I woke with a gasp, my heart pounding. Beside me, Hilary was also awake, her eyes wide in the darkness.

‘Did you dream it too?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Lieutenant Edward Morris. He never came home from the war.’

‘World War I,’ I said. ‘He must have died in France.’

‘And she waited for him. Her whole life.’

That night, I dreamed of Annabella again. This time, she was older, perhaps in her twenties, sitting by the window in the nursery, staring out at the garden. A profound sadness etched her face, making my heart ache.

A voice called from downstairs—the same voice I’d heard on the video.

I felt a chill. ‘Annabella? The same name as in the nursery.’

Hilary nodded, her excitement momentarily tempered. ‘It must be. The dates would work out. If she died at ninety-three and the house has been empty since 1987...’

‘She would have been born around 1894,’ I calculated quickly. ‘So she would have been seven around 1901.’

Hilary sat beside me on the bed, the documents spread across her lap. ‘John, do you think we saw—I mean, do you think what you heard on the video...’

‘I don’t know what I heard,’ I admitted. ‘But I had a dream about her last night. A little girl in the garden, and someone calling her in.’

‘Her governess,’ Hilary whispered.

As she drinks the cool water, she senses a presence and looks up. There, looking at her from the opposite bank is a strange creature. Standing upright like a man, but with no body hair, his smooth skin pale grey in colour. Its face is flat with a high forehead. The eyes are widely spaced and pale yellow like those of a wolf.

It’s six thirty on a crisp cold January evening. I pull on a second jumper and a pair of thermal socks. I’m even debating whether to pull on a pair of long-johns.

Hilary eyes me with amusement. ‘You’re never going out to that telescope tonight are you? It’s freezing out there.’

‘Of course I am. I have to do this.’

The young woman walked into Dick Barton’s office with the kind of confidence that came from old money and good breeding. Barton watched her cross the threshold, his detective instincts already humming.

‘Someone’s flooding the market with fake ear wax,’ she announced, settling into the chair opposite his desk.

Dick leaned back, puzzled. Who on earth would want to fake a chap’s earwax? The question tumbled in his mind as he studied her features more closely. Recognition dawned like a slow sunrise.

‘Follow the road up the hill, take a left over the brow and look out for the old barn, then turn right down a narrow lane and you'll see the sign for Crab Tree. You can't miss it.’

When I dared to look again, the kitchen was exactly as it had been. No wind, no swirling lights, no burning photographs. Just the morning sunlight streaming through the window, illuminating motes of dust in the air.

'What will you do?' I asked. 'If Simmington's procedure works, I mean. You'll be stuck in 2025 with no official identity, no history.'

Emily smiled. 'I've lived through the Victorian era, both World Wars, and the dawn of the internet. I think I can manage the bureaucracy of the modern world.'

Joanna rose and crossed to sit beside Emily on the sofa. Hesitantly, she took the younger woman's hand—her ancestor's hand. 'I can't imagine the burden you've carried,' she said softly. 'The guilt, the grief, the loneliness of your existence. But perhaps there's a purpose to it all that we can't yet see.'

She handed the envelope to Emily, who opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a small, faded photograph of two young girls, their arms around each other, standing in front of a cottage that looked remarkably like the one in the watercolour.

A chill ran down my spine. 'What fire?'

'A terrible tragedy,' he said. 'Two cottages burned to the ground. A young girl died.'

I thought of Emily, of her desperate search for the watercolour. 'Was the girl's name Emily?' I asked.

I hesitated, my heart suddenly racing. Could it be Emily returning for her photographs? I glanced down at the portrait in my hand, those defiant dark eyes staring back at me, then placed it carefully on the side table before moving to answer the door.

The bell rang again, more insistently this time…

Somebody once said that time travel can’t be possible because, if it was possible, then someone in the future would invent it, and the world would now be inundated with time-travellers from the future. I think I may have met one once.

Set in ancient Nubia, The Blood Moon Prophecy foretells the birth of a child under a blood moon who will possess extraordinary powers and shape the destiny of the land.

The fire's dying embers cast a flickering glow across the Shaman's wizened face as he stood on the desert crag. Shadows danced in the hollows of his cheeks and eyes.