A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

  Slowly, Eric uncovered what was hidden beneath the grass. He exhumed it from the earth, brushed away the soil and turned it over in his hands, examining it in the sunshine. It was a liquor bottle of some sort. A small roll of old papers was stuffed inside and the neck of the bottle was plugged with what looked like candle wax.

  “Huh,” said Karen. “Message in a bottle.”

  Eric stared at it. An uncomfortable knot rested in the pit of his belly like a smoldering coal. A part of him had hoped that he wouldn’t find anything here, that the letter Chad handed him was nothing more than fantasy, that it wasn’t really the weird beckoning him to action again. But here it was, just as Hector foretold…and if he was to be honest, just as he’d known since he first read the boy’s letter. It was like Isabelle said. Things didn’t happen to him by chance. There were forces at work that he simply couldn’t hope to understand, much less escape. Four times the weird had called on him already. Today, it summoned him again.

  “Let me see it,” said Karen.

  Eric handed the bottle to her and then carefully mended the damage he’d done to Sterling Geldrin’s grave. Glancing up at the headstone again, it occurred to him that this was the fourth time that someone had taken a shovel to the man’s final resting place since the day he was buried here. Hopefully the old guy wouldn’t mind too much. The last thing he wanted was to end up haunted on top of everything else he had to deal with.

  “How do we get it out of there?” asked Karen.

  Eric stood up and glanced around again as he returned the trowel to his back pocket and covered the handle with his shirt. He felt strangely guilty, as if he were hiding a murder weapon instead of a cheap garden tool. “Not sure. Let’s get out of here. We can figure out what it says when we’re away from here.”

  They walked between the rows of headstones to the main path and followed it back to the parking lot. The whole way, Karen turned the bottle in her hands, studying it, wondering about the message inside. “It’s clever, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What is?”

  “The bottle. Hector was smart enough to use a glass container. He must’ve known it was going to be buried for a long time. It wouldn’t rust or rot. It wouldn’t let moisture in to ruin the paper. He even stuffed the neck with wax instead of a cap or cork that would rot over time.”

  “That, or he just saw me digging up that bottle in his dream.”

  Karen shot him a sour look. “Let’s give the kid some of the credit.”

  Eric shrugged. “If you say so. Why not?” He took the bottle from her hand and opened the lift gate on the PT Cruiser.

  “So what’re you thinking?” she asked. “Dig out the wax and find something small enough to fish it out?”

  “Something like that.” Eric took two of the empty shopping bags Karen kept back here and stuffed the bottle inside them. Then he rapped it hard against the pavement, breaking the glass.

  “Or you could just break it…” said Karen. “That works too.”

  Eric carefully plucked the papers from the broken glass and then tied the bag and placed it in the back of the vehicle along with the trowel. There weren’t any recycling bins nearby, so he’d dispose of it later.

  Then they both climbed into the air conditioned front seats and Eric carefully unrolled Hector’s second message.

  The papers were definitely old, but not so brittle that they couldn’t be handled. The handwriting was the same as that on the first letter, but not quite as neat. The print was smaller, more crowded. It wasn’t a letter, precisely. It had no “Dear Mr. Future,” like the first one, but it was clearly addressed to him.

  Together, they began to read.

  Chapter Four

  It feels strange, writing to you this way. I can’t even be certain that you are real. For all I know, I’ve gone completely crazy. But my dreams are so real. Are your dreams like that, too? The ones that told you to go out and do the things you did? Or do. Will do? Someday? It’s all so confusing. I know you’re not here now. You are Mr. Future. I don’t know when you are from, if you’re a hundred years away or a thousand. I don’t even know what your name is. I don’t see everything. The dreams are always a little confusing. How do I describe them? They’re mixed up. All out of order. And kind of random, I guess. I’m not good with words. Sorry. I see only glimpses of things. The cars look strange. People’s clothes and hair look a little funny. I can’t hope to understand the technology. The thing you carry in your pocket. It’s like a telephone, but it’s not. You can use it like a telephone, even when you’re not home, but there’s a person in there. A girl. I see you talking to her. But I don’t know who she is or how she ended up in there.

  You’re too fantastic to be real. And yet I know you exist. I can’t explain it. I just know it.

  But I’m wasting time. I should start at the beginning. A week ago. Last Tuesday. I remember because it was the day after my birthday. That was when I had my first dream about you. It wasn’t a bad dream. If anything, it was a welcome change of pace from the boredom of school. I spent most of the next day daydreaming about your amazing adventures. And I dreamed about you again the next night. Not the same dream. Not exactly. It was like I was dreaming more of the dream. I was getting more of the story. The same thing happened the next night, too. By Friday morning, I knew you had to be real. The things I’d seen were too vivid to be products of my imagination. Besides, it wasn’t the first time I had a dream that came true.

  It was never anything as incredible as your adventures, but I have, occasionally, dreamed about the future. I dreamed that my dad’s car broke down the day before we got stranded out at the fishing hole. I dreamed I was wearing a cast just a week before I broke my wrist playing with my cousins at the family reunion. And I once dreamed I found my mom’s missing necklace behind the dresser, precisely where it was when I woke up and looked for it. Other things too. Small things. Little details.

  So I knew you were real. But I didn’t understand why I was dreaming about you. Not until Friday afternoon, when I was walking home from school. That’s when I first saw the men in gray suits.

  I don’t know what it was about them. I walk past people on my way home every day without giving them a second glance. And these two looked like any other men on any other street on any other day. One was tall and fit, the other was more of an average height and fat, with a big belly and pudgy jowls instead of cheeks. Both were clean-shaven and nicely dressed in their suits, but they still looked wrong to me. They weren’t even doing anything. Not really. Just smoking cigarettes and having what looked like a very serious conversation. They were standing in front of a shiny, black Chevy Impala, bent over a map they’d spread open on the hood. They didn’t seem to notice me and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but something about them just struck me as wrong. I was immediately convinced that they were bad people. They scared me, and I didn’t even know why.

  My first thought was that maybe they were communists. My dad is always ranting about them, about how they’re trying to destroy our freedom and take over the world. He’s convinced that the Russians are going to start a nuclear war and kill us all. But I don’t think they’re communists. Not these guys. They’re something much worse.

  Nothing happened. They didn’t try to grab me and stuff me in their car. They didn’t even spare me a glance as I walked by. They were too busy with their conversation. But the rest of the day I couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong they seemed. And that night I dreamed about them instead of you.

  They were terrible dreams, filled with screaming and blood and fire and death. They were the most frightening visions I’ve ever seen. I saw monsters with shining eyes crawling out of the sewers. I saw birds falling out of the sky. I saw the river come alive and rise from its bed like an enormous, hungry snake. And I saw the men in gray suits standing in a haze of smoke, their grinning faces splashed with blood and firelight.

  I saw Creek Bend in flames.

  I saw people burning.

>   When I finally woke up, I thought I’d glimpsed the end of the world. I was convinced it was the apocalypse, that my dad was right all along. Except it wouldn’t be the Russians who killed us all. It was going to be the men in gray suits.

  But then I remembered that the world can’t end. Because you exist. And if Mr. Future exists, then the future still exists. So it couldn’t have been the end of the world I was dreaming about. But those things I saw weren’t just figments of my imagination, either. Something seriously wrong is going on in this town.

  I spent all day Saturday thinking about those men and my dreams and you. I didn’t say a word to anyone. I figured no one would believe me anyway. The only person who could possibly help me is you. And we both know you can’t come here.

  I could barely sleep at all that night. Every time I dozed off, I’d see something terrible. Blood. Violence. Screaming. Death. Some of it was the same stuff I’d seen the night before. Some of it was new. I saw the birds falling from the sky again, and the monsters crawling out of the sewers. But I also saw a teenage boy with bushy, blond hair and dead, empty eyes standing over the limp body of a black-haired girl. And I saw a long, dark corridor with a faint light shining at the far end. I know that sounds like the least terrifying thing I’ve described, but there was something awful about that corridor. I don’t know what was at the other end, but I do know that it was worse than all the rest of the nightmares combined.

  I couldn’t sleep at all after that. I was too afraid of falling asleep and finding out what was in the room at the end of the corridor.

  Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed to go to church. It was the longest service I’d ever sat through. It took everything I had to stay awake, but I managed. I didn’t dare fall asleep and embarrass my mom and dad, after all. But it was so hard. Of course, the fear that I might have another nightmare if I nodded off helped.

  After church, we were supposed to go to my uncle’s house for dinner, but I convinced my mom I wasn’t feeling good and she let me walk home, instead. Our house was only a few blocks down from the church. I promised I’d go straight there and not wander. I meant it, too. I really didn’t feel well. I needed a nap. And I was hoping that maybe the nightmares wouldn’t find me in the daytime. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but like I said, I was hoping.

  I didn’t make it very far before the nightmares found me anyway. In the fenced-off lot behind the church, where the old bakery used to be before it burned down, I heard someone talking. I shouldn’t have peeked. I should have kept walking, but I was curious. And I guess I wasn’t thinking straight because I hadn’t slept. But I never expected what I was about to see.

  One of those two men was there. The fat one, in what looked like the same gray suit. He was standing next to the same Chevy Impala I’d seen on Friday afternoon. With him was the boy I’d seen in my dream. The one with the bushy hair and the dead eyes. Except he didn’t look dead-eyed. He looked frightened.

  The man in the gray suit had his back to me, but I could see by his posture that he was at least as angry as the boy was scared. As I watched, the man threw down his cigarette, cursed and punched the boy hard in the belly. The boy promptly crumpled onto the pavement at the man’s feet.

  The man quickly glanced around to make sure no one was looking and I ducked out of sight behind the fence, my heart racing. All I could do was pray he didn’t see me. Seconds passed in silence. Then I heard him say, “Get up!” and I was so terrified that I almost did. But he wasn’t talking to me. When I peered between the boards again, he was looking at the boy, who was struggling to get to his feet.

  “Listen to me,” He told the boy. “Listen real good. And look at me while I’m talking.”

  The boy looked like he was in pain. He looked like he was scared to death. But he lifted his face and looked at the man.

  “Look me in the eyes. Right here.”

  The boy nodded. He looked strange now. I can’t explain it, but his expression changed. He sort of went limp, but only in the face, if that makes any sense at all.

  “You’re going to do exactly as you were told. Do you understand me?”

  The boy nodded again.

  “I’m not sure you do. Do you think I should make sure you really understand me?”

  The boy shook his head this time. His slack face immediately filled with fear again.

  “I think maybe I should.”

  Again, he shook his head. “No… Please…” But then he let out a strangled yell. He looked like he was in terrible pain, but as far as I could see, the man wasn’t even touching him.

  The man grabbed a handful of his hair and held him still. “Let’s just make sure.”

  “Please… Make it stop…”

  “Just making sure.”

  “I swear! Please! I swear I understand!”

  I don’t know what the man in the gray suit was doing to him, but I knew enough to be sure that I never wanted it done to me. The boy’s eyes were bulging, his fists were clenched. Tears were streaming down his face. I saw blood trickle down his lip from his nose.

  I thought he was dying.

  “All right,” said the man. “I think I believe you.”

  The boy gasped and relaxed. I think he would’ve collapsed onto the ground again if the man in the gray suit wasn’t still holding him by a fistful of his hair.

  “Now tell me what you’re going to do.”

  “Follow the plan,” whimpered the boy.

  “Yes you will. To the letter. Where will you be at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Hudson Street. Goss.”

  Something struck the pavement right beside me, startling me and causing the man in the gray suit to turn and look in my direction. Again, I ducked out of sight. I closed my eyes and mouthed another silent prayer that I still hadn’t been seen. I’d been afraid of these guys before, but after seeing one of them in action, I was terrified.

  Like before, several seconds passed. More this time. I was convinced that I’d been seen, that this monster of a man was even now coming to get me. But when I heard his voice again, it wasn’t to tell me he was going to make sure I understood him.

  “Four o’clock,” I heard the man say. “Not one minute late. Don’t come empty-handed. You don’t want to screw this up.”

  “Yes sir,” whimpered the boy.

  I risked another peek. The man in the gray suit climbed into the Impala and started the engine. The boy, trembling with fear and wiping the tears from his eyes, turned and shuffled away, as if still in pain.

  I stayed where I was until they were both gone. I didn’t dare move until I was sure I was alone. Then, finally relaxing a little, I turned to see what had landed beside me a moment before.

  It was a dead robin.

  Just like in my dream, a bird had fallen from the sky.

  I ran all the way home.

  The horrors were real. The nightmares were real. All of them. Not just the birds falling out of the sky. In some form or another, I now know those events are all going to come to pass.

  Unless I can find a way to stop it.

  But what could I do? I’m only twelve years old. That bushy-haired kid was older than me and he couldn’t stand up against that guy. And it wasn’t like the police were going to believe me.

  I thought I’d have nightmares that night. But instead I dreamed of you again. I dreamed I wrote you a letter. And I dreamed that you found the letter in the future. I’m not sure how you can help me, or even if you can help me, but it’s clear to me now that I’m supposed to send you these letters. I don’t know why, but I’m supposed to tell you what’s happening today in Creek Bend.

  If I do what the dreams tell me, maybe they’ll show me how to stop these men.

  I woke up early and wrote you that letter. Then I went to school and handed it in to Mr. Gawes. I’ve spent every spare moment of the day since then writing you this one. I saw you dig it up in my dream, just like I saw you reading the first one, so I know you’ll ge
t it. All I have to do is bury it there.

  I’ll go to the cemetery after school to put this in the ground for you. And then I’m going to go to Hudson Street and try to see what the men in the gray suits are up to. I’ll write you again when I know more. I don’t know yet where I’ll leave it, but I caught a glimpse in my dreams of you finding it, so I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it. Just like I know you’ll find it.

  It’s a little confusing, I know. I don’t really understand it myself.

  I’d say wish me luck, but by the time you read this, it’ll be many years too late.

  Chapter Five

  When Eric had finished the last page, Karen took the letter from his hand and read over the story again. Men in gray suits with terrible powers. Apocalyptic dreams. It certainly sounded like the sort of crap he kept having to deal with. But why him? Why wouldn’t Hector’s dreams show him someone who was actually there in 1962? Someone who could actually help him? It didn’t make any sense.

  “This is so weird…” said Karen. “Is this real?” Then she glanced over at him as she realized what she was saying. “Of course it’s real. Why would I even ask such a stupid question?”

  “He said he was going to Hudson Street,” recalled Eric. “That’s on the other side of town.”

  “He really believes all that stuff from his dreams will happen? Monsters rising from the sewers? The river coming to life? The city in flames?” She looked up from the paper and gazed through the windshield. “I mean…it didn’t happen…did it? We’d know if it did. We’d have heard about something like that.” She looked over at him again. “Right?”

  He didn’t know. But if the story was true—and he had plenty of reason to believe it was—then one of the elements of Hector’s dream had already come true before he even wrote this account. Birds were falling from the sky. And he’d never heard of such a phenomenon occurring in Creek Bend before. He doubted if anybody had. Probably nobody but Hector ever witnessed such an event. It wasn’t any different than the many strange things Eric had stumbled across these past couple years. Just because it happened, didn’t mean everyone knew about it.