Red Moon Rising

by J. T. Brannan

  “And then I ruined everything,” Kelly says, interrupting these revelations, “by believing you.”

  “But why did you believe me?” I ask, getting back to the subject at hand, putting aside those thoughts of my parents, for the time-being at least.

  Kelly pauses, watching the tennis for a long while before continuing thoughtfully. “To this day, I’m still not entirely sure, to be honest.” He pauses again, watches the action on the courts, and frowns. “Well, actually, that might not be true,” he admits. “Your memories of the events you described, they were so intense, so detailed, that they demanded to be believed.”

  “And that was good enough for you?” I ask, amazed.

  “No,” he says with a smile, “I have to admit that it wasn’t. But then something very interesting happened. You had another episode, just after I’d been assigned to your medical assessment team. A man had a heart attack just outside the tennis club house, you watched it happen, you saw the Red Moon, you knew that tomorrow . . . well, you knew that tomorrow would be a different day. And, maybe because I was new to the team, I’d not built up a defensive wall about your stories yet, I was relatively open minded, apparently you came to my office afterward, asked me some interesting questions.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “Personal questions,” he says. “Private questions, of the sort that an adult might not usually answer from a thirteen-year-old girl. My first sexual partner, what happened, details, that sort of thing. Apparently, you claimed that it was an experiment; you believed you would soon be ‘beamed’ forwards or backwards in time – sometimes it was forwards, sometimes backwards, sometimes both, you’d be bounced around until you could figure out how to fix things. But anyway, I guess you were convinced that sooner or later you’d end up on an earlier day, hopefully to help the guy, or whatever. And you thought that if you knew things about me that you couldn’t possibly know, then my earlier self would be convinced that – at some stage – you had asked an alternative version of me those questions.”

  “Is that why you say ‘apparently’?” I ask, understanding now. “Because this version of you never answered those questions?”

  “That’s right,” he says. “I only heard your answers, when you came to me, a day before that man would have died. This version of me, well, I never heard you ask those questions, that ‘me’ is gone forever, I guess. But this me, this me, you gave it to straight, all the sordid details of me and Lucy O’Shea in the back of my ’59 Caddy, at the drive-through movies. Down to all the little details, including what I’d done before the date even started. The only thing you didn’t know was the name of the movie . . . and that was the thing that really convinced me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because to this day,” he says with a smile, “I have no idea what it was. It was my first time with a girl, why would I give a two-bit damn what movie was playing?”

  I laugh, and he joins me; the sound relaxes me and I can see why I might have trusted this man, all those years ago.

  “People claimed that a lot of your information – because you had tried to prove it to people before – well, they claimed it might come from research, available facts, you know. It’s amazing what you can find out, if you’re bright enough, if you’re determined enough. But anyone researching that night would have found out the name of the movie, that’s for sure. You had the day, the date, why not the movie, right? And it’s the little details like that – sometimes not just what you know, but what you don’t know – that really count, in a case like this. But there was something else,” he says, eyes flicking back now to the tennis match. “Something even more convincing, for me at any rate.”

  “What was that?”

  “You took me to the tennis courts,” he says. “You needed a doctor anyway, right? You knew the guy was going to have a heart attack, so you dragged me down there. And sure enough, it happened just as you said. I had my gear with me, I’d even got a portable defibrillator; he started going down and we got to him real fast, you and me, and we saved him. Started that heart back up, got him to a hospital, and saved him.”

  I can sense the pride in his voice again, know now why he believed in me when nobody else did.

  “I tried to convince people, of course,” he says sadly, “but they’d already made their minds up about your condition. Acute tachypsychia, they called it, an inability to experience time properly, in certain circumstances; it’s like the time distortion that you get during high-stress situations like car crashes, you know, that sort of thing, when time seems to speed up or slow right down, it’s there in all the literature. They figured it was brought on by your inability to cope with your first menstrual cycle; apparently you had bad cramps, lots of blood, it was apparently very hard to cope with; so the general feeling was that this psychologically led to a fear of your approaching womanhood, leading you to accuse Desmond Curtis of sexually assaulting you. Your visions of the Red Moon were ascribed to being representative of that first period, that first cycle, and essentially this is what most of the doctors focused on. They said that, after the fallout from the Curtis incident, you couldn’t admit your guilt, couldn’t admit that you’d made the whole thing up, and so you then had to carry on the charade by pretending to have more episodes, more ‘visions’, more incidents of logic-defying time travel.”

  Kelly sighs as he finally looks back toward me, shaking his head. “It’s no surprise you weren’t believed,” he says. “Visions? Time travel? Who in their right mind would ever believe such a thing?”

  I think for a minute, my own gaze wandering to the tennis game beyond. “You,” I say at last, turning back to Kelly. “You believed.”

  “Yes,” he admits, “I believed; and look what happened to me as a result.”

  I must look guilty, because once again he is shaking his head vigorously. “No, no,” he says, “you can’t feel bad about it. You didn’t know what would happen. You trusted me, how can I blame you for that? But people believed I was naïve, others that I was out-and-out stupid, while others made insinuations that our relationship wasn’t ethical, that it was more than the usual doctor-patient relationship.”

  “But why –”

  “That time at the tennis court, people wondered why I was there, why we were ‘meeting up’ outside regular hours. They didn’t even care that we saved that man,” he adds angrily, “they only asked what I’d been doing there with a thirteen-year-old girl.” He sits back and sighs. “I suppose they meant well though,” he says in resignation, “they did what they thought was right, I guess I may have jumped to the same conclusions in their position. But your father wasn’t happy, wasn’t happy at all, he used his influence to get me drummed out of the profession for good.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, before I can stop myself.

  “I’ve already told you,” Kelly says, “there is no ‘sorry’ here, you weren’t at fault, you weren’t at fault at all.

  “So what happened next?”

  “What happened next, was therapy. I objected, of course, but I was no longer of interest, no longer had a say in the debate.” He smiles as a waitress comes and clears the sandwich plates, and orders us another couple of lemonades. “You were zapped, blasted, everything that was available, they used on you,” Kelly continues when the girl has gone. “Your brain was plugged into all sorts of things, they believed that if they targeted the part of the brain that deals with the processing, the sensation, of time, then they might be able to ‘cure’ you. They used hypnosis too, to help you forget.”

  “And it worked?” I ask, knowing that it must have – for a time, at least.

  Kelly simply shrugs. “Maybe it did,” he says. “I guess it did,” he says more emphatically, “yes. It stopped your episodes. At least up until recently.”

  “You think the gunshot may have loosened things up in here again?” I ask, pointing at my head.

  “Well,” Kelly says with a laugh, “I guess that’s one way of putting it, but . . .
yeah, I think the gunshot wound, the coma, the damage to the brain, I think it reopened this . . . ability you have, if you want to call it that.”

  “But what is the red moon? How does it . . . work?” I ask, for wont of a better word.

  Kelly shrugs those shoulders again, as if he’s asked himself this same question a thousand times, and still hasn’t come up with any sort of answer. “The simple answer is, I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I know is that it is real, however it works. Whatever the red moon is – whether its supernatural, or just how your mind deals with your condition – we’ll never know. But maybe it doesn’t even matter. Why are any of us here in the first place, right? How was the universe created? All we have are theories and guesses.

  “I’ve thought about it for years, trust me. The ‘me’ that you asked those questions of, back in my old office. What happened to him? Is he still there, in an alternate reality somewhere? How many me’s are there? How many you’s? Who’s to say if our present reality isn’t dependent on someone else’s time travel? Or is it a matter of alternative dimensions? Are they, in fact, the same thing, one affecting the other?

  “As I say, I’ve spent a long time thinking about it, maybe twenty years or more. And you know what I’ve discovered?”

  I shake my head, and he smiles.

  “I’m better off playing tennis,” he says. “At least that’s got rules that I understand.”

  I laugh, and so does Kelly.

  “My point is serious, though,” he says after a moment’s pause. “Maybe the how doesn’t matter at all. Maybe there is no explaining it. Maybe the why is of more importance – or should be.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, before thinking back to something that Kelly said earlier, seizing upon it. “You said that perhaps my condition shouldn’t be treated,” I remind him. “Why did you say that?”

  Kelly takes a long pull of the new lemonade that has appeared before him, then meets my eyes. “Think about it,” he says. “Think about what a gift you have, think about what it can be used for.”

  I guess I’ve already been thinking along these lines myself, but I want to hear Kelly say it. “Go on,” I urge him.

  “Okay,” he says, “I’ll tell you what I think. In previous incarnations of this condition, you would be faced with some form of trauma, and – if it was severe enough, if it affected you badly enough – pretty soon you’d see that big red moon, and you’d know, you’d know it was starting again. And then you’d bounce around from day to day – and if you want me to be more specific, you’d bounce around the days very close to the event, or close to important days related to the event, you know? A very limited time frame I guess, very focused. And anyway, you’d bounce around time until you’d solved the problem, helped whoever needed helping. And all for no reward, no thanks, nothing except electro-shock therapy and a ‘crazy’ label. But you would help people; with this ability, you could help people. And hell, I think you still can. I think that – if your past is anything to go by – then the only chance you have of ending this thing, of bringing things back to normal, is if you erase the event that started it.”

  “Save the girl?” I ask, then watch as Kelly nods his silver-topped head.

  “Yes,” he says slowly, gravely. “If you ever want this nightmare to end, you need to use time, use this skill, this ability, use it to find that girl before she’s abducted, before she’s killed. Find her . . . and save her. And by saving her,” he adds, “you’ll save yourself.”

  8

  I lie on the bed in my hotel room, trying to sleep.

  Ironic – I’ve been struggling to stay awake for the entire day, and now I can’t sleep.

  And I need to sleep – not just because I crave it physically, but also because sleep is what will send me to another day, perhaps another day when I can help Lynette, when I can save Lynette.

  My talk with Dr. Glen Kelly is one I will never forget; and it isn’t so much the history that he gave me, the missing pieces of my life, the explanation for countless events – no, it is for the hope he gave me, the renewed sense of purpose in my life.

  Before, I was scared, alone, afraid, I was confused by my “problem”, thought I was going crazy; now I see that maybe it’s not a problem at all, but a gift.

  Yes, I think as I stretch out on the double bed, it is a gift.

  And it is a gift I want to use.

  Dammit, why can’t I sleep?

  I want to get back to Palmer, get back and help that girl; I don’t know which day I will wake up on, but I swear that – whatever day it happens to be – I will do everything I can to help her, dead or alive.

  Then something occurs to me, and I reach for my cellphone, dial Ben’s number.

  He answers after only a couple of rings. “Jessica?” he says, and I like the sound of his voice, think that I might even be starting to miss him. I hear the sound of a saxophone in the background – John Coltrane, I think – and I imagine Ben sitting in his easy chair with a beer in his hand, crime scene reports scattered across the table in front of him; looking for answers, just like me.

  “Hi Ben,” I say. “Sorry to stand you up last night.”

  “That’s okay,” he says, “at least you left a message. Sorry I was out of town all day. Where are you, anyway?”

  “Florida,” I tell him.

  “Florida?” he says, his voice louder. “What the hell are you doing down in Florida?”

  “One of my doctors is here,” I tell him, “someone that used to look after me.”

  “Oh,” Ben says, voice softer now. “Okay. Okay. I guess the ABI haven’t banned you from traveling. De Nares might not be too happy about it though.”

  “Screw De Nares.”

  Ben chuckles. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Screw him.”

  “Anyway, the . . . uh . . . reason I’m calling is, because I need a favor.”

  “A favor?” he asks warily. “What sort of favor?”

  “You believe me, don’t you?” I ask. “About . . . you know . . .”

  “Your visions?”

  “Yeah,” I agree. We can call it that, if you want. “Well, do you?”

  “I . . . yeah, I guess I do. Yeah,” he adds with more conviction. “I do.”

  “Then you need to help me,” I say, remembering the police reports spread over Ben’s coffee table, most of which I didn’t have time to read. But I have suddenly realized that they might hold the key to helping Lynette.

  Ben sighs. “Okay,” he says. “What do you need?”

  “Tell me everything you know about the day Lynette was abducted.”

  I’ve finished a bottle of champagne from the minibar and two beers, so I decide to get started on the shorts. The Malibu looks tempting, and so I open it and down it with one long swallow.

  I was right – it is good.

  My hand wavers as it automatically selects something else, and I tell myself that it is all for strictly medicinal purposes. I have so much caffeine in my body that I still cannot sleep, and what I need is a dose of depressant – and alcohol fits the bill nicely.

  It’s certainly having an effect, as the room spins wildly around me; I lose my grip on whatever bottle my hand has pulled out of the fridge, my legs go from under me, and I end up in an unsightly heap on the carpet.

  Not very ladylike, I appreciate that, but who cares?

  It’s not every day that you learn what I’ve learned today – that I was sexually molested at the age of eleven, made to forget nearly two years of my life through controversial therapy and treatment.

  No, I think as I claw my way across the floor, try to pull myself up onto my bed, it’s not every day you learn that, at all.

  Jack is gone, gone once more out of the window, nothing left but the blood, and the silent screams inside my mind as Beauty crashes into me, knocking me breathless to the floor; his body rampant over mine, muscles flexing, nostrils flaring; I see the face of a man above me then, mid-fifties, grey hair, cold blue eyes under steel
-rimmed glasses; he pins me to the ground and I feel helpless, powerless, afraid, alone, terrified, and I cry out as he touches me, grabs at me, my hands and feet try and lash out but he is too strong, too strong . . .

  The face changes then, melts like a candle, flesh running, eyes lost in running blood before reappearing as the face of Paul, above me, crushing me, forcing himself on me, his face sweaty, eyes red, evil, his breath coming out like hot steam . . .

  I am crying, screaming, begging for mercy, and then the face changes again . . . it is Beauty, it is Dr. Kelly, it is Ben, Artie, Pat, it is Douglas Menders, it is my father . . .

  It is a man in a woolen mask, green eyes boring into mine . . .

  And then he is gone too, replaced by an unknown form, an unknown face, a shadow, a wild beast astride me, I try and see who it is but can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . .

  And then I am in the street outside, neon lights shining bright over Jack’s dead body, and I cradle his shattered, broken head in my arms, try desperately to push the oozing jelly of his brain back into his jagged skull, blood over my fingers, my hands . . .

  Lynette’s blood, all over me, and now I cradle her head in my hands, see once again the spark of life leave her, scream up into the night sky, up at the moon, the huge, blood-red moon that seems to grow, and grow and grow, until all I can see is that moon, the moon that has controlled my life for so long, that controls everything, and I feel pulled toward it, see my soul pulled from my body, the red moon wanting to devour it, as it devours everything, but I won’t let it, I won’t, not this time, and then I understand that the red moon is not fighting me, it is allowing me to merge with it, to become one with it, to use its power . . .