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1
THOUGH I WAS REELING from Helena’s murder, for the first time in a long time I had some sense of what I had to do. And did I maybe use some of my enemy’s logic to distance myself from the death? To pretend that Helena wasn’t real? I’m afraid that maybe I did.
The other Daniel’s survival after I left his version of the present had not assured him that this new world would survive if I went back and fixed the past. He was not going to let me live. That meant if I returned to the past he would follow me. Somehow he could hone in on me. He said I had appeared to him in a dream and I had no reason to doubt him. I didn’t think there was any way I could escape him, and I had to if I was going to delete the world in which I was now trapped and return home.
The conclusion was simple. It was him or me. Only one Daniel Wells could survive; that much he was right about. I just had to make sure it was me. Of course, that was where my sense of direction ended. I didn’t know how to find him, and the idea that he could pop up anywhere scared the hell out of me. If his ability to sense my location could work both ways, I didn’t have any inkling as to how. Until I could find out where he was, I had to stay in this new reality. I didn’t think he would try to attack me in the past because he liked this new world too much and wouldn’t want to do anything to make it go away. In this universe I was a target, which was okay if I could use it to my advantage. I couldn’t go back to the house, and I couldn’t go to see my parents. I didn’t think they had anything to fear from the other Daniel, at least as long as I didn’t involve them. He’d want them as part of his stolen, successful life, though I have no idea how he expected to pull that off.
That left Suzy. I still wanted to see her, and there was a chance that my alternate version would go looking for her. She hadn’t believed me about all the time traveling shit back in 1993, but I could see how in Daniel’s twisted mind she was something of a witness who could spoil his fantasy.
I had the note with Suzy’s address on the phone, and after swinging by there other Daniel’s house and swiftly removing a new change of clothes I drove to her house as fast as I could. It was a small place in Willow Grove. I didn’t see any suspicious vehicles along the street. I wondered if Daniel would need a car. All bets were off for someone who could pass in and out of the present at will. It didn’t matter. All my scattered thoughts just meant that my mind was trying and failing to rationalize everything I’d experienced. I had seen my wife die and the strong mental block I had erected months earlier that said “time travel worlds are not the real world and they don’t matter all that much” only went so far to dull the pain. Hearing the other Daniel use that same logic as rationale for killing had thrown everything off-balance.
2
I parked the car and ran to the door. I rang the doorbell and, after a second’s hesitation, followed it up with a quick knock. A few seconds later I heard the sound of locks and latches and then Suzy opened the door. She looked young for a woman in her early forties. She had straightened her hair at some point and in many ways she looked even sexier than she had during our summertime romance a solid twenty years earlier.
She was wearing pajamas and her hair was messy but there was no fog of sleep in her eyes. Her mouth hung agape as she stared at me. “Oh my God. Justin? How? What?”
“It’s Daniel,” I said quietly. This was all too much.
“Oh. Right.” Her forehead scrunched and I saw the light wrinkles that had just started to set in. “How...how can you be here? We all thought you were dead.” She cocked her head to the side as she studied me. “God, you look...the same.”
“To me our last date was yesterday,” I rambled. “It’s like I told you back then, I’m a time traveler. I didn’t mean to come back here but it happened. I’m sorry to come here so late...I’m so sorry about everything, but there’s so much I need to tell you.”
She hesitated, and then stepped aside. Her initial fright had subsided quickly and seemed to have been replaced with curiosity. I guess some part of her had believed me over all those years. “Come in,” she said. She stepped back and I entered her house. Somehow, without warning, the floodgates opened. I burst into tears and fell into Suzy’s arms. She held me with a stiff embrace that gradually softened. When I regained a little composure she walked me into her living room and helped me sit down in a chair with a clear view of the front door. I fully expected the door to burst open at any moment and to see my clone standing there, knife in hand.
Suzy got me a cup of tea and sat down with one for herself. “So you weren’t lying to me, and you weren’t crazy.”
“No and no, as far as I can tell,” I said with a small smile. It was all I could muster. Everything that had happened that night weighed on me, making it hard to think. “Do you remember the calls that came in at the end of the summer we spent together? The ones that ruined everything?”
I told her everything that had happened since I took my first trip through time. She took it all in and amazed me with her constant calm. She winced when I talked about Helena’s murder. “Oh, Daniel,” she said, “I’m so sorry. That’s...that’s horrible.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Suze?” I asked, using her nickname out of an old habit that wasn’t really old at all to me. “You’re in danger. This guy...this version of me who killed Helena, he wants to see me dead and he wants the life that Danny had. He won’t let you live knowing all that you know.”
“So what do I do? Go into hiding? I have a job...” she opened her mouth to say more, perhaps to say that she had a life in addition to employment, but it was all too clear that she didn’t have much beyond her job. I had seen to that.
“I know that. I don’t really have an answer. I just felt that you should know what’s going on.” There was an awkward pause. “You still look great, Suze.” It was a weird thing to say under the circumstances, and I didn’t feel particularly romantic with the image of Helena bleeding onto her apartment floor still clear in my mind. Still, something had compelled me to give Suzy a compliment.
I think I felt bad for her, which I guess is a pretty shitty thing to say, but that’s how it was. I felt guilty for her lonely life, even though I didn’t know how she would have turned out otherwise. I felt bad for how much older she looked, though that certainly wasn’t my fault. Aging happens to everyone. Even going back to 1993 hadn’t made me younger. Getting old is inescapable...for those of us who are fortunate enough to keep on living.
She smiled and for a moment it was as if I had found a new way to travel through time. There we were, Justin and Suzy, just like in that long ago summer. I put out my hand and she took it.
“Do you think...” she started but stopped herself.
“What? What is it?”
“Forget it. I’m horrible to even be thinking what I’m thinking after what you went through tonight...your wife...”
“Suzy, don’t you ever worry about being horrible to me after what I’ve done to you. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Well, I know this... other you wants you dead, right? So he can pretend to be you?”
“Well,” I interrupted, “he technically wants to be the guy we knew as little Danny, not me.”
She gave me a look that I remembered well. “Whatever. I’m having enough trouble processing all this, you can let me slide on some of the details.”
“Yeah, I hear you. I’m sorry.” The little bit of banter between us was breaking through the shock of the evening. I was still terrified, still horrified, but I was with my Suzy again, and not a doppelgänger like poor Helena or even Daniel. She was my Suzy, the same one I’d dated all those years earlier.
“Good, okay. Well, couldn’t you just give that life to him and make a new one for yourself?” She paused without adding that she hoped that new life could be with her. I got the point.
“Suze, I don’t technically exist here. I have no identification, no money, no job... I don’t think it’s possible.”
“Okay, point taken.” We sat quietly for a while, and it was nothing like the uncomfortable silence that had blanketed us in the car years earlier. Despite the stress of knowing the other Daniel was out there plotting, this silence was nice. Peaceful.
“Here’s an idea,” Suzy said. “You’re the Daniel who belongs in this world. That other guy is apparently a long lost twin you didn’t know existed. We tell the police he’s crazypants, talking about time travel and other universes and all that, and we get him arrested. Then you can stay!”
The hope and optimism in her beautiful eyes broke my heart. “Maybe, Suze,” I said. “There are so many possible hiccups in there, but maybe...”
“Is it me?” she asked, looking wounded. “Am I too old?”
I didn’t think I could take much more of this. Everything about it was perplexing and overwhelming. I was in a world that wasn’t mine, and I had seen the murder of a woman who wasn’t my version of my wife, and now I sat with my girlfriend who was actually the same person I had dated in 1993 but was now ten years older than me instead of ten years younger. It was too much, and the situation continued to gnaw at the edges of my sanity, fraying the fabric of sense and reason.
“You aren’t too old,” I said to Suzy. “You could never be too old for me. I told you years ago that I loved you... that was only a few days ago for me. Those feelings are as strong as ever.”
“I never stopped, you know.” She said. “Loving you, I mean. Even after what happened, I just thought... I don’t know. I blamed myself.”
“It’s all my fault, Suzy. Mine. You weren’t responsible for any of this.”
“Do you think maybe we could try, Daniel? To make a life for us here?”
“Yes,” I said. “We can try.” I really meant it too. At the time it seemed like the only approach that made any sense.
Just then I heard the sound of a door opening from somewhere in the house. Suzy and I both turned in the direction of the noise. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
She nodded. I could see the concern on her face. “It’s the back door. Goes into the kitchen.”
“It wasn’t locked?” I asked with a tone of consternation in my voice. I got to my feet.
“I...I don’t know...” she stammered. “Maybe...maybe I forgot.”
“Damn it!” I yelled. “We need to hide.”
3
We ran to the stairs. The house was a split level and there were not many steps between the floors. She led me to what appeared to be a guest bedroom or a storage room, maybe a combination of both.
“We can hide here,” she said, slinking under the double bed. I tried to follow and with significant difficulty somehow managed to slide in after her. We waited in the silence, hearing footsteps from downstairs. Then the muffled steps of someone climbing to the second floor.
We both kept our breathing as quiet as possible. My pulse was jackhammering, and the thought occurred to me that I could not escape into the past with my heart working the way it was at that moment. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, not with a predator on my trail who could also travel through time. Besides, I wouldn’t have left Suzy alone and in danger even if I had the option to leave.
The steps passed our room, but quickly returned. I heard the intruder enter. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” said the mocking voice, confirming that our home invader was the other Daniel Wells.
I knew he was looking around the room. He had probably already checked every other possible space in the little house and had decided that Suzy must be in the guest room. I wondered if he knew I was with her. I assumed he did. “Druggy Daniel” had made many bad choices but I knew he had my brain and it was honed by street smarts that I did not possess.
I felt Suzy nudging me with her elbow. When I turned toward her, she passed a large knife into my hand. She must have brought it out when she served the tea. In the middle of everything going on I had not noticed. The knife made me think of Helena and my stomach rolled and threatened to expel its contents. I fought hard and reined it in.
The silence seemed to stretch out forever, but when Daniel made his move everything happened all too fast. A hand reached down under the bed and clasped Suzy around the calf. She screamed as she was dragged out into the open. I army-crawled through the space where she had been and rolled out, bursting to my feet with as explosive a force as my weary body could muster.
It wasn’t enough. Daniel was on top of Suzy, stabbing her over and over again. My Suzy...her screams tore through me. I took the knife she had handed me, grateful that my twin was facing away from me. I came up behind him and slit his throat as he had done to Helena. He gurgled and toppled forward. I shoved him to the side so he wouldn’t fall on top of Suzy.
I knelt by Suzy’s side. Her pajamas were soaked in blood. I had witnessed three stabbing motions and assumed there may have been at least one more I didn’t see. She was dying.
“I’m so sorry, Suzy, I’m so, so sorry,” I droned on and on. I could feel tears flowing down my cheeks and I felt embarrassed. She looked at me with a pained expression. Her breathing was harsh and shallow.
“Don’t be sorry.” She closed her eyes.
I fished out the cellphone in my pocket and called 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the voice on the other line asked.
“A woman’s been stabbed! Please send help.” I barely recognized my voice. I struggled to remember Suzy’s address and somehow managed to relay the information to the operator.
I dropped the phone to the floor. Suzy’s eyelids flickered open from the sound. She said something that sounded like “imnocery.”
“What? Suze, babe, talk to me, what did you say?”
“I’m...not...sorry.” She worked hard to get those words out.
“You weren’t supposed to have this life,” I said. “I don’t know who or what you should have become, but you weren’t supposed to meet me that summer and I changed everything and now look what’s happened to you.”
Her eyes opened wide and clear. This time when she spoke I understood every word. “No. I wouldn’t trade what we had for anything.”
The tears continued to stream from my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. “Me neither,” I said. I grabbed her hand. It was so cold. She fell unconscious shortly after. I stayed with her, waiting for the ambulance. I didn’t know if they would be able to save her. I doubted it greatly. I wondered what they would make of the body lying just a few feet over who looked exactly like me.
I closed me eyes, and kissed Suzy on her cool lips. As soon as I made contact, whatever dam I had built up to protect me exploded. I burst into thick sobs. My head was pounding. It felt like it was in a vice and someone was turning the screws tighter and tighter. My vision became blotchy and spotted. I thought of Suzy. I thought of our summer together. I let go of consciousness and passed out.