A Time and a Place

by Joe Mahoney

  Iugurtha looked at it ruefully and put it away.

  “All right, let’s go. Keep Ridley safe until I get back.”

  “I can’t promise—”

  “Just keep him safe.”

  Iugurtha handed me the book.

  “You know where to go?” Humphrey sounded as resigned as I felt. “How to get there?”

  Not having really listened to Iugurtha I had only the vaguest of ideas. Probably I would have to ask her to repeat herself. The whole question would be academic anyway if I couldn’t make the gate work—I had only ever used it once.

  Suddenly I felt a most unpleasant sensation in my head, not unlike the onset of a head cold. An image popped into my mind of a forest at night. I could just make out the figure of a man sitting with his back against a massive tree trunk. The tree obscured most of the man. In my mind’s eye I watched as cigarette smoke wafted from his right hand. The hand ascended. Seconds later smoke rings billowed out before him.

  Humphrey’s patient. But where had the image come from? A shiver ran up my spine—had Iugurtha projected it into my brain using some arcane technology? Perhaps. The image had come from the gate, I realized—I was seeing Humphrey’s prospective patient because Iugurtha had bookmarked that page for me.

  As for the unpleasant sensation I had felt in my head…

  I was in fact coming down with a head cold.

  Humphrey cleared his throat. “Are we going or not?”

  There was only one way to find out whether I could still work the thing.

  “Iugurtha,” I said, tossing the book high into the air.

  Instantly it transformed into the large, two-dimensional phenomenon known as the gate. I glanced around, feeling quite calm. Controlling the gate did not appear to have accelerated time for me as it had before. There didn’t appear to be any other untoward consequences either. Rooting around in my mind, I saw that I could control such parameters if I wanted to, though I had only the vaguest idea how I was accomplishing it.

  Humphrey strode forward, his bag in hand, and stepped over the threshold. I started after him. Feeling a sudden urge to sneeze, I stopped and rubbed my nose hard with a knuckle. The urge abated. I shook my head and stepped through the gate. Abruptly the sneeze erupted like an industrial strength leaf-blower. The gate shifted dramatically. Ahead of me the doctor lurched like a deranged manatee. A kaleidoscope of worlds flickered before us, only a precious few havens to creatures of flesh and blood. I thought of the once square-jawed Fletcher, now a stain on the side of some distant planet.

  I reached out with my mind and snagged a destination that didn’t look like it would bake, freeze, or crush us. An instant later I was through, and I struck the ground hard. I struggled to my feet, groaning in pain. I couldn’t complain, though—I was alive and relatively unscathed, more than I had dared hoped for seconds earlier.

  But what of Humphrey? There was no sign of the doctor anywhere.

  Nor, judging from my surroundings, would I be meeting his patient anytime soon.

  XII

  An Important Date

  Drizzle licked my face beneath an overcast sky. Puddles littered the landscape surrounding me. I was back on Earth, but where? I stood on a road sandwiched between two farmer’s fields. Seagulls dotted the fields, pecking occasionally at the moist ground. Through a distant stand of pine trees, I caught a glimpse of a frothy bay. I was back on the island, then. Something about the look of the place suggested the south shore. I was a fair ways from home.

  A battered old Ford pick-up approached and slowed to manoeuvre around me. I limped to the side of the road and nodded at the grizzled farmer who peered curiously out at me from between his windshield washer blades. He stepped on the gas and drove off, leaving a thick cloud of black smoke hanging in the air behind him. I turned and just about collided with a sign informing me that I was on the Blue Shank Road.

  I surveyed the expanse of road before me that, were I to follow it, would take me into Summerside, and I considered the prospect that I had simply gone mad. That I had imagined everything that had happened to me. That Sweep, Iugurtha, Burning Eyes, Rainer, Sarah, and the whole lot of them were nothing more than figments of a deranged imagination. A cold tendril of fear snaked its way slowly up my spine as I chewed on the very real possibility that I had wandered out here on my own in a delusional state.

  Something massive struck me from behind and propelled me forward onto the asphalt. I clambered back to my feet wiping pebbles and specks of blood off my hands. One arm was dripping wet, but my discomfort was nothing compared to the relief washing over me. Maybe I was delusional, but at least the delusion included a convincing version of my good friend Doctor Peter Humphrey.

  “Missed a bit, don’t you think?” he asked, looking around.

  I had indeed missed our destination, and good. It was sheer luck that I hadn’t killed us both.

  “Sebastian,” I said.

  The chrome device strapped to my wrist replied instantly: “Yes, Mr. Wildebear.”

  “How far are we from Summerside?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m having trouble accessing Ansalar’s net. Wait… there. You’re about an hour’s walk from the welcome sign at the edge of the city.”

  “You were having some sort of trouble?”

  “I was. It’s fine now. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I had to use an old protocol.”

  “An old—why would that be?”

  “Every source I check tells me the same date.”

  I exchanged glances with Humphrey, not sure I wanted to hear this. “What date?”

  He told me.

  “That can’t be right,” I said.

  “It is,” Sebastian said. “It’s the seventh of July two years before our subjective present.”

  The seventh of July—I understood the implications instantly. It was the day of the accident. The day —

  “The day Katerina died,” I muttered. “The day before Ridley came to live with me.”

  “You took us here deliberately,” Humphrey said.

  “I didn’t mean to do this, Doctor.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t—not consciously. I just mean that on some level you must have wanted to come here.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Only that the unconscious is a powerful instrument. You’re here for a reason.”

  A reason. What reason? My breath caught as an idea occurred to me, one so bold that I could barely even put it into words. “I could—undo it. Prevent it. The accident. Save her—save my sister.”

  “Ridley will never come to live with you. The entity will never abduct him. We solve a whole slew of problems in one fell swoop.” Humphrey stroked his chin. “Later you can take me forward to the day I bought the book for Joyce and I can fix that too.”

  As an English teacher I had taught literature on the subject of time travel. As such I was all too aware of the theoretical pitfalls inherent in such travel. Time could prove immutable—it could be that nothing we attempted would change anything. Or maybe this was simply one dimension among many. I might save Katerina in this timeline only to have her die in another, including the one from which I had come. Or worse, I could save Katerina only to mess up the future in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  I only knew one thing for sure. That I had to try.

  We trudged along the Blue Shank Road toward Summerside, the drizzle running in rivulets down our faces. As we walked, I told Humphrey everything that had happened to me since Humphrey had jumped through the gate in search of Ridley and Joyce.

  “How about you, Doctor?” I asked once I’d finished. “What’s your story?”

  “Didn’t accomplish much,” he said. “The bugs poisoned me too. Like you, one of the cats came along in the nick of time. You know I found Joyce, or what’s le
ft of her. After that I spent days watching the demon closely, trying to figure it out. How could it be that so many different beings are all wrapped up into one? Is the process reversible? If I could get it in a lab I’d figure out a thing or two, I can tell you that.”

  He retrieved a cigar from his tattered suit, sniffed it, lit it, puffed on it, and went on. “I noticed a lot of people under the demon’s control getting hurt. I decided the least I could do was help out a bit. Patch up a few broken bones here and there. Those people aren’t making out very well, Wildebear. This war they’re fighting. They’re losing. I don’t understand the hold that damned creature has on them but whatever it is, it’s strong. I don’t mean to scare you, but Ridley’s in a lot of danger if he stays put.”

  “I know it,” I said.

  We trudged in single file on the road’s gravel shoulder. “What was it you needed?” I called back over my shoulder.

  “Eh?”

  “In your bag.”

  “What bag?”

  “The one you brought with you to my place.”

  “What about it?”

  “I went to a lot of trouble to get it for you—I was wondering what you were after. Bandages? Penicillin?”

  “You brought me my bag?”

  “You oughta know, you have it right there.”

  “I’m aware I’m carrying my bag, Wildebear.” Humphrey sounded exasperated. “I’m just surprised to learn it was you who brought it.”

  “You asked me to, so I did.”

  “When?”

  “When I was in the grocery store. In Port Kerry. You don’t remember?”

  “How could I? I wasn’t anywhere near that grocery store. I never asked you to bring my bag. Actually I wish you hadn’t. Now I have to lug it about everywhere.”

  “You’re using it to help people, aren’t you?” I asked, irked.

  “I suppose.”

  The doctor fell behind. In a whisper, Sebastian spoke from my wrist. “He didn’t ask for the bag.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It wasn’t the doctor. It was me playing back samples of the doctor’s voice through the store’s public address system.”

  “Why on earth would you do something like that?”

  “Another ploy to encourage you to go through the gate.”

  “Sounds like an awful lot of trouble for nothing.”

  “No trouble for me, standard operating procedure for Casa Terra. And you have to admit: here you are, on the other side of the gate.”

  Words failed me.

  I stopped and waited until Humphrey caught up. “We need a plan,” I told him.

  “My thoughts exactly. I don’t mean to bring up old wounds, but it would help if you could tell me about the accident. If we both know what to expect, we might be able to prevent it.”

  He was right. Just the same I could not bring myself to talk about it right away. The thought of seeing my sister again on the very eve of her death had placed an enormous lump in my throat. According to the official report, the accident had taken place on Water Street in downtown Summerside near a popular café called Samuel’s. A man had fallen into the street in front of my sister’s motorcycle.

  Katerina had managed to steer around the fellow; unfortunately, bad luck saw fit to place a Chrysler Newport in her path. She struck the vehicle head on, somersaulted over it like a rag doll, and was greeted by an unfriendly stretch of asphalt upon which she skidded for several dozen yards before a light pole conceded to halt her progress. Tragically, inexplicably, Katerina had not been wearing her helmet.

  Though unconscious much of the time, Katerina hung on for days following the accident. This was not surprising—my sister was one tough customer. I had always marvelled that death was able to take her at all. Through it all I stayed at her side as much as humanly possible. It was a hard time. But as bad as it was for me, it was worse for Ridley.

  “Take care of him,” Katerina told me once in a transient moment of lucidity. “Take care of my boy. Barnabus, don’t you dare let me down.”

  “I won’t,” I told her, and meant it.

  I can still feel her fingers pressing into my forearm.

  When she passed on, I tried to do as she asked. That Ridley needed some serious looking after was obvious; the grief on his young face was plain enough to see. Unfortunately seeing was the easy part—knowing what to do about it something else altogether.

  Take care of my boy, Katerina had said, and I would like to say that I did my best, but I can’t, because I didn’t. I didn’t even come close.

  I cleared my throat before attempting to speak. “You know as much as I do, Doctor. She swerved to avoid hitting someone. Hit a car instead.”

  “Tragic,” Humphrey reflected. “And yet, when you think about it, fairly straightforward. All we have to do is keep your sister off her bike.”

  Put like that it sounded simple.

  I allowed myself to be briefly buoyed by the doctor’s enthusiasm.

  The rain graduated from cats and dogs to considerably less domesticated animal fare. An elderly gent in a battered Hyundai picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to Summerside. He dropped us off right in front of my sister’s house on High Street. By then the rain had let up, allowing the setting sun to peak through the clouds. Humphrey and I found ourselves standing on the sidewalk two years earlier than we had a right to, shielding our eyes against the glare reflecting off the windows of Katerina’s house.

  Steeling myself, I headed straight across the lawn to the front porch. I mounted the steps and went to knock, my hand trembling. I was trembling at the thought of seeing her. Of seeing my sister, the late Katerina Doucette, nee Wildebear, alive.

  An instant before my fist touched wood Humphrey whispered, “Wait,” and motioned me behind a large cedar bush to the right of the porch, where no one could see us from the house.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “I’m not turning back now, Doctor.”

  “To know that you’re about to die. That you’re meant to die. That would be very upsetting, I would think.”

  “Better than actually dying.”

  “Of course. But maybe there’s a way to do this without upsetting your sister. Where does she keep this bike of hers?”

  I led the good doctor along a cobblestone path to Katerina’s backyard. French doors overlooked the elaborate stone patio that my brother-in-law Jerry had completed shortly before stepping out of my sister’s life. We kept to the shadows, hoping it would make us difficult to spot in the encroaching twilight.

  Katerina’s motorcycle sat atop the patio between a rusty black barbecue and two green garbage pails. The bike itself had belonged to Jerry. It was a vintage affair, with a name like Victor or Vincent—I could never remember which. She was awfully fond of that bundle of black and chrome. Too damned fond, if you asked me, considering it would shortly kill her.

  “We need to disable it,” Humphrey whispered. “Where’s the spark plug?”

  “This isn’t a lawnmower, Doctor. And removing a spark plug wouldn’t stop Katerina. She and Jerry have put this bike back together again more times than you can imagine.” I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking about the time I had the entire bike taken apart. Paid a mechanic to do it.”

  “We don’t have time to—”

  “I know, I know. I’m not suggesting we take the bike apart. I’m just telling you about this time I had it done because—”

  “There was something wrong with it?”

  “No, it was—”

  “Why would you do something like that if there was nothing wrong with it?”

  Too late I remembered that Humphrey and I did not exactly share the same sense of humour. “It was a joke, Doctor. I hid the pieces all
over the house. Took Kat days to find them all.”

  “Huh.”

  “Ridley thought it was funny,” I added lamely.

  “I bet. Well, let’s get on with this, shall we? What do you suggest?”

  A light came on behind the French doors. I heard the doors rattle—somebody was coming out. There was no time to disable the bike or even think how to disable it.

  “Hurry!” I whispered, slipping the bike into neutral. I began wheeling it off the patio onto the cobblestone path. I could only go so fast with my bad leg. Humphrey trailed close behind, trapped behind me in the narrow walkway.

  The French doors opened. Ridley spoke, sounding much younger than he had the last time I’d heard him. “Mom, where’s your bike? Did you put it in the shed?”

  I reached the driveway where I almost lost control of the bike. Humphrey hurried forward to steady it. Katerina and Ridley were talking in back of the house. Katrina’s voice—I had thought I would never hear it again. I had not fully appreciated it the last time I’d heard it. And here I was running away from it. But there was no time to think about that—if I wanted to continue hearing Katerina’s voice I needed to dispose of her bike fast.

  I scanned the neighbourhood. Mature trees lined the street, massive shapes looming in the darkness, lit here and there by the occasional streetlight. The trees were maple and ash mostly. They would do nothing to conceal a bike this size. The automobiles clogging the narrow driveways and spilling out onto the street would do me no good either.

  The houses, on the other hand—if their owners were anything like Katerina, their backyards would be completely accessible. I wheeled the bike onto the sidewalk, heading for the house on the left. Boots slapped the wet asphalt somewhere behind me. I didn’t dare look back.

  “Barnabus, what—Peter Humphrey, is that you? What are you doing with my bike?”

  It was no use—the jig was up. I pulled back on the handlebars and brought the motorcycle to a halt. Sighing, I propped the motorcycle up on its kickstand, and turned to face my elder sister, feeling about as sheepish as I’d ever felt. And I’d had plenty of opportunities to feel sheepish around Katerina.