Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

  “I know,” Terry tells him through tears. “I know who you are. I know everything.”

  The old man nods and closes his eyes.

  I want to send Marco a message as he departs, but then I remember that I’m not there in the stable with them. I’m watching from very far away. This vision, though, is so vivid. My ability to read the thoughts of everyone in the room is so profound.

  Inside the office, Willa stands ready. She is the only one who has caused Van Owen lasting injury and pain, the one who has beaten him twice in battle. But Van Owen is the first one to speak, and he says exactly what I’m thinking: “So, the whole family’s here.” He smiles that same overconfident smile that I’ve seen across so many lifetimes.

  Jerome doesn’t wait. For once, he is the aggressor, charging forward to attack first. That odd humming sound returns, and Van Owen’s hands begin to glow again with the power he took from Kwame a century and a half ago. He waits until Jerome is only a few feet away, and then he raises his hands and lets loose his lightning barrage.

  For a moment, Jerome slows down; he lowers his head to look at the electrical stream beating against his chest, charring away his shirt. Then he looks up and begins moving forward again, not a mark on his body. Through the window, Carl watches, elated when he sees Van Owen’s awestruck expression.

  ​“Why won’t you fall, you lumbering brute?” shouts Van Owen.

  ​Jerome doesn’t respond. He doesn’t explain that he has spent years learning how to withstand lightning attacks—years being singed and burned and struck by his father, all in preparation for this day. He just keeps his forward momentum, the lightning currents scoring his clothing and slowing his progress but only barely hurting him.

  Then I see the thought come to life in Van Owen’s eyes. He has realized that Jerome can’t be harmed physically. He maintains his lightning attack but begins to reach into Jerome’s mind, reading his memories. Almost immediately, he finds a weakness.

  “You’re worried about Willa and Terry, aren’t you?” asks Van Owen, speaking without moving his lips.

  Jerome narrows his eyes and tries to close off his mind, to create a mental wall, just as his father trained him to do. However, Carl had no mental powers—no way to prepare Jerome for such an attack.

  “Well,” Van Owen goes on needling the boy, “you needn’t worry about them. They’re in no danger from me. You and I both know where the real danger lies.”

  Jerome’s anger rises. He pushes doubly hard against the lightning, taking three great strides.

  “All those years of training—your father bullying you, burning you, beating you—did you think it was all in your best interest? Did you ever consider that maybe none of it was about training you at all? Did you ever consider that your father beat you simply because he took pleasure in beating you?”

  “Shut up,” Jerome bellows, but he is wavering, weakening to the slaver’s mental attack, allowing Van Owen in, giving him fodder to press harder.

  “Look at how he treated Warren,” Van Owen goes on. “That poor boy just needed a little guidance and fathering but could get none from his father, so he descended into the world of narcotics. Look at how Carl treats poor, defenseless Terry. How much longer do you think Terry will last under the same roof with such a monster? Soon your father will drive Terry away, just as he did Warren.”

  Warren groans in response, “Stop filling my head with lies…”

  “Soon you’ll leave, too, and your father will have just what he wants—to be alone in the house—with Regina.”

  “Stop it…”

  Van Owen’s voice is smoother with each sentence. He has practiced such manipulation for generations. “Yes, that’s it. That’s what Carl has wanted all along—to be alone with his little girl.” The suggestion is revolting and absurd, but Van Owen presses on. “Alone with the silent girl who looks just like her mother. Can you possibly imagine what Carl Kelly might want from her?”

  I see it happen then: Jerome begins to let up. Whether it is the lightning or the needling or the telepathic coercion, Van Owen’s assault seems to take its toll on Jerome. He doesn’t believe Van Owen’s words—I’m certain of it—yet he looks undermined by their viciousness, and he begins to falter. But Willa is raising her hand, preparing to mount her attack.

  “Yes,” Van Owen continues, “your father has told you lies all your life, Jerome. He’s prepared you for an epic battle with me, taught you that I’m some sort of scourge against your family. It’s simply not true. None of it. It’s all backward. It’s your father who’s the serpent, not I. In 1859, I rescued Amara and Kwame from a savage land. I endowed them with powers that had been in my family for generations. And was there any appreciation? No—only hatred and loathing and resentment and threats. Only fear of the unknown. Only mistrust that a white man might be trying to raise them up above the rest of humanity’s dregs. But isn’t that the way it always is? Man betrays his maker. Man is so envious that he defies the one who shows him kindness.”

  Abruptly, Van Owen’s lightning stops flowing, and he lowers his hands. Jerome can rush him now, but he doesn’t. Instead, he barely trudges forward at all. “I… I don’t understand,” says Jerome, his face expressionless.

  “No, of course you don’t,” Van Owen says aloud. “How could you? You’ve spent seventeen years under the same roof with a madman, being indoctrinated into his mad delusions. It’ll take you some time to accept the truth, but eventually you’ll see that I’m not your enemy. I didn’t bring Terry here so that I could hurt him. I brought him here so I could help him, so I could raise him myself, guide him, teach him. You and your family stormed my stable and attacked my students and me. I’m the one who’s been wronged here. These men—these young Black men here—they come to me to be taught, to learn how to lift themselves from the mire. Yet you rage in here and inflict violence upon them, trying to tear them back down. I think you owe me an apology.”

  Jerome’s eyes look glassy. He’s only a few feet from Van Owen, but he appears hypnotized, bewitched by Van Owen’s lies. “I…I’m sorry…I…”

  “Yes,” Van Owen nods as he pats Jerome’s shoulder. “Of course you are. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “No,” says Jerome, “it wasn’t hard at all.” His eyes glint. The dim expression fades. He grits his teeth almost into a half-smile. He was pretending. Van Owen’s bile wasn’t affecting him at all. Jerome was far too smart to believe a word. And now he lifts his hand to strike.

  For all of the extraordinary powers that I’ve seen used against Van Owen, I don’t believe I’ve ever been as contented as when I see him suffer the indignity of the backhanded slap across the face, rendered by Jerome. Van Owen’s head turns from the force of the blow, and his face flushes red with anger as he staggers backward. He focuses his eyes on Jerome, trying to find a way back into the boy’s mind. Jerome doesn’t give him one. He strikes again, punching, slapping, elbowing. Blood trickles from the slaver’s nose. Van Owen tries to speak, tries to raise a hand in defense, but Jerome punches him again, square in the mouth. Van Owen falls to the floor on his back, his teeth bloodied.

  Jerome jumps atop him. “No more,” he shouts. “You took my mother.” A punch to the jaw. “You kidnapped my brother.” Another punch to the nose breaks it with a sickening crack. “Now you’ve got my sister and my grandmother here, too? No more!” Again and again, he strikes Van Owen until the slaver’s face is purple from the clotting. Then, as Van Owen hovers somewhere just above unconsciousness, Jerome raises both hands, clasping them together in a double fist above his head, preparing for one final blow. Van Owen wheezes as he tries to speak. He spits out a tooth. Jerome lifts his hands higher, clenching his jaw for the final blow. Then he waits, and he waits, and he waits. Finally, he looks down with pity at Van Owen, and he lowers his hands. He has the enemy down, beaten, ready to be finished, but Jerome can’t escape who he is. Carl’s concerns, Coach Dodge’s criticism, even Akins’s derision—they all pointed to the
same Achilles heel that Jerome has known for years: he lacks a killer instinct. He cannot deliver a fatal blow. Jerome realizes it and drops his hands to his sides. And in that moment, he is lost.

  Van Owen’s glowing hands shoot upward and wrap around Jerome’s neck like electric eels. Electricity crackles from them as he twists and presses and finally makes Jerome feel pain. “Barbarian,” Van Owen seethes, drool and blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. He looks like a rabid dog.

  Carl pounds on the window while Van Owen squeezes tighter, pulling himself up, pushing Jerome back against the ground, strangling and electrocuting at the same time. Jerome’s eyes shut, consciousness gone. Then, suddenly, they snap open again. He is awake, yet he appears asleep at the same time, almost as if he’s entranced. His fist seems to rise from twenty feet behind him, the punch colliding with Van Owen’s head and knocking the slaver backward into the glass wall. Van Owen shrieks as blood drips from a new head wound at the rear of his skull.

  “Good girl,” Willa says as she watches Regina dictate Jerome’s movements. She is practicing the same trick that her mother did on the day Regina was born. She is the puppeteer and Jerome her marionette. The little girl shuffles her feet, and Jerome stands. She mimes with her hands, and Jerome raises his, grabbing Van Owen by his lapels and throwing him into the adjacent wall. A priceless nineteenth century painting falls to the floor.

  “I’ve seen this game before,” Van Owen hisses. He looks toward Willa. “How are you doing this? You don’t have that power. But if it’s not you, then who…?”

  Regina shifts her feet again and Jerome races forward. Again he lifts Van Owen up and throws him, but this time, even as the slaver strikes into a desk, sliding across it and slamming into the wall, Van Owen keeps his eyes on Regina. He watches her mime each of Jerome’s movements and understands that it is she who has taken control of Jerome’s body.

  “So, it’s you, is it, little one?” Van Owen groans through bloody teeth. “Yes, it would be. You have Amara’s eyes. You would be the most vicious of all.” He offers a sympathetic expression. “I don’t want to hurt you, child—you’re the reason we’re all here—but I won’t tolerate this insolence.” He waves his hand toward her, making almost a throwing gesture, and sparks fly from his palm like electrified daggers and land on the floor near Regina’s feet In that instant, I know that he’s telling the truth: he isn’t trying to kill her. She is the reason for all of this. He does want her alive—as a replacement for me. He couldn’t locate Dara when the boys were born, but he sensed Regina’s birth; he knew that a female descendant had come into the world. He wants Regina.

  The lightning whizzes by Regina, missing her, forging tiny holes in the wall behind her. But she jolts and loses her control of Jerome, who crumbles to the ground. Regina gasps as Jerome lands in a heap. She recoils, suddenly a child again. Van Owen takes a step toward her.

  “No,” says Willa, who has walked so slowly across the floor that she has gone unnoticed. She’s only a few feet from Van Owen now. “No!” She waves her hand at Van Owen, and he rises into the air, higher, higher. He looks down at the floor, grimacing furiously. His face is already healing from Jerome’s attack.

  Willa moves her arm back and forth, and Van Owen’s body complies. With each of her gesticulations, Van Owen’s body shifts in the air, careening into the near wall, the far wall, the steel door, the glass window. He howls with each contact. “Stop it, you filthy witch!” he cries.

  She smashes him into a mirror, shattering it. She beckons again with her hand, and he begins to rise again, but he raises a glowing hand and fires off his lightning. It flies upward, seemingly erratically, but the current strikes the cable that supports the grotesque crystal chandelier. The cable rips in two. The chandelier falls downward. Willa doesn’t make a sound, even as the chandelier lands atop her back, knocking her down, pinning her to the ground. Crystals shatter and roll across the floor.

  But Willa doesn’t cry out. She manages only a weak whisper: “Run, Regina, run…”

  Thirty-Five

  “No,” Carl shouted at the glass window.

  He could barely breathe. Jerome looked unconscious. Willa looked dead. There was no blood, but the chandelier was tremendous. Its weight had crushed the old woman against the wooden floor.

  ​Carl tried to make sense of what he had seen. How had Willa performed these feats—stopping bullets in the air, lifting Van Owen off the ground with the wave of her arm? But there was no time for these questions. Van Owen was back on his feet again, moving toward Regina. Carl had to save his little girl.

  He pressed his palms against the glass, trying to electrify the window as Warren had done with the door. He pressed harder, but his lightning just rolled over the glass, offering only a fireworks show.

  ​Then, the gunfire erupted again from above, and one bullet grazed his shoulder. Carl moaned but didn’t fall.

  “Pop!” called Terry, prying himself away from his fallen grandfather. He tried to jump up, but Warren shoved him back down. Warren forced himself to standing and raced out from behind the carriage. Carl was still focused on the window, still coating the glass in electric fire, but it was having no effect. He was favoring his right side, where the bullet had connected, but he wasn’t giving up on getting into that room.

  Above, the remaining shooters grew bolder. They made themselves more visible—crouching now at the lip of the loft, four young Black men fired their guns. Another bullet struck Carl. He grabbed at his thigh and crumpled to the ground, weak, his lightning ceasing. Warren ran to his father and knelt beside him.

  “Get back,” Carl shouted through the pain, trying to push Warren away, but Warren wouldn’t relent.

  “No, Pop. I won’t.” He scooped Carl up in his arms, cradling him like a child. He scanned the stable. Then he turned his back to the shooters and began backing up toward the carriage.

  “What are you doing?” Carl shouted.

  “Saving your life,” said Warren as he continued moving backward. Even as the gunfire came, he kept moving. Even as the bullets ripped across his back, he kept moving until he reached the carriage. Finally safe behind it, Warren fell to the ground, and Carl rolled from his arms and landed beside Terry.

  “You should have left me there,” Carl said. “You could have gotten hit.”

  Carl looked down at his leg. The bullet had traveled straight through his femur. Seeing the blood, Carl suddenly became aware of the pain. He followed the trail of blood from his leg to where it mixed with another trail—one that came from Warren. “Warren?” he asked.

  Warren’s breathing was shallow. His voice was soft. Blood was spreading beneath him. “You okay, Pop?”

  Carl grabbed his arm. He opened Warren’s jacket to check for wounds but saw none. “Where were you hit?”

  “In my back.”

  “Turn over. We can draw the bullet out. We can cauterize. Let me…”

  As Warren spoke, blood dripped from his mouth and hung from his lip. “It’s not one bullet. It’s many. And there’s no time.”

  Carl reached underneath to Warren’s back and traced his hands along the wounds. His hand lit up, and Warren groaned as five blood-soaked slugs eased out from his back and fell onto the hay. “You’re gonna be ok, Warren,” Carl said. “You’re gonna make it.”

  “It’s too late, Pop,” Warren said, his voice weak.

  Carl took Warren’s hand in his and spoke with pride. “Terry, did you see? Did you see what Warren did? Do you remember your brother Warren? This is Warren…” Carl was crying. “This is Warren…”

  “I know,” Terry said, his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  Warren coughed. His breathing was labored. “How’d you like that thing with the door, Pop? Pretty cool, huh?”

  ​“It was…it was amazing, Warren,” said Carl. “How…?”

  ​“I don’t know… I just imagine something’s not there, and I can make a passage through it…” The bullets were starting again. The boys in
the rafters had reloaded. “But wait till you see this trick. You better cover Terry up, though.”

  There was a piercing, high-pitched hum. Warren’s hands started to glow. Then the light spread. It traveled up his wrists, up his arms, across his chest. He smiled, as if the sensation was almost pleasant, even as the light coated his head. His entire body gleamed as he looked at Carl and Terry and said, “Goodbye.” The glow enveloped him, obscuring his features, his clothing, his entire form. He exhaled one last, loud breath, howling as the electricity exploded from him. There was no lightning, no current, no sound even—just a burst of light that seemed to emanate from every part of his body, as if he had taken all of the suffering and disappointment and pain he’d ever experienced and drawn them into a power source at his core and then expelled them all at once. Blue light streamed upward and outward, filling the room. Carl crouched over Terry, shielding him. The light danced across Carl’s back, but he was immune to its effect. Above, Van Owen’s men screamed as the light buffeted them. Suddenly, the humming sound returned. Much louder, almost deafening. There was a brilliant flash of blue light emanating from Warren’s glowing form. It exploded through the stable, ripping a hole in the wooden rooftop. As the rain poured in, much of the roof fell with it, collapsing onto the loft, burying Van Owen’s men in rubble.

  As quickly as it had come, the light vanished and the stable was silent. Carl pulled himself off of Terry and rolled onto his back. The pain in his leg was so intense that he could barely move. “Terry, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I think so.” He looked around. Where’s Warren?”

  Carl checked the spot where his eldest son had been. There was nothing there but ash.

  Thirty-Six

  Van Owen averts his eyes from Warren’s light explosion. Regina stares into it. The roof caves, crushing Van Owen’s men—those poor, corrupted African-American boys all unconscious or dead. The light envelops the stable, and then it departs, taking Warren with it. And Carl and Terry are left combing their hands through a pile of dust.