Isaac and the squirming wraith swirl through space and time. The wraith makes squealing noises, as if it’s in pain. Isaac, knowing what to expect, clutches the wraith’s arm tight. When they land, they land on cobblestones at night. Isaac rolls to his feet, releasing the wraith.

Isaac’s other time travels had been set by his parents. This time, he wasn’t sure what to do so he focused on one thought: the inscription on the seal of the casket and the meaning of the watch itself.

Memento mori.

Which is exactly what he sees when his head stops spinning. Isaac turns toward a shop window, a photography studio. The mullioned window is filled with portraits, and painted on the glass are these words:

Memento Mori

Jos. Baker, Photographer

They’ve landed on the street in the middle of the night. The street is lit by flickering gas lamps, and the air is damp and thick with fog. The only sounds are faint and distant—a horse’s slow clop, the squeak of a carriage, a foghorn. It smells fishy, smoky, and wet.

Isaac steps closer to the shop as the wraith still squirms and whines behind him. Some of the portraits are family groups, some individuals, all dressed in Victorian clothing. But they seem a little odd, and as Isaac stares in the dim light, he sees why. Even though their eyes are open, even though they all appear to be alive, in each of the pictures one of the people is dead. In some, a ghostly figure hovers in the background.

Isaac reads the card, printed by hand, that sits inside the window.

Photographs of you and your deceased loved one. Spirit photographs. Together forever, never apart. Mementos to treasure.

Ugh. Isaac steps back. He must be somewhere in Victorian England—London, he guesses. He remembers reading that spirit photographs had been a popular notion in Victorian times. It seems an apt place for him to land with a monstrous wraith, the kind of monster memorialized by Poe and Shelley. Isaac will abandon the wraith in London not terribly long after the publication of Frankenstein.

The watch tick-tick-ticks in his palm.

He takes another step back and is suddenly thrown, hard, to the ground, a searing pain in his leg.

Isaac can’t help letting out a yell. As he smacks the ground, his fist opens and the watch rolls away, with a click-click-click on the cobbles, coming to rest at the edge of a grated opening that leads to the sewer. The watch perches precariously, its skull mouth grinning at him.

This is mori, it seems to say.

The wraith has bitten into his calf, hard, and hasn’t let go. Isaac kicks at it and tries to wrestle away. The pain is excruciating. He kicks harder, and the wraith finally jumps back with a snarl.