Faces in Time (39 page)

“Entertainment room’s locked too, genius. Woulda had to break it down too.”

“Maybe so, but that’d only be one door to break down instead of two, and you’re still stupid.”

“Maybe so, but you’re still dead,” he says stepping forward and punching Chester in his left temple with the tip of the pistol barrel.

Chester
falls to the ground.

Edmund kicks him square in the forehead.

Sparks
and colors are all Chester sees as he digs under his shirt to pull the flare gun out of his pants. The next kick hits the tip of his chin, flinging his head backward, pain shooting through his neck, his hand still under his shirt.

Vision comes clear.

Edmund’s gun is pointed at his head.

“Where is she? One chance.”

Blood running out of Chester’s mouth, his hand moving under his shirt, “Gone. Before you were born.”

He pulls the trigger on the flare gun. Bright yellow bursts onto Edmund’s chest. The searing color spreads across his torso, blindingly luminous.

Edmund’s finger pulls on the trigger, firing a bullet at Chester.

Breathing like an attacking animal, she runs past Marvin’s desk, screaming, “Police! Police!”

Marvin jumps to his feet, “What-tha hell is happening up th—”

Her flats slap the ground loudly as she steps through the automatic doors and down the ramp to the parking lot. She sees the car immediately, shiny and definitely the only classic in the lot. Running between the car and the one next to it, she accidentally scrapes the key on the metallic blue quarter panel.

“Bang!”

The gunshot pulses from the second floor of the building, stopping her in her tracks. She thinks of Chester. She thinks of Titor. She thinks of Chester’s last words to her.

The rear exit flings open, and Edmund stumbles out, his shirt tattered and bloody. The skin on his neck and chin is charred as he raises his head staring directly at her eyes. His body wavers.

She shoves the key in the lock, frantically opens the door, jumps in, tosses the device on the passenger seat, and starts the car.

Chirping the tires in reverse, she nearly hits Edmund who has just stepped into the parking lot. Peeling out of the lot, the car fishtails, tearing into the rubber of the rear tires. Leaving smoke of exhaust and rubber, she pulls onto the four-lane strd flooras he stumbles toward the gray wreck of a car.

The gunshot rings through her head, and she cries. Looking in her rearview mirror, she sees nothing but open street. Grabbing the device, she unlocks the keypad and types in the password.

A box lights up on the screen:

ERROR. INCORRECT PASSWORD.

2
More attempts Before Lockout.

“Damn it, no spaces.”

She begins typing it again, with one hand on the wheel, one holding the device and punching on its keyboard. As she types in the M, she wonders if she’s going mad as a high-pitched whining pierces her eardrums.

Metal crashes into metal, roughly jerking the car forward. The device flies out of her hand and lands on the floor between her legs. Tugging on the wheel to straighten the car, she looks in the rearview mirror.

The gray dented mess is behind her. As soon as she sees it, it rams her again, sending her head bouncing off the steering wheel.

She reaches down to grab the device. Her fingers slide over its edge. Another crash smashes the side of her face into the wheel.

Straightening herself up, she slams the accelerator down, and the engine roars fiercely. Her torso and head are knocked back flat against the seat. The scenery begins to get blurry, pistons pumping faster and faster as the engine races closer to the redline. She flies through an intersection just after the traffic light turns red. The gray car is small in her mirror.

Slowing down, she picks up the device and begins where she left off in typing Dr. Moses. After completing the o-s-e-s, she presses ENTER.

ERROR. INCORRECT PASSWORD.

1
ore attempt Before Lockout.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”

Her fingers type the fictional name over again, praying that every asterisk on the password line of the screen is masking the correct letter. Holding her breath and all her dwindling hope, she presses ENTER.

Pounding into the rear bumper again is the gray car, whipping her neck forward. Before she can look up, the gray vehicle is on side of her, now leaking radiator fluid all over the road and sliding toward the passenger side of her car. She swerves into oncoming traffic, the device leaves her hands again, smacking the center console and landing wedged in the space between the console and the seat.

Just as a luxury sedan is about to plow into her, she returns to the right side of the road and looks out the window to see Edmund’s intense eyes, flooded with malevolence, his neck horribly singed.

A van pulls out in front of Edmund, and he slams on his brakes. His car bumps the curb—one of the hubcaps shoots off, the other wobbling wildly.

Stomping on the gas again, the Chevelle’s tires chirp, pinning her back against her seat. A car in each lane blocks her path. Dodging them, she swerves into oncoming traffic again.

Pulling in front of the two slower vehicles, while her thoughts usurp her speech, “Get away. Then try device again. God, hope not locked out.”

The speedometer needle dives into triple digits. Her eyes watch the rearview mirror. She can see the gray mess pulling in front of the two slow cars, but it grows smaller in her sight with every desperate breath.

Returning her eyes to the road in front of her, she sees a red light that is far too close for her to slow down for. She had no idea she was so close to the intersection or the danger beyond it. It’s a street she’s been down hundreds of times but usually as a passenger, and now she’s vaulting through it three times faster than she’s ever been.

Closing her eyes, the Chevelle is a metallic blue blur screaming through the intersection. Brakes scream and horns shout, but there is no collision. Opening her eyes, she sees no relief as the huge turn is ahead of her. Planeline Highway follows the river, and both the Mississippi and the street make a nasty, near ninety-degree turn just ahead of her.

Smashing the brake pedal, the car bucks from one side to the other and ides out of control. The performance brake rotors that Chester installed turn bright red. As the car invades oncoming lanes, it heads straight for an imposing brick building, a bowling alley. The tires squeal dragging across the pavement, but she also hears another noise. A whirring.

As her mind pleads to a higher power, some things become blue and stretched out, and others turn red and squashed. The tires slide, maintaining no traction, and the brick wall stands resolute, growing bigger and bigger in her windshield, inches from colliding with the rampaging metal behemoth from a bygone era.

“Excuse me?” asks Chester, holding Rhonda’s trembling hand.

The dark-haired, blue-eyed girl throws her arms around him and presses the side of her face against his neck. He still hangs onto Rhonda’s hand. The girl looks to be no older than sixteen, and Chester looks no less than helpless.

Gazing at Rhonda with pleading eyes, “I swear I’ve never seen this girl in my life.”

Taking her arms from around him, “You really don’t remember me?”

“No.”

“I’m Elise. You don’t even remember my name after all you did for me?”

“No, I’m sorry I don’t. Are you sure you’ve found the right guy?”

Leaning forward to his right ear and whispering quietly enough so Rhonda will not hear her, “How many other time travelers can there be?”

Chester’s eyes soak in her facial expressions as he squeezes Rhonda’s hand tighter, feeling that all he’s put together might instantly unwind, fearing he’ll be pulled away from her.

Elise says, “It all makes sense. I knew you wouldn’t remember me, but somehow it’s weird to look at you and watch it happen.”

In little more than a mumble, he says, “I think I know that feeling.”

“It’s just amazing that you don’t remember me. When I first met you, you were trying to convince me of the same thing—that we were once friends although I’d never remember it.”

“How?”

Elise points to Rhonda but looks at Chester and asks, “Can we talk in front of her?”

“She knows everything about me.”

“
Everything
?”

“Absolutely.”

Nodding to the nervous woman at his side who has clenched her left fist over the course of the last minute, “And, are you Rhonda?”

“Yes,” raising a red eyebrow that glistens in the afternoon sun.

“Thank God.”

Lowering her brow, she asks, “Why do you say that?”

Feeling that since she’s already said too much she might as well explain, “No reason—he just talks about you like your love is more certain than time. Besides trying to save me and convincing me that he was a friend, all he’d talk about was you. I was afraid that somehow me coming back here would mess things up for you.”

As Chester can feel the tenderness of Rhonda’s hand interweaved in his own, he repeats his unanswered question, “How? How can this be?”

Hesitating and exchanging glances and counter-glances, she starts, “As far as I can tell, you reset the timeline that you knew me when you came back for her. Twenty years after that you came to save me but I didn’t know who you were—you sent me back in time. My ex-boyfriend,” a pause and a whisper, “
strangled
me to death the first time around.”

“Oh, my God,” escapes from Rhonda’s thoughts and out her mouth.

“You saved me, Chester. And you wrote me this letter.”

Out of her back pocket, she pulls the letter folded in six partitions and holds it out at Chester. He stares at it. The shape of the letters that can be seen bleeding through the back of the folded page is familiar to him.

He tries to grasp the thought of a note, worn and discolored with age, written by him in a year that hasn’t happened yet, made of wood from a tree that has probably not been cut down. And, whether the tree is never cut down, whether it burns to the earth, or if it is discarded as inferior paper stock, this letter will exist without an origin or dependency in this timeline. The world has no logical explanation for it because it hasn’t traveled with the paper. Without the knowledge of the trip, the paper is beyond logic, a truly alien form, an unaccounted addition to the mass of the universe. It’s an anomaly, just like him. But if left alone, it’ll survive longer than his lifetime.

“Take it,” demands Elise, “Take it. Quick.”

His mind still spins over the prospect of a note he’s written traveling through places that no longer exist, written when his hands were older and in a different time that will never happen, now just a future past that is only remembered by either a blue-eyed being of unique experience or a fantasy of a madwoman.

Rhonda grasps the letter and places it against his chest. Feeling her pressing fingernails awakening his flesh through his purple shirt, he raises his hand and takes the paper from her.

Elise says, “Came a long way to bring that to you. Do you know what a bus ride from Riverview to L.A.’s like? Weirdoes all around—perverts, lunatics, compulsive liars. And all of them want to sit right next to you and tell you their story. The normal people are the only ones who keep quiet; the crazy ones want to talk to you. And, the worst part is that my story is the craziest of them all, but I can’t share it, not even with nuts on the bus.” Seeing he still hasn’t unfolded the note, “Aren’t you gonna read it now?”

“No, I don’t know if I want to. Some things maybe I shouldn’t know,” he says sliding the note into his pocket.

“Ever wonder how your car was there waiting for you?”

Patting his right hand on the air between them as if he were trying to squish it down, “Don’t talk anymore here. Let’s go up there,” pointing to the top of a nearby hill that is part of a children’s play area. On one side of the hill, there is a giant rope net made in the shape of a spider’s web. It connects the hill to a Swiss Family Robinson style tree house.

Halfway up the hill, he turns to Rhonda, “On top of a grassy knoll—what an appropriate spot for a secret parley.”

Her tension doesn’t ease.

Squeezing her hand, he whispers in her ear, “Between a child slapping your butt, a rude parent yelling at the both of us, the shooting outside the hotel, and a teenage girl I’ve never seen before swearing she knows me—someone just doesn’t want us to go to the zoo anymore.”

She doesn’t smile, but she squeezes back and kisses him. She asks, “So, she’s the other one you told me about? The one that might exist?”

“The car and the shirt on the seat never made any sense without there being another traveler.”

Turning to Elise, he asks, “So, you’re the one who scratched my car?”

“Uhh, sorry, was kinda in a hurry.”

“And the dings in my bumper?”

“I was the victim on those—they weren’t my fault.”

“Just giving you a hard time. It’s okay; it’s all gone now anyway.”

“Huh?”

“Exploded.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

Elise’s face lights up, “Hey! You’ll get another car like that one. You have to if you had one later to give to me. That right?”

“Yeah, maybe, I guess so,” pauses thinking of the possibilities, “Actually, I could go buy my original Chevelle for the first time from its owner. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that before.”

Rhonda, “Well, you were a bit busy trying not to be killed until a few days ago.”

Elise’s face harvests confusion, “Waiomeone was trying to kill you too? You never mentioned that in your log at all. All you talked about was time travel and being with Rhonda. Don’t you think someone trying to kill you is important to your story?”

Chester looking serious and troubled, “Actually, it was two people trying to kill me, but it doesn’t matter. Now, why was your ex-boyfriend trying to strangle you? What exactly did I save you from?”

“Ex-boyfriend escaped from jail, and he was coming to kidnap me or kill me if I wouldn’t go quietly.”

Rhonda says, “Honey, you’re too young to have ex-boyfriends in jail.”

“Was thirty-five then. Look younger than I really am just like this one does,” she says pointing to Chester, “You never told me I’d come out looking like a teenager either. Was a bit of a shock.”

“What happened? Why did I send you back, and why’d you take the car anyway? I wasn’t sure that it’d be possible to bring back something that big.”

“You didn’t explain any of that to me. You gave me this black electronic gizmo, told me the password, told me to run away while you fought off my ex. I was nearly to your car and heard a gunshot. I guess he killed you…I’m so sorry.”

Silence.

Chester says, “S’okay. Doesn’t affect me now, I guess. What happened then?”

“Eddie, my ex, came running out the back door of the home. So, I—”

“Wait a minute. ‘The home’—what home? Not the Riverview Assisted Care Facility?”

“Yeah, that’s where you knew me from. That’s why you helped me. I worked there, and we were friends. That’s what your whole letter to me said—just trying to prove to me that we were friends, even though I didn’t remember any of it.”

Chester’s mind spins for a moment before asking, “Hey, if you’re telling the truth, how did you know where to find me now? How would you know where we were going to be?”

She unzips her purse that has taken the shape of the device wedged tightly inside, and she pries it out.

“I’m sorry, but I read all of your ournal entries on here. Had to know how all this happened to me. That’s the only way I understand this resetting stuff, well at least some of it anyway. You wrote about being here today; that it was kind of your special place. You wrote logs about everything you and Rhonda did together. Very sweet actually.”

His eyes stare at it. His hands pat at his pants pocket, feeling over the same shape that he sees in her young hands. Every contour consumed his thoughts for years, wearing his sanity. Now, it resides in her hands as well as his pocket.

“What about the car? What does it say about how I got the car when I came back the first time—the time before you brought one to me?”

“Didn’t say. Guess you bought your first one from the original owner like you were just thinking about doing. I swear all you talked about was Rhonda and time,” holding the device out to him, “You can read it for yourself.”

Shaking his head, “What happened when you came back—when you first got here?”

“It was the craziest thing. I was about to slam into the brick wall of a bowling alley trying to get away from my ex chasing after me—car was out of control. Then, I could see the field appearing on the bricks like a warped reflection, but just before the crash the car drove onto the field—the wall disappeared, like I passed through it or something.”

“Then what?”

“I had just gotten the device out of the side of the seat and stepped out the car and closed the door—then you appeared out of nothing. I got scared, dropped the keys, and ran. Didn’t know who it was that appeared there. Just knew something completely weird had happened to me—my ex was chasing me—went through a brick wall. Had to get away. Didn’t know if he was going to be coming through behind me. Didn’t know if I was in trouble or going nuts. Either way wanted to go and hide. Didn’t know for sure that it was you until I read your log on the device later on. Said you arrived in a field but didn’t mention anything about the car.”