Ghosts

Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,—

In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.

The alternative was staggaring more than my facilities could hold or deal with—that my cousin, sleeping calmly in that bed, had left our spance and time for a period of four years, and that before this complete disappearance, as a preliminary to it, by way of training possibly, he had escaped our time, while still occupying our space, for a far longer period, for some twenty-five years. 

Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest.

She was dressed in a long linen duster and a linen hat, bound round with an emerald veil tied in a bow under her chin. Modish clothing for motoring—in 1905.

There’s something different about that child. I wondered if my pencil could catch it.

Gee, maybe people in the past won’t be scared of me.

"Oh, Professor," half chided Helen Crane, "You don’t mean to say that you believe in these dreams. That the past can actually come back into the present."

Peculiar things go on ’round that old mansion!

Miss Belle Herbert once lived here! During the Civil War she was a southern spy and captured by Major Joshua White!

Open up! I’ve had enough of this! Whatever crazy explanation there is, I want it now!

Lucy found it very confusing. “I don’t think I really understand this Wheel of Time business even now,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t understand it,” said Jamie cheerfully, “but then I don’t understand television either. But when you’ve seen it working, you can’t help believing in it.”

Humbug! Insolent young ruffians coming here with their Christmas nonsense!

Now is the time. Look straight ahead and don’t be afraid.

This was the message received by a dozen or so experts in the "time attempters" field:

"I have succeeded in establishing a creeping time-satellite or time-shuttle at my estate of Moonwick near Lunel in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France. If you are really experts in your field, you will appreciate the importance of this. From this time-shuttle, which is just beyond the ‘shoal’ of all of you to whom I am sending this message, it will be possible for you to launch genuine time probes. I am sending this to a dozen or so and I hope for acceptance from at least five. I must have a matched set of at least five. Some soon. A very little bit after ‘soon’ will be too late for me to transmit the shuttle to you. Bring ideas only. Everything else for frugal and break-through living is provided. You will receive various transportation chits and enabling papers. Peter Luna.”

The World Courier Service (“No questions asked. Messages carried anywhere or anywhen in the world”) delivered these messages to the dozen or so persons who were experts in the time field. And some of the people gave assent and some didn’t. So, the next day, the Courier Service delivered airline tickets, train tickets, and International Taxi Coupons to five of the experts who had agreed to go to Moonwick.

If these shadows do not change, Tiny Tim will not see another Christmas.

If you build it, they will come.

If I finish it, will you come?

“For a thousand years,” said the ghost-queen. “I have waited for help.”

Es regnete fürchterlich. Ich hätte besser nicht nur den Regenmantel, sondern auch Gummistiefel angezogen. Mein Lieblings-Magnolienbaum an der Ecke ließ traurif sein Blüten hängen. Brevor ich ihn erreicht hatte, war ich schon dreimal in eine Pfütze getreten. Als ich gerade eine vierte umgehen wollte, riss es mich vollkommen ohne Vorwarnung von den Beinen. Mein magen fuhr Achterbahn und die Straße verschwamm vor meinen Augen zu einem grauen Fluss.

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It was raining cats and dogs, and I wished I’d put on my wellies. The flowers on my favorite magnolia tree on the corner were drooping in a melancholy way. Before I reached it, I’d already splashed through three puddles. Just as I was trying to steer my way around a fourth, I was swept suddenly off my soggy feet. My stomach flip-flopped, and before my eyes, the street blurred into a grey river.

Rubinrot, Begabt mit der Magie des Raben, Schließt G-Dur den Kreis, Den zwölf gebildet haben.

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Ruby Red, with G-major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven.

I, uh, digitized the actual footage taken from the night. I, uh, cropped and lightened the image.

The house Parry lived in had been built in 1928, right before the Depression hit, and the odd thing was that it apparently was haunted from the very beginning. From day one.

It’s 1814: They’ve never seen fashion styles like ours before.

I’m not going to let anybody hurt you this time. I swear to you on my life.

Had she somehow crucially alterted her own present by changing Alice’s future? The thought that she might have started some terrible chain of events that she could not possibly have foreseen, nor known about, worried her more and more. It was only in the small hours of Wednesday night that an answer came to her that seemed to make sense. The present that she knew, the way things were in her time, could only have come about if she had traveled back to the past. Her finding the chatelaine, her answering Alice’s call for help, those things were necessary to shape the past and bring about the future as it was. She had to believe this. It did work. She was a part of how things had turned out, not an alternative version, but the one she was meant to live in. If she hadn’t gone back, hadn’t taken the decision to help Alice, well, that wouldhave resulted in a different future from the one she knew.

As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race. I did find something else: the date it happens. . . . The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.

Scrooge: Is there no chance that boy will be spared?
Christmas Present: Not if the future remains unaltered.

Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”

He’s like the anti-Scrooge.