A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  “Good. Now I’ll take any money you got.”

  My mind was racing, trying to figure out how we could get out of this. Maybe if we could trick him somehow, lure him closer, then jump him. But, no. He’d seen what happened to his friends when they let the girls get near them, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

  “Now!” he screamed, and fired his gun into the air. I flinched, my whole body tensing. I hadn’t heard a gun fired in months, and I wasn’t used to it.

  I told him I had a few hundred dollars in the car.

  “Go git it.”

  Slowly, keeping my hands raised, I got up. “I need the keys. The money’s locked in the glove box.”

  “Yer a damned liar. I should shoot you right now.” He was inching closer to me, closing the gap between us. “Fact, I think I will.”

  Miss Billie put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The man spun and pointed his gun at her. “Hey, lady, what the hell you think yer—”

  And then came a loud, low-pitched panting, and from behind one of the bungalows galloped one of Miss Billie’s poodles—only it was twenty times larger than it had been three minutes earlier, the size of a full-grown hippopotamus.

  The man turned, screamed, and aimed his gun at the giant dog. “Shoo! Go on now! Shoo!”

  Then the other two dogs appeared, jumping out from between another pair of bungalows and growling like a pair of truck engines. He whirled toward them, and the second his back was turned, the first dog leapt, jaws wide and teeth gleaming, and bit his head off. What remained of him went limp and fell to the ground.

  “Good girl! Good girl!” Miss Billie cried, clapping her hands.

  Everyone in the Flamingo began to cheer. My friends got up off the ground.

  “My bird,” said Bronwyn. “What kind of dogs are those?”

  “Colossus poodles,” Miss Billie answered.

  One of them trotted toward me with its mouth open, and I put my arms out and fell back a few steps. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think he’s still hungry!”

  “Don’t run, he’ll think it’s a game!” said Miss Billie. “He’s just bein’ friendly.”

  The dog’s tongue came at me like a huge pink surfboard and licked my head from neck to scalp. I think I squealed. I was left dripping and grossed out, but grateful to be alive.

  Miss Billie laughed. “See? He likes you!”

  “Your dogs saved us,” said Emma. “Thank you.”

  “It was you ladies who gave them a chance,” she said. “Thank you both for your bravery. And tell H thanks, too, when you see him.”

  Adelaide strode across the forecourt pushing Potts in his wheelchair. “Young people, fine work today!”

  “Yeah, but who’s gonna clean up this mess?” Potts grumbled.

  “I don’t suppose they’ll bother you again,” Emma said, nodding toward the fallen highwaymen.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” said Miss Billie.

  Emma and I took Paul aside.

  “Last chance,” Emma said. “Would you consider coming with us?”

  He thought for a moment, looking from Emma to Bronwyn to me, then nodded. “I’m overdue for a visit home, anyhow.”

  “Yes!” Emma shouted. “Portal, here we come.”

  “But where’s he going to sit?” said Enoch. “There’s only room for five!”

  “He can sit up front,” said Emma. “And you can ride in the boot.”

  I drove slowly into the dark porte cochere, through which we’d had to push the lamed car a few hours earlier. The Aston purred happily now, thanks to Enoch’s know-how and Emma’s welding skills. The sudden gravitational rush came as we rolled through the middle of the short tunnel. I gripped the wheel a little tighter against the sensation that the car was falling off a cliff’s edge, and then we emerged into the wee hours of the present-day night.

  I reached to turn on the headlights.

  “Wait,” Paul hissed, and I stalled my hand.

  He pointed out the windshield, across the wide field. “There. Look.”

  At the truck wash, two pairs of headlights were crossed, and silhouetted in them were several men. They’d been waiting, covering the exit. One was holding something near his face that might’ve been a CB radio. It was unclear if they’d seen us.

  “Floor it,” said Enoch. “Run them over.”

  “Don’t,” said Paul. “They’ve got rifles, and they’re good shots. There’s too much ground to cover to get clear of them.”

  “Then back up,” said Emma. “It’s not worth the risk.”

  I decided she was right. Like all loops, there was a front way out and a back way out, through the day that was looped. The trouble with going out the back way was that you then had to travel through the past, and the trouble with the past (at least the last hundred years or so) was that it was full of hollows. But that was a problem I was uniquely equipped to handle. So I put the Aston in reverse and rolled us backward through the loop entrance. In a moment we returned to the daylit world of Miss Billie’s motel.

  “Back so soon?” she said, walking her dogs toward us. They had already begun to shrink. In a few hours, I guessed, they would be nipping at her heels again.

  “There are more highwaymen out there,” Paul said, leaning through his open window. “They must’ve put out a call for reinforcements.”

  “I wish we could take you all with us,” I told Miss Billie.

  Miss Billie shrugged. “As long as my dog treats hold out, we’ll be all right.”

  “We’ll ask H to send you more as soon as he can,” Emma said.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Can you show us the back way out of here?” I said.

  “Sure,” said Miss Billie. “Though by taking it you’re risking your lives. There were shadow creatures everywhere back in sixty-five, even down here in Florida.”

  “We’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ve got a nose for hollows.”

  Miss Billie stood a little straighter. “You’re like H?”

  “He’s like Abe,” Emma said proudly.

  “Don’t know him. But if H trusts you enough to hire you, I guess you know what you’re doin’. And, of course, them boys outside wouldn’t dare follow you into hollow territory. They’d soil their damn undies rather than face those creatures.”

  She gave us quick directions: past the garage, down Main Street, right at the courthouse, “And when you feel the pop in your ears, you know you’ve passed through the membrane.”

  We thanked her again, but there was no time for long goodbyes. Anyway, most of the Flamingo’s residents were in hiding after the terrifying events of that morning, though a few shouted good luck to us as we curved around the highwaymen’s patrol car and drove out of the forecourt. I couldn’t help thinking that they were the ones who needed luck, and a good deal more, stuck here at the mercy of thugs.

  We drove down Main Street. I kept one eye on my mirrors as we went, half expecting to see another old squad car pull into view. When we turned right at the courthouse, I felt my stomach drop and there was a ripple in the air like a heat wave. But nothing had changed—at least, nothing we could see.

  “We’re out,” said Paul, his tone an odd mix of relief and dread.

  We had passed through the membrane and out of the protective boundaries of the loop. Now time would march forward day by day, and hollows, if there were any to be found, would be coming for us. I had to remind myself that they were no less deadly for being historical, and my hand drifted involuntarily to my stomach as I surveyed it for any unusual twinges. For now, there was nothing.

  We passed in and out of small towns, riding mostly in silence, just processing the crazy events of the past day. We were tired, too. Not only had what happened at the motel been emotionally and physically exhausting, but it was late—midday here, but nearly midnight back in
the present. To think that we had discovered my grandfather’s safe house that same day was unfathomable. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

  “We should call home,” Bronwyn said. “Tell everyone we’re okay. They’re probably worried.”

  “We can’t,” said Millard. “We’re in 1965, so we’d be calling Jacob’s house in 1965.”

  “Oh,” replied Bronwyn. “Right.”

  I glanced at her in the rearview and caught a glimpse of Emma. She wore an intense but inscrutable expression, like she was wrestling with an uncomfortable thought. Then she saw me and her face went blank.

  There was a brief silence that I’m sure felt normal to everyone except me and Emma, and then Emma said, “Paul, how far is your loop?”

  “Should get there before sundown,” he said.

  “Can you point out the town it’s in on our map?”

  With some effort, she pulled out the road atlas and found the page for Georgia. (There was hardly room to move in the back, with four people crammed into three seats.) Emma passed the map to Paul.

  “It’s right . . . here,” Paul said, tapping a mostly blank space halfway between Atlanta and Savannah.

  Enoch shifted his legs and leaned over to look, then laughed. “You’re kidding. Someone hid a time loop in a town called Portal?”

  “Actually, the town’s named after the loop,” Paul said. “Or so the story goes.”

  “Are there peculiar thugs and highwaymen in Portal, Georgia?” asked Millard.

  “Surely aren’t,” he said. “That’s why the ymbryne who started our loop made it move around from day to day; so nobody mal-intentioned could find it.”

  “Which ymbryne made it?” asked Millard.

  “Her name was Miss Honeythrush, but I never met her. We use a loop-keeper now, just like most folks do.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t, but Miss Annie might. We can ask her. I hope you’ll be able to stay and rest awhile.”

  “I doubt we’ll be able to stay long,” Emma said. “We’re getting an important mission.”

  Rest. The very word sounded so delicious that I started daydreaming about beds and pillows and soft sheets. I realized that, if I was going to get us all the way to Portal, Georgia, without driving us into a tree, I needed coffee, and I needed it soon. But first, I wanted to put some distance between us and Starke, so I waited until we were near the Georgia border before I started scanning for coffee shops. They were fairly plentiful, this being a time before commercial coffee chains had colonized every street corner. That said, these towns seemed more populated and prosperous here in 1965. They all had a bank, a hardware store, a doctor’s office, a couple of restaurants, a movie theater, and a lot more, too; not just some shuttered stores and a big-box shopping center on the outskirts. It didn’t take a genius to see the connection.

  When I could no longer stop myself from nodding off at the wheel, I pulled over at the next likely-looking place. It was called Johnnie’s Brite Spot.

  “Who wants coffee?” I said. “I’m dying here.”

  Everyone raised a hand but Paul.

  “I’m not a coffee drinker,” he said.

  “Have a sandwich, then,” I said. “It’s lunchtime.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just wait here.”

  “We should all stay close to Jacob,” said Emma. “In case there are any hollows around.”

  Paul folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. “I can’t go in there,” he said finally.

  “Why is he being difficult?” said Enoch.

  And then I realized why, and a shudder of revulsion went through me.

  “They won’t let him,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” said Enoch, irritated.

  Paul looked angry and embarrassed. “Because I’m black,” he said quietly.

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” said Enoch.

  Millard sighed. “Enoch isn’t a great student of history.”

  “It’s 1965,” I said. “We’re in the Deep South.” I felt awful that this hadn’t occurred to me sooner.

  “That’s terrible!” said Bronwyn.

  “It makes me sick,” said Emma. “How can you treat people like that?”

  “Are you sure they won’t let you in?” said Enoch, peering at the diner’s window. “I don’t see a sign or anything.”

  “They don’t need one,” said Paul. “This is a white town.”

  “How can you tell?” said Enoch.

  Paul’s head snapped up. “Because it’s nice.”

  “Oh,” said Enoch, chastened.

  “Hollowgast aren’t the only reason I don’t like traveling through the past,” said Paul. “They’re not even the biggest reason.” He drew in a deep breath and looked down again, and when he looked up a moment later, he’d stuffed his feelings away somewhere deep. He waved his hand. “You all just go on in. I’ll wait here.”

  “Forget it,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t eat here if I was dying of starvation.”

  “Me, neither,” I said. I wasn’t tired anymore, just pissed off and deeply unsettled. I had grown up in the American South—a weird, tropical version of it, filled with transplants from other parts of the country; but still, the South. But I’d never really confronted its ugly past. I’d never been forced to; I was a wealthy white kid in a mostly white town. I felt ashamed that I had never really reckoned with it, never imagined what a simple road trip through my own state might’ve been like for anyone who didn’t look like me. And not just in the past. Just because Jim Crow was dead didn’t mean racism was. Hell, in some parts of the country, those laws were still officially on the books.

  “What if we burned the place down?” Enoch suggested. “It would only take a minute.”

  “That would accomplish nothing,” said Millard. “The past—”

  “I know, I know, the past heals itself.”

  “The past?” Paul shook his head. “Is nothing but an open wound.”

  “What he meant was you can’t change the past,” said Bronwyn.

  “I know what he meant,” Paul said, then went quiet again.

  There was a sudden, sharp knock on my window. I turned to see a man in an apron and a paper hat staring at us, one hand on the car’s roof.

  I rolled my window down a few inches.

  “He’p you?” he said. No trace of a smile.

  “We were just leaving,” I said.

  “Mm-hmm.” His eyes slid to the back seat, then to the passenger seat. “You kids old enough to drive?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “This your car?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you a cop or something?” asked Emma.

  He ignored her. “What model vee-hicle is this?”

  “1979 Aston Martin Vantage,” Enoch said quickly. Then his eyes widened as he realized his mistake.

  The man stared at us for a moment, expressionless. “You a comedian?” He straightened and waved someone down. “Carl!”

  A police officer had just turned a corner at the end of the block. He pivoted and started heading toward us.

  “Start the car,” Emma hissed.

  I turned the key. The engine made a noise loud enough to wake the dead, and the man stumbled back.

  When he regained his balance, he tried to reach through my window, but the gap was too small to get his arm through. I put the car in reverse and started to roll, and he swore and yanked his arm out before it could get ripped off.

  * * *

  • • •

  The downside of the Aston’s fat, growly engine note was how thirsty it was, and in the seven hours it took to reach Portal, we had to stop twice to fill the tank. In those days you didn’t pump your own gas, so we had to endure nosy que
stions from both station attendants while they did it for us. This being the South, they were slow about it, too. They pumped slowly and talked slowly and made change slowly and offered to check the oil and tires and wash the windshield and twenty other unnecessary things, all just an excuse to walk around the car and study it, and us, from every angle. It could’ve been a good opportunity to get out and stretch our legs and pee, but we didn’t have clothes for 1965, and besides, I had no interest in using a bathroom that Paul couldn’t use, and I knew the others felt the same. Instead, we stopped to relieve ourselves in an orange grove along the Georgia border, scattering among the trees and coming back with handfuls of ripe fruit, which we ate as we drove, juice running down our chins and peels flying out the windows. The only ones who got out were Emma and Enoch; they went into the second filling station and returned after a few minutes with three coffees in Styrofoam cups to share among us. After we pulled away, there was an awkward, sullen mood in the car, most of it emanating from Emma. Bronwyn, who was sitting beside her in the back, asked if she was okay, and she said yes in a way that sounded like no, but didn’t elaborate.

  The oranges and coffee were enough to sustain me through the rest of the drive, and the drive was tedious. The interstate highway system was not yet complete in 1965, which meant we had to wend our way down bad country roads, through stoplight-infested towns. And because our car attracted a lot of attention to begin with (exotic-looking in 1979, the Aston was positively futuristic in 1965), I had to be careful to drive under the speed limit, despite a constant temptation to stomp my foot down on the gas just to hear that thirsty V8 engine purr. We were stuck in 1965 until we found a loop that could connect us back to the present—preferably, it would be Paul’s loop—and getting to Portal a little faster was definitely not worth the Dukes of Hazzard–style car chase it was likely to provoke.

  We finally reached Portal as evening was approaching. It was a nowhere within a nowhere: low hills stippled with cornfields encircled by deep woods; a strangely named town hidden among towns with names nearly as strange—Needmore, Thrift, Hopeulikit, Santa Claus (no kidding)—the weird names acting, I suppose, as a sort of camouflage. The town boundary was marked with a bullet-pocked sign that read WELCOME TO PORTAL, though I didn’t see any town beyond it, just more cornfields.