An Echo Through Time: A Novella

by Nicholas Licalsi

  By the time I returned home for the traditional March 20 meatloaf dinner all I had gotten my hands on was a baseball bat and a pellet gun. I had convinced myself that these were better options, since a gun would be too messy, complicated, and loud. When the killer showed up tonight, a bat and some stealth would be enough for me to prevent anything from happening. I didn’t plan to give him any time to get to the back door. A gun would alert everyone in the neighborhood of what I’d accomplished. If the worst-case scenario happened tonight, then I could transport myself to another universe and use the firearm.

  I walked to Gretchen’s in the middle of the night with the bat and the fake gun. I was glad the suburban town was too exhausted from their Sunday chores to notice a delinquent like me roaming the streets with the baseball bat at my side.

  When I got to Gretchen’s place, I hunkered down behind some bushes in her backyard and watched the fence gate and listened. After what felt like moments but was realistically hours, my watch read three o’clock. I listened for the tell-tale signs of a car door opening and closing. It wasn’t until four-thirty that I heard a car door open and shut. It was followed by an engine turning on, and soon I heard a car drive down the street.

  By five-thirty, the killer hadn’t made an appearance, and I needed to get back before anyone saw me and worried enough to call the cops. I ditched the bat in a trashcan and slipped away in the last of the dark hours. I was in bed with enough time to have a quick nap before my alarm went off and I had to get ready for school.

  * * *

  I nearly fell asleep in my first class of the day. After the bell let us out, I broke routine and darted to Gretchen’s first period. We didn’t usually meet up until after our second period, but I had to see her.

  I expected her not to be there, and when most of the students coming out of the classroom weren’t her I had nearly accepted the theory as truth. I told myself stories of how the killer had gotten to her without my noticing. I was about to leave my post by the door when she finally walked out of the classroom. I smiled at her. Her short, brown hair was dusting her soft shoulders.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, confused.

  I smiled, “I just wanted to see you.”

  “That’s sweet,” she replied, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Want to walk me to my next class?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  Gretchen’s next class was on the other side of the building from mine. If we took our time, which we would, I would be late to my second period. This was why we didn’t meet up after first period. Despite this, I walked with her, dismissing a single tardiness as nothing in the vastness of the cosmos that was my life.

  I grasped her hand and started slowly walking down the hallway. As we weaved in and out of the hordes of students, Gretchen asked, “Hey, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. If she was killed today, and odds were good that it would happen, I would be off in another reality preparing to live this day all over again.

  “Can we meet up to study college algebra? At The Lighthouse?”

  “Coffee and math. Sure, I can do that,” I said, thinking, Coffee would be amazing right now. I debated if I should capitalize on my tardiness and walk into the teacher’s lounge to take some coffee from them. As long as I did it confidently, no one would say anything.

  “Great. And remember, my senior pictures are this weekend. Can you make it to those? I want to take a few with you.” She squeezed my hand. I could tell she had a bounce in her step. This doomed girl was excited about an event that would likely never happen to her.

  “No problem. I’ll be there,” I answered quickly and confidently in spite of the truth I knew. To add to the illusion, I asked, “What should I wear?” I acted as interested as possible.

  “A nice sweater, with maybe a collared shirt under it. I don’t want it to be too fancy, but not too lax,” she replied.

  We walked the rest of the way to class sharing idle chitchat. The only thing I could focus on was the subtle skip in her step, letting it pull my hand higher and lower as she walked.

  * * *

  I sat down next to Gretchen at the lunch table. She had beat me there this time and was already unpacking her lunch. I examined the familiar contents and wondered which one would kill her this time. The green Jell-O in its small plastic container seemed innocent enough, since it didn’t have a peanut suspended in it. I unpacked my lunch and attempted to enjoy the remaining time I had next to her.

  “Do you want half of this brownie?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing that if I didn’t eat it, she would leave it untouched. It wouldn’t be the dangerous half, either.

  I chewed the prepackaged treat as she asked me what my plans for the summer were. I answered with a nonchalant shrug that I was going to get a summer job. The question was pointless, since by summer I’d be gone. That is unless she survived this lunch. If past performance was indicative of future results, I had no reason to believe she would.

  “What are we going to do when I go off to college, Todd?” she asked. She made no effort to bury the lede, and I was grateful for that.

  “Well, you’re going to college in-state, so we could visit and keep things going. My parents are pretty relaxed.”

  “You know I’m going to be eighteen in a few months, and you’ll be sixteen for a few more. That means that I’ll be an adult dating a minor.”

  “You’re fourteen months older than me,” I said, unamused. “It’s not a big deal. And it’s definitely not illegal, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” The tone sounded harsher than I expected, so I smiled in an attempt to blunt the comment.

  I was trying to think of a way to ease her into a more comfortable conversation as she finished the last half of her sandwich. The only bit of food she had left. The bit of food that would likely kill by poison, suffocation, or allergen.

  “But what if we start having different experiences and we grow apart? College might change me. Do we even want to have a long-distance relationship?”

  I scoffed, louder than was appropriate. The idea of a long-distance relationship being a hindrance in this day and age was something only her generation would worry about. “It’s not the 1800s, Gretchen. We’re not writing each other once a week and having the letter carried across the state on horseback. I can pull out my handy-dandy pocket computer and see your face for virtually free, no matter where you are in the world. At any point after 2010, a long-distance relationship is virtually equivalent to a normal relationship. Especially if you compare them against previous centuries.” Then I added, “Assuming we are on the same planet.”

  She smiled and finished the last bite of her sandwich. “Are you planning on going to Venus anytime soon?”

  “God no! That place is a mess.” She looked at me, confused, and I explained, “I’d head to Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons. Callisto is essentially the Vegas of the outer planets, whereas Venus is the Sicily of the inner planets. It used to be nice and beautiful, but then corporations and mobs ruined it with their greed and corruption. Luckily, your generation won’t live long enough to have to deal with planetary political problems.” I realized I had been rambling, probably due to being on edge about Gretchen’s imminent death. I looked across the table to see what suspicious look she might have on her face.

  She was beaming “You’re so good at putting things into perspective. You make up these wild scenarios to distract me and make my problems look so small. How do you do it?”

  “I just say what’s on my mind,” I answered. And at the moment the only thing on my mind was that Gretchen hadn’t died yet. Maybe a long-distance relationship was in our future.

  * * *

  The final bell rang, and nothing had happened to Gretchen yet. She was still skipping around in excitement when we walked out of the school. There was a bit of a skip in my step, too. I was trying to keep my mind away from the idea that she would live until tomorrow.

>   After she surprisingly survived lunch, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept expecting something to happen to her in the afternoon classes, but those were uneventful, too. My mind wanted to let its guard down, but I couldn’t allow that. Gretchen was going to die, and I had to figure out how it would happen.

  She only survived past lunch in a dozen realities. She would survive either by the nurse’s efforts or what I could only assume was Gretchen’s luck making one of its scarce appearances. Then she would wind up dying in her fifth period. The longest I had ever seen her survive, outside my first visit, was sixth. The heartbreak I experienced when that happened was astounding. I spent three full lives away from this time period trying to get her off my mind. It didn’t work, and I inevitably found myself back in high school. At the moment, I worked to keep hope at bay as we walked to the senior parking lot holding hands.

  “You want to just take my car to The Lighthouse?” Gretchen asked.

  I had technically just gotten my license months ago, and while I had been driving cars and far more complicated machinery for lifetimes, she didn’t know that.

  “No, let’s take mine,” I proposed. I felt like driving, thinking that I would have more control being the one behind the wheel.

  We walked to the end of the street and faced the wide crosswalk. A few kids were crossing it, but most were still milling around on one side of the street or another. I looked both ways out of habit. A few cars were lined up for the freshman pickup line. A black SUV and a red sedan were sitting at a stop sign, waiting to turn into the freshman and sophomore pick up lanes. They were waiting for us to cross, so we started out.

  Gretchen was on my left, between me and the waiting cars. I heard a motor start accelerating and thought nothing of it. I looked down and saw where the yellow lanes were stopped by the crosswalk. We kept walking.

  Then Gretchen screeched, and I turned to look in her direction. The black SUV was charging straight at us. The sun glinted off the windshield, and I couldn’t make out who was behind the wheel. No one could do anything. The world seemed to slow as I thought through my options. The car was too close, and I couldn’t run in either direction. We were an equal distance from both sides of the street. It didn’t matter which way we turned, the car was on a collision course. I knew it would follow us and run Gretchen down. I took a deep breath, since it was my safest option.

  The next instant, I opened my eyes to find myself in my bed. My heart was slow, but started to pound quickly as my mind took control of the new body and adjusted its senses accordingly.

  I scrambled off of the bed and sat cross-legged on the ground. I did my best to relax and focus. I took a deep breath and exhaled. The floor felt familiar to me as I tried to rush into another Todd’s body.

  I cleared my mind successfully. The next thing I knew, I was lying on cold concrete in the brisk sun of a March afternoon. My left shoulder felt like it was on fire. I ignored it and used my right arm to push myself off the ground. A crowd had gathered, but I ignored them and looked back toward the middle of the street.

  Skid marks and blood painted the white crosswalk. Gretchen’s mangled body lay crumpled in the center of the street. She was only feet away from where I had left her. There was a commotion, and the faculty was beginning to arrive. It would only be a matter of time before the police arrived. There was no sign of the black SUV or its driver.

  Teachers couldn’t figure out if they should console kids or shoo them away to disperse the crowd. I saw an older man walking my way. He looked like a teacher, but in the confusion I couldn’t say what subject he taught. The old man was picking at his teeth as he took in the chaos around him. I walked in the opposite direction, toward Gretchen’s lifeless body.

  Everyone stared, but no one approached. The thing gave off an aura of destruction and death. Curious students wanted to see it, but none were courageous enough to come closer. After all, her bad luck may be contagious. I knew that if it was, I had already caught as much of it as possible. Another Gretchen was dead, her teenage life thrown away because I couldn’t do anything to save her. She had almost survived today, but she didn’t. She was dead again. It was my fault because I didn’t do anything to get in the way of the car. I ran like a coward.

  I stared down at her mangled body, trying to use it to retrieve memories of the incident that might help the police. Her corpse was bleeding onto the pavement. The impact had knotted her limbs, and she resembled a marionette doll without its strings being pulled. Her face looked away, as if she was ashamed of what I had brought on her. I didn’t dare inspect it. That was too gruesome for me.

  “Come here, son. No need to be by her. Come sit down,” the old teacher said.

  I ignored him. He didn’t understand. No one understood. I had to be near her. Gretchen’s deaths were becoming more and more violent. I wondered how much worse it could get before it came to a finale. Part of me doubted a finale would ever come. I was the only one who could observe the pattern. No one in this world would know that I had watched her go into anaphylactic shock over a peanut days before. If days were even the right way to measure the distance between those two experiences. I could see their correlation, but couldn’t change it.

  My life was like a needle pulling a long line of thread between different fabrics of reality. I was the only one who could observe the cadence of her deaths. The material itself was made up of lives crisscrossing each other, but always heading from one end of the cloth to the other. I cut in and out, sewing them all together for my purpose, or a higher pattern that I couldn’t see. I’d poke in and run along one fiber of one fabric for a minuscule distance, compared to the whole thing, and then pop out.

  “Here, let’s get you to the nurse.” The man’s voice was coming from my left.

  As if the nurse could help me, I thought before continuing to ignore him. I watched the blood leak onto the hard pavement. Grooves would catch it, and her blood would flow in them like canals and rivers.

  The man said something else, but I didn’t hear him. The statement was followed by a sharp pain that erupted in my left arm. I couldn’t ignore him anymore. The shock woke me up from my daze, and I let out a scream of pain. I removed my focus from Gretchen’s corpse and onto the teacher, who had unceremoniously grabbed my mangled arm.

  “What was that for?” I yelled.

  “You were dwelling on this. You really shouldn’t,” he said, unmoved by my shouts.

  I shook my head. He was wrong. He was young despite his age; he didn’t know anything. “I have to focus on this. I have to remember all the details, so I can prevent it.”

  “It’s already been done. You can’t do anything to change it.”

  He was right. I couldn’t change anything. This could happen in a dozen more realities, and Gretchen would still be run down by the car. “I can’t leave her, I can’t save her, I can’t do anything. Why am I trying?” I looked at him, my eyes welling with tears. My shattered arm kept him from physically comforting me. But his face showed he understood how hopeless I felt.

  “Sometimes all you can do is try. But right now isn’t that time. Right now you need to rest and heal,” he pointed out.

  He was right. My body was broken, and they would soon be here to pump me full of arcane opioids to keep my pain at bay. It would ruin my memory of the events, and prevent me from helping the police. I had to get out of this universe, I had to go see the next Gretchen, to save her from this attack. But I couldn’t do that if the attacker was a mystery to me. I looked at the man. He was focused on me and nothing else. The chaos from the onlookers and the sirens didn’t bother him. My world was Gretchen, and right now his world was me. “Why can’t I stop?” I asked, not explaining the question or expecting an answer. “I can’t save her, I can’t change anything. I don’t even owe her anything, anymore. But I keep going to see her. I keep watching her die. I want to quit but I can’t.” I looked down at Gretchen’s body. “Why can’t I stop?”

  I expected the man to be c
onfused, but he looked at me as if he understood everything. Surely he chalked up my rant as just ravings from the shock, but the words he said next were precisely what I needed to hear. “You can’t quit because there’s still hope left in your heart. You’re connected to her, and even when she’s gone, you will still see her. She lives on in your mind and your heart. Take the time you need to heal. Take the time you need to let the fire of hope inside you grow. And when it is strong enough, then you will be prepared to move on, see her again, and bring her the future she deserves. She may be gone now, but the way you live the rest of your life is what will keep her alive. Don’t forget that.” He rubbed my good arm, and his hand was warm and comforting. He gave me a smile as if what he said was perfect for me. Then he left me alone like I wanted and merged into the crowd.

  I looked back at Gretchen’s body, thinking, contemplating what I would do next. How can I find the SUV driver? I asked myself. I knew it was the wrong question. I had to find a way to not give up hope. In the distance, I heard sirens. My arm continued to burn in pain, but I only had minutes until I would be given morphine and not be able to think straight. If there were any clues to Gretchen’s death, I needed to search my memory before I was drugged. Then again, maybe primitively induced relaxation would rekindle my hope.

  7

  Lamp

  I spent three days in the hospital, which was three days longer than I would have wasted if I was born fifty years later. Normally I would have left the body to heal on its own and never come back. This time I wanted to learn the details of the driver as fast as possible.

  The accident shattered my shoulder, and they put me in a cast that immobilized my entire left arm. There was a decent chance this body wouldn’t ever fully recover, but I didn’t plan to stick around long enough to find out. The doctor told me to stay in a wheelchair, despite my legs working fine. I fought it, but in the end my loving mother forced me to comply.