Authors: Michael Montoure
“What
— ”
“A
time machine. We were building a time machine. And I think it worked.
I think it did something to me, and if you take me back there —
”
“Okay,
now I know you have officially lost your fucking mind — ”
“—
If you take me back there, I
think I can fix this! I think that’s why no one ever found the
body, because he’s not in there, because maybe I manage to pull
him into the present, or, or I can go back and change things, or —
”
“James.
James. Shut up. You’re not making any sense. We were just kids.
We were just playing. You can’t fix anything, you can’t
change anything — the past happened, and time moves on.”
“No.
No, it doesn’t. The past doesn’t go anywhere. It stays
with us. I see it. I see it all the time.” James stood up,
gesturing. “People think time moves in a straight line, like,
like a road or a river, but it doesn’t. Time falls on us, like
rain, it falls like rain until we drown in it, and sometimes, it’s
like the drains overflow, and time just — pools up, it seeps,
it gathers in the corners. We think it’s gone, but it’s
not. We just — most people just don’t look at it.”
“James,
just — sit down. You need help, all right? You need to get some
serious help.”
“Maybe.
I don’t know. I just know I need to try this. The house is
still there, right? Out in the woods? I mean, I feel like I’d
know if it was gone, if somebody had cleared it out and built over
it, but it’s not gone, is it? It’s a fixed point. Only I
couldn’t find it, I looked for it and I couldn’t figure
out how to get back there. Can you take me?”
“Yeah,
it is still there, so far as I know, but — ”
“I
know how all this sounds, believe me, I know, but listen — your
boy, Martin?”
“Marcus.”
“Marcus.
He’s about the same age Drew was, isn’t he? Come on,
you’ve got to help me. If there’s any chance that I’m
right and I can still save him, you’d want me to, right?”
Darryl
took in a long, deep breath, and let it out as a sigh. “Okay.
Okay. You can do whatever it is you feel you need to do. Just —
not tonight, all right? Just sleep, we’ll talk about it in the
morning, and you don’t say a word about any of this to Susan,
all right? I’ll take you in the morning.”
James
agreed, thanked him, and Darryl waved it off.
He
tried to go to sleep, but just lay there, staring at the ceiling,
feeling the seconds hammering down like rain.
“Okay,”
Darryl said, once he pulled over and killed the engine, “this
is as close as I get.”
“You’re
not coming?”
Darryl
let out a sharp bark of breath that might have been a laugh. “Not
a chance,” he said. He drummed his fingers on the steering
wheel for a moment. “I do think about it, sometimes,” he
said. “I think about coming out here and seeing for myself,
seeing if he’s still there. And I wonder what the body would
look like — if it’d just be skin and bones by now, or if
the seal on the refrigerator held, if he’s like, preserved in
there. What color his skin would be, that kind of shit.” He
turned toward James. “Thing is? I really don’t wanna know
that bad.”
“Okay,”
James said finally. “Thanks for bringing me out here.”
“Yeah.
Listen — whatever you find, whatever you end up doing? I don’t
want to hear about it. All right? I honestly don’t care. Just —
good luck, and have a nice life, and everything, just don’t
come back. Don’t call me any more, leave me out of it.”
“Okay,”
James said again, and then Darryl surprised him by pulling him close
in a tight hug, then pulling away.
“Go
on,” Darryl said, and James got out of the car and started
walking.
Not
too far. The house, what there was of it, was still there — a
little more overgrown, but mostly unchanged. He had a hard time
believing, at first, that this wasn’t a dead space, but
everything was much too bright and present.
He
walked on, and there it stood, the old refrigerator.
He
put his hand on the handle. Couldn’t make himself open it.
No,
he thought,
this
isn’t right.
This isn’t all of it — it wasn’t just the
refrigerator.
So
he spent the morning going through the yard, finding all the pieces,
putting the time machine back together, as best as he remembered it.
Improvising, when he couldn’t remember what was supposed to go
where — just putting together what felt right. Once it was
finished, that’s when he’d open the door. Not before.
He
couldn’t find the old car battery, and he supposed it would be
long dead by now anyway, so he stressed out for a minute on what he’d
use as a power source. Me, he eventually decided. I’m the power
source. Still part of the circuit — close the loop.
He
put his hand back on the handle and held his breath.
The
image of what he’d find was sudden and vivid and would not be
dismissed. He could see in his mind, as clear as if it was happening,
the opening door, the sunlight spilling inside for the first time in
years, the small and twisted and broken body, mouth open far too wide
in a silent and forever scream.
He
closed his eyes and pulled open the handle.
Nothing.
Okay.
Okay. He’s not here. It’s going to be okay.
James was going to go back and get him, and it was all going to be
okay.
He
hesitated, just for a moment, and took a good hard look at the
construction of it — it was years ancient, and surely he’d
be able to open the door again, once he’d stepped inside and
closed it. He wasn’t a child — he’d be able to
force it. Or maybe — maybe he didn’t have to close it all
the way. Maybe it would still work anyway.
He
stepped inside, feeling it shift and tilt slightly on the uneven
ground. He closed the door gently, carefully behind him, leaving it
open just a crack.
He
closed his eyes, tried to remember what it had been like to be a kid,
how to pretend. He held his hands out in front of him, pressed
imaginary buttons, set imaginary coordinates.
“Countdown,”
he whispered in the dark. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five,
four, three, two, one. Time machine go.”
Some
spark flared bright behind his eyes. His arms jolted back from a
battery he’d touched thirty years before. Close the circuit.
The
refrigerator shifted again under his feet. And the door swung gently,
implacably shut. He heard the latch shut.
He
turned, arms still on fire, and thought, O
kay.
Okay. Don’t panic. Just open the door. Just push, lean your
weight against it, it’ll be fine, it’s going to be fine —
But
it wasn’t fine, and the door didn’t open.
He
strained and shoved against it, bracing his legs against the back
wall, and nothing happened.
He
turned, pounding on it, slamming his full weight against it —
“Come on come on open open
open
— ”
And
the world shifted out from underneath him. The refrigerator toppled,
crashed face-down.
“Oh
God,” he said, “Oh God.”
It
was okay. It was going to be okay. There was a way out, there had to
be. Darryl! Darryl would wonder what had happened to him and come
looking for him, Darryl would get him out —
Darryl,
who had told him not to come back.
“Oh
God,” James said. “Nobody else knows. Nobody else knows
I’m here.”
He
tried to slam against the side of the refrigerator, maybe he could
get it to roll over onto its side, anything but face down, anything
but trapped —
The
walls felt so close. James wondered if the seal on the refrigerator
still held, wondered how much air he had left. He was
hyperventilating — he had to stop.
He
tried to make himself calm down. Just lay there on his side, stunned.
His body still felt shocked and electric, and the cold was creeping
in. The deepest, bone-zero cold he’d ever felt, as the seconds
came hammering down. He’d been in dead spaces before. Not like
this. This moment was absolute, would go on forever.
He
was lying motionless, holding his breath, when he realized he could
still hear breathing. His hands were numb and frozen, but he could
still feel an even colder small hand creep into his own, and grasp
his fingers tight.
“I
knew you’d come back,” Andrew whispered.
MICHAEL MONTOURE is a writer
of horror and dark urban fantasy whose work has appeared on
Gothic.Net
and
Bloodfetish,
and in his
original anthology “Counting From Ten
”
from Stone
Pine Press. He has done annual Halloween readings at coffee shops in
Seattle for over a decade. He lives alone with a gray cat by the edge
of Echo Lake, Washington. He is standing right behind you.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MICHAEL
MONTOURE:
COUNTING FROM TEN AND
OTHER STORIES
“Fear
and love are blended together . . . .
This
collection will tantalize the palate of most anyone’s literary
taste.” —
Seattle
Sinner Entertainment Review
STORIES INCLUDE:
AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY AT BLOODLETTERS: