Black Valley

by Jim Brown

  “That’s what’s happening here. Even if the plant is never built, all the debris, anything that is already in the dispersion field, remains in the field. That’s why the old brainteaser about going back in time and killing your grandfather is meaningless: if you went back in time and killed your grandfather, then you would cease to exist. So how could you go back in time and kill your grandfather? And if you couldn’t, then he would not be dead, meaning you would be alive to go back in time and – ”

  “Okay, okay, we get it,” Nathan said. “The paradox. But you’re saying it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Exactly. Once you’re out of phase with normal space-time, then you’re operating under a different, albeit equally strict, law of physics. It’s like getting into a glass ball, then jumping into a swimming pool. You’re surrounded by water. If your friends jump in, they are surrounded, too. But even though they are wet and everything around them is wet, you remain dry.”

  “Because of the bubble,” Piper said. “And the bubble is the protective field.”

  “So how does that affect Whitey Dobbs? How did he get in the field?”

  “Ninety-nine Einstein. It was Dobbs himself who gave me the answer. As you know, NxTech does research in dozens of different sciences, with plants and factories all over the world. What you may not know is that each laboratory, every single research room, has a designation name and number. The names correspond with the field. A computer science laboratory in Colorado may be called thirty-seven Gates.”

  “Named after Bill Gates,” Nathan said.

  “Right. The name tells the discipline of science, the number means it’s the thirty-seventh laboratory in the worldwide NxTech chain.”

  Dean reached into his desk drawer, took out a set of blueprints, and unfurled them. He anchored one side with a soft-drink can, the other with a tape dispenser. The three of them got up and walked over to the prints for a better look. “These are the plans for the proposed NxTech research center. As you see, it will be built on top of Hawkins Hill.”

  The blueprints revealed a sprawling, multistoried facility – each room numbered, each number matched by a corresponding legend in the bottom right corner.

  “Which lab is yours?” Piper asked.

  “I will have the ninety-ninth physics research laboratory in the NxTech system: ninety-nine Einstein.”

  He pointed to a big room near the center of the plant. “And that is where my lab is going to be.”

  Nathan shrugged. “So?”

  Dean took a full breath. He tapped the paper. “That is within fifteen feet of the exact spot where Whitey Dobbs was buried twenty-two years ago.”

  They were quiet as the reality of what Dean was saying settled in.

  Piper felt the hair rise up on the back of her neck. Dean read the look.

  Piper swallowed. “Something’s coming.”

  33

  He was standing outside. Snow up to his knees. Standing, looking, watching. The stranger, Elijah.

  “Son of a bitch,” John said, rising from his seat. Piper heard the snap of the safety strap, the sound of metal and leather as the sheriff drew his gun from its holster.

  “No,” Dean said. “Don’t. He’s on our side.”

  “How can you know that?” Nathan snapped. “How the hell can you know that? Even if everything you say is true. Even if he is a time traveler, how do you know he’s not still responsible? How do you know he’s not working with Dobbs? How the hell do you know anything?”

  “I don’t.” Dean put on his coat, held up his hands to prevent any further argument, then left the building. A few seconds later he stepped outside into the shocking white world that Black Valley, Oregon, had become.

  They went to the window, all three of them. Piper noted John was holding his gun. His finger slipped inside the trigger guard – ready.

  The wind was still blowing. Skiffs of snow took flight like gossamer ghosts performing a jerking waltz. Dean walked with his head down against the wind, collar up, face hunkered in his coat. The stranger turned to great him. John raised the gun. Piper put a hand on his arm. “No. Not yet.”

  As they watched, the stranger, Elijah, began to move in a herky-jerky fashion.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Nathan asked.

  “Dancing the Time Warp,” Piper said, her words greeted by a perplexed face. “Long story.”

  As they watched, Dean began to laugh. Laugh? Then, with the group looking on, the stranger took off his hat, turned toward the window, made a deep, elaborate bow. And then he vanished.

  Dean stood for a moment, staring at the place where Elijah had been a heartbeat earlier. His words still sounded in his head.

  “I couldn’t just tell you,” Elijah had explained. “I tried that, it didn’t work. In the future you are the only one who understands how it works and even you admit that’s because of an accident.”

  “An accident.”

  Elijah nodded, his hat bobbing like a bird’s wing. “It happened after you watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You got that song stuck in your head. Somehow you put that with your theory, and blam, you figured it out. You told me, or you will tell me, that you had to look at the problem sideways. If you examined it straight on, you couldn’t see it. So I tried to re-create those circumstances.”

  He began to dance. Dean laughed and danced with him.

  “So, who are you?”

  He smiled. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Dean flexed his fingers, the cold working its way into his gloves. “What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “A dream. I hope to fulfill my greatest dream. That’s all.”

  They talked another minute, then he was gone, and Dean was alone in the snow.

  My greatest dream. That’s all.

  Two of the three new computers chimed at once. Dean could hear them in the hall before entering the room. He hurried, brushing snow from his hair and clothes, slung his coat over the nearest chair, and hurried to the first computer, leaving wet tracks behind him. Piper and Nathan were studying the screen of the second machine.

  “You’ve got something,” Nathan said, then shook his head. “It’s all numbers.”

  “Good.” Dean checked the screen, then struck the appropriate keys. Across the room a laser printer hummed into action. “Send what you’ve got to the printer as well.”

  Nathan looked blankly at the computer. Piper smiled and lightly pushed him aside. “Allow me.” She tapped the keys. “Printing.”

  “What did he say?” John asked, showing little interest in the technology spewing from the machine.

  Dean picked up the still-warm paper, the first sheet to be printed. He studied the results. Close, but not enough.

  John repeated his question.

  Dean sighed, picking up the second printout. “He said he wants his dreams to come true.” Dean read the paper and shook his head. “Damn. Not enough.”

  “That’s it? That all he said?” John demanded.

  “That and that I make terrible hamburgers. He said I served him one two weeks ago, his time, working as a teenager at a fast food restaurant.” Dean removed a third printout, swore beneath his breath, and crumpled the paper up. “Not enough. It’s just not enough.”

  Across the room Piper looked up. Dean had come to recognize the look in her eyes. Sparks jumped from the doorknob.

  “Incoming,” she said.

  Dozens of pinpricks of bluish-purple light dappled the room. Appearing out of nothing. Hanging in the air. Some throbbing. Some growing.

  “What’s happening?” Nathan screamed.

  “Not now,” Dean muttered. “Not yet.” He took another sheet from the printer.

  The wind began to blow. More holes, bigger now. Several the size of dinner plates, at least two as large as serving trays. Unanchored papers took flight, flutte
ring like thin, white, spasmodic sparrows. The wind was random, coming from a dozen different sources, at times competing with itself. The room was filled with the scent of burning rubber and ozone.

  The wind grew stronger. A paper tray tipped over. A waste basket slid across the floor.

  Piper, the smallest of the group, staggered as she was struck in the chest by a mallet of hot air.

  “Grab hold of something,” Dean shouted. “All of you!”

  Piper grasped the edge of a study lab table. They were bolted to the floor and offered good anchorage.

  John had holstered his weapon but now appeared conflicted. Not sure where the enemy was. What the enemy was.

  “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Dean shouted. “Everybody hang on.”

  As if to punctuate his statement, a blue-white spear of jagged lightning erupted from one of the three computers. Sparks flew and crackled. Black smoke rose several inches, then was ripped to shreds by the conflicting winds. The air howled as if a pack of invisible, flesh-starved wolves had suddenly been set loose.

  “Dean, what are these things?” Piper yelled.

  “Distortions. Rips in time. We’re at a conjunction point. That’s why all the phenomena.”

  A soft-drink can tipped over. The outstretched blueprint curled back into a tube, bouncing against the tape dispenser. A rack of test tubes crashed. A computer monitor, hit by a particularly focused blast, slid six inches, stopping precariously close to the edge of the table..

  “How do we make them stop?” Nathan asked.

  “We can’t. And I’m not sure how long it will last.”

  The third computer chimed. The sound almost lost in the now banshee scream of the whipping wind.

  “John,” Dean yelled.

  “I’m on it.” Holding the mounted lab table, John Evans pulled himself over to the third computer screen. “How do I print?”

  “F-nine,” Piper screamed.

  For a long second the caterwauling wind was all they heard, then the printer beside Dean began to hum. It sucked in a blank sheet of paper and regurgitated the information from the computer.

  Holding the table with one hand, Dean reached out and anxiously ripped the fresh sheet from the machine. The paper flapped in his hands like a small white flag. He tried to read the numbers. Then swore. “Not enough, damn it. It’s not enough.”

  Suddenly three of the smaller pinpoints dried up. The wind slowed but didn’t stop.

  “What’s happening?” Nathan asked.

  “Room’s pressurized,” Piper told him. “The air pressure between here and whereever those holes open into is equalizing. Anything from the computers?” she asked Dean.

  He shook his head. “If I had more time. I know the basics. But not the details.”

  “What are we looking for?” Piper screamed.

  “Numbers!” Dean yelled, his voice straining to be heard over the roar of the wind. “I believe what we are seeing now is the result of what will be my earliest attempts to breach space-time. That’s why the time holes are confined to this room.”

  “What kind of numbers are you looking for?”

  “Calculations. If my theory is correct, Whitey Dobbs can’t control when or where he appears. Due to the way he was exposed, his movements are random. Geographically he is pretty much limited to Black Valley, but everything else is a crapshoot. However, he’s been making some rather precise appearances. I think he’s using these rips to navigate between past, present, and future. I can’t believe he’s smart enough or lucky enough to know where the next portal will open or how to open one on his own. He must have empirical data.”

  “How could he get that?”

  “From me, or my future self.”

  “Why would you do that?” Piper asked.

  “Because this never happened. Like I said, anything we do now will change the future, but it won’t effect Whitey Dobbs because he’s in a protective field. Whatever has happened to him, in his time line, has happened – it’s our future, but his past. Obviously, when he appeared in the future, he must have snookered me, taken advantage of my guilt. His unique radioactive signature must allow him to slip through the portals without harm. I don’t believe the same is true for others.”

  “So Dobbs becomes your own time-traveling astronaut,” John said.

  “Chrononaught, but yes, that’s about it. Perhaps he was blown into the future and may have stayed there, had it not been for these portals. He was at least there long enough to have the photograph of Mason’s daughter altered and triggered to Mason’s and my DNA, and he had enough time to get a new blade for his knife, one made of some futuristic metal that’s sharper than anything I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

  “The computers,” Piper screamed. Her words were torn from her and batted about by the still – persistent wind. “You’re trying to re-create the time spurts. That’s why you wanted all the clocks, so you could tell how much time existed between events.”

  “Yes. But there are two variables I hadn’t counted on. I thought Dobbs’s appearances were related to the rip in space-time created by the explosion. And although that certainly made the fabric more pliable, this latest phenomenon, these time holes, indicate that I am also capable of creating ruptures. And then there is Elijah. For some reason he’s not as limited. I think he can sense them, like Piper. And in some cases create them.”

  “Without those coordinates it will be virtually impossible to stop Whitey Dobbs.”

  “A forty-five will stop him.” John said.

  Dean shook his head. “No. There’s something else you should know --”.

  The third computer chimed again. “More,” John called, striking the keys, sending the electronic information to the printer across the room.

  This time Dean waited, as if superstitious that his early removal had invalidated the data on the preceding pages. The wind calmed enough to risk standing without a grip. His tie whipped behind him like a banner, but he was able to hold the sheet with two hands.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Got it?” Piper asked.

  “Not all, but something.” Dean closed his eyes. No time for computers, theories, or trial-and-error strategies. He had to process this new information himself, right here, right now.

  Suddenly a spear of jagged lightning shot out of a nearby portal, striking Dean full in the chest, knocking him off his feet. He was aware of falling but not of hitting the ground. His extremities screamed as if a thousand hot knives were flaying his skin.

  “Dean!”

  Piper’s voice was his anchor. He shook his head. His thoughts suddenly a jumble of numbers, memories, and sensory information. His ability to discern reality from fiction, to focus a clear thought, was gone.

  “Dean!” She was there, somehow. Lifting him up. Cradling his head in her lap. Her face swam before him, distorted by what appeared to be a foot of churning seawater. He wanted to touch her. To play his fingers across her smooth white skin. As if that touch alone would quell the burning that seemed to flare from his insides.

  His arms wouldn’t move. He tried to speak. His words were gone.

  “Shhh, it’s all right. Everything is all right,” she whispered.

  Then why was she crying? Don’t cry, he wanted to tell her. Don’t worry about me. Just had the wind knocked out of me. That’s all. She stroked his hair. He could hear other voices. Familiar. Nathan?

  Mayor Peculator. How’s it going?

  “Dean, can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

  He tried to answer, but someone had replaced his tongue with a fat, angry salmon.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Dean saw more than he could count.

  He could feel hands undoing his shirt, rolling up his sleeves. Piper?

  “How is he?” Her voice was shrill.
r />   “No visible burns,” Nathan said. “Just shaken up, I think. Dean, if you can hear me, try to focus. Try to look at one thing and see that one thing. Concentrate. Let it guide you.

  Dean found Piper’s face. So beautiful, so fresh. A field of virgin snow. Worried eyes embossed with tears. Don’t cry, Piper, don’t cry.

  Her eyes widened. Dean felt her legs beneath his head tense. Saw the veins in her neck rise to the surface. Her eyes sparked.

  He opened his mouth, tried to control the fish that had once been his tongue.

  “Dean,” Nathan asked. “What is it? What is it?”

  They didn’t know. They couldn’t see her face. Distracted by her worry for him, maybe even she didn’t know. Dean closed his eyes, found the word he needed, then pushed it forward with all his might.

  “Incoming,” he whispered.

  The wind shifted once more, a cold, icy saber replacing the hot, dry air from earlier. Then from somewhere faraway and yet very close, the sound of laughter, shattered teeth on fine china.

  The laughter of Whitey Dobbs.

  34

  The hole pulsed large enough for a man to fit through. Whitey Dobbs stepped out less than three feet behind John.

  Dean struggled to raise himself. He pushed out the words. “John, behind you.”

  Before John could turn to face him, the white-haired demon hooked an arm around his neck. Dean caught the glint of something metallic, almost like electric silver, arc through the air, then plunge deep into the sheriff’s chest.

  “John!” Piper screamed.

  Dean grabbed the table leg and pulled himself up. He lost his grip and fell back to the floor. Piper and Nathan stood.

  The knife.

  The knife.

  Electricsilver and blood. It struck again, sinking deep into the sheriff’s massive chest. Lying on the cold linoleum, Dean used his elbows to pull himself forward. John was less than ten feet away.