by Alexie Aaron
“Maybe he didn’t think it was him who was responsible,” Mike said. “He was coming south to either seek Ted and Cid out, or perhaps Ma and me, when something prompted him to stop on the side of the road.”
Mia pushed away the sick feeling in her stomach and said, “Or someone.”
Chapter Thirteen
Burt pushed his pack behind him to ease his back as he sat against the cold wall. His fall from the story above had been a surprise. The floor of the old examination room seemed solid enough, an expanse of postwar tile laid wall to wall. He had walked in a few steps and stomped on the floor. There, it was a solid as could be. He had advanced further in to take a better picture of the spirit he had followed when the floor gave out under him.
Youth had been on his side. He managed to twist and grab an edge with one hand and then another. He was pulling himself up when he heard the squeaky wheels of a gurney being pushed after setting motionless for few decades. He turned to see the dull steel legs propped on ancient casters moving towards him.
“Please, I only want to help you,” he pleaded, managing to get his upper body above the plane of the existing floor.
The gurney barreled at him, hitting him in the shoulders, causing him to lose his balance and fall. He hit the floor hard, and his head bounced on the tile. He felt faint and woozy. Burt pulled his arms out of the straps of the backpack and managed to free a large box of salt. He saw black dots before his eyes and knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He lunged around on painful hips and legs until he had encircled himself in salt. Only then did he allow himself to pass out.
A beam of light reflecting off an old metal tray in the room above him hit him full in the face. He had opened his eyes with the hope that he was back in the aerie, or possibly on the peninsula which he still called home. He moved his head and waited for the blue dots to settle down before he recognized the predicament he had gotten himself into. He looked at his Casio watch and saw he had lost a day. It was now Wednesday. It was the very same watch that convinced him he had indeed gone back in time when he woke up in his boyhood room.
He looked around the room he had landed in. The mouse-eaten padded walls confirmed that he was in one of the solitary rooms of the facility. He carefully raised himself up and tested out his legs. They felt battered and bruised, but both legs held his teenage weight. He stepped over his salt line and moved to the door. It was the standard metal door with a flap where a tray could be scooted under without opening it. There was also a slot that must have been used for peeping in at the prisoner. It was rusted half open. Burt tried to open the door to no avail. He set his jaw and walked across the room and started to pull the long lines of padding off the wall until he found a header for a window. Upon further investigation, the window was bricked in. He moved to his pack and pulled out a hammer and a common screwdriver.
He stopped and went back to the door to see if he could use the screwdriver to open the door before he damaged it. Again, he was not successful. He returned to the bricked-in window. He placed the flat head in the grout of the brick work and hit it hard with the hammer.
Chips of old mortar seemed to explode towards him. He stopped and pulled his tee up over his nose before he resumed his assault. Soon he had freed a brick from the inside of a double layer of bricks. He removed a few more interior bricks before he started on those which should be all that kept him from the outside and fresh air. The mortar used on the outside was more difficult to chip away at, but he managed to make some holes in the corners of the block of bricks he was working on. He stopped, turned around, and searched through the wreckage that fell with him. He smiled as he unearthed a piece of a two-by-four that he could handle. He took the piece of wood, placed it in the middle of the bricks, took a deep breath, and hammered on his end with all his might. He was rewarded with the mortar crumbling.
Burt rested a moment. He felt sick and rushed to a corner and puked. “Burt, you’ve got a concussion,” he told himself. “Rest a moment.”
His words were mostly absorbed into the moldering wall pads.
Burt walked over to his pack and pulled out one of the quart-sized water bottles and opened it. He sipped the water slowly, hoping he would be able to keep the water inside long enough for it to be absorbed in his cells. After, he returned to his project, summoning the vilest, angriest thoughts he could manage and wailed on the end of the two-by-four with the hammer. Just before it split into two, a brick cracked under the pressure, cracked in pieces, and fell outwards.
Burt tossed the wood down and stared at the small opening. He could see daylight. He used the screwdriver to chisel out a few more bricks, and when they dropped outside, he listened for them hitting the ground. When he had entered the building, he had walked up one floor when he caught sight of the shadow he followed to the facility. He had hoped this room was on the ground level. But as the second brick fell, he timed the drop and estimated that before he heard it ping off of something below, it had fallen two stories. He removed another brick, and he not only confirmed his estimation, but an added splash occurring another few stories after the ping of the ricocheting brick worried him.
The building must have been built on a hillside. He removed enough bricks to be able to extend his arm outside the wall. He took a mirror he had liberated from his mother’s junk drawer and held it in his hand. He watched as he slowly moved it around, and his heart sank as his fears were confirmed. He was in a room that overlooked the Smoky Hill River. If he tried to escape from this room, the likelihood of falling to death by first hitting the rocks on the cliffside and then drowning in the river was almost certain.
“Well, I have fresh air. Let me regroup before I use up all my energy on a fruitless endeavor.”
Burt extended his salt-line protection to reach the window. He placed a line on the sill in order to seal the protection circle. He cleared out a space, tossing into the far corner anything he couldn’t find a use for during his internment. He hadn’t given up on being able to escape out the hole he fell though, but without knowledge of the whereabouts of the ghost who attacked him in the room, he thought this was foolhardy. Burt set out all the supplies he managed to secure before he slipped out of the house yesterday morning. He mentally patted himself on the back for using a blanket to wrap around his old cassette recorder. He patted his pockets and grinned as he hadn’t lost the batteries he purchased at the gas station.
Feeling ill, he made a hard decision. He needed to rest. But while he rested, he needed to leave a record for what happened to him if he perished before he was found. After he loaded the recorder with batteries, Burt unwrapped a new plastic-cased cassette tape. He pulled out the cassette and settled it in the machine. He tested it to make sure it was recording. He pulled out the cardboard inside the case and wrote: “Important! Please get this to Mia Cooper, daughter of Charles Cooper PhD, Big Bear Lake, Illinois.” He settled it in the case, took a small drink of water, and pressed record.
“Mia, I felt you were the best one to give this to. If you’re listening to it without me with you, I’m just assuming I died in an isolation room in the Smoky Hill Home for the Criminally Disturbed. More on why I’m here later.
“I woke up three AM Tuesday morning in my bedroom in my childhood home. At first, I thought I was dreaming, but as I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light, I knew something extraordinary had happened to me. I was a teenager again. Gone was my extra weight - or love handles as you were always so kind to tell me you appreciated. I backtracked to my room and picked up my Casio watch. I looked at the date and did a quick calculation. I had traveled back in time twenty years. But how?
“I stole through the house and peeked into my parents’ and my sister’s room. They were also twenty years younger. If my body hadn’t been transformed too, I would have thought perhaps I had inadvertently walked through a portal, like the ones He-who-walks-through-time makes. But here I was, Burt Hicks high school senior. I needed to see if anyone else had made the time jump, so I
made plans to go down and visit Mike. Together, I thought we could piece this mess together. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t think about returning to the present day. All I thought about was I was, given a second chance at life and a second chance at investigating the Smoky Hill Home for the Criminally Disturbed before they dam the river and the reservoir covers it with water.
“After I looted the house for supplies for my investigation - filling my father’s old Boy Scout mountaineering backpack in the process - I felt a nagging need to figure out what had happened to get me here. I tossed my stuff in my car and quietly went downstairs to where I had what you all call my Garage Sale Library of the Macabre. I started searching for time travel spells and came up empty. That’s when I started thinking about what Ted would say about me being in the past messing around. About how I could change history. One wrong move, and I would create an alternate timeline. But wouldn’t the original timeline continue? Maybe it would continue without me, but you would go on with your lives once you stopped looking for me.
“Yes, I know, I wasn’t thinking this through. Instead, I joined my family for an early breakfast, and I pretended to go to school but headed south. My original plan was to meet up with Mike, maybe look up Ted and get him to make some of those machines he creates so effortlessly, and then tackle the investigation. We would have to use whatever video camera we could afford. Maybe a Sony Ruvi if Mike chipped in some money. He and I wouldn’t organically meet until ten years from now, but once I told him what the future had in store, I was sure I could convince him to join me.
“As I sit here, I wonder why this investigation seemed more important than, let’s say, finding a way to subvert the Cynosura in this time or maybe even rescue you from the world of hurt you’re living through. But all I could think of was getting here. Was it my selfishness or something else? Why was this investigation so important? Did the ghosts from this wretched place call to me across time and space? I really wish I had stayed on course and ended up at Mike’s house.
“I was driving south when I had the overwhelming urge to pull the car over. I parked on the verge of the road and pulled out the map my parents insisted I carry in the Dodge. I was in the Shadow Hill River Valley! I mean, what were the odds of that? Well, I’m now convinced that my subconscious was in the driver’s seat. Otherwise, I would have to say that fate was in charge, and you know how I feel about fate. Anyway, Mia, I thought that I may as well see if the building was still there. In my original timeline, I ventured there with a bunch of kids. We sprayed our mark on the trees as we passed, just in case we got lost. If I could find one of those marks, I could find my way there.
“In retrospect, I should have just closed my eyes because something else was pulling me here. I had wasted time looking for the marks. But after a half an hour, I found the first mark. If it weren’t for my heavy pack, I would have run all the way here. The building isn’t in good shape. I found the public rooms intact. I assume that the crazy doctor insisted on extra quality in order to convince the visitors of the insane that their criminal, although loved, ones were in excellent hands. But the deeper I got into the facility, I noticed the decay.
“Damn, I’ve got to flip this over.”
Burt fumbled with the machine. His fingers had lost their grace. He feared that this was a symptom of what was happening inside his head. Was there swelling around his brain? He felt the urgency to complete this tape. He had to put on record Burt Hicks’s last paranormal investigation.
“Back. This is side two.”
Burt took another sip of water.
“I first started to see shadows on the main floor in the front of the building. Nothing distinct or menacing. I took a few snapshots with my camera. I’m not sure where my camera is now. I lost track of it in my fall. I’ve got plenty of time to look for it,” he said with a sad chuckle.
“Where was I? Oh yes, the shadows. There was a particularly strong one on the public staircase. I approached it, but it moved upwards before I could make contact. Yes, it was leading me into a trap. I can see that now, but I was viewing the haunt through the intermittent snaps of the pictures I took. The excitement of seeing so much activity drove me upwards. I had abandoned every rule of paranormal investigation in order to have this evidence. Was it hubris - here I was young again with the knowledge of decades of paranormal research - that made me think I could do this alone? That there wasn’t any real threat? How could there be? There were only threats when you were involved. Before you say anything, I don’t really think this way. I know it was your special talents and connections that saved PEEPs time and time again. You and Murphy.
“Hubris and ego. Which of them destroyed us? Oh and that damn flitch. I’m digressing. Back to how I got here.”
Burt stopped and took another drink of water. If he kept this down, he would open the thermos of vegetable and beef soup he brought. It was cold when he put it in, and he imagined it was going to be cold to eat it, but at least he would be putting something into his starving body.
“I followed the shadow down the hall until it went into one of the more sinister looking examination rooms. I stomped on the tile floor as I crossed the threshold and found it sound. The shadow started to take form. I walked forward, and the floor gave out underneath me. I managed to catch the edge and hang on even though the weight of my backpack jerked me down. I was pulling myself up when one of the gurneys was propelled my way and hit me hard. I fell, hitting the floor below and wasn’t sure of my condition. I could hear you shouting in my head. ‘Salt, iron, holy water.’ I pulled out one of my mother’s supply of salt boxes she uses for canning. It wasn’t kosher, but it was salt. I managed to draw a circle around myself before I passed out.
“When I woke up, it was Wednesday, which is the day I’m recording this. I’ve lost a day. Okay not a complete day, and maybe it was providence that I slept through the night. I can only imagine the horrors that settled just beyond my salt line. To my delight, I was able to stand. If I broke something, it’s minor because I can walk and bend and lift. I’m still throwing up, and that bothers me. And I have waves of dizziness which have increased after my physical activities.
“Back on track. I cleared a safe zone and inventoried my supplies. I have soup, water, two flashlights, a small lantern, a four-pack of Bic lighters, a hammer, screwdriver, this tape recorder, a pack of eight cassette tapes, batteries for the recorder, batteries for the flashlights, and a blanket. If the ghosts drain the batteries, I’m pretty much screwed for light unless I burn some debris, and I can’t do that until I’ve established a flow of good air. And when things go pear-shaped, there is that funny little candle I found in my pajama pocket. Why do they put little pockets in pajama shirts? I bet it’s for cigarettes. I mean we all know how safe smoking in bed is,” Burt said and allowed himself a laugh.
“My mother insisted the males in the house wear these pajama sets. I don’t know where she got them, probably Sears. Anyway, even when I visited, she had a pair setting on the bed for me to use. You may remember that when we visited… She didn’t like that we shared a room. She didn’t like you. Showed she didn’t have my best interests at heart, just her Kansan morality.” Burt sighed. “Ted, if you’re listening, don’t take offense, and don’t take this out on Mia, past is past. Hey, right now, past is future. Or is the future the past? There’s something for your big brain to figure out. It should keep your mouth shut for a while. I’ve never known anyone who talked as much as you, well, except for Brian…
“Mia, I can see you clearly. We’re all enjoying the gumbo Cid’s made. You’re laughing. You rarely laughed in the beginning of this… I mean when we first met. You had this tragic vibe and secrets – oh, were there secrets. Stephen Murphy for one. I don’t know if you know this, but he lashed out at me when we were trapped on the yacht during the hurricane. I didn’t see it, but I’m sure you know that ghost was in love with you. I don’t think he is now. Something happened, and I can see the friendship between the two of you cru
mbling. Sure, you work side by side, but gone is the way you two look at the other. You have this hurt expression that I know all too well. Most of the time I caused it. Then Ted and now Murphy. Through the camera lens, I can see the bastion of your friendship is falling into ruin.
“Mike and I talked about it recently, well, in the future… Damn, this is confusing. Anyway, we both think you’re strong enough to continue on without the ghost, but is our assessment tainted by our need to be your Murphy? Mike is upfront and honest enough to lay his cards out on the table, much to Ted’s disgust. You may think he’s just being flirty, but I assure you that isn’t the case. If something does happen to Ted, will you move on to another? I’m probably dead, not that you’d consider me anyway. I’ve wounded you too deeply. Cid? I’d like to think he’d step in and care for you and the boys until your grief has passed, but I don’t think that the memory of Ted will allow anything to form between the two of you.
“And then you have the supernatural entities to deal with. What a scary and wondrous life you lead. You’ve commented that it’s a pain in butt, but to be that important to so many entities has to be gratifying. You’re a queen bee who’d much rather be a drone. You’ve been PEEPs drone. You didn’t steal the spotlight from any of us. My fears were unfounded.
“I wonder who you are right now? Let’s see, you’d be twelve. Now I feel like a perv. Yes, I know I’m seventeen… Now I really feel like a perv. Okay, you’re this little kid who, from your own account, is living a shitty life. You’re not connecting with your parents, and the Council of Women is fucking up anything good that has come your way. Why? They want you bitter, baby. They wanted a sociopath, but your angel genes kicked in. Unless there are sociopaths in Heaven. Somehow, I doubt it. You were supposed to kill this fallen archangel named Abigor. But no, you guys bumped knuckles, and in doing so, the world was saved. How fun is that! So, don’t let the bullies get you down. You, Mia, are a marvel.
