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that last time. It’s been sitting there… ready… for years.”
    It took a while to get the fire going. Some of it was damp and mouldy, but after removing the worst of it, the fire took well. Soon the shack was lit up and warm.
    Rudy showed me around, commenting on many of the things in his house. There were only three rooms. The main living room, a small bedroom, and a storage cupboard at the back that stank of rotten food. It would take some cleaning up, but with a little work the place could be liveable again.
    In the main living room there was an old sofa, a small desk pushed in one corner, and a bookshelf crammed full of old books and papers.
    “The Professors diary is in there, on the top. I read it a while after he left. I felt guilty, but I wanted to know what he was thinking. You may want to read it. It’s… strange… but it explains a little about why he was mad I think. The bits from when he was in London weren’t that interesting, but the few entries he made when he moved to the country are interesting.”
    I nodded, moving on to look at the large grandfather clock stood in one corner, motionless. The time was stuck at half past four. Dust caked the top and the glass, and the wood was dry and cracked. It was still a beautiful thing.
    “It stopped working a while after I died.” His voice was quiet, “Needs winding up every week or so. The chimes don’t work, but the tick of the clock is nice. “
    He was silent for a moment. “It could do with cleaning up a little. I never got round to restoring it properly, didn’t have anything to clean it with. Would you mind winding it up? It’s the turnkey at the back.”
    I did as he asked, and started the pendulum swinging. Soon the quiet tick, tick of the clock broke the silence.
    “I used to sit in here a lot, reading.  Adler liked to walk a lot, but I preferred to stay in here. The sound of that clock was quite relaxing.”
    “The professor didn’t stay here much?”
    “Yes, he did, most evenings anyway. He spent most of the day wandering around, and he slept outside, up the slope, behind the shack a short way is an overhanging in the rock. He had a camp there. There’s not much there now though. I brought most of it back down here, after he left.”
    “I see. I’ll have a look up there later, after I’ve got my stuff in here.”
    Searching though the bookshelf, I could see it held mostly classic old tales and several copies of the same thesis book by the professor. Duplicates of the books I found in the bus.
    “There is a mountain of books of all kinds, mostly rotten, over in the junkyard. You’ve probably seen it. I used to pick up some whenever I went back there hunting for stuff.” He pointed at the bookshelf. “That’s where most of this came from.”
    Later that day I did read the professor’s diary, at least the last few entries that he had written before he arrived in this place. I decided to put the pages inside my journal, in case they become useful at some point.
    Professor Adler’s Diary
    Below are the last entries in the diary of Professor John Adler of Temperance, Northamptonshire, before his arrival in this other place.
    March 20 th , 1922
    It is the first day of spring, and it is a time of the year I always love. The snow, which back when I was boy would still be melting even now, is long gone. I think the weather must be changing over the years.
    As I walk the lanes of the country, how I love to do in the afternoons now the weather is turning finer, I see all the first signs of the year to come. The flowers are beginning to bloom, small animals are flitting about, collecting food or materials to build their little nests with, and there’s that crisp, pungent smell in the air.
    It is nice at least, that the weather has turned, so that I may take a break from writing my memoirs. They are a joy that I would not set aside for long, but it is, as I heard some of the younger, modern thinking artists say, at my last seminar,