Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  Curly frowned and crossed his arms tightly.

  "Can we just go back and sit down for a minute?" asked Diane. "I don't feel so good."

  "You look good," said Eddie, mustering a smile. "At least twenty years younger."

  Alan started to move into the living room. "We ought to try and figure out a way to get back." He sounded dazed.

  Curly shrugged and sat on the floor near the door. "I don't know, maybe we just oughta enjoy ourselves for a while. I could go to Professor McClellan's house and break his windows for giving me a 2 in Pre-Renaissance Drama."

  "I wouldn't," Eddie said. "When we get back, it might be on your permanent record."

  "Jesus Christ," said Frank, throwing himself onto the sofa next to Judy. "You really think this is funny?"

  "I take it as it comes, Frank," Curly said, his face suddenly sober, "and I try to smile at it."

  "’I laugh so I do not weep,’" Eddie said. "That's from something, I forget what."

  "Funny or not," Woody said, "this is real. Or at least it's real to us. Now we have to decide what to do until . . . we're taken back. Or we can figure out a way to go ourselves. Or something else happens."

  "Something else? Like what?" Sharla asked.

  Then the door opened, and the light burst in from the stairwell, and dead friends began to come through the door.

  Chapter 9

  Dale Collini was first, wearing a red, quilted ski jacket against the cool autumn air that came in through the door. He was grinning, and carried two pizza boxes, one piled on the other.

  "We're back, piggies," he said.

  Behind him was Keith Aarons, wearing a C.P.O. coat with its massive collar all the way up, so that his bearded head seemed to be borne in a navy blue vase. An expression halfway between a smile and a smirk was on his handsome face, his hands were pressed deep into his pockets, and a cigarillo protruded from a corner of his mouth like a fang.

  Woody's heart had begun to pound the moment the door opened, and now he felt as though it would burst from his chest as Tracy Zampelios appeared in the doorway.

  She stood there for a moment, finding him instantly, her gray, Grecian eyes looking at him, her sweet, triangular face softened by the waves of dark hair falling over the shoulders of his brown leather jacket that she wore. He thought in that moment that he would die, and welcomed the prospect, for to wake up now, to return to the reality of the present, would be infinitely cruel.

  "Tracy," he said softly.

  "Who else were you expecting?" she said lightly, then ran to where he sat, melted onto his lap with the lightness of a dream, and kissed him. Her lips were cold from being outside, but he warmed them quickly, intoxicated by the feel, the scent, the sight of her, by the sheer corporeality of her being.

  It seemed a long time before he became aware of the shallow, panicked breathing near him, and when he looked he saw that Diane's eyes were bulging, her mouth was hanging open, and little yips were coming from her throat.

  "God," said Tracy, "Diane's freaking out . . ."

  By the time Woody got to her, Curly, Alan, and Keith (Keith, Woody thought, my God, Keith!) were by her, but she was looking at Keith in terror, and now the little whines of sound seemed ready to explode into screams, and Keith looked at her as though he understood everything, and said, "Hey, Diane, it's cool. Everything is cool. We're your friends, you dig?"

  Her breathing slowed, although she still looked at Keith as if afraid to take her eyes off him.

  "What've you guys been doing?" Keith said to Curly. "Bad shit or something?"

  For the first time in as long as Woody had known him, Curly seemed at a loss for words. He knelt on the floor, his eyes darting from Keith to Tracy back to Keith, a vacuous half-smile on his face, as though he had found himself in a wonderful if frightening dream.

  "Curly?" Keith said in his dimly remembered but compelling voice, "you stoned too?"

  Curly laughed. It sounded halfhearted, but under the circumstances Woody thought he did an adequate job of it. "I guess . . ." he said, pausing, then going on. "I guess we're all a little stoned."

  Tracy sniffed the air and made an angry little-girl face at Woody. "I smell it. Getting stoned without us, huh? And on some heavy shit, if Diane's any indication. You okay?"

  Diane nodded, but her amazed mouth, still open, allowed no smile.

  "You all look really far out," Keith said. "You got any of that shit left?"

  "Uh, no," Curly said. "Just the one joint. Sorry."

  "I'm . . ." Diane spoke. "I'm sorry I . . . freaked out. That was stupid."

  "Hey," said Keith, "we've all gotten burned already. It's over now, everything's groovy. Who wants some pizza?" He yelled out to the kitchen. "Hey, Dale, bring in the pizza! And let's get some music. It's like a morgue in here." He went to the stereo and put on Big Brother. A moment later Janis Joplin's wail filled the room.

  Dale brought the pizzas into the room, and sat next to Alan, who regarded him with the look a mouse gives an owl about to pounce. Keith settled on the floor by Sharla's feet next to the rickety coffee table. He rubbed her knees and smiled up at her. In return, she looked at him as if he were a ghost. "S'matter, wild thang?" he said. "Curly's magic dope get you too?"

  Sharla looked at him for a moment, then at Woody, his arms around Tracy, and she grinned. "Hell, no, white boy," she said to Keith. "Gimme a slice of that pizza. And heavy on the mushrooms."

  Frank whispered something, and Dale said, "What did you say, Frank?"

  Frank turned to Dale, looked at him, and slowly shook his head. "This proves it. It's a dream," he said.

  Keith looked at Woody. "Still stoned, huh?"

  Woody nodded. "I guess so. But most of us are okay." He looked around the room at the others. Judy sat next to Alan, a smile of astonishment on her face. Diane looked less delighted, but no longer about to panic.

  Eddie, on the other hand, looked like a kid in a candy store.

  "God," he blurted out, "it's good to see you guys again." Then, with a face filled with wonder, Eddie took a piece of pizza as carefully and sacredly as if taking the host at communion.

  Curly was already chewing. He swallowed, then said, "I haven't had a piece of pizza like this since . . ." Then he seemed to realize the circumstances, strange as they were. ". . . since last week."

  "God, you guys are acting weird," said Tracy, getting off Woody's lap just long enough to grab a slice of pizza.

  "It's a dream," said Frank again.

  "So if it's a dream," Woody said, "enjoy it." He looked around at his friends, the living and the dead, together again. Just enjoy it, Frank."

  "Woody? Baby?" Tracy said, her hand on his knee. "You crying?"

  "I'm happy," he said, knuckling away tears. "I'm just happy, babe. Happy to be with you. With all my friends."

  "No," Frank said, pushing himself up and picking his way across the room as if treading through a vipers' den. "No, this isn't right."

  "I'll talk to him," Woody said as Judy started to get up. "Let me talk to him, Jude."

  He followed Frank to the bathroom, where he found him leaning against the wash bowl, his head bowed, eyes closed. "Frank . . ."

  "This isn't real, Woody. It's what we want to see, that's all. It's all hallucination. You know as well as I do that none of this can be happening."

  "All right then. Have it your own way. It's a dream." He sat down on the edge of the bathtub. "But after Tracy died, I dreamed about her. I dreamed that she came back, that we both knew she was dead, but she was allowed to come back to say goodbye to me." He gave a great sigh, remembering. Or was it now, he wondered, foreseeing? "I had that dream over and over, and every time I was glad for it, glad to be able to see her again, to finally have the chance to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her.

  "We've got that chance now, Frank. It's like that dream again, only during it I always knew it was a dream. But this, tonight, feels real, and that makes it even better." He waved an arm toward the living room. "
They don't know they're dead. They don't know we've lived twenty-some years since we last saw them. They're alive, and we're alive, and this is 1969 for as long as this dream lasts. And Tracy's there and God help me but I still love her, and I'm going to spend this time—whether it's seconds or hours, whether it's a dream or as real as my pain—with her. And so is everybody else. They were scared at first, but did you see their faces now?"

  He grabbed Frank's arms. "Dammit, Frank, don't question this. It's a gift. Accept it!"

  Frank didn't look at him. "It's not real, it's—"

  Woody's patience fled. He swung Frank around and slapped his cheek hard enough to stagger the man.

  "Is that real?" he said. "Did you feel that?"

  Frank looked at him in what seemed like shock. But then his eyes calmed, and he nodded. "Okay. I'll . . . do it. I'll be part of it.”

  "They were your friends too. And you loved them." Woody put a hand on Frank's shoulder. "Come on."

  They went into the rooms where the others were. Woody sat next to Tracy, and watched as Frank sat on the other sofa by Judy. Slowly his friend's face softened, and in another few minutes he was listening to the conversation, and a gently ecstatic smile was arching the corners of his mouth.

  They sat, eleven people in a large, dimly lit room, eight of them hiding twice the years of living that their fresh and unseamed faces showed, slowly remembering what being young was like, and starting to enjoy it again.

  They ate pizza from cardboard boxes, drank beer from a keg. The pizza tasted better, spicier, the beer colder and richer than they had remembered. The music was fresh, the conversation more alive than any they had heard in years.

  They listened to their young friends talk about music, about films and books. Their opinions were frank and unassailable, and they gave the exasperating yet charming impression of being absolutely right in everything they said. There was no subject too lofty, no problem so complex that it could not be encircled and solved by their simple, youthful logic.

  For the most part, the eight kept silent, allowing Tracy and Keith and Dale to talk. When they discussed politics, Keith asked Frank why he had that stupid grin on his face, and Frank replied that it just felt so good to be a liberal and not feel guilty about it. The young ones looked around and shook their heads in mock pity, then talked some more, and slowly Woody understood that this was a Saturday night in the fall of 1969, that same fall that—

  ". . . get the damn ROTC off campus, for one thing."

  It was Tracy who spoke, her pretty face aglow with righteous indignation.

  "It could be done," said Keith quietly.

  "Here we go again," said Dale. "The old blowing up the ROTC building routine. Careful, Keith, or somebody'll take you seriously."

  "Maybe they should," Keith said, and gave Tracy a look. It was so quick that it would have been easy to miss, but Woody recognized it for the conspiratorial glance that it was.

  And he became aware of the tension that had come over all those who shared his future, his memories of the past, and, it seemed, his consciousness. How long would it be before Keith and Tracy made their dark, fatal, visit to the ROTC building? A month? Weeks? Only days?

  His mind whirled. Could anything be changed? He was in the past because of what had happened in the present, and his present (now the future—oh God!) had been dependent on what had happened in the past. If it had not been for the loss of Tracy, his nostalgia would never have been strong enough to make him want to come back. So wasn't his very presence there evidence that he couldn't change anything?

  Even so, it didn't matter. Logic, even under the most illogical of circumstances, had to take a back seat to love and friendship. "Dale's right," Woody said. "You ought to forget it. Violence isn't the answer."

  "It's an answer," Keith said. "When every other answer's been tried and doesn't work."

  "Keith—“

  "Woody, you know that old story. Sometimes you have to whack the mule over the head with a two by four to get its attention. We've whacked the mule, so now maybe we just have to shoot the motherfucker. Hey, nobody likes violence." The way he smiled made Woody wonder. "But if it's the only way to let people know you're serious . . ."

  "Things will change without it," Alan said. "A couple years from now ROTC won't be mandatory on any campus.”

  “Sure. And how do you know?"

  Alan glanced at Woody, who gave his head a small shake. "I just know, that's all. Things are changing."

  "Not fast enough."

  "You can't blow up any buildings, Keith," Judy said, lecturing like a mother hen. "Please. Just don't." She turned to Tracy. "That goes for you too."

  "Who made you my mother?" Tracy said, surprised.

  "Well, I'm old en—"

  “Judy." Woody's response came without thinking.

  Tracy looked from one to the other. “Jeez, you guys are weird tonight. Let's change the subject, huh?"

  "No," Woody said, looking at her, touching her hair. "It's important that you believe us, that you believe us implicitly."

  "It won't matter, Woody," said Alan. "I don't think it can change anything . . . we can change anything."

  What the hell? Woody thought. Was Alan going to come out with the truth? Maybe it was the only way, the only way to convince Keith and Tracy.

  "What are you all talking about?" Tracy said.

  "And why," Dale asked, "do you all look like you're sharing a secret? I mean, it's like we've got the pizza-goers and the non-pizza goers, and the nons know something we don't.”

  “Yeah," said Keith. "What's the deal?"

  "Let's tell them." It was one of the few times Eddie had spoken since the others had entered. "They're going to find out anyway."

  Alarmed, fearing this sharing of the truth with phantoms,

  Woody waved a hand weakly in the air. "Why? How? . . .”

  "This night isn't ending," said Eddie. "No time is passing. The clocks? Watches? They slowed down as we got younger. Now they've stopped. There's still no noise outside. My watch, the clock on the dining room wall, all of them, I bet. Check them."

  Eddie was right. Woody looked at his wrist, around which was the Timex he had worn in college and lost years ago. The second hand was frozen at 11:28. When he looked up, he could see everyone nodding, everyone except for the three friends.

  "How about yours, Keith?" he said.

  Keith shook his head. "I haven't worn a watch since Easy Rider. But what do you mean, there's no noise outside?”

  “Cars, trucks, voices," said Alan. "Nothing."

  "Are you deaf?" Dale said. "Listen." They did. Except for the noises in the room, Woody heard only silence. "You don't hear cars?"

  "What's this bullshit all about?" Keith said. “You putting us on? You decide to play a little joke on us?"

  "It's a dumb joke, whatever it is," said Tracy, and Woody saw the fear behind her anger. "Knock it off, huh?"

  "We're not from this time," Woody said, unable to lie to her. "We're from almost twenty-five years in the future. We came back somehow. In our own bodies. Got younger."

  Even as he said it, he realized how outlandish it must sound, even to illusions, hallucinations, ghosts, memories.

  "Aw, Woody," Tracy said, shaking her head as though she was disappointed in him. "Come on."

  Frank stood up. "I'm going to go outside," he said. "Just for a breath of air, and to see what the hell's out there."

  "I'll go with you," Curly said. "I want to see too."

  'This is definitely not groovy," Keith said.

  By then Frank was at the door. He turned the knob, pulled the door inward, and froze.

  Through the open door Woody could see nothing. It was deeper than darkness alone, as though someone had erected a panel in the doorway and painted it a flat black that offered no reflection. Woody stood up, and heard Curly say, "Worse and worse. This is like a computer game."

  "Type 'STICK HAND INTO DARKNESS,"' Eddie said.

  "Now what?" Tracy sai
d. "You guys see a monster that we don't? Maybe a dinosaur that got in your time machine?"

  Woody looked at Keith. "What do you see?"

  "The hallway. The floor, the banister, the walls, the light." He stepped to the doorway, walked past Frank and Curly, and was immediately swallowed by the darkness. Diane gave a little scream, and in another moment Keith's head, left shoulder, and hand appeared, as if breaking a vertical surface of black water.

  "It's okay, guys. I'm alive." He grinned and stepped back into the room. "Next into the chamber of horrors?"

  Curly put his hand on Frank's shoulder. "Let me try it.”

  “It's not hard," Keith said, then laughed. "You clowns are good. You really look scared, Curly. And Frank, you look like you're about to wet your pants."

  "Wait," Woody said. "I'm the host. I got you into this. I'll go."

  "’It's my party and I'll go if I want to . . ."' sang Keith. "Take my hand," Woody said to Curly. "I'll step into it." Keith laughed and shook his head in disbelief. "Holy shit.”

  “It's blackness to us," Woody explained. "Pure darkness. I think it's because we don't belong here."

  "Yeah," Keith said. "You all belong in psychiatric care. But go ahead, man, step into the Twilight Zone."

  Woody did. Holding on to Curly's hand, he put his own arm slowly into the darkness, afraid that he would be grasped and hauled through.

  But he felt nothing. That was the only way he could describe it later. Nothing. Neither air nor water nor heat nor cold. It was as though his hand and arm had ceased to exist. He tried to wiggle his fingers, but although his mind gave the order, he could not feel his nerves and muscles respond. He stepped back then, and his arm and hand reappeared.

  Keith laughed. Dale, smiling, shook his head. “You're still alive?" he said.

  Woody ignored them. "Hold on," he told Curly, and walked slowly through the door into the soul of night.

  His skin and eyes and ears ceased to function as organs of sense. Only his brain retained a spark of consciousness, just enough to realize that this must be death, only the brain still functioning, knowing that the body was dying around it, the heart that supplies it with blood now cold and still, the muscles that did its bidding moving no more. And soon the brain itself would flicker, its electric messages end, and it too would be part of the everlasting darkness, of the black, of death . . .