by Michael Shaw
“I know.”
“They’re saying you stole from Luna.”
“I know that too.” I changed lanes to the far left and accelerated.
“This is… This is not good man,” he said with a shaky voice. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Jason told me that I had to get out of there, and so that’s what I’m doing.” Another call started coming in. I checked the screen; it was the number from yesterday. It was David Kemp from Luna. “I… I need to hang up now, I-”
“Just tell me you didn’t do it.”
“What?”
“Did you steal from them?”
“No,” I replied emphatically.
“But yesterday…”
“I don’t even know how I could have stolen from them, Alex. You know me; how on earth would I have the capacity to take something from Luna-”
“And the watch?” He asked firmly.
My wipers activated. It had started to rain.
I held the phone away from my face for a moment. My fingers squeezed tightly around it, and my hand shook. Has the whole world turned on me? I brought the phone back to my ear. “What do you mean?”
“You still have it, don’t you? That’s what… That’s what they’re accusing you of taking-”
“I know.” I switched the phone over to my left hand.
“So where did you get it from?”
The rainfall increased, but I kept my foot on the gas.
I exhaled. “I told you. It was my dad’s.”
“And how did he get it? Don’t you think it’s a little off how it was hidden all this time?”
I squeezed the steering wheel. “My father created the pocket watch. Jason told me. You have to believe me; I didn’t steal anything.”
“Do you know if your father was really the one who invented-”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “Yes, he did-”
“But do you know? How can you tell for sure, Jon?”
I bit my lip.
“If this is a mistake, like you say, just come back and explain it to them.”
“I can’t come back,” I said. “I can’t. Dad didn’t want Luna to have it for a reason.”
“And why do you think that is?” Alex asked.
I tilted my head, surprised by the question. “I…” A sound caught my ear. I stopped, listening to the other end. Something in the background. I heard voices. Voices I didn’t recognize. “Alex, who’s with you?”
“No one, Jon. It’s just you and me. Please, just tell me what’s going on. I need to understand-”
“Are there police with you?” I pressed the phone hard against my cheek.
I heard another voice in the background.
“Jon,” Alex replied, “There’s no one with me.”
I lowered my head in disbelief.
“Just - just stay on the line with me. Tell me-”
“Are you tracing my call…”
“No, that’s not it!” He pleaded. “Jon, I promise-”
“I’m not coming back, Alex.”
“Jon-”
I hung up. Immediately, another call came. David Kemp. I picked up.
“Jonathan Ashe,” he said. His voice sent chills down my spine. I heard another voice in the background. Howard Miller.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “How did you know about the pocket watch?”
“No one will ever know we had this call, so let me speak as candidly as possible.” David’s syllables popped, making me shake. Who were these people? “No matter what you do. No matter where you go. You will not be safe.”
My hands trembled.
“I hope you’re ready to be hunted, Ashe.”
“Who are you…”
“Because I can’t wait to hunt you.”
He hung up, and a low tone resounded from the phone.
I panicked. Steering with my knees, I put my cellphone in my lap and pulled the SIM card out. After that, I turned the phone over, took the back cover off, and pulled out the battery. Once that was done, I did as Jason said and kept driving away, waiting for the help that he said I could find.
Now, I was all alone.
Chapter 8
Gas was going on empty. I found a station to fill up at. I parked next to a pump and got out.
I put a jacket on; the rain hadn’t let up. As I pulled it over me, I noticed that my arm was still messed up, but the effects were already subsiding. I flipped the hood over my head.
“Okay Jason,” I said to myself, standing next to the pump. “I’m running like you said. Now where’s this ‘help’ you were talking about?”
The screen on the pump read “Insert credit card or scan Mark.” I lifted my wrist underneath the scanner. A tone resounded as it scanned the code. After a few moments, it blinked. “Invalid.”
What? I scanned again.
“Invalid,” it repeated.
I opened my car and pulled out my wallet. This was the sort of thing I had been prepared for as a kid; never trust Marks completely. I pulled out one of my credit cards and put the wallet in my back pocket. “Insert credit card or scan Mark,” the screen displayed once again. I put my card in the slit. “Remove quickly.” I did.
Invalid.
“What…” I pulled my other cards out.
Every card. Every swipe. Invalid, over and over. I pounded on the side of the pump. No, I leaned my head against the screen.
I tried to pay inside. The lady smiled and scanned my Mark. She raised her eyebrow. “It’s not seeming to work.”
I exhaled. “Is there anything I can do?”
She scanned my Mark again. “I can pull it up on the computer.” Her eyes went back and forth across the screen. “Frozen.” She looked up. “It says your accounts are frozen.”
I leaned over and looked at the screen. She was right. “No,” I exhaled. “I don’t understand.” While I read the text on the display, another section popped up. “5/17/2042 - Wanted for theft. Possibly dangerous.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide. I looked back at her, just as surprised. What followed was a long silence between the two of us.
I quickly glanced behind me at the rest of the place. No one else was in the gas station.
She stared at me, not moving. A new look in her eyes. Fear.
“Listen,” I said, slowly reaching one hand into my back pocket. “I just want to fill up the car at pump 3.” I took out my wallet again and handed her one of the bills that I had kept saved. One hundred dollars. She held it in her hand but kept gawking at me. Eventually, looking down at the bill, she reached over and activated the pump.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
At any moment, I was expecting her to call the police. I filled up as quickly as I could. But every time I checked over my shoulder, she was still just standing there. I shook my head at the whole situation. I’m a terrible runaway.
When it was time to leave, I took one last look at her. She reached down, and her fingers grasped the telephone next to her.
I put my hand into my pocket. The pocket watch naturally fit into my palm. As her eyes met with mine, I pushed the button.
The flash was quick; the pulse immense. Time stopped. Thankfully, the cool-down had ended. I drove away with time paused. She was going to call the police, but this gave me a head-start on her.
I had three hundred dollars left in my pocket. The rest of my money was gone. All my accounts, frozen. I punched the steering wheel. How did this happen? Everything had been taken from me. My money, my family. My name. It all happened in one day. It was as though it had been planned. As though it had all been waiting to happen until this day. I didn’t understand. I didn’t have anything to do now; any plan I could have contrived was ruined. No money. No way to bounce back. No way to start somewhere new.
But Jason had told me to run. He told me that help would find me. And that was what I held onto.
Driving down the highway with time paused was different. I could go as fast as I wanted, but I still
had to slow down when I reached an area that was congested. None of the cars were moving, so it was important for me to be just as careful.
Internal time was about to reach ten minutes again, so I took the next exit. I parked at a fast food place and unfastened my seat belt. Holding the pocket watch in front of me, I closed my eyes and pressed the button, bringing back forward time.
Before the clock started moving again, it jolted my brain into the past. Just as it had done that first time I used it, the pocket watch plucked a memory from my head and played it back.
∞
I was seventeen years old. I lay in bed inside my dark room. I rolled over and saw my door. Open. I never left my door open.
A sound to my right. I looked over with just my eyes.
This kind of thing had happened before. I even talked about it with Jason. I had been convinced it was sleep paralysis: a state during sleep that can be characterized by frightening hallucinations. The problem was that this time, I wasn’t asleep. I was wide awake. I leaned up in bed and stared at the source of the sound.
Fear is easier to contain than sorrow; tears are more difficult to suppress than trembles. So, I had gotten used to this. Just be still, I would tell myself, and the night terror would go away. But now that I was wide awake, the fear was more difficult to contain. I sat up in my bed, staring across the room.
It was a man. He looked to be on his way out of the room, as though he had already done something. His clothing was dark, and he hid in the shadows.
In the shadows. I felt that I had seen this man before. I opened my eyes wide, and I searched to see a scar. But he was hidden, just as he had been before. I compulsively squeezed, my fingers wringing out the covers. It was the killer. I just knew. It had to be.
He held a finger up to his face.
My hand twitched. To my right, a phone sat on the nightstand. But that was too far. Under the bed was my father’s gun. But that was even farther. And back then, I had never even shot it. I was stuck.
He rushed to my window; it was opened like my door. He had an easy escape. My room was on the ground floor.
When he had passed through the threshold and fallen onto the lawn, I pushed myself up and ran to the window.
By the time I reached the opening, he was already running from the lawn onto the road.
Something suddenly burst from within me. This was the man. He was just in my room, and now he was getting away again. “Hey!” I burst out.
He got into his vehicle, slammed the door shut, and pulled away.
I screamed. “Hey! Get back here!” I pounded my fist on the window sill. My voice began to crack, but I kept crying out. “Wait!” I brought both of my fists down onto the window pane. I dropped my head to rest against my hands. “Wait…”
“Jon?” Jason called from far within the house.
I slammed my window shut and stumbled back to the bed, wiping my eyes. Through tears, I saw a small object on the bed. That man had left something. I picked it up. A piece of paper. A sentence scrawled in black.
Jason’s footsteps resounded as he made his way toward my room.
My hands shook.
“Jon?” Jason was closer.
I read the words on the page. “It had to happen this way,” it said.
My hands jerked, and the page tore. “No!” I yelled. My knees bent and I descended to a kneel, my head in my lap.
Jason ran in. “Jon, what’s-”
I crumbled the paper in my hands and wailed.
He attempted to put his arms around me.
I was wrong. Neither fear nor sorrow can be contained. Pain is pain, and just like a neuron, it always prompts a reaction. I could not contain this. Just like everything else, it was out of my control.
Nothing was in my control.
∞
The flash was over. Time was back, and so was I. I reached forward and rotated the keys to turn the car off. But right as I did, something overcame me.
The pain wracked my forehead like never before. That sound returned to my ears. It was like nails on a chalkboard. Like a pot boiling. I cupped my hands over my ears, but that didn’t stop it. It banged against my head. I grabbed the steering wheel and squeezed.
It knocked me out.
Chapter 9
My eyelids rose, and I rolled my head to the side. My ears picked up a tone from the car. It repeated over and over again. I lifted my eyes to the keys, which were still in the ignition. Groggy, I pulled them out, causing the tone to stop.
I remembered that time was moving forward now, so I forced myself to lean forward and wake up. Drowsiness. Why was I suddenly so exhausted? I cracked my knuckles and shook my hands a few times, confused by what I had just experienced. My head felt different.
These memories weren’t welcome. They were the things that I had shoved out. The things that I had moved on from. The past four years of my life had been about change, and it was change that I had worked hard on. I worked with diligence to be a new person, to move on from the past, to mature. In high school, I was the misguided, rich orphan. Senior year, I was a recluse. After high school graduation, I determined not to look back. College was supposed to be a period of change, leading into a permanently new Jonathan Ashe, a shift away from the old. But in these past few days, the shift showed signs of reversal. Visions of the past, reminders of my own history. Everything upset the nature of the present. It all returned those old feelings, my worn out sense of loss, and my unsatisfied hope to get revenge. A hope that I had tried to put to rest.
These memories weren’t welcome.
The time was 5:20 pm. I wiped my face and blinked. How long did I… Looking in the mirror, I saw lines underneath my eyes. Red branches spread across my retina. I sighed and got out of the car. At least there were no police sirens sounding nearby. I had been out for a while, and nothing happened, so it seemed that I had gone far enough for now. I was hungry, too. I could go into the fast food restaurant I’d parked at and just pay with cash. My last stop had shown me that I couldn’t use my Mark anymore.
Maybe I’ll find the help that Jason was talking about soon. There has to be someone who knows about this that doesn’t want to catch or kill me.
I walked in, still cautious, still paranoid, but calmer now that some time had passed. Police had come to my house, but I wasn’t sure what would happen next.
As I entered, no one was really paying attention to me. I told myself to just relax. Everyone was either ordering, eating, or watching news on the TV mounted in the corner.
My turn in line came. “Hi,” the teenage guy said.
“Hey. Number one, to-go.”
He tapped it into the register. “Four dollars and thirteen cents.”
I pulled out my wallet and took out a bill, keeping it low. “Can you break this?” I asked quietly.
He gave me a funny look. “Sure.”
I got my change and headed toward a booth to wait for my food. And for the first time in the day, I just sat and thought about nothing. I didn’t know what to do now. I couldn’t go home. I’d lost all my money. Thoughtless wandering was my only move right now. But after a few minutes of mindlessness, it brought itself back to my attention. Its ticking struck my ear drums. Its rhythm seemed to pulse against my leg. The pocket watch. The phenomenon on which the entire situation focused. It was the cause to my recent problems, but it had potential to be the solution to them, too.
After I sat down at the booth, something happened in a quick blur. A man walked by, dropped an envelope at the table, and walked out the door. It happened fast. So fast that by the time I saw it, the man had already left.
I looked down at the table. The envelope was thick. No writing or address on the front.
“Number one,” a man at the counter called, bringing my attention up for a moment. Putting the envelope into my pocket, I grabbed my food and sat back down.
The envelope was easy to open. I pulled out its contents. Some sort of white card folded once. I opened it, and onto t
he table fell a few photos, face down. I turned them over. My hairs immediately stood on end.
They were pictures of me. My eyes widened as I saw each one. One of me at the hospital. One of me in the gas station. One of me before the interview at Luna.
The last one was of me passed out in my car.
I looked all over the restaurant. Whoever had left these was gone now, but when I looked around, every face worried me. I wasn’t just being followed, I was being watched. My escape was not as successful as I had thought.
The card was the only thing I hadn’t looked at. I opened it back up. Two words were printed on the inside.
“Keep running.”
I tapped my foot nervously. What was this supposed to be? A threat? A warning? Everywhere, someone had been watching me. But if the intent were capture, then the chance was already there. This couldn’t have been Luna. And it certainly wasn’t the police. I put my head in my hands. What is happening? Who was that?
I ate quickly and walked out of the restaurant, keeping the pictures and note in my pocket.
A police car pulled into the parking lot.
I picked up the pace.
Sirens turned on. The car pulled to a stop, and a man immediately emerged. “Sir.”
I kept walking.
“Jonathan Ashe.” He pulled out his service weapon. “Stop where you are.”
I froze. My car was just a few feet away from me. But I had left my gun in the car. Would I have to use the watch?
“Put your hands up.”
I slowly lifted them into the air. My arm burned.
“There’s a lot of people worried about you, buddy. Want to take a ride with me back home?”
They found me. I slowly turned around, hands still up.
The cop began to approach me. Cautious.
I acted on impulse and thrust my hand into my pocket.
He rushed in my direction.
The pocket watch entered into my hand. I was just about to press the button. And I would have, but someone intervened.
Gun shots banged loudly against the police car.
The officer and I ducked down. He had made it to my front bumper, but I was on the side, next to my front door.
