by N. W. Fidler
Grandpa’s Journal
Written by N. W. Fidler
Special Thanks to W. Waltz for Editing.
Roads split all the time. This time I’ll take the left.
4/22/06
Cool. A journal for my birthday.
I LOVE writing. Don’t get enough of that at school already.
Thanks Grandpa.
4/23/06
What does the roads thing mean? Just drive down one and then the other. It’s not that hard. Weather was okay.
Kind of cloudy.
Not much to say today.
5/1/06
Today was boring. School sucks. Max dumped me. Everything sucks.
8/10/2016
Mom made me go see grandpa today. Said he needed help with getting rid of some junk he’s been hording. Course when I get there Mom is nowhere to help, the place smelled funny, and grandpa couldn’t care less if I just sat around eating everything in his fridge all day. Except he had nothing in it. It wasn’t even plugged in. Typical.
So, of course Mom finally comes back after three hours of weeding and starts complaining I’m not doing anything. Like what? The place is a dumb. There’s dead bugs everywhere and the place smelled like a toilet.
Through all this yelling, guess what? Grandpa just sat there in his chair, staring off into space. Like usual. I think the last time he ever said a word to me was when I was five. I don’t remember about what, all I know is my parents getting on his case about scaring me, then kicking him out of the house. I wasn’t scared. Never was.
“MARCH.” Mom pointed up the stairs and I did only to get away from her. Upstairs was worse than downstairs. At least downstairs had a pathway, up there boxes and stuff were crammed into every corner. Also it was hot. Like the floor could be literal lava fresh from a volcano hot up there. I’m pretty sure everything up their was melted and just stuck together. I had to climb over a tracker tire, some newspapers, I think a box of pointy lawn gnomes, and some much other trash that by the time I got to the back I felt like I ran a marathon. Two even.
“Just start tossing boxes my way and I’ll take them down the stairs.” Mom called to me. I did as she said. Just grabbing and throwing them over or pushing them at odd angles as quickly as I could. I’m sure the sweat all over my body had dried up by the time I had room to sit.
Mom couldn’t keep up with me so I just took a break and waited. It was boring. Opening a random box, I shuffled through it for something interesting to jump out at me. Nothing worthy of note, just old clothes with lace or frilly. They must have been grandma’s dresses I guess? I don’t know. I never met her. She died before I was born so I never met her. She had odd taste, a LOT of this stuff was poofy and overly colorful. Mostly just ugly.
There were other boxes with papers or random trinkets. A lot of it I had no idea what they did. It wasn’t till Mom called for me to send more boxes that I saw it. Just as I lifted one of the paper filled ones, an old as nails tan book flopped out of the bottom. The pages flapping open with dust everywhere. There were some dates so I guessed it was his old journal?
I was tired, thirsty, and hot so I have no idea what drew me to this thing. The box held up just enough to get it to Mom before the weight of the papers busted open the bottom in Mom’s hands. I’m sure she was cussing under her breath but thought I didn’t hear her. “Jason, hold on, it fell all down the staircase. Let me pick this up.”
Good. It was still hot as the Sierra (Sierra or Sahara?) desert up there but sitting felt nice. The book was old. Really old. The pages were falling out and the spine was barely there. The cover was torn and covered in blotched sketches. A lot of the symbols I didn’t get but there was a peace sign.
The first page had ‘Continuing where I left off.’ A lot of the pages afterwards where impossible to read and smudged or completely torn out. But there was this weird thing with the dates. None of them were in order or made sense. The first one I could read was on July 28th, 1914. Was Grandpa alive then? That would make him 102, right? It must be one of his stories.
Dad always said Grandpa and Grandma were full of them. Dad told me a few of them like the one with the witch and the purple bell. Every time she rang it a cat would appear and help her with whatever was puzzling her. One day she fell in love with a young man travelling through the woods and wished to be with him forever and ever. She rang the bell for advice but the cat had no idea what love was. So she rang it again but that cat had no answer as well. She then rang it again and again and again but none of them could help her. The man left the forest never knowing she existed.
It’s kind of sad.
Anyway the journal entry was ruined. All I could make out was something about nearly hitting a car, sending down the wrong road. Then being chased by something? I don’t know. His handwriting didn’t help either. It’s worse than mine!
There was another entry for some day in 2077. It was mostly taking about scraping deals and weird pricing numbers that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
1870 said he met a monk in Africa saying he had three more lifetimes, then tapped his necklace. What does that even mean? Are their Monks in Africa? These must be his story notes or something.
“Jason!” Mom yelled my name, nearly make me crap my pants. Said she’d been trying to get my attention for ten minutes. Sure she was.
It had to be near ten o’clock at night before Mom would let me out. At least she had the good sense to get some water while we worked. You know what? We didn’t even put a dent in the place. Jeez.
Grandpa had moved to another room by that point. I think it was a dining room or was supposed to be one. It was covered in so much rotted fruit and crusty bowls that him eating a sandwich at it was downright disgusting.
I had the journal with me. I wanted to look through it some more, maybe even ask him about it. Now see, he was happy or very neutral about everything. Quiet.
My Mom was talking to him about all we got out. Well I got it out she just happened to get it down the stairs. I did all the work.
He took one look at me and I swear he had to have teleported. One second he was in his chair happy and the next he was up in my face across the room screaming about taking HIS property. I didn’t know he could move that fast!
He stole the journal from me and started throwing stuff at Mom and I. Whatever he could grab, breaking or shattering all over the place just to get us out of the house.
On the way home Mom was on the phone with Dad discussing a retirement home and rights of attorney to the shack he called a house. I think Dad was going to talk to Grandpa tomorrow.
It’s strange to have your whole life in-between pieces of paper. Even story ideas Grandpa was good at. Why not just post it online ad make a butt load of money? Make it last forever on the web.
8/11/2016
There was thunder all today but no rain or lightning. Dad had me tag along to help him move some jars of hot sauce his Grandma and Grandpa made when they were younger. Said they were the best burning feeling all down your throat I’d ever get. I’m sure he didn’t get the innuendo.
Grandpa was his normal self. He just sat there out on the porch, letting Dad walk up to him without a care. Dad made it clear that if he ever raised his voice to Mom again the nursing home was the least of Grandpa’s worries. “Just take what you came to get and go.” Grandpa answered him, not even looking at Dad. He was just staring up at the tree across the street.
Dad said some other stuff I didn’t catch and shoved his way into the house.
I wasn’t sure if Dad wanted me to follow so I just stood there on the bottom step half stepping up and half attempted to go back to the car.
“Ungrateful brat.” Grandpa spat. And for the first time he looked at me. Really looked at me. Jus
t studying me head to toe like we’ve never met before. It had to be a good ten seconds before he said. “You want something?”
“No.” was all I could say. I turned to go back to the car but Grandpa just laughed at me. “What’s so funny?”
“You.”
What kind of response was that? He’s crazy. He went off on this long drawn out thing about probability and making too many mistakes to fix his mistakes and just on and on about whatever he was spouting. All the while twisting his green rock necklace around in his hand, I wish it would have broke.
Dad came back, making me help him carry as many jars as we could to the car.
Grandpa never finished what he was saying. He just stopped as soon as Dad came back. Before we left though Grandpa finally gave Dad a time of day. “I’m sorry about your Mother.”
He was so sincere that when Dad answered him with “You never loved her Dad. I don’t want to hear it.” I had to be in shock, the same with Grandpa.
On the way home Dad blasted whatever radio station was clearest, which was the same five pop songs over and over, fuming. It wasn’t till we were almost home he explained Grandma adopted him without Grandpa's knowledge. Grandpa had been away for months and when he got back all covered in mud, two black eyes, and covered in bruises that all he had to say to Grandma was “It’s done.”
Dad said Grandpa must have had it in with the mob or some criminal organization cause after that day not even a single drug dealer set foot on their street for decades. Grandma had thought Grandpa was dead and yet one explanation later Dad was shoved in a broom closet for a few days.
He was three then and once Grandma opened the door to the closet everything had been fine for a while. But Dad never forgot that and as years passed and Grandma dying in some accident, all the love Grandpa had was gone.
Dad said it was the same day I was born.
I don’t know what to say to that.
Why would he tell me that?
Mom wasn’t happy when Dad got home. Grandpa wasn’t in a home yet. And she hated HATED hot sauce. I thought it tasted great. I took a few when Dad wasn’t looking. Grandpa had good taste.
8/12/16
I don’t know why I’m writing all this. Grandpa asked me today if I was a writer. I’m not. Up until recently anyway. I told him it felt like there was too much on my mind and just had to get it all out, it was all jumbled in my head. “But on the page it feels more real?” he asked.
I had no answer to that. He was right. I guess when I saw the way he was so protective of his journal, I got home and saw this old thing (that was the same tan color as his. Did he mean them to be matching?) on my bookshelf I just felt compelled to do something with it.
I don’t know.
I couldn’t sleep last night. Not well. Around 5 in the morning I left the house and headed to Grandpa’s. It was a long walk but I got there near 6. At least it felt like 6. He was up but he was as alert as I’ve ever seen him. I knocked once on the door and the thing flew open, he snatched me in, slamming the door behind him.
I tried to explain who I was but he knew already. I was named after him after all.
And He was waiting for me.
“You’ve arrived.” Drawing me inside, passed all the junk laying around, he needed help moving some chicken wire, and a stack of wooden barrels that he claimed were full of dragon’s teeth. I think he was joking but after what I saw next I’m not so sure.
Behind all this was the basement door, I didn’t even think this place had a basement. It didn’t seem like it. The stairs were covered in dust, just layers of it.
The floor above us was barely high enough for me, seeing him crotch at his age must have been murder. Unlike the rest of his house though, the basement was completely empty.
Almost.
In the corner was
This is crazy.
Maybe describing it will help? Just writing this makes it all so unreal.
It was a bucket seat they have on those oversized Ferris wheels. Sort of. There was a lot of exposed wires, Grandpa claims it’s not supposed to be like that but years of disrepair tends to show something’s true colors.. There were knobs, switches, an dials all over the inside of the thing. He opened the car door, motioning me to step in.
When I didn’t he got in first and started powering the thing up. It wasn’t loud. It was just a low buzzing sound and a few flickering colors. I thought it’d sound like a worn out diesel powered derby engine from the looks of it. By the time I stepped in, he shoved the door closed.
Like that it happened.
No warning.
No lapse in time.
Poof. Just poof and we were there.
We were no longer in the basement.
We were now outside, surrounded by trees, birds, plats everywhere, and a rush of a river just off a sloping waterfall juts to our right.
“Welcome to July 1st 1615, my boy.”
It had to be a trick, you don’t just show up in a forest and
Across from us bushes shifted just enough that Grandpa pointed my attention to it. There, three native Americans crotched as if in shock and awe. Grandpa called to them, in some language I’ve never heard before.
They didn’t seem to like that too much. Instead of awe, they raised their weapons, and rushed at us. Yelling war cries all the while. “Oops. Used a rival tribe’s dialect.” A few switches were flipped and we had returned to the basement.
“What just…what???” What could I say? It all happened so fast. A blink and it was gone.
“Jason. I’m a time traveler. I have many unexplained things I must share with you and I have very little time to show them to you.”
“This is impossible!” I thing I screamed in his face or something close to it. “Time travel is science fiction. You can’t just do it.”
“So what we saw was teleportation which is equally believable. Like the Philadelphia project.”
He had a point. Taking me away from the machine, we went back upstairs to his dining room. “It is not a perfect science that’s for sure. There are multiple ways to travel through time and all of them are dangerous.” He explained. “We always leave a footprint behind. There are pictures and cave drawings all over to prove it. Heck, I even made a few. Now some of them are in museums being glorified as some sort of human achievement.”
He was laughing, he was so lively that it was surreal to see him be anything but a bump on a log after all these years.
“If you’re ever in a bind and need to repair something head to the ten years before or ten years after the year 2000.”
“Why?” I had asked, sitting in a chair across from him.
He winked at me. “Cause technology was new and fresh in that period and far FAR less regulated. Today and after everything needs to be connected to some sort of network before it’ll even turn on for you.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong but I was just not with it with all that had happened.
He continued. “Also a word of advice: Never go back to kill Hitler.”
That got my attention. “He’s the most evil man in history! Why would you want to keep that waste of human being alive!?”
Grandpa sighed. “Cause I tried. Early on time travel was just a thing I could do. SO, I went back the moment he was rejected from art school. I held a gun to his head. I had no idea what he was saying but I think he was pleading for his life. I pulled the trigger. I swear I did. Multiple times. Yet every time my finger bared down on the trigger I felt a wave of nausea. Stars just decorated my vision and a feeling of weightless nothingness. It scared the pants off me. But I did steal all his money he had on him that day. I went to several other periods in his life time both as a child and when he was a heartless dictator. All the same. Sickness and fear plagued my very soul. It wasn’t till much later I realized what that was.”
“What?”
“Jason. Major events in history are there for a reason. Even if they are the most terrible people in existence. If I had shot
Hitler, what would our world be like if World War 2 didn’t happen like it did or at all?”
I tried to imagine it but I wasn’t ever really good at history so I just shrugged.
Grandpa shook his head. “Not only would it have been a paradox but life as we know it would cease to existence. I would no longer exist if I did it.”
He sent me on my way home after that. Said he needed to rest up for tomorrow. When I got home I locked myself in my room and started writing everything down here.
What does this all mean?
Could I change history?
As long as it’s not an important event could I change the outcome of something? Like a baseball game? Invent something before they are invented?
There’s too many possibilities to this!
8/13/16
I can’t believe Mom took my phone away!
All yesterday after work she went on and on wanting to know where I went yesterday morning. I told her it was none of her business! So she’s been making me do chores all day. It was SO HOT and rainy all freak’n day!!
Then she took my phone and said I’d get it back once I told her where I went.
THAT’S NOT FAIR!
It’s none of her business what I do on my own time. I asked where Dad was all day but she kept dodging the question by shoving whatever my next task was in my face. I had to have cleaned the whole house twenty times over by the time Dad came home for dinner.
I finally told her I went to see Max cause of the tough time she’s been going though. Mom said she didn’t realize I even saw her anymore after she ‘broke my heart’.
Dad didn’t talk much at dinner or the rest of the night. All he told Mom was “It’s done.”
I hope Grandpa is okay.
