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Meanwhile in 2019, Jonas Kahnwald, Martha Nielsen and Fransizka Doppler traipsed through the woods, looking for any sign of the elusive murderous preacher. The sky overhead darkened. ready to rain down on the teenagers. They'd been hiking for over an hour, still finding nothing.
"Maybe we should turn back." Jonas wondered
"We can't give up, Jonas." Martha said "For Heidi and Bartosz."
The trio continued walking until a building was clearly visible in the distance. A cabin. Perfect hiding place for a time-traveling murderer. Pushing a tree branch out of the way so they could head up the driveway, Fransizka turned to the others. "This is my grandfather's cabin. We didn't want to sell it, but he's in a home now. Nobody ever comes here."
"Sounds like a great hiding spot." Jonas mused "Do you have a key?"
Franz snorted "Do I have a key"
"Do you?" Martha asked again
"Yes." Fransizka sighed "Yes, I have a key."
The redhead unlocked the front door and the three teens nervously proceeded inside. The lights didn't turn on, so sight was slightly limited and nobody knew what was waiting inside Helge Doppler's cabin.
"Jonas, you head down that hallway and Martha and I will stay here." Franziska whispered, pointing down a darkened hallway
"Why am I going alone?" Jonas wondered aloud
"Because you're a big strong man." Fransizka joked
"We all know i'm not" Jonas fired back
While the Doppler girl continued to argue with Jonas, Martha proceeded into the dark living room, guided by the flashlight on her salmon pink iPhone. Her white converse trailed muddy footprints in areas where they should have kicked up dust. Somebody had been here. The Nielsen girl carefully moved the wrought iron grate from where it sat in front of the fireplace. The room no longer smelt like burnt wood, a trademark scent of Winden winters, but the ash was still fresh, staining Martha's fingers as she sifted through the burnings to see if she could find anything hinting at the preacher or his identity.
Fransizka took the kitchen. She ran her fingers along the table, stirring up a line of dust, but stopping when she realized that part of the table had been wiped down, freed of it's dusty shroud. Curious, the redhead turned to look at the fridge. It wasn't making the telltale buzz that refrigerators tend to do, and when she opened it, it was both empty and cold. No rotting food smell anywhere.
The sink wasn't clean. At least, not the kind of clean that the Doppler's had left it as. No, this sink looked clean, but underneath the trap, old vegetables were caked to the drain, and other parts of the bottom of the stainless steel appliance.
Both girls spoke at the same time.
"Someone's been here."
Jonas Kahnwald found nothing out of sorts in the bedrooms or down the rest of the hallway. Bored and useless, the boy headed outside, preparing to check any creepy basement or outbuilding he might find. The boy stayed as close as he could to the wall as he inched along the perimeter of the cabin, stopping abruptly when he heard the clang of his foot against something. Looking down, he found himself staring at what looked like a cellar door, done up in a very heavy duty padlock.
"Guys!" he shouted "You might want to come see this!"
The two girls dropped what they had been doing, rushin out the back door to see Jonas kneeling by the cellar doors. The Kahnwald boy was messing with the padlock, trying to rattle it off the door handles. Franziska tried her keys, shocked to realize that none of them worked against the metal padlock.
"This is really weird." The redhead muttered "Get me something I can use as a lever to pop this open! Like really thick branch."
The two other teens looked at the Doppler girl in confusion.
"Did nobody pay attention in science class?" Truth be told, Franziska had only paid attention in physics because of a teacher with eyes like swimming pools she had gotten lost in every morning.
Jonas ran off into the woods, coming back with a thick branch from a birch tree. Wedging it between the shaft of the lock and the body, she pushed down on her side of the branch like a cheap see-saw at the children's play park, popping the base off the bottom of the padlock. Clearly it wasn't very well made.
"So, who's going down first?" Martha asked as she pulled open the heavy metal doors
"You're the oldest." Franz shrugged, ushering the brunette into the dark uncertainty of the basement.
Basement ended up being inaccurate to describe what was underneath the cabin. It was a full on war room. Fallout shelter. Freaking bunker. Whatever term you think fits best.
"What in the hell?" Jonas mused
The walls were covers in scraps of paper and newspaper articles going back as far as the eighteen hundreds. Photos tacked to the walls showed the residents of Winden at different stages in thier lives, more alarmingly, the teenagers at areas in their life they hadn't even experienced yet.
"That's dad and Uncle Mads." Martha said quietly, pointing to a photograph tacked above an article reading 'Search For Local Boy Ends After Body Found In Caves'
Jonas pointed to another photo "Heidi. And Bartosz's mugshot." Those two pictures were hanging above 'Nuclear Power Plant CEO's Son Arrested In Connection With Vogel Murder'
Franziska drew a breath "Guys, look at this one. There's a pending date on it. November 15th. Tomorrow."
"That's the judge on Bartosz's case." Martha said quietly.
Sure enough, in a lone space of wall was a picture of a teenager in a Rastafarian hat with large golden hoop earrings, wide smile on her face, hand intertwined with that of a younger Zacharias Kruspe.
