The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  After reading about Heinrich’s tragic death, John set the book down to think a while, which was, again, a strange way to act, for the John in the dream and the dreaming John both paused to reflect on the same set of facts.

  John’s great-great-grandfather Heinrich — Pop Pop’s grandfather — died the very same month as the Heinrich in Nanny’s book, but it wasn’t because he was summoning demons or playing alchemist. He simply had a heart attack, leaving his 12-year old son Peter as the man of the family.

  At that point John had a revelation. There were two worlds, roughly in parallel. His world, and the world of his visions. So the characters in the other world were somewhat like the bearded Spock in Mirror Mirror.

  So what does that say about Jillian?

  The dreaming John turned back to the book. Johann had taken advantage of young Peter’s desperate situation and promised him a way to contact his dead father — not through séances or any kind of spiritual tomfoolery, but by traveling back in time to when Heinrich was still alive.

  This, Nanny said, was the power of the Crystal Orb. Once a man mastered the orb, he could manipulate both time and space. He could peer into the past or the future, into other lands, or even transport himself there.

  John’s ability to see and speak to Jillian seemed like small beer in comparison, and he wondered if there was more he might be able to do, or learn to do.

  But at that very moment something went horribly wrong. John felt rather than saw a new presence in the room, and someone else, on the edge of his senses. Outside, or lurking nearby.

  He turned to see Jillian coming into the store. But it wasn’t his Jillian, or the Jillian from the cabin in the woods, or even the Jillian he saw in Lafayette Park. It was Jillian like he’d never seen her before. She looked regal and powerful and mysterious and altogether untouchable. Like some fairy queen, or the witch in The Magician’s Nephew.

  At the same time, the sleeping John, tossing uneasily in the cabin in Southern Maryland, felt a presence. He knew that someone was approaching stealthily, and his attention was divided — half on this queenly Jillian and half on the unseen intruder.

  He knew, in the way a person knows things in a dream, that the intruder was the old man. He could feel his approach, and then — as if he had read it in Nanny’s book — he realized that the twin pipes had a connection he hadn’t guessed. The old man, wreathed in smoke, approached the cabin from the shadows, and John realized that he was obeying an unspoken command. The John in the cabin, almost in a trance, reached for his pipe and set it to his lips.

  The old man got closer, and the Jillian in the book shop smiled. He hadn’t emptied the pipe from the night before. He’d let it go out, and there was still enough tobacco for a short smoke. The John on the rustic bed in Southern Maryland thumbed the lighter, set fire to his bowl and lit the tobacco.

  Almost as soon as he inhaled he had a sensation that he’d done something horribly wrong. The old man — only a few yards away — faded from the world John knew and appeared in his dream, in the very book shop. The John in the book shop now noticed that his pipe was in his mouth, and he was smoking.

  To John’s eye the old man appeared in the store with an expression of triumph and hope, as if he would be welcomed by a long-lost lover. But that hope quickly died when he turned to face Jillian. He expected an embrace, but found himself cowed, stricken, bowing in submission to a power he didn’t expect or understand. And he realized in that instant that he’d been toyed with and used.

  Jillian towered over him and gloated. She demanded the old man’s pipe from him, and then looked directly at John. Somehow he knew that she was looking at both Johns. The John in the dream and the dreaming John in the rustic cabin by the bay.

  She took his pipe out of his lips. He felt all his strength draining away, as if he was losing his grip on life and reality and sanity all at once. He was falling and sliding and completely out of control. He felt that he was losing himself in the dream and would never awake. That he would be stuck in that book store with no way to return to his own world.

  * * *

  Sometime later John awoke, confused and disoriented. He was lying on a couch in a strange room. He’d had events like this before in his life, where he had to piece together the snatches of memory from a hard night of drinking. But this time was different. His head was relatively clear, and he didn’t have that feeling that a squirrel has slept in his mouth. His mind was calm and his vision was bright.

  He waited for the pounding pain in his temples, but it didn’t come.

  He looked around and realized he’d seen this room before, but only briefly, and from a different angle. It was the living room in Jillian’s cottage. The one from his dream, that he’d visited after chasing the car thief through the woods.

  That convinced him that he was still asleep, but no amount of pinching or blinking or concentrating could rouse him from the dream. He seemed for all the world to really be here, which didn’t make any sense at all.

  Then he noticed a homely smell. Coffee.

  He carefully made his way into the kitchen, looking to see if anyone else was in the house. The clock on the wall said 6:30, and the light and the color of the trees outside said a morning in October. But it was only July. It should be bright day by now.

  The pot was half empty already. He poured a cup and sat at the table by the back window. The same table where Jillian had wrapped him in her cloak, fed him soup and read the tarot cards.

  He sat at that table for a long time, thinking, reflecting, finishing the pot and making another. He didn’t feel hungry, and the coffee was surprisingly satisfying. He also didn’t feel any need to go anywhere or do anything. This was a quiet place to sit and think, and there was no need to leave.

  About 8:00 he noticed movement on the back patio, and he saw the old man approaching. He seemed changed. Older, and worn. If haughtiness was like the air in a balloon, it had leaked out of him and left a saggy, wrinkled shell.

  He came into the kitchen, looked at John briefly, and then stared off into space in that gesture that another generation used to mean, “It’s your turn to speak first.”

  “That’s a relatively fresh pot,” John said. “Grab a cup and have a seat.”

  The old man shrugged and did as he was told. They sat for a few minutes in silence, sipping their black coffee.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen to you,” the old man eventually said. “I’m finally starting to understand what’s going on. How she used me. How much of a fool I’ve been.”

  “I don’t even know where I am, or what’s happened to me,” John said. “So apologies seem a little preliminary, if you know what I mean.”

  The old man set the cup under his nose and inhaled the steam for a minute. He seemed to savor it as if it brought back pleasant memories. Then he turned to John.

  “What have you guessed about the pipes?” he asked.

  John sat back in his chair and looked away. A hundred responses played in his mind and fought for access to his tongue, but he felt as if there was an answer lurking in the background. As if his subconscious had figured it out, and he simply needed to be quiet for long enough to let it come to the surface.

  “The two pipes were custom made,” he said, to himself and to the old man at the same time. “They have something in them. Some artifact, perhaps. It gives them the power to make these dreams that have been haunting me. But when the two pipes are close, they do something else.”

  He wanted to go on, as if a prophetic gift was guiding his tongue, and if he allowed it to speak the truth would be revealed. But he didn’t believe in such things, and couldn’t consciously choose that course.

  The old man regarded him with piercing eyes.

  “You know more than you say,” he said, “but it’s in your blood to be rational and cautious. I know better than anyone.”

  “So is Rachel’s story true?” John said before he had a chance to stop himself. How would this old man know of t
he book he had read in his dream?

  The old man looked at him, as if he was trying to read his soul, and John, who would normally recoil from such a gaze, wished that his soul was as bare as a deck of cards on the table, for anyone to read, and that a seer would come to interpret them. It would be a relief to know the truth.

  “Much of it is true,” he said, and they were both entangled in their own thoughts for a time.

  “But right now we have a different problem,” the old man eventually said. “I’ve been duped, and the two of us are trapped. She has our pipes, and I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.”

  * * *

  “Since we’ve got nowhere to go, perhaps you could explain,” John said as he warmed up a pan on the stove and took four eggs from the refrigerator. “First, I assume your name is Gunter Schmitt. And second, why pipes?”

  “That is my name,” Gunter replied. “Well,” he continued, seeming to accept that they were going to have to pool their resources, “the pipes were a way to keep the shards at the right temperature.”

  “Shards from the orb?” John asked.

  “Right. It was an object of incredible power, but your ancestors didn’t believe in things like that. Or, rather, they believed in them, but they didn’t trust them. They smashed the orb and scattered the pieces.”

  “On that field in Fairfax,” John said.

  “Yes. They thought that was the end of it, but even the small pieces I found still had some power in them.”

  He paused for a moment and sipped at the dregs in his coffee cup. John cracked the eggs into the frying pan.

  “Heinrich’s death left Peter in a bad way,” the old man continued. “He was only twelve years old and he had to take care of his family. Johann took advantage of that and used him. Peter wanted to speak to his father so badly that he was willing to dabble in dark arts. Johann’s experiments drove Peter mad, and they scared your grandfather. It scared him even more when he began to have his own visions. He thought it was hereditary, but he found that smoke would ease the madness.”

  “But only Edgeworth, and only because it came from that same field,” John said.

  Gunter laughed. “It was never about ‘ruining his bowl.’ He stuck to Edgeworth because it was the only brand that gave him relief. He was self-medicating.”

  “But you were friends with my grandfather. Which world are you from?”

  “Your world. Remarkably well preserved, aren’t I?” he said with a wry smile. “Time between worlds is a confusing thing. I’m as old as I look. No more, no less. But I’ve traveled, and my time hasn’t always tracked with the time in your world.”

  “So how does Jillian fit into all of this?”

  “There are parallels between the worlds, and most people have versions of themselves in those other worlds.”

  “But time is confusing,” John added.

  “Right. Usually your double is about your same age, but not always. He might be a child, or he might be in the grave. The Jillian here is about the same age as the Jillian you married.”

  “And the two of you were lovers?” John tried his hardest not to sound too incredulous.

  “I’m fit for an old man,” Gunter said with a laugh, but then he shook his head. “But now I’m realizing it was never like that. She used me to get at you, and to get both the pipes.”

  “You had both the pipes. Why did you sell one to me?”

  “I could only do so much with it. There’s something in your bloodline ... I don’t understand it, but it’s more potent when a descendant of Heinrich smokes it. If I’m nearby I can piggyback on the effect. Jillian knew that, and she wanted the two of us to come here, with the pipes.”

  “Why? What can she do now?”

  “I’m not certain, but I think she’s gathered other remnants from the orb that have been preserved in other artifacts. She must have some scheme to collect as many as she can.”

  “How do we get back to our world?” John asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Gunter said, and then opened his mouth to say something else, but thought better of it.

  “The computer,” John said. “You convinced those government goons to mess with my computer.”

  “I convinced them you were a threat,” he said.

  “So even if I can go back, ….”

  “You’ll likely spend your days in the funny farm,” the old man said. “I’m sorry, John. I wish I could fix that for you.”

  “You would have done anything for me,” said an amused female voice from the door. Both men turned and saw Jillian standing there, looking like the dread queen from a fairy tale.

  “You both loved me well, in your own ways. So I will spare you and send you back to your own world in peace. This world shall be mine very soon.”

  Chapter 11: Back Home

  By two o’clock the next day John was tending six lines in a borrowed row boat within 40 feet of Calvert Cliffs. He had a small cooler with sandwiches, iced tea and beer, and the rest of the afternoon to catch a couple dozen crabs. The Jillian in the other world had taken his pipe, so he bought a corn cob pipe at the shop where he got his crabbing license and the chicken necks for bait.

  She’d sent him back, somehow. She had both the pipes, now, which meant she had at least two fragments from the orb, and probably more. John assumed she’d sent the old man back as well, although he hadn’t seen him since breakfast at Jillian’s cottage in the other world.

  Without Pop Pop’s pipe, John’s dreams would probably be a thing of the past. He wasn’t sure what that would mean, and it was hard to believe that things would simply end like that.

  He had three more days before he had to be back at the office, and thinking of that wasn’t particularly pleasant. Men in white lab coats would probably be waiting for him, with pills … or worse.

  He intended to spend the time relaxing, eating crabs, drinking and smoking, and he’d try not to think about Heinrich or Johann or Gunter or Jillian, about orbs or mystical pipes or other worlds. He’d keep busy being idle and allow his subconscious mind to work the problem.

  * * *

  When he got back to his place on Sunday afternoon he was surprised to find only one voice message on his phone.

  “John, it’s Herman,” came the familiar voice. His boss never called him at home. This had to be something important. “We had an interesting call on Friday. Someone named James died this week and a lawyer was looking for you. Something about a will. Then the police called. I don’t know what’s up, but … I’d like to help if I can. Call me at home before you come in on Monday.”

  James?

  John left his luggage for later and sat down on the couch with a finger of bourbon to think this through. He’d known a few James’ in his life — who hadn’t? — but he couldn’t think of a James that would involve him in a will. Something else was going on here.

  The prudent thing was to call Herman, but some nagging impulse told him to try to find this James first. Start with the assumption that he’s a relative, he thought, and work from there.

  After an hour on ancestry.com and Google he found the missing link. Both families had changed their names to avoid association with the Nazis — from Mueller to Matthews on John’s side, and from Mueller to Miller on James’. The James that he met at the tobacco distributor, and with whom he’d been smoking a few nights ago, was a second cousin.

  Now the pieces started to fall together. James kept a stash of Edgeworth because he was suffering from the same hereditary curse, and he was self-medicating to keep the madness at bay. But that would mean that he had some pieces of the orb. Pop Pop struggled with the dreams because a fragment of the orb was in his pipe. The pipe was the source of his illness and the cure at the same time — provided he smoked Edgeworth.

  After Jillian took John’s pipe, the dreams had disappeared. Maybe that would be the end for him. Or perhaps it wasn’t that simple. Bloodline clearly had something to do with it as well, and he was only guessing that James
Miller had some of the orb.

  While he sat thinking he heard a knock on his door. He opened it to find two police detectives.

  They were pleasant enough, and made as if they were simply following their last leads so they could close the book on James Miller’s death. But John wondered why detectives were involved at all.

  “You went to visit Mr. Miller on the 10th,” Lt. Adams said, reading from his notebook. “Did he seem well to you?”

  “I’d never seen the man before that day, so I’m not an expert on how he looks, but he seemed normal and healthy enough to me.”

  “What was the point of your visit?”

  “We’re both pipe aficionados, and I was doing some research on a particular brand. The company he worked for used to distribute it.”

  “Would you know the tobacco on sight?” the other detective asked.

  “Yes,” John replied, and the detective pulled a small pouch out of a backpack and showed it to John.

  “That’s not it,” John said.

  “You don’t even have to smell it?” the detective asked, surprised.

  “No. It’s a different blend, and a different cut.”

  The detective smiled. “That’s what our pipe-smoking chief said as well, but I wanted a second opinion. This is the tobacco that was in his pipe when he died.”

  “Most pipe smokers try different blends at different times.”

  “Most do,” the detective continued, “or so I’m told. Mr. Miller had a reputation for smoking a particular brand almost all of the time.”

  “Edgeworth,” John said.

  “Precisely,” the detective replied. “Do you have any idea why? I understand it’s not for sale any longer, and there are much better blends available today.”

  “I don’t know why, but he did have a pallet of the stuff,” John said. “Perhaps he got some deal with the distributor when it went off the market.”

  “You know that he’s a relation of yours,” Detective Burns said.