Black Valley

by Jim Brown

  He laughed. The cackle reverberated through the empty room, echoing in Piper’s head and heart. Melting sun dyed Dobbs’s white hair a sickening pink, the color of raw flesh. “It’s not nearly as much fun as it sounds. That’s why I’ve decided to make someone else take my place.”

  Piper’s back struck the wall. Cold air rushed in through the jagged mouth of the broken windows.

  Dobbs grew closer. She imagined she could feel his hot breath on her face. An involuntarily shudder raked her body.

  “Just enough time for us to have some real fun,” Dobbs said. He licked his lips.

  “Whitey Dobbs,” a voice rang out behind him.

  He turned. The silhouette of a large man filled the doorway. John, she thought for an irrational moment. The man stepped forward. No, not John, but someone large and strong like the sheriff. An ugly cut was etched across the man’s forehead, a mask of dried blood covered his face.

  “You bastard.”

  “Mason,” Dobbs said, the barest hint of surprise in his voice. “As I live and breathe – two things your cousin John can’t do any more. I knew one of these days he was going to lose his head.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “So, how’s that daughter of yours? Will she ever be able to count to ten again?”

  “You’re dead. You hear me? Dead.”

  Dobbs waved the knife. “You really want to fight me?”

  “Nothing is going to stop me from killing you. Nothing. Wrecked my damn car getting here, knocked myself out, probably got a concussion – but that didn’t stop me. You think I’m going to let a little knife get in my way?”

  Mason pulled three dark red sticks from his right coat pocket and a lighter from the left. He thumbed the flint. A one-inch flame was born. He moved the fire under a trio of wicks. “This is dynamite. You know what dynamite is, don’tcha? Hiss, snap, boom. Three sticks is enough to take off this whole floor. Even you can’t survive that.”

  The grin was wiped from Dobbs’ face. “You’re bluffing. You kill me, you kill yourself and the girl, too.”

  Mason looked at Piper for the first time. His vision touched hers for just a moment, then flickered away. “Better she die at my hand than yours.” He moved the flame closer, a hairbreath from the wicks. “Now, dropped the knife.”

  A pause. Whitey Dobbs opened his hand. The knife fell.

  Piper realized what was happening a moment too late. “Nooo!”

  The knife stopped three inches from the dirty floor.

  “What the hell?” Mason gasped. The knife flew, moving like an arrow. It slammed into Mason hard enough to knock him off his feet, burying itself up to the hilt in his chest. He hit the floor. The lighter and explosives fell, harmless, beside him. His mouth opened and closed as blood foamed between his lips. Then . . . nothing.

  Whitey Dobbs walked over and kicked the man in the head. No response. Mason was dead. Dobbs looked back at Piper and grinned. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

  Dobbs turned his head like a dog catching a scent. “Damn! It’s here.”

  Piper felt it, too – that electric tingle that preceded something bad happening.

  Dobbs opened his hand. The knife withdrew from the body with a sickening slurp. He closed the blade and put it in his pocket, resting his foot on corpse’s hip. “Oh, well. Now that he’s dead, he will travel well.” Dobbs pushed with his foot. The body rolled once and then was gone.

  Piper detected a growing breeze. And something else: the scent of flowers. Flowers in a snowstorm? No. Flowers from another time, she realized. Air was the first thing to cross the barrier of space-time. Which would also account for the tumultuous weather.

  Dobbs picked up the dynamite and lighter, flicking the flame to life. He touched the fire to the wicks. A ravenous hissing ensued as the blaze chewed the cords. Dobbs watched as the flame grew closer to the explosive. “Almost pretty, wouldn’t you say?”

  Piper’s head was light. She was hyperventilating.

  “I’m glad it’s pretty, since it will be the last thing you see.”

  He was waiting until the last second, waiting until there was no time for Piper to run, to hide, to do anything but die. He dropped the hissing explosives, tipped his head, and disappeared into a ripple of air.

  37

  Lights flashing, siren screaming, the squad car shrieked into the empty mill parking lot. At the ranger station they had found the dead Forest Service worker, Piper’s truck, and the one stolen by Dobbs. The abandoned mill had seemed the most likely destination.

  Dean was out of the car before it came to a complete stop.

  Piper.

  Was he too late?

  Was she still alive?

  The image of Mavis’s body twisting slowly in a hangman’s noose flashed through his mind. Mavis, Judy, and now – Piper.

  No. Not again, not again.

  He couldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t live if it did.

  “There,” Jerry yelled, pointing to the mill. “On the top floor. By the window.”

  Dean recognized the small silhouette. Piper. She was alive. A second shadow moved by the window.

  Dobbs?

  It had to be.

  Dean ran to the mill. The door was locked.

  “Step back!” Jerry aimed his Smith & Wesson at the lock and shot twice. He kicked off the ruined lock and pulled out the chain. Inside, the police-issued flashlight revealed an inert and empty building.

  “The stairs,” Dean said, sprinting in that direction.

  They took the steps two by two, fueled by fear and desperation. Dean was less than six feet from the top floor when the explosion shook the building.

  “Down!” Jerry screamed to Dean as a wave of orange-red flames rushed down the steps and across the ceiling.

  “Piper?”

  Crawling the remaining six feet, Dean found the top floor of the abandoned mill. Support beams creaked and sagged. The windows were shattered. Tiles fell from the ceiling in a rain of fire.

  He had no memory of leaving the building. No recollection of stumbling down the stairs and out of the ruined structure.

  Piper.

  Dean sat on the Jeep’s bumper, his head buried in his hands as he sobbed uncontrollably.

  Piper.

  Each breath seemed an insult, each heartbeat an affront – a reminder that he alone was alive, while those he loved had died. The moment clicked forward, but for once, perhaps for the first time in his life, Dean did not know what time it was.

  “Shut up,” Jerry snapped.

  Dean looked up, staring at the deputy in disbelief. He opened his mouth to speak. Jerry shushed him with a finger. “Quiet. Listen.”

  A faint sound drifted in the fresh night.

  “It’s coming from over there.” Jerry began to run. Something about the sound pulled Dean to his feet.

  “Over here, over here,” Jerry shouted. “She’s alive.”

  Click.

  Flip.

  Click.

  Flip.

  Whitey Dobbs played with his modified switchblade as he paced back and forth. He was in a windowless medical room beneath the NxTech Research Center, no more than thirty feet from the spot where years earlier he had been buried alive. The room was stocked with typical medical paraphernalia: a reclining examination table, blood pressure gauge, sink, and a large, oblong light extending from a long, sectioned pole, allowing it to be contorted to shine light into even the most unseeable regions of the human body.

  The door opened.

  Dean entered, bearing a metal clipboard and a smile. His hair was completely gray, and wrinkles webbed from the corners of his eyes and mouth, while dark semicircles hung beneath his eyes.

  Dobbs turned his back and quickly retracted the blade. Dean would panic if he saw the blade.

  “T
his is it,” Dean said.

  Dobbs turned around, mirroring the doctor’s own smile. The professor was holding a small black box no larger than a woman’s clutch purse and two blue-silver bracelets. A series of three pressure buttons colored red, yellow, and green were the only things visible on the box. There were no wires connecting the device to the bracelets.

  “This is it, the prototype of the device that will ultimately save you from the time flux. It’s quite a creation, if I say so myself.”

  Dobbs smiled broadly. “So, how’s it work?”

  Dean’s eyes widened. He never missed an opportunity to cackle about some freakin’ theory or another. Smug bastard. Diarrhea of the mouth, his father used to call it. Dobbs bit his lip to suppress a chuckle.

  “The neoradiation that permeates your body is attached not to your physical form but to your bioelectric signature,” Dean explained. “Inanimate objects can be forced through the time stream, but because they lack the unique bioelectric chemistry of a living being, they don’t absorb the radiation. It’s that radiation that is keeping you in flux.”

  “Fascinating, Doc,” Dobbs said with a smile. Dickhead.

  Dean continued, “There’s only one way out of the time stream. Sever the bioelectric connection by transferring the radiation to another living creature. Once we’ve perfected this procedure, we will find an animal of the necessary size and weight, preferably a sick one, and inject it with poison and transfer neo-rads to it. After absorbing the radiation, the animal will die rather than bounce around in space-time.”

  “Interesting,” Dobbs said, playing with the device.

  “We’ll test it tomorrow. If it works, we may be able to use this procedure by early next year.”

  No way I’m waiting.

  “Sounds great,” Dobbs lied. “How’s it work again?”

  Dean laughed and went through the operating procedure once more, assuring Dobbs he didn’t have to worry about it, because when the time came, Dean would run the system. But he indulged him just the same. Dobbs forced himself to pay attention.

  The familiar tingle began at the base of his neck. He was about to hop again. He asked Dean for a soda. Dean left.

  Two minutes later Dobbs and the box disappeared into the time stream.

  Jerry was pulling Piper from a snowbank when Dean arrived. Flaming debris littered the ground around them, melting deep holes in the snow. He shoved the deputy aside and swallowed the girl in a hug.

  She was injured. Blood dripped from a dozen small cuts on her arms and face. But she was alive. “Alive. But how?” Dean asked.

  “Elijah. It was Elijah.” An uncontrollable coughing fit racked her body. Dean waited patiently.

  “Elijah?” he repeated.

  Piper nodded. “Mason’s dead.”

  Dean felt a new stab of guilt. Mason. He had forgotten about his old friend. And now?

  “Dobbs killed him. And he was going to kill me. He lit three sticks of dynamite and waited for the wicks to burn down before disappearing.”

  “Then how–?”

  “Elijah. I think you’re right. They can’t be in the same place at the same time. But the second Dobbs disappeared, Elijah appeared. He shoved me out the window. I have to thank him.” She looked around Dean. “Where is he?”

  Jerry was ten feet away. He was holding a charred, floppy brimmed hat. “I’m afraid he didn’t make it.” He pointed with the hat. A scorched severed arm lay in the snow.

  The smell was strong, strong enough to make a grown man sick. It was coming from the evidence room, a room under strict jurisdiction. Coye Cheevers wiped his face with the back of his greasy hand and made a decision. Yes sir -- he was gonna let himself in. Had to follow protocol, had to protect the chain of custody. The penalty for failing to do so was most severe.

  “Most severe,” he mumbled, opening the door.

  But the smell. Ye God, it was awful. The rest of the sheriff’s department might be in shambles, but that was no excuse to let something putrid remain in the evidence room.

  No sirree, Bob.

  The sheriff was dead. Jerry had said so. Which shouldn’t have surprised Coye, since he had seen the sheriff’s head roll down the hall like a jack-o’-lantern, but it did just the same. After all, hadn’t he seen the sheriff just minutes later with his head still attached?

  Yes sirree, Bob.

  There was comfort in routine. And keeping the evidence room clean and uncontaminated was his job, given to him by the sheriff himself. It was a job he took seriously. And sticking to it was only right, a sign of respect for the headless sheriff, God rest his soul.

  The stench was worse inside the evidence room, swelling to near unbelievable levels. What the heck has gone bad? he wondered as he clamped a hand over his nose and sucked air through his mouth.

  Had someone been in here eating? Left trash behind? That didn’t make much sense. Who would want to eat in the bleak, windowless room? A rodent, then? Rat or maybe something bigger. Came in through the rafters to escape the cold and died?

  A squirrel or maybe a racoon?

  He scanned the room in quick gestures, anxious to confirm his theory and get the hell out of there. He was looking for the body of a dead animal – a racoon, he decided. But if it was trash, if somebody had let something spoil, then the penalty would be severe, yes sir, most severe.

  He moved deeper, looking behind shelves and sealed cardboard boxes, all tagged and labeled with yellow-and-red evidence markers.

  Nothing.

  But the stench was the worst here. Coye fought desperately not to throw up. He was determined to find the offending – albeit dead – animal.

  “Aha,” he cried, seeing the broom closet. It wasn’t used for brooms but for weapons, hunting rifles mostly, guns seized for various violations. “Got you now, you dead, smelly varmint.” In his mind he had decided it was a dog, not a raccoon – one of those big, black-muzzled, shaggy-haired dogs just like in the Walt Disney movies – except dead and smelling to high heaven and somehow stuffed in a closet.

  He opened the door.

  Most severe, Coye Cheevers thought as the body of Mason Evans tumbled out of the closet. Piece by piece.

  Most severe.

  Click.

  Flip.

  Click.

  Flip.

  Whitey Dobbs played with his modified switchblade and waited. He was in the men’s room, less than twenty feet from the dismantled body of Mason Evans.

  Click.

  Flip.

  He thought of Piper Blackmoore and frowned. She was a unique one. He would have liked to have more fun with her, but that’s the way it goes. Now that he thought about it, he realized he had never seen Piper even once in the future. Was he always destined to kill her in every time line? Or had something else happened?

  Click.

  Flip.

  He thought about the plans he had made, working bit by bit whenever happenstance made him appear atop Hawkins Hill. And now it was ready. But Dobbs had decided to make a change – an interesting change.

  The role of Nathan Perkins will now be played by Piper Blackmoore, he thought with a crooked smile.

  Click.

  Flip.

  He left the blade out for a moment. The electric silver hummed, sending butterfly-wing vibrations through his fingers, up his arm, and into his chest, lancing his very heart – making them one an the same, each and extension of the other. He had modified the knife himself using a new metallic material that had replaced the scalpel in medical procedures. The new metal was incredible, almost alive. The subtle, virtually inaudible hum soothed his nerves and excited his determination.

  Time, age, illness – all were words without meaning to him. Yet he was impatient. Somewhere in the ache of his memory he sensed a unquenched need. It was a yearning more powerful, more compelling, and ult
imately more satisfying than even the hunger.

  His appetite was set for revenge.

  The death of Mason Evans had been quick and unfulfilling. He peered out the small opening in the bathroom door. It was nice to know that where he would travel next was one of the few moments in time where that damnable Elijah could not go.

  God, he hated that son of a bitch. Almost as much as he hated Dean Truman. Almost.

  But even Elijah couldn’t stop what would happen soon. In just a matter of minutes space-time would begin to tear, the first rips in the sequence of events that would ultimately lead to the explosion of the NxTech Research Center.

  To Dobbs it had been just over a year and a half since he had been buried alive on Hawkins Hill. For eight months he had endured the treatments necessary to remain in one time period. Patiently waiting until he had everything he needed to put his plan for revenge into action. Finally the future Dean had completed work on the bracelets which Dobbs now had in his pocket.

  As a safety device, Dean then gave Dobbs a series of handwritten notes that compensated for his dyslexia and explained where and when many of the time holes would appear and their likely destinations. This gave Dobbs a means of navigating in the time stream.

  Idiot.

  It was the last bit of crucial information Whitey Dobbs needed to begin his plan of revenge.

  Dobbs cracked open the men’s room door and watched as the inept deputy entered the evidence room. There was a short scream, then silence.

  He laughed out loud. Damn fool had fainted again. He reminded Dobbs of something he had seen on TV long, long ago, a herd of goats that passed out at the first sign of trouble. The deputy was like the goats.