Middle Falls Time Travel Series, Books 4-6 (Middle Falls Time Travel Boxed Sets Book 2)

by Shawn Inmon

  Aside from the incredible mystery that is my life, no.

  Joe picked up his copy of the Asimov book and held it out to her. “This is more my speed.” The cover showed a futuristic city and two flying cars.

  Midge tilted her head back and looked through her bifocals. “Oh, spaceships and the like. How exciting. You’d probably find our little murder mysteries boring, then.”

  “No, not at all, but I’ve got somewhere else to be. Thank you for the invite.

  “Well, thank you for helping to set up,” Midge said, as the door opened and three other ladies pushed through. One of them carried a serving platter with small cakes on it. As he passed, Joe said, “Looks good, Mary Ellen.”

  She looked at him with surprise, but he had already picked up his easel and poster and was heading toward his car.

  THE NEXT SEVERAL TUESDAYS passed the same way. Librarian, key, setting up, waiting, chatting with whoever had the room next, going home.

  As Joe set up the first Tuesday in February, he wasn’t very hopeful. He put his sign out, then immediately settled in to read—Children of Dune this time around. Just before his hour was up, a woman wandered in. She was lovely, and looked only a few years younger than what Joe actually was. He felt his heart beat faster. She had shoulder length auburn hair, and even from across the room, Joe noticed her striking, emerald eyes.

  She’s beautiful, but there’s no sense in getting hot under the collar. All she’s going to see is a teenage kid.

  “Hello,” he said, turning to face her. “I’m Joe. Joe Hart.”

  Joe had been sitting sideways to the door, and when he turned toward the woman, her eyes flitted involuntarily to his birthmark. She smiled kindly. “Nice to meet you. I’m Veronica McAllister.”

  “Do you have a group meeting here next? I know my time is almost up. What are you guys? Book club?”

  The woman shook her head.

  She looks pale, and a little wobbly. Maybe she’s sick.

  “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

  “I think I need to sit down.”

  Joe ran around the table and pulled out a chair for her. “Here, here. Sit down.”

  She sat down, an odd expression playing over her face.

  Man, why didn’t I meet you when I was a few years older. Oh. Wait. I know. Because I never left my freaking house. My soul mate could have been living half a block away and I never would have known it.

  Joe left Veronica where she was and returned to his side of the table. He picked up his backpack and slipped his paperback inside. He glanced up at Veronica, then a thought occurred to him. “Wait. I assumed you were here for another meeting, because I’ve been sitting her once a week for months, and no one else has ever shown up. You don’t remember any of those things on the sign out there, do you?”

  To his great surprise, Veronica nodded. Joe’s eyebrows shot up, but he had no idea what to say next.

  “Google. Search engine. Amazon. The everything store. Apple computers. Starbucks coffee. But, how?”

  Joe’s mouth fell open and he leaped up so fast that his chair tumbled behind him. He pumped his fist in the air, then leaned across the table. Veronica still looked uncertain of what was going on.

  Joe stared intently into Veronica’s eyes.

  “Hello, fellow time traveler.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Sorry. That sounded cheesy, didn’t it?” Joe said. “Like a line out of an old B movie or something. I should have had a smoke machine, or lasers, or something. I’ve been sitting her so long, I’d kind of given up on anyone like you coming in.”

  “So, you’re like me, then? You...“ Veronica paused, apparently searching for the right word, “...passed away, and then woke up back in your younger self?”

  Wait a minute. ‘Passed away?’ Died? That makes so much more sense. He closed his eyes for a moment. Like a movie, a scene unfolded in his head. He saw himself, his real self—the forty-four-year-old Joe Hart, stretched out on a couch, sleeping. The viewpoint moved to the cluttered kitchen table and zoomed in on the carbon monoxide detectors, then panned over to his gas furnace. Finally, the mini-movie in his head, returned to his own self. Joe watched himself draw his last breath and die.

  I’ll be goddamned. That’s what happened, isn’t it? It’s like that was a memory, just waiting for me to be ready for it. Isn’t that typical? If I’d bothered to get the right batteries for those damned detectors, I’d still be in 2004. But, I’d also be still stuck in that same old rut. Not living life at all. Just existing. This is better. Now I have a chance to actually live.

  “That’s exactly what happened,” Joe said, fully realizing the truth of it as he spoke the words. “I died, then woke up when I was eighteen years old again.” He looked at Veronica. “How old were you when you died and then woke up?”

  “I was seventy-eight years old when I died, eighteen when I woke up. As you can see, I’m not that young anymore. I’ve been living this life for twenty years now, not that I’m doing a great job of it. But, how many lives is this for you?”

  “How many lives?” Joe asked. “What do you mean?”

  Oh, holy hell. She’s done this whole round trip thing more than once! This is exactly why I wanted to find someone else who had been through this. Maybe she can help me understand things a little better.

  “You mean, if you die again in this life, you just start over somewhere again?”

  “Apparently. At least, I did. Not somewhere, though. The exact same place.”

  “Holy Toledo. Like a save point in a video game. So, if I ran into traffic and got hit by a bus, I’d wake up in the same spot I did this time?”

  “As far as I know, but I took that route once, and I don’t recommend it. Those few minutes between being run over and starting over are extremely painful.”

  “How many times have you, umm, started over?”

  “Twice. I’m about to make it three, though. See if my luck holds.”

  “Why?”

  A shadow passed over her face. Joe peered at her more closely and saw bags under her eyes that indicated sleepless nights, or grief, or maybe both.

  “We obviously have a lot in common, but there are things I don’t feel like talking about.”

  “I can respect that.”

  “My best advice is, don’t count on things staying the same. Just because someone died in one time frame, doesn’t mean they’ll do the same this life. Everything changes.”

  Joe nodded. “I haven’t been back here that long, but I’ve already noticed that things change. In fact, that’s what I’m trying to do—change things. There are a lot of things I saw in my lifetime that I would have liked to change, and now, maybe I can.”

  “You mean things in your own life, or ... “

  “Both. I mean, I’ve already changed some things in my own life, but there are other things that I’d like to fix, too.”

  Veronica nodded and gifted him with a sad smile. “I wish you luck with that, Joe. I mean it.”

  But if she’s about to leave and start over again, I’ll never see her again. I don’t want to lose the only other person who can relate to where I am, as soon as I meet her.

  “It would be interesting to have someone else with me, helping me. Right now, there’s no one else I can talk to. I don’t have a friend in the world.”

  Veronica shook her head. “I don’t have the strength. But, if I wandered by and saw your sign, maybe someone else will, too. For all I know, Middle Falls is crawling with time travelers.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “Have you, umm, you know, made yourself rich? It’s not as easy as everyone would think, is it?”

  “No, I haven’t. And you’re right, it’s not all that easy.”

  “I suppose, though, if you are able to go back again and again, you could figure it out. My problem is, I never paid any attention to the stock market, so I don’t know what to buy. I suppose I could buy land where Microsoft will eventually build their campus in Redmond, but that
takes a lot of money to get started. But, if what you say is true and we start over again, a little bit of research now could go a long way when we were back there again.”

  Joe saw his words hit home.

  “It could,” Veronica said, smiling. “You’ve given me an idea. Thank you. I hadn’t figured it out. Just because I know Apple is going to build the iPhone, or that Blu-Rays are coming, doesn’t mean I have any idea how to build them. I’m not a technical person.”

  Wait. Blu-Rays? What the heck is that? Is this woman from off in the future somewhere? Farther out than I made it?

  “You don’t have to answer, but how far did you make it in your first life? What year was it?”

  “2018.”

  “Oh, wow. 2018. That seems like an undiscovered future to me.”

  “How far did you make it, Joe?”

  “Only to 2004. I’m guessing we probably didn’t get the long-promised flying cars by 2018, then?”

  Veronica smiled and shook her head. “No. I’m sure there were lots of interesting developments those last fifteen years or so, but I was tuned out. I had retired, and was barely eking out my day to day survival. Not much fun.”

  “You know, it’s hard to stand here, looking at you, still young and beautiful, and think of you as an old retiree, getting by on social security.” Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  Veronica flushed. “I’d say that none of us that are walking this particular path are what we seem at first glance.”

  Joe nodded to himself. “You haven’t met anyone else like us, then?”

  “No. Honestly, I’d never even considered it. I thought this was just my own personal heaven or hell, whichever I manage to make of it.”

  Joe stared at Veronica intently. “I wish you’d change your mind. It’s been lonely.”

  Joe saw a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was considering.

  “Thank you, Joe. You are very sweet. But I’ve got to go.”

  And, just like that, she did. She stood and hurried out the door of the meeting room, then turned right toward the parking lot instead of toward the library proper. Joe ran to the door and yelled, “Wait!” but she was already in her car, pulling away.

  Joe didn’t know whether to feel elated or depressed.

  Okay, I know a lot more than I did, but that kind of hurts. I find someone who could be a real friend and companion, and she can’t get away from me fast enough. I know I shouldn’t take it personally, but, man, this sucks.

  No one else had come in to claim the room, so Joe turned out the lights and closed the door. He walked to the librarian who unlocked the door for him every week.

  “All done. I locked up the room.”

  “Thank you, Joe. See you next week?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  And he was. He sat in that library every Tuesday afternoon for three more months, but never got another nibble.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Joe gave up on the idea of finding someone else in his situation. After a few months, the thought of it simply faded from his mind, and he focused on his life. He made plans for the future.

  The rest of the year passed in a new kind of blur. Instead of just marking the passing of days by essentially living the same day over and over, he kept busy. He still had his appointments with Abigail Green every week, but their progress had slowed. Sometimes now, it felt like they were covering the same ground, over and over.

  Joe still went to Al-Anon every week. Over time, he became one of the people who helped set up, laying out the books, scooting the chairs around, and making coffee. He saw new people come in, unsure of what they were getting themselves into. He opened up and shared more about his own life.

  The time he spent volunteering at the shelter continued to increase. He went from one day a week to two, three, and four. Eventually, Debbie told him that she didn’t know how she had kept the place running without him. Joe fought a constant battle against taking a dog home from the shelter. He did manage to stop any of them from getting the needle, though. Once, that meant he had to do a four hour road trip with a little mixed breed terrier that was destined to be euthanized. He found a no-kill shelter in Medford and they said they would accept him if he brought drove him down.

  He had acquaintances he was friendly with at the Al-Anon meetings, and he considered Debbie at the shelter a real friend, but he still didn’t have anyone he could really hang out with. JD and Bobby had gotten jobs, and Joe could tell they were drifting away. He estimated that in another few years, when wives and kids came into the picture, they wouldn’t speak much at all. And that, of course, depended on whether they died in the St. Helens explosion or not.

  In March 1980, Joe began to see the news stories he knew were coming. At first, they were simply curiosity pieces—“Minor rumblings emanating from the sleeping giant known as Mt. St. Helens.” Over the weeks and months that followed, the updates about St. Helens became as common as the nightly graphic of the body counts in the Vietnam War had been a decade earlier.

  A few rumblings soon turned into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of earthquakes per day, ranging from tiny to moderate. The attention of the world’s media turned toward St. Helens, and she rarely disappointed. Virtually every day in the late winter and early spring of 1980, she rumbled, burped, and belched smoke skyward.

  St. Helens also became an odd sort of tourist attraction. An attraction, because how often do you get to see an active volcano belch smoke and ash. Odd, because how many attractions can kill you? It made a celebrity out of a cantankerous old inn keeper named Harry Truman. Harry was warned by authorities that he was in the blast zone, and that when the big one came, he wouldn’t survive.

  Harry told the authorities, and any news media that would listen, what he thought of the “guvment” and their agents. He said repeatedly that he and his wife, who had passed away years earlier, had sworn they would never leave their home at Spirit Lake for any reason. Harry became a folk hero to many, songs were written about him, and he seemed to enjoy the attention.

  The Forest Service blocked visitors to his lodge, but they couldn’t force Harry to leave, and so he stayed, tempting fate, and the mountain. Joe knew Harry was destined to die on the morning of May 18, when the big one did indeed come, and a one hundred and fifty foot wall of mud and rock swept down over his lodge and eradicated Spirit Lake.

  As winter turned to spring, and April turned to May, Joe’s friends JD and Bobby began to talk more and more about driving the few hours up I-5 to see the volcano up close and personal. Joe remembered, of course, that was how they had died in his first life. But, he had also learned, through his interaction with Abigail Green, that it was hard to convince someone of the impossible.

  So, he did his best to squash the idea of a volcano camping trip in more subtle ways.

  JD and Bobby were headstrong young boys who didn’t much go in for subtlety, though, and every strategy Joe tried, whizzed by them without leaving a mark.

  Finally, the third week of May rolled around, and nothing Joe had done had dissuaded them from taking the trip. They were planning on driving up to the mountain on Saturday morning, then camping that night and returning home Sunday afternoon. They wanted a story of how they had looked death in its unblinking eye and lived to tell the tale. Joe knew they wouldn’t survive the trip unless he intervened.

  On Friday, Joe invited them over to watch the Mariner game. The Mariners were only in the fourth year of their existence, and they weren’t given much of a chance in the American League West. It was still a new experience to have a major league team in the Pacific Northwest, though, so people watched. That night, they were playing the Chicago White Sox in Chicago.

  Joe’s apartment at RiverCrest had a small balcony, where he had an equally small barbecue. While big right-hander Jim Beattie was setting the ChiSox down in order in the first, Joe barbecued a thick steak for each of them.

  “I swear to God, man,” JD said, “it’s like you’re a freakin’ adult anymore. Liv
ing on your own, cooking for yourself. Next thing we know, you’re gonna tell me to stop smoking so much weed and get a better job.”

  Bobby nodded, but as Joe handed him a plate with an inch-and-a-half thick steak, he said, “But I do no object to this sudden onset of adult skill sets.” Then he looked at JD and snickered his stoner’s laugh.

  I can’t say that you guys are the greatest friends of all time. You’re always doing stuff without me, and you never even started to grow up, but I’d like to give you a chance. Not to mention, you’re still the best friends I’ve got.

  The Mariners were off to a surprising start in 1980. When they closed out the Sox in the bottom of the ninth for the victory, their record was dead even at seventeen wins, seventeen losses. It was a brief mirage in an otherwise hopeless season that would see them go on to a 58-103 record.

  The game finished a little after 7:00. It was a perfect late-spring evening in western Oregon, and the sky was just starting to darken.

  “Well, dude,” Bobby said, “Are you sure we can’t talk you into going with us tomorrow. You can bring that little barbecue and cook us some more steaks like that, for sure.”

  “Before you take off, hang on for a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  “Sure, man,” Bobby said, sitting back down on the couch. “What’s up?”

  Joe drew a deep breath. “I’ve been trying to think of any other way to accomplish this with you guys, but I haven’t come up with anything. There’s nothing to lose now, so I’m just gonna tell you.”

  Bobby and JD didn’t focus on many things, but they both met Joe’s eyes.

  “What’s going on with you?” JD asked. “Everything okay, man?”

  “Yeah, everything’s okay, but. It’s about to not be, at least for you guys. Listen, do you remember when you came to see me a couple of years back, and I told you that you were both dead?”

  A look of utter blankness resided comfortably on both JD and Bobby’s face.