.

  “Who?”

  “Follow me.”

  He stood up and walked off the path, toward the iron fence separating the park from the woods. He found a section where the iron bars were corroded and bent at the bottom, and he crawled through. Maybe I should have started to ask questions at this point, but I blindly followed, maybe hoping for answers or some semblance of them. Before long we came to a decrepit cabin shrouded in foliage. He pushed open the heavy wooden door, lodged in its frame from years of warping and weather damage.

  “I used to come here when I was a kid. It was the only place I could hide from Johnny and his minions.”

  “I call them goons, but minions is good too. What’s with all the cloak and dagger?”

  “This place, it’s not what you think. It has… Secrets.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He sat down at a moss covered table, lit by a moonbeam shining through a crack in the roof. He lit the melting candles in the center of the table and took a seat, motioning for me to take the other. I obliged.

  “What do you mean, secrets?” I asked.

  “We’ll get to that,” he said. “But first…”

  He tossed my journal onto the table.

  “Who are you?”

  I told him everything, from the start. I told him about my red Mercedes, the never-ending tunnel, the crash, the coma. I told him about home, what I could remember of it. Why were those memories so fleeting now? I explained the iPhone to the best of my ability, although my limited scientific knowledge wasn’t nearly satisfying enough for Fritz’s inquisitive mind. He was taking this all surprisingly well. He seemed excited, even. I suppose for a lover of science fiction, meeting a man from the future is somewhat of a dream come true. I answered every question I was able to and we talked until the morning sun shone through the cracks in the walls.

  “Shit,” he said. The word sounded unnatural coming from him. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  I couldn’t let him leave yet, the conversation had been entirely one-sided for the last five hours.

  “Wait, what about my answers? What about the town, the secrets? Who is listening?”

  “Sorry, Emmett, that’ll have to wait. Keep walking up the path to the north. Maybe that will help. See you around, traveler.”

  I yawned. I’ve been pulling far too many all-nighters since I got to Elk Valley, and it wasn’t doing my mental health any favors. I needed sleep, but I needed answers more. I pulled the heavy door closed and noticed a name carved into it, as old as the cabin itself. “Pickett,” it said.

  As I walked north up the overgrown trail I wondered who he was, what he used the cabin for. It must have been a little fishing getaway for him, with the lake less than a mile away. There was a remarkable beauty to these woods, and it was easy to imagine the park and town before it was developed.

  I walked for what felt like hours, the fatigue compounding with every step. I thought about turning back several times throughout the walk. There’d be hell to pay when Mrs. Grady found out I’d snuck out. That was reason enough to delay my return, but the desire for answers was an even stronger incentive to drive my feet forward. I felt the blisters growing on my heels and wished for my Merrell’s, or at least something more comfortable than these undersized oxfords. Maybe this was a wild goose chase. I was just about to turn back when I saw it. An elk, carved into a spruce, just like the one from the floorboard. I ran my fingers over the deep, old wounds. There’s no way George made this carving. It was old, maybe a hundred years, maybe more. I pulled my hand away and felt the sticky pitch on my fingertips. What had the man at Al’s said to me? I should take up a hobby. Hiking, he said. He must know something. I was on the right track.

  I picked up the pace, the dewy branches whipping across my face as I quickly trekked through the brush, almost tripping over every other branch or root, until I was hit so hard the wind was knocked from my belly. But it wasn’t a branch, it felt like… metal?

  I caught my breath and backed up, brushing away the woodland debris littering my obstacle. It wasn’t a branch, it wasn’t a tree, it wasn’t a boulder. I ran into a car. The trunk of a car, specifically. Covered in moss and forest growth was a rusted, decaying, silver car. I brushed off the glimmering chrome badge on the right. This wasn’t just any car.

  This was… a Prius?!

  - Emmet Brewer, hiker