Beyond Time

 

It was the first day at my new house. I was tired after all the unpacking, so I decided to go to bed early. Later, I was woken up by a tapping sound. I switched the light on and checked the time: it was 3:00 a.m.

“Who could it be at this time?”

I opened the door to find no one outside. I went back to bed wondering if it was just a dream, but as I was drifting back to sleep, it was there again. As  I sat up, the sound continued, but this time, I noticed where the sound was coming from. It wasn’t from outside—it was from inside the closet.

I armed myself with a baseball bat and opened the closet slowly, but there was nothing inside. I pushed my clothes aside, but then I noticed a door handle that wasn’t there before. Not sure what to expect, I turned the handle. Beyond it, was a barren land.

“What the hell is going on?”

I pinched myself to see if I was sleeping, but no, I was already awake. I went back into my room and closed the door. I took a couple of deep breaths and opened it again. It was the same. I decided to explore the weird land, so changed my clothes and packed some essentials before venturing off into the unknown. I walked for a couple of miles without seeing a single soul. I then ate and rested for a little while before resuming my journey. After covering another mile, I came across a tent, but I froze the second I stepped inside. Within the tent was a woman. She was much older, but looked almost identical to me.

“Who are you?”

“I’m you, Shantel, just forty years older.”

“Wait, what? How is this possible?”

“This is what’s left after the world plunged into a demonic war, and I need your help to stop it.”

I couldn’t say a word. How was I supposed to help stop a demonic war of all things?

“I know you’re confused, but this is important. The demon who started this imprisoned me when the war broke out, so I couldn’t prevent it. By the time I broke free, the worst had come to pass. I need you to go back in time to when it started and prevent it.”

“How do I do that? I don’t have any powers.”

“I discovered a grimoire just before this all began seven years ago. I’ll bestow unto you the powers I gained from it. You must go and do this on your own; my body cannot handle the toll this magic takes anymore. Banish that demon to the veil beyond.”

My older self held out her hands, and suddenly, I felt a surge of magical energy flow into me, coursing through every fibre of my body. With it, I also saw her memories and knew exactly when I needed to go back in time to. I travelled back in time, and to the exact soft spot where the veil between our world and the demon world was thinning at the time. I knew the spell that had to be used, so I began chanting right away. The space before me split open and a hand with claws broke through.

The demon tried to grab me, but I moved away; It blasted magical energy at me, but I repelled it. The struggle continued, but I managed to overpower the demon by fusing its magic with my own to push it back into its realm. I chanted a sealing spell right away and closed the breach in our world. At the end of it, I began to feel the magic in me quickly begin to fade away.

Panicking, I focused and pictured my house. I travelled back to my timeline. Once there, I quickly opened the closet door to go and meet my older self, but the door that was inside was no more. I tried to use my powers once again to open a portal to that timeline, but nothing happened. Perhaps me solving the demon issue made the power transfer void. I could only assume that things went smoothly from that point on in the timeline. I checked the time and it was 3:05 a.m., so I got back in bed to get some rest.