The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  Monday, August 9, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  Cob’s feet scrabbled at the floor, remembering the need to flee back then but feeling unable to, feeling glued to the dusty floor of the empty apartment, gazing into the eyes of Elizabeth’s killer. He’d known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he must push a button and get to the site where he could disappear back to safety, back to something…what? Where? He couldn’t remember. He only knew his palms sweated against the floor, the sawdust gritty and hard beneath his skin.

  The hardness was what brought him to something like sanity again. The floor was something solid, something to hold onto, and it was real. The banging in the hall continued. Cob sat up, his breath rapid and catching in his throat, leaving him choking and sputtering. He blinked hard. Tears streamed down his face, and he felt a squeezing, gripping tightness in his chest. The banging still kept on; that was real, that was now, he understood through the terror of the memory.

  “Mister Cob? Mister Cob, are you quite all right?”

  No. No, I’m not quite all right, because I can remember parts of my last trip. I shouldn’t be able to remember. That wasn’t part of the contract.

  BANG BANG BANG.

  “Mister Cob! Kris, get the tool kit. Mister Cob, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take the door off if you can’t reply. Sir, are you ill? Did you—oh, thank you. No, it looks like…oh, blast it, how do we get to the hinges with these covers on?”

  A feminine voice, farther off, said something too muffled for Cob to understand.

  “Okay, yes, sounds good. You know everything, Kris. Bring over that chair.”

  Cob struggled to calm his breathing and heart. He swallowed and scrambled to his feet. A glance in the mirror revealed that his face was still only half-shaven.

  “Whoa, hold it still, please. Hand me the screwdriver. No, the flat head.”

  At the sound of metal against metal, Cob shook his head hard and squared his shoulders. He shoved aside the image of the long, pale arm resting in a pool of blood.

  Focus, man. Act like a person. Pull it together. You’re Rupert fucking Cob, you have a crap ton of money, and you are the bravest bastard you know. Act like it.

  Cob knocked on the inside of the door. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m okay!” he called.

  On the other side of the door, he heard shuffling and a sliding like heavy furniture being moved. Cob depressed the locking mechanism beside the doorknob and turned it.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said, trying to smile at the concerned faces of Mister Jonson and Miss Moto. “I, uh, had something for lunch that…” Cob let his voice trail off and widened his eyes in mock terror and puffed out his cheeks. He made a vague gesture at his abdomen. “Just workin’ through it, if you catch my drift. I’ll just be a sec.” He shut the door again and leaned over the sink.

  Bad lunch indeed.

  The pool of blood once again invaded his memory. His hand trembling, Cob picked up the abandoned razor and finished shaving.

  ~

  “Benoy, should we discuss Mister Cob’s condition upon his last return?”

  Ben cupped his head in one hand, his eyes scanning his ledgers. This was always comforting, this examining of the ever-increasing income. Don’t worry about morals, don’t worry about whether various people were alive or dead, just worry about the money.

  “No.” Ben kept looking at the ledgers, turning page after page of neatly inked black columns. “Besides, what condition do you mean? Emotional?”

  Vere sat across from Ben. “He was in good spirits after the memory erasure. He didn’t bring anything dangerous back with him. He behaved well upon intake today. But that was a close call, if you’ll remember, and he was veritably covered in blood—”

  “He wanted to know what happened,” Ben interrupted. “He told us. He just got too…” Ben looked up at Vere. “I don’t know, too near. It’s one thing to say you want to know who killed somebody. You can do that a little more sneakily. What Cob did still got him the answers he wanted but, yeah, it was risky.”

  “I’m surprised you wanted to take him on again,” Vere said, “given that risk-taking nature of his. And after we had to send a team after Brimley Wheat—”

  “We’re not talking about Wheaton,” Ben said. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Vere nodded.

  It was one thing to imagine it, Ben realized, but it was quite another to have confirmation. “Wait, wait, wait.” Ben lowered his voice and leaned forward. “You know he’s dead?”

  Vere raised one silver-streaked eyebrow. “That was what we decided upon,” he replied, his voice cold. He rose. “There’s much to do with both Mister Cob and Miss Lessep. I suggest you tear yourself away from your precious bank accounts and join us for the latter’s debriefing.” Vere half turned away. “That is, if you still care about your precious historical knowledge after all.”

  Ben bowed his head. “That’s all I care about,” he said. “You know me better than to suggest that I don’t—”

  But as Ben looked back up, Vere was already gone.

  ~

  On Cob’s way back to the lab, he passed a sitting room whose doors were open before but were now firmly shut. They were pocket doors, well worn from centuries of sliding in and out of the walls. Though they were latched together at their center point, a sliver of light fell across the hallway floorboards. Every few seconds, laughter erupted through that thin gap.

  Cob held his breath and tiptoed forward to peek.

  There was the woman, now out of her mechanic’s uniform, sitting in front of a roaring fire telling the others a story. A cat was silhouetted sitting near her on the carpet, looking up at her as if paying attention to her words. The woman’s eyes flashed with eagerness and excitement, and her gestures were grand and demonstrative. When she stood to act out a part of her tale, Cob could see that she now wore a smart, practical pantsuit, not unlike the men-in-black attire he himself sported. An ID badge swung from her left lapel, but with her back to the fire, the light behind her, Cob couldn’t make out what it said.

  “And then he was gone, parachute and everything,” the woman said. Her audience erupted in wild applause.

  “I can’t believe it,” Miss Moto said. Cob now saw that she was reclining on the floor in what appeared to be a very uncomfortably complicated posture. “Seriously, that is the last person I would have suspected.”

  “I know,” the other woman agreed.

  Someone was shuffling toward the pocket doors, and Cob scooted out of sight and down the corridor toward the kitchen. He didn’t look back but instead hurried straight down to the lab as he was originally supposed to.

  He was gone…parachute…last person they would have suspected…

  The woman’s ID badge was blue ink on a white field.

  Cob had no further time to ponder these clues before Doctor Vere trundled down the stairs. “Ready to go find the Mothman, Mister Cob?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, doc.”

  “Have a seat there.” Vere nodded toward a round metal stool. He picked up a flat clear object with a pair of tweezers. “Hold out your left palm.”

  Cob obliged. “Is this the retrieval device?”

  “Yes,” Vere replied. “This might hurt a bit.” He set the object on Cob’s palm, and as soon as the material touched his skin it sank into it. A sharp, liquid feeling shot through Cob’s veins, followed by a twinge and cramping in his hand. He gasped and made a fist against the pain, but Vere grabbed his hand and held it open.

  “It’ll just be a second, son. You can get through it. If you close your hand around it, the button might migrate too deep into your tissue. That makes it hard to activate in an emergency.” Vere held Cob’s fingers together and placed his other hand on Cob’s shoulder. “It’s all right. I know it’s quite unpleasant.”

  The pain sharpened. “Gah!” Cob clamped his mouth shut, fearing he’d cry if he let himself. “Hoo, man. That is…wow.” Unbidden, little tears trickled out from the corne
rs of both eyes. “Damn, doc, that sucks a lot.” The pain lessened, and Cob could see his skin was smooth and unbroken. No one would have guessed that something just slid through it. A moment later, Cob felt fine once again.

  “Flex it a bit,” Vere instructed.

  Cob obliged. The hand moved freely, but he could feel a knot under his skin, as if he’d suffered a minor sprain.

  “Is it numb?” Vere asked.

  “A little.”

  “That will subside even more over the next few hours,” Vere said. “Now, I need you to press the center of your palm…”

  Cob did so, and a small device on Vere’s table vibrated.

  “Very good, son,” Vere said, picking up the device. He pressed a button on it. “Look at your hand, then.”

  On Cob’s palm, there was now a faint red X.

  “When you see that, you want to search for the same marking in your surroundings,” Vere instructed. “It will be roughly the same spot where you arrived, though it may be slightly off if there is something blocking the original spot, or if the climate is too damp to allow the necessary electricity to flow. The system will locate the nearest usable location. If you wind up off a bit, you’ll return—” Vere gestured around the room. “Well, you might not return right on the drive plate, but rather somewhere else within the building.”

  Cob chuckled. “Anybody ever land on the roof?”

  Vere gave Cob a stern look. “We expect you within the time frame we discussed,” Vere said. “So. Any other questions?”

  “I can’t interfere, right?”

  “No. So this is not the time to think about preventing the Silver Bridge from collapsing, Mister Cob. Unfortunately, those poor souls are gone, and there’s nothing to be done without causing tremendous paradoxes.”

  Cob shrugged. “I mean, it sucks, I’m not saying I love that that happened or anything, but that’s not what I’m going back there for.”

  “You want to know what the creature was, the cryptid that seemed to portend the accident,” Vere said.

  “Yup,” Cob said. “It could be an alien, it could be a kid playing a prank…”

  “You realize the going theory is a barn owl or a sand hill crane, do you not?”

  “No matter what, I just gotta know.”

  “You are one of our most frequent clients,” Vere said, “so yes, I am well acquainted with your insatiable need to know various things.” Vere snapped his fingers and scurried to a desk across the room. “Almost forgot.” He withdrew a small cloth bag from a drawer, scrabbled around inside for a moment, and then produced a money clip with a small clutch of cash in it. “Era-appropriate currency,” Vere said. “Try not to spend it if you can help it. Emergencies only. It’s antique. We’re starting to run out.” Vere handed the money to Cob, who shoved it into his right front trouser pocket.

  Vere pointed to a low metal platform in the corner of the lab. “On you go.”

  Cob wondered again. The murder flickering in his memory…what were these other things he’d come here to learn?

  “Doc, is there any way I could ever…uh…”

  “Mister Cob, we’re on a very tight schedule here.” Vere was glaring at him. “Get on the plate, sir. I won’t ask again.”

  Cob nodded.

  Later. I can figure it out later. Maybe offer ’em lots of coin when I get back if they’d let me keep one memory. Just one. If this ends up being a good one, I’d rather keep this than the blood and terror and pain and stuff.

  The murderer had worn pinstripe trousers held up with suspenders, underneath which he’d had just a blood-smeared tank top that had once been white. He had slicked-back hair and crazy eyes…the apartment was abandoned; it hadn’t been hers, Cob knew somehow. No, Elizabeth lived—

  There was that name again. Elizabeth. Who was Elizabeth?

  Elizabeth lived with…friends? In—

  “I’m rooming near the Florentine Gardens.” The voice was musical, low and husky with a kind of lilting quality to it. Cigarette smoke swirled around her black hair. “Do you know it? The owner…he’s kind of a creep, but he lets me stay at his joint for practically nothing.”

  Cob dragged his attention back to the present.

  Focus. You can worry about that later. If the memories come back, you got plenty of time to worry about them then. You got other stuff to do now.

  “Bon voyage, Mister Cob,” Vere said. “See you soon.”

  Cob gave Vere a little salute. His hand exploded in pain again, and he doubled over. His vision swam. One second he was staring at the scratched metal of the time machine’s drive plate, and the next everything went black.

  Sunday, November 27, 1966, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA

  “Mister? You all right?” Someone shook Cob.

  He coughed and blinked up into the brown eyes of a small boy. The boy relaxed and let go of Cob.

  “Thank God,” the boy said. He wasn’t quite a teenager and had the scrawny, underfed look of a kid on the brink of a growth spurt. He wore a tee shirt with contrasting piping along the collar and sleeves and a ball cap with a cartoon of a knight’s silver helmet on it. “You need me to call the doctor? I think he’s havin’ his lunch just in the coffee shop there.” The boy pointed across the intersection at a cheery brick building. In the window, carefully painted red letters spelled out JOHN’S DINER.

  “Nah, I’m okay.” Cob flexed his hand; the cramping and pain were gone. He took a long, deep breath.

  The air smelled oily, hot, and full of sharp tar.

  EPA doesn’t exist yet. Car emissions not so good. People are probably smoking everywhere.

  The crumpled butts on the sidewalks confirmed part of that. His eyes watered, and the sun shone bright, right overhead. He pulled the Ray Bans out of his pocket. “Thanks, kid. I owe ya.” He got to his feet and fished around in his pocket. Vere hadn’t given him any coins, so a dollar would have to do. “Here, buy yourself a…malted? Is that what you guys like these days?”

  The boy regarded the dollar with awe. “Wow, sir, I could get about three of ’em with this. Thanks.” He snatched the bill from Cob’s hand and hurried off to a bicycle lying on the corner.

  Cars flanked both sides of the street, all late 1950s and early 1960s models of various mid- and low-priced varieties. No imports, nothing brand new.

  Cob mused over the kid’s hat for a moment until he spotted a sign in one of the storefront windows. He walked closer. The hardware store was closed, which meant it must be Sunday based on the hours listed on the door. A blue and white mimeographed flyer proclaimed that AT DUNMORE’S HARDWARE, WE’RE CHEERING ON THE KNIGHTS AND YOU SHOULD TOO! There was the same cartoon knight helmet, beneath which were the dates of the regional football playoffs in nearby Ravenswood. WATCH THE KNIGHTS FLATTEN THE DEVILS!

  Cob grinned. Sports used to be important in little towns like this. This was a time Cob only knew from history books and the ramblings of his great-grandmother Annie; she’d recorded a vlog in her youth that he’d watched growing up. Annie’s high school days weren’t much earlier than this.

  “Time was people didn’t talk politics.”

  Cob remembered from one of her videos; he remembered that she’d had his same dark hair, cherub face, and blue eyes.

  “I never cared what others thought, so long as they were kind about it.”

  He walked a little farther and found almost no businesses open but similar signs advertising the football game. He passed a record store, a pet shop with eager puppies bouncing in a pen in the front window—Cob entertained a dark thought that all the dogs were now long dead—and a shoe repair shop, the counter piled high with ladies’ pumps. Every person he passed tipped his hat or nodded at him, and Cob again remembered Grandma Annie’s stories of the mid-twentieth century.

  “It only got worse later, the divisiveness. That’s the thing this war and its aftermath have managed to get right, since Empiricists are so much nicer to each other at least.”

  Cob wound his way ba
ck to the corner he’d first awoken on, the corner near the coffee shop. Good a place to start as any.

  You’re not here for nostalgia.

  Cob crossed the street to John’s Diner.

  You’re here to find a monster.

  ~

  The interior of the diner was dingier than Cob imagined. Inside, he found a checkerboard floor, smoky air, and Paul Simon on the jukebox plaintively insisting that a rock feels no pain.

  Three men sat at the counter—two were heavyset, and all had a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Pie slices in various states of consumption sat on white plates in front of each of them. A willowy waitress—no uniform, just a plaid shirt with fringed pockets and a nametag reading “Peggy”—looked up when the bell on the door jingled.

  “Anywhere you like.” Her voice was husky and her smile gentle. Her dark blond hair fell in soft curls down past her shoulders. On a black-and-white TV behind her, cardboard UFOs sailed in front of a painted sky.

  Cob smiled. He wanted to do more than smile, because Peggy’s big light eyes and full mouth reminded him of the woman he’d grown infatuated with at the travel agency.

  Oh, hell, who was he kidding? She was a woman, and women piqued his interest, period. She was a woman in a roomful of men who likely also saw something appealing in her gently world-weary look and tall, slim figure, so Cob figured he was just another poor sap being pulled into her fan club.

  Besides, he reminded himself, getting up to funny business back in the past was the best way to fuck things up.

  Don’t accidentally become your own grandpa and all that jazz.

  Cob plunked himself down at the counter, a few stools away from the other men. Close enough to hear their conversations, but far enough to go unnoticed.

  “Think they’ll take it?” one man—white-haired and bearded—asked another.

  “Hell, no—’scuse me, Miss Peggy—but the team ain’t been worth a lick since Shad Williams graduated.”