“How much is this?”

The shopkeeper signed. “What does the tag say?”

Picking up the small white price tag, Nate flipped it over. “Ten pounds.”

“Then it’s ten pounds.”

Nate fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a crisp ten-pound note, slamming it on the counter. “I’ll take it.”

The silver hair retailer grinned, slid the note over, and curled it into his fist.

“Have a good day.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nate said, already distracted—mesmerised—by his new-old silver device.

A crack cut in a zig-zag across the watches glass, and the aged, yellow enamel face beneath offered scratched and faded roman numerals.

The black hands lay crooked, inactive, frozen in time at twenty past two. Whether early morning or afternoon, Nate didn’t know.

Around the edge, silver, floral inlay curled elegantly in meandering patterns, moving up and around to meet the linked chain, which he clipped to the pocket of his hoodie.

As he reached for the front door of the antique shop, Nate tried to twist the crown at the top of the watch. It turned once, twice, then suddenly, the world froze.

Silence thundered against his ears. Cars outside the windows halted. The old clocks that once ticked around the small, cluttered shop stopped tocking.

Blinking, Nate spun on his heels. “Wha—!” he began, but the shopkeeper had vanished, leaving nothing but a spiral of sparkling dust held suspended in the beams of sunlight.

Vibrations hummed through his palm and up to his arm as the pocket watch started to buzz and bounce. The clock hands spun anticlockwise; their once still forms circling faster and faster until they became nothing but a black blur. Nate dropped the watch, and it fell but didn’t fall. Instead, it swung back and forth like the pendulum of a grand clock or a hypnotist’s tool.

The world shook, and Nate watched, horrified, as the little shop peeled, catching alight like a lit sheet of paper, burning from the inside out. Wallpaper flaked away like embers, vases and candlesticks toppled from their places atop shelves and tables.

A bright light blinded Nate’s eyes, and he collapsed to the floor, but where his hands should have met the rough carpet of the old antique shop, they collided with hard, black and white linoleum tiles.

Pain shuddered Nate’s bones, and he hissed, sucking warm air through his teeth. Groaning, he clambered to his feet and slipped the pocket watch into his pocket. He brushed the invisible dirt from his jeans, looked up, and his breath caught. He couldn’t believe it.

Honeyed coloured wood surrounded him, stretching around the edge of the vast, grand entrance hall. Two sets of broad ornate stairs climbed before him and split in the middle, curving around to reach another upper floor. A large carved wooden panel sat at the top of the steps, and as Nate peered closer, he could just make out a white, round face of a clock nestled in the centre. It read ten past twelve.

Straining his neck, Nate gawked upwards. Glass claimed the ceiling in a decorative ornate wrought-iron dome, and at its centre hung a golden chandelier.

The sound of chatter and soft tunes of violins wafted from somewhere outside the hall, and standing there, in the impossible room, Nate had the suspicious yet itching feeling that he had seen the place before. Maybe in a dream or a film.

Yes, a film, now, what was it called?

“What the actual...” Nate whispered. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t… he couldn’t understand. How could he be—

Footsteps thumped, and Nate flinched as a woman came running from around the bottom of the staircase. Under her arms, she held large, white canvas jacket-type objects, their bulky sizes obscuring most of her body. As she came closer, her eyes met Nate’s, and seeming undeterred by his tall, awkward frame loitering in the middle of the floor, she held out one of the items, offering it out for him to take.

“Please take a life jacket, sir.”

“What? I don’t—” Nate stammered. He took the life jacket, hooking it over his arm. “What’s going on?”

“There is no need to panic, sir.” the woman said, but the slight tremor in her voice betrayed the integrity of her words. “It is simply a precaution, but the Captain has ordered that everyone don a life jacket. You are more than welcome to continue with your evening activities.” With a short curtsy, she hurried off, the skirts of her black, old fashioned maid’s dress fluttering as she disappeared through a door at the opposite end of the room.

Turning the life jacket over in his hands, Nate slipped it over his head, the light, chunky weight of it giving him an odd sense of comfort, like feeling it proved that he wasn’t mad, that the fact that he could touch something, something real, meant he wasn’t entirely out of his mind.

A jolt shuddered through the floor, and Nate steadied himself against one of the wooden pillars. Shouts and cries erupted from everywhere, and the sound of shattering glass or china exploded. Doors to the right hurled open, and men dressed in black dinner jackets and women in long, fancy, early twentieth-century dresses hurried out. Some wore their life jackets, but most didn’t, carrying them loosely at their sides.

Through the thundering of footsteps, Nate could just make out snippets of conversations.

“What do you suppose it wrong? We are not sinking are we?” a woman in a wide-brimmed hat whispered to her friend, the large white feather protruding from the top of her hat shaking as she walked.

“Oh, stop your, fussing. My husband said the Titanic is unsinkable. This is most likely nothing but...”

Nate had stopped listening, his mind reeling. His heart thumped in his chest, and the ground swayed beneath him, whirling like an old-fashioned spinning top.

The Titanic? Nate wanted to scream. The actual, bloody Titanic? It had to be a dream. No, it had to be a really, really bad nightmare.

Or maybe he had been poisoned by something back in the antique shop—a hidden pile of mysterious powder stuffed between the folds of an antique bag that had somehow escaped into the air. Or maybe a vase had toppled off one of the shelves and knocked him unconscious.

A glint of sliver snapped Nate from his tumbling spiral. A young man, dressed in a sharp black tailcoat, brushed Nate’s arm. Fastened to the pocket of his waistcoat was inexplicably Nate’s pocketwatch.

“Hey!” Nate exclaimed, then slapped a hand over his mouth.

The man stopped, causing a couple behind him to trip. Spinning on the heels of his polished shoes, the man scowled, his piercing blue eyes shooting daggers through Nate’s chest.

“Pardon?” he spat.

Nate flinched, turning away. “Nothing. Sorry...sir.”

Eyeing Nate up and down, the man sneered. “Steerage should stay down below,” he hissed and shoved Nate’s shoulder, the back of his head smacking the wooden pillar. “Where they belong.”

Warmth burned Nate’s cheeks as he watched the man follow the rest of the crowd out the doors and then presumably up to the promenade deck, where Nate knew there wouldn’t be enough lifeboats waiting or not enough to save those still down below. His gut twisted, and bile rose in his throat.

He wanted to go home. He wanted his bed. The life jacket draped over his shoulders suddenly felt like a lead ball and chain, bolting him to the floor. How did this happen, how did—

Cold jolted his hand as he curled his fingers around his pocket watch. He yanked it out. The crack on the glass stared at him like a wicked, cruel smile, teasing him, laughing at him.

“I hate you.” Nate said and twisted the crown at the top of the watch.

White, searing light blinded Nate, and his feet slipped, falling from under him. His back struck something soft and prickly, and Nate realised it was carpet. He ran a hand over his body, his life jacket gone. His head twitched from side to side, but the Titanic’s entrance hall had vanished, replaced once again with the musty smell of old books and the cluttered appearance of the little antique shop.

“What just happened?” Nate yelped.

The shopkeeper raised an eyebrow and tapped his nose. “I don't know what you mean.”