But how can any of that matter after what I’ve been through tonight?
I was in another time.
Another thought chills me.
Earlier this evening, when I first arrived at Camton, Vance had been nervous. As if someone was following him and Jane had said there people that had done something to her. I’ve already got enough trouble.
I certainly don’t need more.
February 13
“Johnny, he was all ready to skip the draft, run away to Canada, and marry me, and we he would’ve if I hadn’t told him to go to hell. Of course, I didn’t say that right away. First, I begged him to stay here, move in with me, have a baby, but he wouldn’t listen. ‘We’ve been fighting France’s war too long,’ he said. ‘It’s not our fight,’ he said.” Tiffany, my overly talkative waitress refills my coffee without missing a beat in her monologue. I light another cigarette, pretending to listen. “His plan was to hightail it up to Canada and get a job in construction or something like that. He wanted me to come with him, but I told him, ‘my acting career is about to take off. You expect me to support you in your dreams but you can’t support me in mine?’ Well, that pissed him off more than anything and he up and left without me. You want anything else? A waffle? Some toast maybe?”
“Just the coffee,” I say, stretching a kink out of my back. She smiles, saying she’ll be right back. She’s flirting with me, poor thing.
I look back down at my notebook, tapping at the table with my pen. I abandoned the mess of my script this morning. Tossed it straight in the trash. This is a fresh notebook. Blank and full of possibilities.
I stare at the empty page.
The events of the previous night stare back at me.
Time travel, girls from the future, shadowy figures peering out of the dark.
It’s all too much to believe. I inhale deeply on the cigarette, wanting the buzz to wake me up from this dream. But it doesn’t.
I glance down, noticing the mud on my shoes. My corduroy blazer is still damp from the rain. It would have been ruined if not for the trench coat that Vance had given me. There are scratches on my arms and face from sliding down the hill. It couldn’t have been a dream. I did go somewhere. Somewhen.
I need to process this. All of it. Accepting that the laws of physics might occasionally take a day off is no easy task.
I finish my cigarette, light another and pick up my coffee, noticing that it’s empty.
“Anyway,” Tiffany says as she returns with my coffee, “it’s been rocky, but the whole acting thing will take a turn any day now. I’ve been doing all these auditions and only last week I met this agent that said he absolutely had to sign me.”
“What happened to Johnny?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Johnny, your boyfriend. Was he drafted or is he up in Canada doing construction?”
“Oh, he disappeared?”
I turn to Tiffany, my attention piqued. “Disappeared?”
“Yeah, he ended up being drafted and jumped out of an airplane over Algiers. The Army never found him. No body, no chute. No nothin’.”
I think of Vance’s old girlfriend, Jenny, who disappeared back on the other side of that tunnel, and of his other friend who died over there. The memory sends a shiver down my spine. Terrance, that’s what his name was. I look up at Tiffany and say, “maybe he made it to Canada.”
Tiffany snorts. “There’s a thought.”
I sip on my coffee as Tiffany moves to help a trio of cops. I tap at my notebook, then check my watch. My eyes go back to the mud on my shoes. Godamnitall.
I make eye contact with Tiffany when she finishes getting the cops their coffees.
“You got a phone I can use?”
She gives me a wink and gestures toward the back.
“You look like shit.” Vance slides into the seat next to me. I had moved to a table on the patio after calling him. He made it here in a record half an hour.
My notebook is still empty.
I wave to Tiffany to get her attention. “Another coffee,” I say.
Vance stares at me, not saying anything. I stare back. I feel the cool damp breeze on my skin, hear the cry of seagulls, feel the warmth of the sun as it peeks through the clouds.
Real life doesn’t seem real anymore.
Tiffany arrives with the coffee. I wait for Vance to take a few sips before speaking.
“Time travel,” I say, quietly.
“There’s nothing else to call it.”
“You think that’s what happened? Back then, I mean?”
Vance leans forward. “From what Jane tells us, different tunnels—”
“Tunnels?” I interrupt.
“That’s what she calls them. According to her, different tunnels have different, uh, delays.”
“What does that mean?”
Vance sighs. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me,” I say.
“We spent, what, twenty minutes back there?”
I shrug. “Felt like an hour.”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s say you’re at the lab and you have two timers. You start them at the at same time and then you take one with you through the tunnel. You stay there for twenty minutes and come back. If the one you left behind now says twenty-two minutes, then that’s a two minute delay. You following this?”
I nod, despite not entirely understanding.
“Jane says some tunnels have huge delays.” He pauses, staring at me. “Some have negative delays.
“Those would bring you back before the time you left?” I ask.
Vance nods. “I wouldn’t want to mess with those tunnels. The delays can also shift, because some of the tunnels are unstable. But they can have all kinds of delays. Five minutes. Twenty minutes.” He looks up at me. “Some even as long as a month.”
“You’re saying I might have stumbled onto one of those tunnels and gone through for, what, a few minutes? But when I came back out, a whole month would have passed?”
Vance nods. “The other side of the tunnel could have been in the same geographic location. That would explain why you don’t remember going anywhere… else.”
I lean back in the chair and clench my eyes shut. The therapy sessions come back to me. Endless hours throughout my childhood. Endless attempts to explain what had happened. “I’ve had so many therapists tell me so many things that I don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s bullshit.”
Vance takes a sip of his coffee. “Confusion and memory loss are common when traveling. Remember how it took you a minute to remember our names? It’s even worse if you have no one there to help you through it. Jane also had trouble remembering things. But Aleisha, she helped Jane.”
I grimace at Vance as he picks up his coffee, taking a sip. “So . . . more therapy?”
He frowns. “What’s wrong with that?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want another therapist. Therapists robbed me of my childhood. You want to know what they told me? There was this one in particular. Johnson, I think his name was. He said the reason I couldn’t remember that month was because I had been––” I pause, not wanting to finish. The memories are still too raw. Too painful. I swallow, forcing myself to continue. “I had been abducted and raped. Repeatedly. For a month straight. You want to know what else he said?”
Vance sets down his coffee. “What else?”
“He tried to convince me that the abduction turned me gay.”
“Jesus,” Vance says.
I nod. “Because of him, my parents wanted to reopen the investigation. Start a manhunt all over again.”
Vance regards me quietly for a moment. “Aleisha’s different. She’s open minded. She specializes in regression therapy. She helped Jane remember a lot of things she had forgotten. And Jane’s case is even harder than yours. We all talked about it last night. We think it would be good for you to go through that process as well.”
“I said I don’t want another therapist.”
I stare at him, feeling uncertain. “I could probably get the address of the house we were visiting if I talked to my parents. Though… we’re not really on speaking terms.”
“Even if you had the address, could you actually take us to the tunnel? Could you lead us there?”
I frown. “Shit, Vance. I don’t even know if what happened to me was remotely the same as what you guys found in that basement. Even if it was, are you kidding me? You want me to go back there?”
“Do you want to know for sure?” Vance asks.
A chill runs through my body. “Know what for sure?” Though I already know what he’s going to say.
“If that therapist was right?"
I raise an eyebrow. “Trauma didn't make me gay."
Vance nods. “I get your point. But the rest of it, the part about you being abducted and forgetting because of the trauma. That could be true, couldn't it?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Vance leans forward. “Do you want answers?”
“Sure, I want answers. But I sure as hell don't want to talk to another therapist to get them.”
Vance leans back and scratches at his dark beard. “You need to see how Aleisha helped Jane.”
“Okay…”
“We taped all her sessions. But Jane keeps them for security.” Vance checks his watch. “We’ll have to wait a few hours, though.”
“Hold on,” I say. “I still don’t understand why you’ve told me all this. You were perfectly capable of listening to my story and letting me go on living my life in ignorance. You didn’t have to tell me any of these details.”
Vance glances over his shoulder, then leans forward until he is close enough to whisper. “Watch the film. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a lot more going on here.”
“Fine.” I breathe a sigh of frustration. “So, we go to Jane and ask her to let us watch a film of her therapy session.”
“I told you, we’re going to have to wait before we can talk to her.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why, does she have a job?”
“No.”
“Is she at some kind of meeting?” I smirk. “Is it AA?”
“No, Ellis.”
“Can’t we go to her house and knock on her door. Where does this girl live, anyway?”
This time, Vance doesn’t answer.
“Vance, she doesn’t live with you, does she?”
“No, of course not.”
A take a sip of coffee. “Hell, she lives on the other side of that—that tunnel, doesn’t she?”
Vance glances around the patio. “Quiet.”
I lean forward. “She lives… back in time?”
“Yes,” Vance hisses. “For her own safety. I didn’t want to tell you this last night, but there are some very bad people after her. Government, Ellis. But not the kind you read about in the papers. The guys we’re talking about, their names aren’t in any record. No pictures of them exist in any government database. They don’t have friends. They don’t have family. They don’t exist.”
“And these guys are looking for Jane?”
Vance nods. “They police the tunnels. But they don’t know about ours. So we keep her hidden. She’s safe there. We have a schedule and we stick to it. Meal drops. Clothing drops. And it all happens at night when fewer people are around. So, we have to wait until then.”
I stare off at the beach, my coffee forgotten. I think about some poor security guard who, every night watches a couple of grad students walking into a storage room and never leaving. I think about Jane. A girl living in two times. My god, what a story.
“So, when’s the next visiting hour?”
“6 PM” Vance says. “You are free tonight, aren’t you?”
I breathe a sigh of frustration, glancing at my notebook. There's still the script I’ve promised to re-write. I think about Barry Mendelssohn and Bob Carr. About the two guys who followed me yesterday afternoon and the creep with the scar who was watching my apartment last night. I should be working. But this is one hell of a story. And a story is just what I need.
“Sure,” I say, with mixed feelings of regret and relief. “I’ll meet you there tonight.”
“Good,” Vance says, standing. “6 PM. Don’t be late.”
I shrug my assent.
Vance bends down and grabs me by the shoulder. “Ellis, once you watch this… everything will be different.”
I frown. “You keep saying that.”
Vance shakes his head. “This is on a whole different plane.”
I stop halfway up the stairs to the front of the bungalow, realizing something is wrong. There’s clothes on the lawn, arranged in neat piles. They're my clothes. I take a step forward, feeling my jaw slacken, and stop again. My typewriter is there as well. I close the distance to the front door.
“Looks like you’ve got problems, Mr. Claymore.” The voice is reedy and high pitched.
I look up to see two men waiting for me on my porch. One is tall and skeletal with the sallow skin of a golem. The other is a fat lump of a man. He’s bald as a melon with roughly the same coloring and no discernible neck. Both of the goons have multiple gold rings on their fingers. Both wear poorly cut black suits.
Neither are smiling.
I glance at the street and see a black Lincoln Continental parked on the curb. So these are the guys that were following me yesterday after lunch.
“What do you want?” I ask, stepping past the piles of my belongings and onto the porch.
The two goons glance at each other, and the fat one steps forward. “We'd like to introduce ourselves,” he says, speaking in that high-pitched voice. “I’m Carl.”
“And I’m Tracy,” says the thin man. His voice evokes the distinct image of someone sharpening a knife with a whetstone. “We’re associates of Bob Carr.”
“Tell Bob I’ll have his script to him by the end of the week,” I say, stepping between the two men and angling for my door. The thin one, Tracy, slides in front of me, blocking my way.
“He knows that,” Tracy says. “But…”
“We wanted to see how you’re doing,” Carl finishes.
I turn around to find Carl standing directly behind me.
“How’s that third act denouement coming along?” Carl asks, folding his arms across his expansive chest.
“You need some dialog polishing?” asks Tracy. “We’re great with dialog.”
“Or a speedy typist?” Carl holds up his hands, displaying fat, sausage shaped fingers. “I may not look it, but I’m surprisingly dexterous.”
“Thanks, guys. But I don’t need any help.”
Tracy leans back against the door. He holds up a toothpick and begins to excavate his lunch from his molars. “You sure?” He says, speaking around the toothpick. “Mr. Carr trusts us completely, you know.”
“If he trusts you guys so much then why aren’t you writing the damn script?”
I try to step past him but Tracy puts his arm across the doorframe. I stop, feeling myself grow cold. Carl leans toward me. His breath is hot on my cheeks. “We don’t write scripts, we just make sure they get finished.”
I take a step back. “It will be finished and delivered by Friday.”
Tracy absentmindedly examines the toothpick. “Yes, we know.”
Carl nods in agreement. “We’re here to ensure that said delivery promise is fulfilled. Considering that this is, what, the third time a delivery date’s been changed?”
Tracy nods. “That’s right. The third time.”
I push past Tracy and turn the doorknob. It’s locked. At least this means that Jim isn’t home right now. One problem at a time. I fish out my key, speaking as I do. “Tell Bob Carr that I will deliver him his script on Friday as discussed.”
Tracy leans in closer. “I hear you got a sizable advance as well?”
The door doesn�
�t unlock. I check my key and try it again.
“Yes? And?” I ask, trying the lock again. Shit, Jim’s changed the locks.
Tracy steps back, folding his arms across hic chest. As he does, his suit jacket pulls back, revealing a shoulder holster.“Failure to deliver will require a refund. In full.”
Something inside my gut squirms, shrivels, and quickly dies.
“He’ll get it,” I say, and knock loudly on the door. I’ve gone from wishing that Jim isn’t home to hoping very desperately that he is.
Carl steps forward, leaning in so close that his belly presses into me and his reeking hot breath blasts into my face. “He’d better.”
I clench my eyes shut, trembling, and stay there until I hear the sound of the Lincoln Continental retreating up the street. Fuck me. What am I doing, running around with Vance and his groupies when I have a script to rewrite from scratch? I should be chaining myself to a chair at the Venice Whaler, ordering a constant stream of coffee and having Tiffany siphon it directly into my gullet. What the hell am I doing?
There's a noise from inside. The lock clicks and I step back as the door opens behind me.
My first thought is that the cat is out of the bag, and Jim must know now that there’s a real chance he will never see a rent check from me again, let alone the three months of back pay I owe him. My second thought is that Jim looks awful, rivaling my own appearance from the night before. He’s unshaven, sweaty, and bleary eyed, and he’s wearing the same thing from last night.
"Were you talking to someone?" Jim asks.
So he didn't hear. Small mercies. “Tourists,” I say.
Dispersion: Book Two of the Recursion Event Saga Page 5
