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1
WHEN I CAME TO, I smelled mothballs. I was in a bed, all tucked in under the blankets. I sat up, the covers falling down around me. It took me a second to get my bearings, and when I did the realization hit me hard. I was in the same room where I had seen Suzy die, and where I had murdered the awful version of myself whose creation was as much my responsibility as his death.
The room looked very different. Under Suzy’s ownership the room had been painted a simple cream shade. Now I saw wallpaper with bold vertical stripes alternating between red and white, like a giant candy cane. I was positive that I knew where I was, but as to when? I had no clue, and I didn’t care. I was tired of everything. Each effort I had made in the months since I had started traveling had resulted in disaster. I had seen more horror, felt more anguish and remorse and fear than I had ever thought a human being could handle and not end up ranting in the looney bin.
I put my head back down on the two soft pillows and closed my eyes. It didn’t matter what time period I had found myself in. I was staying put for the time being. A return to the present in that room wouldn’t be good in either the horrid timeline I’d just escaped or the original. I wasn’t ready to get out of bed and face the world. I wasn’t sure at that moment that I’d ever be ready. Daniel Wells was poisonous and the world and all its many timestreams would be better off without me.
I wondered if I could find the will to kill myself, and what that might mean to the worlds I’d created, or opened, or whatever it was I’d done. I laughed bitterly. I’d been able to murder my other self with the justification that he was evil, and yet I couldn’t, wouldn’t dare harm the “real” Daniel, even though my meddling had been responsible for that Daniel and everything he had wrought. I was too weak.
I was startled by a voice. “Oh, good, you’re awake!”
I sat up again. An elderly woman stood in the doorway. Despite her apparent age she stood straight and tall. She had a kind, gentle look to her. She spoke at a rapid clip that also didn’t match her short, grey hair. “I was nervous you might not wake up, that you might die in the night. I said to myself, Dorothy, you’re pretty silly not calling the police or an ambulance or something, but you know what I thought? I thought they might take me away instead of you. I’m the one who saw a sleeping man appear out of nowhere, after all.”
“You...saw me appear?” I asked.
“Oh yes, I was just walking down the hall, coming back from the kitchen with a glass of water. I do get so thirsty in the nighttime and I try to remember to bring water with me when I first turn in for the night but I often forget. Senility, they call it. Anyway, I was walking down the hall and I heard a crackle like when a bulb burns out. I thought maybe a fuse had blown, and I looked in and you just appeared a second later, naked as the day you were born. If I’d been any slower I might have missed your arrival but I’m pretty quick for a gal my age.” She said that last with a smile that seemed strangely familiar.
“And you’re not...I don’t know, concerned?” For a moment my grief was put aside, at least a little. This was all just too strange and curious.
“Well, I’ve never been a very religious woman, but on the outside chance you might be an angel, I thought I should probably take care of you. Getting you into bed wasn’t so easy, you know.”
“Thank you for that. Your kindness means a lot.”
She smiled again. “So tell me, young man, are you an angel?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m just a plain human being like you.”
She laughed. “Well I suppose we’ll agree to disagree. It begs the question though, how exactly did you appear in my guest room?”
“I don’t really know the specifics of it.” I felt very comfortable, very familiar with this woman and I spoke freely. After all, she had seen me do my trick and hadn’t panicked. She’d taken care of me and the least I could do was give her a form of honesty. “I just pop from place to place. Sometimes I can control it, sometimes not.” I shrugged. “Guess this was one of the ‘not’ times.”
She stayed surprisingly quiet as she thought about what I’d said. I thought she might decide to kick me out or that it would be good to call the authorities after all. Instead, she gave that same grin and said, “How about some breakfast?”
2
Dorothy gave me clothes to wear that she said had belonged to her husband, who had passed away years earlier. Something about her made me overcome my desire to stay in bed and never leave. In spite of myself I dressed and met her in the hallway. She led me down to the kitchen. Seeing the downstairs made me think of Suzy and I felt my emotions threatening to betray me again. She and I had reconnected and a strange world of possibilities had opened in front of me. All that had been stolen away.
I forced my sadness back down in the dark hole from which it had emerged and I joined Dorothy at the table. To my surprise, she had already set a place for me and had eggs ready to go. She had known that I would decide to join her for breakfast. This woman had strong intuition.
I glanced at the newspaper sitting on the edge of the table. I was not at all surprised to see the date: May 28, 1993. In the stress of everything that had happened, my unconscious mind had sent me back again. I wondered if that part of my brain had wanted me to fix things or if it just saw 1993 as a safe refuge. It didn’t matter. I could wait out the few days until the earlier version of me arrived. I’d tell him what happens if he gets involved, and get him back on the original plan, to wait until September and prevent the attack on Jeff Berger.
By the time I was halfway through my eggs I had developed seven distinct theories as to why this plan was bound to fail. I was working on the eighth when Dorothy spoke. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Daniel Wells.”
She stuck out her hand. “Very pleased to officially meet you, Daniel Wells. I’m Dorothy Bailey.”
I almost choked on my food. “Bailey?” I asked. “Do you know a Suzy Bailey?”
She looked surprised and beamed with pride. “You know my Suzy? She’s my granddaughter! The most wonderful girl. How in the world do you know her?”
“Well...we met on one of my random trips.”
“She saw you appear like I did?” she was looking at me with fascination.
“No, no, we just met in passing.” Sadly, I concluded, “she wouldn’t remember me at all.”
“Well that’s just a small world, isn’t it?” Dorothy stated.
“I suppose you’re right.” I stared down at my eggs.
“Are you alright, dear?” Dorothy asked.
“I...yes...I mean, I’m going to be. Thanks to your kindness.”
She looked a little confused but moved on quickly. “Where will you go, Daniel, if you don’t mind my asking? And don’t hesitate to tell an old woman to stop her prying. God’s will is not for all of us to know, that much I remember from my school days.”
I shook my head. “You’re not prying, Dorothy. Not at all. And listen, I’m not an angel. I’m telling you, I’m just a guy who can somehow do something very weird.”
She rolled her eyes. “You can deny it all you want, Daniel. I’ll let you have your ruse.”
“Okay...well, the truth is I don’t really know where I will go. I didn’t expect to find myself here and I don’t exactly know how to get home.”
I expected her to inquire about that, to push me down a path where I’d have to talk about time travel, but she didn’t. “Well, you are welcome to stay a few days if you need. Until you figure things out.”
I smiled. “I don’t know if that will be necessary, but thank you. I think you’re the angel here, Dorothy. Your granddaughter takes after you.” My voice broke at the end of that sentence and I felt fresh tears wet the surface of my eyes.
“Well that’s kind of you to say. Are you sure you’re okay, Daniel?”
I nodded.
“Then you can take a shower when you’re finished and I’ll let you be. Anything you need, please ask.”
I thanked her again. I felt very fortunate and very undeserving to be the recipient of her kindness. I think it was to be expected that she made me think of Suzy, but those thoughts were unsettling and sad and they weren’t going to help me fix everything I’d broken.
Was there a safe way to be in 1993? Could I make it even a few days without doing any damage? There was, I realized, an even bigger and potentially far more serious problem. My heinous twin had missed his target by a large margin when he had jumped back to find me in the past. Whether it was his lack of practice or the drugs still in his system, he had said he’d arrived in 1991 and had waited out the two years. That meant he was around somewhere, still alive and still plotting against me.
Everything I changed last time around all but guaranteed that Jeff Berger had not been murdered, and yet the other Daniel had survived to kill both the women I loved. Even setting things back to their normal order probably wouldn’t eliminate him, and if I fixed everything and he followed me to 2013, he would be brought into my timeline. The “real” timeline. No way.
I took Dorothy up on her offer of a shower. The hot water poured over me and before I knew it I was sitting in the bathtub, immersed in the downpour from the shower head. It felt like decades had passed since that first true travel I had made in my own shower in the home I shared with Helena. So much time and so much destroyed.
I felt myself starting to cry again, but before the tears had hit my cheeks I heard a knock at the small, slatted bathroom window. I looked up. I could see a man looking in at me. He had a full head of curly, dark hair, and a thin goatee. Though he was interrupting my shower and peeping in at me, he had a look of dismay on his face as if I had upset him.
3
At first I thought he was somehow floating in the air, but quickly remembered the split-level was built into a hill. I got to my feet and stepped out of the water. I grabbed a thick red towel from the nearby bar and wrapped it around my waist. The man continued to stare at me with that same disappointed, grim look.
“Who are you?” I yelled. I thought maybe he was expecting to spy on Dorothy. Maybe he was into old ladies. All I knew was I was going to protect my Suzy’s grandmother, a woman who had taken me in under the strangest of circumstances.
The man didn’t respond. I was angry. “Who the fuck are you?” I screamed over the rush of the shower.
He raised one finger to his lips in a “shush” gesture that infuriated me. I was going to say something else but he mouthed the words, “Meet me outside.”
Was he there for me? I wondered how that could possibly be. It took me five minutes to get dressed in the clothes Dorothy had left for me and make it outside. I walked up the hill that wrapped around the home. The man was as tall as me and very thin. He was dressed in a suit and long trench coat that didn’t make sense in the hot weather Pennsylvania was experiencing in May, 1993. The man still looked pissed, like I had wronged him.
“Who are you?” I asked as I approached. “What do you want?”
He shook his head disapprovingly. “Daniel, this has gone on long enough.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
He looked off in the distance and took a deep breath of the morning air. “It’s always this way,” he said with a sigh. “People alway ‘just want to look’ and then they get too deep.”
I wasn’t sure he was actually talking to me. It almost seemed like he was indulging in some kind of a soliloquy.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said, “But I’ve been through too much. You need to leave me alone. Now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said.
Without thinking, I rushed at him. I was prepared to take out my anguish on this creepy stranger, but he side-stepped me with ease and slammed his fist on my back, knocking me to the ground. I rolled over and he put his foot down on my chest, holding me in place with surprising strength.
“Daniel, we’re going to have a conversation, and I’m seriously hoping you can make this go easy for both of us. We need to chat about the time stream.”
“I... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, though I had more than a little idea what he was talking about. What I didn’t know was how he knew me and what I had done. I squirmed and tried to push his foot off.
“Oh I think you know a fair amount, Dan. Can I call you Dan?” he didn’t wait for a response. “Here’s the thing, Dan. We have a good idea how much the timestream can handle, so we let some things slide. Freebies. For some people that’s good enough. Either they are satisfied with their exploration or they’re frightened off. Your freebie was Levi’s Confusion. Didn’t stop you though, did it?” He said that last with a tone of disgust.
“How do you know about that?” I was dumbfounded.
“It’s my job to know about that,” he said. “Look, can I let you up now? I’d like to talk like gentlemen. Can you behave yourself?”
I sighed and nodded. He removed his foot and reached out a hand to help me up. He looked around, taking in the woods around us. “The universe is suffering, but this timeline in particular is no good. Too many Daniel Wells editions popping in and out. Too many variables. Too many loose ends.” My mouth betrayed a small smile. “Something funny?” he asked.
“No, it’s just, well... I was kind of thinking the same thing.”
He nodded and sighed again. “Yeah, that’s what the others say about you. They say you’re a guy who considers all the angles.”
“What others?” I asked.
“Not now. Not here. Like I said, this timeline’s all shot to hell. It’s time to go.”
He reached his hand out and grabbed my shoulder. Pain shot through my arm from the firmness of his grip. I opened my mouth to protest and then shut it tight. All around me, the world was moving backward at a rapid pace. The leaves on the trees shrunk and disappeared, only to be replaced by brown, dead ones that reattached themselves and gradually returned to green life.
Everything was changing in that same backward way, faster and faster. I saw the homes brighten as the paint regained its former luster and then swapped out for older, peeled paint from a previous coat. In what seemed like maybe fifteen seconds, the houses on the street collapsed into parts one by one and then vanished completely, replaced by a thick blanket of trees.
The changing images became a blur. The strange man kept his grip on my shoulder and I didn’t try to pull free. I knew what was happening. He was bringing me with him as I brought my clothes when I traveled. I watched him. He was studying the blur with intense focus. He could do what I did, but it was different. It was controlled...powerful. My traveling was like a child trying to pin the tail on the donkey while blindfolded, occasionally stealing just enough of a peak to get him close to the target. This man travelled like a scientist fiddling with a series of dials to get the settings just right.
When the blur reduced, I saw nothing but wilderness. The man released his iron grip on my shoulder. He took another huge whiff of the air and smiled. “Ah, that’s more like it. Clean and crisp.”
“When is this?” I asked.
“Oh, hard to say. Sometime long after the dinosaurs and a few ice ages, sometime before the earliest human settlers arrived. A nice quiet pocket.”
“It seemed so precise though,” I said.
“Sure,” he replied. “I could have picked a specific day if I’d wanted, but really this terrain is just like this for a period of about ten thousand years. Anyhow, you needn’t worry about all that. What you need to know is this: it’s here and now that we will have our talk.”