“Like what?” I ask.
“Oh…” Ellis lets out a breath. “The character of the young woman in the film named Cat, the one who Agent Rommel is there to protect,” he turns and looks at me. “She’s real, Jim. Agent Rommel, he’s real. And the base at the end of the film? That’s also real.”
I shake my head. “You’re just as crazy as all those people who call in, aren’t you?”
“Is it as crazy as believing your wife is alive after her car plunged into the East River in forty degree water and her body is never found?” Ellis asks.
I stand, a cold anger washing over me. “I need to go.”
“Back to Malibu at this hour? Don’t even think about it. I’ve got an extra bedroom. Stay the night.”
I check my watch. It’s 3 A.M. and I am exhausted. “Fine… But I'm done talking about this.”
Ellis holds his hands up, as if surrendering. “Whatever you want.”
The guest room is small, but impeccably furnished. The bed is more comfortable than most beds I’ve slept in at five-star hotels. I sink down onto the mattress and try to relax, but I can’t. I sent Ellis the flash drive knowing full well that he might try to turn it into fodder for his conspiracy show. The fact that he didn’t strikes me now as odd. Do I believe his excuse that my story sounds too much like the truth to be accepted by his audience? I had handed him what amounted to a major scoop, and he had said no.
But why? We haven’t spoken in thirty years. He owes me nothing. Maybe he would have used it if I had been someone else. Maybe he was simply trying to be a good friend to me. Maybe he was trying to prove his honesty. Which brings me back to the question of why.
Ellis had intentionally changed the topic of his night’s show because I was there to listen. That much I knew. He had been forthcoming with me about the film he’d written. He’d said that there was some truth to it, that he had seen things that weekend he couldn't explain.
It had been years since I’d seen Time Patrol. What was the film about again? Ray Brenner plays the time traveling Agent Rommel who goes back in time to protect a girl named Cat from a group of time traveling bad guys from the future. The movie ends with Agent Rommel and Cat in a secret underground government base below the Cedar Springs Dam. The government agency that Agent Rommel works for has been trading information with the rival time travelers. Something goes wrong with their time traveling device, causing the underground lair to collapse, which destroys the dam and floods the nearby town.
Longdale and I had seen the movie on opening weekend. We had known that Ellis was drawing inspiration from our horrific experience that weekend in Cedar Springs, but to find out now that he was spinning the movie into some massive conspiracy theory and selling it to his millions of listeners was sickening.
Wasn't it?
Or was Ellis’s point a good one, that it was no less mad than my ongoing hope that Molly had somehow survived that horrific car crash? It all depends on whether Ellis believes the stories he is telling. If he believes them and he’s wrong, then he’s crazy. If he believes them and he’s right…
I stand pacing the room, trying to work out the new ideas swirling through my head. Molly knowing the story from when we were driving up the mountain. The film being true. The characters in the film being real. Ellis saying that Jane reminded him of Molly. Molly placing herself in the shoes of Jane when telling the story. I’m missing something. I have a feeling that Ellis is still holding back, and that he can provide the missing pieces.
I open the door, slipping out into the hallway. The flickering light of a television is reflected on the living room’s far wall. As I get closer, I hear the tinny sound of the television’s volume turned low.
“—Only a short walk to a nearby lake. During the summers, we would spend all day out there. I remember swimming out to the floating dock in the middle of the lake. We would lie there in the sun for hours, talking and sleeping the day away.”
I step into the living room. The first thing I see is Ellis, once again wearing the brightly colored kimono, open down the chest. He has one hand resting across his bare chest and his legs are stretched out in front of him. His body language is casual, but something in his expression catches me off guard. There’s a sadness there. A deep, profound sadness that I find immediately recognizable, mirroring my own grief. The recognition troubles me as if I’d just witnessed an incredibly private moment.
And then I notice the television.
It’s Molly.
She’s younger, maybe still in her teens, with long curly hair swept across one eye. And she’s thin. Almost sickly looking. Her eyes are closed. Wires trail from sensors attached to her temples and forehead. She’s lying in dark water, which ripples and undulates with her movements.
“Ellis, what is this?” I ask.
“This is Jane,” Ellis says, his eyes not moving from the television set. “Better known to you as Molly.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I whisper.
“I knew your wife in 1974,” Ellis says. “She was going by Jane at the time. Vance and Aleisha found her while doing some research on a… a very unusual discovery they made. But her story was far, far more unusual than what we'd already discovered.”
I hear a different voice from the television coming from somewhere off screen. “… It’s 1973. And how old are you?”
“That would be Aleisha,” Ellis says.
“I’m thirteen.” Molly responds.
“She can’t be that young,” I say, staring at the screen.
“Ah, this is regression therapy,” Elli says. “She is remembering back to when she was thirteen and living in Minnesota.”
I look at Ellis sharply. I had left the Vandermeers out of my book. I turn back to the television as Molly continues to speak.
“I’m walking home from school. It’s fall and the leaves have just changed. This car pulls up alongside me and stops. The man inside is strange, I could tell, but he knew things about me…”
“What is this?” I ask. “What is she talking about?”
Ellis points to the chair next to him. “It would probably be best if you sat down and watch the whole thing straight through. I’ll answer every question you have when it’s over.”
The screen fuzzes to static. Ellis presses eject on the remote and then gets up to remove the tape from a VHS deck. I sit back in my chair, feeling numb. I had just seen a video of my wife, Molly, being interviewed in the Camton University Psychology building by Vance’s girlfriend, Aleisha, only a few months before Aleisha had died. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the insane story that Molly had to tell.
“You were there?” I ask.
“Not when this was filmed,” Ellis says. “Vance initiated me into the group a little while after they found Jane—sorry, Molly.”
“How did they find her?” I ask, looking suddenly at Ellis.
He returns to his seat, settling his bulk into the armchair. “The story that Molly tells in this film is only a piece of it. The device she describes, which the Order used to kidnap her—”
“I’m sorry. Who?”
Ellis waves a hand. “You’re going to have to bear with me. The Order of the Perpetual Dawn is the name of the group who kidnapped Molly. They're from the future, Jim. Exactly when, I don’t know.”
“The—the future?”
“Please listen.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll try.”
“They have these devices that rip holes through space and time, like large gates, and they’ve used them to come backwards to our time for reasons that I don’t even fully understand. And, believe me when I say that I’ve spent my whole life trying to. But what I do know is that Molly is intricately connected to their purposes.”
“Okay…”
“So these holes that they rip—”
“Into space and time, I got that.”
“They leave a sort of shadow behind that can become fixed to a large enough object—the wall of a building or a cave.
We call those ‘tunnels.’ I stumbled upon one such tunnel when I was just a boy. Thankfully, I made it back. Not everyone who’s stumbled across these tunnels has had such luxury. Vance and Aleisha discovered one of these tunnels in the basement of Camton’s psychology lab. They decided that if there was one then there might be more, and so they sent out fliers asking to interview people who have had similar experiences. That’s how they found Molly, who was going by Jane at the time. Do you remember that night at the Venice Whaler when I told the story of my lost month?”
“None of us believed you,” I whisper.
“Vance did,” Ellis replies.
I grip the edge of the chair and push myself to my feet. Shaking my head, I begin to pace the living room. “Even if all this is true, none of it helps me. None of it will bring Molly back.”
“But it could!” Ellis leans forward. “Don’t you see, Jim? Molly had led a remarkable life long before she met you. Her marriage with you was a piece of it, an important piece of it, but this rabbit hole goes much deeper. I haven’t even gotten to the ISD.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“The Isochronic Securities Department. A secret government organization that has been studying these tunnels since the fifties. The ISD contracted with my father’s construction company to help build the Cedar Springs dam around this tunnel as a cover for their original base.”
“When we went up there for that weekend at the mountain…”
“It was a cover. We wanted to help Molly get home.”
“Home… to Minnesota?”
“That’s what she wanted at first. But Vic—the agent she mentioned in the video, the one who helped her—he convinced her instead to go to New York. To wait for you. And that’s what she chose.”
“She knew that she would marry me?”
“Yes,” Ellis says.
I turn and run a hand through my thinning hair. “This is all too much.”
“There’s more,” Ellis says. “Listen carefully. These are the facts. The ISD monitors the use of these tunnels. They have been spying on the Order for some time. The Order was interested in Molly long before any of this started. Now, please Jim, listen to this next part carefully.” Ellis stands and grips my shoulders. “The ISD caused that car accident as a cover for recruiting Molly.”
“How do you know all this?”
“It was spoken to me from the lips of Molly’s own partner. The ISD faked her death as a means to recruit her.”
I pull away from Ellis’s grip. “If you’ve known all this for so long, then why didn’t you tell me all this earlier? Why did you wait?”
“Jesus Christ, Jim! I’ve been telling the whole world! The film, my radio show, do you think I’m being coy here?”
I point at the television screen. “You haven’t told the world about that!”
“No one would believe it,” Ellis says.
“Except for me,” I say, feeling a heat rise in my chest. “That was my wife, and you kept that from me.”
“It wasn’t mine to tell,” Ellis says, looking down. “I still don’t know if it was right for me to show you. But you came to me.”
“The flash drive…” I reach into my pocket, pulling out the small box containing the drive. “It came to me on the night that Molly disappeared, or… was recruited. You really don’t know what it means?”
“My honest opinion?” Ellis asks.
“Please,” I say, feeling exasperated.
“I have no idea what’s on it, and that's the honest truth. As far as I know, it’s gibberish. But… the whole world seems to be swirling around Molly. She’s already changed the course of history at least once. So, I think you’re right. You receiving this drive was not an accident. If I were you, I would hold on to it with my life.”
I nod, staring at the box, then slip it back into my pocket. “Shit.” I say. “I don’t know what to do anymore. What the hell do I do?”
“There’s one more thing.” Ellis crosses to a desk. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a set of keys, using them to open one of the desk drawers, and removes a large document folder. Holding the folder with both hands, as if it were some kind of precious artifact, he moves back across the living room and holds it out to me like a gift.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“I meant what I said on the show, that this issue of time travel is my holy grail. I’ve spent my entire career searching for proof of the things that Molly revealed to me. People who travel accidentally like I did often become trapped in the wrong time. It causes in them an enormous amount of confusion and mental anguish. Some of these accidental time travelers—the ISD calls them Interlopers—will admit themselves to mental institutions. Did you know that hundreds of mental patients every year are admitted believing themselves to be time travelers? It stands to reason that some of those people are telling the truth. For years, I’ve put sent out letters to every psychiatrist, therapist, and psychoanalyst in the country, asking them for information on patients who have made such claims. I have heard back from a surprising number of them. ” Ellis opens the folder. He reaches inside, pulling out a single piece of paper. “This a transcript of a therapy session with a well-known therapist from Albany, New York, and it has to do with both you and Molly, and your marriage. You’ll notice the header at the top of the page.”
I examine the top of the page.
Sandra Newton, PhD. 1678 Western Avenue
Albany, New York 12203
Patient: Redacted
Date: June 9, 1985
“This is from twenty years ago,” I say. “What could it have to do with the two of us?”
“You're forgetting that Molly is, for all intents and purposes, a time traveler.”
“Right…” I mutter. “Still trying to wrap my head around that one.”
“Read the document,” Ellis says. “And I wanted to say in advance that I’m sorry.”
I glance at Ellis, and he meets my gaze. His face is pale and there is a sadness in his eyes, not unlike the sadness in his eyes when I found him sitting alone in the living room nearly an hour earlier. I turn away, looking back down at the document, and begin to read. It starts off mid-thought.
Back to this day in question. How did it start?
I remember the sky. It was a cloudless morning, and the sky was this crisp, clear blue color. I went to this small cafe and got a coffee and muffin and the morning paper—Oh, I was in Chicago. Well, yes. I finished my coffee around 8:15. I wanted to leave in time to catch my husband. I knew where he would be, you understand?
Because he’d told you?
Not exactly… he’d written it in a book. That morning was one of those days that everyone can remember. Like Pearl Harbor. A day that lives in infamy. Except my husband… he wrote a book about it. So I guess you could say his account was even more infamous—I’m sorry, but this is the hard part. I hadn’t seen my husband in over ten years. We were in this car accident. Our car went into a river, and he thought I’d died. But I hadn’t. So this was the first time in ten years that I would see him. I knew where he would be, you understand? Because he’d written about it. So this was the one day that I could see him. The only day.
How could he have written about a day that hadn’t happened yet?
Because he hadn’t written it yet. I know it doesn’t make sense. I can’t say too much, but in doing what I was doing that day, I was already breaking rules. You see? And add to that the fact that all these people were going to die.
People are going to die? Who? How many?
No! No one has died. At least, not yet. But don’t ask for details. I told you, I can’t say too much. And you couldn’t stop it if you wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to. But there was no way. I have to watch this horrible thing. The plane… hitting the tower… I… and then I see him… my husband… but I could… I just couldn’t…
Okay, I won’t ask for details about that. But I want to go back to something. You said that was the only day you could see him
. Why?
Because he died in a plane crash. So I knew that there would be no other time. No better way. I—I’m sorry. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come to you. I’m sorry for wasting your time.
I put down the document, feeling shaken, and trying to make sense of what I’d just read.
“The book. The attack on the Sears Tower. Seeing her husband. This is Molly.”
“That’s right,” Ellis says. “After the attack on the Sears Tower I knew it was authentic. But after reading your book, and reading about how you believed you’d seen her there, then I knew that this woman was, in fact, your wife. She looked for you, Jim. She may do it again.”
“She says here that she knows how I’m going to die.” I point with a shaking hand at that portion of the transcript. “It says I’m going to die in a plane crash.”
“I’m sorry.”
I rise to my feet, feeling shaky. “I’m getting on a fucking plane in just a few hours!”
“I know.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Would you like to know what I would do if I were you?”
“Sure,” I say. “What would you do if you had a life sentence?”
“I’d get on that plane. I’d live my life. Because you don’t know if it’s going to be this plane, or the next. If there’s one thing I learned from Molly, it’s that the future is hard to change, but it can change. You could become a recluse, avoiding air travel like the plague for the rest of your life, but I suspect that one day you’d begin to doubt yourself. Could Molly have been mistaken? Air travel is so safe after all. And then you’ll get on a plane, and everything will be fine. And then you’ll get on a second, and a third, and a fourth plane. And twenty years from now, you may get on a plane and feel a slight tremor, and that may be the end. Or it may never happen. These things are truly impossible to know. But in the end, what kind of life would it be to always live in fear? Maybe you now know how you will die, but in the meantime you still have to live. Ignore this. Go live.”
Incursion: Book Three of The Recursion Event Saga Page 13
