Thread of Time

The instruments of progress, cruel and unyielding, chiseled away at the ancient of thought, much like a second-hand will erode the fragile contours of the soul. Though Edgar Allan Poe, master of melancholy, had passed long before the modern world awakened to its technological horrors, his mind had danced upon the precipice of such uncanny revelations.

Familiar he was with the Daguerreotype, a grim, silent reflection of reality, where shadows were trapped, lifeless, upon silver plates. In the years after his departure from this mortal coil, other specters–actors, the hollow marionettes of performance would attempt to invoke his spectral presence upon the silver screens of the early 20th century.

Among these shadows of men stood one who eclipsed all others—Samuel Story, an actor whose very name carried an unsettling sense of destiny. His features, sharp as a raven’s beak, bore the pallor of long-departed ghosts, and his voice, though seldom heard, echoed like a forgotten wind across the desolate moors of human imagination. In silence, he moved, as did all in those early films, the flicker of motion betraying the illusion of life, as though the actors were phantoms, tethered to a dim and fading existence.

On the night in question—oh, that dreadful night!—Samuel Story took to the sound stage, a place that had long been his battleground and sanctuary. The role was none other than that of Poe himself, the tormented poet whose life had played out in tragedy. A prop door, simple in construction, was to serve as a symbol of transition–from one reality into another, from life to the unknown.

And it was there, in front of that infernal contraption—the camera, the all-seeing eye of modernity—that Samuel Story’s fate became sealed. With solemnity, he approached the prop door, his hand trembling as it grasped the handle. There was a hesitation–a moment in which the air seemed to thicken, shadows deepen, and time recoiled. He stepped through the door, his figure passing beyond the frame in a single motion.

Yet, what should have been an exit into the next scene became something altogether more sinister. When the camera’s mechanical eye blinked its final shutter, and the crew awaited Story’s return, he did not appear. The director, camera operator, and co-stars remained stunned silent, the clicking of the camera’s film rolls flicking, but the actor had vanished–his departure not merely from the sound stage but from the very fabric of reality itself. The door, that accursed door, remained affixed in place, an inanimate witness to the inexplicable. No one could explain how or why, but Samuel Story had stepped through and, like a whisper lost to the wind, had vanished into eternity.

But as inexplicable as his disappearance had been, the world was unprepared for his return. In 2023, Virginia City, an old mining town steeped in legend and the lingering spirits of a bygone era to which Samuel Story reemerged. He appeared as though he had walked out of another century, his clothes as immaculate as they had been the afternoon he vanished. Dapper, poised, and dressed in the fashion of Poe himself, Story’s figure cut through the modern age like a specter lost in time. His dark frock coat, slightly frayed at the edges but still regal, flapped gently in the cool mountain breeze, and the air around him seemed to shift, heavy with the weight of things forgotten.

Witnesses, astonished and wide-eyed, stood rooted to the dusty streets, their voices caught in their throats. There he was, as though plucked from a silent film, his skin pale, his eyes shadowed with a timeless melancholy. It was as if he had never aged a single day in the one hundred and nine years he had been absent.

What secrets, then, did Samuel Story carry? What strange and unspeakable horrors had he encountered behind that door, beyond the veil of the world he once knew?

His silence was more unnerving than any words he might have spoken, and his presence, though mortal, felt disturbingly unreal. The echoes of Poe’s tormented soul seemed to cling to him as though the actor and the poet were now inseparable, their fates intertwined in some dark cosmic tapestry.

No one would disclose his secret as Samuel Story strolled through the street–a living paradox, a man out of time, and a mystery unsolved.