Timebound

by Rysa Walker

  Out of habit, I bent down and started to pick up the sheets that I knocked over, but the smell was stronger near the floor. Fighting back a wave of nausea, I decided I really didn’t want to know what was under the stack of linens and pushed the door to my right. It wouldn’t budge and there was no handle on the inside.

  I moved back two steps to see if I could get enough room to kick it in. That’s when I felt something round and hard poking my spine.

  I bit back a scream. Then, after a few seconds of nothing happening, I glanced behind me and saw that my attacker was the doorknob to another, larger door. Relieved, I opened it and escaped into the hallway. I had no clue where the first door led, and given that the smell was stronger in that direction, I was very glad that I didn’t have to find out.

  The light from the medallion was again very useful, since the gas lamps in the third-floor hallways weren’t lit. The corridors were confusing enough without having to feel my way along the walls in the dark. The entire floor seemed deserted, but I couldn’t shake the memory of the things that had happened behind some of these doors.

  Of course, Katherine’s instructions were wrong. The first left did take me to a main hallway, but the second left along that corridor was one of Holmes’s amusing little dead ends.

  Coming back toward the main hallway, I passed a door that, like the second-floor room where Katherine and Kiernan were waiting for me, had a bolt on the outside.

  I knew Katherine would screech that I was violating the timeline—and she was undoubtedly correct that anyone in there probably wasn’t supposed to escape—but I really didn’t think much of the CHRONOS ethical guidelines on that front. I yanked the bolt back and opened the door.

  I heard a scuffling sound from inside, but it could very easily have been a mouse and I didn’t have time to stop and investigate. “If there’s anyone in there, the door is open,” I whispered. “Holmes has a gun, though, so be careful.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer, just turned right at the main corridor, and then tried the next left. Thankfully, that one did lead me to the stairs.

  I paused at the top of the open stairwell to listen. The muted noise of an argument drifted upward, but it didn’t sound like the man from the bank.

  “… not leaving you here with…” That voice was clearly Minnie. I couldn’t make out the entire response, but the other voice was low and calm, and I was pretty sure it was Holmes. I picked up the phrase “back at the flat,” and “business” as I moved slowly down the stairs, but that was all I heard.

  When I hit the second floor, I took off quickly through the hallway. No wrong turns this time and the gas lamps were easier to travel by than the dim light of the CHRONOS key. It was still a confusing maze of twists and turns, but I reached the room a few minutes later. I unbolted the door, and a very relieved-looking Katherine and Kiernan rushed out.

  As we hurried back toward the stairway, I took all of the cash that I could find at the bottom of the handbag and crammed it down the front of Kiernan’s shirt. It was at least ten times the salary we’d agreed upon and he started to protest.

  “You’ve earned it, kiddo. And,” I said softly, “if we get separated, you may still have a job to do. Get Katherine back to the Wooded Island—the spot near the cabin.”

  “I know how to get back to the Expo, Kate,” Katherine said. “I’ve spent plenty of time here.”

  “Yes, but I’ll wager you don’t know the back ways as well as he does. And based on what I’ve seen, he’s friends with half the people who work at the Expo. I’m willing to bet they’d help him—no questions asked.

  “Kiernan,” I added, “take every back alley you know and keep an eye out for the guy you were following earlier. The pudgy one. He’s still looking for Katherine, probably on the Midway.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I’ll be okay—I can jump straight home from here—but I won’t see either of you again for a long while.”

  Katherine had just turned a corner. I held Kiernan’s arm to keep him back so that she couldn’t hear our next exchange.

  “If you get out, you don’t come back, okay? I’ll be fine.” I tapped the medallion hanging from my neck and spoke quickly. “Is yours at the cabin?”

  He nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation, I slipped the spare medallion around his neck and tucked it into his shirt. “Never take it off, okay? Never. Prudence is going to demand your dad’s key at some point, and I think there’s a good chance you won’t remember any of this if she does. You might not even remember why you don’t trust her, and I really don’t think that’s fair, do you?”

  His eyes were solemn. “No, Miss Kate. I don’ think that’s a bit fair.” The chain was very long on him, well below his waist, and he rearranged it as we turned the corner, wedging it into the waistband of his trousers.

  I again had the eerie feeling that I was being watched and spun around to look back down the hallway we’d just left. But there was no one in the corridor—just the flickering shadows from the gas lamps.

  Katherine, who was now approaching the stairwell, looked back impatiently over her shoulder. I turned back to Kiernan, putting my finger to my lips and flashing my eyes toward Katherine, hoping he’d understand both that he needed to be quiet and that she didn’t need to know about our little exchange. He nodded and gave me a little smile.

  There were no voices in the stairwell. A few lights were still burning in the pharmacy, but Holmes’s office was dark. I crossed my fingers that he had stepped out to help his wife find a cab to take her home, but I had a bad feeling.

  I led Kiernan toward the inner edge of the stairs and we crept upward to the dark third floor of the hotel. When we reached the landing, I gave Kiernan’s shoulder a little squeeze and moved the two of us in front of Katherine.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, in a barely perceptible whisper. “I’m the one who knows which way we’re going.”

  “Do you have martial arts training?” I snapped. “If not, we stand a better chance if I go first. Just in case. You take the rear, Kiernan in the middle. If we all stay close, you can nudge me when we need to turn.”

  She made a slight face, but nodded once and pulled back against the wall so that I could inch out in front of her. “It should be the second left.”

  After my last experience with her thinking it was the second left, I was tempted to ask if she was sure it wasn’t the third, but I decided it was best to keep chatter to a minimum.

  We crossed to the other side of the hallway and were just about to make the turn when two gunshots sounded from behind us. All three of us jumped and ducked as we ran around the corner, but the shots were clearly on a lower floor. The good news? Holmes was nowhere near our current location. The bad news? He was most definitely still in the building. And from the sound of things, that bad news had probably been much worse news for someone on the first or second floor.

  “Come on,” I said. “At least now we know he’s in the building, but not close by. We just need to find that window.”

  “But he doesn’t shoot anyone tonight,” Katherine said.

  “You know that for a fact?” I asked, my voice tense. “He killed a lot of people here.”

  “I just hope he hasn’t killed someone else because of us,” she said. “Someone who wasn’t supposed to die.”

  “I do, too,” I said. “But there’s not much we can do about it now, is there? We need to keep moving.”

  There was a rapping sound behind me and I whipped the CHRONOS key around to look down the corridor, bumping into Kiernan as I spun around. For a split second, I saw a tall shadow in the very middle of the hallway and then it was gone.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Katherine.

  “No,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought…” I shook my head. It clearly wasn’t Holmes, and I’d had very little sleep in the past forty-eight hours. “Nothing. Just jumpy, I guess.”

  We ran down tw
o more corridors, including the one where I’d paused earlier to unbolt the door. The door was open a good deal wider than it had been when I left, and I wondered whether the occupant had escaped the frying pan only to land directly in the fire.

  And that’s when I smelled the smoke.

  22

  I don’t know how long we spent in those hallways. It was probably less than ten minutes, but they were easily the longest ten minutes of my life. The place was, for all intents and purposes, a maze, designed to disorient anyone unfortunate enough to get lost in the middle.

  We had just passed the door I had unbolted earlier and the stable point in the linen closet for the second time. Every time we were forced to backtrack after encountering a dead end, I was terrified that we’d come face-to-face with Holmes. To make matters even worse, the smoke was getting thicker.

  “I know there was a window, Miss Kate. It was on this side of the buildin’.” It was the second time we’d walked all the way to the end of this corridor and tears were now pouring down Kiernan’s face.

  “Well, there’s no window at the end of the hall and no rooms on this side of the hallway,” Katherine said.

  I stopped for a moment. “Unless… there’s a hidden door? He used trapdoors, didn’t he? I remember something about him walling up a shipment of furniture—building the room around it—so that he could claim it never arrived and avoid payment. Maybe…”

  “What are we supposed to do then?” Katherine asked. “Start kicking in walls at random?”

  I didn’t answer her, just tore down the hallway, back to the linen closet. Ignoring the fact that something back there reeked foully, I gave the closed door inside the closet a hard kick with the side of my foot. It opened about an inch and I had to put my arm over my mouth and nose to keep from vomiting.

  I kicked again, trying not to think about what I was dislodging. With the third kick, there was a soft thud and the small door swung inward.

  I bent down to look inside and could just barely see the window at the very end of a long, narrow room that stretched the entire length of the hallway. If there was a moon out, it was behind a cloud, because only the faintest hint of light was coming in through the glass. I couldn’t see a ladder, but Kiernan had said he didn’t think we’d be able to see it from the inside, since the rungs began just below the window’s edge.

  I turned to Katherine and Kiernan, who were standing at the entrance to the linen closet. “You were right, Kiernan. This has to be it.”

  “What is that god-awful smell?” Katherine asked.

  “I think we both have a pretty good idea,” I answered. “I guess Holmes didn’t manage to get all of the victims to the pit in the basement. Just hold your breath as much as you can—and be careful to duck as you enter. The doorway is very low.”

  I held the CHRONOS key out into the room, hoping for enough light to pick a relatively clear, corpse-free path to the window. As I began to move away from the door, my skirt brushed against something solid. I really didn’t want to know what it was, so I just kept inching forward.

  “Are you okay, Kiernan?” I asked, reaching back for his hand.

  “I’m okay, Miss Kate,” he said, but he slipped his hand into mine. “We need to hurry. I mean, if he set the fire, then this is prob’ly his escape route, too…”

  I moved forward as quickly as possible with only the CHRONOS keys for light to guide me. The room was mostly empty, aside from some stray items of furniture, but it was only about four feet wider than the broom closet had been.

  We passed several shadows that looked like cots along the left-hand wall and I was pretty sure that the long, thin object dangling from the edge of the second one had once been someone’s arm. I heard a quick intake of breath from Katherine a few seconds later, and when I looked down at Kiernan’s face his eyes were tightly closed—he just clutched my hand firmly and blindly followed my lead.

  We’d covered another five yards or so when a shuffling noise came from behind us. A quick glance back revealed nothing. I told myself it was probably just the body that I’d shoved away from the door slumping the rest of the way to the ground. Or a rat. Normally, either of those ideas would have freaked me out, but right now they were a source of great comfort.

  But the sound came again. And then again. Either the body was following us or it was a very large rat. Even more likely, it was Holmes.

  He obviously knew we were in here. If I could hear one person moving stealthily behind me, he could definitely hear the three of us. Holmes must have known we were in here before he even entered—otherwise, why no lantern? We had a slight advantage, in that he could not see the light from the CHRONOS keys that we were using to find our way forward. He had a much better idea of the territory, however, since he’d designed this nightmare.

  “Go,” I whispered, still moving forward. “Keep low and stick to the side so you aren’t silhouetted by the window. If it won’t open, smash it. Don’t stop for anything. You both know what you need to do once you’re out of here. I’ll see you—eventually.”

  Kiernan leaned in toward me for just a moment and clutched my hand. I was afraid he was going to argue, but he didn’t. “Bye, Miss Kate. Be careful.”

  I gave him a quick kiss on the top of the head as they moved past me. Pulling myself as close against the wall as possible, I listened, trying to separate the sounds of Katherine and Kiernan on my right from the less obvious movements to my left.

  Inching over a few feet, I positioned myself across from the two cots I’d seen earlier. The room was, at most, six feet across, and with the obstacle of the cots on the other side, Holmes would have to pass directly in front of me in order to get to the window. I fought the temptation to tuck the medallion back in my pocket. There was no way he could see the light, but it still made me feel exposed—a bright blue beacon pointing out my location.

  I took a few slow, deep breaths to try and steady my pulse and then stole a quick glance at Katherine and Kiernan. I couldn’t see them clearly, just the glow from Katherine’s CHRONOS key ten, maybe fifteen yards away from the window. Please, dear God, let this be the window with the ladder, I thought.

  Holmes was still advancing from the left, but it was very hard to gauge his exact distance. His breathing was jagged—as if he’d recently been running or had inhaled a lot of smoke.

  Another quick glance at the window. I couldn’t even see the blue glow anymore; Katherine must have slipped the key back into her dress.

  I was about to turn away when the faint outline of the window shifted slightly. There was a loud creak as the frame resisted, but the gunshots were even louder.

  Holmes fired twice in rapid succession. I don’t know where the first shot landed, but the second shattered a section of the window. I twisted toward him just as the third shot went off and was able to pinpoint his location—he was almost on top of me. In fact, if he hadn’t been staring at the window when he fired, I’m pretty sure he’d have caught a glimpse of me in the brief light of the explosion.

  I stood up, my back pressed to the wall. The blue light gave an unearthly glow to Holmes’s face that would have been sinister enough without the long-barreled revolver he was clutching. He had stopped in order to take a more careful aim when I kicked upward. The goal was to hit his arms, which were holding the revolver at chest level, but the skirt limited my movement and the blow caught him just below the belt of his overcoat.

  Holmes doubled over, his finger squeezing the trigger of the gun as he did. The shot went wild; the vibration in my feet suggested it had lodged in the floor. Catching my balance, I pulled my knee up sharply into his face. I heard a crunch, but it wasn’t enough to stop him; his hand lashed out and snatched the foot I was standing on out from under me.

  As I fell, I could see Kiernan’s form visible in the window from the chest up. I couldn’t see Katherine; she was either standing out of the light of the window to avoid being a target or she was already on the ladder.

  My head smashed ag
ainst the floor. I pushed myself up to a sitting position, my back against the wall, as quickly as I could, but I was disoriented. There were dozens of little blue lights when I opened my eyes and I remember thinking that must be what they mean by “seeing stars.”

  There was a noise to the left of me, so I pulled my legs in and kicked again. One foot clipped him, in the knee, I think, but it was more of a glancing blow than a direct hit.

  “You have an impressive kick for such a little lady,” he said. “But it’s no match for a gun.” He was moving the gun slightly from side to side with one hand as his left hand fumbled in his jacket pocket.

  My heart pounded in my ears as the gun swept past where I was huddled. He can’t see you, Kate, he can’t see you, I reminded myself. And there had already been six shots—two downstairs, and four up here. I didn’t know a lot about guns, but I’d seen a few Westerns, and the one in his hand was a “six-shooter.” That meant the gun should be empty. Unless, of course, he’d stopped to reload before entering the linen closet.

  He hadn’t reloaded, but it didn’t matter. His hand emerged from his pocket holding a single bullet.

  As Holmes clicked the round into the chamber, I turned sideways and centered the medallion in the palm of my hand, wedging my arm against the wall to keep it steady so that I could pull up the kitchen at Katherine’s house.

  He took a couple of steps backward, probably to give himself a wider view to catch any movement, his left hand stretched behind him to feel his way. His legs buckled when he bumped into one of the cots. There was a clank of glass against glass, and Holmes cursed softly, then stopped in mid-profanity to laugh.

  I don’t know what instinct caused me to turn away from that laugh. It meant breaking eye contact with the medallion and I had already locked in the kitchen—I was just pulling up the date and only needed a second more, two at the most. If I hadn’t turned away, however, the liquid would have caught me square in the face.