Time Rifter 1:
Heather Gwyneth Wellsworth
TRFC (Time Rifter First Class)

"Now, you do what Mr. Bickles says, Gwynnie," Mr. Wellsworth warned his only daughter, "and don't go near that museum storage room."

     "What's in there, Daddy-W?" Heather Gwyneth Wellsworth knew her father telling her 'no' was like telling her 'yes'. It would simply be too much for her to resist.

     Mr. Bickles, the curator of the Baltimore Museum of History, coughed and pointed down a side hall to an old wooden door. "That first door is where we're storing the artifacts for the upcoming Jewish Holocaust exhibit. Admittance is strictly by invitation of the museum staff." He gave Heather a glare that would have been right at home on Satan's face. "And that won't be happening anytime soon."

     "That's fine with me, Mr. Bickles," Heather said, slipping her hands behind her knee-length skirt while rocking on her feet.

     Mr. Wellsworth and Mr. Bickles strolled toward the main hall filled with artifacts of the current History of World War II exhibit. That left Heather free to dash down the side hall to the storage room door. She arrived and stared up at a sign showing an open door inside a circle with a line drawn through it at an angle. Under the drawing it read in big, bold letters, "Absolutely No Admittance. And that goes double if you're under fourteen."

     "On December 21," she said out loud, "just a few days from now, you'll be twelve, Heather." Heather always talked to herself while solving problems-as long as no one else was around. "Surely they don't mean physical age … the number of years since birth. Why, last year your fifth-grade teacher, Miss Gagglesnod, said you were so intelligent that in a crowd of older students you'd stand out like a dolphin in a school of tuna. And a museum is a place of intelligence, not age. So," she glanced up the hall to discover it empty, and then turned back to the sign again, "it can't refer to you, Heather. You're older than your years."

     She reached for the doorknob and turned it.

     "Gwynnie!"

     After jumping three inches off the floor, she spun around. The door remained closed behind her, and her father stood down at the end of the hall with both fists rammed into his hips.

     Heather blinked the fear out of her eyes. "By Saint George's dragon, Daddy-W, you scared me nearly to death."

     "What did we tell you about that room?"

     Heather started to answer, but stopped when she heard Mr. Bickles' voice echo from around the corner. She couldn't understand his words, but relief calmed her when her father disappeared from sight.

     "Now's your chance, Heather. Get on in there and see what they're hiding."

     Without wasting another second, she opened the door, stepped in, and closed it behind her. A musty smell invaded her nose so fast it almost made her sneeze. The windows against the far wall, even though their blinds were drawn, filtered in enough light to see fairly well.

     Mounds of stuff seemed to sprout everywhere. An old desk rested closest to her, piled high with ancient-looking books and pamphlets. A three-candle candelabrum seemed to sprout from the desk's scratched surface, and a brass six-pointed Star-of-David teetered against an uneven stack of books.

     Heather tiptoed to the desk and discovered faded and time-darkened books with many flowery-frayed threads of cloth sprouting from the tops and bottoms of their spines. Picking up one, she sniffed it. The musty smell haunting the air doubled forcing her nose to wrinkle and her head to shake as she dropped the book.

     Heather eased farther inside the room and halted between two racks of clothing. On one rack hung gray, long-sleeved uniform tops, and as she flipped through them, she noticed each donned a big, yellow Star-of-David sewn onto it.

     Then she picked up a photograph of someone's arm. On the lower part of the arm a tattoo stretched across it featuring six numbers. "By Saint George's dragon, Heather, what is all this stuff? What was the Holocaust anyway?"

     Standing at the end of the rack facing the door she had entered, Heather knew her father and Mr. Bickles would soon lumber in and yank her away. "You've got to move faster, Heather, if you want to see more."

     She waded deeper into the piles of artifacts. Something darted in from her left.

     "Excuse me!" bellowed a scratchy voice, just before a body slammed into Heather knocking her down.

     "Hey!" Heather yelled, after sprawling on the floor. Without looking at the figure, she sat up and straightened her skirt.

     "Tough luck, kid-o, but you were in the way."

     When Heather glanced in the direction of the voice, she let out a scream. Its owner bolted over to her and covered her mouth with what appeared to be a hand, though it was blue, leathery, and slimy.

     "Yuck!" Heather blurted.