Fir Lodge

by Sean McMahon

  And on that sombre note, they waited for the personification of their cause of death to leave the basement, both of them flitting away from the glorified coffin that was Kevin’s home at the soonest opportunity.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Kevin

  Saturday Evening, 10:59pm

  Kevin awoke, his mind swimming amidst a nauseating grogginess. His thankfulness that it was pitch-black quickly dissipated, devolving into panic, as his need for a dark room to sleep off this hangover-from-hell transformed into a complete lack of spatial awareness.

  A sliver of blue-hued light cut across the floor, two metres away from him on his right-hand side. His brain quickly processed a list of likely options, and he slowly realised it was shining from the other side of a doorway. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, familiar shapes began to crawl into focus. The fogginess of the pounding headache that was debilitating his eyesight began to retreat, allowing him to assess his surroundings more deductively.

  He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, like a blunt blade of a guillotine. He pulled his head away from the cold, jagged metal, and attempted to use his hands to push himself up. It was then that he noticed his hands would not separate, bound by a force he could not see.

  Bringing his hands up to his face, he tried to ascertain what he was up against. The light from the crack under the doorway glistened against his wrists, and for a terrifying moment he thought it was blood. Kevin inhaled deeply, which sent him off-balance and caused his neck to collide once more with the thin metal surface. Expecting the feeling of inertia to afflict him forever, he was relieved to discover that his mind was able to focus once again.

  He brought his hands back up, then realised it wasn’t blood.

  “Tape,” he thought, allowing his panic to subside.

  Instinctively, he then tried to move his feet apart, rolling his eyes at the fact that, predictably, they too were bound. Kevin tried to yell, the noise a feeble whimper that was dampened by the fact that that he was also gagged. Kevin tried to push his fingers underneath the tape wrapped around his head, but eventually gave up.

  Dragging himself forward, he rolled onto his side, edging towards the slice of eerily-glowing light that was creeping beneath the bottom of the doorway to his right. There was barely enough of a gap for him to see a hint of the other side, but it provided Kevin with just enough information for him to know precisely where he was.

  ‘Um herrrrm!’ he muffled, then instantly froze, realising how stupid he was for disturbing the silence. What if he had heard? What if he was coming for him right now?

  Now he knew he was in his own home and, more specifically, in the storage room of his own basement. He realised the sharp metal was actually the shelving unit for his old paint tins, discarded creosote, and reserves of dog food that he kept a safe distance away from the potentially hazardous chemicals. He also knew that he wasn’t going to escape by doing a MacGyver, and creating a ballistic weapon with crusty old paint and wood preservative.

  He shimmied along to the far corner of his prison cell, searching for anything that he could use to aid his escape. Eventually, his hands fell upon an old coffee table, concealed under what he remembered to be a dust sheet.

  Using his head and hands to form a pincer, he pulled at the sheet to reveal it. The table was ready to fall apart, and the wooden legs would have made a poor weapon, as he recollected why he had demoted the thing to the basement in the first place. The table was held together with wooden dowels, cheap glue, and a hefty dose of willpower. He grimaced, as he realised there wasn’t much in the way of resources.

  Kevin continued his quest, remaining prone as he did so, back to the metal cabinet. As he attempted to use the edge of the shelving-unit to cut through the tape, he discovered that he had clearly done far too good a job at sanding them down when he’d built them a couple of years ago.

  After what felt like an eternity, he realised there was nothing he could use to escape. It was then that he began to come to terms with the fact of how screwed he was. Kevin heard a muffled sound of what seemed like crying, realising Jerry was upstairs, alone with the monster that had dragged him here.

  A tear rolled down his cheek. Pulling himself together, now more determined than ever, he began searching the floor of the room all over again, inch by inch.

  His boy needed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Punxsutawney Purgatory Paradox

  18th Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:07pm

  They watched in silence, as the afternoon sunlight edged ever-closer to their favourite picnic bench at the rear of the lodge. It was a fresh restart, and their friends, as well as a past incarnation of themselves, were arriving in their respective cars.

  Jon had just finished welcoming Will and Stacey for the nineteenth time, and was now, true to form, tinkering with the hot tub behind them, which meant that they had about five more minutes before they’d have to free up the bench.

  It was an odd sensation, the once-beautiful but now-saturated haze of the afternoon sun flickering between the leaves of the trees, acting in unison with the ever-thickening, static white fog to create a notably dismal ambience.

  Hal, once again, stared deep into the whiteness. Seemingly reading his mind, Kara broke the silence, pulling Hal back down to earth from his racing thoughts.

  ‘The fog’s getting thicker with every restart. It’s getting harder to see stuff,’ said Kara.

  ‘That can’t be good,’ said Hal. ‘It definitely feels like we’re not as tethered to this place as much as we were at the start.’

  Kara nodded and contributed another observation.

  ‘And those guys,’ she said, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb towards the lodge, where her friends were congregating, ‘their voices are definitely getting more muffled, it’s getting harder to hear the gang talking…’

  ‘Except the music, it’s as clear as if we were in-phase with them…’ said Hal, referring to the never-ending playlist that echoed throughout the lodge on a constant cycle whenever their friends were awake.

  ‘Yeah…that is weird,’ agreed Kara. ‘Why do you think that is?’

  Hal rattled off an overly-complicated theory involving decibel levels and reverberations, which immediately caused Kara’s eyes to glaze over, making her feel sorry that she’d asked. She sat up straight, and Hal stopped his trademark tirade of techno-babble, knowing her well enough to know that she was gearing up to share an idea.

  ‘We need to try something different, instead of trying to change the events that lead to us leaving to take Jerry back to the murder house. Each and every time the flutterby effect–’

  ‘You can’t change the butterfly effect to flutterby effect Kara, it’s never going to stick,’ said Hal.

  ‘But you agreed that butterflies should so be called flutterby’s. It’s literally all they do.’

  ‘Yeah, but you can’t jump out of your blue, police call-box–’

  ‘Time-travelling car, surely?’ interjected Kara.

  ‘Fine, whatever your time-machine of choice may be, shouting that the “flutterby effect” is…I can’t remember what I was getting at, but my point is it doesn’t sound as cool.’

  ‘Can I finish what I was saying now?’ she asked, wishing to finish her thought before she too forgot what her point was. It was getting harder to concentrate in this place, she couldn’t decide if it was a side-effect of prolonged time-travel, or if there was a more sinister reason behind it.

  Hal casually mimed the shooting of duel pistols in her direction, with his elbows resting behind him on the picnic table.

  ‘Each and every time the flutterby effect,’ said Kara, ignoring Hal, who was rolling his eyes, ‘stops us from achieving any notable change. It’s like time wants us to fail, maybe because we also need to save Kevin?’

  It was true that, with the exception of accidentally murdering Robert, every change they tried to make was ultimately corrected by an unpredictable counter-m
easure, presumably deployed by time to counteract their meddling. Every time they thought they were successfully causing a ripple, they realised all they were really achieving was adding the tiniest water-droplet to an ocean of pre-determined, and perfectly orchestrated, destiny.

  Kara continued. ‘What if, instead of trying to change things here, we need to be changing things there?’

  ‘You mean where it happened?’ asked Hal.

  ‘Yeah!’ confirmed Kara.

  ‘Go on,’ said Hal, pulling his elbows away from the table and sitting up.

  ‘What if we can change things where we are due to die before our past-selves get there?’

  ‘You know that’s impossible,’ said Hal, shooting down her plan. ‘Our past-selves are too far away for us to interact with the environment. We’d have the combined physicality of a kitten’s burp.’

  ‘We would initially, but what if we practice, focus on increasing our range?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much we could achieve in the sixty-odd seconds our alive-selves are going to take to walk up Kevin’s driveway…’

  ‘What if one of us was distracting Jerry?’ suggested Kara. ‘To buy us more time? Still in range, but delaying the arrival of our past-selves at Kevin’s lodge, just enough for you and I to make changes in the basement?’

  Hal had to admit, it was a good idea, in principle at least. By maximising the duration of their proximity to their past-selves, they could theoretically increase the amount of time they were able to interact with their environment. Hal wasn’t entirely convinced, however, by what they could actually change in the basement.

  ‘But what can we really change whilst our killer is getting his kill-room oh-so just right? All we’re really achieving is giving him more time to sharpen his psycho-knife. Maybe even allow him to get a few more reps in with his dumbbells so he can drain the air out of me just that bit faster?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ said Kara, rising from the bench and adjusting her superfluous spectacles, positioning her legs shoulder-length apart, and placing her hands on her waist in a full-on Darth Vader pose.

  ‘We’re going to follow his every move for the next two days, memorise everything that happens before zero hour–’

  ‘Zero hour. Nice. Did you know that was the title of this cool comic abou–’ but Kara cut his interruption short.

  She needed to say the words out loud. To give life to her thoughts.

  ‘Hal, we’re going to kill the bastard.’

  *

  ‘Damn dude, that was so dramatic!’ said Hal excitedly. ‘Like, even the sun was behind you, casting this totally boss shadow. Don’t get me wrong, the whole “hand on the waist Vader thing” looked damn impressive and all, but…there’s a huge difference between pushing things over, flipping switches and, well, killing a man dead with, what? Light-petting?’

  ‘Gross. I hate the word “petting”, Hal.’

  ‘I know, that’s why I said it I think…’

  ‘Douche.’

  ‘Ha! Plus,’ added Hal, ‘there’re the ethical implications of committing a murder…’

  ‘I think our conscience can be pretty clear on this one,’ said Kara, a look of ferocity in her eyes. ‘Not least, because of the fact that we wouldn’t be committing the crime in the physical world, given that we’re time-travelling astral-projected photocopies of ourselves.’ Kara smiled, extremely pleased with herself for how that sentence came out. It was the sort of techno-babble that Hal was so fond of using.

  ‘You’ve been spending too much time around me, now you’re really starting to sound like me,’ noted Hal, also sporting a smile, ‘I’d have gone with “facsimiles” rather than “photocopies” though, but that’s just me.’

  Kara was on too much of a roll to entertain Hal’s vernacular hijacking to stop now, eager to win Hal around to her way of thinking with another fact.

  ‘Not to mention, by the way,’ said Kara, ‘that the only reason we’re even having this conversation is because of the guy, you know, killing us in the first place!’

  Hal had to agree, this wasn’t exactly a black and white moral dilemma, it was matter of survival.

  ‘Okay…settle down, Agent 47. Assuming we can remain close-enough to our super-fine past-selves long enough to instigate a chain reaction that could lead to taking out our murderer, what would happen next?’ There was no way he was even going to consider this unless they could be certain of where the outcome would leave them.

  ‘The past versions of us will drop off Jerry,’ said Kara, ‘then…I guess they’d walk back to Fir Lodge–’

  ‘Leaving Jerry at home alone with a slowly decaying murderer?’ interrupted Hal, ‘Whilst his owner is trapped forever in his own basement?’

  She winced. ‘That…is a concern, I agree…’

  Hal shifted in his seat uneasily, glanced over his shoulder, and offered up his seat to his past-self. He gestured towards the expansive garden, and they started walking, deciding to plan their first ever murder-plot on the go.

  ‘So, to summarise,’ said Hal, ‘our plan is to practice extending our range so we can operate unhindered by the laws governing this…paradoxical Punxsutawney purgatory?’

  ‘You’re proud of that one, aren’t you,’ said Kara, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘More than a little,’ said Hal. ‘You know, like in Groundhog Day, the town they were in was called–’

  ‘Nobody cares Hal,’ said Kara, cutting him off with a smile.

  Hal continued. ‘Right, anyway, then we have to devise a way to kill a man, the one thing we can’t interact with in this place I might add, using only an empty basement. Then, finally, we have to free another man from a locked room, before the timeline readjusts and erases us from existence entirely? Just so I’m clear on what you’re proposing?’

  Kara stared at him defiantly. ‘Well, when you say it like that, it sounds stupid, but…yes. That’s our plan.’

  Hal smiled devilishly. ‘I love this plan. And I’m excited to be a part of it. When do we start?’

  ‘Unless you have somewhere you need to be, I was thinking right now?’ proposed Kara.

  Hal took out his ghost-like phone, which was still as dead battery-wise as he was pulse-wise, and proceeded to scroll through his imaginary calendar app.

  ‘Nope, I’m free.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Kara, with another one of her trademark eye-rolls. ‘You really committed to the bit there.’

  ‘Let’s just hope I can commit murder with the same vivacity,’ said Hal.

  ‘To be fair, your vivaciousness has never held you back before.’

  Hal let out a thick chuckle, stood up, then stretched. It did nothing for his muscles, but mimicking the process was oddly comforting, if nothing more than for the small hit of nostalgia it gave him.

  ‘Damn Kara, do you ever just take a moment sometimes, trying to take in how insane all of this is?’

  ‘Not nearly enough. Which part in particular?’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Hal. ‘There are so many parts. I mean, this is Norfolk. It’s hardly somewhere you’d expect to find an other-worldly hub full of batshit time-anomalies. And yet here we are, dressed like this, doing these things…’

  They had come here to get drunk, and relax with their friends. Instead, they had somehow become time-travellers dressed as ghost-hunters, on a mission to stop a real-life serial killer. Kara had to admit, the whole situation sounded utterly ridiculous. Hal’s mood was surprisingly infectious, however, and she found herself giggling too.

  ‘Busting ghosts with scooby-snacks,’ said Kara whimsically, realising, for the first time, that Hal must have been really in his element. ‘Admit it, you’re secretly loving every minute of this aren’t you.’

  Hal balked at the accusation, though his smile betrayed the authenticity of his reply.

  ‘I mean…I was considerably more comfortable before we settled on committing time-murder…’

  Ka
ra screwed up her nose in an inquisitive manner, pulled out her magnifying glass, and brought it up to her left eye.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ said Hal, but there was no telling her. ‘I mean it Kara, don’t.’

  And in her best attempt yet at a Velma impression, she uttered but a single word.

  ‘Jinkies!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Haunted

  Saturday Morning, 3:01am

  Jasmine was having difficulty sleeping. Rolling onto her side, she glanced at her phone to check the time, grimacing at the display which told her it was 3:01am.

  ‘Urgh,’ she said to herself quietly, not wishing to wake her roommates. Kara was asleep in the bed opposite her, tossing and turning in her sleep, presumably trying to combat the impending hangover that had no doubt already begun to dig its claws in. Jon and Rachel were out for the count in the double bed in front of her, with Jon’s snoring bouncing off the walls and into her eardrums.

  Up until now, she’d been fortunate that her pregnancy had gone easy on her, but it seemed that was about to change, now that it had finally begun messing with her sleep patterns. She saw her near-empty glass of water on the bedside table, illuminated by the intermittent flashing blue light of her phone, the moonlight casting a shadow of the glass onto the wall.

  Jasmine reached for the glass, drained what was barely a mouthful and frowned, knowing she would need more. Using her legs, she pushed the duvet cover off of herself and begrudgingly pulled herself out of bed, being careful not to disturb the multiple sleeping-beauties, and made her way to the bedroom door, prising it open quietly. As she turned around to gently pull it closed, she noticed an object moving in the dark. It was Jon’s wireless speaker, which had seemingly fallen over. Jasmine shrugged, knowing that the shadows were clearly playing tricks on her, and made her way up the wooden staircase, being careful not to walk into the adjacent pool table.