Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  Across Keith's body, he handed the joint and the matches to Woody, who took them and looked at them, knowing that there was no stopping now. He had thought that when the time came, he would not be willing to return Tracy to that time from which she had come. He had envisioned taking her hand and leading her from the room, down the stairs, into the darkness, and home.

  But going home would truly be going into the darkness. They were all dead now, and his children would be orphans for the little time it would take for the virus to reach them, if it had not already. And then they would be dead too.

  Dead. Non-existent.

  No. There was nothing to lose.

  Then he thought his way back along the route that had brought him to this place, now and the first time. He thought about the sweet scent of tobacco in the dimly lit studio, the riff from the Doors' song that had gone through his head, the memories it had resurrected, and the desire, the need those memories had brought. It had been a need great enough to not only take him back, but to take his friends too, a need strong enough to bring back the woman he needed.

  And to bring back a nightmare.

  "Remember them," he said. "Bring them back. Take them back."

  He put the joint between his lips, struck a match, breathed deeply, ignoring the pain as the hot smoke surged down his windpipe and into his lungs, breathed and breathed until his chest seemed filled with the smoke, held, eyes closed, held, until he felt tendrils wriggle like tiny worms down his veins and nerves and arteries, down all his limbs to the ends of fingers and toes, to ears, penis, hair, all. And still he held, and when at last he opened his eyes and breathed out, nothing visible drifted from his mouth and nose.

  "Keith . . ."

  "Keith . . ." the others replied.

  Woody passed the joint, and after an infinite time heard Tracy whisper, "Sharla . . ."

  And he whispered with the others, "Sharla . . ."and it blended with the music, the throbbing of the drums, felt rather than heard, the erotic drone of the organ, the dying scream of the guitar, the shaman's voice singing Sharla's name, and when Woody turned to look, the joint was a joint no longer, but a torch that Tracy passed along, and Tracy was glowing, gleaming like a burnished bronze statue, hollow and heated from within. And when Dale took the torch she offered, he breathed in red flame, and Woody watched with half-closed eyes as the fire went through Dale, burned from inside so that Dale's body gleamed. He was Dale no longer, but another bronze statue, heated in the crucible of time. The statue breathed the fire out then, but only enough to relight the torch. The rest of the flame he kept inside, and Woody knew that if anyone mortal were to touch Dale or Tracy, they would burst into flame, that the divine heat would turn them to ash in seconds.

  Then he held his hand in front of his face and saw that he too had become a fiery statue, and he could hear the hiss of steam and the crackle of flame as his fingers moved, and he knew that he and his friends were becoming a Great Engine, fired and stoked and ready to . . . do what? Go back in time, like some complex Victorian machine, fueled by mind-coal, churning into life one cylinder at a time until soon all eight would be ablaze with power?

  Now Eddie burned, and Diane . . . and now Frank's eyes were wide with the searing exhilaration of the flame, and Woody heard names and repeated them, but they were no more than the rushing of a mighty furnace in his head. And now Curly had the torch, and now he burned with its fire, and Woody looked around the circle again, and now they all were huge, massive colossi joining bronze hands, fusing together at fingers and palms, and the music had taken on the tones of madness, organ shrieking from pipes scalded by steam, guitar fretted by fire-tortured fingers on burning strings, drumsticks flailing into tubs of molten iron, and the shaman in black leather screaming now, hair ablaze, no words, only shrieks of agony.

  And Woody realized what they all were.

  They were not statues. They were not parts of a machine. They were demons.

  And they were going to hell.

  He heard, through the screams of the flames, a laugh, high and frenzied, coming from below him. Then he looked down, as from a great height, and saw what he held in his flaming lap.

  Keith Aarons's face was bubbling, and a harsh, wet laugh arose with every pop of the boiling flesh. Woody closed his eyes, but his eyelids had melted away, and he saw Keith's own eyes open, alive now, filled with terrible knowledge and power, and Woody knew that if they were demons, here was the Devil, here in his arms.

  Now the flames began to rise higher, and Woody's first thought was that Curly must have dropped the torch, and that the apartment, and perhaps the world itself, was on fire. For everything was fire now, and Keith's laughing, pitchy face vanished behind a curtain of red and orange, and in only a moment the flames devoured until there was nothing more to burn, and they faded and died and the heat dissipated, and everything was black, and cold, and silent.

  Then, impossibly, Woody saw blackness against blackness, forms of darkness in the dark, saw piles of bodies strewn across an ebony landscape, tossed like dead leaves in a fatal storm. He flew on the wind over the dead earth, and saw the faces of the corpses on the piles, and though in blackness they were white and yellow and brown, all dead.

  Among the millions he saw Tracy's face, dead, and Peter and Louisa, dead. Curly and Frank and Eddie and Dale and Diane and Curly, all dead. And Keith's face, dead, smiling.

  All the faces, all the world. Dead. Dead.

  Dead.

  And there among the millions, the billions, was his own face, eyes open, mouth open, still, a dead face like all the others, and the wind let him drift down upon his body, and he sank into its infinite stillness and silence, and knew that he was dead.

  Eternity followed.

  Chapter 48

  A thought came:

  If he was dead, why did his blood sing?

  If he was dead, why was his flesh tight and his muscles strong?

  If he was dead, lying on the surface of a dead world, why then was he a young man sitting on the floor of a shabby apartment, with his young friends stirring into life around him, and familiar music playing in the corner?

  My God, he thought, forcing his eyes open all the way. My God, we're here.

  His hand was clutching Tracy's, and both hands were smooth. The flesh above the wrists was not cross-hatched with years, and the fine hair on his knuckles was still transparently pale. When he moved, the concho belt felt loose around his waist.

  "We're here," he said through a throat thick with the haze of dreams. "We're back."

  "Yeah. But it was definitely not a good trip," a voice said, and Woody recognized it as Curly's, though with the higher pitch of youth. "What about Keith? Is he . . . ?" He left it unfinished.

  Woody looked down at the man—the boy—whose head still lay in his lap. The flesh of the cheeks above the black beard was pink again, and the chest rose and fell beneath the blue work shirt. The hair was long and dark, and curled around Keith's shoulders. His eyes were still closed, and he looked as though he was sleeping peacefully. Woody lifted his head, felt the back of it. There was no wound.

  "He's alive," Woody said. "Alive again."

  "Okay," said Curly. "Is everybody else with us?"

  Woody looked around at his friends, their flesh untouched by the years. They were all conscious, younger eyes open, wide with the horror of what they had just seen, individually and with a single mind, and one by one they nodded.

  "Then let's get out of here, okay?" Curly took another fat joint from his shirt pocket. "Return ticket. The music's still playing, so let's say goodbye to our resuscitated buddy here and smoke a little."

  Curly took Keith's legs, and Woody his shoulders, and they moved him out of the circle, lifted him up onto the couch. They had just sat back on the floor, when Woody noticed Dale getting to his feet.

  "What are you doing?" Eddie said. "Sit down."

  "No. I'm sorry. I'm staying too."

  Over the confused babble of the others, Eddie shout
ed, "What?" and leapt to his feet on young, strong legs.

  "I didn't tell you before. I couldn't." Dale took Eddie's hand and looked at Woody. "Is there time?" he said. "Can I talk to him alone?"

  Woody nodded, and Dale led Eddie around the corner and into the kitchen. "Woody?" Tracy said, and he noticed her face had grown pale. "What is it?"

  "Dale's sick," he told all of them. "Leukemia. He told me he was thinking about staying behind. It's . . . an escape."

  There was nothing else to say, and new sorrow aged their unseamed faces. Woody thought he had never seen eyes so old peering out of faces so young.

  In a few more minutes, Eddie and Dale came back into the room, their arms around each other. Eddie's eyes were wet, and he turned and embraced Dale and cried some more, while the others looked away, giving them what privacy they could.

  "Goodbye," Eddie said, and sat between Tracy and Diane. He didn't look up again, and Dale turned and walked into the darkness of the hall.

  "Light it up," Curly said, passing the joint to Woody. Woody struck the match, ignited the tube, and drew in, drew as hard as he could, until his lungs felt close to bursting, then exhaled, and passed it on to Tracy.

  But there was no sensation other than a slight giddiness, and he pressed his eyes shut, waiting for the rush to hit him. After a moment he opened them, expecting to see Tracy handling a torch or a ball of fire or bolt of lightning, drawing it within her and changing, transforming into something unexpected and awesome.

  But she stayed Tracy. And the joint stayed a joint, shorter now. Tracy passed it on, and when she turned back to Woody, he saw confusion and disappointment in her eyes. But most of all he saw fear.

  She looked at him, saw him looking back at her, concerned, puzzled, and anything but stoned, and she gave her head a quizzical shake. He shook his head back, as if to say no, nothing. Then they both looked at Eddie. Then at Diane. And at Frank, who passed the joint to Curly. None of them seemed affected.

  Curly took the joint, but only held it, and didn't smoke. "Uh-oh," he said. "Um . . . are you all straight?"

  They all looked guilty, as if they should be censured for not instantly flying into the future under the effect of the cannabis. "I don't feel anything," Frank said.

  "Me neither," said Diane, and the rest agreed.

  Curly eyed the joint suspiciously. "Well, shit, this is the same stuff as before—the same damn stuff we smoked five minutes ago—or twenty-four years from now, as the case may be." He took rolling papers and a baggie full of the grass from the pocket of his chinos, opened the bag, and sniffed it. "What the hell's wrong?"

  "I'm wrong."

  They all turned to Tracy, who had crossed her hands in her lap and was gazing at the floor. "I'm not supposed to go back," she said, and her words put the taste of metal in Woody's mouth. "I'm not supposed to be there. I know it, and all of you know it. The first time it happened without anybody thinking, but now we all know, we know that things can go wrong."

  Woody touched her hand, held her fingers in his. "Maybe things can be better too."

  She shook her head, though she didn't take her hand away. "No. It's not natural, what happened. If I don't go back, if Keith and Dale and I stay here, then things will be the way they should have been, for better or for worse."

  Dale had come back into the room when he heard their voices, and now he stood in the doorway. "Tracy," he said, "I don't pretend to know what this is all about. I'm not even sure I believe that it's happening. But I do know that you haven't brought any sorrow into the world. There's no reason why you shouldn't go back. I think you all ought to just try again, and keep on trying."

  "No," she said. "It didn't work, and it won't work. I don't know the rules either, but it's almost like the first time was some . . . cosmic quirk, some little experiment. But maybe the experimenter didn't like the results, and doesn't want to try it again. Maybe . . . order has to be restored. No. You won't get back with me."

  She squeezed Woody's hand. "It's our turn to say goodbye now."

  Holding Woody's hand, she got up, and helped him to his feet. They walked down the short hall and into the bedroom, where they sat on the bed and held each other. "I loved my years with you, Orpheus," she said. "Because that's what I remember, what I lived. Not just a few months, but years."

  "I remember the months best," he said. "The rest . . . like dreams. Wonderful dreams."

  "I love you so much. I always will, wherever . . . whenever I am. Say good—"

  She broke off, and he knew what she had been about to say. Say goodbye to Louisa and Peter for me. But there would be no Louisa and Peter. They would not be dead, for how could what never existed die?

  "Maybe I'll remember," she said against his shoulder, and he breathed in the smell of her, luxuriated in the feel of her against him so that it would last the rest of his life. "Maybe when you're gone I can remember it like a dream, and I can change things . . . keep Keith away from the building, talk him out of it . . . I can try.”

  No, he thought, but he didn't say it. When they were gone, the past would take over completely. She would remember nothing, and nothing would change. She would die again. Unless . . .

  He moved his hand to his right thigh, felt the thin ridge of the paper in his pocket, then put his arm around her again.

  "I'll be with you," he said. "I will be with you."

  "I know. Always. Always." She drew back from him and looked into his eyes. "I don't feel like crying, isn't that odd? I feel happy—happy that I had a chance to live a lifetime with the person I love. I wouldn't have had that if you hadn't loved me so much. Loved me enough to come back for me. Oh Woody . . ."

  When she kissed him, it was as if the smoke of the drug had suddenly hit him. He wanted only to drown in her embrace, to die in that instant, to hear no other sound forever than her soft breath.

  But instead he heard a shout.

  "You bastards!"

  It was Keith Aarons's voice. They had waited too long.

  Pan was awake.

  ~*~

  Keith Aarons didn't open his eyes when consciousness came to him this time. He had before, but now he heard voices very near him, and his first thought was that it would be wise to learn what was being discussed before revealing his awareness.

  His second thought was the memory that he had died, had stuck a gun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger before those two old friends of his could take him back—

  Take him back.

  Back to a time before his life had a purpose, back before Pan existed, before the virus was released, before he had written one word in his book of the mind. They had taken him back so that he would die young, die as he had in his dreams for the last twenty years . . .

  It was then that he snapped open his eyes and screamed at them.

  The way they jumped was a delight, and he rolled off the couch, landed on his feet, and stood towering over them. "Took me back, didn't you? You really weren't bullshitting, were you, Curly?" Woody and Tracy came into the room, and Keith laughed. "And there's the ringleader of the little plot. Turn back the hands of time and make everything nice again, huh?" He stepped through the people on the floor, who twisted themselves away from him, and stopped in front of Woody.

  "Hello, Keith."

  "Hello, Keith?" Keith mimicked. "That's all you can say about fucking up my plan? I had the earth saved, Woody. I saved the earth, and then I died, happy and peacefully, if violently, and you have tried to fuck the whole thing up. But it's back there—or forward there—waiting. And it's a future that I won't allow to be aborted."

  "And what do you plan to do about it?"

  "Go back with you. Go back to where I'm dead. Because that's what I lived for—and what I died for."

  "What if we won't take you back?"

  “Then you don't go back either. I won't let you leave without me."

  "Then we'll all stay here. Forever in this limbo if we have to. We won't take you back, Keith. We won't. I don't think we c
ould if we wanted to."

  Keith stared into Woody's eyes, trying to break him, but Woody didn't break. He looked back, and Keith saw that he was telling the truth, or the truth as he knew it. "Okay," Keith said. "Then I disappear now, in this time, in this world. I'll have to wait twenty more years, but I can. What goes around comes around. And it will. And so will I." He walked to the door and yanked it open.

  And started to walk into a heart of darkness.

  He stopped, amazed and terrified. Only his hand had entered the thick blackness that covered the doorway, but that was enough to make him take in a squealing, panicked breath. His hand felt like ice and fire at once, and he pulled it away, back into the apartment.

  Then something shattered over his head, and his last waking thought was that he was falling forward, into that darkness, and that if he did he would never see the light again.

  ~*~

  "Get him," Woody cried, leaping to where Keith Aarons lay, his lower legs the only visible part of him. Woody grabbed Keith's ankles and pulled. Curly was at his side in an instant, and together they hauled Keith out of the inky plane and back into the apartment.

  There was a wet spot on the back of Keith's head where the Mateus bottle had splintered apart, breaking the skin. Diane stood there, the broken neck, with a candle still sticking in it, in her right hand. "Is he okay?" she said. Woody didn't think she sounded very concerned.

  "Yeah," said Curly. “Breathing all right. You put him out though. Nice work."

  "That's not Keith," she said coldly. "Whoever it is, it's not the Keith I knew."

  There was cord in the kitchen, and they tied Keith's hands and feet tightly, then carried him into the hall. When Woody and Curly set him down, he began to come to consciousness, and spoke to the old friends who surrounded him, looking at him with a mixture of fear and pity.

  "Let me go," he said when his eyes opened. "You've got to let me go, you don't understand. If I don't go back, it'll be just like it was, the world will die, damn it, and everyone with it. My way, there'll at least be a few who survive. You've got to let me go, Woody!"