“Hello?” he asked the room, his voice echoing into unknown depths. He couldn’t make out any nearby walls as he paced around, his hands splayed in front of him in search of anything to make contact with.
He held his breath to better hear what he thought were voices whispering in the distance, but found it to be his voice still echoing faintly, as if traveling down a tunnel.
Martin had wandered at least thirty steps away from the flickering light, but the room felt no less dark than where he had stood previously.
The ground rumbled and he immediately knew a change of scenery was underway. He sat on the ground, having learned his lessons from the first two instances when he collapsed, out of balance and flailing. Since then, he sat every time the ground rumbled and waited for his arrival at the next unknown destination.
The ground became light, a floating sensation as he pictured himself flying on a magic carpet like Aladdin. If he could see the walls around him, he’d see them passing by in a blur, like riding a train and staring out the window. He wasn’t sure if he was teleporting, falling, or flying, and he didn’t care to find out.
Just sit down and enjoy the ride.
The rumbling of the ground beneath his ass settled into a soft vibration before halting completely upon his arrival.
The darkness of the prior room gave way to bright lights. When the gravity returned to normal, Martin stood on weary legs to explore his newest location: an empty library.
Shelves of books stretched as far as he could see. The librarian’s desk stood thirty feet to his left, abandoned, a lone computer monitor turned on to a black screen with a digital clock bouncing around as a screensaver.
The silence didn’t feel as thick in the library, not ringing in Martin’s head. He looked up to see a second floor with more bookshelves and tables overlooking the first floor. The library felt familiar, but he couldn’t quite piece it together.
He’d had that problem when he first arrived in this dream, struggling to remember the most basic things. A voice within told him he wasn’t in a dream, that maybe he had died. And while he knew he wasn’t in a regular dream, he couldn’t muster the mind power to piece together what had actually happened. All he could do was explore the ever changing places around him.
Martin moved his legs that felt like bricks, dragging them closer toward the computer, the sensation like walking through two feet of mud as he forced his legs to move every inch forward.
“Psssst!” a voice whispered from behind, sending an instant chill down Martin’s spine. “Hey, mister.”
The voice sounded adolescent, and Martin pivoted around to face it.
Two pale boys stood ten feet away. How did they get there? The library had rows of books in every direction, no exit in sight. The boys stood side-by-side, each holding a gun in hand.
The boy on the left had a long face, pointy noise, and short, spiked brown hair. A smirk revealed a charming countenance to go along with his light green eyes. The boy on the right was taller by at least six inches and had his flowing, sandy hair brushed back to reveal his green eyes. Both wore matching black trench coats that covered them from neck to ankle.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. This is all a dream. They’re not really standing in front of you.
Martin reminded himself of this fact as he looked from Eric’s pump-action shotgun to Dylan’s semiautomatic TEC-9.
“We are standing in front of you, dipshit!” Eric barked in a shrill voice.
Dylan smirked, nodding in gratitude. Both boys cradled their guns like babies in their arms, striking Martin as an odd pose. Martin accepted that anything was possible in his dreamscape, now knowing the future mass murderers could hear his thoughts.
“What can I do for you boys?” he asked, ignoring his trembling legs. An instinct told him this moment was critical to what he was doing, but he couldn’t remember what exactly he was doing before arriving in the never-ending dream.
“You can mind your own fucking business,” Dylan snarled, now raising his pistol in the air. “Long live the Trench Coat Mafia!” He pumped the pistol upward.
Eric howled at the ceiling like a rabid wolf. “Don’t come near the school. Don’t try and stop us. You’ll pay if you do. I’ll slit your throat and piss in your blood.”
“Long live the Trench Coat Mafia!” Dylan shouted again, almost robotically.
Both boys studied Martin with hungry grins on their face, like a pair of lions about to pounce on a zebra. As if a light switched on in his mind, Martin remembered everything he had been working on before falling into this dream. The boys and the library had felt familiar because they were familiar. He had just stood in this very library within the last few weeks, and remembered his plans to try and stop the boys from slaughtering their schoolmates. Now, he wondered if this was a subconscious ploy to talk him out of it. The past seemed ruthless in preserving its history, and getting to someone through their dreams didn’t seem too drastic for Father Time.
“Eric. Dylan,” Martin said authoritatively, looking from boy to boy. “Let’s talk this out. Why do you want to do this?”
Martin drew on his bomb threat training from years at the post office. If a bomb threat ever came in to the post office, either via phone or an in-person threat, they were instructed to ask the suspect “why are you doing this?” as the first question. In ninety-nine percent of bomb threat cases, the suspect was always equipped to answer “where is the bomb?” or “how much time until it goes off?” with a pre-scripted response already in mind. Asking the perpetrator their reasoning for their actions was the last thing on their mind, and he hoped to catch the boys off guard in the same way.
Eric smirked, turning to Dylan, who kept his own drunken grin fixed on Martin. “You know why we do this,” Eric said calmly. “You saw it all over the news. Nobody at that goddamn school cares about us. They tease us. They think we’re different, but we’re the only ones truly grabbing life by the balls.”
“Long live the Trench Coat Mafia!” Dylan shouted again, and Martin thought he saw saliva leaking from the corner of the boy’s mouth.
“Dylan,” Martin said. “Can you even say anything else?”
Dylan snickered, keeping a steady eye on the old man in front of him.
“You know, you’re absolutely right,” Martin continued. “I did watch all of the news reports, and read all the articles when they came out. It was a truly fascinating story. The first of its kind. If we only knew then the rest of the shootings that would follow your lead.”
Eric threw his head back, cackling uncontrollably. “Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s been a treat watching the others carry on our work. There’s been so many, and there will be many more. They all will be taken care of by the Trench Coat Mafia.”
Martin remembered the Trench Coat Mafia as nothing more than a group name for the less popular kids at Columbine. In the videos Eric and Dylan had filmed of their target practice in the woods, they made multiple references to the Trench Coat Mafia, and wore the same trench coats they had on during the massacre.
He remembered when those disturbing videos had leaked. They aired on the late night news, not wanting to risk any children coming across the footage in the old days before the internet made everything accessible. In the video, they had made multiple references to not only the Trench Coat Mafia, but also to the Nazi party, and Adolf Hitler. They worshiped Hitler, hailing his name numerous times in the video and in their notebooks that surfaced further down the road.
“I understand that life can be hard, especially in high school,” Martin said, deciding to do what he could while he had both boys’ attention.
“Save it, old man,” Eric snapped. “We don’t give a shit what you say. Everything is going to happen as planned.”
“Yeah,” Dylan finally said another word. “Tell someone who gives a fuck.”
The boys chuckled at each other like they had shared an inside joke.
“You know, Dylan, Eric is only bringing you along because he’s too
scared to do this on his own. He doesn’t actually care about you.”
“Shut up!” Eric screamed, cocking his shotgun and raising it to Martin’s face. “Shut the fuck up!”
“But it came out on the news, Eric. All the stories said you were a big loner. No friends. How sad. But you came up with this sick idea and brainwashed the only person who would give you the time of day. Dylan was a happy kid before he started spending time with you. Why bring him down?”
“Shut up, old man. I swear to God!” Eric shouted. Dylan stood by his side, jaw hanging open in surprise as he watched the exchange.
“God? You don’t believe in God, remember?” Martin responded calmly. “You shot a girl after she admitted believing in God.”
“That did feel good. That Bible-thumping bitch,” Eric said proudly, still aiming the shotgun at Martin.
“Was this all worth it? Killing each other after leaving such a mess behind. Too chickenshit to face the consequences?”
“You’re just like the rest of them,” Eric said. “You need a lesson in how to be nice to people. You walk around here with your rules and ethics, thinking you’re better than everyone else.”
“Do you know how stupid you sound saying you killed people because they weren’t nice?” Martin asked.
“Go to hell, and stay away from our school.”
Eric squeezed the trigger and the shotgun let out a booming sound, echoing across the empty library. The slug caught Martin square in the chest, spreading a burning sensation throughout his lungs.
Eric and Dylan both giggled as Martin collapsed in slow motion to the ground, hand clasped over the hole where the warmth of blood started to ooze.
“We told you to stay away,” Dylan said, stepping up to Martin with his pistol aimed between his eyes. Martin had never stared down the barrel of a gun before, but seeing the small black hole of death created a strange sense of comfort as he knew what would come next.
I’m in a dream. I’m not really going to die. If he shoots me, I’ll wake up. That’s how this works. Martin reassured himself as a sliver of doubt crept in.
“No one remembers you two. Ten years down the road, after your shooting, your names are long gone and forgotten. I hope it’s all worth it.” Martin spoke with a forced smirk, wanting Dylan to pull the trigger so he could leave this endless nightmare.
“Long live the Trench Coat Mafia!” Dylan shouted, and shot Martin in the head.
34
Chapter 33
Martin jolted awake, glued to the bed beneath him by sweat, and looked slowly around the room to the sight of beeping monitors and dozens of wires and tubes running in and out of his body. He held up his hands to find an IV running into one and a pulse monitor clipped to his index finger on the other. Breathing felt as fresh as he had ever experienced, and he realized an oxygen mask was strapped around his head and clasped down over half of his face.
A chalkboard hung on the wall across the foot of his bed with his last name written in big, round lettering. It also showed his main doctor to be Dr. Lincoln and a list of the three nurses who likely took care of him.
Why am I in the hospital? He patted around his body, feeling for any sort of pain or missing limb. Did I get attacked trying to save Izzy? He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to gather his thoughts on what he had been doing, but all he could see was Eric and Dylan, laughing, taunting, and shooting him while they sung praises to the Trench Coat Mafia.
An older man dressed in a white lab coat strode into the room after a quick courtesy rap on the door.
“Mr. Briar,” he said as he approached Martin’s bedside. “Welcome back. I’m Dr. Lincoln, and I’ve been looking after you the past week.”
Martin stared at him dumbfounded, and the doctor recognized this immediately.
“Mr. Briar, you’ve been in a coma for the last six days. You’ve been coming in and out of sleep for the last twelve hours, so we’ve been expecting you to wake up soon for good.”
Coma? What the fuck?
“Do you remember what you were doing before you arrived here?” the doctor asked in a sympathetic voice.
Martin opened his mouth to speak, but felt his throat tighten with mucus. If he’d really been knocked out the last six days, his body likely wasn’t functioning correctly.
He cleared his throat twice, lifted the oxygen mask off his face, and mustered out, “Water.”
“Yes, of course.”
The doctor spun around and filled a cup from the sink in the room’s bathroom, returning with a wide grin. “This should do good for you. We’ll get you some bottled water in a bit.”
Martin grabbed the cup in a weak, shaky hand, and used all of his concentration to guide it to his mouth. When he took the first sip, he felt an instant clearing and soothing in his throat as the cool liquid went down.
“Much better. Thank you,” Martin said. He curiously looked around the room more. “Where am I?”
“You’re in Littleton, Colorado.”
“Littleton?” Martin asked. “I’m not from Littleton.”
“We know that. We were hoping you might remember what you were doing out here, so far from home or work?”
Martin closed his eyes and took a deep inhale, testing his lungs’ capabilities without the oxygen mask. The last thing he could remember was having dinner with Sonya. But how long ago was that? Clearly something happened to put him in a coma. Why wasn’t the doctor telling him?
“I’m sorry. I can’t remember anything.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” the doctor asked, now scribbling on a clipboard.
“I remember having dinner with my girlfriend. Is she okay?”
“Do you remember her name, Martin?” the doctor said, seemingly ignoring his statement about his last activity.
“Yes. Sonya.”
The doctor nodded his head and continued writing notes. “Very good. I need to gauge your memory skills. It helps us know how badly the coma has affected your brain.”
“Shouldn’t all of these machines tell you that?” he asked, pointing a finger to one of the many wires taped to his forehead.
“Those tell us how your brain is doing physically. You suffered a concussion, but otherwise your brain is in good shape. You were very lucky.”
Lucky enough to not know why the hell I’m in Littleton in a hospital bed?
“This will be a process, Mr. Briar. Just know that. There will be some basic things you probably can’t remember off the top of your head. Things like names of people and places. That’s common, and they will come back in good time. I want to make sure you’re not suffering beyond that. Do you know where you live?”
“Larkwood. Born and raised.”
“Good. Do you remember your mother’s name?”
He opened his mouth, but paused before speaking. He had wanted to respond as a reflex. He could picture his mother, could describe her to the finest detail, but her name was coming up short in his mind.
“Don’t worry. Perfectly normal. Do you know what year it is?”
Martin certainly hadn’t forgotten that he had traveled back in time.
“1996.”
Dr. Lincoln raised his eyebrows, apparently not expecting a correct answer.
“Do you know who the current president is?” the doctor asked.
“Bill Clinton,” Martin said confidently, his voice finally feeling back its normal self.
“Very good. I’d say by these early tests that you’ve suffered mild memory loss. You’re still very much aware of the current happenings. Head trauma has some bizarre effects on the mind.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Yes. You were struck by a semi-truck.”
“A semi? Where?”
Martin racked his mind, the memory refusing to come to the forefront.
“You were found in front of the Klebold residence in their private neighborhood,” the doctor said, studious eyes on his patient.
The name Klebold
must have been the trigger word as Martin’s mind released a floodgate of memories. He could remember exactly what he was doing. He had just finished snooping around the Klebold house and saw Dylan answer the door for the police officer.
“Does that ring any bells?”
Martin stayed in his mind, tracking the events that had happened chronologically. After the cop left, he fled the scene, knowing the officer’s visit had to do something with his rust bucket of a car being spotted on the side of the road in the glamorous neighborhood.
He scrunched his brow in thought. “I’m afraid I’m not remembering. You said the Klebold house?”
“Correct.”
Martin tossed up his hands, feeling a slight tug from the tubes in them. “Sorry. That name doesn’t sound familiar at all.”
Martin made sure to stare the doctor in his eyes, not wanting any chance of him catching on to his lie.
“Don’t stress. It will eventually come back to you. The police may still want to speak with you to get a statement on the accident. I believe the truck driver is in jail; semis are forbidden to drive through that neighborhood.”
And they probably never do, until the past decides to push me out of the way.
Martin now understood what Chris had meant. Changing a historical event, whether for better or worse, wouldn’t be straightforward. Columbine would have to proceed as history had planned, and the thought burned Martin inside. He’d come this far only to find himself in the hospital from a coma, and having nightmares about the two howling lunatics who would one day carry out their destiny.
Eric and Dylan win. I can’t push any further than I already have. Anything more will get me killed. I need to recover and get ready for Izzy in September.
“I’m gonna let you relax for a bit. I’ll have a nurse stop in later to get some of these tubes taken out, and I’ll discuss the next steps with you at that time,” Dr. Lincoln said. “Is there anything I can get for you right now?”
Wealth of Time Series Boxset Page 18
