Restoration

by Guy Adams

  "Fries and as many onions as you like, Amy," the stranger said, "and a couple of cold beers."

  She nodded and dashed away, happy to avoid any further conversation.

  "Let me tell you about reality, Hughie," the stranger said out of the blue. "I'll keep it simple so you can follow," he leaned back on the padded seat, letting himself spread out. "Reality is layers," he continued, "infinite layers. Piled on top of one another." He mimed this with his hands, spread out flat over the table, moving them one over the other. It made Hughie think of standing in the yard at school, playing the counting-out game in a circle Pizza pizza pizza pie, if you eat it you will die…

  "Universe over universe, existence after existence," the stranger said, "all stacked up."

  Amy returned with their beers, the stranger taking a long draught of his before continuing. "Some people never see beyond their own little layer."

  "The ants," Hughie muttered, thinking of the stranger's analogy about the ants and the bottle.

  "The ants, exactly," the stranger smiled, "you're getting it. Some of us see the whole, even move between the layers, exploring, researching, playing…"

  He took another mouthful of beer. "Actually my lot didn't do much playing, they took existence far too seriously."

  "Republicans, huh?" Hughie asked, pushing himself into the corner of his booth and taking a drink of his own beer.

  The stranger paused, looked into Hughie's mind for an explanation and then grinned. "Something like that."

  The Eagles switched to Creedence Clearwater Revival. "I see the bad moon arising, I see trouble on the way, I see earthquakes and lightning, I see bad times today…" Damn right, thought Hughie, damn right.

  "Usually those layers are solid," the stranger said, "it takes a lot of effort and skill to pass between them." He frowned, that persistently light and jolly mood punctured by a sharp and unnerving anger. "A skill I seem to lack these days. Taken away by them…" he ground his fingernail into the soft wood of the dining table. "I am a reduced man, Hughie," he said quietly, "you are not seeing me at my best…"

  That's a small relief, Hughie thought, for he was quite certain that a stronger creature than he saw before him would not be in the best interests of his species. If the stranger picked up on the thought he didn't show it, just went on defacing the wood. After a moment, Hughie realised that he found this edgy creature even more unnerving than usual so tried to jog him out of it. "Usually?" he prompted.

  The stranger looked up at him and, just for a second, Hughie saw the irises of his eyes– its eyes Hughie, a voice said in his head, not his never forget that– no, he wouldn't… he saw the irises of its eyes bleed into the white, as if the dye was running. The colour rippled, offering a serrated edge like a circular saw. Then the image was gone, the eyes looking as human as ever. "Usually?" the stranger asked.

  "You said that the layers were usually solid, suggesting they weren't always."

  The stranger smiled, the anger gone instantly – no, Hughie that voice said again, don't believe that, the anger is always there, just under the surface, just waiting to boil over – "That's right," the stranger said, "usually… " he brushed away the shavings of varnish and wood he had dug from the table as if just noticing a fleck of dust on an otherwise perfect surface. "Sometimes, there are soft points, thin areas where the layers bleed into one another. These places are focal points for disturbances in the overall reality, areas where time slips loose or the atmosphere curdles. They disturb those around them, warp the normal rules of that layer's physics. In short, Hughie, they are areas of potential."

  "And the Home Town site is one of them?"

  The stranger nodded. "You really were wasted pumping shit, Hughie."

  "Tell me something I don't know," Hughie replied.

  "Alright," though whether the stranger had misunderstood or was just playing with him, Hughie couldn't tell, "someone who knew what he was doing in an area like that could rip a hole through the layers as deeply as he liked," he looked into Hughie's head, searching for a suitable analogy, "like knocking a hole in the wall of one subway tunnel and into another."

  "Wouldn't that damage the layers?" Hughie asked, though in his head the word he was thinking of wasn't "layers", the word was "world".

  "Oh naturally," the stranger replied, "it would tear the metaphorical guts right out of it." He glanced over to the bar. "I wonder where the lovely Amy's gone with our steaks…"

  4.

  Sally Hillman had never known a day like it. She was used to her employer's comings and goings – in fact, as Tom had predicted when arriving at the Plaza hotel, she had an intimate knowledge of both, for Ted Loomis the former was swift and the latter swifter still – but she had never known him vanish off the face of the earth like he had today. The phone had been ringing itself silly with some kind of fuss over at the Home Town site. The police, no less, demanding to know where Loomis might be. She had come close to grabbing her purse and hightailing it out of the office of Loomis Real Estate several times over the last hour.

  She had tried Loomis' home line every ten minutes or so but – unless he was lying dead somewhere, dear Christ, Sally thought, don't say his heart finally gave in – there was nobody there.

  Her head filled with the worst possible images: her employer (and occasional lover) growing grey and cold on the bathroom tiles; her being marched off to prison as an accessory to some form of crooked business deal she had no knowledge of; SWAT teams swinging through the smoked glass window of the office, machine guns locked and loaded… When the phone rang again it was almost a relief.

  "Loomis Real Estate," she answered, "Ted, is that you?"

  "I'm afraid not dear lady," came the voice on the other end of the line, "in fact it was the noble Mr Loomis I was hoping to speak to."

  "He's not here," she said, sick to death of having to. "Nobody's seen him since he left the office yesterday."

  "Oh," said the man, "I've seen him since then, in fact my friend and I shared a couple of drinks with him last night. I confess I was rather the worse for wear after the experience, perhaps he too is suffering somewhere."

  This last mirrored Sally's imaginings a little too closely for comfort, though it wasn't drink she feared had struck him. "You were with him last night?" she asked.

  "Indeed, he was kind enough to tell us about the Home Town project and suggested we met him there this morning."

  Alarm bells began ringing in Sally's head, not that it took much to set them off given her current agitation. "Really?" she asked. "Were you able to catch him there?"

  "Sadly not," the man replied. "Not to worry, I'm sure we'll catch him soon enough."

  Don't let him hang up! Sally thought… whoever this guy is he's seen Ted after anyone else and was at the construction site this morning, she was damned sure the cops would want to ask him a few questions. "Wait!" she said, trying to bite down on the agitation, the last thing she wanted to do is scare the man off. "If you tell me where you're calling from I can hunt him down and get him to call you back."

  There was a slight pause. He's not going to go for it, Sally thought. Damn it, he's going to hang up on me!

  "I can't see a number anywhere," the voice replied eventually, "but we're at a splendid place called Dunkin' Donuts, just along the road from the building site. Is that enough for you to get in touch?"

  Bet your ass it is, Sally thought, saying: "That's just fine sir, you hang in there for a short while and I'll ring you right back."

  "How kind," the man said, "thank you so much for your help."

  He put the phone down and so did Sally, but only for as long as it took for her to find the number for the police.

  5.

  Captain Shepard was by no means sure what to make from Alliss' story. In his experience every statement a police officer took was a mess of fact and fiction, assumption and observation folded over like pizza dough until what you had was something that needed careful sifting to figure out what was what. Like the old
joke about blind men touching parts of an elephant (one thinks it's a snake, another thinks it's a tree and so on) the truth could only be found by a careful amalgamation of views. Alliss' story didn't make an elephant, he sure as hell knew that much. But what did it make? Two guys pulling onto the site in Loomis' car, one black and one white, with a half-assed joke – or so Alliss had thought at first – about having killed its owner and stolen it. Shepard wondered if that had been a joke at all. He'd heard stranger admissions during his time in the uniform, some folks just thought they were untouchable and it made them say stupid things. Time would tell.

  The thing that jarred most of all was the discrepancy between Alliss' description of the white man and the effect he had so clearly had on him. Alliss didn't strike Shepard as a man who would scare easily. Hell, anyone walking around with that haircut had to have some grit in his shit. So how come this man – a small, balding English guy in glasses by the man's own account – had put the frights on him so heavily? Shepard knew he could just about knock the man into a clean faint by smacking his fist on the desk hard enough, he was terrified.

  Something in his eyes, Alliss had said, the kind of look you imagine the devil to have just before he turns on the oven.

  Colourful description aside, it was clear how much the man had got under Alliss' skin. Something in his eyes… Shepard thought about the row of dead hands in the earth outside and wondered, just for a moment, whether Alliss might have seen the elephant for what it was after all.

  The door to the Portakabin opened and Dutch walked in. "You might want to take the radio, cap'n," he said, "the woman from the real estate office called in, says two guys that claim to have been out here this morning have been trying to get hold of Loomis. Pair of 'em are sitting in a Dunkin' Donuts would you believe? Not a couple of miles from here."

  Alliss gasped and Shepard scowled at Dutch, damned idiot should know better than to go flapping his gums in front of Joe Public. There was the sound of trickling water and he looked to the roof of the cabin, thinking, damn, is that rain? Then he realised that Corben Alliss was busily pissing himself, staring out of that dirty window towards the highway again.

  6.

  Miles watched Carruthers talk to the waitress. She shook her bottle blonde hair and swiped her hands over her ample arse as if trying to push it back into her pelvis. What's the old goat up to? He wondered. Finally Carruthers tore himself away and came back to the table.

  "Any luck?" Miles asked as Carruthers sat back down, looked at the solitary donut left – apple and cinnamon – and then shrugged, picked it up and took a big bite out of it.

  "With the service staff, most definitely," the explorer said, smiling, "we have an assignation planned for this evening – or so she hopes at least," he chuckled. "Apparently there will be dancing, beer and the 'best goddamn country' I ever heard." He took another bite of donut and leaned in close. "I think if we stay here much longer she may just wrestle me to the floor, it's something to do with the accent, she says it's 'dreamy'."

  "Any luck with Loomis?" Miles clarified, rolling his eyes.

  "Ah… not as yet. He's not at his place of business but the kind lady who works for him has promised to track him down and call us back."

  "She's calling us here?"

  "Yes, she said she had the number."

  "She had the number?"

  "Yes, or could find it at least, I forget her precise words."

  "What were your precise words." Miles felt a nagging feeling tug at him, this didn't feel right at all.

  "What? Is this because I didn't let you make the call?"

  "Of course not," Miles rubbed at his legs, wishing that concerned coil in his gut would go away, "I just want to know what you said."

  "I told her that I wanted to speak to her employer. She said that he hadn't been in his office yet today. I mentioned that we'd had a few drinks last night and – just making a bit of small talk you understand – if her employer had felt as tender as I the following morning then it may well explain his absence."

  "Then what?"

  "Then I said that Mr Loomis had wished to show us around his building site today and that we were hoping to get hold of him to discuss that very thing, or words to that effect."

  "Did you tell her that we'd been to the site."

  "Of course not… oh… well, no, not exactly."

  "What do you mean 'not exactly'?"

  "She… let me get this right… she asked if I'd managed to 'catch him' there to which I replied that I hadn't."

  "Implying that you had been there."

  Carruthers face fell. "Oh dear, that wasn't what I meant."

  "Then you told her you were sat in Dunkin' Donuts a mile or two down the road and she told you to stay put while she made a few calls."

  "Well, she didn't put it like that of course, she said she was… damn!" Carruthers slapped the table with his palm. "I'm so sorry, I've been an idiot haven't I?"

  "Let's get out of here," Miles said, standing up and reaching for money to pay.

  "She misunderstood me," Carruthers insisted, "or I misunderstood her… oh dear…" he gestured towards the forecourt beyond the window as a police car pulled in. He turned to the waitress. "Sorry my dear but I rather think I won't be available for beer and dancing after all."

  "Hell," said the Dunkin' Donuts waitress, "if it's police trouble you're in, you just step out back here and get yourselves gone."

  "Excuse me?" asked Carruthers, struggling with the woman's vernacular almost as much as the concept.

  The waitress gestured for the pair of them to follow her, stepping out into a storeroom just as Captain Shepard got out of his squad car. "I've got no love for men in uniform, sugar," she informed him. "If it weren't for them I'd still have a husband to take dancing. As it is they won't be letting him out nights for another four years." She opened a door at the rear which led into a small car park and storage area. "Now shift your asses out there and I'll keep the son of a bitch talking just as long as I can."

  Carruthers gave her a slight bow. "You are a goddess madam."

  "Damn right, and the best night out you never had, sugar, now scoot!"

  Miles and Carruthers ran outside and she pulled the door closed behind them.

  "You attract a great class of woman," Miles said, grinning at the look of discomfort on his friend's face. "Let's hope her husband doesn't come looking for you once they let him out."

  "I'm sure her motives were honourable," Carruthers said. "Likely the poor man was imprisoned in error and she sought nothing more than friendly company."

  "Yeah, 'likely' that's just what it was."

  A small road led from the rear of the cafe back out to the highway. As that would bring them face to face with the local law, they clambered over a wire fence and across a stretch of wasteland that ran parallel to the strip of businesses hawking their wares to passing motorists.

  "We're still no better off than before," Carruthers moaned after they had run a fair distance and found themselves on a dusty road that led away from the highway.

  "Yeah, but at least we're not sat in a police cell," Miles replied. "That would have been infinitely worse."

  "We don't know for sure that the gentleman would have arrested us, after all we are innocent of any misdemeanour."

  "And without any form of ID. Well, any ID that wouldn't get us locked in a mental asylum at least."

  "I'll take your word for it."

  They sat by the side of the road to get their breath back and let their churned up donuts settle back down again.

  7.

  Captain Shepard strolled into the Dunkin' Donuts and saw instantly that it was empty. That was typical, he thought, these things are never so damn easy.

  "Help you sugar?" the waitress asked stepping behind the counter from out back. "Get you a coffee maybe or something cold?"

  "Two men been in here?" he asked.