A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

Diane shook her head. “Let’s get you all inside. I should probably call Monica, huh?”

  “No, no, no…” said Paul, shaking his pounding head. “No calling Monica…”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that,” said Eric.

  Paul’s wife didn’t know about Eric’s strange life of weirdness (although he couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to keep it from her). She wouldn’t understand what was going on. All she’d see was that her husband was clearly drunk off his ass and her son was blind. And of course that her sister-in-law and her assistant appeared to both be on drugs. Overall, it just wouldn’t look very good for any of them.

  Diane rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

  “Just keep an eye on them for the next few hours. I’m going to find out what those agents are up to and put a stop to it.”

  “By yourself?”

  Holly gasped. “Not by yourself!”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Just stay with Diane. She’ll make sure you’re safe. No one will know you’re here.”

  But she reached out and grabbed his hand. “My vision!” she said. “The city burning! You’ll die!”

  “I won’t die,” he promised as he pulled away from her.

  “What’s she talking about?” demanded Diane.

  “Witches and riddles,” said Eric. “Metaphors. I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t look convinced. And neither did Holly. And he didn’t have time to argue about it.

  “Just stay here,” he said. “Isabelle will keep in touch.” He turned and walked away.

  “Don’t do anything stupid!” called Diane.

  “Yeah!” shouted Holly. “No stupid!”

  “Stop yelling!” pleaded Paul.

  “Sorry!” said Holly in that loud whisper.

  Eric didn’t promise anything. He always seemed to have to do something stupid. There usually weren’t any other options.

  He sat down behind the wheel and found Spooky sitting in the passenger seat beside him. He was staring up at him, those yellow eyes somehow both intense and bored at the same time.

  “Just you and me now, buddy.”

  He backed out of Diane’s driveway and set off across town. Now he only had to figure out his next move.

  YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT, texted Isabelle. The phone was in the cup holder again, where he could read it.

  Eric sighed. “I know.” He’d known for a while now. “Rossetter.”

  ROSSETTER, she agreed.

  It honestly didn’t occur to him at first. Only slowly, as the day went on, did it dawn on him. Chad told him about Rossetter Psychiatric Hospital. He didn’t know when it was torn down or where it used to be, but it had housed a lot of dangerous patients over the years. Even when he found Wire Ties’ notepad, he didn’t make the connection at first. Maybe he didn’t want to. But among the list of places he was searching was the hospital. And he knew of a place right there on the hospital campus that fit Chad’s description eerily well. A man in a bright, pink shirt once told him it was an asylum of sorts and that it housed the criminally insane, among others.

  Chad didn’t know where it was or what became of it because it had vanished from the public eye. It was never torn down. It was still standing there today. It was merely unseen.

  Last time he was there, he was set upon by a pack of shadow creatures and a large, alien-like monster. It was also where he first met Pink Shirt and first encountered the deadly aura plasma that could reduce a grown man to a stain.

  Granted, all the people responsible for those horrors were now dead, meaning that there was almost zero chance of encountering any of that stuff again, but of all the unseen places he’d discovered last year, that one had been one of the creepiest.

  The place came with its own tried-and-true horror cliché. The abandoned and isolated asylum.

  IT MAKES SENSE, REALLY. THE UNSEEN PLACES IN CREEK BEND WOULD MAKE IDEAL LOCATIONS FOR YOUR GIRLFRIEND’S TWISTED EXPERIMENTS

  Eric clenched his teeth. “Girlfriend? Really?”

  But Isabelle ignored him and went on. NO ONE WOULD BE LIKELY TO DISTURB HER THERE. IT MAKES ME WONDER WHY THEY’RE BOTHERING WITH THE GOSS BUILDING AND HIGH SCHOOL AT ALL

  True. At least Goss was sitting empty. The only person likely to show up there—aside from him, of course—was the realtor, Libby. And even she might not show up. The building was still owned by Gardenhour and the gray agents obviously had access to multiple Gardenhour buildings in 1962. Maybe they still had that kind of pull today. Maybe they had permission to be there. But why the high school? That was a very high profile location. Was it just because that was where the experiment took place in 1881? A tribute, of sorts? Or was there some reason that it had to specifically be the high school?

  HEY, I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING. IF ROSSETTER IS UNSEEN, AND UNSEEN BUILDINGS ERASE THEMSELVES FROM EVERYONE’S MEMORIES, HOW IS IT THAT CHAD KNEW IT EVER EXISTED?

  That was a damn good question. He had no idea.

  There was plenty he still didn’t know about the unseen.

  He made his way across town to the hospital and parked in the north lot, near the urgent care entrance. As far as he could remember, he was parked right about here the first time he saw the deserted structure. It stood on the far right side of the lot. It was definitely there. He’d been inside it. But of course there was no sign of it now.

  The unseen didn’t actually disappear and reappear. It was always there. People just…ignored it somehow. That meant that, logically, it should continue to block the view of anything that stood behind it. But as he scanned the area where the building was supposed to be, he could see everything. There was a grassy area with a row of large trees between the lot and the street. A row of nice houses lined the other side. He could see the intersection. He could see the street that ran perpendicular to it. He could see the houses that lined the other side of that street. He could see the parking lot of the women’s clinic and the street that led back to the other medical buildings.

  There was no gap that he could perceive. There was no house or tree that was cut down the middle. It was impossible to see through the building, and yet there was nothing missing from his field of vision. It didn’t make sense. Did his brain just ignore anything incomplete and patch the scene together for him? Or did he simply imagine anything that he couldn’t see?

  This sort of thing always gave him a headache.

  He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He tried to clear his mind. He tried to focus. Right in front of him was a four story building. Not huge. Not fancy. It was blocky and boring, excessively simple compared to the more complex and aesthetically pleasing architecture of the rest of the hospital.

  But when he opened his eyes, there was still nothing there.

  He wasn’t surprised. He never did figure out how to see these places. It just sort of happened. One second it was gone, the next it was there. It disappeared again the same way. Gone without a trace. The same was true of the other places. The alley between the biker bar and the pet groomer. The empty shop between the Creek Boutique and the jewelry store. The restaurant behind the convenience store where Aiden Chadwick vanished seven years ago. He never found any kind of trick. He just kept looking for them until they appeared. And sometimes they just didn’t. More than once he gave up and went elsewhere, returning to try again later.

  But there had to be some way to do it. They’d always turned up when he really needed them. It couldn’t just be by chance. Besides, Aiden could do it. Aiden was a seer. He had a natural gift for it. And Eric must’ve had the same gift or he never would’ve been able to see any of those places. And yet with the sole exception of that creepy motel, he’d only occasionally managed to perceive them.

  Of course, it wasn’t as if he’d spent the past year practicing, either. He wanted very little to do with these places. They were abandoned and slowly deteriorating. They were dangerous. They were probably filled with all manner of toxic mold. Maybe even asbestos. With no one to look after them, they would all even
tually crumble to dust.

  Besides, the nameless organization knew about them. That was enough reason to stay clear.

  He watched an SUV drive onto the lot and park in front of the urgent care entrance. An older man with a cane stepped out of it and very slowly made his way into the building. Business as usual. People came and went all the time. People worked here. They looked out from those many windows every day. They never saw the structure that loomed here. They had no idea that anything ever existed here. Just like they had no idea that witches and golems were real. Or that spirits of all kinds walked the earth, some terrifying, some indistinguishable from the living. Or that there were countless worlds out there filled with all manner of horrors, or that the borders between our world and those were so fragile, so easy to cross.

  He closed his eyes again. He liked his life better when he didn’t believe in nonsense like that. It was so much simpler back then.

  But then again, he supposed he’d never give up Isabelle and Holly for anything as mundane as a normal life.

  He opened his eyes again and watched as a young woman walked out of the urgent care doors. She looked vaguely familiar. But then again, most people that age looked familiar in this town. She was most likely a former student.

  As he watched her enter her car, distracted, he became aware of something large occupying the space in his peripheral vision to his right. He turned and looked.

  It was there.

  Big and square, muted, as if the architect had intentionally stripped it of any personality, it looked about as unwelcoming as any building could possibly look.

  Keeping his eyes fixed on it, reluctant to even blink for fear that it would vanish from sight again and not come back, he shifted the PT Cruiser into gear and drove right up to the door, parking as close to the building as he could get.

  He’d found last year that once you were inside the perimeter of an unseen location, it no longer had a tendency to disappear. Instead, you became a part of the unseen yourself, invisible to anyone passing by. Unheard, as well. Inside the unseen, no one could hear you scream, which was a good thing to remember.

  And if you pulled someone into an unseen place with you, you could force that person to see it too. That was how Paul was able to enter the motel with him. He drove everyone right onto the unseen parking lot.

  Some places, like this one and the old schoolhouse, had a very tight perimeter. The unseen only extended a short distance from the building. Others, like the motel, had very large perimeters.

  Eric killed the engine and opened the door. Then he remembered Spooky. “You coming?” he asked, risking a glance over at the passenger seat.

  Spooky was curled up, sleeping. He opened one eye, regarded him with very little interest, and then closed it again, returning to his nap.

  “I can’t leave you here. It’s June. That’s animal cruelty.”

  The cat didn’t acknowledge him a second time.

  Eric looked up at the building. He didn’t want to go in there. He was sure there was going to be something extremely unpleasant waiting for him inside. But neither did he want to risk losing sight of it again. These places were finicky. “Fine.” He put the key back in the ignition, turned it to accessories and rolled down both front windows. “There,” he said. “I’m assuming you’re smart enough to get out of the car if it gets too hot.”

  Spooky’s tail twitched, as if offended, but he still didn’t open his eyes. Apparently, whatever awaited inside didn’t concern him.

  He stepped out of the vehicle and looked up at the building.

  Rossetter.

  Wire Ties was very interested in this place before he died. Why? Was something going on inside?

  As he walked up to the door, he glanced down and saw a large, manila envelope lying on the cracked sidewalk, directly in front of the building’s main door. A rock was sitting on top of it, preventing the breeze from blowing it away.

  His first thought, of course, was of the steampunk monk and those traps he’d been leaving all over town. Was this another one? If he picked it up and opened it, would he get a whiff of some kind of gas that would make him think for the next four hours that he was Lady Gaga or something?

  He glanced around. He saw a minivan pull up to the urgent care entrance. An old man was walking his dog on the other side of the street. A UPS truck was rumbling by. The tail end of an old, white luxury car was just disappearing down a side street. The world was carrying on as it always did. And there was no sign of Steampunk Monk’s ugly, red coat.

  But why would he leave a trap as obvious as this? All his other traps had been so subtle.

  Carefully, he bent and picked up the rock.

  There was no name or address on the envelope, but who else would it be for?

  He picked it up. It wasn’t sealed. The flap was loose. He held it well away from his body and opened it. No poisonous gas or mystery dust flew out of it.

  He held his breath and peered inside.

  It wasn’t a trap.

  It was another letter from Hector.

  He withdrew the papers, confused, and looked around again. How did this get here? Besides him and Isabelle, only five people on the planet knew about these letters and all of them were in Diane’s apartment.

  It hadn’t been sitting here on this sidewalk for the past fifty-four years. The envelope was new. The wind hadn’t even creased it yet. Someone had to have left this here for him in the past few minutes.

  But who?

  He looked out at the city around him again. A woman was jogging past on the sidewalk, oblivious to his very existence. A white utility truck eased to a brief halt at the stop sign beside the women’s health clinic.

  His eyes washed over the hospital, all those windows looking out over the parking lot. Was someone up there, watching him?

  Was it Hector?

  Was he here?

  Quickly, he began to read.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I’ve been up almost all night studying the book. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, like something from another world. Most of it is written in a language I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. At least, not anymore. Besides that, large sections of it are written in Latin. At least, I think it’s Latin. A few pages here and there look like they are written in French and German. The rest is handwritten notes scrawled in dozens of other languages. Only a tiny fraction of those notes are in English. What little I can read is still impossible for me to understand. And yet, I just keep turning through the pages, over and over again. There’s something strangely familiar about it all. It’s almost like I’ve seen this book before, although I’m sure I would’ve remembered something like this. Maybe I saw it in a dream somewhere. Maybe one of the ones I’ve forgotten. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  It’s so odd. I turn the pages and look at the writing and I feel like I can almost read it. Almost… As if it’s on the very tip of my tongue. It’s intriguing and scary at the same time.

  I keep coming back to certain pages. I end up staring at them. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I feel something stirring. Is it familiar? Have I seen this before? Or is this the part of my mind that has something to do with my dreams? I wonder if the two are connected somehow.

  And the more I look through these pages, the more I’m convinced that this is a very, very old book. It doesn’t look that old. It’s not new, but it’s not crumbling, either. The pages aren’t brittle, the binding is unbroken, and yet I’m certain that this may be one of the oldest books in existence.

  I don’t know. Maybe my imagination is just running wild. But it’s so strangely intriguing. I can’t stop thinking about it. Even now, as I write this, I keep looking over at the book beside me, at those mysterious passages. I want to know more. I feel like if I just keep looking at them, I’ll eventually understand what they say, and maybe they’ll tell me incredible secrets.

  But it’s also terrifying. There are certain passages that I look at and for reasons I can’t explain,
I get a fierce chill at the very sight of them. It’s like whatever is written there is so terrible, so unspeakably wicked, that it frightens me all the way to my core even though I can’t read what it says.

  Can words be evil? Even if no one can read them?

  The pictures don’t help. They look like the sort of things people might have nightmares about in hell. A lot of them seem to be illustrations of people being tortured and sacrificed. There’s one that looks like some kind of insane, sexual orgy. There are shadowy things that might be demons. And there are a lot of images of monsters. Not just hairy, horned beasts, but of monsters. True monsters. They take up the whole page. They don’t have proper dimensions. I can’t tell their faces from their claws or their teeth from their tails. I can’t really describe them. They shouldn’t look like anything but obscure doodles, black smears on pale paper, but there’s something utterly terrifying about them.

  Why did the men in gray give this to Zachery? Do they know how to read it? Does Zachery know how to read it?

  It doesn’t matter. I’ve got it now. They’ve lost it. They can’t do whatever evil thing they were planning to do without the book. So I’ve won.

  But they won’t let the book go that easily. They’ll be looking for it. They’ll be looking for me.

  I need to sleep. I need to dream again. The dreams will tell me what to do next.

  I hope.

  …

  Have I made a mistake? My dreams didn’t tell me where to leave the letter. Maybe I didn’t sleep long enough. I only got a couple of hours before my mom woke me again. I’m so tired. And I’m so afraid.

  I dreamed about Zachery. He was suffering. The men in the gray suits were furious. It’s all my fault. I took the book and now they’re punishing him.

  Well…probably not now. It might’ve happened last night. Or it might not have happened yet. I can’t be sure. But at some point they definitely find out he lost the book. And it doesn’t go well for him. He’s in tremendous pain. He’s terrified.

  They might even kill him. I’m not sure.