"Now do you finally believe?" Elizabeth asked the still-awestruck Margaret who just nodded her agreement.

The revolving chair had been brought down to the ground. It was, as his grandfather's note had specified, just a prototype. Leo had found the small switch behind the display, which on pressing, slowly brought the chair down. There was some form of steam technology which had kept it afloat in the air. Though Leo did wonder how robust the technology must have been to have survived for a decade.

"But where is the real thing? Is there a real thing?" Leo whispered, almost to himself.

The chair wasn't an actual time machine. Margaret had been the first to try and verify it, immediately jumping on top of it and pressing a few buttons at random before Leo or Elizabeth could protest. Nothing had happened however, and even though all three of them had been disappointed by that, internally all of them had only one thought.

There must be an actual Time Machine somewhere then!

Of course it was possible that Grandfather had failed, that every thing in this laboratory of his was a prototype. But Leo didn't believe it, or rather he didn't want to believe in it.

"We should look through this entire area. Maybe Grandfather has hidden it somewhere. It has to be here!" Elizabeth said, almost in a frenzy. It seemed she was thinking the same thing Leo was.

And so they split up. Margaret went towards the northern part of the lab, Leo towards the south and Elizabeth took on the east and west. It was decided that after about an hour they would meet back up near the door of the lab.

The southern part of the laboratory was quite dusty, as could be expected from a place abandoned for a decade. There were rows and rows of books on quantum physics, mathematics and even some on chemistry. Leo absent-mindedly looked over the titles, not knowing what he was looking for but sure that he would know when he found it.

He didn't however. There was truly nothing but books in the southern part of the lab, not even diagrams or boards with formulas written by Grandfather. Disappointed, Leo ambled over to the doorway much before an hour was up and sat down. He had much to think about, much to distract himself from the disappearance of his mother.

For starters, the chair. It had the words "Prototype 134" written on it. If so, then where were the 133 prototypes previously? And in fact, where were the ones after this one? This wasn't the actual time machine, then why had Grandfather put this up as a display?

And where was the real Time Machine?

Leo debated within himself, but wasn't able to find any satisfying answer to any of his queries. He was still debating uselessly with himself, when he heard footsteps and looked up to see Elizabeth and Margaret approach. From the looks on their faces, Leo surmised that they hadn't found the Time Machine either.

"Well?"

"No luck. Nothing in the center of the lab at least. What about you?"

"Just useless books." Leo turned towards Margaret, who seemed oddly quiet.

When she noticed him staring, she turned away for a second before answering, "I found something."

"A Time Machine?!" Both Leo and Elizabeth almost jumped on her in excitement.

"No, no. That's why I was hesitant, I knew you would react like that."

"What did you find?"

Margaret reached inside the pocket of her jeans and took out a small piece of paper.

"A letter, or rather something akin to a letter. What we found near the Third Cross."

"What is written on there?" Memories of his mother came back, but Leo suppressed them, trying to turn his thoughts elsewhere.

Margaret sighed. Then she opened the piece of paper and began reading:

-Ah how stupid I have been. How could I have forgotten? Am I truly growing senile? Why would I keep making machines that I knew wouldn't-couldn't- succeed?

I have no excuse. Einstein had the excuse of being the first to discover something previously unknown. And yet I? When I have seen everything? Yet I kept making those bloody useless machines? Have I really fallen so low, is the power of popular culture really that strong? This will be my last one. And I will keep it always as a memento to my hubris, to my stupidity.

And now finally, the real work begins.

There was an oppressive silence once Margaret had finished.

"What do you think he means?" She asked quietly after a while.

Elizabeth sighed and went to the door, leaning against it. "I don't know. Like the last letter, I believe the only one who can answer what those letters mean is already long dead. But to me it sounds like the ramblings of a mad man."

"Do you think this means he stopped work on the Time Machine?" Margaret asked hesitantly.

Stolen story; please report.

"I don't think so," Leo answered. He had been thinking about the words in the letters, both letters, carefully.

"If you combine this letter with the one we found in the third cross, both mention something, some object that Grandfather is building. In the previous letter, there was the its still not near completion and in this one it is the real work begins. I believe this has to be the Time Machine. Nothing else makes sense."

"But why would he call himself a fool then? And he called this his last one."

Leo pondered the question for a while, his head hanging down. There was an explanation, but it was so wild that he was hesitant to even say it out loud.

Argh to hell with it.

"Well, it may be that Grandfather found something out, something intrinsic that had been missing from it's previous prototypes. Or maybe something was wrong with each one of his previous prototypes that was quite obvious in hindsight."

"What do you mean?" Margaret asked, cocking her head.

"Well, think about it. The word that jumps out the most to me in that piece of paper to me is popular culture. Grandfather says that he was swayed by the power of popular culture. And now think about the shape of that chair. It is exactly in the shape we would expect a time machine to be, so much so that we didn't even question what it was as soon as we saw it. Popular culture has trained our brains to immediately recognise what a time machine should look like. But is that right? Is that really how a real machine would look like? Well, seemingly in Grandfather's own words, it is not. He was similarly misled, and he made at least a hundred prototypes following a preconceived notion of what a time machine should look like. And that was the wrong path to follow. All I am getting from this piece of paper is that Grandfather abandoned his research to build a time machine following popular culture, not that he abandoned it all together."

"You mean the time machine could be in any shape or form around us?" Elizabeth asked hesitantly.

Leo nodded. "It is also another reason we may have not found it yet. We have been looking for a time machine, but we have been looking for a machine which follows the rules of time machines we know of in books or films. We are looking for a Back to The Future car or a H.G Wells chair, when in reality we have no basis to assume that a machine capable of travelling through time would have any conventional shape at all."

"That is not helpful though," Margaret said, her forehead creased in a frown. "If the time machine can be any shape, even those that we cannot comprehend, then how is it ever possible to find it? After all the time machine could be a rock on the shore of the ocean. There are millions of such rocks, we can never hope to test all of them. And that's just for rocks."

Leo didn't respond. He didn't have a proper counterargument to that.

"There must be some hint here though." Elizabeth said slowly, turning around and looking at the lab. "If Grandfather succeeded in building the time machine, surely he would have some sort of indication as to it's location somewhere here."

Leo sat down on the floor, deep in thought. Elizabeth was right, there should be maps or diagrams or something related to how the time machine looked like, since if Grandfather had built it then he must have used some guidance to maintain it's shape. But there was nothing at all in the entire laboratory. The only drawings were a few mathematical figures he was too stupid to understand, the structural diagram of the mansion in the middle of the island, and some other plans of the lab itself.

"We should start going. It's about to be dark soon." Elizabeth said suddenly, standing upright. Margaret nodded, and after a while Leo reluctantly stood up. He kept feeling that he was missing something, something very obvious and clear but he wasn't quite able to put his finger on it.

"Come on Leo, we'll return tomorrow again." Margaret said gently, pulling on his arm. Leo looked back to see Elizabeth had already left through the door. With one last wistful look at the laboratory, Leo followed.

The journey back seemed to pass much faster. Whether it was because they knew the way now, or because their minds were occupied by the mystery of the time machine. It took them barely an hour from when they left the laboratory to reach above ground and even see the looming mansion in the distance.

Elizabeth had been right. The sun was almost touching the horizon, and the dusky glow of evening had spread throughout the island. The three of them quickened their pace through the small jungle behind the mansion, not wanting to be outside after dark. Especially with a killer on the loose.

When they reached the doors of the mansion, the sun had set. The remainder of it's light wasn't enough to fully light up the mansion, which stood ominously in the shadows. Slowly, the three of them went inside.

The mansion was unusually silent. Perhaps not unusual considering only the twins were there at the time. But still Leo felt a chill run down his back. Something was not quite right. He looked at Elizabeth and Margaret, and they seemed to be echoing his thoughts.

"It's too quiet. Even for the twins." Elizabeth said, and then with unspoken agreement, the three of them ran up the stairs. The twins' rooms were on the second floor and within a minute all three of them had reached there.

Still nothing.

The eerie quiet and darkness seemed to permeate through the entirety of the second floor.

Leo gulped and stepped forward. Passing in front of William's room, he closed his eyes trying to forget the horrific sight inside. Soon he came near Henry's room which was beside William's. The door was shut, so Leo quietly rapped on it.

"Henry, are you there?"

No answer.

Leo looked back towards Elizabeth and Margaret who were right behind him now. Elizabeth shrugged, while Margaret made a pushing gesture with her hands.

Leo looked back the door. Yes, Margaret was right, the door was unlocked. Slowly, Leo pushed it open.

Henry was standing in the middle of the room.

No, that wasn't quite right.

Henry's corpse was standing upright in the middle of the room, handing from the ceiling through a rope tied to his hand. His dead eyes stared ahead with fear. A knife was sticking out of his throat, having pierced completely through. Leo wanted to stumble back, wanted to scream, wanted to do anything, but he was paralysed again, watching Henry's corpse slowly rotate on it's fulcrum.

"Wh-" Elizabeth was next in, and she was rendered speechless. Not paralysed though, for she immediately pulled Leo back and shut the door before Margaret could see what's inside.

"So Henry is....?"

Elizabeth nodded gravely. A sudden sound of footsteps caused all of them to look towards the stairs.

Charles stood there, his eyes empty, vacant but with a glimmer of something else inside.

Something insidious.