The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  Hal knew this already, what with it being information that was in the public domain on the Crown Court website.

  Hal took a sip of his latte, pensively mulling that over, then winced, tearing open a third sachet of sugar and pouring it into his cup. Kara shot him a disapproving look.

  ‘What? I gave up smoking, I’m sure as shit not giving up sugar too,’ said Hal defiantly. ‘So, they have Jerry’s owner pegged for this?’ Hal thought about that, as a sadness befell him. ‘What happened to Jerry?!’

  ‘Oh, I did some Facebook stalking,’ Kara said happily, finally having some information Hal didn’t. ‘The owner of Fir Lodge took him in,’ she added, pulling her own phone out, scrolling between applications for a few seconds, then turning the phone to face him so he could see a picture of Jerry at his new home.

  ‘Top bloke that Danny,’ said Hal, noting the feed on Kara’s phone which revealed to him the man’s profile.

  ‘But here’s the thing,’ said Kara. ‘I went through my own emails, and get this,’ she paused for dramatic effect, which was somewhat dampened by the irritating whine emanating from a nearby baby in a pushchair a few metres away from them.

  ‘You gonna tell me,’ said Hal, ‘or just stare at me until the CSI Miami theme tune kicks in?’

  She looked at him with an expression laced with what Hal interpreted as I don’t know what that means before dropping the bomb, and ultimately the mic.

  ‘I gave a statement to the police after the incident. A statement I don’t remember even giving, I might add…’

  ‘Obvs,’ said Hal, taking another swig of his latte.

  ‘And something about it doesn’t add up. Read it,’ she said, sliding the phone across the varnished table.

  Hal looked down at the screen and followed her instruction, reading her statement.

  ‘My name is Kara Sanders. The following is a true account of the events that took place on the evening of August the 25th, 2018, at Pentney Lakes, Norfolk…’

  Hal read about the events of Saturday the 25th, which recounted, beat for beat, everything that he already knew. Until he reached the last paragraph of Kara’s statement, and a chill ran down his spine.

  ‘Woah,’ said Hal.

  ‘I know right?!’ said Kara, relieved that he had spotted the same inconsistency that she had. ‘Ignoring the fact that I don’t remember writing this at all, anything in particular seem notably screwy to you?’

  Hal recited the exact line of transcribed dialogue that didn’t ring true. In fact, it was nothing short of an absolute lie.

  ‘Peter must have taken Jerry back to his home. I was clearing broken glass from upstairs. Otherwise I would have offered to take him…’ Hal stopped reading out loud and looked up at his friend. ‘That isn’t what happened. We were the ones who took Jerry back.’

  ‘Bingo. Which means–’

  ‘Who says bingo anymore?’ said Hal, entirely off topic.

  ‘Which means,’ said Kara, intentionally ignoring his attempted derailment of far more important matters, ‘either I lied to the police…or my memories can’t be trusted.’

  ‘Which is impossible. Because I remember things going the same way as you do.’

  ‘So why did I lie to them?’ said Kara, starting to question not only her sanity, but her integrity as a human being. There’s more. According to the records, Kevin claimed he was drugged prior to Pete’s murder.’

  ‘They must’ve run tests on him or something,’ said Hal, basing his argument on old reruns of Diagnosis Murder and Columbo.

  ‘They did. No traces of anything in his system. And it gets worse. How Pete was found…they think it ties in to huge back catalogue of murders dating back to the late-Nineties!’

  ‘Holy crap,’ he choked on his coffee. ‘So, he was like, what? A serial killer or something?’

  ‘Allegedly, yeah. But there’s no way Pete died that weekend. Not when–’

  ‘You, me, and possibly Fearne remember him leaving Fir Lodge alive and well,’ said Hal, finishing her sentence.

  She nodded. ‘So, the real question is; why does everyone else believe it happened?’

  Without warning, the door of the shop flung open, a rush of air bombarding them both, causing Kara’s hair to flutter. An odd sound rippled through the coffee shop, shaking the cups on the tables, the glass stands nestled within the cabinet encasing the cakes, and the four walls around them. The sound was unlike anything they had ever heard before; In fact, it was more like the natural sounds around them were being sucked into a vacuum.

  The universe, it seemed, had decided to answer her question personally.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dancing with Yourself

  5,840th Restart – Sunday, August 26th, 2018, 11:56pm

  Malcolm found himself reminiscing over his short-lived victory. How he had traded the one named Peter’s life to break the hold Harold, Kara, and time itself held over him.

  His flawlessly executed plan once again coming undone.

  There was only one way he could be here now; someone had changed the outcome of that night.

  Harold and Kara…

  Yes, he remembered now. His memories were as jumbled as his current thoughts these days.

  Always shifting. Always changing. Reorganising themselves like a constantly shifting kaleidoscope.

  They had ruined everything.

  Again.

  Malcolm recalled the implanted memory of seeing his own body being wheeled out on a stretcher. The blue flashing lights dazzling his out-of-phase eyes. And as his body crossed the boundary line of the Pentney Lakes, this new iteration of his time-travelling self was brought with it.

  Brought here.

  He stared at the sickly green reflection of the emergency lighting refracting off of the tantalisingly-thirst-quenching jug of water, which served as a mocking reminder that he wasn’t able to drink, and for the 1,496th time a cover of the song “Dancing with Myself” drifted softly towards him from a nearby CD player, which had kindly been switched on by a nurse.

  Whether this had been an act of kindness or a form of punishment, he couldn’t be certain, though if it was the latter it was surely a torture he admittedly deserved. Little did she know that music was the lifeblood for time travellers such as himself.

  It kept them anchored. Kept the mind sharp.

  Too sharp…

  He learnt a long time ago that the cover was performed by a member from the cast of an American TV show called “Glee”, thanks to the helpfully face-down CD case beside the bed.

  An album that had been playing on a continuous loop for the past three hours throughout the dead of night. His only salvation was that a restart was due in the next several minutes, and would abruptly put an end to the wailing. At least for the nine or so hours that would follow.

  His analytical mind, combined with a near photographic memory, had afforded him a seemingly supernatural ability to track the passage of time. But, as a Restarter (a term he had long since made peace with using ever since he had heard Harold and the girl named Kara uttering the word) it was excruciating.

  Every second of every minute of every day was catalogued in his mind, and even when he had lost said mind, the details of every second would slowly drip-feed their way back into his subconscious eventually. Only to be lost again with the arrival of the black fog.

  He had spent countless years clawing his way back from the void of eternal damnation. The cruellest joke of all was that when he had finally broken free of the endlessly-rewinding thirty-three hours those children had trapped him in, he had ended right back where he started.

  He remembered the glee…he winced at the use of the word, and adapted his inner-monologue accordingly, ensuring he made a mental note never to so much as think of using it ever again.

  Malcolm remembered fondly how he had beaten the system. How, despite the odds, he had found a way to escape the invisible force field that ensconced the Pentney Lakes, vanquishing the self-declared Restarters at their own
game.

  But something had clearly gone wrong. Something had been changed.

  And so it was that the universe once again consumed him, breaking his body down into billions of tiny fragments, before reassembling and discarding his essence back within the confines of acres of woodland. In Norfolk. Of all places.

  He thought back to the events that followed. To his confrontation with the ones who refused to let him be. So many confusing encounters wrapped within paradoxes and sealed with a bow of impossibility. And, after it all, he found himself here.

  Initially, he had experienced relief.

  A sense of gratitude that he had reformed in a location he didn’t recognise. Whilst the fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling had sent agonising beams of light into his corneas, once the vibrancy of his surroundings simmered down and he regained the superbly detailed intensity that a fresh restart afforded, he reasoned perhaps this was merely another challenge for him to overcome.

  Malcolm had watched with pride as he looked down at his barely breathing body, being wheeled in on a stretcher, his legs and arms not only secured with straps, but also no less than four separate pairs of handcuffs. His arrival was heralded by a flattering abundance of trained professionals; eight police officers to be exact. Some of them armed.

  He had chuckled at that. After all, in the United Kingdom, whichever way you painted it, that was a big deal. It meant you were not just a threat to others, but a threat to those that could protect themselves as well.

  He was death incarnate.

  Many years ago, he would have gone as far as to say a God…

  But that was then and this was now and yet, somehow, also then, whilst paradoxically being tomorrow and yesterday all at the same time.

  Malcolm closed his eyes and rubbed the sockets with his palms, violently running his hands through his thick black hair and shaking his head with vehement vigour. He sniffed a sharp intake of air, composing himself for what would come next, as the farcical narrative of the music once again crowbarred its way into this mind, igniting a melancholic sense of irony that was not lost on him in the slightest.

  Well, let’s sink another drink…because it will give me…time to think.

  Malcolm sang along in his mind, barely concealing the fact that he was humming the tune out loud, then glared around the room; at the once tan-coloured flooring – now a slick black – that he knew must have smelled like disinfectant. At the empty vase on the window sill to his right, lacking the flowers that may have been there had he not burned every last friendship he ever had over the years (in some cases literally…) by becoming a brilliant, albeit definably psychopathic, murderer.

  His eyes moved to his left, settling on the bed in front of him, the shadows of his past taking on a life of their own across the black bedsheets, swirling under the lights of the machine that were keeping his past-self from moving on. Oddly, said lights served as the only colour besides the security lighting amidst the impenetrable blackness and uniform blandness that had slowly possessed the room over time.

  Day by day he had watched the colour being drained in tiny increments, coupled with an ever-thickening fog that seemed to feed on the warmth and life around him like a parasite fuelled by his own despair.

  Realising he was losing himself to his thoughts again, Malcolm refocused his attention on the fluctuating hissing sounds of the iron lungs that kept him in what he knew to be a perpetual coma.

  He was surely being kept alive solely so he could face justice for the crimes he had committed. Presumably, someone, somewhere was working on the assumption there were bodies to find. They must have known what he was capable of, as evidenced by the ankle braces and wrist straps that secured him firmly to the bed.

  The hisses gave way to beeps and clicks, followed by the droplet of sustenance from the IV that, as its namesake suggested, travelled intravenously down a transparent tube and into his bloodstream. His eyes moved towards the closed door of his room, and at the armed officer standing just outside, visible through the inch-thick wire-mesh-lined glass. Being so close to his past self, he knew he could open that door, but also knew that it wouldn’t do him any good.

  The restart that had brought him here had seemingly decided he was too much of a threat; a restarting killer roaming the halls, potentially going on a rampage and murdering vulnerable patients…or worse, doctors and nurses.

  Malcolm rationalised that the impact of killing those who worked in a profession that involved saving lives could cause untold pandemonium to the rivers of time.

  That probably explained why the threshold of the room acted as his new Restart Point, much like the boundary line at Pentney Lakes.

  He felt a pang of shame, and then anger. If that were true? If that were really the case? Then how was it acceptable for Ophelia to…to…

  His mind ran off on a new tangent. A common occurrence for him now.

  Malcolm sighed, letting go of his anger and suddenly feeling oddly nostalgic as he remembered those early years of restarting. When he was learning about how everything worked for the first time. A time of wonder. Excitement. Of plans that went somewhere. All of which had led him here.

  His first mistake was assuming the same thirty-three-hour rule applied, and it took him a long time to realise no one was triggering a restart early. Once his paranoia subsided, he reached the logical conclusion that no one was intervening. This particular time loop was merely a twelve-hour cycle. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  Eight years.

  Eight years, relatively speaking, of being stuck watching his physical-self refusing to heal. It was an entirely new form of torture. With every second of progress his body made, all of it was undone every twelve hours, bringing him no closer to returning to the world of the living.

  Malcolm stood up and stretched. The act did nothing for his muscles, which were currently a metre away from him lying on the bed before him and no doubt beginning their descent into atrophy. It was more the routine of doing so that helped solidify his resolve for what came next.

  He walked towards his past-self, leaning over the body, and staring at his gaunt, ill-looking face, finally feeling truly ready to take this to the next level.

  ‘What are you dreaming about I wonder…’ Malcolm said to his comatose counterpart, the mechanical devices keeping his past-self alive responding with mechanical beeps and clicks.

  The music triggered the return of a fleeting thought in his mind, which eventually coalesced to form a more coherent memory. It was taking him longer to form those now. He could feel it.

  Something the rat-catcher had said. An evasive answer to a riddle that could have been little more than a desperate man trying to illicit the illusion of bravado. But it felt like more than that. Malcolm was astute and objective enough to know when a statement was laced with subtext or not. And those two simple words echoed amidst his thoughts once more.

  “A team.”

  That’s what the young man named Harold had said. But there were only two of them. Hardly what you could call a team. A partner maybe. But a team? Something felt off.

  For the thousandth time, he replayed the moments over in his mind, thinking back to the seconds before he was forced out of existence in the previous timeline, an act which ultimately brought him to this place. He recalled that moment just as he was disintegrated at what he reasoned must have been at a molecular level, pressing pause on not only his life in the physical world but also his admittedly deteriorating mind.

  “A team,” he repeated, the blurriness of his thoughts gaining further cohesion.

  And then it hit him.

  A truth so obvious he was actually embarrassed it had taken him so long to figure it out. What he didn’t know, however, was that this wasn’t the first time he had reached this conclusion at all, merely the most recent instance of him remembering a long-solved problem. An answer which had driven him to this very idea in the first place.

  Standing over his own comatose and utterly useless body, he chas
tised himself unfairly for forgetting his new goal. The fog was prone to stealing ideas right from under him.

  Malcolm licked his lips and wondered if it could really be that simple.

  If his comatose body was the one thing keeping him locked in time, in this room, reliving the same twelve hours over and over and over…

  He placed his hand on the limp arm of his body-double, feeling the familiar sensation of a charge, not that it was strictly required. Malcolm was close enough to passively draw upon the temporal energy emanating from his body in the past. But it surely couldn’t lessen his ability to interact with his surroundings by doing so.

  Malcolm reached out towards and beyond the multitude of life-support devices, setting his sights on what lay behind them.

  ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ he whispered, accepting that if this didn’t work, he was at peace with it.

  If he was right, he needed to get back to where it all began, and this was the only sure-fire way he felt he could achieve that goal. If he was wrong…well, better to be free and dead than to spend another second in this godforsaken hell of his own making. Either way, it would be progress.

  It was then that Malcolm heard it; the familiar sound of rushing air. It had to be now, he didn’t want time to steal the opportunity away from him, or worse, risk losing his mind again. A black static fog, which was somehow also viscous, swirled menacingly along the floor towards him.

  He composed himself, not wishing to let that particular horror claim his focus, and continued reaching beyond the life-support network, which hissed in protest, still popping and clicking diligently. The thick mist seemed to gain speed around him, bridging the gap between the door and Malcolm’s legs in a fraction of a second. Sensing he was on to something, he quickly pulled at the power cables, yanking them from the wall, then rolled over the end of the bed and poised himself, ready to jump.

  The heart rate monitor chirped angrily as his physical-self began to flatline, just as the fog attacked his temporally-displaced torso, travelling up his arm and erasing his appendage from existence entirely.