Chapter Three
Suddenly, everything went black and still. Emma felt the cold ground beneath her and she took a shaky breath, trying to fight the nausea.
"Henry?" she called into the blackness. She noticed that it wasn't completely dark; there were stars above them.
"Mom!" Henry called from the ground nearby, and Emma reached over to find Henry and Hook sprawled next to each other. She sighed in relief and looked around. They seemed to be in the same clearing, but it had somehow turned to night. All around them, townspeople were groaning and picking themselves off of the ground.
"Henry!" Regina rushed over to them and hugged her son. "Are you hurt?" she asked.
"No, I'm fine. Where are we? What just happened?"
"Emma? Regina? Is that — oof! Sorry, sorry, I didn't see you there," came Mary Margaret's voice. She and David wove through the people on the ground and a small wave of relief passed over all of them. At least their family was safe.
"I can't see a thing, what just happened?" Mary Magaret said worriedly.
"Thankfully, some of us are prepared," David said, pulling a small flashlight from his pocket. He clicked it on and a dinky pool of light hit their feet.
"And thankfully, some of us have magic," Regina said, conjuring a bright flaming torch from a cloud of purple smoke. They could see clearly now and they all reacted at once. None of them were in their regular clothes. Emma saw Regina was in a pink vintage dress with pumps and a pearl necklave. Her hair was in retro waves and her lips were pin-up red.
"Regina, you're…" Emma began, but Regina was looking at her with the same confused expression.
"Emma, look at yourself," she said. Emma looked down. Her pants, boots, and leather jacket were gone. In their place, a tweed pencil skirt and blouse that revealed an unnaturally tiny waist. No wonder her stomach hurt; she had some kind of girdle on underneath this get-up. She felt her hair and realized it had been pulled back into a bouncy ponytail. She realized that a pair of cat-eye glasses sat on her nose. On her feet were a pair of black leather pumps.
"Oh, I am so not into those," she muttered.
The guys were in suits and fedora hats. They all looked as if they all had stepped out of a vintage car commercial.
All around them, people looked at each other in confusion. The whole town looked like they were dressed for a fifties party.
"Where are my leather pants?" Hook demanded.
"Well this is an unexpected side effect," Mary Margaret mused.
"Ok everyone," Regina called out, "we may all look strange, and there is nobody who wants to get out of these ridiculous clothes more than me," she said, giving a dirty look toward the pink dress. It was the most girly she'd probably ever dressed. "But please take out any flashlights, phones or other source of light you have on you. If we want to find our way back to town, we don't need people tripping over each other." Slowly small lights began to come on across the field as people turned on phones and flashlights.
"I think that portal must have transported us ahead a few hours," Emma commented. "I mean, we're still in the clearing. It's just dark."
"But why would we have also gotten these clothes? And what caused the portal to open in the first place?" asked Mary Margaret.
"Or may who caused the portal to open," said Hook darkly. "My money is on Jekyll's evil twin."
"He isn't my twin," Dr. Jekyll said indignantly, joining their circle. "He's the evil within me which I clearly no longer possess."
"Obviously, and now he's causing even more trouble than when he was inside of you," Hook retorted.
"We don't know if Hyde opened the portal, or he's even here anymore, so let's leave Dr. Jekyll out of it," David said. "What we need to do is find our way back to town and make a plan. And figure out where our clothes are."
There were murmurs of agreement and they led the group through the darkness back into downtown Storybrooke.
Emma walked next to her parents as they trudged on the familiar route.
"Do you think Hyde could have done this?" she asked her dad quietly.
"I don't know. It didn't look like his style, but maybe he himself didn't do it," David murmured. Mary Margaret frowned. "What do you mean?"
"He brought the dirigible to Storybrooke — who knows who was in it that might be convinced to help Hyde create chaos? We might have enemies from the Land of Untold Stories that we don't even know about."
When he said it, Emma suddenly stopped. A vision overtook her and her body started shaking. The sound of clashing metal swords and the sight of herself battling a hooded figure filled her mind. The images flashed before her eyes and the feeling of terror swept over her. The vision stopped as suddenly as it had started and she saw her parents looking at her with concern.
"Emma, are you ok?" her mother asked, placing a gloved hand on her shoulder.
Emma swallowed and tried to hide her shaking hands. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just left over nausea." She tried to give a reassuring smile and started forward again. Her parents walked next to her and she pretended not to see the questioning look they exchanged, instead staring at the ground.
They were finally at the edge of town. Emma was ready to go to Granny's and have some hot food while they figured out what the hell had happened to them. The words "time" and "travel" had been playing through her mind on repeat, and that thought paired with the stomach-churning portal and the shake-inducing vision made her want to lie down.
"What in the world?" Mary Margaret breathed. Emma looked up from the pumps which were currently killing her feet. Her jaw dropped. Storybrooke looked like it had travelled back to the 50s.
The cars that lined the street were all straight from 1950. She walked up to Granny's diner and opened the door. She had thought the diner was retro before. Now she saw that everything was in shades of turquoise, pink and white, and a huge jukebox played in the corner. Granny hurried in behind Emma and gasped. "My kitchen!" she exclaimed.
Emma's family came in behind her. Henry looked around the diner and spotted himself in a mirror. "Cool," he said as he snapped the red suspenders on his crisp white shirt.
"What isn't so cool is the fact that Hyde is gone," Hook announced, walking through the crowd milling outside the diner. "And we seem to have entered a realm which has no respect for a bloke's sense of comfort," he said, fidgeting with the black tie around his neck and the starchy suit jacket. "Even my hair is trapped," he added, grimacing at how his black hair had been neatly combed and gelled.
"The fifties weren't known for their leather pants," Regina said dryly.
"But why the fifties?" Mary Margaret asked. They sat in a large booth and discussed the yellow portal, the disappearance of Hyde, and the fact they seemed to be stuck in the fifties. Granny interrupted them, bringing out plates of burgers, fries, and milkshakes.
"These were the only ingredients left," she said.
"I'm not complaining," Henry said, popping a fry into his mouth. "I've always wanted to travel back to the fifties." Regina and Emma smiled briefly at Henry's cheerfulness.
"Maybe Dr. Jekyll knows something. Wasn't he the one who came up with the idea about using part of the dirigible to defeat Hyde?" Mary Margaret asked.
"But it didn't defeat Hyde," Emma noted. "For all we know, he's back in our time, plotting with his friends from the Land of Untold Stories."
"Do you think Jekyll knew that the spell would make us time travel?" Mary Margaret wondered. "Or did his plan backfire?"
"Or maybe this is exactly what he wanted," Hook growled. "I think the good doctor knows more than he lets on. I never did trust him."
The door to the diner crashed open and Dr. Jekyll, covered in blood, staggered forward and fell to the floor. They all jumped up in their seats and rushed forward.
David got to Jekyll first and knelt next to him. "Dr. Jekyll, what happened?"
"I found Hyde," the doctor gasped. "He tried to take the dirigible scrap from me but I got it back." They all noticed the round piece of metal in Jekyll's scraped hand. "He attacked me but I managed to run away."
"Where's Hyde now?" Regina asked. "Why didn't he follow you here?"
"Because," he said faintly, "he knows what I can do to him."
Dr. Jekyll's head flopped to the side as he passed out. They all looked at each other, the same look of worry and confusion mirrored on their faces.
Hyde was somewhere out there, waiting and ready to attack.
They were trapped in another time without any idea how they'd gotten there or how to get back. And there was something Jekyll could do to Hyde that had stopped the evil madman from killing the innocent doctor.
Things had just gotten very strange.