by Jim Brown
Jerry spread the map on an empty desktop. Using a ruler, Dean traced the longitude and latitude.
“This is where he would have appeared after our encounter in the classroom,” he said. He circled the location with a pencil.
“That’s over at the high school,” Jerry noted.
“And this is where he’s going.” He circled a second location. “Several miles away.”
Nathan looked over his shoulder. “That’s out in the sticks. Nothing there but trees.”
Jerry tapped the map. “And the old Wherrington timber mill.”
Dean became rigid. “The timber mill?”
“Yeah, but it’s empty. Been abandoned for – what, two years now?”
“How close is that to the ranger substation?”
“Not far – quarter of a mile at the most. Oh, jeez.”
“Piper,” Dean whispered. “I sent Piper to the ranger station.”
The big car was not designed for severe-weather driving. Despite its weight and size, the Delta 88 slipped and slid whenever it struck a patch of ice. Mason didn’t care. He pointed the automobile more or less in the direction he wanted to go and pressed the accelerator to the mat.
As a result, he pulled into the rear parking lot of the grocery store just minutes after Whitey Dobbs had left in the stolen truck. Jenkins Jones, the owner, was still standing in the snow.
Mason lowered the window and slid to a stop. “A young guy with white hair. Have you seen him?”
“He stole my truck.”
“When?”
“Just now. He just left.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
The old man made a face. “He’s crazy. Tried to make me have sex with one of the cashiers.”
“Where is he going?”
“I told him, I said, ‘No way, you son-of-a-bitch. No way am I going to put a condom on and do the naughty with those pretty young girls. You’re going to have to kill me – ”
“Directions. Directions! Where the hell did he go?”
Jenkins Jones smacked his dry lips. “Beal. He asked how to get to the old Beal Highway.”
“Beal? What’s out there?”
“Trees. That’s all. Ranger station, couple of houses, the old sawmill, that’s all.”
Mason put the car in gear. “The truck? What does it look like?”
“Red-and-white GMC. A lotta chrome. Brand new. You – you tell that son of a bitch I want it back. And I still ain’t going to do the wild think with them cute checkers.”
Mason grimaced.
“What? It could happen!” Jenkins Jones screamed as the Delta 88 roared away.
U. S. Forest Service Substation 1240 was an old farmhouse that had been renovated. What had been a barn was now a garage used to store different equipment, depending on the time of year and the needs of the area. For the past six months an array of firefighting gear had been stored there. Thankfully, the need had been minimal this summer, and now, with the world mantled in unseasonable snow, it would likely remain unused for the next five months.
Fred Olmstead was alone at the station, and like the firefighting equipment, he didn’t expect to be of much use this winter. Since his wife died a year ago, he had pretty much been living in the station. He felt safe here, far way from the constant reminders of his dearly departed bride of forty-two years. In six months he would reach the mandatory retirement age. After that – he didn’t like to think about it.
He was sitting in the big arm chair in the main lobby, enjoying his Reader’s Digest, when a young woman with bright eyes and way too much energy bounded into the room, almost giving him a heart attack.
Her request was nearly as startling as her arrival. “I don’t think I can let you have that, missy. That’s government property,” he told her politely.
“I’m with Westcroft College. I work with Dr. Dean Truman. I can’t stress to you how urgent this is.”
Fred scratched his two-day-old beard and sucked in his gut, wishing he had taken the time to put on his official forest-green uniform, or at least tucked his ratty red-and-black-plaid shirt into his worn jeans. “Dr. Truman, you say?” He rolled the name around in his head. Sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put a face with it. “Can’t really see why a doctor would have much need for that.”
The little brunette huffed and stormed past him, marching into the back room.
“Hey, hey! You can’t go back there.”
She began rummaging through the equipment-lined shelves. He followed her. “Authorized personnel only. I can get into serious trouble if I let you – ”
She turned to face him. Her brown eyes were pooled with tears. “Please. You’ve got to help. You’ve got to.”
Fred Olmstead felt his heart melt. He took a ring of keys off a peg on the wall. “Outside. In the garage. Big key gets you inside. Little key unlocks the cabinet in the back. Can’t say what shape it’s in or how many supplies there are.”
She took the keys and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips felt like warm flower petals. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, well – if I get fired, you’re going to have to take care of me in my old age,” he called as she rushed out the door.
Whitey Dobbs thought of John Evans and giggled. Damn. Always knew the dude was tough, but hell, how many times did you have to kill the man to keep him dead?
He checked the time. He was doing well. The truck handled the snowy roads with surprising authority. It wouldn’t be long now. “Not long at all, Jimmy Dean – not long at all.”
He found the irony appealing. That all this was made possible thanks to calculations by Dean himself. How could someone so smart be so stupid? The future Dean Truman had theorized that something had caused fractures and weaknesses in the space-time and had exposed Dobbs to high doses of what he called neo radiation. All true. But what the future Dean Truman did not know was that the weakening of the space-time field was caused by him, by his experiments, by his work exploding.
Idiot.
In the few months, his time, that Whitey Dobbs had enjoyed control of his time jaunts, life had been a bit more bearable. As long as he vented the buildup of radiation with a time hop approximately every three days, he wouldn’t flicker away unexpectedly. With that control, Dobbs was able to experiment.
Tandy.
His greatest desire was to save his baby sister from being murdered at the hands of their father. His chance came when a time jump put him in the past approximately two months before her death. Dobbs wasted no time. He stole a car and was on his way to Baltimore when he learned the second cruel joke life had played on him.
Approximately thirty-seven miles from the top of Hawkins Hill he flickered away, winking out and reappearing somewhere else, somewhen else, but always within the that radius. He tried again and again and again. Each time the results were the same. He was tethered to Hawkins Hill.
The only thing he truly wanted to do, the only benefit to his miserable state of existence, was denied him. He couldn’t save Tandy.
The closest he came was a phone call. He was surprised he remembered the number, more surprised when she answered the phone. Tandy. Her voice was small but spirited. A simple hello sent chills down his body.
Tandy alive.
“Hello?” she asked again.
She’s going to hang up, he realized. His own voiced seemed to fail him. When he did speak, his words were strained and choked with emotion. “Hello, is – is this Tandy Dobbs?” he asked, knowing the answer but desperate to keep her on the line.
“Yes, it is. Who is this?” Her voice so young, so friendly, open and alive.
He might not be able to save her in person, but he could at least warn her, tell her to get the hell out of that house. He talked quickly, urging the young girl to leave home.
“Who are you? What do you want?�
��
“Just get out!” Then, desperate to impress her with the seriousness of the situation, he told her what was going to happen. He told her the future. She was quiet, deathly quiet.
When she spoke again, it was in a tiny, frightened voice. “Who is this? Melvin?
Is this you? Melvin, this isn’t funny.”
There was a sound like the phone being dropped, and then a new voice, a horrible voice, a voice that screamed in his nightmares every night. “Who the hell is this? You call my house again, you fucking pervert, and I’ll rip off your dick and shove it down your throat. You hear me, asshole? You hear me?”
His father. Dobbs physically jerked away from the phone. A cold pall settled over his mind. For a moment, the external moment that stretches between fearful breaths, he was no longer Whitey Dobbs; he was Melvin. The boy. The cowardly boy who had endured his father’s beatings and witnessed his sister’s murder.
Then his heart shut like a clenched fist around his rage and hatred. More than anything he wanted to go to Tandy, more than anything he wanted to kill his father again. There was a newspaper box next to the telephone. He read the date and smiled.
“You hear me, asshole?” his father was yelling in the phone.
Whitey Dobbs laughed. It was a sound Melvin had never made, a sound he knew could chill the bones of the dead.
His father was silent.
“Three days,” Dobbs said. “Three days and then you die.”
The phone went dead; the world went gray. Then Whitey Dobbs was somewhere else.
His greatest wish denied him, Dobbs had been left with nothing else but revenge – sweet, sweet revenge.
Traveling the time stream, aided by Dean’s calculations, Dobbs learned other limitations as well. While he could go up to four hundred years into the past, he could only travel ninety-eight years into the future – from the time he was buried.
Still, with control came power.
He had caught that arrogant disc jockey, Larry Pepperdine, hunting in the woods ten years before this current time period. The man had about died when he saw Whitey. Dobbs knocked him out, cut off his right hand, then traveled ahead to this current time period, where he used it to choke Clyde Watkins.
Larry Pepperdine bled to death in the woods, his body not found until recently. And despite the exact nature of his wound, no one suspected the freshly severed appendage belonged to Larry.
Sweet.
Whitey Dobbs adjusted the heater vent, then started looking for signs to the Wherrington timber mill. He felt a sudden jolt, followed by a sustained shudder, as if someone were raking an electrified brush across his naked body.
What the hell?
He pulled over. Where? An old sign, rusting and crooked, marked the entrance to the timber mill. No. Not there. He looked behind him. Another shudder. There -- back there. Whitey Dobbs turned the truck around, following the impulse. He pulled into the driveway of the ranger station.
The cabinet was in the back of the barn, just as the ranger had said. What he hadn’t said was that there was so much other equipment that getting to it was a chore. Twice, Piper had to back up and start again. She had reached the cabinet and was beginning to search for the right key when the sensation struck her.
He’s here.
The thought came to her, complete and without ambiguity. She reflexively crouched, scanning the barn from waist high. The big machines sat quietly. Piper left the cabinet, working her way back to the door.
Here.
Was she imagining it? Letting her fears get the better of her?
The ranger stumbled out the door like a man who had been drinking and crossed the ranger station porch. He stopped at the steps. Turned and looked at the barn. At Piper. His eyes were like hubcaps, his skin paper-white. He tried to speak. Blood bubbled from his mouth, a crimson froth. He fell forward, bouncing down the stairs like a rag doll. A figure stepped out of the door behind him.
Whitey Dobbs.
Piper felt a shiver of electric fear arc between her mind and her heart. Dobbs looked at the fallen man. The silver-bladed knife, now red with blood, quivered. He raised his head, sniffing the air. He turned, his eyes on the barn.
Whitey Dobbs started down the stairs.
The depression in the landscape was covered by the leveling snow. Piper hit a deep spot, sinking up to her waist. She gasped as the cold clenched her lower body.
Run, you fool, run.
She struggled through the snow, leaving an all too visible gash on the trail behind her. The land rose. She climbed out of the depression. The snow was still several feet deep. Each step was like lifting weights, each stride harder than the one before it. She had found the side door of the barn just seconds before Whitey Dobbs entered. She was sure he hadn’t seen her.
It didn’t matter. She raised her head. He was still coming. She could sense it. And if she could sense him, chances were he could sense her. The trail vanished into what had been the timber mill parking lot. Piper ran, picking up speed on level terrain. She stumbled.
Don’t you fall, don’t you dare fall, she chastised. I’ll be damned if I’ll trip like some panty-wearing sorority girl in a teeny slasher movie.
The building before her stood like the skeletal remains of a once-proud dinosaur, now fossilized in brick and broken glass. A large sign, weathered and hanging slightly askew, marked it WHERRINGTON TIMBER MILL – NUMBER 31 – OREGON DIVISION.
Piper hit the door with her shoulder. It opened half a foot, then stopped, held in place by a thick chain and padlock. Locked? No. It couldn’t be locked. She looked back across the parking lot. Although he was not visible, she knew he was coming. She felt it.
The highway was close to two hundred yards away. If she made it to the road and worked her way back to the ranger station, she could get to her truck as well as the gun she kept in the glove compartment.
Whitey Dobbs came out of the woods.
No time, no time.
Piper ran down the length of the building, disappearing quickly around a corner. If he could sense her, then hiding would do no good. But there was always the chance that the sensations went only one way. She found another door. This one hung broken on its hinges. She pushed it open another foot, then slipped inside. She could hide in here. And if he could sense her? Her chances of finding a weapon of some kind were greater in the building than in the woods.
Mason Evans turned too quickly into the curve. The Delta 88 took on a life of its own. The steering wheel spun in his hands as the car pirouetted across the black highway. He had driven too fast.
He hit the brakes, locking the tires and increasing the spin.
He cursed as he tried to wrestle the steering wheel under his control. The car left the highway, tipped, and began to roll sideways. The world was a whirling dervish, the sound of screeching metal earsplitting.
The car slammed like fist into a regal Douglas fir.
I taste blood, was Mason Evans’s last thought.
The building was dark, too dark, and the air tasted of sawdust and mold. It had a thick, cloying property that made Piper feel as if she were wearing it more than breathing it. She instinctively went to the only light, where she found a flight of stairs. She climbed rapidly, her footsteps sounding like a tennis ball striking an empty building. The mill was three stories tall. The top floor was ringed with windows six feet high that ushered in the dying light of day.
The massive room was empty, save for a series of support columns. The dying sun cast the dust-laden room in ruby hues. The windows, shattered by vandals and backlit by sunlight, appeared like rows of bloody, jagged teeth. Piper realized her mistake as soon as she stepped into the open. By following the light, she had effectively trapped herself.
The sound of footsteps rose behind her. He was coming up the stairs. Piper hysterically searched the empty room for a weapon. She foun
d a two-by-four behind one of the pillars.
A board against a time-hopping madman with a futuristic knife. What would he betting odds be in Vegas?
She had one chance and only one. Hiding behind the first support column, she hoisted the board like a baseball bat. The pillar was barely wide enough to cover her and would not mask her presence for long.
The footsteps grew louder, more deliberate – the stride of a man taking his time. She was trapped and he knew it. The glow of the knife surprised her, casting a bluish cone into the empty room. The glow grew. Her heart was a Gatling gun. She saw the tip of the knife.
Now.
Piper stepped out from behind the pillar and swung the board with all her might, aiming just behind the knife – aiming for what she hoped to be Whitey Dobbs’s head. The board struck . . . nothing.
Piper had a moment of surprise before inertia dropped her to the floor. She landed hard. Numbing pain exploded from her left elbow and radiated throughout her body. Her mind seemed to slip; logic was ice and her thoughts a clumsy skater.
The knife, the knife, the knife.
The electric silver blade quivered as the cherry-handled knife hung suspended in midair. The sound of clapping came from the doorway. Whitey Dobbs stepped out into the dyed-crimson air.
“Bravo, bravo. Good effort, but poor execution.” He nodded toward the knife, which hung magically in the air. “Pretty neat, huh? It’s melded to my brain waves. Can travel up to thirty feet.”
Dobbs opened his hand. The knife soared across the room, the handle slapping into his palm. “Ain’t science grand?”
Piper scrambled to her feet. Pain seared her left arm, but she could move it. Nothing was broken.
Dobbs walked farther into the room. Piper began back pedaling, not daring to look behind her. Her eyes held by the ungodly grin of Whitey Dobbs and the unnatural glow of the electric silver knife.
“Can you feel it?” Dobbs asked. “Of course you can. You just don’t realize it, that’s all. You were drawn here, you know? By the same force that let you sense me coming. See, this is where the thinning occurs, where the next conjunctive point will be. I don’t pretend to understand it, but the laws of space and time seem to weaken here. Thin, see? For me it’s like stepping through a heavy curtain. Once it’s thin enough, I can cross over from anywhere within a hundred-foot radius. One step and poof, I’m somewhen else.”