Temporally Out of Order

by Unknown

  “I expect he was,” I said.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “Nor will I,” I said, for it seemed the blacksmith had been doomed from the time the bell first sounded, and at least now the bell had rung its last. “But can I have my purse back, then? I expect I can find a man to ring the passing bell for my old mate Tom somewhere considerably nearer home.”

  The parson gave me a look as he handed it over that I suppose I well deserved, but what can I say? I’ve never claimed to be a good man, but I am Minnie’s best girl, and she’d been waiting patiently for me to bring her home my pay, and to come back to her safely from the sea.

  DESTINATION AHEAD

  by Laura Anne Gilman

  We’d been driving nearly ten hours, two dogs and a kid asleep in the back seat, when I realized the GPS was lying.

  “Babe?” I kept my voice even, controlled: no need for alarm and for god’s sake don’t take this as a personal accusation, but…

  There was a sigh, and then, “Yeah, I know.” I heard a click and a rustle: the sound of a map being pulled from the glove compartment. God only knew how old that map was, it had probably migrated over from the old car with all our other junk. But even an out-of-date map would still have highways and byways on it; maybe ones that the GPS hadn’t been programmed with. Cartographers are more careful than programmers.

  “Huh. We should have turned left back there.” Jack waved a vague hand that could have meant back there at the last tree, or back there an hour ago.

  I glanced at the GPS, still showing a blithe green line going forward, then looked back at the road. The disturbingly empty, unfamiliar road. Damn it. Jack’s mom had moved to a new house a few months ago and this was our first chance to visit, but despite punching the new address in the moment we pulled out of our driveway, this didn’t look right.

  Mom wasn’t the most social of creatures, but she wasn’t the sort to live out in the middle of nowhere Pennsyltucky. And she’d have mentioned it if she’d made such a drastic change, right?

  I tried to remember when I’d last seen something familiar. We’d stopped at a gas station to let the dogs do their thing, and I’d managed not to bitch at Jack for something, I didn’t even remember what, just that I’d had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something to him. But that had been nearly half an hour ago. How had we gone from strip mall gas station to this utter emptiness in half an hour? The GPS had claimed that there was a shorter route that would avoid traffic, so we’d gotten off at that exit and stayed on the county road, rather than getting back on the highway, but even a county road should have something along it, right? We hadn’t been living in the city that long…

  “Want me to call, tell her we’re running late?”

  “Yeah, probably. Who knows how long this’ll take to sort out.”

  He pulled his phone from the charger, swiping the screen awake. “And perfect, no signal.” Jack sighed. “At least the pack’s still asleep.”

  A glance into the rear view mirror showed me two dachshund and an eight-year-old, curled up and using each other as pillows. Letting them run around in the back yard until nearly midnight last night had been a stroke of genius. Keep them up, wear them out, and wake ‘em up early: the secret to a peaceful road trip.

  The female voice I was starting to hate informed us: “In one mile, turn left.”

  There was a rustle of the paper map, folding and unfolding, and Jack sighed again. I felt my muscles tense, and forced them to relax. He wasn’t doing it to irritate me; that was just how he was. I knew that. “There’s no left exit or veer on this map for like ten miles,” he said. “Your GPS is cracked.”

  “Now it’s my GPS?” I shouldn’t have said that—we tried not to fight, not even play-fight—in front of the kid. “So what do you suggest, oh navigator?”

  “Finding another gas station and asking them.”

  “You realize that might get you kicked out of the husbands club?”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Only problem with that is, I don’t see a gas station anywhere. We haven’t even seen an exit sign in miles.” We hadn’t seen any signs, actually. I guess out here, they figured you knew where you were and where you were going? “Should I ask the lady in the box?”

  “Yeah, ‘cause I’m sure her directions will be so much better finding a gas station versus finding my mom’s place. Sondra, where is the nearest gas station?”

  There was a pause, then the GPS’s generated voice came back: “Calculating… ”

  Then nothing.

  “Sondra? Nearest gas station?”

  “No gas station within calculating distance.”

  Jack folded the map with irritating sloppiness. “Oh that’s just great. Nobody out here needs gas? They all have electric cars? Where did my mom end up, planet of the incredibly wealthy senior citizens?”

  “If she did, we need to renegotiate that prenup.”

  “Hah. In your dreams. I just—”

  Whatever Jack was going to say was lost when the suspension suddenly burped, and the wheels rattled off pavement and onto what sounded—and felt—like gravel. I gripped the steering wheel and blinked at the road ahead of us, which had suddenly lost its reassuring high-speed-friendly asphalt. “The hell?”

  “Dads?” The munchkin was awake. “Are we lost?”

  Again? hung heavy in the air, even if the munchkin didn’t say it. Our kid was way too perceptive for our own good.

  “Nope,” Jack said immediately. “Your dad’s taking us on a long-way-around shortcut.”

  Again, again hung in the air, loudly unspoken.

  “You two can get out and walk, if you’d like,” I offered. “Me and the dogs will be just fine without you.”

  Maxine shot me a grin, so much like Jack’s it still made my heart squeeze to see it. “Walking, we’ll probably get there first.”

  There isn’t much sass like an eight-year-old’s sass.

  The GPS decided that was a good moment to interrupt. “Turn left in one hundred yards.”

  “Idiot voice, there isn’t… ” Except there was, a dirt road appearing to the left a hundred yards ahead that I’d have sworn wasn’t there before. I’d’ve sworn the entire road was paved a few minutes before, too, though, and we were clearly on gravel now.

  “Mom did say the house was part of an estate built on an old farm,” Jack said slowly. “Maybe this is a back entrance?”

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I said, letting the car idle just before the turn. There was nobody else visible on the road, but I kept my attention split between the rear view mirror and the road ahead, just in case.

  “If we go back to where the gas station was, we’re going to add at least an hour’s travel time.” We’d already been in the car too long for everyone’s comfort. “Afraid your car can’t handle a dirt road?”

  “You really want to get stuck out here with a broken axle?” I shot Jack a sideways glance that wasn’t quite a glare.

  “I don’t want to get stuck out here at all.” There was just a wedge of ice in the words, layered out of kidshot, a fight just waiting to break out. I drummed my fingers on the wheel, then hit the gas, bypassing the first road to stay on the equally unfamiliar but at least partially paved main road.

  “Recalculating.” I was really starting to hate whoever they’d modeled that voice on.

  Maxine leaned forward, her arms resting on the back of my seat. Next to her, the dogs shifted in their sleep.

  “Max, sit back, put your seatbelt back on.” Jack was using his dad-voice, the one he brought out when he thought I was too wound-up to be allowed to say anything.

  “Daaaad.”

  “Now, Maxine,” I added.

  I loved my husband. And my kid. And even the dogs. I was less fond of them all together, after too many hours in the car. I felt no shame in admitting that. I just kept it between my teeth, and dealt with the ulcers after the fact.

  Sondra told us, “Go fi
ve hundred yards and turn left.”

  “What drugs are you on, machine?” I muttered, then glanced at the display, then down the road again. “Seriously?”

  Jack glanced at me, then at my hands. I consciously eased them off the wheel a little, wincing as they uncramped. “It wants us to go left. Maybe we should go left?”

  “Maybe you should let me do the driving?” I sniped before I could stop myself.

  “Maybe you should have taken a better dump before we left the house?”

  I could tell Jack regretted the words the minute they left his mouth. We’d sworn to always call each other on bad behavior—it’d been part of our wedding vows, for Christ’s sake. But all it had taken was Maxine bursting into tears after one of our fights, and we’d agreed to clamp down on the blunt speaking.

  I exhaled, a tight whistling noise. “Fine. I’ll take a left, right by the … are those goats?”

  A small herd of goats, in fact. Grazing on the verge next to the road, a few of them lifting their heads to look curiously as the car pulled up, then—as though someone’d thrown a switch—then turned and ran off, hooves kicking up clods of dirt in their wake.

  “You’d think they’d never seen a car before.”

  “This far out in the middle of nowhere, maybe they haven’t.” I glanced back, but Maxine was occupied with her tablet, the dogs curled on either side of her. Good. The last thing we needed was a meltdown over why hadn’t the goats stayed and why couldn’t she pet them.

  The road was dirt, but it felt like it was pretty smooth: no worries about the car’s alignment . I stared out the window, hoping to see some sign of civilization. At this point, even a grungy gas station would be a welcome oasis.

  “Jack.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Sondra’s voice confirmed it: “Destination ahead.”

  Jack let out a “poh” sound, the way he started doing after Max was born and he stopped swearing out loud. “That’s not my mom’s house.”

  Except it was, kind of. The lines of the building, the massive stones set in the corners, even the slant of the roof were similar to the photos she’d sent us. But his mom had spent a fortune replacing the slate roof when she bought it, as well as the windows. The windows in this building were … ancient was too kind a word for them. And …

  “There are goats outside,” Jack said.

  Goats, and a cow. Not right up next to the house, but closer than his mom would ever allow anything not a cat to get near her.

  “Cool!” Max had heard us, and was bouncing on her seat, and therefore so were the dogs, awake now and leaping up to slobber all over the windows.

  “Don’t let the dogs out,” Jack said sternly, as I pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine. “Whosever animals these are, they’re not going to appreciate Mutt and Jeff chasing after them.”

  Max slumped back into the seat. “Where are we?”

  The GPS answered her. “You have arrived at your destination.”

  I shook my head. “The hell we have.”

  As though in response, the GPS blinked, then displayed the “lost signal” icon, and went blank.

  Before Max could demand I put a quarter in the swear jar, someone came out of the building, shooing the goats away. They scattered, leaping into the air like they had springs on their heels, and the woman—it was a woman, tall and broad at the shoulder, wearing a long skirt and a shawl over her arms—turned, as though suddenly realizing we were there—

  And screamed and ran back into the building.

  “The fuck?” I joked about the car being an eco-monstrosity, but it hadn’t ever gotten that kind of reaction before.

  “Seriously,” Jack said. “What the hell?”

  “Dads!” The two of us together was too much for Max to ignore, goats or no. “Quarter in the jar!”

  “When we get home,” Jack said. Then, lower voiced, “If we ever get home.”

  I couldn’t deal with him right now, not him and the kid, and the dogs, and… “Maybe they’ll know how to get back to the main road, assuming I can peel our hostess off whatever ceiling she’s flipped onto. Stay here.”

  I got out of the car, shutting off a one-sided discussion from the munchkin on if the goats would like dogs or not, and eyed the house dubiously. It didn’t look like it was going to fall down any time soon, but it sure as hell hadn’t been modernized anytime in this century. An impressive garden sprawled out on the other side of the lot, filled with a bunch of green leafy things I couldn’t recognize. And, other than an equally ramshackle barn-like building further off, there wasn’t anything else in sight.

  “If this is a prank, I’m going to skin someone alive and wear them as a raincoat.” It was a good threat, but I couldn’t think of anyone who could have pulled this off. Rewiring the GPS, sure. Between the two of us we know a dozen people who not only could do it, but would, and there were another handful of people who’d know someone who could do it for them. But the rest of it? It would take Koch-level money to screw with the landscape like this—removing the buildings, adding goats?

  “We were in a car crash. I’m in ICU, having one seriously whackadoodle surgery-dream.” I reached the door, studying the sturdy, weathered wood that looked even worse up-close.

  The sound of the car’s horn jolted me, and I waved a hand back at the car to tell them to keep their damn pants on, then knocked three times on the door, trying to be both authoritative and unthreatening.

  There was a sound from inside the house, but the door didn’t open. So much for country hospitality.

  “Oh come on, all I want to do is get directions! I’m stepping away from the door, okay? I’m not a threat, I’m just lost.”

  Silence, and then the sound of someone on the other side of the door. But I wasn’t expecting to have to look down when the door finally slid open a hand-span. Looking back at me was a kid, maybe ten, sure as hell not eleven. Pale blond hair, wide blue eyes: he looked like he should be auditioning for a role as some stereotyped cherub, not staring at me like I was a monster come to eat him.

  “What do you want?” He was trying to sound tough, but it didn’t quite come across, considering his voice hadn’t broken yet.

  “Directions, kid. That’s all. We’re trying to get to my mother-in-law’s, and we’re lost.” No need to say mom’s house looked a lot like this one; odds were back then they were building a bunch the same, like all the cookie-cutter duplexes back in the Fifties. This one clearly hadn’t gotten any updating: they were probably poor as dirt. I had a couple of twenties in my wallet, that’d be more than fair payment for directions back to civilization.

  Wide blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. “There’re none of your kind here.”

  My kind? Oh, great. “Look, kid, just tell me how to get back to the highway, and I’ll be out of your hair.” I didn’t know if sending Jack over to deal with him would make things better or worse. If the kid’d been raised a racist, odds were he was a homophobe too, no matter how whitebread Jack was.

  Blue-eyes scowled at me, but I was pretty good at reading kid, and I didn’t think it was anger or fear or even hatred. More … puzzlement. Like I’d said something that confused him.

  He wasn’t the only one confused. Landscapes that made no sense, a look-alike house that was a hundred years past-due on an update, dirt roads where there should be a highway, GPS systems that went haywire and then crapped out and not a single sign of civilization anywhere. If I were a paranoid person, or the kind to get fanciful, I’d swear …

  Oh.

  No.

  I was pretty sure I stopped breathing there for a minute, and I probably looked a proper lunatic, standing there with my foot in the door so the boy didn’t close it on me, my hand on the doorframe and my jaw doing a fair impersonation of, well, a slack-jawed idiot. If so, the kid didn’t call me on it, just stood there like he was waiting for me to turn around and go away.

  Jack calls me stubborn, but I p
refer to think of it as logic-driven. If the evidence says X, then X is probably the answer, however much current science refutes the possibility.

  “Son,” and he didn’t even blink at me calling him that, no matter how much he might not want “‘my kind”‘ standing in his doorway. “Son, what year is this?”

  oOo

  Max was still talking, but I tuned her out. Something was wrong. I could see it in Shan’s stance, the way he leaned in, then leaned back. Whoever he was talking to was blocked by the door, but they clearly weren’t friendly, or were giving him shit about something.

  Shit. I should have gone, not him. Shan’s got a chip on his shoulder, not huge, but sometimes he pisses people off without realizing it. Not that I’m any model of diplomacy, but …

  “What’s wrong with dad?”

  “Nothing. You know he hates asking for directions, that’s all.”

  Max snorted, a wet, sarcastic sound she’d totally inherited from me. “So do you. We get lost all the time.”

  Truth. That was why we’d—I’d—bought the damn GPS in the first place, much good it had done us.

  One of the dogs whined, and a quick look over the back seat showed that all three of them were getting antsy. Just what we needed. “Can you take them for a quick walk? Not too far, stay near the car. And stay away from the goats.”

  The dogs were energetic, but low enough to the ground that the kidlet could handle them, and even if they ran away, there weren’t any other cars in the area to worry about. Just goats and a cow. Did cows kick? The only thing I knew about cows was that they produced milk.

  I looked back at Shan to see a young boy now standing in the doorway, and my husband stalking back to the car with an expression on his face I’d never seen, and couldn’t read.

  He was coming to my side of the car, so I rolled down the window. “What’s up?”

  “Jack-o. I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  “We’re in Pennsylvania.” My logic was wasted on him. His eyes were a little too wide and his hands, where they rested on the sill, were shaking slightly. “Shan, what’s going on? What did that kid say to you?”