by P. T. Hylton
Joe nodded. “Indeed. And I want to hear what you have to say, too. I just realized I’ve done all the talking.”
Sophie couldn’t help but smile. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad sleuth after all.
2.
They followed Matt through town—he in his truck and Mason and Frank in Sophie’s car—past schools, churches, and houses, large and small. Now that they were away from the river and getting their first real look at the heart of town, Frank thought this place wasn’t all that different than Rook Mountain.
For the first time in years, Frank was behind the wheel. He suddenly realized he’d missed driving.
He looked at Mason. “How am I doing?”
Mason raised an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”
Matt turned onto a small road that twisted up a bluff.
Mason asked, “Can we trust this guy?”
“I have no idea,” Frank said.
Mason’s gaze was fixed to the window. As they moved away from town and deeper into the forested heights of the bluff, he seemed to relax by degrees. They were going into his element.
Finally, they passed a sign that read, Castle Bluff Park. A few moments later, the road ended in a parking lot. Matt parked his truck, and Frank pulled into the spot next to him.
“Same signal as before if we need to run?” Mason asked before getting out.
“Same signal as before,” Frank answered.
When they got out, Frank turned to Matt. “Okay, why’d you bring us here?”
Matt smiled weakly. “We’re not quite there yet. Follow me.”
He led them on foot through the parking lot and up a well-trod path up to the top of the bluff. It was a short walk, clearly designed to allow people of all abilities to make it to the summit.
They rounded a final bend and came out onto a vista. A flag pole stood in the middle of the clearing, the American flag at the top whipping in the wind.
Matt moved to the wooden fence at the edge of the vista. “Take a look.”
They were looking out over King’s Crossing. Every house, every church, every road was laid out below them like some sort of miniature town.
“It’s beautiful,” Frank said.
“That’s why I brought you here,” Matt said.
They stood in silence for a few moments, looking out over the town.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Matt said finally. “It can be a strange place. Sometimes a petty place. A dangerous place, too. But mostly it’s a good place. The people here can surprise you in a million wonderful ways.”
Frank let that hang in the air for a few moments before he said, “What did you want to talk to us about?”
Matt looked at them both in turn, and there was something like fondness in his eyes. “This is going to sound strange.”
“We saw a grown man get pulled through a hole in a tree two hours ago,” Frank said. “I think we can handle it.”
Matt smiled. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Okay, here goes.” He put his hand on the fence. “I’m pretty good friends with both of you.”
“Okay…” Mason said.
“I’m friends with Sophie, too,” he continued. “She and my wife are practically inseparable.”
Frank suddenly realized he’d never introduced Mason. Matt had acted so familiar with him right off the bat that Frank hadn’t felt the need.
Matt pointed down toward the town. “A pretty big fight happens down there in the very near future, and we’re in it. We watch each other’s backs and make a pretty good showing of things.”
“Can you explain this a little more clearly?” Mason asked. “I grew up in the woods, so I don’t always catch on to things as fast as some.”
“Yeah, explain it for Mason’s sake,” Frank said.
Matt grinned at that. “Okay, sorry. Let me try to do this another way. I can explain how Zed knew you’d show up at that restaurant last night. How he even knew what you’d order. It’s the same way I knew you’d go to the library this morning after you left the shed.” He looked Frank in the eye. “It’s because we’ve done this all before. Lots of times, actually.”
“Still not following,” Mason said.
“Okay, look, it’s like this,” Matt said. “Zed’s figured out a way to send someone back in time. Not anywhere in time, mind you, but back along their own timeline. So, he could do his thing and send me back, say, two years. It would be 2013, and I’d still be me, just as I was in 2013, but with all the knowledge I have now.”
He let that take hold for a moment.
“So let me see if I understand,” Frank said. “If you went back to 2013, there wouldn’t be two of you, right? Just the one guy with this future set of memories?”
“You got it.”
“So you’re Quantum Leaping into your past self?” Frank asked.
“Err, yeah, I guess,” Matt said with a grin.
Mason leaned against the fence. “How’s Zed do it?”
“It’s that compass of his,” Matt said. “That’s part of it, anyway. And you’ve seen how he can teleport?”
“I’ve seen it,” Frank said. “Some of his cronies in Rook Mountain had the power too. It was pretty gross.”
“Well, he says it’s like that. But he’s moving people through time rather than through space. The compass tells him who to send and when to send them. And then he touches them and they go back.”
“Okay, then why’s he doing it?” Mason’s voice was as confident as Frank had ever heard it. Now that they were away from the unfamiliar ground of modern society and talking about a topic he knew something about, Mason was like a whole different person.
“Now that,” Matt said, “is an excellent question. Here’s the thing. All that stuff he said at the restaurant last night and in the park this morning? He was telling the truth. Mostly. A version of the truth anyway. He does have powerful enemies, and they are coming in two weeks’ time. And we will have the fight of a lifetime on our hands. Zed has a plan to defeat them, but for it to work, everything has to go exactly as planned. So far, it hasn’t.”
Frank was starting to get the picture. “Sending people back in time gives him unlimited do-overs.”
Matt nodded. “Exactly. A couple problems, though. From what he says, Zed can’t go back in time himself. He has to send somebody else. And when that person goes back, only that person retains their memories of the most recent try. Everyone else loses them. That person explains to Zed what happened. He always sends back someone who was actually there when it went wrong, but still…it’s all subject to the interpretation of the person telling the story. It’s a bit like shooting darts in the dark for Zed.”
Frank shook his head. This was crazy, but it was also pure Zed. He couldn’t help but believe what Matt was telling them. “How many times has this happened? How many times have we tried and failed?”
“I’m not sure of the exact number. I don’t even know if Zed knows. Maybe a hundred? More? I don’t know. Because the only person who knows is the person who’s sent back. But we’ve come up with a little way of keeping track.”
A light went on in Mason’s eyes. “The tattoos!”
Matt nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly.” He rolled up his right sleeve and showed them the Roman numeral IV. “This means I’ve been sent back four times.”
“Jesus,” Frank said. “You’ve experienced this conversation four times?”
Matt rolled his sleeve back down and shook his head. “I told you we were friends before. And we were. I mean, as close as people can become in a couple weeks, anyway. But we’ve never had this talk. I’m changing things up this time.”
“Why?” Frank asked. “Did Zed—”
Matt cut him off. “Zed doesn’t know I’m doing this. I’m going behind his back. First time ever.”
Mason echoed Frank’s last question. “Why?”
“Let me give you a little background. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Zed supporter from the start. He showed us what he could do with that com
pass and I believed him. Then I met you three. You started telling me what I now believe is the truth about Zed. By the third time I was sent back, I was sure you were the good guys. The fourth time I went back everything changed.”
“How so?” Frank asked.
Matt scratched his chin. “Normally, Zed only sends people back as far as he needs too. A few weeks. Maybe a month or two. However far back he wants to send them to adjust whatever it is that needs adjusting. But the last time…he sent me back ten years.”
“Why so far?” Mason asked.
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned and looked out over the vista. “The town looks so small. Like a set of toys or something. That’s the way they see it, Zed and the Exiled. King’s Crossing is just another battleground. But it’s more than that to me.”
“Tell us what changed your mind about Zed,” Frank said.
Matt took a deep breath before continuing. “My wife and I never had kids. Doctors told us we couldn’t. We thought about adopting, but we decided we liked the freedom. We liked the ability to do anything and go anywhere without being tied down. But when I went back this time…I got my wife pregnant.” His eyes lit up as he talked. “Her name’s Alice. She the sharpest kid you’ll ever meet. She’s changed my world. Our world. She’s the best thing in our lives.” He reached out and grabbed Frank’s arm, gripping the sleeve. “So you see my problem? What if Zed sends me back ten years again? Or sends my wife back? Or, hell, sends someone else back and it sets off a chain reaction that changes things. Alice might never be born. Or maybe a different sperm will fertilize a different egg, and we’ll have a kid, but it won’t be her.”
Matt looked back and forth, meeting their eyes. “There can’t be any more do-overs. We have to get it right this time.”
Frank put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We’ll do what we can to help. Tell us what went wrong the other times.”
Matt nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good place to start. I don’t really know how to say this, but every time I’ve lived this…you three have been the reason we couldn’t beat the Exiles.”
“Wait, what?” Mason asked.
Frank drew in a deep breath. “What do you mean? Was it because we couldn’t find the book?”
Matt shook his head. “You had the book. All four times. The first time, you tried to destroy it. The second and third times, you hid it with one of your locks. You tried to help us kill the Exiles, but the outcome was never good. The last time, Mason tried to use the book. They killed us before he could make it do anything. The Exiles always ended up getting the book. Zed says we’ve also tried not asking you to find it, but the Exiles get their hands on it even more quickly in those cases.”
“Wait,” Frank said. “If you know we found the book those other times, why bring us into it at all? Why doesn’t Zed just find it himself? It’s in the same place we found it those other times, right?”
“That’s a complicated question,” Matt said. “To answer the first part, you never told him where you found it. You were never honest with him and you never handed over the book to him. As far as I can see it, that’s the only thing you haven’t tried.”
The air suddenly felt a few degrees cooler to Frank. “So that’s your angle. You’re telling us all this so we hand the book over to Zed.”
Matt slapped the wooden fence. “No! That’s not it at all. I’m just giving you the history. Future history. Whatever. After I give you the book, you can do whatever you want with it. I still believe in you three. I think we can find a way. Whatever that way is, it’s not Zed’s. Because even if we win that fight, what then? What’s the world like after Zed wins?”
Frank squinted at him. “You said after I give you the book. You have it?”
Matt nodded slowly.
Frank frowned. “I thought you said we never told you where the book was.”
“That’s true,” Matt said. “But I also told you things are different this time. My daughter is a special girl. She found the book. We’ve been hiding it for three years.”
3.
Alice was drawing when they arrived. She wasn’t the best artist in town, or even in her class, but she enjoyed it. Drawing released a certain kind of energy that always seemed to be trapped inside her. Taking it out and putting it on the page was a relief, kind of like sneezing. It had to be done, even if the results weren’t always pretty.
Today she was watching Adventure Time on the iPad while she drew, so she wasn’t paying much attention to what she was drawing. She was just letting it flow through her. First she’d drawn a dog, a cute little one, maybe a beagle. But after she finished she noticed his teeth were a bit too sharp, and the sparkle in his eye was a bit too lively. He looked like he was hungry and maybe he didn’t mind so much if the meat he got happened to be human. Then she drew trees, but the wrinkles in the bark looked like screaming faces. Then it was bunnies, and landscapes, and people, all with the same odd, slightly frightening result.
It seemed everything she drew today turned out twisted. Maybe that wasn’t surprising. Maybe that was because twisted was exactly how she felt. She’d felt that way for the past two hours. Ever since meeting the man in the shed.
He’d seen her. Really seen her in a way she couldn’t erase. She’d Pulled Back, and it was as if he’d Pulled Back with her. That knowledge, the knowledge that there was someone out there that could do what she did, or at least could see through what she did, was like a lead ball in her stomach.
She might feel better if she could talk to someone about it, but who? Her parents got uncomfortable and acted weird anytime she even hinted around the topic of her special abilities. Who else was there? Marcy? Yeah, right. All she ever wanted to talk about was soccer.
Something else bothered Alice about the man in the shed. He’d been scary, yes. Terrifying, actually. She’d be surprised if she could sleep any night for the next week. But he also understood what she could do. He’d understood it better in five seconds than her parents had in nine years. What if he could help her understand it? What if he could tell her why she was this way?
These were the thoughts running through her head when the front door opened, bringing her back to the real world.
She set down her pencil, only barely noticing the flowers she’d drawn had sharp thorns, and scurried to her usual observation place atop the stairs.
Dad walked through the door, which was a little surprising considering it was a workday and all. Just as surprising, he was not alone. Three people followed him. The first was a woman in a tee shirt and jeans with an impossibly cool haircut that made it look like she didn’t care when clearly she did. The second was a man with black hair streaked with gray. Neither of them looked up and noticed Alice at her perch atop the staircase. No one ever did.
Then the third man, an old guy with leathery-tan skin and wrinkles around his eyes looked right up at her like he’d known she was there. His eyes lit up when he saw her, and he gave her an enthusiastic wave.
No one else noticed.
“Helen,” Dad called. “They’re here.”
Mom came out of the back room. She ran toward them, then stopped awkwardly. It was like she was meeting strangers and seeing old friends all at the same time. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Helen.”
“Frank,” the younger guy said.
“Mason,” muttered the old guy, barely loud enough for Alice to hear.
“Sophie,” the woman with the cool hair said.
Helen smiled crookedly at Sophie. “Oh, what the hell,” she said, and she pulled Sophie in for a hug. “I know you don’t remember, but we’ve had some fun times, you and I. We got drunk together the night before the Exiles attacked last time.”
Sophie held herself awkwardly though the hug as if not sure what to do with her hands. “God, this is weird.”
Mason said, “How about this one?” He pointed up at Alice.
The others lifted their gazes and searched for her a moment before settling on her.
&nbs
p; Dad did a double take when he saw her. How many times had she hidden and watched from up there? And no one had ever noticed. Until now. “Come on down, honey.”
Alice descended the stairs, suddenly feeling a bit shy. They were all watching her, like she was something special. It felt like they expected her to do a trick or something.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and her parents introduced her all around. As if she hadn’t been watching the first time everyone had given their names.
After Mason introduced himself, he said, “Sorry I gave away your hiding spot.”
She was none too happy about it, but what was she supposed to say? “It’s okay. I don’t mind at all.”
“Well,” Mom said. “This is very…strange.”
Sophie smiled. “For all of us.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Dad said. “Besides we don’t have time for strange. There’s lots of work to do and not much time to do it.”
That was Dad’s way, Alice knew. Anytime he was feeling uncomfortable he started working on something. That was probably why he always got so many projects done when Grandma and Grandpa were visiting.
Dad reached down and put a hand on her shoulder. “Alice, I want you to get the book.”
She paused, her hands suddenly ice cold. She wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said, Alice, I want you to stab me in the throat. They never showed the book to anybody. Ever. That was the rule. And if someone saw the book, she was to Pull Back and keep it from happening. Her parents never said that directly, of course, but they’d firmly implied it. It was the closest they’d ever come to openly speaking about her abilities.
She looked back and forth from Dad to Mom, waiting for confirmation that she’d heard correctly.
Mom smiled at her. “It’s okay, honey. Get the book.”
Alice walked upstairs as if in a dream. She went to her parents’ bedroom, opened the closet, and reached into the back corner behind the shoe boxes. It was wedged in there pretty tightly, but she gave it a couple of yanks, and it came free.
And was it ever heavy. It wasn’t just the physical weight of the book, though that was part of it. It was tall and wide and as thick as Alice’s leg. But there was something heavy about the content of the book, too. It made her feel uneasy to touch it. It made her upset. It made all sorts of strange thoughts come into her mind, thoughts about fires, and destruction, and trees. Now, that she thought about it, the trees she thought of when she held the book were very similar to the one she’d seen in the shed that morning.
