Biding Time- the Chestnut Covin

by E W Barnes

  “I think I will go watch, too.”

  “Well, they will be at the valve on the back of the house - you can’t see it from here because the workshop is in the way. Oh, there is also one inside the house that supplies the oven. They might be there, too.”

  Sharon followed her great-grandfather’s path to the workshop and looked inside. There was no one there. She looked toward the house and saw a man squatting down working a valve with a wrench. Just beyond him, she could see the back of Kevin next to the corner of the house.

  “Are you ok, Kevin?”

  He looked up with frightened eyes and as she stepped closer, she saw Kevin was standing next to the prone figure of her great-grandfather.

  “Something happened to Dad. This man is helping us.”

  The man was Lloyd Quill.

  “Yep, he was just overcome by the gas,” Lloyd said in a cheery voice. “He will be fine in a moment. I am just tightening this up, just in case.” He smiled at her in an off-hand way and went back to working the valve.

  Lloyd looked different. He was less lined, and his face was open and friendly, not the closed, calculating man who had lectured her on history. Watching Lloyd carefully, Sharon checked her great-grandfather. He was unconscious but breathing regularly. A quick check of his pulse revealed a strong heartbeat.

  “I think he will be ok,” she reassured Kevin with a hug.

  “And that’s done,” Lloyd said, standing up. He handed the wrench to Sharon. “Here you go, young lady. You can put this away for him, can’t you?”

  Thoroughly confused, Sharon nodded. Lloyd smiled and tipped his cap. “I will be on my way to see if anyone else needs any help.”

  As soon as Lloyd was out of sight, Sharon dropped to the ground and inspected the valve. It was securely closed. Lloyd had not opened it as she feared.

  A groan came from her right. Her great-grandfather was sitting up, Kevin helping him, grinning in relief.

  “Dad! You passed out! A man came and helped us! He turned off the gas, right, lady?”

  “Yes, he did,” Sharon answered, still bewildered.

  “Then we are safe,” Kevin said with a happy sigh.

  “What about the valve in the house?” Sharon asked. “Did you take care of that one already?”

  “What valve in the house?”

  “No, I didn’t get a chance,” her great-grandfather answered, his voice weak. He leaned against the house and took a breath.

  “That’s ok,” Sharon said. “Kevin and I can do it. Just rest, we’ll be right back.”

  ◆◆◆

  With the same patience and careful direction her grandfather would use to teach her, Sharon taught young Kevin how to shut off the gas valve in the house. As natural gas was not yet odorized in 1933, they opened all the windows in the house to make sure any gas that might have leaked from the oven cleared out. Her great-grandfather came in as they opened the last of the windows in the living room.

  “Nice job,” he said as he checked the oven valve. Kevin grinned, and Sharon shook his hand in congratulations.

  Sharon followed them out to the orchard, Kevin leading and confidently explaining to the rest of his family that the house was safe.

  “Will you have dinner with us?” It was her mother’s voice, her mother’s face and for a moment Sharon was tempted to pretend it was her. But she couldn’t stay in this time.

  “No, thank you very much. Please go enjoy your food.”

  Her great-grandfather put out his hand.

  “Thank you, Miss… uh….”

  “My name is Sharon.” Sharon took his hand and shook it. She hugged young Kevin one more time and then, smiling at the rest of the family, she turned and walked back into the orchard.

  ◆◆◆

  The smell of the orange blossoms was like a mist surrounding her, following her, guiding her until she found a place where the sounds of civilization had faded. She was alone with the whisper of the breeze, the shushing of the branches, the soft sound of petals falling in the twilight.

  The lights of the house twinkled through the blossoms, far away like stars, and she leaned against a tree. She was certain Lloyd would come back, to do something terrible to ensure the future he wanted. She would wait to be sure the family was safe.

  It was chilly without her wool jacket, and she longed for the warmth of the library, for Caelen’s arms, and sharing with him the satisfaction that this was all over, that everything was the way it was supposed to be again.

  The moon was well over the horizon when the sun set and, being close to full, lit the orchard like a lantern. The orange blossoms glowed around her in the soft light, the stars twinkled overhead. The lights blinked off in the house, one by one.

  The town clock chimed the hours as the evening wore on. Sharon bounced from foot to foot, arms wrapped around herself to keep warm. Time stretched on, but she didn’t mind. Soon this would be over. Then she

  would use the remote control to return to the library. For the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to the future.

  The clock tower chimed midnight and her vigil was finished. The article detailing the deaths of her grandfather’s family had been clear they had died on the day of the earthquake. That day was over. She had succeeded. She had restored the future.

  She pulled the remote control from her pocket and, with one last look around, she pushed the button. Nothing happened. After several more tries the remote remained a cold lump of plastic and she knew it was broken forever. She had no way back. She was trapped in the past.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “You did it,” said a voice behind her.

  Sharon turned, startled. Leaning against another tree was a man. It was Kevin. Except it wasn’t the Kevin who tried to kill her and had died in 1940. This one was older, silver-haired and wrinkled. It was her grandfather, and he was smiling at her.

  “You saved them.” He nodded toward the house in the distance. “You saved them, you saved me. You saved us all. I knew you could do it.”

  “What about Lloyd?”

  “You saved him, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Her grandfather straightened up and looked at the moon starting its slow descent into the west.

  “Lloyd was a good man, a plumber who lived in the neighborhood. After the earthquake someone suggested he help people shut off their gas valves so that there wouldn’t be fires. He came to our house just after my father passed out and helped us close the outside valve. He didn’t know about the inside valve and neither did I. When my father came to and I told him the man had turned off the gas, he assumed the inside valve had been closed, too.

  “After the explosion killed my family, they sent Lloyd to prison. The court figured that since he was a plumber, he should have known to check the inside valve too. They decided he was negligent for failing to shut it off, and responsible for the deaths.

  “Prison changed him. His good deed so punished embittered him. The trauma of my loss and growing up in an orphanage embittered me. The Chestnut Covin found him and recruited him, and after they released him, he recruited me with promises of wealth and security.

  “You have now changed all of that. My family lived, and I grew up whole and happy. Lloyd didn’t go to prison. I met your grandmother and had a good life with two wonderful children and three amazing grandchildren.”

  “Then… this is a third timeline now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right. In the first timeline after my father came to, he shut off both valves in the house. In the second timeline, Lloyd missed one and everyone died except me. This is the third timeline where you and I shut off the second valve together.”

  “You are my grandfather, not the Kevin recruited by the Chestnut Covin.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What if you’re lying? What if you’re evil Kevin trying to trick me?”

  He chuckled at that.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  �
�You’re appropriately suspicious. That’s a good thing. Also ‘evil Kevin’ is kind of funny, like that old science fiction show we used to watch together, remember? Evil Kevin should wear a goatee.”

  Despite her distrust, she laughed with him.

  “I can prove I’m your grandfather, though. Evil Kevin learned we’d put the articles for you in a strongbox - we don’t know how. Your grandmother intended to put it in the crawlspace when she programmed Mrs. Bower. When we realized he knew about the strongbox, I hid it under the house, so you could only find it after the fire. Then your grandmother wrote the message on the walls in the crawlspace. Evil Kevin didn’t know where I hid the strongbox or that your grandmother had left the message.”

  “Evil Kevin tried to kill me.”

  “I know.” He looked sad and even a little ashamed even though he was not at fault in this timeline.

  “What were they trying to do?” Sharon asked.

  “Their mission was to steal your grandmother’s temporal amplifier. It’s the only one in existence not housed at the Temporal Protection Corps. With it they could have freely looted all of history. You foiled them by taking it out of the house, as your grandmother requested.

  “When that plan failed, they attacked history to cause the rapid shift anomaly. They knew your grandmother’s temporal amplifier would be the last one that went offline. With you trapped in the past, they could steal it, correct the rapid shift anomaly, and restore history the way they wanted it once it was in their possession.”

  “But how did they time travel if they didn’t have a temporal amplifier?”

  “They used the temporal amplifier in the bookcases to shift to 1955, to a time when your grandmother and I were at the hospital for your uncle’s birth. They made all the shifts from then, using the temporal amplifier in the bookcases, which turned out to be very lucky for you and us.”

  “Why was it lucky?”

  “Because we could track the changes across timelines. It’s how we could get articles for events that had not happened yet. If they had used a different temporal amplifier, we could not have done that.”

  “Why not use a different temporal amplifier instead of risking Rose… uh… grandmother finding out and stopping them?”

  “I am not sure. Lloyd said something to evil Kevin that the person he reported to required that we only used the temporal amplifier in the bookcases. Lloyd always thought it had something to do with using TPC equipment and that it would allow them to go undetected for longer, maybe long enough to complete the mission.”

  “How do you know what Lloyd and evil Kevin had planned? How can you know if you only lived one timeline?”

  “The temporal amplifier protects against paradox, remember? We could see details across timelines - and your grandmother helped me to understand what they meant.”

  “If you knew what would happen, why didn’t you and grandmother travel back in time and stop it, instead of leaving it for me to do?”

  He chuckled again.

  “Your grandmother and I were both almost 100 years old when we discovered this. We were too old to do what needed to be done. And we knew we could count on you.”

  “Right.” She looked at the moon now, too, taking in everything her grandfather had said.

  “What about the article about me being killed after the earthquake?”

  “That’s from this timeline. When you return to your own time, you must make sure you turn off the gas, so the fire doesn’t happen.”

  Then she opened her hand and showed him the lump of plastic that used to be the remote.

  “I can’t get back. This is broken. Can you fix it?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, I cannot. I am not actually here. I am a holographic projection programmed into the temporal amplifier to appear only after the specific circumstances transpired that would occur when you corrected the errors.”

  She was not expecting this answer. Tears started in her eyes and she looked away blinking. The hologram of her grandfather was silent as she pulled herself together.

  “I don’t suppose you have any suggestions about how to live in 1933 do you?” She wiped away the tears and tried to smile.

  “You don’t have to stay in 1933. There is another way to get back. There is another temporal amplifier. That’s the one which is projecting me.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask.” He laughed and after a shocked moment, she laughed too and though it made her ribs ache, it was a glorious feeling.

  “What do I do?” she asked when she had caught her breath.

  “Go back to the house. Look for the anachronism.” He winked and then vanished.

  ◆◆◆

  The journey back to the house seemed to take forever, not only because she was walking instead of running but also because she was aching, and weary. She’d had the benefit of adrenaline when she was running to save Kevin’s family and time had seemed to go slow and fly all at the same time. Now it plodded along with her, accompanying her along each block.

  Her wool jacket was still hanging on the bush as she approached the dark house. She put it on, grateful for the insulation that warmed her almost immediately. She stopped and observed the house a long time.

  Her instincts told her the hologram of her grandfather was telling the truth, that the correct timeline, her timeline, had been restored, that he was the caring man she had always known, and not the bitter, murderous Kevin the Chestnut Covin had created. She wanted to trust his assertion she could find her way back to the future in the house, but she was wary. Her experiences with time travel made her cautious.

  The house was dark as were most of the others in the neighborhood. When she finally moved forward to see the house from other angles, the gritty noise of her shoes on the sidewalk seemed loud.

  The grassy lawn silenced her steps. Listening with every sense, she walked around the house and carefully opening the side gate, pausing every third step to see if there was any motion or sound. She crossed the backyard and stopped in the shade of the back porch.

  All was still. Then she went around to the other gate next to the kitchen window, closing it silently. This side of the house was bathed in the light of the setting moon and, feeling exposed, she wanted to move faster. But she halted under the dining-room window.

  Something was different here, there was a feeling, no, a sensation. It was familiar and comforting - a temporal amplifier was close by.

  Nowhere else in her circumnavigation of the house had she sensed this. She knew there was a temporal amplifier in the dining room, and she needed to get inside.

  She leaned against the house and considered her plan. The dining room was in the center of the house and neither the front nor back door was closer. If the house was as she had left it, the front door would still be unlocked. If there were someone in the house, breaking in through the back door might offer a more unexpected route. If any neighbors heard her breaking in, they would call the police. Walking in the open front door would be quieter.

  Stealthily, she walked along the side of the house, moving from shadow to shadow, cutting across the lawn and up the steps to the porch, ducking to one side of the door to take advantage of the darkness still pooled there. She reached over and turned the knob. It was still unlocked, and the door drifted open a few inches. She waited in anticipation of a response, but all stayed quiet.

  She slipped in and soundlessly closed the door behind her. The house seemed deserted. Feeling more secure she walked through the living room and into the dining room.

  The lace curtains were pulled to the side of the windows, and moonlight illuminated the small table in the room's center, the built-in cabinets with their leaded glass fronts, and the gleaming built-in sideboard under the windows. Wood paneling on the lower half of the walls swallowed the light, and the white plaster on upper halves glowed. Framed art on the walls were squares of black against the white, and one piece caught her breath and held h
er eyes.

  It was the de Kooning painting she had seen in the master bedroom of the house in 1962. The one she had photographed and shown to Rose and Caelen. Rose had said de Kooning created his works in the late 40s and early 50s. The painting should not have existed in 1933. It was the anachronism she was looking for.

  She drew close and as she did, the feeling generated by a temporal amplifier intensified. It had to be behind the painting. The painting was almost as wide as she could stretch her arms. She carefully lifted it off the wall. It was lighter than she expected as she set it on the floor next to her. There was nothing on the wall behind the painting except the clean white plaster, and the two nails carefully placed to display it.

  Sharon ran her hands along the plaster and the wood paneling below it, searching for another hidden door or secret panel, and she could find nothing. Frustration and not a little fear welled inside her. She was so close! It had to be here somewhere.

  Ok, think, she told herself as she took a deep breath and stepped back to look at the wall. Where could it be? Maybe it was in the cabinets or the sideboard. How much space does the temporal amplifier take up? She pictured the control panel on the back of the bookcases… the control panel that did not appear to occupy the space it took up behind the bookcase shelves.

  She picked up the painting and turned it around. The control panel for the temporal amplifier was in the canvas, a space that could not be there, but it was.

  She nearly cried in relief and setting the painting on the dining room table, she carefully programmed her return. She wanted to get back to the library right after she had left so that Caelen would not have time to worry about her.

  All that was left to do was push the button and this would be over. She looked around the room one last time as if to say goodbye. There was a figure in a corner. It was in shadow, outlined by moonlight behind it. It was watching her, head cocked slightly to the side. The figure was in darkness and she could not see its face.

  Her heart stopped beating. She stopped breathing. She froze with her finger poised over the button. The figure did not move. It did not speak. It was as if time was suspended.