I've been on the run this past two weeks. That's why you haven't heard from me. I couldn't use the Timephone because they would have picked up on the signal - besides which, I've been lying low in dark places in the day and on the move at night.
[If you've missed the beginning of the story, you can read it here: https://steemit.com/story/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-parts-1-to-5 ]
Now I'm in the mountains. I think I'm safer here. I hope I am. I found this place, cut into the hillside. I found it by chance. Actually I fell right into it, otherwise I'd never have known it was here. Some kind of hideway, like a bunker. Abandoned. I don't think anyone's been here for at least a couple of years, judging by the way it's overgrown and the amount of dust on everything inside - but it's well stocked. I don't know, maybe whoever lived here went out, thinking they'd be back soon, but never came back. It happens.
There are cans of food for at least a year - even two - tea, coffee, flour and grain - well sealed in big tins. A smokeless woodburner for cooking and heating - also pots and pans, a few enamel bowls, forks and spoons, a nice little selection of kitchen knives. They've even cleverly diverted water from a nearby stream into a pipe so that there's even a tap with fresh running water. One really good thing is that the woodburner has got a thermal charger which makes enough electricity to charge my phone. There's also a computer here, which means I can write much easier than on my old phone and I don't need to use my solar charger, which won't work so well in winter anyway.
Every day is getting shorter now and most of the leaves are already brown. I'm deep in a big forest and I haven't seen or heard anyone for about a week or more. You can really lose track of time in a place like this. I think I'll stay for the winter if I can. Maybe even longer. I like it here. There's tools for cutting wood - a small axe and a big splitting axe and a few different saws - a hammer and nails, pick and shovel, as well as a few basic carpentry tools and a good assortment of other handy equipment. Even a little workbench in one corner with a vice. There's a bed - something I haven't slept in for a long time - with a roughly made but extremely comfortable mattress filled with heather. There is even a box of blankets - a bit musty and damp, but soft wool and fairly clean. It's a good place. I couldn't have arranged a better place for myself.
So, back to the story...
You'll remember I activated the Interdimentional Portal and then fell up into it.
I won't try to describe what it feels like to fall though a wormhole in the fabric of SpaceTime (not exactly what it is, but close enough. None of the other Time travelers I've met could really explain what it is or how it works either...
You know, like when you're at the dentist, and they're just about to inject the anesthetic into your gums - and there's that moment just before it happens - you look at your dentist in the eyes, then you look at the needle, very close, but you haven't felt it yet, but you know you're just about to... and that moment, it's maybe only a matter of seconds, but it seems to go on for longer - much longer... while nothing actually happens... and then suddenly it does - you feel it like a shock, and then it's all over. Well, it's a bit like that, but much much more drawn out.
No, it's not like that all. It kind of is and it isn't.
Actually the only thing I can remember from my first trip across Time was that I had these two lines from a song going through my head, over and over and over again. It was those lines from the song 'Oh Sister' by Bob Dylan, when he sings 'Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow..' Very strange. Just those two lines, over and over and over and over...
And it was dark, but not completely. Lights were drifting around, some this way, some that, some of them spinning round each other, spiralling through the dark. Maybe they were stars or galaxies. Maybe they were atoms. I really couldn't say.
The next thing I knew I was standing on solid ground. I looked down to make sure. Cobblestones. Grey, wet, muddy cobblestones. And the air was full of different smells. Fish, vegetables, tobacco and coal smoke, horse manure - I noticed one foot was standing in a steaming pile of it.
To say I was disorientated would be an understatement. Remember, a few seconds earlier I had been in the attic of my parents' house. It was noisy here too. The sounds of a busy market. Shouts from the market stall holders advertising their wears. The clatter of iron wheels on cobblestones... an angry voice behind me in a broad cockney accent 'Oy! Dan't just stand there in the middle of the road ya bloody ninkempoop! I almast run you over!'
I turned round to see a lad who looked to be about thirteen years old, short, dressed in threadbare grey rags, wearing the most worn out boots I've ever seen, about three sizes too big for him, looking angrily up at me - then sensing, perhaps from my relatively clean appearance (even though I'd just trudged halfway across north London, not to mention travelled through Time in a bowler hat from another dimension), perhaps because I was so tall compared to him and just about everyone else in the market, or from my strange manner of dress (I'd forgotten to change my clothes, so I was still wearing a hoodie, jeans and trainers, as well as The Hat) that I was from a much higher class of society than he could ever dream of being a part of. He tipped his cap to me in great deference and cast his eyes downwards and began to mumble, 'Beg yer pardon mister.. sir.. sorry.. wasn't lookin' where I was going was I? Really sorry mister. I'm just mouthy, don't take no notice... 'ere... Gor' blimey, mister! Look at your shoes!'
The last bit he said so loud, and with such utter amazement that a few other people stopped to look at my shoes too. Pretty soon I had quite a crowd around me, all pushing and shoving to get a look at my incredible footwear. I don't know what I would have done if at that moment there didn't come rushing towards us a big, long bearded man dressed in wide black hat and long black coat, calling in and a loud, gruff voice with a stong eastern European accent, 'Make way, make way, Make way!' He ploughed though the crowd of spectators, marched right up to me - looked me hard in the face for a moment, as if to be certain it was me, and then took me in a most cordial but firm grip by the arm, announcing in a loud voice 'Ah my good cousin! I've been looking for you everrrywhere. You rrreally mustn't keep wanderring off like that. Come on, I'll take you back home. Come with me.' and he led me quickly away down cobbled market street, with an few sideways words to the crowd 'He's my cousin from Rrromania. He's an .. arrrtist' as if that explained everything. At least the crowd seemed mostly satisfied with the explaination - although I could feel the yellow eyes of the barrow boy following me and my amazing shoes all the way down the street as my great great grandpa Morris led me away into the maze of East London of 1917.