A haunting noise woke David from deep sleep. It was an air raid siren, something not heard in London for almost 80 years now. Through his slumber-heavy eyes he noticed Jane standing at the window with the curtains open.

‘Jane? What’s happening?’
‘It’s the Luftwaffe. They’re back.’
‘…what?’

From the floor above David heard footsteps. This was strange, because it was only the two of them living in this house. He jumped out of bed and hurriedly dressed. He picked up a magazine and rolled it up, too scared to realise how absurd this would be as a weapon. He was also too scared to notice that Jane was still staring out the window.

Quietly opening the bedroom door, David slipped into the hallway and padded to the foot of the stairs. There, at the top, a man in cotton pyjamas and a nightcap stood holding a candle, which lit his gaunt, angry face.

‘What are you doing in my house?’ the man gasped in a refined accent.

David responded by remaining stock still, too shocked and afraid to reply. He dropped the magazine.

‘Get out! Get out!’ the apparition raised its voice.
‘Are you a ghost?’
‘A ghost? Don’t be absurd. Begone!’

Terrified, David fled back to the bedroom and shut the door, grateful that it had a lock. Behind him he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He went over to the window and put his hand Jane’s shoulder.

‘Jane, there’s a ghost. An old man with a candle. Jane!’

Angry fists banged on the door. Jane didn’t flinch. At last David looked out the window and saw what she was staring at.

A figure who, at first glance, looked like a man in an overcoat. He was in their garden looking up at the sky. His head, however, was that of a bird’s. A bird wearing something like a compressed top hat. The bird man watched as three bomber aircraft roared overhead. Moments later came the booming thud of bombs exploding. The birdman and David dropped to the floor and the ghost ceased his hammering. Only Jane remained where she was.

‘What’s going on Jane? Jane!’

David turned his wife so that she was looking at him. Tears streaked her face. Wrapping her in his arms, David felt his wife sob into his chest.

‘It’s OK, I’m here. What’s happening Jane?’

By now the ghost had recommenced his assault on the door. This seemed to snap Jane out of her miserable trance. She turned to the door. Outside the siren of an emergency vehicle briefly matched the wail of the air raid siren.

‘We better let him in,’ Jane said.

Before David could stop her Jane unlocked the door and opened it to the ghost. The apparition was taken aback by the sight of a woman in a nightdress, his anger snuffed out immediately.

‘Wha…what are you doing here? Who are you people?’ the ghost asked.
‘I can explain,’ Jane said, ‘but I need to show you something, if you’ll allow me?’
‘Show me something? Very well, but, after that, you leave!’

Jane nodded and led the man over to the window. She pointed up at the sky where the bombers were disappearing into the distance. Next she pointed at the birdman in the garden.

‘Good Lord, what terrible conjuring is this?’ the ghost yelled, anger meeting astonishment.
‘Not a conjuring. What you see is real. David, this man isn’t a ghost; he’s as real as you or I.’
‘Of course I’m real!’
‘How do you know, Jane? What is all this?’
‘David, Jane, you need to leave my house immediately.’
‘Please, Mr…?’
‘Abney.’
‘Mr Abney, we need to speak with that man in the garden.’
‘Man? That thing’s a man?’
‘It…he is. And he’s probably just as afraid as we all are.’
‘I’m not afraid, young lady, I’m furious.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, you won’t mind taking the lead then?’

Mr Abney hesitated. Surprise drooped his mouth as he began to notice the contents of the room. Lamps, photos, cell phones.

‘Come, Mr Abney, David, I can explain,’ Jane said, ‘but we need to include that man in the garden.

Both men simply nodded, and Mr Abney shakily led the way out of the bedroom and down to the ground floor. The kitchen and dining room looked intact, albeit coloured by the strange light caused by a fiery sky. Mr Abney wasn’t sure how to open the patio doors and turned to Jane. She pulled them open and beckoned the birdman over.

‘What happens here?’ said the birdman, his accent a mixture of light Scottish, Geordie, and West Country.
‘Please, come inside,’ Jane said.
‘It is clean?’
‘It is.’

Utterly perplexed, the birdman entered. He, David and Mr Abney sat around the dining room table, flinching at the occasional sound of bombs. Jane, unperturbed, asked if anyone would like a cup of tea (explaining to the birdman exactly what it is). When she switched on the kettle both the birdman and Mr Abney jumped out of their seats.

‘It’s OK, it’s just a form of technology that boils water quickly. See?’

Jane poured the hot water into a teapot and added some fragrant leaves. At last feeling safer, the birdman began to remove his headgear. Beneath the hat and bird-like mask was a young face, reddened by the stuffy attire. He had a scar under one eye and his long brown hair was in disarray. David could smell his body odour from the other end of the table.

‘What is your name?’ Jane asked the birdman, speaking clearly and slowly.
‘Elias Thornber’
‘Please to meet you, Elias. This is Mr Abney, David, and my name is Jane. Mr Abney, what year is this please?’
‘Year? Are you quite mad?’
‘Please, Mr Abney.’
‘It is 1846, of course.’
‘Elias, what year is it?’
‘1665’
‘Preposterous!’
‘Mr Abney, please be patient. David and I, we think it is 2022.’ Jane pronounced each number carefully, so that both Mr Abney and Elias were left in no doubt what year she thought it was.
‘How? What are those birds?’ Elias asked.
‘They are not birds, Elias. They are a form of transport. Clever people developed a way for humans to fly.’
‘I see.’
‘You see? How can you possibly understand this? I do not understand. How do they stay in the air? What powers them? Where do they come from?’ Mr Abney was raising his voice again.
‘I must have fallen to the plague,’ Elias said. ‘This be the afterlife. A most unusual afterlife, but what else can it be?’
‘Don’t be silly man!’

Jane held up her hand to placate Mr Abney. Elias simply sat there in his thick leather robe with a thin smile on this face. A floral smell emanated from the long, thin nose of his mask, causing David to sneeze. Jane’s husband couldn’t quite believe that his allergies were reacting to some 17th Century flowers, and looked to his wife for explanation.

‘This has happened to me before,’ Jane began. ‘In fact, it used to happen quite a lot when I was a child. Back then I lived in a forest, and so it wasn’t immediately obvious what happened.’
‘What did happen? What has happened?’ asked David.
‘We are currently in between times,’ Jane said. When no one replied she continued. ‘I am not from 2022. I am not from 1846, or 1655, or whichever year of World War Two is happening out there. I do know that these are years in which London is, or was in the greatest peril. Are you able to understand what I’m saying Elias?’

The younger man from 1665 nodded. He was just as much in awe of his tea as he was by Jane’s words. She was about to continue when the all-clear siren wailed outside and the ground at the end of the garden started moving.

‘Oh, I thought this may happen,’ Jane said, and went out through the patio doors, followed by the men.

From a hole in the ground a young woman emerged, looking first up at the sky and then at the people gathered above her.

‘’Ave we been ‘it,’ she said in a Cockney accent
‘No, the house is safe,’ Jane replied.
‘Then what ‘appened to the top ‘alf of me shelter? An’ who are you people?’

Jane offered the woman a cup of tea and brought her inside. She quickly brought her up-to-date which the situation, and the young woman nearly fainted when she heard about the origins of Elias, Mr Abney, David and Jane. When she recovered she expressed disbelief, until Jane then demonstrated some of the modern appliances in the kitchen.

‘Bloody ‘ell,’ the woman (who had introduced herself as Mrs Birkett) said. Mr Abney nodded in agreement, as did Elias who-despite not understanding the swear word-got the general idea.
‘So what now? How long does this last?’ David asked.
‘Not long. I expect we’ll be together for another couple of hours before time reestablishes itself.’
‘But why you? How come you never mentioned this before?’
‘Why me? I don’t know. It used to happen to me as a child. Of course, back then I used to live in the countryside and so it was less obvious when different times blurred. I first realised when I was a teenager and saw an ancient soldier in the forest I was walking through. Fortunately he was scared away by the cellphone I was holding.
‘Over the years it happened less and less, and I thought it had stopped altogether. I never mentioned it to you because you’d think I was crazy. I thought I was crazy. But I also did a ton of research into why this may be happening to me. All I could figure out was that there was a common factor: that the day on which the times converge is a day on which the location I’m in is suffering from some sort of horror.
‘The Blitz,’ David said.
‘And the plague,’ Jane said, nodding at Elias. ‘When it happened in the countryside it was at the height of foot and mouth disease, or some devastating storm, or a terrible accident outside where we lived.’
‘I guess I’m ‘ere ‘cos of the Blitz,’ Mrs Birkett added. ‘Why’re you ‘ere?’ she asked Mr Abney.
‘I imagine it’s because London is currently suffering from that awful cholera. At least it is in 1846. I hope it will eventually go away?’

Mr Abney had asked this question to Jane and David, but neither replied. Jane had held up her hand to silence her husband, and considered her response.

‘I’m afraid I can’t say,’ she eventually replied. ‘I’m scared about what may happen if you learn too much about the future. You’ve already seen that we develop flying machines, and Elias you’ve now seen that London survives the plague. Any more information you get may endanger…well, goodness knows what it may endanger, or how. All I was able to learn was that it probably isn’t a good idea to know too much about the future. What I…’

Before Jane could finish her sentence Elias began to fade away. The others looked on in fascination. Shortly after Mr Abney disappeared and then, with a bemused look on her face, Mrs Birkett vanished back to May 1941. Jane placed her tea on the counter and went over to the kitchen window.

‘So is that it? Everything is now back to normal?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘I can still see a fire-lit sky. I can still hear an air raid siren.’

Jane didn’t reply. She just watched to see whatever current-day horror awaited her.