The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  “I learned that in the last hour,” John said, pointing to his computer. “Do you know how he died?”

  “It seems to have been a heart attack, but there are a few details we’re concerned about. Whenever someone changes a long-established habit on the same day that they die, we try to follow up on it.”

  “Yes, I watched Columbo as well,” John said with a smile. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Do you know about the will?”

  “No. I presume you mean James Miller’s will.”

  “Yes. He left you two things. Can you guess what they are?” Lt. Adams asked with a smile.

  John laughed. “On a whim I would say his pallet of Edgeworth. Beyond that I have no idea. Maybe his pipe. But he would have had to update his will in the last few days. I’d never met him before then.”

  “That’s what’s so curious,” Lt. Adams continued. “He added you to his will a month ago. And that’s another thing that worries us. When someone updates a will and then dies shortly thereafter, we get suspicious. Where were you on Thursday night?”

  “I visited James on Thursday night, then I went back to the cabin I was renting on the bay in Calvert County. “

  “Can anyone confirm your schedule?”

  “I don’t think so. I came back to the campground in the dark, and I don’t believe anyone saw me. Just before noon the next day I went to buy a crabbing license and some bait, so the shop owner might recognize me. When did James die?”

  “About eleven Thursday night.”

  John sighed and made an “oh well” gesture with his arms.

  “I suppose my alibi depends on someone seeing me at the campground,” John said.

  “We’ve checked with them,” Lt. Adams said. “They didn’t see you, but they saw your car, and they saw a light in your cabin. They also saw someone else near your cabin that evening. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”

  The old man, John thought.

  “I didn’t have any visitors,” John said truthfully.

  “That’s not a direct answer,” Lt. Burns noted.

  “No, it’s not,” John said, “because I can’t tell you who someone else saw. I didn’t see anyone in the campground that night, and no one came to my cabin.”

  “Okay,” Lt. Adams said. “I don’t think we’ll need to bother you anymore. But just in case, do you have any more travel plans coming up?”

  “No,” John said. “And you never told me what I was left in the will.”

  “You were right about the Edgeworth. The other thing was his antique bed. It’s a nice bed. A four-poster. Any idea why he would leave you his bed?”

  “You got me on that one,” John said. “To keep it in the family?” he said, as if that didn’t sound all that convincing to him either.

  * * *

  After the detectives left John called Herman and thanked him for his concern, but explained that he’d already spoken with the police, that everything was okay, and that his time off had been sufficiently restful. Herman sounded relieved, but not completely convinced.

  On Monday John expected government lawyers and doctors to come knocking on his door, but they never showed. James’ lawyer called to ask about delivery of the tobacco and the bed. Apparently James’ widow was a complete mess. She was furious that James had altered his will without telling her, she was upset that he had given away the bed they slept on, but she still wanted it out of the house as soon as possible — so long as the tobacco went with it.

  The lawyer practically begged John to arrange to pick it up, so he called a moving company and had it shipped to his small townhouse. He paid extra for rush delivery, and asked his stay-at-home neighbor to open the door for the movers.

  Later that day he found a hand-written note in his mailbox at the office. It was written with a fountain pen on nice paper, and it said, “I spoke with Doc Robbins and I think I cleared your name.”

  John smiled at that. The old man had lost a lot in this little adventure, but he had the decency to try to undo some of the damage he’d caused.

  The pieces of the bed were there in his living room when he got home that evening. It was quite a nice piece of furniture, and since his own bed was simply a mattress and box spring on a metal frame, he decided to move everything upstairs and set it up.

  Something about the bed seemed familiar to him. The cut of the wood, or the color of the stain, or the style of the engravings that ran along the posts and the headboard. He couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded him of family, and he was glad to have it in his house. He had too few pictures and mementos of his relatives, and somehow the bed more than made up for the loss of Pop Pop’s pipe.

  While setting up the bed he noticed quite a few patches in the backs of the posts, as if someone had drilled small holes and covered them with a bit of dowel, or a dab of wood putty.

  On a whim he chose one of the least conspicuous examples and carefully removed one of the dowel plugs with an awl. In the back of the hole he found a small piece of silvered glass that glowed faintly. Almost unable to control his excitement he dug out the rest. In a half hour he had eleven of the shards in an old Altoids can. And then he realized he was in mortal danger.

  The last hole he found wasn’t on the post, but on the bottom of the head board. It was done recently, and the dowel came out with a gentle pull. Inside this hole was a carefully rolled piece of paper.

  “She won’t stop until she has all the shards,” it read. “Sorry you got involved.”

  Apparently James knew what was going to happen to him and he made preparations.

  He would have sworn that James hadn’t known him before their brief talk last Friday. But the old man said time is screwy between the worlds, and if James had been having visions, perhaps he’d seen things in advance.

  In any event, if the two shards in the pipes were worth so much to Jillian, she would certainly be willing to kill for the collection he was holding in his hand. Whatever she’d done to James, she hadn’t yet found the shards. But she might be watching. In fact, he was almost sure she was watching. And the sudden appearance of movers would be an obvious tip. If she wasn’t already on to him, she would be soon.

  A fight or flight reaction welled up in his heart, and in an instant he knew it was time to stand and fight. The life he’d been living was leading in the wrong direction. Why try to go back to it? It was going to end, and probably sooner rather than later — whether the orb ever existed, or whether he ever saw Jillian again. He was drinking himself to death, and he didn’t even care. The end of that life seemed more of a relief than anything else.

  In a matter of minutes he was in his workshop, drilling holes in his largest briar and fitting the shards in one at a time. He didn’t have the craft to make an artful job of it, but he did have the internet, and he was able to discover fairly quickly what types of resin would patch the holes and heat cure. After a few hours of careful work he had a pipe that would make Johann roll over in his grave, but he hoped it would do the trick.

  * * *

  He remembered a small zip-lock bag of Latakia he kept in his roll-top desk on the first floor. That’s what the old man smoked “for maximum effect.” Perhaps it had the most powerful interaction with the shards. He walked up the stairs from his unfinished basement into his townhouse kitchen and immediately knew he was too late.

  “You dare to challenge me!” said a queenly voice. It was Jillian, of course, but unlike he’d ever seen her. She seemed tall and pale, as if the blood had been drained from her. But she was fierce all the same. She wore a tiara on her head and a flowing gown that trailed behind her. She held something like a scepter in her right hand, and she began to move it as if she was going to cast a spell.

  John didn’t know what else to do. The heat from his hand would have to be enough. He held the pipe out in front of him, hoping the combined power of all those shards would do something. Anything.

  A flash of light came from Jillian’s scep
ter, but something else issued from John’s pipe. A kind of translucent globe formed around his hand and the light from Jillian’s scepter, which had seemed blindingly bright, now seemed weak and inconsequential, like the light from a flashlight on a sunny day.

  Everything in the room was frozen in time. Everything except the globe and John. He could control the globe in his hand like a joystick, or a game controller. The surface of the globe had images of people and places. If he moved his hand slightly to the left the images would change, as if he was dialing time backwards. Pitch, yaw and roll all had different effects on the image on the sphere. It was like browsing through time and space and other worlds. He felt sure that he could pick a world and simply step into it.

  It was exhilarating and terrifying. He had the power of worlds in his hand. He could think a question and the globe would show him the answer. In a moment he knew that the crazy mathematician with the multiverse theory had been on the right track. It was the orb itself that had caused the worlds to fracture and divide — all springing from this world. Before the orb there was only one universe, but now they were splitting and dividing and spinning off in every conceivable direction.

  John thought back to that fateful day when his Jillian had died in the car crash, and now he could see the lines of connection between his world and all the others.

  The crash had been no accident. The Jillian who styled herself as a queen realized she could gain power in her world by killing the Jillian in John’s world. She had already killed several of her doubles, and while those murders granted her power, they took away something of her soul.

  John looked up at the murderess in his kitchen. She was poised to attack John and take the shards of the orb, but she was still as a statue. As John looked around he noticed that everything was frozen. Even the leaves on the trees outside were still. Jillian stood there, pale and full of hatred.

  He remembered his own Jillian. She had to be out there, somewhere. With time and space at his disposal he could find her.

  The image on the globe changed. There were thousands — no, tens of thousands of worlds where he and Jillian lived in peace. With the orb he could pick whichever one he wanted and .... What? What would happen if he went into a world where he already existed?

  The globe read his thoughts and a series of images flashed before his eyes. The images showed all the possibilities and all the contingencies. He saw and understood exactly how he could enter one of those other worlds, and what would happen if he did. The only realistic choice was to find the world he liked best, kill the John Matthews in that world and take his place.

  Or, he could go back in time in his own world and prevent his Jillian’s death. But as he thought it, the globe showed him all the consequences — all the ripples that had spread out from that one event, and how they would all change. Children who would or wouldn’t be born. Family disasters that would be averted and new ones that would be created. By preventing Jillian’s death he would be altering history. He would be choosing fates.

  Then, as if to tempt him, Jillian’s face appeared. Not the cold, pale, murderous copy of her in his kitchen, but Jillian the way he remembered her. A little older, with a few more lines in her face, but they were happy lines. He could see the love in her eyes. With just one thought he could go there and be with her.

  But then something deep in his mind called up another vision. It was an image of his great grandfather, faced with a similar temptation. Now he knew what Peter could have done, and all he gave up. Peter could have saved his father, but only at a dreadful cost he wasn’t willing to pay because he believed in a simple rule. “Thou shalt not kill.”

  John looked again at the pale, evil version of Jillian, frozen in time before him. He wanted to hate her, but he saw how it had all begun — at first as a simple desire for security, and then as a growing lust for power and control. She wasn’t evil to start.

  Other images started to flash across the globe. His Mennonite ancestors who had set all this aside, and now he saw their decision in a new light. It wasn’t superstition or ignorance ... or fear. They rejected magic because they knew it would control them and make them into people they didn’t want to become. They prized simplicity and forgiveness more than wealth and power and control. It was the opposite of fear. They chose the risk of a plain life … without power ... simply because it was the right thing to do.

  With the orb he could bring Jillian back. All he had to do was dial back time and undo her murder. He could maroon Queen Jillian wherever he wanted, or he could kill her outright, or drive her mad. He could change time and space in so many different ways.

  He made his choice, and then ... somehow he knew exactly how to do it with a thought ... he destroyed the orb once and for all. He could hear the pieces crumbling into dust, and he could see Jillian fading away, back to her own world, bereft of all the power she’d accumulated from the fragments she’d collected.

  As the orb shattered, his pipe got hotter and hotter until it started to burn his hand. He had to drop it in the sink and he watched as it turned to smoke before his eyes. When it was gone he could hear sounds again. The wind in the trees and the gentle, soft noises of the house.

  * * *

  The old man — Gunter Schmitt — had been as good as his word. When John arrived in the office the next morning, Herman took him aside and told him the whole story. Gunter had been feeding information to the security department about a hereditary madness that John was starting to succumb to. They, in turn, reported it all to Homeland Security. Schmitt came in early Monday and again on Tuesday and told them that he’d made it all up — that he was trying to get back at John because of an old family rivalry. Gunter would probably spend the rest of his days in a prison for lying to federal authorities.

  After a few days of ordinary work and peaceful sleep, no smoking and no drinking, John was sitting in his favorite chair with a battered old copy of Moby Dick and a large cup of coffee. He felt better than he had felt in months, but there was still one thing missing.

  He spent an hour on the treadmill, mulling it over, then decided to make the call.

  “Hey, Lisa, it’s John,” he said.

  “John, is everything okay? You’ve never called before.”

  “Everything’s fine. I’m sorry to call so late, but what are you doing after work tomorrow?”

  “Last-minute happy hour with the gang?” she asked.

  “No. Dinner. Just you and me. I have a long, strange story to tell you.”

  END

  Excerpts from the Mueller Family Tree

  Names in bold appear or are mentioned in the story.

  Heinrich Mueller (the wizard)

  1871-1904

  Edith Mueller (nee Shulz)

  1875-1942

  Peter Mueller

  1892 - 1967

  Gerda Mueller (nee Meyer)

  1894-1975

  Werner Mueller (“Pop Pop”)

  1913-1993

  Maria Mueller (nee Allard)

  1920-1995

  [Many German families changed their names at this time to avoid association with the Nazis. The Mueller family split into two branches — the Matthews and the Millers.]

  Matthews Line

  Max Matthews (nee Mueller)

  1933-2012

  Anna Matthews (nee Williams)

  1946-

  John Matthews

  1967-

  Jillian Matthews (nee Collins)

  1970-2011

  Miller Line

  Gustaf Mueller (son of Peter Mueller)

  1920-2001

  Gretel Meuller (nee Weber)

  1925-2002

  Alfred Miller (nee Mueller)

  1941-

  Jane Miller (nee Harvey)

  1947-

  James Miller (2nd cousin)

  1970-2014

  Allison Miller (nee Bailey)

  1975-

  A Collision of Worlds

  “They say that looking at a bright screen befor
e you go to bed is bad for your sleep,” Jillian said as she slipped under the covers next to John on Sunday night.

  “Since when have I had a hard time sleeping?” he asked.

  Jillian laughed.

  “Okay, but what about me?”

  “Look the other way,” he said with a grin, but then he turned the tablet so it didn’t shine in her face. He wanted to check his email quickly before going to sleep. There was only one new message, and it was odd.

  Delivery to gschmitt@ failed

  John couldn’t think of anyone with that name, and of course he also noticed that it wasn’t a proper email address. He assumed it was part of some sort of scam, so he deleted it, closed the cover on his iPad and set it on the night stand.

  “Hey,” he said, rolling over and taking Jillian in his arms. “I love you.”

  * * *

  The next morning at the office John received an email from gschmitt@. It simply said, “need to see you.” This was getting strange. He forwarded it to desktop support, asked how something like that could have gotten through, asked them to keep an eye on this sender, and then deleted the message.

  * * *

  “You were rolling around a lot last night,” Jillian said as she poured John a cup of coffee on Thursday morning. John was sitting at the kitchen table next to the back window. The morning sun couldn’t quite cut through the woods behind their little house in Bowie, Maryland, but enough light filtered through the late Spring leaves for John to read the paper.

  “Sorry. Did I disturb you?”

  “A little,” she said with a slight smile. “Bad dreams?”

  “I don’t often remember them,” he said, “but last night ... that was weird.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said as she flipped the eggs on the griddle.

  “I can’t,” John said, and Jillian wasn’t sure if he meant that he couldn’t, or that he didn’t want to. He seemed to sense her confusion.

  “You know I’ve never remembered my dreams.”

  Until now? she thought, but let it go.

  John sipped his coffee in silence for a minute. He took it black, which was a small point of contention early on in their marriage. Jillian took a lot of pride in her special mixes of ground coffee beans with various herbs and flavorings, and she thought a little milk and sugar brought out the subtlety of her concoctions. When John drank it black she felt he was being disrespectful of her efforts.