I smile at him. “I know, Tuck. I was just joking.”
Tucket stares at me for a moment, then starts laughing. “Oh, that’s a good one. Haha. Because you already do that! I did see the ketchup you had expired in January and I was like, whoa is this guy CRAZY? But now it makes sense. You must have gone to the past to buy that, right?”
I look at my bottle of ketchup. Damn. It did expire in January. “Oh, you know it. So pancakes, huh?” I surreptitiously drop the ketchup into the trash and grab a plate. “Looks delicious.”
After breakfast, Tucket is fascinated by the process of hand-washing dishes. I let him go to town in the soapsuds while I escape to the living room, snatching up my phone and finally pushing the button for the messages I have from work.
I have been bracing myself for the tirade from my boss, wondering where I’d been the past few days. To my surprise, the first message is actually one of my coworkers, Dave, calling from the office phone, reminding me to bring back the timing light I borrowed from him because he needs it to finish a job on the Evinrude motor he’s working on. He playfully adds that I should also bring back the rest of the tools I’ve bummed off him since I’ve been there.
He follows this up with a joking complaint about his wife getting on him for never fixing anything at home and how he blames it all on me for having all his tools. During the call, someone else apparently tries to call the shop. Dave attempts to put the person on hold amid advice from Deb, the office manager and, being technologically inept, he messes it up. The second message is just a follow up by Dave from a few minutes later, apologizing for cutting the call short and attempting to blame the error on the phone system. I can hear Deb laughing at him in the background.
I hang up and stare at my phone, trying to wrap my brain around the situation. Dave’s complaint is not a real problem. He easily has just as many of my tools riding around on his toolbox as I have of his. But the fact that no one seems to have mentioned my having disappeared for the better part of a week doesn’t make a bit of sense. I had assumed the messages were going to involve me getting fired amid a slew of curses from my boss. I double-check to make sure there are no more messages I missed.
Nothing.
I pocket my phone and snatch my keys off the hook near the door. “Mym, do you mind keeping Tucket company for a few minutes? I need to shoot over to the marina and check on something.”
Mym slides a plate into the drying rack. “You need any help?”
“No. I’m good. Shouldn’t take long.” I give her a quick kiss.
“Are you going driving?” Tucket asks. “Like a real human-operator vehicle?”
“Uh. It’s a pick-up truck.”
“Groovy.” Tucket beams. “That must be so righteous. Do you get scared, knowing how dangerous it is?”
“Um. No. Look, I’ll be right back. Don’t wander off anywhere while I’m gone, okay? I really like my neighbors and they, um, appreciate privacy . . .”
“Oh no worries, bro.” Tucket gives me another fist bump.
I trot down the stairs and scan the street. My old Toyota isn’t in any of my usual spots despite there being plenty of available spaces. I check around the corner just in case I parked it there. I haven’t used the truck much since I’ve been home, but can’t imagine why I would have moved it. I go back upstairs and poke my head back inside. “Hey, Mym. You didn’t by chance use my truck did you?”
“No. Is something wrong with it?”
“Hard to say. It’s AWOL.”
“Did one of your friends borrow it?”
“Not that I remember.”
“They probably ask you in the future and then come back in time to borrow it,” Tucket says, as if this is the most obvious solution. He continues dunking a saucepan in the sink.
“Okay. Just checking,” I say, trying to puzzle out what could have happened to it. “I’ll take the bike for now.”
I head back downstairs and open the main garage door. It takes a few minutes to get the tank secured back on and roll it out of the garage. The turn signals are still shorted somewhere in the wiring, but I can live without them.
“Is that your hog?”
My heart jolts in my chest. Tucket has appeared right beside me. “God, Tucket. You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were staying upstairs to do dishes and hang out with Mym.”
“I did. But then when it took you a little while to come back I decided that maybe I missed an opportunity to see how you drive, so I decided to check it out.”
I can hear water running through the pipes from upstairs. “So the other you is still up there with Mym?” The edge of his Temprovibe is peeking out from under the sleeve of his shirt. He’s going to be harder to keep track of than I thought.
“Yeah. We wash the dishes and Mym teaches me how to use the gas stove. That’s really cool how you still plumb explosive gases into your homes and drive your own cars even though people could just swerve and kill you at any time they want. This place is like the Wild West. I love all the danger. Now you’re going to ride this!” He puts his hands on his hips and admires the Honda. “I mean, this is REALLY dangerous.”
I slide the key into the ignition and kick start the bike. It takes three tries, but then roars to life.
“How does the hog know where to go? Is there anywhere to program the route in?” Tucket leans over and scrutinizes the gauges.
“This motorcycle is from 1972, Tucket. A little before GPS.”
I let the bike idle and go back into the garage for my helmet and gloves. Tucket’s comments shouldn’t be getting to me, but I cinch the helmet a little tighter than usual.
“So how do you get where you’re going without a navigation system?”
“You just have to remember. And read road signs.”
“Gnarly. Road signs. That’s so millennial.”
I get seated on the bike and rev the throttle a couple of times to warm it up faster.
“So if you get run off the road or hit by another car, do you want us to come get you? Do you have an emergency plan or maybe a way for the bike to alert us in an accident? How would you—”
“I’ll be back before you know it, Tucket.” I knock the kickstand back with my heel and get rolling. “Stay here.”
“Okay. It was nice knowing you. I mean, just in case you die. I really like that you let me visit and meet your girlfriend.” He shouts the rest as I ride out into the street and turn the corner. “I’ll be sure to let the Academy know how nice you were!” I rev the throttle again and drown out the rest as I streak away.
Chapter 4
“When arriving in a new place and time, you will displace the atmospheric gases around you naturally, but items with more mass, like raindrops and insects can still present a fusion hazard. Avoid precipitation at all costs and stay away from lamplight. Darkness is preferable. If you do get fused to a bug, no one wants to see that anyway.” -Journal of Doctor Harold Quickly, 1907
The Neverwhere
I am terrified. I would have thought that death would mean an end to being scared, but now the unknown is changing the rules. Whatever is going on in this place, I am certainly not resting in peace. I am running, and I am afraid.
I can’t see much. I’ve gotten off the street and plunged down a foggy alley, still clutching my softball bat. I sprint past a few trash bins and out onto the street at the far end. I’m on the opposite side of Fourth Street from where I started—Sixth or Seventh Street now. Not sure why I headed this way. Just running. Fleeing the destruction behind me.
I’m back in St. Petersburg. My St. Petersburg from 2009. The vision of destruction I left behind is gone. It’s a relief, but I don’t stop.
A bigger clearing in the fog opens ahead and I recognize the apartment building where one of my ex-girlfriends used to live. I linger there, finally able to see a little farther in the glistening haze. There is something to this clarity. I am finding it easier to see near places I’ve spent a lot of time. My apartment, the smoothie s
hop, now here. Whatever clues there are to this place, I feel like that is one.
After the intensity of what I just saw—that girl vanishing into thin air—I’m ready for a taste of the familiar. Looking at the two story apartment building, I get the feeling that I’m not just looking at an old building. I’m looking at my past.
Kaylee was a fun girl, but too young. She had barely finished college when I met her. She waited tables at varying hours and felt like she could party the rest of the time. Her habit of showing up at my place at two or three in the morning made me late for work on multiple occasions. I tried to keep up at first, mostly since she was pretty enough and seductive enough to talk me into about anything, but I finally stopped seeing her after having to pick her up hammered at the police station at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. She took the breakup in stride and would still text me on occasion as if she had forgotten it happened. I wonder if she knows I’m dead.
I walk around the side of the Spanish-style building to the back of her old place. Kaylee’s is the apartment on the lower corner. A 4x4 cement step juts out into scraggly crabgrass doing its best to survive in the sandy, fire-ant-infested dirt between the back of the apartment building and the parking lot. I open the screen and peer through the window of the door. A crayon drawing of a cat holding an Easter basket is stuck to the fridge. I remember that. Kaylee’s autistic nephew, Bryce, had drawn it for her because he didn’t like rabbits and said he wanted an Easter cat.
I study the rest of the kitchen. The drying rack near the sink is cluttered with Kaylee’s mishmash of USF Tervis Tumbler cups, just how I remember it. It shouldn’t be. Kaylee moved out of here at least six months ago. Right now, I don’t care. I just need a place to hide.
I try the doorknob and it opens.
I slip inside and lock the door behind me. The place is cold, over air-conditioned, the way Kaylee always kept it. It’s a small apartment, but her novice landlord had made the mistake of including the electric bill in her rent, so she kept the pair of wall units running all the time. I pass through the hallway to the living room and check the lock on the front door. I don’t know what good it is going to do against my unknown enemy, but I feel a little better once I’ve placed the chain across it.
I set the bat down on the coffee table and, after checking the security of the window latches, have a seat on Kaylee’s cinnamon-colored couch to ponder my dilemma.
There are other people here. That much has been proven. Even if the young woman got yanked out of existence in front of me, there was no doubt that she was here. I need to see if there are more. I also need to know who did that to her.
Thunder rumbles overhead. Curious, I move to the front window. The sky above is still clear blue in sections to the west, but toward Fourth Street it has continued darkening. A towering grey thunderhead is lingering over the area where I’ve just come from.
The tops of the skyscrapers downtown are visible beyond the houses across the street. The buildings are in ruin, if they can even be called buildings, and there are far more of them. Whole floors have been torn out of the nearest tower perhaps a block distant. It stretches skyward at least a hundred stories, far taller than anything I have ever seen in St. Petersburg. Farther south, the clock is missing from the top of the Bank of America building. That building, one of the tallest in town during my time, is now dwarfed by skeletal spires of steel and concrete all around it. What was a healthy city now resembles a bombed-out warzone.
I crane my neck to see farther down the street. Other buildings are changing again in front of my eyes. The transformation is moving like a wave. Not dramatic. No tumbling roofs or falling walls. The houses simply transforming—colorful and whole one moment, burned out or vanished the next. What’s more, the streets that were clean and dry are filling with water. No, not filling. That would involve some sort of action. When I look back to an area that was previously dry and find it under three feet of water, it’s as though it had always been that way. It hurts my brain to even process it.
A rattling distracts me from the scene. Someone is attempting to turn the doorknob on the back door. I slide away from the window and duck into the single bathroom, closing the door behind me, but leaving just a crack to peer through. I realize too late that I left my bat on the coffee table. The doorknob rattling stops amid muffled curses. Someone is splashing through water at the side of the building. A moment later, a shadow falls on the blinds on the far side of the kitchen. The silhouette is of someone tall and I catch a momentary glimpse of a shaggy face attempting to peer through the space at the edge of the blinds. The window rattles and there is more cursing.
The would-be intruder makes his way around the front of the apartment and tries the front door. Another boom of thunder rolls across the sky and I hear a yelp from the man. The door is shaken furiously, but doesn’t budge. The cursing abates as suddenly as it came and I am left in silence. The quiet is interrupted only seconds later by the pattering of rain on the roof. The patter quickens to a steady drumming and I edge back out of the bathroom. I stay low and dash across the living room to snatch up the bat. Outside is blackness now. I retreat again, this time to the bedroom. I close the door and turn the lock.
Kaylee’s bedroom is not as I remember it. Despite being a free spirit elsewhere in life, her apartment was always tidy, the bedroom most of all. I recall her bed being constantly made up with a preponderance of frilly pillows to weigh it down. Not today. The room looks lived in. All but one of the pillows have been dumped on the floor and the comforter kicked to the end of the bed. Kaylee’s little writing desk is in disarray as well, pens and pencils scattered about. A yellow legal pad is lying atop the desk with a few pages hastily torn off. The pad is bare, but has deep indents in the top page from someone pressing hard while they wrote. Curious, I pick up a pencil and brush it across the page the way detectives do in old movies. The word that appears means nothing to me, but was obviously important to someone. It’s been repeated across the page no less than ten times in thick block letters.
ZURVAN.
I scribble a little more on the page and find a symbol drawn multiple times around the words. The symbol is a circle with blades or wings coming out of it and flames issuing from the circle. It resembles the sun or a star, but with a vaguely technological vibe. I stare at the page, trying to make sense of it. While I am pondering the sketches, the rain stops outside. I tear the top page off the tablet and stuff it into my pocket.
Sunlight and blue skies are back when I open the front door. The view of the city skyline is back to normal as well. Condo towers and office buildings from my time are reflecting sunlight from glistening windows. Despite the recent downpour, the ground around the apartment isn’t wet. I creep out to the sidewalk and check the gutter. Not so much as a trickle. I scan the houses around me. All have returned to the way they were before. No ruins. No water damage.
I turn around and have started toward the apartment when I catch movement around the side of the building in the bushes. I freeze and lift my bat. Cautiously, I take a few steps toward the shrubbery. I’m still a dozen yards away when they shake violently and a man sprints from hiding behind them. I raise the bat to swing, but he bolts the other direction, shaggy hair trailing down his neck. He’s barefoot and his pants are dirty at the bottoms of the pant legs. I glimpse only a ragged beard and wide, dark eyes before he dashes away, but there is something very familiar about him.
“Hey! Wait!” My yell goes unheeded as the man disappears around the corner of the garage next door. I run after him and turn the corner into the alley, but by the time I get there the man has vanished. I trot down the alley to see if I can spot where he went, but pick up no sign of him. Frustrated, I return to the apartment. If the man has been living here, perhaps there are more clues to who he is.
Once inside, I lock the front door behind me again and scan the apartment. I return to the bedroom to look for something else that might give me a clue to his identity. As I round the corner of the
doorway, I stop in my tracks. The bedroom is changed. The bedspread is back over the bed and pillows are neatly stacked in order the way Kaylee always preferred. The writing desk is tidied up as well. No sign of the scattered pens and pencils. The notepad is gone. I open a few drawers and find it under a roll of stamps and some thank you cards with ducks on them. The pad looks wholly intact. No pages torn from the top. Baffled, I reach into my pocket and remove the sheet I folded up. I open it to find that all of my sketches are gone. I stare at the blank sheet, then rifle through the pages of the notepad. Blank. Blank. Blank. Six pages down I find the shredded edge of a page where one has been removed. I slip my page into the space and the edges match up perfectly. What the hell? I stare at my page a little longer then flip through the ones above again. No indents. No markings. Whatever clues my mystery visitor had left, he has managed to take them with him.
I rummage through the desk till I find my pencil again. I know what I saw. I draw the symbol of the flaming circle with wings, filling in as much detail as I can recall. Then I write out the word I read and underline it.
ZURVAN
I tuck the paper into my pocket and shut the drawer to the desk. I pause, reach back into my pocket and double-check my paper. This time my drawing is still there. I try it one more time just to be sure. Staring at the sketch of the winged sun, attempting to burn it into my memory, I can’t help but hope I am onto something significant. I don’t have much to go on, but anything is better than hiding in my apartment waiting to be attacked. Somewhere there is an answer to the riddle of this place. I am going to solve it.
<><><>
St Petersburg-2009
A chain link fence surrounds the Saint Petersburg Southside Marina. The gravel drive features an electric gate with a keycard access to keep vehicles from pulling directly through. It’s supposed to keep unauthorized persons from getting near the boats, but since the nearby pedestrian gate finally rusted off its hinges last summer, the effect of the fence has been mostly decorative. A “No Trespassing” sign lists to a slight angle near the gate and may keep the honest folk out, but otherwise the sidewalk is unimpeded and has become a favorite avenue for the army of neighborhood cats who scavenge through the high-and-dry for remnants of successful fishing trips.
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 108
