Chapter Fourteen

why are you here

i made this for my oc book and i really like the way it turned out so here's an annaliese aesthetic

"Sounds like insanity to me." Franziska snorted after I finished regaling her with the adventures in time travelling form the night before.

Before we had left the woods last night, we agreed that we would all meet up with them again on Saturday morning to unravel the mystery behind why that cave has a thirty-three-year time portal inside it. Ulrich, Beck and Zacharias had all agreed to stay inside the cave. Bartosz and Magnus had gone back to bring them blankets and sleeping bags. Under no circumstances were they to be seen by anybody in Winden, lest they be recognized.

"Franz, I'm telling the truth." I said, slamming the metal door of my locker closed "You think I'd make this up? Especially with what's happening to Bartosz?"

Bartosz had been indefinitely suspended while the investigation and trail were formally taking place. The poor boy was going insane, stuck at home with his parents all the time. It wasn't any easier for me, my father taking over for Aleksander at the power plant and my mom's commute to Frankfurt often left me in the house alone, only ever seeing my parents a few minutes each day.

"It just doesn't sound very feasible to me."

"Trust me, it's very feasible." A chipper voice sounded form behind Franziska as the eldest Nielsen siblings made their presence known

"We saw them ourselves." Magnus said, wrapping a lanky arm around my shoulders

"How high were you?" The redhead scoffed

"You're one to talk." Magnus shot back

"Listen, Franziska. We know you have contacts. The kind of people who could really help us right now." I insisted "We need you."

"We need everybody's hands on deck for this." Martha put in "The group of us have been friends since kindergarten. We have to do this. For Bartosz."

Franziska closed her locker door, obviously deep in thought. After she stared at the floor for a minute, mulling over the pros and cons, I'm sure (or maybe ways to kill us), she turned to me to deliver her final decison.

"Fine. For Bartosz."

"For Bartosz!"

___

As young Zacharias Kruspe wandered around modern day Winden, he realized that this was a town where nothing really changed. The Nielsen house still had the same harsh brick exterior, and the Kahnwald house still had the same red paint, although now it looked like the pant job was falling into a bit of disrepair.

Claudette Landers no longer lived in the same brick townhouse. As he walked past, he could see a family with two young girls through the bay window. The sight filled the teenage boy with a feeling of melancholy, like when he'd found out that Lemmy from Motorhead had died by this point in time. Zacharias and Beck had always thought that Lemmy would live forever.

In a way, it pained Zacharis to see that Beck and Lea had taken the Kruspe family home as their own. He always thought that he and Claudette would be the ones to settle in the house. Slowly opening the creaky gate, the boy crept into the backyard, which was in various stages of disarray.

A bright pink penny board that Annaliese had first used to learn how to skateboard was lying forgotten near a thriving tomato plant, the smallest barbeque Zacharias had ever seen sat on a dodgy looking wooden deck. A pale blue metal table was on a patch of grass near the deck, everything clearly hastily moved to make space for a circular hot tub. In the back corner, a canvas tarp was covering a large object. Trying not to disturb whatever was underneath, the eighteen-year-old carefully removed the tarp, gazing at the classic truck below.

"Holy crap."

This was the very truck that had once been his father's. When Heinz and Prudence Kruspe had moved to the Alps, the Sergeant had left the classic truck sitting in the garage. A twenty-nine-year-old Zacharis then took it upon himself to fix it up. A passion project. Something he was still working on with his niece four years before he vanished. Now the truck was finished, done in a striking pine colour. It had been driven very few times but had won awards in multiple classic cars shows.

Zacharias was debating taking the truck for a drive when he was a rustling behind the blinds on the screen door. Panicking, the boy threw the tarp over the truck and dipped behind the shed.

The screen door opened, and present-day Beck Kruspe walked into the backyard, clearly ready to go into the hot tub, a confused expression on his face when he took in the current haphazard state of the tarp. Muttering under his breath, the man went to go fix the tarp, unaware that the physical embodiment of his brother from a better time was slipping out the back gate.

___

After school, we went to see our time travelling friends, bringing Jonas and Franziska with us. Albeit begrudgingly, Franz had talked to some of her contacts and managed to get burner phones for Beck and Ulrich. Beck and Zacharias were going to have to share. The redhead expressly told them that the burner phones were to contact us in emergencies only.

"You gonna teach us how to use this thing?" Beck frowned

Franziska rolled her eyes, snatching the flip phone from Beck "To call us, click the button to go to the phone book and click on our number. If for some reason we want to call you, open the phone and click this green key here."

"Makes enough sense, I guess." Ulrich shrugged

Grabbing an air horn from my bag, I tried to get everybody's attention. It worked. Air horns tend to do that.

"Listen up! We need to create a list of everything we know so far." I began "Bartosz's next court date is in three weeks. Basically, we have until then to prove he didn't do it. Otherwise we go forward to a higher court in Berlin."

"So, what do we know?" Bartosz asked sadly

I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and clicked open a black gel pen. "We know that this cave" I jabbed my pen in the direction of the cave opening "Can take us back thriy-three years into the past. We need a closer look at the door in the cave. We also know that it works both ways."

Zacharias frowned "Wait, a door?"

"We didn't touch no door!" Beck defended

"Let's look into that." Jonas encouraged "We can try travelling back with and without the door."

"When we travelled, there was some sort of blue dust." Ulrich said

Quickly scratching that down, I heard Magnus speak up beside me. "Did the cave shake when the dust fell?"

"I think so" Beck nodded "We had trouble standing up."

"We have to try that again." Bartosz insisted "Cover every angle."

"We will." I tried to soothe the boy "In either timeline, did we notice anybody new. On all the small-town murder shows, whoever that ends up being is always suspect numero uno."

The three boys from the eighties stopped goofing around and shot each other worried glances, talking in hushed tones. Franziska worriedly pulled out her phone, scrolling through the picture's gallery.

"Do you guys know something?" Martha said quietly

Beck sighed. "A few weeks ago, a new preacher came to town. He was really odd, went everywhere in his hat and robes. We didn't think anything of it, but then Ulrich's brother went missing and we found Zacharias' body from the future at the caves."

Franziska held her breath. "A few days ago, my sister was approached by a man in reacher's robes. She's deaf, and he knew how to talk to her in sign language. It really freaked my mom out. This is the police sketch."

The boys looked at Franziska's phone.

"That's him." Ulrich confirmed.

I peered over the redhead's shoulder to get my own look at the police sketch. Pulling out my phone, I showed Franz the zoomed in version of the shot from the night Heidi died.

"I think he's our guy. We're going to 1986."

the ending is kinda weak but i do like this chapter