It didn’t matter. With the amount of wannabe ghostbusters who’d already paid for an overnight stay months in advance, he had plenty of time to meet nice girls.
A bit of movement through the front window broke his thoughts. People walked by his house often. It was in a residential neighborhood, after all. The crazy few even jogged by, like that girl in black who’d bebopped past Sunday when Beverly Gibson and the one-name photographer showed up. But it was 10 a.m. on a workday.
He leaned closer to the window. Two people walked up Gerry Avenue in the direction of his house, which shouldn’t have been odd. Cord’s door got knocks from the occasional salesman, sometimes from even a kid hocking band candy, and a mailman/woman/person still delivered door-to-door here, but these two were none of those. A man, the largest man he’d seen in person, bearded and wearing a red flannel shirt like he was Paul Bunyan, opened the gate to Cord’s walkway and a woman stepped in. She could have been a normal-sized human, or even tall, but in the man’s shadow this woman with dark hair tied in a ponytail looked like a middle schooler.
What are you doing? Cord wondered and checked the door to see if it was locked, not because of the man, although he couldn’t see a lot of his face behind all that hair, but because of the expression on the woman’s face. He’d seen that look before on a woman. A chill ran through him.
“No. Go away,” he whispered, pressing himself against the wall. Seconds later, a shadow fell over the window on the front door and knuckles rapped. I’m not here.
Cord didn’t know why he felt jittery. Nothing usually frightened him, not even moronic gym rats named Roman, and Roman had every right to frighten him. Cord even owned a haunted house, for Christ’s sake. Then why—
“We know you’re here,” the woman said. “Brick can see you through the window.”
Brick?
He stopped. This was wrong. He had no rational reason for his guts to tie themselves into a garden-hose-at-the-end-of-summer mess. He owned a business. These people had approached his business. They must want to discuss a way to pay him money to use his business. They were not here to hurt him. He inhaled sharply because for some stupid reason he hadn’t been breathing.
Cord stood straight, stepped away from the wall and opened the door.
“Good morning,” he said to the strange couple. “I’m sorry, but tours don’t begin until 7. Have you reserved your spot?”
“We’re not here for the ghost tour,” the woman said. “We’re here to discuss David Collison, Ph.D.”
Oh, no. “Are you from the government?” squeaked out.
“No,” she said.
Cord grabbed the front door. He had to slam it, slam it now, or his life would change. He knew his life would change, and he didn’t want it to change. He liked his life just the way it was, thank you very much.
The door came to a jarring stop, and the woman stepped into the house under Brick’s outstretched arm.
“You should consider yourself lucky we’re not with the government,” she said and took a few steps forward to allow Brick enough room to enter the house behind her.
As the door closed, the knot in Cord’s stomach tightened. He’d seen home invasions in movies, but they usually involved drugs or kidnapping a senator’s daughter or something much more exciting than his life. “What do you want?”
The woman smiled. “Just to talk,” she said. “You really need to learn to relax.”
4
Dave walked slowly toward the avocado beer fridge, his hand shaking as he grabbed the chrome handle and pulled open the door. What was left of a case of Miller Lite sat on the middle shelf, two Ziploc bags of sliced summer sausage and a partial brick of sharp cheddar cheese on the top. He reached inside and pulled out the sausage.
“This isn’t right,” he said, his voice loud in the quiet machine shop. Dave opened the clear plastic bag and sniffed. The aroma dragged a flood of long-hidden memories through his brain. Grandpa Sam’s farm. He plucked out one of the slices roughly cut by a pocketknife and bit down. The soft, processed meat stung his tongue pleasantly with coarse salt and cracked pepper.
“My God,” he moaned. He hadn’t eaten summer sausage since Grandpa Sam died. When was that? Grandpa Sam took me to see E.T., so nineteen eighty-two? He swallowed the processed meat and put the bag back into the fridge, drawing out a beer before shutting the door. But this is his shop. This is his beer fridge. His beer brand. His sausage. When Dave gripped the beer tightly and pulled, the tab came off so unexpectedly he almost dropped the can.
“What the—?”
A pop-tab ring hung on his index finger. He hadn’t seen one of those for decades. That’s because they stopped making them when I was a kid. Dave took the tab from his finger, bent it like he’d watched Grandpa Sam do hundreds of time, careful not to cut his fingers, and dropped it into the opening.
“This is wrong,” he said, the bird in the rafters fluttering again at the sound of his voice. He held up the Miller Lite. “This is all wrong.” Dave pushed his arms into the air and spun like Julie Andrews on that Austrian mountain, trying to take in the machine shed all at once. “Grandpa Sam’s dead. This isn’t his shed. This isn’t his farm. I haven’t been dropping out of thin air. Some bum didn’t steal my goddamned shoes that cost me over a hundred dollars. I’ve lost my mind and gone to Crazytown.”
He put the can to his lips and took a long draw of cold, foamy liquid, careful to rest his tongue on the opening so he didn’t suck the tab into his throat. He drained the can and threw it across the shop. It landed and bounced, clanking into a shadowy corner.
“Hey,” he shouted into the machine shop. “It really is less filling and it tastes great. Who knew?”
A noise stilled his hand before he could pull open the fridge again. The sound of tires crunching on gravel hit him like Skid’s fist. Someone owned this machine shed. Someone who might like the same snacks as Grandpa Sam and the same beer as Grandpa Sam. Someone who didn’t know Dave once had a right to be here and might call the cops on a trespasser.
He padded to the nearest door on sock feet, leaned in to peer through the crack. What he saw almost dropped him back onto the dirty concrete floor.
A man in oil-stained Key overalls stepped down from a dusty brown 1980 Ford Ranger and spat tobacco juice.
“Levi-Garrett,” came from Dave’s mouth, although he didn’t realize he’d said it.
The passenger door popped open and a sandy-haired boy about eight years old slid onto the gravel drive, his white E.T. T-shirt clean except for a dark Dog n Suds root beer stain over Elliott’s face. Dave knew that shirt, he knew that stain—they were both his. He also remembered the last time he wore that shirt. The day Grandpa Sam died.
“Dear god,” he whispered. “Nineteen eighty-two.”
5
“Hey, you people can’t do this,” Cord protested as the big guy clamped a hand on his shoulder and walked him into the kitchen. The jitters that had grabbed Cord at the door left him. Now he was just mad. “I’m a legitimate businessman in a legitimate neighborhood.”
“So am I,” Brick said, dropping Cord gently onto a wooden kitchen chair.
Cord looked up at him, his eyes narrowed. “Hey. You’re the Manic Muffins guy.”
The statement caught Brick slightly off guard. “Uh, yeah.”
“You have really good coffee.” Cord turned toward Skid. “And you—”
“Always the coffee,” Brick mumbled over Cord’s head. “Why doesn’t anybody ever say that about my muffins?”
“—you jogged past my house Saturday morning.”
Skid shrugged, her toned, T-2 Sarah Connor arms not lost on him. “I’m sure lots of people do.”
He put on the car salesman smile that won him Employee of the Month six times in a row at the dealership. “I never forget a face, at least not one as striking as yours.”
Brick shook his head. “Don’t.”
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Cord’s smile turned into a grin. “Oh, wow. So, are you two, you know?”
“Nope,” Brick said. “I don’t really know her, just well enough that using the words ‘striking’ and ‘face’ in the same sentence isn’t the best idea.” While he said this, Brick contemplated the flowery 1970s linoleum and Skid’s pink Hello Kitty shoes. Nope. He didn’t know this woman at all.
Skid turned a kitchen chair backward and plopped down. “Now, Cordrey,” she said through a smile. “Why—”
“How do you know my name?” he interrupted.
She draped her arms over the back of the chair and rested her chin on them. “I read Sunday’s paper.”
Cord’s grin faded slightly. “It’s Cord.”
A hand the size of a Stephen King hardback slapped against the table. Cord jerked backward and almost fell.
“This isn’t about you. This is about the scientist,” Brick said, not shouting, but at the same time shouting. “We all saw him on the same night, and he teleported somewhere each time. Teleported right in front of us.” Brick stood and folded his arms, which, whether he intended it to or not, made him look even bigger.
Cord pulled his cell phone from his pocket and activated the screen. “I’ve just dialed 9-1,” he said. “My finger is about a quarter-inch away from hitting another 1. You two have about thirty seconds to convince me not to call the cops. So far—”
Skid’s hand shot out faster than Cord could react and snatched the phone from him.
“Please stop,” she said, her voice calm. She slowly pushed herself from the table and stood, slipping the phone in her back pocket. “Something weird started happening to us the night we all met Dave.” Her eyes bore into Cord’s. “Little things. Street names changed. The name of the newspaper changed. The band I remember seeing Saturday night wasn’t the band that played by Sunday morning. Muffin frosting changed.”
Brick dropped his hands into his jeans pockets. “How’d it taste?”
She waved him off. “Delicious. Very chocolatey.”
“What we want to know,” she continued, “is what is Dave Collison Ph.D.’s connection to this house, and do you expect him back?”
“Back?” Cord barked a laugh. “Back? I don’t know that guy. I have no idea how he got here. I was conducting a ghost tour and he just dropped out of the air. I have no idea if he’s coming back, but—”
“Do you guys smell that?” Brick sniffed and nudged his hairy head at Cord. “Do you have an air purifier?”
6
Grandpa Sam. Dave tried to force himself to relax, but his chest had pulled too tight for that. Grandpa Sam died on the day Dave spilled root beer on his E.T. shirt. The memory filled Dave’s head in a flash. After he spilled his soda, Grandpa Sam had laughed, pushed a wad of Levi-Garrett chewing tobacco into his cheek and got out of the truck, only to take a few steps, clutch his chest like Jonathan Kent and fall dead onto the dusty gravel drive. Dave’s screams echoed in his head. He had rushed back to the truck and grabbed the CB radio mic, trying to reach anybody to come and help.
Dave peeled his face away from the crack between the door and the wall, tears running down his face.
“Nope,” he said, turning and walking into the middle of the shop, the dusty concrete dotted with his sock footprints. “I’m not going through that again.” He stopped and looked to the ceiling, the rafters in shadows. “Why the hell am I here?”
The bird chirped.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
There’d been no scream from outside. Not yet. “Maybe I remember wrong.” But he knew his brain was trying to lessen the impact of his grandfather dying in front of him for a second time. The day he died was the day Dave felt the world drop away. It was the reason he would follow his foster father’s path into physics and try to solve time, to figure out a way to go back and warn Grandpa Sam he was going to die. Theoretically, the supercollider he worked with could create mini-black holes that would supply the extreme gravity needed to disrupt time. If only—
The feel inside the shed changed, like static electricity had suddenly flooded the air.
“No,” fell out of his mouth and he rushed toward the beer fridge, stuffing the bags of summer sausage and cheese into his pants pocket and looping a finger into the plastic yoke on a six-pack of Miller Lite. The wave must be on its way and he didn’t know when he’d eat again. He’d barely shut the door when the air freshener smell grew heavy and enveloped him.
The little Dave outside screamed, big Dave no longer there to hear it.
7
Silence. Skid and Brick stared into the hall that went from the kitchen to the front room. Cord sat at the table, his hand cupped as if he still held the cell phone Skid had confiscated.
“Uh-hem,” Cord said. Skid held a finger to her lips, then turned to Brick.
“You feel that?” she asked. He nodded.
“Feel what?” Cord wanted to stand with them, but he felt like he was in the principal’s office.
“Change in air pressure,” Brick said, taking a step toward the hallway. “Like a storm’s coming.”
Storm? Cord finally stood. “What do you mean, ‘storm’?”
“It’s just like what it felt like when Bud Light Dave vanished in Slap Happy’s,” Skid said, ignoring Cord. “The air’s heavy. Same smell, too. It’s coming from the hall.”
This was getting even weirder. “That’s where the guy appeared.”
“Or it could be anything,” Brick said. “If this Collison guy is slipping in and out of somewhere, he’s also coming and going somewhere. He might not be the only one doing it.”
Skid’s eyes popped wide. “If it’s him again, we can’t let him get away.”
“What if it’s a Siberian tiger?” Brick asked, a hand on her shoulder. “Or a mountain troll.”
She frowned. “How could it be a mountain troll?”
“Of course, it couldn’t be a mountain troll,” Cord said, his voice a little higher than he would have liked. He coughed. “There’s no such thing, but what about the tiger?”
“It’s him,” she said, “and his ass isn’t getting away this time.” Skid took off in a dead sprint and dropped into a baseball slide in the hallway, skimming over the false blood stain and turning to stop on her stomach.
Brick moved into the hall after her more quickly than a big man should.
“Hey,” Cord started, but a thump interrupted him, like someone had dropped a duffel bag of meat in his house. He stood, frozen, and watched a full can of beer roll into the kitchen.
8
Another floor. Dave mouthed ouch and slid his eyes open as he landed on his chest. He looked up; a pair of brown ones peered into his.
“Yaaaa,” burst out as he scrambled to his knees. The woman the eyes belonged to grinned. Dave knew her. “Skid?”
She pushed herself to her feet and rested hands on hips and leaned her weight onto her right leg like nothing unusual had just happened. “Bud Light Dave,” she said, then spoke over his head. “Brick?”
Brick? “What’s a Brick?”
Massive hairy hands grasped Dave’s shoulders and lifted him into the air.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Hey.”
Whoever, or whatever, had grabbed Dave walked into a kitchen and sat him in a chair.
“Did you see that?” Skid asked. “It was just like at the bar, except the other way.”
“No,” Cord said. “In this house, it was exactly that way.”
Skid and Brick turned toward him.
“He just, pop, fell out of the air and landed on the stain in the hallway. He landed in exactly the same spot.”
Dave pointed a finger at Cord. “I’ve seen you before.” He moved his head toward Brick. “But not you. I don’t know you.”
“This your Oilyman?” Skid asked Brick.
“No.” He grabbed Dave’s chair and leaned it backward
to inspect him, ignoring Dave’s shout. “And yes. He’s not hurt, he’s not covered in oil, but this is the guy I saw near the bathrooms at Slap Happy’s. He’s also not the guy.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Cord said. “Either this is or is not the guy. He’s the man I saw.”
Brick relaxed and allowed the chair to rest on all four legs. He scratched his beard more out of habit than need. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but this guy just fell out of nowhere, remember? What I mean is he’s not the Oilyman I saw, but maybe he will be. Like my guy is the future this guy, but even dirtier. If that makes any sense.”
“It does,” Skid said. “But first, let’s all call him Dave.”
“Why?” Brick asked.
“Because that’s his name.” She sniffed Dave, but all she could smell was beer and rotten fish sandwiches. She cringed. “From what you said, the guy you saw is Dave, but not Dave. It’s Dave—possibly from the future—dressed in the same clothing, but somehow injured and covered with oil.”
“Where are you going with this?”
Skid exhaled slowly. “I’m just trying to make this less confusing. Is it working?”
Bud Light Dave cleared his throat and the three of them turned their attention to him. He sat at the table, his shoulders slumped, leaning his bruised face on the palm of his left hand.
“From a purely textbook physics perspective, what you’re suggesting—that you both saw different timeline versions of me—is theoretically possible, but technically impossible.” He paused to let this sink in. “But in a that’s-exactly-what-my-boss-was-working-on perspective, yep. You pretty much nailed it.”
“So,” Cord said. “You’re from the future?”
Dave drummed his fingers on his bruised cheek. “Were you even listening to the conversation?” he said, his voice dripped with defeat. “Hey, could one of you bring the beer from the hallway? I’ve just flown here from 1982, and boy, are my arms tired.”
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 7