A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

  Karen looked down at the words on the page again. “Maybe he stopped them.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Eric. He certainly hoped so. But they wouldn’t know for sure until they found the rest of his story. Assuming, of course, that the boy lived long enough to complete it.

  “Why would his parents just let him walk home alone like that?” asked Karen.

  “He was twelve,” Eric reminded her. “That’s old enough to be home alone. And it was a small town. Besides, it was the early sixties. It was a different time back then. Remember how different it was when we were growing up? And that was the eighties.”

  “I guess so.” But it still didn’t seem right. He was only a boy, after all.

  Eric was more concerned with the trouble Hector might’ve gotten himself into next. Clearly he made his way here to this cemetery, since the bottle was buried right where he said it’d be. Had he really gone to Hudson Street alone? Did he find the men in gray? What did he see and hear? And was he able to avoid getting caught?

  “Do you really think these guys in the gray suits are agents? Were they around that long ago?”

  “They’ve been around a long time. Don’t forget, they were responsible for the Fire of 1881.”

  “Oh yeah. That genie business.”

  It was a jinn, actually. A very old and very powerful being of fire and smoke from a nightmare alternate dimension. Or so the story went. No lamps. No wishes. Just terrible, fiery death rained down upon anyone stupid enough to summon one. (Which was presumably why the agents who came here more than a century ago tricked a bunch of gullible teenagers into doing it for them, unleashing a raging inferno that incinerated the teens and devastated half the city.)

  He’d done some research on the mythology of the jinn after that first encounter. He’d read that the term “genie” or “jinni” was supposed to be the singular form of the word, but he’d been unfortunate enough to have one of the creatures enter his mind. He learned a few things firsthand about them during that agonizing experience, things nobody else in the modern world could possibly know. For example, he learned that they were not merely fire and destruction. They were actually emotional creatures. And he learned that the correct word for them, in their own language, in any number, was “jinn.” Although they existed as individuals, they were social beings and did not consider themselves wholly unique. Singularity was not a concept they embraced.

  But he didn’t bother telling her any of this. It wasn’t important. What was important was figuring out their next step.

  “What’d he mean by ‘Goss’?”

  “The old Goss Building on Hudson Street,” Karen replied without a moment’s thought.

  “Which building is that?”

  “It’s that place out by the golf course. It’s up for sale. Been on the market for a couple years now.”

  “Oh yeah. Looks sort of like an old school. Always kind of wondered about that place.”

  “It’s part of Gardenhour.”

  “Is it?” The Gardenhour organization was centered on a beautiful, sprawling estate outside of town. That building was what tended to come to mind when anybody mentioned Gardenhour, but it was comprised of many separate facilities in Creek Bend and throughout Southern Wisconsin. Their primary mission, as Eric understood it, was the care and support of children with developmental challenges.

  “It was a rec center.” She peered at him over her sunglasses. “How can you spend your whole life living in one town and not know these things?”

  Eric shot her an unamused scowl. “It’s called ‘minding your own business.’ It’d be a better world if more people did the same.”

  Karen gave a snort of a laugh. “I really don’t think that’s what it’s called.”

  “Can we get back to the task at hand, please?”

  Karen shrugged and looked back down at the fifty-four-year-old papers in her lap. “Fine. So we’re going over to the Goss Building now.”

  Eric hesitated. He didn’t like this.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” she reasoned. “I mean, that is what you’re planning to do, right?”

  It was. But the last thing he wanted to do was take her there.

  “It was half a century ago,” she reminded him.

  “That doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

  “Well we can’t just sit here all day looking at dead people. Just drive.”

  Reluctantly, Eric shifted the vehicle into gear. As he drove, Karen withdrew her phone from her purse and said, “What does Isabelle think of all this?”

  The phone rang at once, as she knew it would. When they first met, Isabelle somehow became bonded to Eric’s mind, so all Karen had to do if she wished to speak to Isabelle was speak to Eric. He was like a human intercom.

  Assuming, of course, that she was paying attention. Sometimes she wasn’t. She did respect their privacy.

  Exactly how this psychic connection worked, she wasn’t sure. It was a complicated thing that neither Eric nor Isabelle could fully explain. She had access to his thoughts, but not his senses. She couldn’t see what he saw or feel what he felt, precisely, but she could perceive the things he saw and felt by his thoughts, emotions and reactions. She couldn’t hear what he heard, precisely, either. But she could follow along with conversations by “hearing” Eric process the words in his head as they were spoken to him. By the same process, she could also read anything that Eric read. So she always had all the hard facts, but the little details escaped her to the point that she sometimes needed Eric to describe the weird things he experienced.

  It was quite fascinating, really. When it wasn’t making her head hurt.

  Karen put her on speaker and held the phone out in front of her.

  “I think Eric’s totally right. Whatever was going on in 1962 is probably over, but these things really don’t seem like they happen to him without a reason. Today must be important somehow.”

  Karen frowned at the phone. She had a point, of course. Every time the weird had called out to Eric so far, it had done so in the eleventh hour of whatever crisis he was about to charge into. There was either a deranged maniac on the verge of finding a profound and dangerous artifact, a powerful wizard about to obliterate a coven of innocent witches, a pair of sinister agents closing in on a frightened runaway or an enormous, inter-dimensional worm about to tear a hole through the universe. Why should she expect this time to be any different?

  “We need to find the next part of Hector’s story,” said Isabelle. “We need to know what those gray agents were up to. Whatever it was, I’m betting it’s about to have serious repercussions in the present.”

  Karen considered this. “Okay… Well, what do you know about 1962?”

  “I wasn’t even born until 1965,” replied Isabelle. “So not much.”

  “It was the Cuban Missile Crisis,” recalled Eric.

  “That’s why he thought the agents were Russian at first,” concluded Isabelle. “I’ll bet everyone’s dad complained about the communists around the dinner table in 1962.”

  Eric nodded thoughtfully. The date scribbled on the top of the first letter told him that Hector’s adventure began in October. The Cuban Missile Crisis wouldn’t come to pass until November, but there was plenty of tension in the air already. Even an English teacher could figure that out. But those men in gray suits had nothing to do with the Cold War. He was sure of it.

  He turned west onto Main Street and drove toward the river.

  “Can you feel anything unusual?” asked Karen?

  “Not yet,” replied Isabelle. “I’ll let you know if I do.”

  “Thanks.” Sometimes Isabelle could sense things that others couldn’t. No one, not even she, could explain why. Her perception of Eric’s surroundings was entirely limited by his own perceptions, but she’d been able to detect strange energies radiating from people and places in his weird journeys even though he wasn’t aware of them himself. “Keep an eye out for us.”

  “I will.”


  She started to hang up and then stopped herself. “Oh, Isabelle?”

  “Yes?”

  “I forgot to ask. Where are you today?”

  “Tokyo.”

  “Ooh! I’ve always wanted to go there. What’s it like?”

  “It’s really pretty here at night.”

  “I’ll bet it is. How long have you been there?”

  “About a month.”

  “Really? That long?”

  “Yeah…”

  Karen turned and frowned at Eric. “Something wrong?”

  “No. I’m fine. It’s just really peaceful here, that’s all. You worry about yourselves. I’m telling you, something’s up in that town. Be careful.”

  “We will.” Karen disconnected the call and slipped the phone back into her purse. As they approached the bridge, she turned and stared thoughtfully out her window.

  “I still think I should drop you off at home first.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “You heard Isabelle. It’s probably dangerous.”

  “I don’t care. I want to help this time.”

  He said nothing more. He wasn’t going to win this. She was far too stubborn.

  On the other side of the bridge, Karen pointed at a man walking toward them along the sidewalk. “Check this guy out.”

  Eric saw the man, too. He was stout, with a shiny, bald head and a pudgy face. He wore a long, red, leather coat in spite of the warm weather and a pair of peculiar-looking glasses. He was carrying some sort of device—probably a phone or a camera—in his left hand. He was squinting up at the surrounding buildings through the odd spectacles. In just a moment, he was behind them, but he looked so odd that he lingered in the mind well after he was out of sight.

  “He looked like a steampunk monk or something.”

  Eric laughed. “Steampunk monk? Is that a thing?”

  “If not, it should be. He was totally rocking that look.”

  He didn’t think much about the strange man in the red coat. There were plenty of strange people in the world. There were plenty of odd people right here in Creek Bend, for that matter. For example, there was a man named Clay who must’ve owned the world’s largest collection of outlandish and whimsical hats. He could frequently be seen walking up and down Main Street, showing them off. He never seemed to wear the same one twice. There was also an older man whose name—according to Karen, who knew far more people than Eric ever would—was Homer. He had a long, straggly beard and a tendency to turn up in odd places all over town having very animated arguments with himself.

  And of course there was Eric, who had no business judging anyone.

  “I hope Hector’s all right,” she said. Then, “Or was all right?” She cocked her head. “Would he still be alive? I mean if it was 1962, then…” She scrunched up her face and did the math. “He’d only be, what? Fifty-six?”

  “Sixty-six.”

  “Sixty-six,” she agreed. “That’s not very old. There’s a good chance he could still be around. Right?”

  Eric didn’t know. He supposed they could look him up…but even assuming that he must’ve survived whatever was going on in 1962, there was no guarantee that he hadn’t died of natural causes before now. Sixty-six wasn’t too young to have a fatal heart attack or die of cancer, or perish in an accident. For that matter, there wasn’t any guarantee that he still lived in Creek Bend. If he was alive, he could be anywhere in the world today.

  “If he is still alive,” he reasoned, “and if he still lives in Creek Bend… Then what would be the point of the letters? Why not just come find me in person?”

  Karen frowned. “But that would mean…logically, at least…that Hector’s probably dead.”

  Eric glanced over at her, worried. “But what do I know about it?”

  “Right. You don’t even know how to change your ringtone.”

  “I like the ringtone that came with the phone.”

  “You just refuse to learn how to work it.”

  “It sounds like a phone when it rings. I like that.”

  “Whatever.”

  They fell quiet as he turned onto Hudson Street and made his way south, toward the golf course.

  The Goss Building was on the right. It stood surrounded by a spacious lawn shaded by large weeping willows and towering evergreens. A small crescent of forest wrapped around the side and back of the property, mostly, but not entirely obscuring the fairway on the other side.

  Karen said the place was a rec center of some sort, but it still reminded him of a school. It was only a single story, rectangular, flat-roofed. Boring. But it was a long building, with lots of windows. Inside would be many rooms and long, empty hallways. It would be a lot of ground to cover in search of something as small as a letter.

  “I like this place,” she declared. “It’s cool and creepy.”

  “I don’t like creepy places as much as I used to,” said Eric.

  There was a realtor sign by the driveway, instructing them to contact an Elizabeth Sizney if they were interested in the property. He didn’t recognize the name, but Karen did. “It’s one of Libby’s.”

  “Libby?”

  “Her husband owns the boat dealership outside of town.”

  That didn’t really tell him anything. He’d never shopped for a boat before. But he nodded as if he knew exactly who she was talking about.

  It constantly astounded him how many people Karen knew.

  He turned into the small parking lot and pulled up beside the main doors. It appeared deserted, but Eric had no intention of letting his guard down.

  He didn’t like this. He knew from experience that this was exactly how a lot of trouble started. Trespassing on seemingly deserted properties usually ended with him running from some kind of insanely terrifying monster. He couldn’t even say that things like that didn’t happen here in Creek Bend because that exact thing happened several times last year.

  “Aren’t you going to park?” asked Karen.

  “We could get in trouble for snooping around here.”

  She gave him an “are you kidding me?” look that made him drop his gaze, embarrassed.

  “I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be here.”

  “It’s one of Libby’s properties,” she argued. “She’d vouch for us if we needed her to. Besides, she’s so flighty she wouldn’t remember giving us permission if we asked. I’ll just say she told us we could look around.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like being in plain sight of the road. If a police car drives by—”

  “So pull around back.” She gestured toward the corner of the building. “Park in the grass over there. Out of sight.”

  He stared at her for a moment, surprised.

  “Seriously, you’d think you’d never done something like this before.”

  He did as she suggested and parked on the grass, well out of sight of any traffic on Hudson Street. Here, the vehicle was considerably less likely to be spotted, but they still weren’t entirely hidden from view. They were probably visible from the golf course, if anyone happened to be playing through and looking this way. And if anyone were to show up while they were here—such as the actual owner of the building—they’d only have to look out any of the many windows overlooking this part of the lawn. “This is the part I hate,” he told her. “It always makes me uncomfortable sneaking around like this.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? I always thought this sounded like the fun part.”

  He shook his head. He wasn’t sure what to even say. They’d been married for almost twelve years now and she still managed to surprise him almost every day.

  “Well come on. The faster we get this over with the less likely we are to get arrested.”

  He supposed she was right about that. He rolled up Hector’s message from the bottle and slipped it into the glove compartment for safe keeping. He took the first letter from his pocket and put it in there, too. Then he stepped out of the vehicle and squinted up at the om
inous-looking building before him.

  This was going to suck. He was sure of it.

  Chapter Six

  Eric had a sick feeling deep in his belly. He hated this. He always felt uneasy when it came to sneaking around. He didn’t like that nervous tension, that fear of getting caught, of getting in trouble. He’d known other people who enjoyed that sort of thing, people who crept into abandoned buildings late at night because they were rumored to be haunted. They loved the thrill. The risk. The rush of adrenaline. It was a natural high. He, however, didn’t like that feeling at all. He never had. But that wasn’t the reason for this particular sick feeling in his gut. It wasn’t even that these kinds of situations almost always led to some terrifying encounter with something monstrous.

  It was Karen.

  “I really think you should wait in the car.”

  “If you tell me that again, you’ll need that trowel to burry something of yours.”

  CAREFUL, texted Isabelle. I DON’T THINK SHE’S BLUFFING

  Eric ignored her. “I’m telling you, I have a bad feeling about this.”

  But she was already at the side entrance, her hands cupped around her face, peering into the shadowy corridor on the other side of the glass. “We have to find Hector’s next letter. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. You need me.”

  “I don’t. Not for this. He said he saw me finding it in his dream. Me. That means I’ll find it with or without you. Besides, we don’t know for sure that it’s even here.”

  “Where else could it be? It’s the only place you know to go.”

  “I don’t know.” He looked left and right, examining the windows. “The place is probably alarmed, don’t you think? I mean, why wouldn’t it be?”

  She pulled on the handle and the door opened. “I don’t think there’s an alarm,” she said as she leaned in for a look. “Why would you set an alarm if you’re not even going to bother locking the door?”