MISSING TIME
"313" Volume 1 of 3
Copyright 2013 by J. David Clarke
Cover design by Kimi A. Phillips
ALSO BY J. DAVID CLARKE
The Rubberband Man and Other Stories
Time Spent ("313" Volume 2 of 3)
Time Lost ("313" Volume 3 of 3, coming soon)
The Wizard in My Window (coming soon
Keeper of Days I: The Book of Day and Night (coming soon)
Find me on the web:
www.facebook.com/clarketacular
www.amazon.com/author/clarketacular
From Amazon reviews for MISSING TIME
"Like 'LOST' on speed!"
"Looking forward to what happens next!"
"...had a Koontz feel to it."
"Wonderfully creative..."
"Fast moving. Highly recommend."
"One of the most thrilling books I have read in a long time!"
"...it left me hungry for more!"
"...strange and wonderful story..."
"...combines suspense, drama, wit, deception, with a hint of passion."
"This is a must read."
CONTENTS
"You were on the bus with me."
"What do you remember about that night?"
"The most badass thing ever."
"That thing is not our son."
"I am not nothing."
"That girl's crazy and everyone knows it."
"Daddy's little princess."
"Can you be brave for me?"
"There are worlds inside all of us."
"To lead, unseen."
"A dream come true."
"Home."
"What happens next?"
Prologue
"You were on the bus with me."
The bass was pounding loud enough to shake his head apart, but Ryan's eyes stayed fixed on her.
His tongue flicked his teeth as he watched her body undulate in her little gray dress. Dirty blonde hair trailed all the way down her back, the tips just brushing her ass.
That ass, he thought to himself, running a hand through his hair.
I'm gonna ruin that later.
As if on cue, the girl turned around. She almost seemed to search the crowd around Ryan with her eyes, bright green eyes. There was no way he could see them from here, but he did. Then, with a strange certainty, the eyes settled on him. She looked right into his eyes, and she smiled.
Oh yeah, Ryan thought and grinned, I'm about to fuck this bitch up.
She maneuvered up to him with impossible grace, weaving her body up against him, passing through the throng of dancers, pressing him against the wall, and proceeded to grind against him, causing Ryan to feel his cock wake up and go rock hard. Ryan swallowed, and put his arms around her. He tried to dance with her, but she held him that way, he was not sure exactly how.
"I'm Ryan," he said.
She grinned, a twinkle in her striking green eyes. "I know."
"We should get a drink," Ryan whispered in her ear.
Once he got her to the bar, it would be easy to get the pill into her glass. He had done it before. Then it was just a matter of getting her outside to his car, once the pill started to kick in, and he'd be good to go. He could do whatever he wanted. He looked down at her body, thinking of all the things he would do to it.
"I have a better idea," she said. Her green eyes flashed.
Something happened.
Something was not right.
Her eyes were all he could see. They were all around him. Running inside his head and keeping him trapped there.
She laughed, and her voice, inside his head, said:
HHOW ABOUT WE HAVE SOME REAL FUN, YOU FUCKING SCUMBAGG
Ryan tried to speak, but nothing came out. His legs were moving on their own, walking him toward the door, with the girl following after. He tried to scream, to wave, to do anything to stop from going with the girl, but his body would not obey him. When he got to the door, his impulse was to reach his hand out and push the bar, but her eyes (those striking green eyes) flashed in his mind, and he found his head bowing forward. He smacked the door with his forehead, knocking it open but causing a spray of color to cloud his vision.
"Baby!" she said from behind him, and he felt her hot hands take his arm. She laughed to the bouncer at the door, "He's had a little too much to drink, poor thing!"
Ryan tried to scream to the bouncer but he couldn't even see him, much less say anything.
"You two need a cab?" a male voice nearby asked.
No! Ryan screamed in his head. Help me!
"We're fine," she said sweetly, "our car is right outside."
KKEEP SCREAMING I LOVE ITT
By the time Ryan's vision cleared, his legs had taken him to his car, and his hands had fished the keys out and opened the doors. He handed her the keys and got in on the passenger side. As he climbed in, he saw a guy getting on a motorcycle near the front of the bar. He tried to shout out to him, but again he couldn't say a word.
NNO ONE CAN HELP YOU SO JUST GET USED TO ITT
She drove the car out on Highway 10, toward the edge of town. There was a bridge across the river there, and once on the bridge she pulled the car over and stopped. Ryan got out of the car against his will, shutting the door behind him.
The girl got out and walked around the car. The light from one lone streetlight over the end of the bridge fell on her, illuminating the terrible look on her beautiful face.
SSO YOU WERE GONNA FUCK ME UP, HUHH
Please I'm sorry please please please, Ryan begged inside his mind.
WWHO'S THE BITCH NOWW
Ryan began taking off his clothes. First he pulled his pants down and kicked them off, then took his shirt off, tossing the lot over the railing. They floated down to the dark water below.
Her green eyes consumed him. He stepped up next to the railing, taking care to bang his arms and legs against them painfully.
Ryan turned around and faced her, leaning back up against the railing, pressing his anus against a particularly painful metal protrusion there.
The girl laughed, and just then a light fell on her.
The motorcycle rolled to a stop some twenty yards from them, and the man stepped off, removing his helmet. He was the same age as them, early twenties, dark skinned African-American, bald, wearing a dark jacket over plain white T and jeans.
"Whatever you're thinking of doing to him," he said, "don't do it."
Help me! Ryan screamed inside his head, the freezing bolt or whatever it was pressing into his rectum. Oh God please help me!
SSHUT UPP
"Who the fuck are you?" she asked.
"You were on the bus with me," he said. "You were on the bus, right?"
For just a moment the green eyes, which were all Ryan could see, cracked open and he saw a terrified little girl on a school bus. In the middle of the night, the bus -- but then the green eyes came back together and he saw nothing again.
"Who. The fuck. Are you?" she asked again.
"I can feel you," he said. "That's your thing, huh? Getting inside people's heads?" He glanced at Ryan. "Controlling them? I can feel you in there, trying to take over, but it isn't working. That's kind of my...thing? I guess? My power. Things don't hold on to me. If I think hard, I won't even be here. I'll be back home. I don't know how it works."
"The fuck are you talking about? WHO ARE YOU?"
"My name is Kevin? You remember? You're Becca, right? You were on the bus with me that night."
"SHUT UP about that!"
Suddenly, from somewhere to Ryan's right, a spotlight activated. Kevin and Becca turned toward it, covering their eyes. Ryan tried, but couldn't turn his head.
A shot rang out, and Becca f
ell, her head a ruined red mess on the pavement.
The green eyes vanished from Ryan's eyes, and he fell to the ground.
"Stop!" Kevin cried. "Why are you doing this?"
Ryan lifted his head, his exhausted muscles in agony. Until now, he hadn't realized how hard his body had been fighting itself. He could barely move.
A second shot rang out, and Ryan thought he saw Kevin's head flinch, but he was unharmed.
"Why?" Kevin shouted again.
A third shot rang out, and then a fourth, and fifth, Kevin flinching each time. Shots rang out faster and faster, like microwave popcorn cooking to a crescendo. Bullets slid off Kevin's body, riddling the car, the motorcycle, the bridge itself.
Kevin closed his eyes, and was gone.
Ryan turned his eyes toward the spotlight now, blinded, terrified, and his vocal chords finally, finally began to obey him.
"Nnng. Nunngghh! NNNN!! NOOOOOO!!"
A final shot sounded.
End Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
KEVIN
"What do you remember about that night?"
There were cadavers under the sheets. Kevin knew this, but his mind pushed it away.
"What are we gonna do?" asked a gangly guy in glasses and an Autobot symbol t-shirt.
Kevin ran his hands over his bald head, thinking, raising his eyes to the ceiling. One of the other guys was walking around the lab, scanning the walls with his eyes. He was tall and handsome, with jet-black hair. A skinny girl with spiky blue hair paced back and forth in front of the door, her hands balled into tight fists. Another girl and two guys stood near the lab table behind Kevin. The girl was mousy looking, with shoulder length brown hair. She clasped hands with the Asian man next to her, who was eyeing them all suspiciously. His arms were covered in matted black hair. The last had short blond hair, and an open, almost blank expression on his face. He wore a very plain, old white t-shirt and faded pair of jeans.
Kevin was sitting on one of the stools that were positioned randomly around. Some of the tables were bare. Some contained lab equipment: microscopes and other things Kevin didn't recognize. Some had sheets draped over them, and under the sheets...but Kevin's mind refused to think about that. He wanted to go home. He jolted himself before he could form the thought.
"What are we gonna do?" the gangly guy asked again. "About him?"
Kevin lowered his eyes. The scientist sat against the wall in front of him, his lab coat and gray slacks disheveled from being tossed there minutes before. He had gray-and-white hair and wore circular wire-rimmed glasses, which his finger now pushed up on his nose.
"That's a very good question, Brandon," the scientist said. "What are you going to do?"
Brandon flinched. "He knows my name! How does 'Umbrella-Corp-Guy' know my name?"
The scientist smiled. "I know all your names."
Kevin got off the stool and approached him. "Look, I don't want to hurt you..."
"She does," said the scientist, inclining his head in the direction of the blue-haired girl. "Mia, isn't it?" he asked.
Her eyes widened. Yellow energy began to glow from her fists.
"Okay," Kevin said. "You know our names, we get that. Now tell us, what else do you know? Why are you guys after us? Why did you..." he looked toward the sheets, and couldn't say it, for a moment. "Why did you kill them?"
The scientist, whose badge had no name, looked Kevin in the eyes. "You don't know what's going on at all, do you? Do you even know what you all have in common?"
"I know more than you think," Kevin said with a touch of anger. "I know we were all on the school bus together. I know we all have these abilities. We can do things you can't. What I don't know is: why is all this happening?"
The scientist studied him coldly. "You don't know anything."
"Then tell me. Tell me before this gets out of hand and Mia really does hurt you."
The scientist looked at Kevin, then around the lab at all of them, at Mia longest of all. Slowly, he nodded.
"The bus crash," he said finally, "What do you remember about that night?"
Kevin closed his eyes.
******
The bus swerved onto the shoulder of the road and back again. Kevin was near the back, on the right side, his backpack clenched in his arms. Some of the kids were screaming, some calling out, but Kevin was just looking out the windows. Something was outside, in the night.
The bus was moving faster and faster, as the driver tried to escape it. The bus roared onto the bridge going faster than it should be, swerving violently from left to right. The wheels slid on the wet pavement, and the bus hurled out of control.
Kevin clutched his bag, closing his eyes, and as the bus smashed through the railing, all he could think was: I want to go home. I want to go home.
*****
Brian Lloyd, Kevin's father, held his wife's hand as she started to sob in the psychiatrist's office. "It's all right," Brian said soothingly.
Dr. Keating had been taking notes, but paused to wait for them to continue.
Kevin slumped down in his chair and tried to pretend he wasn't there.
"We don't know how he got out of the car," Glenda Lloyd said finally, "we don't know how he got home."
"Kevin's been through a lot," Brian said, holding her.
"You're talking about the school bus crash," Dr. Keating said.
Brian nodded. "He doesn't do well on long trips. Gets antsy."
"He kept saying he wanted to go home," Glenda said. "He kept saying it over and over. Then..."
"He just wasn't there." Brian said firmly.
"He wasn't there," the doctor repeated.
"He was gone. He was just...gone. We were frantic. We stopped the car. We searched it. We called his name, God, we shouted his name until we were too hoarse to speak. We called the police. They got a search going, they put his name and picture out."
Kevin wrapped his arms around himself.
"Where did you go, Kevin?" the doctor asked.
"Home," Kevin said.
Glenda nodded. "We found him when we got home. He was playing with his toys, on the floor, like... like..." she started sobbing again.
"Like nothing had happened at all." Brian finished.
"Kevin, did you walk home?" the doctor asked.
Kevin shrugged.
"That's just it," Brian said. "That's what we can't figure. We were across the state line. We were a hundred damn miles from home!"
Kevin closed his eyes.
"How did you get home, Kevin?" The doctor asked, while making a note.
No answer. "Kevin?" Dr. Keating looked up from his notepad, to see an empty chair where Kevin had been.
Glenda shrieked.
*****
The bus hung in the air for a moment, then struck the water with a violent lurch, throwing Kevin from his seat into the floor. He hugged the bag tight and kept his eyes clenched shut. The shout in his head drowned out the screams of the other kids. I want to go home!
*****
Kevin had been waiting for his dad to pick him up from school when they fell upon him.
The biggest of the three, a muscled up kid named Tommy, grabbed his backpack up off the ground where it had rested.
"Hey," Kevin said. "Give that back."
Tommy laughed and threw the bag to one of the others, Russell, or Rusty, something like that.
"Give it back!" Kevin said again.
Tommy took a swing at him, connecting square to Kevin's nose. Or so he thought. His fist slid off, and he lunged off balance. Kevin shoved him, and Tommy went tumbling onto the grass.
One of the other kids tried to grab him, but Kevin slipped easily out of his grasp. Tommy came at him again, trying to grapple him along with his friend, but the two of them couldn't get a hold on him. They both slipped away and fell together to the ground, Kevin kicking at them as they fell.
"Stop that!" shouted a teacher from near the side entrance to the school. "Stop that right now!"
Tommy had gotten up on his own, as the security guard hauled the second kid to his feet.
"I'm gonna get you later, you-" he stopped cold.
Kevin was gone.
*****
Water rushed over Kevin, splashing into his mouth. He choked, but didn't move. He was too scared. Water flooded the bus, rising all around him, cold...so cold.
I want to go home! Please, I just want to go home!!
*****
Kevin pulled the motorcycle off on the side of the bridge.
The girl he had followed from the club was about twenty yards ahead. She had the guy stripped down naked and up on the side of the bridge near the railing. The railing...just the thought of it made him shudder. This was the exact spot on the bridge the school bus had gone over, ten years before.
Kevin approached, and the blonde girl whirled to face him. "Whatever you're thinking of doing to him," he said, "don't do it."
"Who the fuck are you?" she asked.
Missing Time (313) Page 1
