The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  That’s because he doesn’t.

  Even with Jonson’s admonishing voice in his head, Cob couldn’t let it happen. The news reports he’d studied before leaving were clear: Elizabeth Short’s body was found dismembered, so mangled and ripped apart that it took some investigation to determine her remains were even human. The thought of that lovely face, the pert nose and full lips being slashed, that perfect lithe figured he’d slid between his legs as they swing danced…he couldn’t bear the idea of this shadow man being allowed to hack that all to pieces, drain her limbs of their blood.

  Cob’s stomach felt heavy, as if a stone rested inside. A sharp burning sensation rose in his throat.

  The man was inside the building now.

  Cob’s feet felt bolted to the sidewalk.

  Move.

  And yet he worried. What if he did stop this, but the man murdered him instead? What would that do? What would his sister think happened to him, the agency men, his friends?

  Get a grip, man.

  Cob walked across the street, first casually but then faster and faster until he was running, feet pounding up the front steps, searching for Elizabeth’s name on one of the pencil-scrawled tags on the mailbox fronts.

  Fuck it. Knock on ’em all.

  Ah, but no need, there was a muffled scream from the third floor. Cob took to the stairs, clinging to the railing for dear life as he ran.

  There was a heavy thud, then silence.

  The apartment door was open a crack, just enough that Cob could see a figure in a dirty shirt staring down at a giant slab of pork round, one side butchered to separate the loin from the leg. The man held a knife and raised it at the pork round again, only, no…

  Cob knew it wasn’t a pig on the floor, and yet he couldn’t see it as anything but. He blinked. He knew it was Elizabeth’s body there, knew it was her blood pooling between the cracks in the hardwood, and knew this murderer dissected her torso, but no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes, all he saw were cuts of hog meat, as if hanging behind the deli counter at a supermarket.

  Thank God for a little mental breakdown.

  Mourning and reality would come later. But right now…at least he would get what he came for. He stared at his hands until they stopped shaking, and then Cob pushed the door open wide enough to step inside the apartment.

  “Who are you?” he asked the man.

  The man turned toward him. He was silhouetted from behind by a bare bulb, the golden glow coated in blood turning the light orange, like buzzing sodium parking lot lights. It left the man in shadow, but Cob could tell he was tall and thin.

  Still backlit and shadow-faced, the man walked behind Cob and shut the apartment door, bolting it. “If you don’t stay quiet—”

  “Who are you?” Cob demanded. “Who was she to you? Why’d you do it?”

  The man walked from the near-empty living room to the bathroom, where he paused a moment, looking around.

  Cob’s heart raced. He felt his ears grow hot.

  Don’t look down at her. Don’t look, because maybe this time she’ll be a girl, not a pig.

  He felt a wetness seep into the cracks in his shoes and knew it was her still-warm blood, tacky and metallic.

  “Here we are,” the man said from the bathroom. He withdrew an empty garbage bag from beneath the cupboard under the sink. As he rose to his full height, Cob caught sight of his cadaverous face in the mirror.

  Streaked with blood, the man was hawk-nosed and skeletal with too-long, stringy black hair. He turned and stared at Cob.

  “I got another bag,” he said. “I got another bag, and I can put you in it, too.” He took a step forward. “Would you like that, Mister Cob?”

  Cob felt a sharp sting in his chest and for an instant he thought he’d been shot.

  The man grinned. Even his teeth were smeared with Elizabeth’s blood. “That’s right. I know you. Or rather…I suppose I will know you. I haven’t quite figured when this is.”

  All thought drained from Cob’s mind, leaving him a hollow shell, a robot turned off and left out to rust in the rain. But then his body dragged him along on autopilot and he first scrambled away from the man, then pressed his return switch and—

  Blackness.

  ~

  Claudio stepped clear of the return zone just in time. The lightshow resulting from Cob’s departure was quite a dazzling sight to behold, making Claudio wonder what it looked like whenever he’d made a hasty getaway from the body of a murdered whore.

  Speaking of…

  He looked down at the decimated corpse and felt nothing but peace and the bored necessity of cleaning. He chucked the remains of Elizabeth Short into the trash bag, rinsed himself of her congealing blood, and left to find a nice field somewhere.

  Thursday, August 12, 2100, Flussville, South Carolina, RAA

  Ambrose looked up from Claudio’s notebook, carefully avoiding the edges of the pages covered with something resembling rust. He nodded to the younger version of himself standing before him. “He’s on his way back now.”

  “Right,” the other Ambrose said. This one—still sandy-haired and optimistic—held an infant in his arms. He tucked the baby’s blanket around her. “God, I don’t want to send ’er back to ’im, not with what you’ve told me.” His eyebrows drew up into a triangle. “Why’d you have to tell me? You’re probably feelin’ the flood of all this now, too.”

  “I feel the memory of being you now,” Ambrose said. “It’s all crashin’ down. I remember how it really happened, though, how I didn’t know there was somethin’ amiss with ’imuntil today, didn’t know about his…” Ambrose swallowed hard, trying to keep down a slick thread of bile. “His research trips…an’ what ’e was really doin’.”

  “So I got ’er, like you told me to,” the younger Ambrose said. “From thirty years ago, I went back and got ’er, and now I’m s’posed to go back to me own time and let Mister Florence raise her? Knowin’ he’s Jack the bleedin’ Ripper?”

  “I don’t know,” Ambrose said. He dropped Claudio’s journal on the desk and leaned over it. He noted that his hands looked older than they’d appeared just a day ago.

  Maybe the weight of all this wore on me more over the years.

  Ambrose wondered if he should look in a mirror but thought better of it. He’d already grown leaner, grayer-haired, and angry-looking about the mouth in the last three decades. He didn’t want to know if working for a serial killer made it worse.

  “Did you avoid him back there, back in Roanoke?” Ambrose asked.

  His younger self nodded. “Yeah. But Sinéad almost spotted me.”

  “God, makes you wonder if anybody at Roanoke was ever really there.” Ambrose exhaled something resembling a laugh. “All of us runnin’ about.” He gestured to the child. “She’s the only one, eh?”

  “Hell, it ain’t all paradoxes and ridiculous theories, mate,” his younger self said. “There were a right number o’ colonists and whatnot.” The baby fussed. “It’s all right, little Ginny.” He looked back at Ambrose. “No, but I think the natives are gettin’ more ’n a bit suspicious. Seem to know what we’re all up to by now. One woman, she offered me soup…”

  Ambrose looked up at the younger man. “Soup?”

  The younger Ambrose half-shrugged the shoulder less encumbered by the baby. “I wonder if they don’t have some biological way to send people about space and time.”

  Ambrose was struck by the memory of Claudio telling him about his trip to Point Pleasant, the sight of the creatures beyond the veil separating the known Earth from the parallel one, a version of the planet Claudio dubbed “Beta.”

  “Maybe not through space and time, but perhaps to the other side…” He told younger Ambrose about the Mothmen and the technology stolen from Beta. “Claudio means to exploit the resources there, use ’em to triumph in the war.”

  “Then what’s she for, eh?”

  Ambrose studied the child. “She’s his heir. Pure, he says. The first white perso
n born in America.”

  “I don’t like this cause anymore,” the younger Ambrose said. “And I don’t think this little girl should suffer because I’ve been a stupid git what hitched my wagon to the wrong star.”

  “You and me both, mate.”

  The younger Ambrose stopped and looked at his older self. “I’ll take her back, but I won’t take her back to him,” he said. “Tell him it was a failure.”

  “What do I say happened to ’er?” Ambrose asked.

  “She died?” the younger man suggested.

  Ambrose blanched. “And it was my fault? He’ll flay me alive. And he’ll enjoy it.”

  The younger Ambrose considered this. “Well, we got a lot o’ sins to make up for.”

  “No, I’m leavin’ ’ima note and gettin’ the fuck out.”

  “You’ll remember soon what I did with ’er,” the younger Ambrose said. “She’ll be safe.” He stepped back from Ambrose, pressed his palm, and vanished.

  Papers swirled around the room in disarray. When they settled back in the wake of the brief wind, Ambrose Richards felt a flood of memories swell in him, a series of flashes and words and phrases that poured into his mind and body like water into a balloon, his mind filling and expanding until he felt full, resigned, and at peace.

  I have to get to her.

  Thursday, August 21, 2070, 1 mile east of Cattle River, Kentucky, RAA/NBE border

  Ambrose returned to his own time and place but then immediately left, infant in tow.

  The last town Mister Florence would go to on ’is own. That’s where I got to take ’er.

  And so he was renting a hovercar at quarter to midnight, getting falsified papers in as much order as he could to make it look like Virginia was his daughter, and he was off to the border.

  The walls weren’t monitored as much going from the RAA into the NBE. It was the other way that things were dicey, but Ambrose knew he’d be less conspicuous on the way back. No baby. Virginia wouldn’t be returning to Rénartia.

  Still, he sweated as he initiated the landing process and felt the car touch down on the pavement outside the guard station. His palms left dark wet streaks on the steering panel controls. Behind him, Virginia let out a soft coo of contentment.

  “You stay quiet, little one,” Ambrose warned her. “Don’t draw attention an’ we’ll be right as rain.”

  She let out an inquisitive little mewl.

  Wish I could keep you. But no, you need to be as far from me an’ my people as you can bloody well get.

  He inched his car forward until it was right in front of the wooden arm that raised and lowered to let cars through after the patrol check. The night held a soft-focus glow of fog, turning the headlights and guard station lights into surreal pinpoint stars with four tips, Christmas tree lights as seen by a myopic sans spectacles. The smell of ozone seeped through the hovercar’s ventilation system from the other vehicles’ vapor exhausts. Usually Ambrose found this scent pleasant, but tonight it seemed cloying and plastic, with a hint of something not dissimilar from the stench of burning hair.

  A man exited the guard station cubicle. He wore a jaunty blue and white hound’s-tooth suit with a white silk shirt and a crimson cravat.

  Bloody dandies.

  And yet he felt a stirring of sympathy, as their European-inspired dress and art were all they had, really.

  We’re takin’ their tech away, bit by bit, leavin’ ’em crumbs. They got these centuries-old things to keep ’em comforted an’ that’s it. Who’m I to call ’em out on it?

  The man’s clothes struck him as absurd, however, in their vintage knock-off style. Here Ambrose was, trying to smuggle an infant born almost five hundred years earlier into a country now two hundred years behind the times with their technology. Ambrose wanted to shriek with hysterical, mad laughter.

  Keep it together, mate. We’re almost there.

  “Hallo, there,” the guard chirped. He sounded like he’d grown up across what used to be the Canadian border. “And how’re we doin’ this nice night, fella?”

  “Oh, grand, sir,” Ambrose replied. He enunciated with care, trying to polish his rough Cockney into the posh, Received Pronunciation he knew would go over well in this state. “Just picking up my daughter from my ex’s place.” He jerked a thumb at the backseat and dropped his voice. “She’s sleeping, so…” He pressed an index finger to his lips.

  The guard nodded and smiled. “Got an eighteen-month-old myself,” he remarked in a stage whisper. He peeked at the bundle of blankets in the car seat and then looked back at Ambrose with a grave expression. “Her mother joined up over there, did she?” He let out a series of “tsks.” “Such a pity. I lost more than a few good friends from university that way. You never can tell.”

  “It was always a mixed marriage,” Ambrose said. “That is, ideologically,” he added.

  “The things we do for love,” the guard said. “Don’t blame ya none. Sorry you gotta take the little angel over to that place just to see her ma. Darn shame, that is.”

  “Indeed.”

  The guard asked to see Ambrose and Virginia’s papers, and Ambrose produced them with a shaky hand. The baby stirred and whimpered, distracting both Ambrose and the guard.

  “Forgive me, sir, I’ve got to get her home and fed.”

  “’Course, ’course. We’ll have you both outta here before you know it.” The guard made only a quick glance of the papers, too quick to notice the forged seals. “Have a lovely time with your little girl there, Mister, ah…” The guard looked at the paper one last time. “Mister Lessep.”

  Long ago, that might’ve been my name.

  The guard’s words played over in his head.

  I lost more than a few good friends from university that way.

  “Surely will do, sir.” Ambrose took the documents back and gave the guard a little wave.

  Virginia settled back to sleep as the hovercar took to the skies once more.

  As Ambrose drove, he remembered a young man, head bowed over knobby knees, dreadlocks trembling as he sobbed.

  “Please don’t be angry,” Ambrose said.

  “I’m not angry,” the other man said, raising his head and wiping his face. “I feel sorry for you.”

  ~

  Michael Lessep almost shut the door when he saw who stood on his front porch. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he muttered. Then, more loudly so the person outside would hear, “No, you bastard. Not letting you in, not after last time.”

  “Mike! God, mate, you gotta help me.”

  “Not your mate, Ambrose.”

  Not anymore.

  “It’s freezin’ out ’ere and I got a fucking baby.”

  Michael opened the door. Sure enough, Ambrose stood there with something the size of a loaf of bread in his arms. The blankets surrounding it stirred, revealing a milky-white arm and tiny mitten-clad fist.

  Michael looked from the baby to Ambrose and back again. “What’d you do?” he demanded. “You left me and got some fucking stupid woman knocked up and now the both of you’ve gone on some bender or other and want me to watch it?”

  Ambrose drew back. “God, no.”

  “Then what?”

  Ambrose seemed to be trying to smile, but it was all hesitant and sideways. “Can I come in? Thirty minutes tops, love.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Michael growled.

  “Mate. Mike. M-M-Michael, sorry. Michael. Mister Lessep. Sir.”

  Michael stepped aside and opened the door wide enough for Ambrose to enter. “I’m not your father, Ambrose. Jesus. Just don’t call me ‘love.’ You lost that right when you decided you were a fucking heterosexual.” Once Ambrose was inside, Michael slammed the door shut. “You have thirty minutes. I’m timing you.”

  “Right. So. This is the first white baby born on American soil and I time traveled to steal it from Jack the Ripper—who is my boss and a bloody racist who wants to exploit her for his cause—and now I want to see if you’d adopt her and hide her for�
�oh, until she grows up at least? Probably longer? Probably until my boss dies, at any rate.”

  Ambrose sat down, still holding the infant, and cuddled her close to his chest. “I can…go into more detail, but yeah. That’s…yeah.” He looked up at Michael. “It sounded more complicated in my head. I thought it would take longer.”

  Michael blinked. “That’s the uncomplicated, short version?” He glanced at the clock on his mantle. “All right, I’ll give you forty minutes.”

  Friday, August 13, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  “Kiddo, you already run around the world for the sake of truth, justice, and the Empiricist way. Can’t you just be happy with your FBI work? Why you gotta have adventures in your personal life, too, huh?” Adventure to Michael meant risk. Risk of getting caught, risk of getting found out, risk of someone discovering something, or—God forbid—Violet herself discovering something.

  “Oh, Pop, you’re too damn practical.” Violet kissed his bald head and scampered out with the credits he’d loaned her, off on some vacation or business trip that made Michael’s jaw tense up.

  She’ll be okay. She joined the FBI, after all, and you let her do that. If she were gonna find something out, she would have by now.

  Oh, but that was a weird way to think of it. “Let her.” There was no “letting” Violet do anything, and besides she was an adult now. She could take care of herself. The heat was off.

  When she returned from her vacation, she was listless and preoccupied, even less relaxed and at ease than she’d been when she left. She took him to lunch at his favorite restaurant to give him back some of the cash she’d borrowed, and her eyes seldom left her water glass.

  “I thought the whole point of a vacation was to reboot yourself,” Michael said. “Honey, you seem more on edge than you were before you went away.”