So You Had to Build a Time Machine

by So You Had to Build a Time Machine (epub)

  Skid, with that disbelieving look still plastered on her face, allowed Cord to wrap her in his arms. He kissed her forehead like a parent and patted her back. “You’re not alone, you know?”

  She planted a hand in his chest and gently pushed him away. “Thank you, Cord. I needed that, but if you call me Skiddo again—”

  Brick appeared, his shirt back on but unbuttoned, chest splattered with black blood. He stood at the head of the slain orc, the tip of the tekpi still sticking out from its skull.

  “Nice.” He walked past Skid, pulling a pistol from his back pocket, and handed it grip-first to Cord. “Here. You might need this.”

  Cord looked at it as if it were a strange, poisonous reptile. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Our friends were in a circle around a soldier.” He stared off toward the fire. “A soldier of the United States Army. There are lots of them out there, dead in the grass.”

  Skid wiped at the last of the tears. “Was he still alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he say anything?” Cord asked, the smile gone. He took the sidearm but didn’t look at it.

  Brick’s shaggy head fell forward slightly. “He said, ‘negotiations failed.’ What do you think that means?”

  “Dave would know,” Skid said. “We need to find hi—”

  She stopped; something snapped in the night. They all turned south to find the crawling storm of a Miller Wave nearly upon them. Before Cord could grab her, Skid ran to intercept the rolling purple clouds, ready for once to welcome it.

  8

  Susan walked through the twenty people scattered throughout her family’s former living room, the darkness outside now complete, their faces grim in the harsh shadows of Tungsten lamps. No florescent or LEDs for the Murder House, oh no. Everything was authentic 1984. Tamara stood and followed the last surviving Sanderson into the hallway, the memory of Tommy falling from thin air sent a chill through her when she stepped over the bloodstain in the floor. She knew nothing of Cord’s artwork; to her, the stain was real.

  “Mrs. Meek?” she said. The older woman turned, a strange smile on her face.

  “Yes, dear?”

  Tamara twisted her fingers nervously. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your family.”

  Susan’s smile waned but didn’t disappear. “That was a long time ago. I was sad for a long, long time, but I found anger is a good replacement for sorrow.” She turned back toward the stairs, but Tamara stopped her before she took a step.

  “Are you—are you really going to kill your father?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  “I don’t know.” The remaining whisper of a smile drifted away; her brows pinched. “No,” she said. “That is what I came here to do. That’s why I have a Glock 19 in my purse. But, now that I’m here, it all seems silly. No one can travel backward in time, and I’m too frightened to shoot anyone.” Her eyes fell on Tamara. “Even the person who robbed me of a normal life. My mother, my brother, a place to call home. If it wasn’t for him, I could bring my children here, to this house, to play with Grandma.” Her voice trailed off and she wiped a tear from her eye before looking up to Tamara. “But Grandma’s dead.”

  Tamara resisted the urge to hug this woman. She didn’t seem the hugging type. “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Ask that Cordrey fellow for my money back, if everything I just said doesn’t happen.”

  She turned for the final time and ascended the stairs to the second floor.

  9

  As Cord and Brick—holding onto his pack with one hand, gripping the sword in the other—ran to catch Skid, the Miller Wave engulfed them. Their tired limbs struggled forward until the wave passed and they spilled onto another grassy plain, the same moon, the same dusting of stars overhead.

  “Goddamnit,” Cord shouted, then realized that had been stupid and lowered his voice. “Where are we? We’d better not be in another orc world, because that would really not be fun.”

  “I don’t know,” Brick said, lifting his pack, shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t look much different from—” His words trailed off. “Oh, my god. That is beautiful.”

  “What?”

  He held out a beefy arm and pointed. A light, an electric light, shone in the darkness. “That’s an outdoor light, my friends. We’re back.”

  Skid stood behind them, looking in the opposite direction. “Boys, turn around.”

  They did and Cord let out another shout. They hadn’t gone straight south in Orcland. They’d veered to the east. Skid faced the US 71, or at least a highway. About a half-mile away a tall sign stood in the air like a beacon in a lighted court.

  “That looks like a motel,” she said.

  “Yeah, out of a 1960s biker movie.” Cord stood next to her, pistol held lightly in his hand because that’s what people did in movies.

  She pushed him, a friendly push, then started walking across the grass field toward the far-away lights.

  “I need a shower,” was all she said until they reached the Highway 71 Motel, the bug-infested marquee telling them they’d soon get the “Best sleep in the Midwest.” A diner was attached to the line of doors facing the parking lot, windows dark this early in the morning. Four fat motorcycles, three Harley-Davidson Sportsters and an Indian Chief Black Hawk rested in front of motel rooms along with two cars, the makes and models strangely out of place. One car was a two-door Studebaker, the other a DeSoto with Nebraska plates.

  “I hope one of you has cash,” Skid said through a yawn, walking to the office door, which bled the only light in the place. They were all tired. So tired no one felt the tremor that shook the floor when they stepped into the office of the Highway 71 Motel and woke the night clerk asleep behind the desk. The man wore a plaid button-down, short-sleeve shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. He almost knocked over the full ash tray at his elbow when Skid hit the call bell. A print painting of a sailing ship was tacked behind him on the wall. The frame shook, but not enough for anyone to notice.

  10

  Darkness draped the top of the stairs. Susan Meek, Susan Sanderson Meek, the last surviving member of Delbert Sanderson’s family, took each step slowly. Dread gripped her as a river of memories flowed. The last time she’d stepped into this house was days after the murders, after police removed the bodies of her family, mopped up the blood and pulled down all the crime scene tape. She’d come to take her belongings and remove anything she may want to keep; she didn’t want to keep much. It was no longer her home, and the possessions no longer belonged to her family. Her family was dead. Police had arrested her father just days before as he stood in the yard covered in red screaming at their neighbor. Mr. Wanker simply stood in his kitchen with the telephone receiver to his ear frantically talking to the police as he watched Delbert wave the sword stained by his family’s blood. That’s not how the story read now. Delbert had been knocked unconscious by a giant of a man Susan was sure didn’t exist.

  The stairs were the same, the refrigerator was the same, the carpeting in the living room was the same. Only Delbert Sanderson had changed. Or had he always been a pressure cooker waiting to explode? It was hard to see her childhood through adult eyes. She turned and sat at the top of the stairs, the bathroom door behind her. Her parents’ room and the twin bedrooms where she’d grown up next to Tommy were on either side of the staircase.

  A sigh escaped. What are you doing here, Susan? She looked around the upstairs through the darkness and, for the first time since she’d stepped into this house tonight, it looked like home. The gray shapes of closed doors, a picture on the wall, the table in the corner Mother had loved—they had stayed put all these years. This is crazy. Go home. Susan huffed, feeling silly for having come here at all. She prepared to grab the bannister rail and pull herself up, when a scream of surprise hiccupped from downstairs.

  A ripple, the moment in a science fiction movie when everything is about to go to h
ell, spread through the hall and up the stairs. A picture fell in the hallway near the bedroom where Delbert Sanderson had murdered her mother. Susan slapped a hand on the rail and held on when the ripple washed over her and was gone. She sat, eyes pinched shut, but nothing happened, not really.

  “What in the world?” she whispered.

  The sound of people downstairs chattering, saying things like, “What was that?” “Did you feel it?” “Was that real?” rose toward her. As Susan sat with her eyes closed, another sound drifted into her ears. A television. A television that hadn’t been on before played from somewhere nearby and—

  What is that? Snoring?

  Something, something alive, moved nearby. Her eyes sprang open as a brown and white cocker spaniel put its paws on her shoulders and licked her face, its tongue warm, wet, real.

  “Hey,” she said, reaching toward the dog to hold it back. She didn’t know there was a dog in the house. Then she saw it and her world dropped from under her.

  “Oh, my God. Muffit? Is it Muffit?” Susan gently took the dog’s wet chin in her hand. It was the family dog. Her stomach fluttered. “Who’s a good boy, Muffit?”

  The dog leapt again, trying to lick her nose, docked tail beating back and forth. A chill shook her core. This can’t be Muffit. Muffit was Delbert Sanderson’s first victim.

  The bottom step moaned under a great weight. Susan swallowed dryly and she glanced tenuously toward the bottom of the stairs. The next step groaned. A large, heavy man came up the stairs, a long slim sword in his right hand. He took another step, then another. In the darkness, the man hadn’t noticed Susan sitting at the top. She gave up trying to keep Muffit off her.

  Dad? Fingers fumbled with the latch of her purse then her hand dug in, feeling the cold steel of the Glock 19.

  The man with the weapon took another cautious step upward, then another, then another. He was halfway up the stairs when Susan broke the silence.

  “Hello, Father.”

  Chapter Ten

  September 7

  1

  Bud Light Dave woke in the gray world of twilight, the hallway that ran past the conference room dimmed to mimic the night of the outside world. He didn’t know what time it was, but it wasn’t morning. Not yet. Or had he missed morning? I had too much beer. The bottles were gone, even the one he broke by throwing it at the monitor where the B-horror movie starring an enormous praying mantis and Alternate Universe David had played out. Dave slowly rolled his sore head toward the feed from the infirmary. Other David was dead. No one outside Virginia Leith in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die could survive with only a head.

  He sat up slowly, expecting his own head to start pounding, but it didn’t. Dave gave it a slight shake. Nothing. Just a hint of a headache hung back amongst the cobwebs. He could handle that. His legs swung over the table where he’d slept and dropped his feet onto the floor. Karl was gone, and he cleaned up nicely.

  The world took a slight tilt as Dave made his way down the table, running his fingertips across it for balance. “Whoa.” He almost stumbled but caught himself. “That was some par-tay, amIright?”

  Something moved in his periphery, or not. He refused to turn his head before he plucked a bottle of juice and a bag of peanuts from the Magic Wall of Food. The cabinet revealed apple, apple, apple, grape, watermelon, tomato and finally orange. Dave grabbed the orange and leaned against the refrigerator door, his attention directed at the hall. He didn’t have the stomach for Other David’s severed head this morning.

  Something moved again.

  “What now?”

  He struggled with the cap, but finally got it off and tossed it on the floor before draining half the bottle. The sharp citrus burned his mouth, which tasted like beer and the rotting fish sandwiches he’d slept on in the alley behind All-National Burger.

  Whatever moved outside kept just below the frame of the long window that gave the conference room a clean view into the hallway. Then, on cue, something pressed onto the glass that his hangover-addled brain couldn’t identify. He only knew it couldn’t be Oscar, because Karl had showed his friend in the monitor and Oscar didn’t have scissors-like mandibles.

  The thing moved again, and he jumped. For the first time since he’d met Dr. Karl Miller Ph.Dickwad, Dave wished they were in the same room.

  “What the hell are you?” The movement outside the window grew more agitated. How thick is that glass? he wondered. Whatever was out there, there were more than one.

  Dave walked toward the head of the conference room. He finished the juice and left the empty bottle on the table before approaching the door. All he had to do was open the sleek metal door a crack and the hall lights would turn on. Then he could see whatever was out there. The handle turned easily in his hand.

  “This is stupid,” he said, and pulled the door open anyway, just a few millimeters, enough for the hall lights to pop on, when he discovered he was right.

  What the unholy hell? The light, emulating daylight as its engineers intended, flooded the hallway, and Dave screamed.

  Cockroaches the size of Galapagos tortoises froze for a moment before pounding over each other and scattering from the light. They disappeared into the open area of HR, leaving black droppings strewn across the once-spotless complex floor like ice cream sprinkles from hell.

  Dave vomited over the tiles.

  2

  Delbert Sanderson stopped halfway up the stairs. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his words slurred. Daddy’d been heavy on the Old Milwaukee tonight. Muffit stopped licking Susan and turned toward Delbert, a growl in his throat.

  Her body shook. Dear God, this is real. The strength washed out of her and she nearly dropped her purse. This is actually happening. This is my father. This is the night.

  Susan had so many questions for the man who murdered her mother, her brother, her dog, and left her to face life alone. Grandpa’s heart attack had erased the rest of the family. All that was left was David, a foster brother who was gone. The agency had taken him; she had no idea where he was.

  Why did you do it? she wanted to ask. Why did you kill my family? Why did you slice open Muffit like a tomato? Did you lose your mind that night? Or did you really want this? Were we really that awful? And the one question that lived through the years like a bad dream, a black cloak that hung in the closet of her memories, haunting her for nearly forty years. If I hadn’t been away at college, would you have killed me too?

  “It’s me, Dad. It’s Susan.”

  Delbert stopped, his face in shadow. She couldn’t see his expression; his only movement was the sword twisting in his hand. “You can’t be Susan,” he said, his tone flat and dead. “Susan isn’t here.”

  The hand in her purse slipped around the handle of the Glock and gripped it as deftly as she would a gardening tool.

  “It’s me, Dad.” Her voice shook, but only slightly. If Delbert noticed, he didn’t care. “I know what you’re about to do, and I can’t let you.”

  Her brilliant father, whose experiment in the basement had something to do with this, swayed enough to rest his hand on the wall to keep from falling down the stairs.

  “You sound like Susan, but you don’t sound like Susan.” He raised the sword. “Please, don’t be Susan.”

  He took another step and stopped.

  Please, don’t be Susan? “Why are you doing this?”

  Delbert turned his head. The thoughts running through it must have scattered like the break on a pool table. I’ve confused him.

  “Because,” he growled, the word turning into a yell. “They’re leeches. They’re demons. They won’t let me work. They—” He paused, waiting for his brain to catch up. “They beg me to kill them. It’s a blessing. A blessing.”

  Her grip tightened on the pistol. “What about me, Dad?”

  Delbert’s free hand moved from the wall, slapped the crown of his head and rubbed in rough circle
s. Curses flew from his mouth. When he looked back up, he was dangerous. “You’re Susan, but you can’t be Susan. Susan isn’t here.”

  At that moment, she knew the man who pushed her on the swing set at the park down the street, the man who drove her to softball practice, the man who brought roses to her eighth-grade graduation wasn’t there, either. It was the man who repeatedly told Tommy he was a disappointment and called her mother a worthless drunken fool. It was the man who kept the family terrified for the last four years of their lives. That’s who was slowly marching up the steps.

  “Tommy,” Delbert shouted past Susan like she wasn’t there. “Get your lazy ass out here.”

  Someone on the ghost tour laughed downstairs, but Delbert didn’t notice. He started back up the stairs, his eyes full of crazy, when Tommy’s bedroom door opened, and light flooded the dark stairway. Muffit tensed to spring, barking as Delbert reached striking distance of Susan.

  “Delbert, Tommy, what’s going on?” came from down the hall.

  Mother. Oh, my God. Mother.

  Muffit sprang at Delbert, who was close enough Susan could smell the cheap beer oozing from him.

  “Goddamned dog,” he grunted and swung the sword to slice into the cocker spaniel, but Susan shoved a foot against her father’s chest and pushed hard. Delbert’s eyes sprang wide when he realized what was about to happen. His arms waved almost comically, and the sword flew from his hand, clanging against the stairs. The force of Susan’s foot tipped his drunken balance, and he teetered backward.

  Delbert Sanderson fell, head hitting the wooden steps with a crack before he tumbled into the hallway and landed in a pile of limbs. He didn’t move again.

  “Delbert honey? Are you okay?” Cecilia Sanderson asked, her voice closer now.