"Are you okay?" Jim asked, relieved as the color slowly returned to the woman's face.
"Yes." She sat up straighter, careful not to upset the toddler who was comfortably nestled between them. She stared at Baby, swallowing nervously. "Where did he come from?"
"He was sleeping in Sandburg's bed when I woke up. Blair must know him somehow--"
Naomi's abrupt laugh cut him off.
"What?" he asked, glancing sharply between Baby and Naomi.
"Do you believe in the impossible, Jim?"
"What do you mean?" he asked carefully. Besides what? Being a Sentinel? Getting trapped in a dream? Seeing black jaguars?
Naomi brushed her fingers through the child's curls. "It was impossible to keep this under control." She looked up at Jim. "Blair's hair was just like this."
"Yeah. He kinda looks like I thought Blair would look like at that age."
"He looks exactly like Blair did."
Ellison nodded absently, then noticed Naomi staring at him. "What did you mean by 'believing in the impossible'?"
"Could you get my purse?" she asked.
"Sure." He got up carefully and retrieved her woven bag. While she was digging through it, he went back and got a banana, cut it in small pieces and brought it back on a plate for Baby. The child's attention was still riveted on the television show, but one hand drifted to the plate, delicately picked up a piece of banana, and squished it into his mouth.
Ellison went back and got a towel and a damp cloth. He put the towel under the plate, then watched closely as the child ate, ready to wipe him up the moment he stopped. He really didn't want banana mush on his couch.
Naomi pulled out her wallet and put the bag away. She opened it to a photo and sat staring at it.
"Who's that?" he asked, after a moment.
"My son." She slid the photo from the wallet and handed it to Ellison.
He looked down at the photo, then looked to the child. Both children -- the one in the photo and the one on his couch -- were wearing identical outfits. Denim overalls, with a red and white striped T-shirt. He started to smile at the resemblance, then stopped. Both children had identical hair, identical bracelets and leather neck chains. Both children had identical . . . everything. "I don't understand," he whispered.
"Neither do I. Except, I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that this is my son."
* * *
Part Three
"England swings like a pendulum do..."
Arms flailing, Blair tumbled out the window to the ground, hitting the hard-packed earth with a painful THWACK on the back of his head, knocking the air out of him. He gave a deep, shuddering gasp as he tried to draw oxygen back into his lungs, but nevertheless found himself curled further on his side, caught in a wave of painful coughing.
A sudden flash of memory ripped through Blair, and he opened his eyes with a shudder, looking around furtively, but there was no sign of Jim's corpse nearby. Fortunately the darkness hid any and all corpses. Jim's alive. Not dead. Jim's not dead. There's nothing to see.
Damn, he felt lousy. Nothing like falling out of a window to crank up the misery level. He couldn't even sit up. Come on, come on, come on. Get with it.
There was music, that song he was thinking about earlier, and a familiar smoke heavy in the warm night air, a remembered blend of firewood, cigarettes and marijuana that penetrated his clogged sinuses. Oh, man. Jim's gonna be pissed. Just what he needed, Cop Jim showing up with guns blazing to run everyone out of the alley.
His slitted eyes opened a fraction wider. Wait a second. This wasn't his alley. He must have rolled a ways down the hill.
Where the hell am I? Did I black out?
"Jim!" Blair closed his eyes and gingerly rolled onto his back, groaning as he tried to figure out just how badly hurt he was. Ouch. Stars. Ouch. Ow-ow-ow-ow.
He forced himself to sit up. Legs seemed to be there. His back hurt but didn't seem to be badly damaged. His head - Oh, shit - his head hurt. It really did. He lifted one shaky hand to the back of his skull and fingered the lump there. Well, that's what you get for falling out the window.
"Hey, Jim!" Blair tried, a little louder, a little perturbed now. His roommate must really be sleeping soundly not to have heard his call. "Come on, man, give me a hand here." He drew a damp tissue from where he had tucked it into the wristband of his sweatshirt, shook it out carefully, and gave his nose a good blow.
He opened his eyes again. Someone was playing that old song that had been haunting him for over a day. He realized he must have just been hearing a neighbor's too-loud stereo earlier. Well that made sense.
It was still dark. But it was warm outside. How weird.
Mama's old pajamas and your papa's mustache,
Falling out the window sill, frolic in the grass,
Tryin' to mock the way they talk, fun but all in vain
Gaping at the dapper men with derby hats and canes.
England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben
The rosy red cheeks of the little children
Blair leaned back against a tree trunk, only vaguely trying to figure out why there was a tree there. I must have rolled down the hill, then wandered down to the park or something. I'd say I have a dilly of a concussion if I don't remember any of this...
A voice speaking over a tinny P.A. system was almost drowned out by a lot of clapping and cheers.
"Hey, guys, that was Bobby Winston and the Sleeping Figtree! Let's give them a warm California sendoff!"
More clapping, crashing against him in waves that seemed to echo around in his skull.
"Stone the Crows' flight was delayed, so they won't be here for a few more hours. We're switching their spot with Colosseum."
Lots of shrieks and clapping.
Jim is going to be seriously pissed off with this music. It must be three in the morning.
Weird it's so warm out at three in the morning. In October.
The thought was quickly followed by another. This can't be Cascade.
He started shaking, nerves quaking under attack. What the hell-? Where were all the people? He could hear them, but he had yet to see any. It was dark, moonless. Not overcast, though; he could see the stars. Lots of stars. He stood up for a closer look.
Maybe the stars are from when I hit my head. Does that really happen? That whole "seeing stars" thing?
"Shut the fuck up!" A harsh voice off to his right sent him spinning to find the source. He tried to see through the darkness, but he could barely make out two figures arguing about something, their voices drifting his way. He got enough to know that it was about drugs.
That would be my cue. Exit, stage left.
He headed in the other direction, trying to walk over the uneven ground. He heard a woman scream, but it was ahead of him, not behind him. Other voices joined hers, and it seemed she was being helped.
He stumbled, then sat down abruptly, dizziness winning for a few minutes. His hand came away sticky from the back of his head. Great. Just super.
"Blair? Blair?" A female's frantic voice from somewhere close by.
Oh, good. Someone knows me. Maybe they have a cellphone I could use.
"Yeah?" Blair warbled, but another attack of coughing prevented him from calling out louder. Once he got the phlegm out of his lungs, he drew in a relatively easy breath of clean night air. Well, mostly clean, except for the pot, of course, and cigarette smoke. Blair pulled himself to his feet, clinging to another tree to stabilize his shaky balance.
He could see a dim shape coming towards him, but the young woman just glanced at him and kept moving, looking down for something. "Hello?" he called out, as soon as he was able to manage it, but she was out of sight.
Now that he was upright, he could see he was near the top of a low hill; there seemed to be a concert going on, just over the ridge, out of sight. No one else was in his immediate vicinity, yet someone had called his
name. The only person who had been around had been the young hippy-wannabe girl in the patchwork skirt and the Indian gauze blouse that was only partly done up. Whoever she was looking for, it wasn't him.
He reached the top of the hill and looked down.
"Blair! Blair, honey!" Again a woman's voice came out of the darkness and trees below him.
"Yeah? I'm over here." Blair stumbled forward, but it was awkward walking down the hill in the dark. The band on the stage at the bottom of the hill was playing an old "Peter and the Hermits" song, and there were probably a couple hundred people sitting on the slope watching them. A lot of them were smoking - he could see the ends of two hundred cigarettes glowing in the dark. The heady scent of marijuana was almost overpowering, setting off another wave of dry coughing. It just tickled his throat; he was actually feeling a bit better.
A long-haired man brushed by him, then grabbed his arm roughly. "Hey, have you seen a little kid up here?"
"What?" Blair asked, trying to see the man's face.
"A kid. This lady's lost her kid." The guy let go of his arm. "Never mind."
"No. Hey, that's awful. I'll help look," Blair called after him. "Have you called the cops?"
No one answered him.
A little kid missing in the dark. All alone. Poor little guy. Blair peered as best he could around him, trying to see if he could see anyone, then took another few steps and sank rather gracelessly to the ground. Who was he kidding? He felt weird. Not sick, just weak-kneed. Probably the crack on the back of his skull. He seriously just wanted to curl up in bed and go back to sleep. But the thought of a little child out there, lost, brought him back to his feet.
The drummer was doing a solo. Great. Too bad he couldn't have used the drum skins instead of my skull.
Wait a sec.
He had to concentrate.
Something was very wrong with all this. Something . . . If he could just remember what the problem was . . . Damn. What was it?
Oh right.
Where the hell am I?
* * * * *
Thirty very confusing minutes later, he was no closer to figuring out where he was.
I think, therefore I am . . . somewhere. He had to be somewhere, he decided, sinking to a heap on a relatively isolated spot on the slope of the hill.
"Hey, man. Wanna buy?" A bearded guy with bushy shoulder-length hair paused at his feet, a bulging woven bag from southwestern Guatemala over his shoulder. Or was it northwestern Nicaragua? The pattern looked vaguely familiar.
Blair squinted at the bag trying to figure its origin, and the man walked away mumbling, "Deadhead."
A dirty piece of paper caught Blair's eye, and he crab-walked over to where it was half-buried in the ground. He smoothed it out, tilting it one way and then the next, gradually making out the words in the near darkness. If he could believe the flyer, he was, apparently, at the Meadow Park Rock Festival.
Wow. I didn't know the festival was still happening.
Hang on, here. Serious flaw. That festival is in southern California; this is Cascade, Washington.
Plus the flyer was obviously dated, since it was the August 1971 Meadow Park Rock Festival. And this was 1998. October 1998.
Damn, his head hurt. And his stomach was deciding to turn over and over. He sat with his eyes closed, trying to find a mantra for nausea.
He finally got it under control and beat his way back to the problem at hand, the one his mind would really rather forget about. The big one. The one that he was sure would explode if he poked at it.
Something isn't right.
Right. That was it. If he could just figure out what that something was, and what to do about it.
"JIM!" he called out, at a respectable decibel level. "JIM!"
"I don't think he can hear you from here."
Blair whirled around to see Harvey Leek standing a few feet away, leaning against the fence. "Harvey! Hey, man, am I glad to see you. I can't figure out what's going on here. I think I might have a concussion," he added, trying to get to his feet and failing.
"First, sit down, okay? All we need right now is for you to fall down and hurt yourself more." Harvey didn't come any closer, but nodded happily when Blair took his advice.
"You try falling out a window and see if you're any better. Speaking of which - I fell out my bedroom window, Harv. At least I think I did.... Yeah, I did."
"You sorta did." Harvey crouched near him.
"Tell that to the sorta lump at the back of my head." Blair peered up at the California police detective. Harvey was wearing blue plaid pajamas with the Dead black armband. "What are you doing here? Aren't you in San Francisco?"
"I'm not exactly sure, Blair. I don't think I'm really here."
"What?"
"I mean, to be totally accurate, I am here -- I'm down in the crowd somewhere -- but the me that you're talking to is actually in San Francisco twenty-seven years later."
"You've lost me." Blair grinned up at him. "But then, this is just a weird dream, so it doesn't matter, right?"
"Actually, it does. It all matters now." Harvey took his beret off, gave it a brushing, then set it back on his head. "You wanted to be a shaman - well, you're doing it. This is the weirdest astral-traveling I've ever done though. I've never gone through time before."
"What are you talking about, man? You aren't making any sense."
"How about this, then? Jim Morrison died last month."
"The singer? He died a long time ago."
"Jim Morrison died in Paris, France, July 3, 1971."
"Right."
"Last month."
Blair stared across at the detective. "I don't get it."
"I remember 1971. Within ten months we lost Jimi Hendrix in London, Janis Joplin in Hollywood, and Jim Morrison in Paris. In April of '71 I went to the Dead's five-night run at New York's Fillmore East, and in August, I saw them in Austin, Texas, during the summer break."
"Harv?"
"It was a wild year."
"Harv, I don't want to be here. I don't feel very well."
"Why don't you just lay down for a while? Hey, how's your cold? Your email said it was getting worse."
"My cold? Actually, I think it cleared up. It probably got knocked out of my head when I cracked it open."
"I don't think your concussion is that bad. Let's see your eyes."
Blair turned his head so Harvey could look at his pupils.
"Not bad. They look equal. Just the same, I'd have someone check you out."
"I want Jim to check it out."
"Not going to happen, cowboy. At least until you figure this out."
"I want to be back in my own bed." Blair leaned against the sturdy trunk of a tree. "Why are we both stuck here in limbo?" He closed his eyes, trying to still the throbbing in his skull. "This isn't possible."
Harvey frowned, scratching the back of his head. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you are here. I'm the one that's in limbo land. You're actually here." Harvey blinked. "And I'm waking up, apparently. My alarm clock's going off, I've got to go. I've got an early shift. Oh, one more thing -- bad choice of sweatshirt, man. Lose it. Uh, bye."
"NO!" Blair stood to grab at the fading image, then fell to his hands and knees, dizzy. "Damn. Damn. Damn." Jim?
* * * * *
Dawn was rising when he located the Lost & Found tent. A skinny woman in a sheer halter top had him sit down and was cleaning the bump on his head. She kept leaning over him to see the back of his head, her barely sheathed breasts knocking against his face. Now normally, he wouldn't complain about that, but his day was confusing enough to add anything more to it.
"Ouch."
"Sorry. I've got to clean it, though, sunshine," she said, humming along with the song playing outside, her absolutely straight blonde hair swinging back and forth dizzily.
A man entered the tent, brushing the flap aside roughly. "Any sign of the kid yet?"
The woman, Cally, shook her head, which kinda did jiggly
things to the breast in Blair's face. "No. There's a whole lot of people out looking."
The guy looked perturbed. He also looked like something off an old record album cover. Blond-white hair, he had lots of gold jewelry and was wearing a fuzzy red vest, no shirt, his tie-dyed jeans patched, buffalo sandals on his feet, and a lot of rope chains around his neck. "Shit. First that girl, now this. If the kid doesn't turn up, this might be really bad publicity. Know what I mean?"
A Step Backwards Page 5