Backtracker

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  "So, you don't think that was kind of weird, huh?" asked Dave. "I mean, the other people at the party sure did."

  "Happens all the time," Larry said casually.

  'Happens all the time to you, maybe,' thought Dave. "Okay, then," he said evenly, closely watching Larry's face for a reaction to his next comments. "There was another time when you hinted that you knew what was going to happen. It was the night before Ernie's parents died."

  "What about it?" asked Larry.

  "We were at Billy's again," said Dave. "Ernie told us his folks were going out of town for the weekend, to Lancaster. You were awfully interested in the trip, and you asked a lot of questions, like when they were leaving and how they were going to get there. You even wanted to know if there were many accidents on the route they were going to drive." Dave paused for effect, drew in a deep breath. "The very next day," he said slowly, emphatically, "Ernie's parents were killed in a car crash on the way to Lancaster."

  As always, Larry seemed unmoved. "Well," he said noncommittally, "it was a terrible thing that happened to Mr. and Mrs. Dumbrowski, but why would you think I knew about it beforehand just because I asked about their trip? I even said that the whole reason I was asking about it was that I was considering going to Lancaster sometime myself."

  Dave sighed. "Come on, now," he said, his voice tinged with annoyance. "You asked about accidents, and then there was one. Don't you think that was kind of weird?"

  "Not really," shrugged Larry.

  "So you're trying to tell me you didn't know about the accident ahead of time?"

  "How would I be able to know something like that?"

  "Because you can see the future," Dave replied gruffly. "Because you're psychic. It's the only explanation for all these things that've happened."

  "Not the only one," said Larry. "Seems to me they could all just be coincidences, and you're blowing them out of proportion."

  "I thought that at first," nodded Dave. "I mean, the whole idea of you being psychic just seemed crazy...but one thing after another convinced me it wasn't so crazy after all. I think it's true you can see the future," he said, and then, more forcefully: "I know it's true."

  For a moment, Larry said nothing, just stared at Dave and stroked his goatee. Then, his expression changed; his eyes widened and his lips curled into a wry smile. "My goodness," he purred drolly. "You certainly seem to think you've solved the case here, Sherlock."

  Bristling, Dave glared at the guy. "I do think I've solved the case," he said. "It all adds up: the way you warned me about trusting people at work...the way you talked about cops coming to the trailer just before one showed up...the way you knew Boris was going to kill himself, and exactly where he'd be...the way you asked so many questions about Ernie's parents going to Lancaster...your being at Mr. Martin's house the same night he committed suicide. It all adds up to you being psychic."

  "Well," snorted Larry, "I don't know if it adds up to that. Maybe you oughtta' go back and recheck your arithmetic."

  "You can see the future," declared Dave. "I know I'm right about you."

  "Huh," grunted Larry. "If you already know you're right, then why are you bothering to tell me all this?"

  "Because I want you to admit it!" flung Dave. "Because I need to understand."

  "You mean you want to know your own future, right?"

  "No!" Dave snapped hotly. "I just want to understand! I want to know why you've done the things you have!"

  "Like what?" smirked Larry.

  "Why did you send me to help Boris? Why didn't you talk him out of suicide yourself? Why didn't you save Ernie's parents? Why didn't you stop Mr. Martin from killing himself?" Aflame, Dave opened the floodgates, let the questions rush out of him in a torrent; they had been pent-up within him for so long that they exploded from his lips, burst forth in a sudden release. "If you didn't want anybody to know what you could do, then why did you drop hints about what was going to happen? Why did you give any clues at all, huh?"

  "What clues?" shrugged Larry, smiling innocently.

  "Listen!" shot Dave, desperation mingled with zealousness in his voice. "I know you don't want people to know what you can do! I can see why you wouldn't want everyone to know that you can see the future...but I swear that I won't tell anyone about this! If you'll just explain it to me, Larry, I swear I'll keep it secret!"

  "What if there's nothing to explain?" asked Larry. "Do you want me to just make up a story so you'll go away happy?"

  "I want you to tell me the truth," hurled Dave. "No more lies, Larry! You've been lying and covering up ever since you got to town, and this time, I want the truth."

  Smiling, Larry slowly shook his head, reached back to scratch the nape of his neck. For a long moment, he said nothing, just looked smug and bemused.

  Waiting for a response, Dave watched the guy; he wondered if Larry was going to confide in him or if he would simply brush aside the inquiry. Thus far, Larry hadn't been very helpful, had evaded and deflected, tried to occlude and confuse...and yet, Dave still held out hope that the enigma would deign to enlighten him.

  With a clap of his hands, Larry ended his reverie. "Okay," he said cheerfully, pushing away from the table. "Okay, buddy."

  "Okay what?" Dave asked hopefully.

  "Okay," grinned Larry, strolling past him. "You can go now. You said if we went upstairs and talked, you wouldn't give that video to the cops...so we came upstairs and we talked. I did what you asked, so now you can go. Show's over."

  "What?" blurted Dave.

  "I said 'show's over,'" lobbed Larry. "We made a deal, and I held up my end of it. I talked to you, and now I can get some sleep." Grinning with mock gallantry, Larry bowed beside the doorway and waved for Dave to exit.

  Dave was dumbfounded. After all the things that he'd said, the powerful argument that he'd presented, he was still being stonewalled; Larry was still trying to shield himself, this time by extricating Dave from the premises.

  Dave knew that he couldn't leave yet; he couldn't go while all his questions remained unanswered. Though Larry might decide to forcibly remove him, he would have to try to stand his ground. The "show" wouldn't be over until he decided that it was...or until Larry Smith battered him unconscious and pitched him down the stairs.

  "No," Dave said quietly, firmly. "We're not done yet. You haven't told me a damn thing."

  "Aw, c'mon," sighed Larry. "We had a deal! You told me you wouldn't harass me anymore if we went upstairs this one time and talked!"

  "Quit trying to put words in my mouth," said Dave. "There wasn't any deal...just a promise. I promised that if you wouldn't talk to me in private, I would go straight to the cops and give them the video. Now, I'm making another promise: if you don't cut the bullshit and give me some straight answers, I'm still going to take that video to the police."

  "Now look," Larry said severely. "I'm trying to be a nice guy here, but I've about had it. I've listened to everything you had to say, and I think I've been pretty damn patient, but enough is enough."

  "I will go to the cops," Dave stated emphatically. "If you make me leave, I swear I'll do everything I can to make your life miserable."

  "Maybe I oughtta' call the cops on you," suggested Larry. "Maybe I should have them haul your ass outta' here for trespassing and harassment."

  "Talk to me!" snapped Dave, angry and desperate. "Just talk to me! Explain things!"

  "I'm done talking," Larry said grimly. "Show's over, kid."

  "Damnit!" exploded Dave, and then he spun away from Larry and stalked to the window. "I'm sick of this! All you ever do is give me the runaround, and I'm sick of it!" In a fit of fury and frustration, he plunged his fists against the windowsill. "This is such bullshit! I already know what you can do! I already know! Why can't you just tell me about it?"

  There was no response from Larry.

  "Shit!" ranted Dave, again beating the sill. "All you do is play head games! You talk about stuff, and it comes true, and then you try to tell me you never
said anything about it! You drag me into the woods just in time to save my friend's life, and then you tell me it was just a lucky guess! Damnit!" Engulfed in an angry storm, Dave felt like ramming a fist right through the window; he wanted to break something, break anything, release the tidal swell of emotion that churned within him. "What kind of idiot do you think I am, that I can't figure it out? After all the stuff that's happened, how can you expect me to believe your lies?"

  Still, Larry Smith said nothing.

  "I deserve an explanation!" flung Dave. "The parents of one of my best friends died! My boss died! I deserve to know why you didn't save them! I deserve to know!" Breathing rapidly, heart hammering, Dave stopped his tirade; his head slumped forward and pressed against the cold window-pane.

  At that moment, he heard an unexpected sound. His head popped away from the window, and for an instant, he doubted that he'd heard correctly.

  Behind him, the door had closed; surprisingly, he'd heard it click shut.

  The door had closed.

  Hastily, he spun around. He saw Larry standing there, by the door, arms folded over his broad chest. The guy's expression was solemn; his eyes were cold, his lips drawn in a tight line.

  "Ever since I can remember," Larry said slowly, "I've had these...flashes...pictures in my mind."

  Dave caught his breath. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  At long last, Larry Smith was going to tell him the story.

  At long last, the story.

  Incredulously, Dave listened.

  *****

  "Ever since I can remember," said Larry Smith, "I've had these...flashes...pictures in my mind. As a kid, it took me a while to figure out what they meant, of course...but it didn't take long for me to realize that they made me different from other people.

  "I'd be doing whatever it was I was doing, and then, all of a sudden, I'd have this flash...like a daydream, except it wasn't a daydream. I could see things in my head...and I'd see the same things later, but they were really happening...or I'd find out that they'd happened.

  "I remember once, my parents and I were driving past a house, and I kept screaming that it was on fire. I thought it was burning, and the people inside were being cooked alive...but it wasn't really on fire at all. It took a lot of doing, but my folks finally convinced me everything was okay, and they quieted me down.

  "A week later, though, that very same house burned to the ground. There was a family of six in that place, and none of them got out alive." Pausing, Larry sighed and shook his head.

  "My parents never quite knew what to make of me," he started again, slowly. "They were very practical, no-nonsense kind of people. They didn't believe that anyone could do the kinds of things I did...or maybe they didn't want to believe, I don't know.

  "Anyway, they always said that I was just very intelligent, very perceptive. If I predicted something, and it happened, they would just say it was because I could figure things out really well...I could notice details that other people missed, and take it from there.

  "If I had visions that didn't make sense at the time, that wouldn't come true for months or even years, they would just say I had an overactive imagination. The wilder the story I told, the easier they could laugh it off...and then, by the time it finally came true, they'd forgotten my prediction...or maybe they remembered and just thought it was better not to think about it too much.

  "Maybe they were a little bit scared of me. After all, there I was, seven years old, and I predicted those people would die in that fire. It wasn't normal, you know? There was no rational explanation for what I could do.

  "Anyway, they never made a big deal out of the stuff I told them, so I mostly kept my flashes to myself. I figured out pretty early that it wasn't a good idea to tell other people about them.

  "Whenever I talked to other kids about what I saw in my head, they'd make fun of me, or else they'd stay away from me.

  "Once, I had a flash that this little girl's grandfather was going to die, and I told her about it. The very next day, he died. I was in first or second grade, I don't remember which...but this girl told everyone at school, and no one would come near me after that. It was like the other kids thought I'd made this girl's grandfather die."

  Larry drew in a deep breath, then released it. "For a while, I used to think it was my fault when bad things happened, too. I used to wonder if maybe I was secretly wishing for some of these awful things, and then somehow making them happen. Naturally, I was pretty confused about it all.

  "I don't think it helped that my family moved around so much. With my father in the military, we were always going from base to base, all over the world, and it made for a pretty unstable life. Under normal circumstances, I think, it would've been rough for me to adjust to all those different places, all that moving around...but with my flashes...well...

  "Let's just say there were lots of times when I wasn't sure where the hell I was, or what was really happening. I'd be in...Madrid, say...and then I'd have flashes of other places, and I had no idea where they were...but later, they'd turn out to be Hawaii or West Germany or the Philippines. I'd be walking through a market with my mother, and then I'd get flashes of me doing other things, or her doing other things, in other places. Sometimes, I'd get flashes of complete strangers...just these flashes, out of the blue, that I couldn't understand, that had nothing to do with me or anyone I knew.

  "I'd see something in my head, and then I'd look around, and it wasn't really happening. These flashes were so strong...it took a long, long time for me to tell the difference between them and reality...the reality of the moment." Larry paused, leaned his shoulder against the wall.

  "As I got older," he continued, "I managed to get a better handle on these flashes, learned to live with them. I saw movies, TV shows, comic books...and there were stories about people who could do the same things I did, or similar stuff. They were just stories, of course, but they helped me understand why I saw the things I did. They helped me realize that what I had was a gift, not some kind of curse.

  "I also got the idea that maybe I could help people with this gift. I started thinking 'Hey, I can see the future sometimes! Maybe I can stop bad stuff from happening! Maybe I can warn people when they're headed for trouble! I'll be like a super-hero!'

  "Boy, was that a dumb idea." Larry's voice abruptly lowered. He jerked away from the wall and began to pace across the tiny room.

  "I should have left well enough alone," he said angrily, hands clasped behind his back. "I should've kept my big mouth shut, like I'd been doing before.

  "You see, if you're twelve years old, and you walk up to somebody and tell them they're gonna' die in a week if they don't avoid a certain bus, or train, or street, they're gonna' do one of two things. They're either gonna' laugh in your face, or they're gonna' get really mad. If they're the wrong kind of person, they might even slap you around some.

  "I met a lot of the wrong kind of people," Larry said darkly. He hesitated in mid-step, frowning at the floor...then sighed and resumed his steady pacing.

  "Anyway, nobody paid much attention to my warnings. Pretty soon, I wised up, and I quit trying to tell people about the bad stuff that was gonna' happen to them.

  "Since I wasn't having any luck with the warnings, I decided to try something different. I figured maybe I could take care of things myself, by jumping in and changing things from what I saw in my flashes.

  "For years, I tried to do this...but it never worked out. Whenever I interfered myself, I could never stop my flashes from coming true.

  "Part of the problem was these flashes weren't always clear...still aren't. Sometimes, they'd be perfectly clear, and I could see every detail of what was going to happen...the time, the date, the place, everything.

  "Other times, the flashes would be blurry. I wouldn't pick up all the details...like, I'd see who would be involved, what would happen, but I wouldn't get the when or where. Sometimes, I'd get everything except one or two details, and other t
imes, all I'd get was one or two details.

  "The flashes that weren't clear made it impossible for me to change what was going to happen. I'd know that somebody was going to fall down some stairs, for example, and I'd know right where the stairs were, but I wouldn't know when that person was going to fall...so I'd go and wait at those stairs, wait for the person to show up...and I'd wait for hours, go back every day...but I'd always be there at the wrong time, and I'd get there one day and find out that the person had already fallen and broken his neck.

  "That happened more times than I want to think about," said Larry, his voice tinged with sadness. "I'd know something terrible was going to happen to someone, and I'd try to stop it...but there would be one or two things I didn't know, and that would keep me from saving that person." Larry said nothing for a moment, just kept pacing. He reached one corner of the room, then turned and started for the other corner again.

  "Now, you'd think that the clear flashes, the ones that showed me everything, would've been better, right? You'd think that if I knew all the details...the who, what, when, where, how...I'd be able to get right out there and stop the bad shit before it happened, right?" Casually, he shot a questioning glance at Dave, who simply shrugged.

  "Well, it turned out that the really clear visions didn't do me any good, either. No matter how much I knew about something that was going to happen, I couldn't change it. Even when I knew everything, every damn detail, I couldn't stop whatever awful thing I'd seen in my flash.

  "I really tried, too," Larry said emphatically. "I really did my best...but it never made any difference.

  "I'd have a flash, and I'd carefully plan out exactly what I was gonna' do to keep it from coming true...but something always got in my way at the most critical moment. My parents would drag me off somewhere just as I was getting ready to leave...or my bike would get a flat tire...or I'd sprain my ankle...or I'd be right at the place where I had to be to save someone, and someone would chase me off, or a dog would run after me. Something always happened to mess things up.