WELCOME|ESTERWELL, NY

The Wanderer

The kindergarteners in Miss Quirke's class were all gathering in a group underneath the giant T-Rex skeleton in the main hall of the museum filling it with their chatter and random bursts of laughter. As far as they were concerned it had been a great day, and the mad science exhibit at the Museum of Natural History was probably one of the coolest things they have ever seen! The only one who didn't seem to be enjoying herself very much at the moment was their teacher Miss Aislinn Quirke, as she tried and failed to get the proper headcount of the wriggling excited little five year olds. "Let's see let's see, 17, 18..." she sighed and called out, "Nicholas do not put your head in the fountain please, and remember hold on tight to your partner's hand." with her finger poised in the air, and the heavy glasses drifting down the narrow bridge of her nose, Miss Quirke continued her count, the wild hair framing her face only seeming to grow more fizzy with worry. "19...." while the frown deepened on her lips and she finally realized which one of her little ducklings was missing. "Sarah sweetie, have you seen Malachai? You and him were supposed to be partners today." when the little girl blinked and looked down at her hand as if she was just as surprised he was not there holding it, she shook her head, large cornflower blue eyes going as round as saucers, just on the brink of filling with tears.

"I-I'm sorry Miss Quirke, I don't know where he is." she almost sobbed but managed to contain it when the comforting hand of her teacher gently pat her back.

"It's okay sweetheart, sometimes it's hard to remember to hold onto someone's hand when everything is so new and exciting." despite the sweet sounding comfort in her voice, she was beginning to grow more and more worried, the thousand things that could have happened rushing to crowd her thoughts as her eyes flitted frantically across the great hall of the museum looking for the lost little boy.

Finally she turned to the parent volunteer who seemed busy keeping a group of small chattering boys away from the giant T-Rex bones, "Kristen can you keep the kids here in a line, we seem to be missing Malachai." she stated chewing on her lower lip as the woman arched her brow in surprise and confusion.

"Mali? But he is usually such a sweet boy and so.. safety-conscious." she stated a furrow growing on her forehead, "Sure I can stay here with them." she assured noting the teachers worry.

With that Miss Quirke swept away from the group and went to retrace their steps, hoping she would find him in one of the places they had been. Panic was starting to set in when he wasn't with the mountain lions and mammoths nor with the pharaohs in their decadent tombs surrounded by Egyptian symbols and pottery. Her steps quickened and her heart rate started to soar as she exited that room and finally made her way into the mad science exhibit, already imagining men in trench coats having gotten a hold of the little boy with bribes of ice cream and candy. Or worse, imagining him slipping away back through the doors and wandering into the street where busses and cars rushed past without seeming to pay much attention to the pedestrians filling the sidewalks. She could almost hear the screech of brakes and the loud crash of huge steel plates slamming together when she finally spotted little Malachai standing transfixed in front of the recreation of the Esterwell labs. "Malachai!" she gasped skidding into a crouch and frantically checking him over for injury, she was after all still almost certain something horrible had happened. When she finally reassured herself that he was all in one piece and the sounds of screeching brakes and booming crashing noises faded back into her imagination, she opened her mouth to scold him, but then she noticed the look on his face and something in it made her pause.

Malachai was staring so intently at the strange machine that filled the back of the laboratory that he seemed to have barely noticed her presence, and in that moment his eyes could only be described as... an old man's peering through a little boy's face. Then he blinked and seemed to come into himself again, the sweet easy smile he usually wore touching his lips again as he burst out with a happy sounding "Hi Miss Quirke." Then looked about himself with amall lost frown on his lips. "Where is the rest of the class? It's not safe to be alone in a big public place." he chirped repeating her words to him earlier "Someone could get...." Miss Quirke smiled gently as she watched his attention once again get stolen by the exhibit.

Reaching down she took Malachai's hand into her own and looked at the exhibit with him, noting the strangeness of the device and the creepy Victorian feel of the lab itself. In her opinion they had done a great job recreating it, right down to the knick knacks and pictures on the desk. "Malachai?" she asked softly, watching as the little boy returned his attention to her, "Do you want to hear the story of Mr. Esterwell?" with a grin the boy nodded eagerly giving her hand a little squeeze in the process, and she couldn't help but smile herself. He was after all such a sweet child, and she appreciated a love of learning and a curiosity for the world.

"Back in 1891 Mr. Jonathan Esterwell was a famous inventor working with Thomas Edison to create the power plants that were needed to light up the whole city of New York. He and Edison were a great pair, and both of them did great things together, but eventually Mr. Esterwell started to, umm well, go a little crazy. You see he believed that with Edison's electricity he could build a machine that would not only take him back in time, but to other dimensions as well and everyone told him such things were impossible and simply could not be done, but he swore he would try. In the end his life was consumed by this one goal. Twenty years later in 1912 his machine was finished and he packed it up and took it to Harvard to show the other scientists and inventors what he had made. Everyone was a buzz with excitement, though no one really believed that it could be done, but still they were curious to see this machine that Esterwell had been working on."

Pointing at the machine in the lab she smiled down to Malachai who was listening to her with rapt attention, "That was it right there, a biiig metal thing with lots of knobs and doohickeys shaped sort of like a giant sewing machine.

When the other scientists saw the machine they were very impressed, though unsure as to how it was supposed to have worked, even after it was explained by Mr. Esterwell using very complicated words and theories, about time travel and multiple dimensions and ideas that did not yet exist. Still when he powered it up they all held their breath and waited for something to happen, and just to show them that he was willing to take any risk to prove that his invention, not only worked but was safe, he stood under the nozzle thing there." she said pointing to it.

"Everyone held their breath as a beautiful electric blue light started to expand like a giant glowing bubble around him growing wider and wider with each passing moment bright light streaking beautifully over the surface, until finally steam started shooting out of the joints and the whole machine started vibrating." she paused there and raised her brow at Malachai.. "And can you guess what happened next?" she asked and for his part the little boy's eyes widened and he exclaimed.

"He went to visit another world!" he shouted wiggling a little in place at the idea. "and there were monsters and fairies and dinosaurs!" he added. "And I bet he even met a werewolf, and a faun!"

The teacher chuckled softly and reached down to smooth his wild little curls, "You have quite an imagination Malachai, and that would have been really neat, but unfortunately his machine didn't work at all. Suddenly a bolt flew loose and the beautiful circle of light disappeared and poor Mr. Esterwell was still standing right where he had been with his hair all sticking up and messy from the static electricity in the room. All of the scientists laughed at him and called him a phony and he left Harvard very much in disgrace." Her nose wrinkled at that not liking the idea of taunting someone for their life's work, even if it did seem impossible.

"After that day no one ever saw or heard from Mr. Esterwell again. Some say he died, and other say he just wandered away and got lost somewhere, but to this day no one knows for sure, but!" She added wanting to end the story on a happy note. "His theories about space and time are still some of the most advanced there are, even Einstein cited them in his great works."

Mali scrunched up his face at that and let his teacher lead him away from the exhibit with a "Come on Mali, we have to go and catch up with the rest of the class. We wouldn't want to get left behind." but as he walked away the boy said something very curious, that Aislinn almost didn't hear.

"He's not dead... and he's not lost. I would know if he was lost." She might have passed it off as just a flight of fancy or imagination if he did not have that same strange look in his eyes as before. For some reason, the words made her shiver a little bit but she quickly brighten when she saw Kristen waiting there with the rest of her class looking as relived as she had felt.

"Here we are Mrs. Davis, sorry that took so long!"

When Malachai and Miss Quirke left the room, the little electric lights flicked off after them to conserve power but something strange happened in the Mr. Esterwell's lab exhibit that the museum staff could never quite explain. The old gramophone seemed to switch on by itself, and the eerie sounds of a old song began to fill the hall skipping stuck on the same few lyrics, "They call me The Wanderer, yeah I'm The Wanderer, I roam around around around around...." no one knew how that record got there or why it suddenly started playing but most of them passed it off as a simple joke.

By Alec Damondred