by Sean McMahon
‘Headache again?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Yeah, comes and goes,’ said Kara. ‘Where are we at?’ she asked, referring to where they were in the current loop. ‘Kevin should be arriving in a bit, right?
‘Mm-hm. You wanna follow him for a bit? Maybe get a closer look at his place? If he opens the doors for us, we may even be able to sneak inside...’ suggested Hal.
Kara wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.
‘I thought the plan was to follow our tracks,’ she replied. ‘Also, we need to make sure we follow ourselves to Kevin’s tonight,’ she added.
‘Relax,’ said Hal in a reassuring tone. ‘We’ve got hours before we head off to take Jerry back’ he said, referring to their past-selves
Reluctantly, Kara responded with an “okay, why not” kind of shrug.
‘Okay, if you’re sure,’ said Kara.
*
Like clockwork, Kevin arrived, and then departed, only this time he had two time-travellers on his tail. Unfortunately, it was slowly becoming a theme that when it came to Hal’s ideas, things didn’t quite go to plan.
As Kevin navigated the woods in pursuit of Jerry, who had run off ahead of them, he took them further away from Fir Lodge than they’d been thus far. This resulted in them focusing more of their attention on trying to keep up with Kevin’s brisk pace than the route they were taking.
Their progress was hindered at numerous points, as Hal tried to step around the protruding brambles that obstructed their path, despite Kara’s protests that they could just walk through them unscathed. It transpired that plant-life fell into the tick-box of “Living matter”, meaning they couldn’t directly interact with it.
They eventually stopped at the edge of a lake to regroup, as Kevin stopped and pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, and proceeded to pick up some of Jerry’s recently deposited business.
‘Would you look at that view,’ said Hal, staring out across the wide expanse of water in front of them.
Kara was about to question what was so breath-taking about watching Jerry taking a dump, when she realised Hal was referring to the rural skyline stretching out in front of them.
They sat down on a nearby log, taking in the serene beauty of the fir trees that ran across the horizon. The late afternoon, orange-tinged sun reflecting the vista before them into the water of the lake, like a shimmering mirror-image of a duplicated snapshot in time.
A few minutes later, it was Kara who noticed the one thing missing from this interactive postcard that they were diverting all of their attention to.
‘Hal, where’s Kevin?’
Hal quickly looked over his shoulder, then his other shoulder, finally standing up with an air of urgency.
‘Oh man,’ said Hal, running a hand through his hair. ‘I guess now we know how the parents felt in Home Alone.’
‘He can’t have got far,’ said Kara. ‘Let’s go catch him up.’
*
After what felt like a couple of hours searching for Kevin without success, Kara was the first to voice her uneasiness about the way their day was progressing.
‘I think we should head back, Hal,’ she said, as she looked behind her and realised they had stepped well-beyond anything resembling a beaten track.
Hal, who was about as reliable with directions as he was with contributing informative opinions relating to football, offered up his thoughts on which path they should take.
‘Yeah, you’re right, we need to suck it up and sack it off,’ said Hal, who had also had more than enough walking for one day, and they proceeded back the way they came.
*
An hour or so later, they found themselves back at what appeared to be the log they had sat on earlier that afternoon.
‘Kara, do you know where we’re going?’ asked Hal eventually.
‘Not funny Hal, I’ve been following you this whole time,’ said Kara.
Hal gave some thought to their current location and said ‘Well, I think our lodge is on the other side of this lake…maybe?’
‘Oh, that’s just perfect. So now we’re lost in time, and the woods,’ exclaimed Kara, her definition of perfection clearly differing greatly from Hal’s. ‘So, what’re you suggesting, we swim across?’
‘Man, these woods are way denser that you’d expect for a holiday retreat. Not to mention, every path looks the same,’ noted Hal, sensing he may need to begin formulating a case for his defence.
‘They’re trees Hal, of course they look the same.’ Not for the first time that day, she’d wondered why she couldn’t have been caught in a temporal anomaly with Jon instead of Hal.
‘Well, we can’t swim,’ said Hal, ‘even though we wouldn’t get wet, we’d just drop to the bottom of the lake-bed. Without knowing how deep it is, we might not be able to climb up the embankment on the other side,’ he added, basing the entirety of his opinion on The Great Cardboard Case/Hot tub Incident of their first restart.
‘It’ll be getting dark soon, we’re wasting valuable time,’ said Kara nervously. ‘Let’s just head that way,’ she added, pointing towards the path that looked most like the one they had trekked down before they had lost track of Kevin.
‘If we keep the lake on our right, we can use it to guide us,’ she said, vaguely recalling that she’d seen someone do that on a documentary once.
Unfortunately for Kara, she failed to realise that the “documentary” she was citing was actually a movie about a small town called Burkittsville, infamously known for having a spot of bother, thanks to a rather rambunctious Blair Witch.
*
Despite maintaining a brisk pace, and also discovering that they apparently had endless reserves of energy, the journey was a long one. Not having to stop to catch their out-of-phase breath did little to combat the sheer amount of distance they had to traverse. Hal stopped for a moment, a severe burst of heartburn stopping him in his tracks. Kara slowed her pace and walked back over to him.
‘Heartburn again? You haven’t even eaten anything in days,’ said Kara, more out of concern than resentment.
‘I don’t’ know…It’s like your headaches I guess.’
They both knew that they didn’t seem to get hungry or thirsty in this place. Nor could they feel the heat or cold. Why they kept experiencing the similar symptoms of pain left Hal as mystified as Kara. Feeling better, he motioned that he was ready to get going again.
Sticking to the edge of the lake had yielded results; they’d reached the other side just as the sun had set. However, from their current view-point on the edge of the forest, they could see the glistening of water a long distance away from the current body of water they were using as a landmark.
Kara took a deep breath, then vented the temporally-displaced non-air from her lungs.
‘Kara…how many lakes are there here?’ asked Hal, as he recalled their first walk, where they had hit a dead end and Will had noted there was a second lake on the horizon.
‘Well, it’s called Pentney Lakes, so I’m guessing more than one?’ said Kara.
Every path they took seemed to lead them further and further away from where they needed to be. Several huge errors had clearly snowballed until, eventually, they were acres away from where they wanted to be. They were now truly and utterly lost, finally understanding the expression of not being able to “see the forest from the trees.”
A static fog began to line the floor, undisturbed by their legs, as they kicked their way through it.
‘No, no, no, NO!’ yelled Kara, shouting into the thickening mist that was surrounding them. It was then that the all-too-familiar sound of rushing air made its attack on their eardrums.
‘Oh, for fu–’ but Hal’s profanity was cut short, as the ruthless fog swallowed them up and, once more, they disappeared into the past.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Restarting from scratch
3rd Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:05pm
They sat on their picnic bench, Hal smoking the firs
t of his freshly restocked trio of cigarettes. It was Kara’s turn to break the ice.
‘It was a good plan Hal, it wasn’t your fault we got turned around.’
‘Thanks Kar’, but it was a terrible plan. Though I do appreciate you caring enough to lie.’
They shared a smile, and looked out across the tree line to the rear of their lodge. Oddly, the mist hadn’t fully dissipated following the restart. It was barely noticeable, but with their heightened sense of sight that had been bestowed upon them since arriving in their personal bubble of repeated time, they could see it. It was merely a wisp in terms of density, but very much there.
‘What do you think the deal is with the fog?’ Hal asked Kara. ‘I mean, besides it being a literal manifestation of Robert’s sardonic wit,’ he joked, taking another drag. The damn cigarettes didn’t even do all that much for him, it was like breathing in air.
‘God knows,’ said Kara, ‘It’s never followed us back before…has it?’
‘First time I’ve noticed,’ said Hal, shaking his head. ‘It usually only shows up as a useless early-warning system before it whisks us back to the start.’
‘It’s kind of…static right?’ added Kara, waving her hand through the scarcely perceptible mist, which refused to move under her admittedly ineffectual touch.
She scrunched her eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to ignore the whiteness, as if it were the lines on a heated windscreen of a car that she had to cast from her mind so that she could, once more, concentrate on the road ahead.
‘So, I’ve been thinking,’ declared Hal, as he turned to face her with a look of excitement on his face. ‘We need a name.’
With his past-self talking to Jon at the hot tub, Hal and Kara stood up and made their way to the free deckchairs to the right of the tub. They knew through experience that they’d have access to them for another ten or so minutes without being interrupted.
Kara dropped onto a deckchair, eager to continue their conversation.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked.
‘This thing we’re doing, jumping through time, it’s kind of like a superhero thing,’ said Hal, ‘and all the best teams have a name.’
The light-hearted distraction was actually a welcome one to Kara, and she decided to entertain the notion.
‘What, you mean like “the dynamic duo”?’
Hal scrunched his nose up at that.
‘We can do better than that. Something that relates to what we’re going through. Time-Travellers is a bit…one-dimensional, no pun intended.’
‘How about “Time Ghosts,”’ suggested Kara, earnestly.
‘I meeeean…something like that. Only not that,’ said Hal, administering an immediate veto.
‘What’s wrong with Time Ghosts?!’ asked Kara, clearly hurt that Hal didn’t see the potential.
‘Because, how can I put this delicately…it’s terrible,’ said Hal with a smile, and offering her a playful wink. ‘For one thing, we’re not ghosts, and secondly, well, it’s depressing as all hell.’
It was Hal’s turn to give it a try. ‘Time Jumpers?’
‘That’s boring,’ said Kara, getting her own back.
‘You’re boring,’ whispered Hal, feigning a sulk.
Kara took another stab at it. ‘Time Rid–’ but Hal cut her off without hesitation.
‘That’s definitely taken,’ said Hal, recalling the urban-myth he had once read about on an obscure forum. ‘We don’t want to mess with those guys, they’d probably erase us. Besides, I was thinking more along the lines of what we’re doing. Restarting specifically.’
They continued to sit there for a while, running various names past each other, until they eventually found a winner. It was so obvious that they kicked themselves that it had taken them so long to get there.
‘How about Restarters?’ suggested Hal.
‘Nah,’ said Kara dismissively. ‘How about…Restarters?’ she added, a mischievous smile appearing on her face.
‘That’s literally what I just said,’ said Hal.
‘Yeah,’ admitted Kara, ‘but if we ever get to tell our story, now everyone will think I came up with it.’
‘No one’s going to buy that,’ chuckled Hal.
‘Time will tell, I guess…’ said Kara.
Standing up for dramatic effect, and putting on his best movie trailer voice, he took it for a test-drive.
‘In a world, where time itself is broken, caught in a loop that no one else can perceive, only The Restarters can restart the past…’
‘…to save the future,’ added Kara, in an equally dramatic voice.
‘You know, as tag-lines go, that’s surprisingly not terrible,’ said Hal. ‘Unlike your trailer voice. How embarrassing for you,’ he added, pretending to cringe.
‘You’re ridiculous!’ said Kara, laughing. ‘Besides, we haven’t done much future-saving. All we’ve done so far is get lost in the woods and push some beer bottles over.’
‘Every elite team has to start somewhere,’ said Hal with a shrug. ‘Besides, we’re kind of writing the rule book as we go along. We’ll figure this thing out.’
Kara wasn’t as convinced. ‘Uh huh. Right. Come on then Restarter, let’s get to work. We need a plan for today.’
They began by running through the list of things they knew, which, as it turned out, was a relatively moderate list. They had learned that they could move things when in close proximity to their past-selves, but only inanimate objects (or as Kara defined it, “Nothing living.”) Following their first restart, they had also discovered that their past-selves hadn’t returned to Fir Lodge after taking Jerry back. Hal speculated that something must have happened between them dropping Jerry home and their return to the lodge, and that this “event” had put them out-of-phase with time itself. He reasoned that, as a result, they wouldn’t be able to see themselves after the event happened, as they would be out of sync with their personal timeline.
Despite Hal’s innate ability to make even the most straight-forward of sentences overly complicated, she thought she saw what he was getting at.
‘Sooo, you think things went south for us during the walk home?’
‘That’s exactly what I just said,’ said Hal, completely unaware that he’d taken the long way around with his explanation.
‘Makes sense I guess,’ said Kara. ‘In that case, I think we need to wait for our past-selves to arrive with Jerry at Kevin’s place, then we can follow ourselves back to see exactly what went down?’
Hal liked that idea. ‘Oooh! We could stakeout Kevin’s place from across the road? Get an early start tomorrow, follow ourselves on our walk to the forest, only this time, break away and stay by his lodge. Sound good?’
‘Motion seconded,’ confirmed Kara.
‘Motion carried,’ said Hal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stakeout
3rd Restart – Saturday Morning, 9:02am
They found their spot at around 9am that Saturday morning, and settled in for the long haul ahead of them. The Restarters had perfect line-of-sight to Kevin’s lodge, and were excited by the prospect of rigging the system in order to see just what had happened on their walk home. They began sharing their theories on what they expected to uncover, each more outlandish than the last. In the end, they decided to make a bet.
‘So, we’re agreed?’ said Kara, reiterating the terms. ‘If our past-selves are greeted by time-travellers, and jump through a swirling portal into the past–’
‘A green swirling portal,’ corrected Hal.
‘Fine. A green swirling portal. If it’s that, you win, and we’ll follow them through it on the next restart. And if it’s literally anything else, I win, and get to keep your pack of chewing-gum.’
They shook hands, the fizzle of blue light preventing them from indulging in doing so for longer than a second or two.
At approximately 11am, their past-selves could finally be seen approaching from the road to their left. Kara took the opport
unity to punch Hal in the arm to snap him from his failed attempt at sleeping, the electricity far more potent now, given the proximity to their past-selves, causing him to bolt upright.
‘They’re here,’ she whispered.
‘Jeeze, thanks creepy child from Poltergeist,’ said Hal, rubbing his arm.
‘Don’t you think we should get closer to Kevin’s place?’ asked Kara. ‘Why are we sitting so far away, it’s not like anyone can see us?’ she added.
‘Because,’ said Hal, ‘it’s a stakeout.’
The reality was that Hal wanted to feel more connected to the world. Sitting further away created the illusion that they could be seen, and that induced a feeling that the stakes were higher than they would have been had they just waited on Kevin’s doorstep.
‘Gah, this is so exciting isn’t it? Just a couple of time-travellers, staking out a key moment in their own history? We’re like proper detectives!’
Kara shrugged.
‘I’ll be more excited once we find out exactly what happened to us,’ she said.
*
Hal’s excitement wore off exponentially as the seconds evolved into minutes, and the minutes graduated into hours. They learned pretty quickly that the idea of a stakeout was much cooler in theory than it was in practice. Precisely nothing happened until the late afternoon, when Kevin pulled up on his driveway, in what Hal assumed to be a four-wheel-drive pickup truck of some description. He wasn’t all that au fait with vehicles, so couldn’t make out the model, but it looked relatively expensive, despite the worn exterior. A midnight blue, two-seater vehicle, what it lacked in passenger practicality it more than made up for with its open-top storage area. The paintwork looked like it could use a touch-up, as if to indicate the vehicle had really been put through its paces. What was surely once a shiny exterior was now more dulled and matte-like.
Kevin looked around shiftily as he opened the door of his truck, allowing Jerry to jump out from the passenger side. Moving to the rear of his vehicle, he unlatched the back panel of the truck, and pulled a long black bag from the back. He slid it all the way out, until it collided noisily with the ground. Hoisting it onto his shoulder, Kevin awkwardly made his way to his front door, unlocking it with his free hand. Once inside, he kicked the front door closed behind him after Jerry was through, but the door failed to catch, and was left ajar by a few inches, failing to shut fully.
