A Traveler in Time
A journalist investigates the claims of Heinrich Vanderkamp, an eccentric recluse who insists he has built a working time machine. What begins as a skeptical assignment becomes something far stranger as Vanderkamp reveals he has already traveled to 1650s New Amsterdam, where he encountered a Dutch woman named Anna Van Tromp. But the past offered no escape from his present troubles, particularly his fractured relationship with his sister Julie. When Vanderkamp ultimately abandons his life entirely, journeying deeper into time, his sister is left to face the consequences. The story culminates in a haunting twist that suggests some journeys through time cannot be undone, and the past continues to echo in ways no one anticipated. Derleth's 1950s tale is a melancholy meditation on escape, loss, and the way our choices reverberate across the fabric of time itself, a strange, sad science fiction story that lingers long after the final page.
