The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  Even in this cemetery, absurdly enough, he felt at home.

  But why here? Why would the spell—

  From the darkness amidst the gravestones farther up the gently sloping cemetery hill, there came a girlish giggle and then a shushing noise. Will stared into the darkness, the shapes of the markers resolving from the shadows, and he started up the slope. The streetlights of Cherry Street did not reach this far.

  “Will,” a voice said. “Cut it out!”

  He frowned. She was talking to him. But how could—

  “Hello?” he called.

  “Will!” the girl cried, and she shot up from behind the large marble stone that marked the resting place of the Gilmore family.

  In the dark he could not make out her features, but her blond hair picked up the moonlight and he knew her by her silhouette. It was Caitlyn. Will held his breath and stared at her, and even as he did a second figure rose from behind the stone.

  “Hey,” the kid said. “We weren't spying or anything. We just . . . you all right, mister? Heard you getting sick, and . . .”

  Will took a step backward, then another, and he bumped into a gravestone and nearly fell over. The kid's words trailed off and he put a protective arm around Caitlyn. Will stared at him.

  At himself.

  It was too much for him, standing there face to face with his own self, eleven years past. Numb and speechless, he backed several more paces away from the couple in the cemetery and then at last he turned and ran, heart pounding, whispering prayers and curses under his breath.

  The wind carried his own more youthful voice to him from up the hill. “What the fuck's his problem?” asked the young Will James.

  The voice was both foreign and familiar, and he recalled how odd it seemed to him every time he dictated notes into a tape recorder and then played them back. His legs pumped beneath him and he nearly tripped over a broken granite slab. Then he was sprinting through the arch and out onto Cherry Street, his chest burning from the exertion. He was out of shape. Not like that kid back in the cemetery. Not like back in high school.

  Not like the Will James of now.

  In his mind he could see the moonlight on Caitlyn's hair, could remember this night—or several like it. He recalled with perfect clarity the scent of vanilla on her neck and how he fumbled to unhook the clasp of her bra with the fingers of one hand. His face flushed as he ran, remembering the perfect smoothness of her breasts and the way she had whimpered when he licked her nipples. Will could practically still feel her hand stroking him through his jeans.

  The sense of dislocation nearly paralyzed him, but he shook it off and kept running, passing the houses on Cherry Street, many with their lights on or with the blue flicker of the television inside the windows. A couple of boys, maybe eleven or twelve, sat on the front steps of one house smoking cigarettes they did not even try to hide as he ran past. The boys stared at him and Will stared back, far more astonished by them and by his surroundings than they were by the spectacle of this man running down the street.

  Me. That was me. Foolish as it was, the words kept running through his mind. He could picture the outline of his own teenage face in the moonlit cemetery, the arrogant stance, the cocky way he slung his arm around Caitlyn. All he could think about was A Christmas Carol and the Ghost of Christmas Past. It was a spell. It was magic. And in that sense Will had thought of this little miracle, this desperate plot to prevent Brian Schnell from altering his own present, as something fantastical and benevolent. The darkness of his past experience with magic had not changed that.

  He was filled with an aching sadness and an envy of his old self, of Young Will and all that was in store for him. Meeting him, though, had been profoundly unsettling, and he was having trouble gathering his thoughts, determining what to do next. Will had known he would probably come into contact with his younger self, but had not expected it to happen so soon. Even if he had braced himself properly, he doubted he would have dealt with it any better.

  What the hell happened? he thought. Why did I end up here?

  And then he understood. He had concentrated on the room under his porch, and the spell had brought him to the right day, the right year, but his younger self had acted as an anchor, drawing him to the cemetery. That was the only thing that made sense.

  Will tried to focus. He was here now. He had a goal. But how to work toward that goal? He had been angry, afraid, and desperate, had felt himself changing inside.

  Changing inside. Am I even that kid anymore? The answer came to him immediately. He was what that kid had become, thanks to his experiences. But by changing his experiences, by taking away his friends and hurting them, Brian was altering who Will had become. The man he was had been forged by his relationships with his family and his friends. Now all of that was being twisted.

  He had to stop it, to prevent the crimes that were to be perpetrated in the coming days. If the spell had transported him to the night he had focused on, he had twenty-four hours before Mike Lebo would be dead. Twenty-four hours to intervene, to make certain events unfolded as they should.

  But you're an idiot. For starters, how the hell are you even going to get around town?

  Will's lungs burned and his chest hurt. He slowed to a jog and then stopped entirely, bent over to rest, not daring to turn back to see if he could still see the little cemetery, to see if Caitlyn and . . . and Will were watching him. He took deep breaths and then stood up straight.

  I'll do what I always did. I'll walk.

  He set off toward the center of town. Now that the maelstrom of his thoughts was beginning to settle, he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to keep Lebo alive and keep Ashleigh and Tess from being raped unless he had help. If he was going to stick around, he would need a place to sleep and wash up, not to mention other clothes to wear. Styles hadn't changed so much that anyone would think his jeans and Red Sox shirt were out of place, but he couldn't wear the same outfit every day. Plus, some of the cash in his wallet might be old enough, but most of the bills were the new design. Something would have to be done about that. His ATM and credit cards would be useless.

  Will was going to have to approach someone, to share the truth. He knew that there was danger inherent in this plan, that intruding in any way upon the past was likely to alter the present, but hard choices had to be made. It was either risk small changes or allow the sick bastard to rape and kill his friends. No choice at all, really.

  The only question was who he ought to approach. But it wasn't much of a question. There was only one logical choice.

  Now that he had at least the beginnings of a plan, Will picked up his pace. His mouth tasted of vomit and he felt exhausted, both from the running and, he thought, likely from the magic as well, but he did not want to waste a moment.

  The night was cool but not as chilly as it had felt when he had first regained consciousness in the cemetery. At the bottom of Cherry Street he turned up Ashtree Road. The split-levels, Capes, and ranches of the side streets disappeared and were replaced by old Colonials and even a few Victorians here and there. In the next decade nearly all of them would have been sold and renovated, but here and now most of them were still in need of painting, with lawns that were yellowed and dotted with bare patches.

  A collie lunged from the open garage door of 227 Ashtree, claws scraping the pavement as it raced down the driveway trailing a chain behind it. The thing looked like Lassie with mange, and its barking seemed a combination of savagery and panic. Will froze, watching the chain unravel, slinking along the driveway. Finally it snapped tight. The dog let out a yelp and was pulled off its feet, choking.

  Will stared at the collie as it stood panting and glaring at him, pulling the chain to its furthest extent. He remembered the dog. Remembered these precise events. The collie had done this to him several times when he had walked the two and a half miles from Caitlyn's to home.

  Surreality swallowed him again.

  Ashtree took him to the cente
r of town, where it intersected with Winter Street. Will turned left and glanced up at the clock set into the peak of the granite Eastborough Savings Bank building. It was almost half past nine. For several minutes he could only stand on the sidewalk and gaze around, only breathing when he remembered that it was necessary. The windows of the library were dark save for the one just inside the foyer. The librarian, Mrs. Thalberg, always insisted they leave that one light on to discourage vandals.

  Will swayed slightly and shook his head. Mrs. Thalberg. He could picture her, a stocky, olive-skinned woman maybe four and a half feet tall whose nylons always made a shushing noise as she patrolled the study carrels making sure the kids were behaving themselves.

  He walked slowly along the sidewalk, stepping gingerly as though the entire street might shimmer like heat over summer pavement and simply disappear. The door to Athens Pizza opened and a fortyish woman came out carrying two pizza boxes, followed by twins, a boy and girl of about ten. Will was sure that he recognized them but couldn't remember their names or where they lived. The smell of the pizza was far more familiar. He paused in front of the plateglass window and stared inside. Perry and Arthur, the brothers who ran the place, were behind the counter as always. Perry shouted something at a group of teenagers who sat at a booth, but Will could not make out his words through the glass.

  One of the kids at the table was Stacy Shipman.

  Will nearly choked on an involuntarily harsh intake of breath. “Stacy,” he whispered. An avalanche of emotion and image went through him, not merely from high school but from the previous two days . . . days that would not come about for eleven more years. In his fear and dread and desperation he had put any thoughts of Stacy out of his head. Now, watching that sly smile, the way she laughed, and the way the spray of freckles across her nose disappeared when she crinkled it up in laughter, he found he missed her. He wanted to find out what was going to happen next.

  Next. What a foreign word it was to him at the moment. Next had to be put on hold for now. But just for now.

  The nostalgia that the scene inside Athens instilled in him was powerful. He wanted to go inside right then and order a slice, or a roast beef sub the way Perry made them, toasted with butter. It was with great reluctance that he tore himself away from the window.

  This isn't your life now. This is then. It's not for you.

  The Comic Book Palace was closed, but through the window he could see Glenn, the guy who owned the shop, tallying up the day's receipts at the counter. Will raised a hand to wave to him but dropped it and glanced away quickly, realizing that Glenn wouldn't have a clue who he was.

  When he passed by Herbie's Ice Cream, Will did not even have the heart to look inside. It was possible Nick Acosta would be working, and it had been hard enough for him to see himself and Caitlyn . . . he wasn't ready to see any of the others yet.

  On the next block was the strip mall with Annie's Book Stop and The Sampan. But here Will paused and frowned, staring at the front of the store between them. It was a florist—The Flower Cart—with a pretty awning and colorful window displays. The odd part was that he didn't remember it ever having been there. He knew that the shops in that strip had turned over frequently enough; that particular spot had housed a video store, a travel agency, and two separate frame stores. Somewhere in there, he supposed, there must have been The Flower Cart. Obviously it hadn't lasted very long.

  A melancholy thought drifted through his mind as he wondered how many other little bits and pieces of his past he had already forgotten, and how much more of it he was likely to lose as the years went by.

  Aren't you a ray of fucking sunshine, he thought, and he laughed softly before continuing on.

  He crossed to the other side of the road and took a right down Market Street, which was short and dead-ended in the parking lot of Kennedy Middle School, a long rectangular box with windows. In addition to the strangeness of it all, as he walked past the school Will felt almost as though he were haunting the place with his memories. Yet moment by moment the surreal quality that had affected all of his senses from the moment he'd come around in the cemetery seemed to be diminishing. The air around him no longer felt electric. The brick structure of the school was just brick. Real and tangible.

  It was not this place that was out of the ordinary, it was Will himself.

  Despite everything, he could not help but take pleasure in simply being here. As he walked across Robinson Field behind the school, he glanced up at the night sky and marveled at the stars. Then Will picked up his pace and began to jog. On the far side of the field he found the tear in the chain-link fence and slipped through it, then made his way along the winding path through the woods. He was amazed that even in the dark his memory did not fail him and he navigated without error.

  Minutes later he emerged from the woods at the top of Parmenter Road, and his smile broadened. A shiver went through him, and he felt almost giddy. He could picture his parents watching TV in the living room . . . his father making pancakes on Sunday morning . . . his mother painting in the little studio she had fixed up for herself in the garage. Al and Diana James had been older than most of the parents of their son's friends, but Will had barely noticed. Now the idea of seeing them then—seeing them here, a decade younger—was fascinating to him.

  Will ticked off the names of the families who lived in the houses he passed. Hendron. Panza. Kenney. Carlin. He came around a corner where tall spruce trees blocked his view of the lower half of the street and at last was in sight of his house. He laughed again and shook his head, slowing to a walk once more.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. This was what his house was supposed to look like. The triangular walk in front surrounded shrubs and birdbaths, and there were much larger bushes across the face of the split-level home. After his parents retired to South Carolina, the Brodys would tear all of those bushes out and remove the shutters, painting the thing an austere white. But on this night the green shutters were still in place and the house was painted Chatham Sand, a kind of beige Will would always remember the name of because they had spent a number of summer vacations in Chatham on Cape Cod.

  This was home.

  His steps slowed even further and he took a deep breath, the smile slipping from his features. Of course he could not speak to his parents, could not simply walk up and knock on the door. If he could get a glimpse of them, that would have to be enough. There would be no way for him to stop the horrors of the days ahead without interfering somewhat with the past, without confiding in someone, but he wanted to take as little risk as possible. Talking with his parents would be an unnecessary risk. Unless he could manage to “accidentally” bump into them at the supermarket or something. But that was for later.

  Twenty-four hours from now, Mike Lebo was going to be run down by a hit-and-run driver and killed, his skull shattered on the pavement and his ribs crushed by the impact. Right now that had to be his focus.

  Will took a deep breath and stepped off the road, away from the streetlights, into the comparative darkness of the Ginzlers' front yard. As he drew nearer to the house in which he had grown up, he could not stop his gaze from roving to the ash tree in the front yard and to the oak from which he had once fallen, earning him a concussion.

  And beyond his house, there was a pale blue one with dark shutters that belonged to Herb and Kathy Wheeler. It was Ashleigh's house. Before she had met Eric DeSantis and he had met Caitlyn Rouge, Will and Ashleigh had been inseparable. Even afterward, she had been his best friend. The cleverest, most imaginative girl he would ever know.

  Will cut across his lawn and went along the side of the house, then slipped through the darkness of the backyard, happy that his parents had never bought him the puppy he had always asked for. He didn't need any barking dogs at the moment. It unnerved him to be a prowler on his own property, to know that should his mother spot him out the window of her bedroom she would be alarmed, even afraid.

  Cautiously he made his way to the line of he
dges that separated his property from the Wheelers'. He poked his head through to the other side and studied the rear of the house, the patio, and the tall trees just outside Ashleigh's corner bedroom window on the second floor.

  Something shifted in the darkness at the base of the trees and Will froze, narrowing his eyes. A shadow. A silhouette.

  Someone else was already there. The shadow reached out to grab the lowest branch and began to haul himself up into the tree, climbing toward Ashleigh's window.

  All the breath went out of Will. Blood rushed to his face. Killing Mike, raping Tess and Ashleigh, all of that had apparently not been enough for Brian Schnell. He had to hurt Ashleigh more. He had come back again. This time, however, he wasn't the only one who knew what the future would hold.

  Fury and disgust rippled through Will, and he slipped soundlessly from the hedges and began to rush across the lawn toward the dark figure scrambling up that tree.

  This time when he had Brian by the throat, there would be no one to pull him away.

  Questions flashed through Will's mind in a confused jumble. The figure in the tree was Brian. One glimpse of his face had been enough to convince Will of that. But from what point in time had Brian returned to this time frame? He had the foolish goatee that Will had seen on him recently, but that proved nothing. Had he already returned to the past and committed the crimes that were to come, and had now made a second trip into the past? Or was this his first foray through time? Could Will prevent those crimes by stopping Brian now? Yet as he sprinted across the Wheelers' backyard, those questions were stillborn, buried beneath a torrent of fury and adrenaline. Will breathed in the scent of October, of someone burning leaves and of the chill night air, and he hurtled through the moonlight toward the tree that led up to Ashleigh's bedroom window.