by Mel Teshco
His lips twisted. He’d almost gone there once with her, he’d not go there again. Not until she was ready. He cleared his throat. ‘You mentioned that you’d stored some of those mustard-coloured chairs in the attic?’
She nodded, and by mutual accord they stood, leaving their glasses on the coffee table. At the end of a tiny hallway, she retrieved a wooden box, and then stood on it to reach for a cord that was connected to a pull-down ladder.
She climbed ahead of him and flicked on a light. When his head cleared the opening, he was distracted momentarily by dust motes dancing through the air under the naked bulb, before his eyes strayed to the two chairs pushed against the wall. He straightened, then ducked his head at the low, sloping ceiling.
And all the while his mind raced. What was the link between these chairs, the one in the house and the closed down second-hand shop? What was he missing? Or perhaps he was overthinking things and there was no link at all.
Tara stepped toward the chairs, one hand running over the back of them. ‘These bring back memories.’ She sighed, her voice poignant. ‘After my father died, my mum made sure our dinnertime was strictly a “no TV” policy. Dinner was a time to talk about the day, where nobody or nothing else could intrude.’
‘Many people could learn something from that,’ Jessie said, thinking back about his own ‘family time’. Most of his memories had consisted of looking after his mother in her grief, which had shortly after careened into a drinking habit she’d been unable … unwilling to break.
Cooking had been his distraction, his good while everything else went to shit.
After his mother’s death through the complications of alcoholism, his recollections had consisted of him juggling his sister’s needs along with his own compulsive drive to succeed.
Except cooking had no longer become an escape. Not really. Somewhere along the way his passion had faded, when it’d become his career path to a better life. A lifestyle that had seen him replace the pleasure of cooking with a burden to succeed.
She peered at him. ‘You okay, Jessie?’
He smiled back, reassuringly. ‘Yes. Of course.’
Liar.
He let loose with a sigh. ‘Actually, no. Not really.’ He raked a hand through his hair, shrugging exasperation. ‘How is it that a couple of old chairs can bring back a shitload of memories?’
She stepped towards him, clasping his face. ‘We’re creating new memories, right here, right now. Memories we can think back on with a smile. Good memories. Happy memories.’
He nodded. ‘You’re right.’ His heart swelled. ‘It’s easy to live in the past and worry about the future when we should be enjoying the now.’
‘Sounds like a good plan to me,’ she said huskily.
He leaned forwards and her eyelashes fluttered closed, her lips parting. His mouth settled against hers and he sank into her curves as though she was his most comfortable clothing; intimate, snug. Dear lord. She tasted of peaches and cream, her petal-soft skin in sharp contrast to her sometimes hard-as-steel interior.
She pulled back and breathed, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
He nodded, his thumbs swiping back her hair. ‘Let’s.’
***
Jessie woke with the dim light of late afternoon filtering through the window and a magpie warbling outside. Tara was sound asleep beside him, while his thoughts were in turmoil.
He’d been dreaming about his mother again. She’d been with his father, the same as this dimension, except despair had shone deep from her eyes, her hair limp and greasy, her body thin and haggard.
Had he been dreaming of some other dimension?
He rolled over, staring at the walls that only yesterday had gone up in flames. He let out a heavy breath. Watching his mum die and raising his sister alone hadn’t been the easiest life, but perhaps the alternative world sucked a whole lot more?
Tara rolled over and mumbled something in her sleep. Jessie climbed to his feet, careful not to disturb her. She needed her rest. Pulling on boxers and ignoring the inner voice telling him to go right back to bed and into the arms of the woman still sleeping, he headed to the hallway and the pull-down ladder.
He climbed into the attic, aware his leg was much better, before he flipped on the light. He ignored the paraphernalia stacked against the walls and looked hard at the chairs. He only wished he could work out how they were related to the dimensional chaos he’d stumbled onto.
Figuring it out was going to do his head in.
A banging on the glass door downstairs had him swing away from the chairs. ‘What the hell?’ he breathed. Tara had left the ‘closed’ sign facing outwards on the door. Was it an irate customer?
Leaving the attic as fast as he could manage, he was just in time to see Tara’s bedroom light flick on before she stumbled from the bedroom, knotting a cord around a summery dressing gown and looking bleary-eyed and half asleep. She looked his way. ‘What’s going on?’
He grabbed her hand and took the stairs that led to the shop. ‘Let’s find out.’
A noticeably un-tattooed Harrison stood in the doorway, his face flushed and his eyes lurching from side-to-side. ‘Thank god,’ he rasped on seeing them.
Tara put a hand to her mouth, seemingly forgetting he was a killer when she asked wide-eyed, ‘Harrison, what is it? What’s going on?’
The barman blew out a breath. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t been watching the news?’
Jessie frowned, an unsettled sensation pulling at his gut. ‘No.’
The other man all but shuffled from foot-to-foot. ‘You were sighted in Sydney, with more reported sightings of the Hummer along the highway headed this direction.’ He released another breath as he turned a disturbed stare Jessie’s way. ‘Seems you’re wanted for murder? Even worse, you’ve gone and implicated Tara. I can’t have that on my conscience.’
‘Harrison, Jessie’s not to blame.’ She swung stricken eyes his way. ‘I mean, not really.’
Harrison’s stare flickered with a telling mix of grief and affront. ‘What happened to you, Tara?’ He shook his head. ‘You were always so prudent, so … level-headed.’
‘Yes, I guess I was,’ she conceded starkly, turning from Jessie to face the other man. ‘Shame I was dying inside.’
Harrison’s face paled. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve never felt more alive. I was wearing blinkers before I met Jessie. Now I finally see again. Really see.’
‘All you might see soon enough is four walls in jail,’ Harrison grated angrily.
Harrison clearly had no real idea what she meant, but Jessie was all too aware. Almost everything they’d believed to be true was, in fact, not. Once the shock of that wore off there was at times a sense of liberation, of utter freedom, not restrained by society’s strictures. They weren’t blinded anymore.
The world was their oyster, literally.
Of course, the good didn’t always outweigh the bad.
For a moment no one moved, no one spoke. Then Jessie nodded at the barman, ‘Thanks for letting us know.’
Harrison nodded, rubbing a taut hand over his face. ‘I feel as though I owe you guys one.’ He shrugged, looking sheepish and anxious all at once. ‘Don’t ask … just … get Tara out of here.’
Chapter Eight
In the Hummer, Tara stayed silent until Jessie turned into the narrow dirt road, the headlight’s beam bouncing as he negotiated the SUV over the ruts. As the road quickly downgraded into a barely passable driveway, she cast him an anxious look. ‘How many times do you think we’ll be travelling to this old house?’
‘As long as it takes to find my own dimension and my sister alive and well.’ He blew out a heavy breath. ‘And however long it takes to find out what all this means and how it’s connected to us.’
‘Why it’s connected to us,’ she added.
‘Exactly.’ He released a weary breath. ‘If my sister is in danger in my dimension, I can’t sit back and do nothing.’
&nbs
p; Not just because in those other dimensions his sister had been killed by the same drunk driver. Startling alterations might have been unveiled, but it was those fixed parallels that left his belly tied in knots, those events that seemed predetermined to happen. The fact his sister had come to him in his dreams and pleaded for him to save her only strengthened his resolve.
He didn’t add that his sister was all the family he had left. Because, if after visiting this dimension and the other meant anything at all, that fact simply wasn’t true anymore.
One of Tara’s hands settled onto his thigh. ‘Of course you can’t.’
The smile he gave her wasn’t forced. She was his light in a dark, uncertain world. And one day he hoped to show her exactly how much she really meant to him.
She smoothed an unsteady hand down her short black tee and red denim shorts, which she’d scrambled into the same time as he’d scrambled into his last set of clothes. She lifted a foot, absently examining her cute little canvas shoe. ‘At least we’re fully dressed this time.’
His brow arched. ‘That’s something I guess.’
Dropping her foot, she cast him another look. ‘I was thinking we should probably forget about the suitcase and take a backpack of things with us the next time we go into another dimension.’
‘Good idea.’ It would be much easier to carry if they were in a hurry. ‘We can fill it with essentials just in case the next dimension turns to shit.’
And if that happened, he had no qualms about getting Tara the hell out of that dimension and into another—into his own, with a bit of luck. He nodded towards her clutch purse. ‘You’ve still got that lipstick handy, right?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded, too taut inside to make further conversation. Not until they’d parked and were standing in front of the creepy house, partly lit up by the flashlight, did he take her hand in his and ask, ‘Ready?’
She nodded. ‘As I’ll ever be.’
She fell into step beside him as he navigated the broken pathway. But as the door loomed, she abruptly stilled, bringing him to a stop.
He turned to her. ‘If you’re having second thoughts—?’
‘Of course not. I just … I have to get something from the truck.’
He waited in the dark as Tara retraced her steps, the flashlight cutting through the growing night. His throat dried when she returned with the package full of money in one hand and the gun clearly in the other.
‘Tara, not a good idea.’
‘Really? I think we’d be stupid not to take these with us.’ She shrugged, but fierceness gleamed in her stare. ‘Who knows, perhaps we were meant to have them?’
‘I don’t want anything to incriminate us in another dimension.’
‘Except we have no idea what’s waiting for us in the next one,’ she held up the money, ‘let alone if we can even afford the petrol to get around.’
While his practical side agreed wholeheartedly, his conscience heartily objected. Either way, she put forwards a good point. He raked a hand through his hair, abstractedly wondering when he’d next get a chance for a haircut.
Least of his concerns for now.
‘The way I see it, we need all the help we can get,’ she added, pressing home the point.
Ah fuck. Perhaps she was right? Besides, who was he to argue? Evidently he’d royally screwed up his life in many of the other dimensions. He nodded slowly. ‘Okay. But only the money. The gun stays behind.’
Her smile crinkled her suddenly too-bright eyes. ‘Sounds like a compromise.’ She spun around and deposited the gun back into the Hummer’s glove department. Tucking the money package into the waistband of her shorts, she took hold of his proffered hand and added in a teasing tone, ‘And here you doubt your integrity when you baulk at taking what is already yours.’
‘I’m not so sure any of it is mine,’ he conceded heavily. ‘But for now I’ll give my other self the benefit of the doubt.’
Her giggle held a tinge of hysteria, and yet the sound disarmed him, stripped him of all his fears, even if momentarily. Whatever the future held he’d do all right, as long as he had Tara by his side. ‘Let’s go,’ he said thickly.
The flashlight only barely infiltrated an all-pervasive darkness when they opened the front door. But Jessie didn’t waver. He felt attuned to the place. In a weird kind of way he experienced an awakening at their return, like this was where they were meant to be, what they were meant to be doing.
Tara shivered beside him. ‘Creepy,’ she whispered.
She followed him into the ceiling and Jessie ignored the innumerable footprints pressed into the thick dust along the main beam—had they always been there?—when he crouched with lipstick in hand. Tara shone the flashlight as he wrote: Hit-and-run. Lolita dead. I’m a killer. Mum and Dad together. Tara’s mum alive and well. Tara’s restaurant/house ok.
He looked up. ‘I’m running out of room.’
Even half-shadowed, her face looked stark. ‘So much has changed.’
He capped the lipstick and handed it to her, before taking hold of the flashlight and taking her free hand in his. ‘Yeah, but we’re still the same.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I feel as though I’m a far different person already to the one you met.’
His hand tightened hold. ‘Maybe we both are. I guess this whole experience is bound to change us … change anyone.’
As she pocketed her lipstick and stepped into his arms, neither mentioned the sudden, eerie sounding hello that echoed from far away.
Tara drew back with a shuddery breath. ‘Which manhole do we choose next?’
‘I’m not sure. All I know is that I have to find my dimension.’
She nodded. ‘Any idea which one that is?’
He swept the beam to the very first message he’d wrote in lipstick, seven manholes away. ‘It’s one of the manholes near that one, but which one exactly I can only guess.’
When they climbed into another room, everything seemed as it should. At least, as normal as things could be under the circumstances.
Tara stepped towards the chair that was on its side, as though abandoned in a hurry. Her fingertips brushed along its back. ‘This is definitely part of my family’s set.’ She looked at him. ‘I just can’t work out what the hell it’s doing here.’
The mystery wasn’t lost on him. ‘You only had two in your attic, did your mother ever mention what happened to the rest?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I just assumed they were broken.’
He turned to her. ‘How many chairs were in the set?’
‘Four chairs,’ she whispered. ‘Placed around a little square table.’
He raked a hand through his hair. ‘The fourth chair is in the second-hand shop.’ Which meant the chairs in each of the rooms of the old house were one and the same, but in different dimensions.
She frowned. ‘Yeah, I’m not sure how that one found its way there. It appeared there just days before the shop closed. But then, it was the last thing on my mind with my mum’s steadily worsening condition.’
Jessie shoved a hand over his face. The chair in the dusty, shabby shop had been nothing short of a beacon to him, as though he’d been meant to find it.
Tara righted the chair and plopped onto its seat. She wriggled, and then bit into her bottom lip, an introspective look coming over her face. When at last she spoke, her voice came out shaky. ‘I swear this chair still has the indents from where my family sat … where I sat.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently, ‘nothing about this is easy.’
They’d both been on a roller-coaster ride from the moment they’d entered the old house. Yes, it was liberating. More often it was scary, at times wondrous and mind-blowing.
She rolled her shoulders and released a sigh. ‘Right now the only word that comes to mind is … poignant. My father died really young in a mining accident and my mother never stopped grieving. She wasn’t interested in anyone else.’ She looked up. ‘At least not in
my dimension.’
Jessie nodded. It really was a shock to the system when everything a person believed to be true … wasn’t. It took some time to get used to the idea, accept it. Seemed in the right circumstances a person was capable of killing, of falling into drugs and crime. Of loving again.
She lifted her hands and busied herself tying her hair into a makeshift knot, her eyes getting a faraway look in them. ‘My granddad—my father’s dad—became the closest thing to family I ever got. He was my hero.’
Jessie only hoped he could become a hero to her too, in every sense of the word. His voice came out husky when he said, ‘Sounds like he had a special place in your heart.’
Her eyes moved back to him, her expression sad. ‘Yes. He would have done anything for me, I know that now. When I was with him, I was loved for me. I wasn’t a piece of someone my mother once loved whenever she looked at me.’
Jessie proffered her a hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
Almost reluctantly she accepted his hold. But as he pulled her upright, her heel somehow connected with the chair leg.
She stumbled, crying out as the chair tipped forwards. It rocked over and crashed to the floor, the sound deafening in the thick, musty air of the house. When he grabbed Tara’s hands and steadied her, the thud of the flashlight as it hit the floor right after seemed almost as loud.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I’m not usually so clumsy.’
He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear that she’d missed tying back. ‘You’re not clumsy, sweetheart. Call me crazy, but these chairs aren’t meant to be upright. Every one I’ve seen has been on its side, probably just how it was left.’
Tara’s eyes gleamed in the shadowy room lit only sparingly by the flashlight on the floor, but he perceived her shocked understanding.
She’d had enough of this place for one day. They both had.
He stooped to retrieve the flashlight, where its beam arrowed through the darkness, directly underneath the chair’s seat.
‘What the …’
‘Jessie, what is it?’
‘Something’s written under the chair.’
