The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  THE PATHS BETWEEN WORLDS

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC.

  All characters in this book are fictitious or fictitious versions of historical persons. All characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property Aethon Books.

  All rights reserved.

  Also by Paul Antony Jones

  Published by 47North

  Extinction Point

  Extinction Point: Exodus

  Extinction Point: Revelations

  Extinction Point: Genesis

  Toward Yesterday

  Published by Good Dog Publishing

  Extinction Point: Kings

  The Darkening

  Ancient Enemies (Dachau Sunset - short story)

  Contents

  Part I

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part II

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You!

  This book is dedicated to:

  Meredith Emerson, whose bravery inspired the lead character of the series.

  And to the memory of Dr. Gerald “Gerry” Henseler. As good a man as you could wish to meet.

  Part One

  the lonely almost-death of meredith gale

  The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

  ―Marcus Aurelius

  One

  I got the letter kicking me out of Berkeley the same day Oscar Kemple’s mom called to tell me she'd turned off his life support.

  It’d be easy to blame everything that happened after that on those two coincidental events, but the truth is, I was already on a downward spiral; I just didn’t see how close I was to crashing face-first into the ground. I can guess what you’re thinking: Meredith, don’t be so hard on yourself. You weren’t to blame. And that’s mostly true, I suppose. After all, the asshole driving the Ford F150 is where my life really changed. But here’s the crazy thing, the one thing that surprises me the most—even knowing what I know now—if I could go back and change what happened, I don’t think I would.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with Oscar.

  Oscar is, or rather was, my best friend. There had never been anything romantic between us, just a really strong connection that started the moment we bumped into each other in the junior high library. He pulled the book I wanted (the latest Harry Potter, if I remember right) and must have seen the look of disappointment on my face because, without a moment’s hesitation, he smiled and handed it to me. Turns out, we shared a lot in common. We liked all the same stuff; the same music, the same movies, the same books. And, to cap it all off, as we each grew into our teenage years, I liked guys and so did he—so it really was a friendship made in geekdom heaven. We made it through junior high school together, suffering all the associated ignominy of that period of our young lives; me the relentless target of bullying for being a ‘copper top,’ ‘little orphan Annie,’ or ‘freckle face,’ and finally, every school bully’s favorite go-to insult for redheads, a ‘soulless ginger.’

  Oscar, for who he was attracted to.

  On my fifteenth birthday, Oscar handed me a small package neatly wrapped in shiny silver wrapping paper with an orange-ribbon bow. Inside was a copy of Anne of Green Gables he’d picked up from a second-hand bookstore. That night, after the few friends I’d had over to celebrate left, I’d sat in my room and begun to read the book and the adventures of its eponymous red-headed heroine. I finished it in one sitting. The next day at school, I’d rushed up behind Oscar and delivered a quote from the book, “Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

  Oscar had laughed, hugged me, and without even thinking about it, I'd kissed him. It wasn’t a romantic thing, not in the boyfriend-girlfriend sense, it was just an expression of my absolute love for my friend, my very best friend. It was… natural. He was my first kiss and I his, and when we pulled back from each other, we were both beaming like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and his doppelgänger.

  “Well, that was unexpected, Carrots,” he said, calling me by the same nickname Anne’s eventual Green Gabel’s love-interest had given her. And from that day onward, I was officially ‘Carrots,’ and every time he called me by it, I smiled. That moment… It’s the best memory I have, and I hold on to it like it’s the most precious thing I possess of my old life. Because it is.

  After high school, Oscar was quickly accepted to Caltech and graduated as a materials scientist with a job offer from Dow Corning that would have set him up for life. By the time I found myself sitting at my first UC Berkeley Law school class, I’d spent four of the previous six years as a mild-mannered receptionist by day, and five evenings a week at my local community college to earn an Associate Degree. Add to that another two years to earn my Bachelor of Science, and you can pretty much see why I’d stayed single for most of those six years, except for the occasional brief romantic fling. I hadn’t ever really wanted to be a lawyer, but I thought it would be a good foundation for a move into the political arena, which was where I felt my true calling in life really lay. Still, at that moment in time, my future looked brighter than I could ever have hoped for… right up until it didn’t.

  Fast forward to Christmas 2015, and I was one year in at Berkeley Law. Oscar and I hadn’t seen each other in almost six months, so when he called to tell me he was going to be home visiting his parents at the same time I was on winter recess, I could barely contain my excitement. We had a lot to catch up on. So that’s how he came to be a passenger in my beat-up Toyota Camry driving home early from a Christmas party that'd turned out to be nowhere near as exciting as it’d promised to be. Oscar, never one to let a moment of happiness slip by uncelebrated, sat in the front-passenger seat blasting Beyoncé’s Single Ladies from the car stereo. We were both giving the Queen B a run for her money, serenading her at the top of our voices, Oscar moving and grooving to the rhythm as he drummed out the song’s beat on the dashboard with his hands. He’d had a drink or three, and he was happy and relaxed. I’d stuck to Diet Coke. Despite my sobriety, the drive home was turning out to be more fun than the party that evening; an evening that should have become nothing more than a vague memory for the both of us.

  That was not to be.

  The last memory I have before both our lives took a sharp right turn was stealing a glance at Oscar as he sang and bopped to the beat of the pounding music. So young. So happy. So full of po
tential and promise, his face smiling back at me as the Ford F150 ran the stop sign, its headlights flooding the car’s interior, creating a momentary halo around Oscar a second before the two-ton truck slammed into us at fifty-five miles-an-hour.

  The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed, three days after the crash with a concussion, broken wrist, and a fractured femur that left me with a permanent hitch in my step. It was Oscar who got the grand prize; he spent the final year-and-a-half of his life in a hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of machines, in what the doctors classified as ‘unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.’

  The uninsured asshole in the F150 walked away without even a scratch. I’ve always thought it was a sign of just how screwed up our existence is when a single second of time can divert your life for better or for worse, depending on what side of a decision it falls. A moment’s delay here or there and your life is suddenly moving down a completely unexpected road. It was only much later that I would truly understand the implication of that simple observation, how a simple choice can quite literally save or end a universe.

  Again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  So, two surgeries on my leg followed by four months of outpatient treatment and physiotherapy later, I was on my feet again. The Oxycontin my doctor prescribed after I’d been released from hospital took the edge off the residual pain enough for me to get back to my classes at Berkeley. Then my insurer decided they wouldn’t pay for the pain meds anymore and I was suddenly, and irrevocably, cut off. I wasn’t particularly worried. I had enough pills to last me the rest of the week, and when they were gone, I’d do as my doctor suggested and just switch over to Tylenol and leave that period behind me. Done. Over. Deep breath; time to get on with my life.

  But a half-a-day after I’d swallowed my last pill, I started feeling the first uncomfortable effects of withdrawal. As the day went on, the discomfort graduated to a pain so intense even my bones hurt. Tylenol had no effect whatsoever, and by the time that first evening rolled around, I was at a bar, searching for anyone who could hook me up with something, anything, to take away the terrible sensation I had of rotting from the inside-out. It wasn’t hard to find him, and from that day on, my habit was fed mostly by cash transactions in the bathroom at the local Denny’s.

  I won’t bore you with too much of the gory details, but as my habit got worse, I started missing classes. Just one or two at first, but within a matter of months, I was spending more time in my apartment getting high than I was at Berkeley. Then I stopped going to class altogether. I told myself I could always catch up; the faculty would understand. After all, I was traumatized. I needed the downtime. Everything would be just fine. Everything felt fine… until reality finally caught up with me.

  Which brings me to earlier this afternoon.

  With not a dime to my name and out of Oxy, I’d woken around mid-day with the red-hot grip of withdrawal already beginning to melt my insides. My mind refused to focus, constantly slipping from thought to thought as I tried to come up with a way, any way, to scrounge up some money, but my friends wouldn’t loan me another dime; I’d burned those that had stuck around one too many times, already. I’d sold or pawned everything I had of any value. Rent on my apartment was due in two days, but I’d already spent that. I had nothing left. I was twitchy, constantly pacing back and forth from bedroom to living room to bathroom to kitchen, my mind a fog of disjointed thoughts, paranoia, and fear. Finally, unable to deal with the constant feeling of uneasiness, I walked out to the street. A couple of fliers sat in my mailbox… and a letter from the university.

  For the attention of Meredith Jane Gale, the envelope read in laser printed letters above my mailing address, Berkeley’s return address in the upper left. I was seized by a sudden sense of hope; there had been a clerical error, and inside this crisp white envelope I’d find a nice little check. Just sixty bucks or so would be enough for me to score some Oxy and get my head straight again for a day or two. That’d buy me enough time to sort myself out, get myself back on track. My heart began beating faster, saliva filling my mouth. A smile sprang to my face, and I felt a surge of anticipation. Tossing the fliers, I tore open the envelope, pulled out the neatly folded sheet of paper within and read it:

  Dear Miss Gale,

  Despite numerous attempts by our staff to contact you, we hereby notify you that your position within the Criminal Law curriculum has been revoked due to lack of attendance. While we understand that there have been mitigating circumstances… blah, blah, blah...

  If you feel this decision has been reached in error, you may appeal by... blah, blah, blah...

  Sincerely...

  The air became suddenly heavy… abrasive against my skin as a growing pressure pushed against my chest. I let the letter slip from my fingers. It fluttered to the sidewalk, where a gust of wind caught it and carried it down the street. I stood motionless, watching as it tumbled away, taking with it the last vestige of my future and everything that I had worked so damn hard for since leaving high school.

  Above the roof of my apartment building, angry rainclouds scudded across the sky toward me, dark and menacing, bringing with them a promise of chaos. I watched their approach with a growing sense of foreboding as, with each passing second, the pain in my chest became sharper as though the storm were attracted to the swelling desperation within me like some kindred force. Unable to look away, I might have remained transfixed for eternity if I hadn’t felt my phone vibrating against my thigh. Without taking my eyes from the sky, I slowly reached down with a hand that seemed to be encased in molasses and slipped the phone from my pocket.

  “Yeah?” I mumbled.

  “Meredith? Is that you?”

  I recognized the voice instantly; Oscar’s mom, June.

  After the accident, Oscar’s parents had transferred him to a hospital near their home in Studio City so they could be closer to him. They had never forgotten the friendship their son had with me, which I was thankful for, even though it was always they who called me. It had been a long time since their last update, and I was glad to hear her voice, mainly because they were good Christian people. Generous to a fault. Which was just what I needed right then because I hadn’t ever hit them up for any kind of a loan and I knew they were well-to-do. I took a deep breath, pushed the swelling panic within me down into the darkness and tried to make my voice sound as normal as possible. In the back of my mind, I was already concocting a sob story about how I’d been robbed and left penniless with no way to pay my rent or buy food. I felt that warm, nagging glow of anticipation return. I was beginning to feel better already.

  “Hi, Mrs. Kemple, how are you?” I said, finally dragging my eyes from the ominous clouds. “How’s Oscar doing?”

  There was a long pause before June spoke again and my paranoid mind thought that maybe, just maybe, she'd somehow figured out what I was up to. When she did speak, June’s words were like a sledgehammer against my heart, somehow able to batter their way past all the pain and the incessant needling of my addiction.

  “Oscar passed this morning, honey,” she said, her voice hushed and slow. “I… I wasn’t sure if anyone had told you yet.”

  “Wh… what?” I stuttered. My head swam, and a fog descended over my vision. My legs suddenly unable to hold me up, I crumpled to the sidewalk, my free hand resting on the side of the mailbox to stop me from tipping over completely.

  “I’m sorry, Meredith. It was, well… it was just time. We couldn’t let him go on like… like that.”

  At the sound of those last two words, the image of Oscar lying in his hospital bed the last time I had visited him flashed into my head: surrounded by machines, tubes coming from his mouth and his sides. The only sound in the private hospital room the constant beep, beep, beep of the monitors. And the smell, that antiseptic, unmistakable hospital scent that barely masks the scent of dying and despair.

  June continued, “Richard and I… well, we decided it was for the best.” She paused for what seemed l
ike forever waiting for me to say something, but I found no words to fill the expanding emptiness. The knowledge that they'd ended my best friend’s life, my only friend, without even giving me the chance to say goodbye drove an invisible spear through me, skewering me to the spot.

  “Meredith, are you there?” June eventually whispered. I could hear the barely hidden river of her agony flowing behind the words.

  I'd tried to blame myself after the accident, but June and Richard refused to allow me to, placing the blame squarely on the driver of the F150. But secretly, I knew I was still the one to blame; if I’d only taken a different route or stayed and talked to a couple of our friends for a few minutes more, everything would have been oh-so-different. None of this would have happened. Oscar would still be alive, and I would still have been me, not this strung out, drug-addled addict. That one extra minute would have made all the difference, and this version of the universe would have never existed. Everything would have been… right.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to whisper, my voice cracking.

  “It’s not your fault, sweetheart. You know we don’t blame you. And it’s all for the best,” June’s voice whispered in my ear.

  I felt tears slip down my cheek.