Hands quivering, he slipped off the camera, rewound it, and looked at the little playback screen. The camera technology was digital, and the images it captured were crystal clear. The images he was looking at were unusually sharp, yet they were just pictures of the wall. There was no man in uniform, no football, no spectral Ruggles galloping to his predestined destruction.
North stared at the opening. He would have sworn to God he had seen twenty-one-year-old Herschel Ruggles carrying his football well past the goal line and into the spiraling, cavernous depths of the unknown. Damn it, he had seen the man right next to him. He had! The camera, though, did not share his view. According to this instrument, North had seen nothing even remotely out of the ordinary.
North was well aware of the theory known as the “observer effect.” It said that an observer of some action could influence that action by the mere act of watching with a specific level of intent. For example, if one’s intent was for the pot not to boil, then it wouldn’t, seemingly in defiance of the laws of science. In the realm of quantum physics, observers had witnessed beryllium atoms confined in a magnetic field and then exposed to radio waves. Normally, as the atoms absorb the radio waves, they would evolve into excited atomic-energy states in a quarter of a second or less. The scientists conducting this experiment repeatedly shone a short pulse of laser light into the atoms that simulated the “observer” effect in this case. The atoms did not evolve, even far past the time they should have. The observer effect had apparently defeated a natural physical transition that, it was widely thought, could not be influenced.
And yet, had North intended with all his heart to see Ruggles tonight? And had that same desire allowed Ruggles to be freed from whatever alternate dimensional state held him? That was a tricky thing for the science-minded North. In fact, it was bordering on the edge of charlatanism, if not outright madness.
Perhaps he simply had been hallucinating. North began to look at the situation rationally. He had been thinking of almost nothing except Herschel Ruggles for a long time now. He was in a dark, mysterious place, all alone, and his anxiety level, coupled with his very natural desire for something—anything—to happen, could easily have tricked his mind into seeing something that absolutely could not be there. North sighed when he realized the atomic pot had boiled, just like it normally did, regardless of whether he wanted it to or not.
The mind was always playing these games. North knew that approximately five milliseconds were required for the sensory faculties, upon registering a sound or visual image, to communicate that fact up the nerve autobahn to the brain. However, since many human actions were performed within two to three milliseconds of the reception of a sensory impulse, for example, a starter’s gun if one were in a race, it could honestly be said that many things humans did were totally unconscious, without input from the mind, because it took too long to receive the mental command to do so. And yet if one were to ask the runner when he precisely heard the starter’s gun sound, he would say he heard it simultaneously with his leaving the runner’s block, even though that was, neurologically speaking, an impossibility. And yet the brain tricked the mind into believing that it was actually so in order to cover up its own tardiness. A gap of two milliseconds might not seem like much to the uninformed, North knew, but in the arena of the mind-body equation, it was roughly equal to the duration of an Earth year. And North’s own brain had just undertaken a major jockeying effort on his weary mind, aided no doubt by his complete obsession with all things Ruggles. North sighed. His mind had just pulled the neuronal wool over him, and he had fallen for it like a freshman general-studies lummox.
“Great shit, like I told you.”
North stared up at the man. BJ was grinning from cauliflower ear to cauliflower ear. “Great shit, you seen it too, ain’t you. Seen him, I mean.”
North slowly rose on weakened legs. BJ was dressed in the same clothes as before, smiled the same quasi-insane smile.
“Seen who?” asked North in a quavering voice.
BJ cocked his head a little to the side, and as North flashed his backup light that way, he was amazed at the muscles in the man’s neck. They bulged out like a pair of swollen parentheses and had a sinister quality that North could not quite pin down. On the earth’s surface, the man’s Adam’s apple had been encased in a scrawny tube of a vessel. Had the man’s shoulder and arms also widened and thickened to rival North’s own impressive, weight-room-sculpted physique? Had North gone mad in the last minute or so? Was BJ even standing there, or was he also the holographic product of a wretched synaptic misfire?
“The man. That Ruggles fellow. You think it’s him too, ain’tcha? That why you come down here asking all them questions. Am I right, or am I right?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I didn’t see anything.” North held up his camera. “And there’s nothing on here, either.”
BJ waved off that dilemma. “Why, you can’t catch stuff like that on film. It’s like a vampire. They ain’t got no reflection in no mirror. Hell, everybody should know that, even college boys like yourself.”
“So you saw something?” North ventured weakly.
“Hell, I say I did. And from you looking ready to puke, you saw the same thing. Don’t try and lie, boy, I can see through any liar, and you ain’t nearly as good as most I’ve come across in my life.”
“I saw something,” North finally admitted. “And it did look like Ruggles.”
BJ slapped his thigh. “Hell, I knew it. Runs by and then just disappears into nothing.”
“Yes,” North said. “How many times have you seen him, it? Him, I guess.”
“Half a dozen or so. Wanted to show you the other night, ’cept you lost your nerve. Probably thought I was a wacko.”
Something occurred to North. Why hadn’t he and Swift seen the image when they had come through the passageway previously? Was there some principle North was unaware of that ruled out two people experiencing the dynamic that resulted from dimensional transference or whatever the hell it exactly was? But then, North recalled, he had felt something that night, the sensation of walking through water, and the fleeting glimpse of something hurtling past that he had incorrectly thought was his friend, Jimmy Swift.
BJ’s gaze caught and then held on North’s gun. “That’s a pretty piece.”
“My father’s. He fought with it in Vietnam.”
BJ looked puzzled and drew nearer. “’Nam, huh? Mind if I take a look?”
North wasn’t about to let the man have the weapon, but he held it out for examination. “It’s loaded, so I don’t want to let go of it, you understand.”
“Sure, sure, can’t never be too careful with a damn gun.” He eyed the weapon closely. “You said your daddy brought this back from ’Nam?”
North nodded. “He was drafted into the Army.”
“Well, okay, but he didn’t bring this gun back from ’Nam. This here’s a German Mauser Parabellum nine-millimeter. Krauts used this make during World War Two. I oughta know. I fought those bastards for three years. Had these damn pistols fired at my ass mor’n once. Do some hurtin’ on you if it clipped you. Even took one off a dead Kraut right outside of Paris in forty-four and then sold it to a Frenchie for a nice bottle of US of A bourbon he’d gotten his hands on. Yep, definitely a World War Two piece. Ain’t nothing like this ever used in ’Nam, son. Nosiree.”
North looked down at the gun he held. “You fought in the Second World War.”
“Yep. Volunteered at age seventeen. Got me a bunch’a medals,” BJ added proudly.
North said, “How come you left the gown and wig here?”
BJ looked puzzled. “Gown and wig?”
“Yes, hanging over there on the wall.”
“You sick, son?”
North started to explain, but then stopped. He looked at the place where the gown and wig had hung. How could BJ not have seen something so clearly out of place as a gown and wig in a secret room underneath a football stadium? And
yet the man looked truly bewildered. And when North moved closer to the spot, the hook that the gown and wig had been hanging on was no longer there.
“Hey, son, you okay?” said BJ in a worried tone.
North turned to face him and said, “Yes, I’m fine. I’m going to go now. Thanks for your help.”
“Ain’t done much. But I appreciate the twenty you gave me. To a feller like myself, difference between eating and not, so to speak.” He let that statement just hang.
North pressed a couple of twenties into his thick hand. “Well, this’ll make you twice as happy then. Good night, BJ.” He had thought about asking the man who he really was, now that North had determined he did not work for the university. Yet right now North didn’t want to know the answer to that question.
He gingerly walked back through the space the image of Ruggles had torpedoed through, and then he sprinted all the way back to winking stars and fresh air.
Chapter 10
THE NEXT MORNING NORTH made his way to the library to research World War Two–era pistols. Although BJ had seemed very authoritative on the subject of German weapons, North wanted to check it out himself. It didn’t take him long to verify that what BJ had said was the exact truth. There was even a photo of a Mauser pistol in one of the books North had consulted. It was a perfect match to his father’s.
When a hand touched his shoulder, North turned and found himself staring at Molly McIntyre. A mass com major in her senior year, McIntyre was editor of the Draven School newspaper and also headed up the yearbook committee. McIntyre was smart, polished, and very comely in appearance, with shoulder-length auburn hair that she was forever flicking out of her dancing green eyes, and a long, curvy body that could not fail to garner the attention of all the young men on campus, North included.
She glanced at some of the books spread over his table. “Hey, Merl, could you pull yourself away from your armament research and help me with something?”
“Sure, Molly, what’s up?”
“I want to talk to you about an idea I have for this project the yearbook staff is doing for the upcoming seventieth anniversary of the university.”
She led him over to a private room off the main library area and closed the door. The table she was working at was covered with books, press clippings, old photographs, and the like.
“You’re one of the few football players who actually have a brain, and part of the anniversary edition of the newspaper has to do with Herschel Ruggles, the football player from way back. You know about him, of course.”
“A little,” replied North warily.
“Well, he’s still the school’s greatest athlete, a Heisman Trophy finalist in his sophomore and junior years, and a favorite to win it as a senior. And his still-unexplained disappearance is hands down the school’s greatest mystery. Did you know that people still talk about it?”
“Really? That’s amazing,” said North, accomplishing what he hoped was an authentic look of surprise. “Some people just can’t help living in the past, I guess.”
“Tell me about it,” said McIntyre. “But it’s not like I can ignore the man in the anniversary edition, particularly when he disappeared forty years ago. Right?”
“Right, absolutely. And you needed me for…?”
She picked up some old photographs lying on the table. “These are photos of an event that took place about a year so or so before Ruggles’s disappearance. It was an awards banquet in his honor.”
North studied the photos. One of them showed a group of people all in formal wear, including Ruggles and a tall, elderly man with longish snow-white hair. A woman who looked to be in her thirties stood beside Ruggles, and there seemed something very familiar about her to North.
“Who are those people with Ruggles?” he asked and pointed at the elderly man and the woman.
McIntyre looked surprised at his question. “Merl North, you of all people should recognize the founder of the school, John Milton Draven.”
“Right, right. Draven. And the woman?”
“Wife number three. Her name was Gloria. You remember the old story, right? That’s the name of the mine where Draven was buried alive.”
“Right again. She’s very beautiful.”
“Most third wives are, North,” replied McIntyre dryly. “In fact, it’s practically a requirement.”
He looked admiringly at all her work. “You’ve really researched this.”
“So much so that I’m about to pop a brain wire. I mean I’ve got my own classes to attend to, and half my staff revolted on me, complaining I’m some kind of ball buster. But if you’re going to do something, you need to do it right. Here’s my proposal to you. Could I do a story on you and Jimmy Swift for the part of the anniversary edition that deals with Ruggles? You two did collaborate to break the man’s record. And it might give a modern-day connection to the Ruggles story. I’m not doing all this work to put the readers to sleep.”
“I’ll do it, if it’ll help you out. In fact, I think it’s a great idea.”
“That’s terrific, Merl, I really appreciate it.” She paused and smiled shyly. “You know, we should go out for a beer sometime and talk. I’ve got some questions I want to pose to you. See, I was at the stadium when Jimmy broke the record. I saw the block you threw. Now, I’m no scientist, but it seems to me you used a little physics in your work that afternoon. Am I right?”
North couldn’t help but smile at her wonderfully perceptive insight. “I’d love to have a beer with you. A woman who can appreciate good science is a woman I want to get to know better,” he added enthusiastically. Suddenly self-conscious, he looked down. In doing so North glanced at the photograph once more and it finally clicked why the woman looked so familiar. He picked up the photo, trying his best to keep his hands from shaking.
“Molly, do you mind if I borrow this photo? I can use this to get Jimmy interested in doing the piece for you. He can be shy sometimes.”
McIntyre said skeptically, “Shy? Jimmy Swift?”
“I know he doesn’t come across like that, but he has a different side to him.”
“Just so you know, the word on campus is that Swift and Cindy Wilson did a number last night that ended right here on a table in the library, and ‘shy’ was not a term that anyone would’ve applied to them. A real animal, apparently, that Jimmy Swift.”
“Well, I’m certainly not like that,” said North gallantly.
“That’s good to know,” said McIntyre in a disappointed tone. “Although you could be quite the lady killer if you wanted to, what with your strong jaw, cute broken nose, and your ‘brainy’ glasses fronting those mischievous blue eyes. And being tall and having those broad shoulders of yours certainly doesn’t hurt. Girls really fall for that combination of brains and brawn. It’s very sexy, Merl.”
“Thanks, Molly,” said North, who could think of absolutely nothing else to say.
She looked down at the materials on the table. “You know, from all I’ve found out with this project, Ruggles was quite the ladies’ man.”
North shook his head. “I’ve heard those rumors, but they’re baseless. See, I’ve done a little digging into his life, too.”
“Really? Who did you talk to?”
“Well, people he played with. Or against. Fans, folks like that.”
“Well, of course they aren’t going to tell you the dirty-linen things. God, men are so naïve about things like that. You all hold Ruggles up on this gigantic pedestal because of his athletic accomplishments. I spoke with a very different class of observer. And what I was told was that, in fact, Ruggles had quite an eye for the ladies. And not just the student body, but also faculty, faculty wives, and on up the ladder.”
“‘On up the ladder’—what do you mean by that?”
“Up the ladder, Merl, right to the very top. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”
North left her there as he stared down at a photo that had turned his entire investigation upsid
e down.
Chapter 11
NORTH CARRIED A PAPER BAG to the wig shop. Inside the bag was the gown from the underground room. North had painstakingly compared it with the gown that Gloria Draven had been wearing in the photograph he had taken from McIntyre. While North was no women’s clothing expert, the gown was an identical match, from the color, to the intricate collar, to the buttons, to everything.
The wig was the second part of the equation. In the photograph, Gloria Draven had had blond hair, cut and styled in the manner of Grace Kelly and Kim Novak with a dash of Jackie Kennedy, as the owner of the wig shop had said. The result was that if you put the wig and the gown together, you had Gloria Draven, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.
As for the image of Herschel Ruggles galloping through an underground room, North believed now that, instead of a hallucination, he was confronted with a time-space dimensional fissure. Not precisely a step back in time, but a sort of fractured portal that offered glimpses of the past without actually traveling to that time period. North knew that it was theoretically possible, this sort of intermediate shared dimensional experience, but he had never thought he would see it firsthand—in the bowels of a football stadium, no less.
He had tried to explain all this to Swift, but his friend had still been recovering from his date with Cindy and the Wild Turkey. It was lucky there was no practice this week because of exams, and yet Swift had not looked capable of much studying, either.
He entered the wig shop and went directly to the counter. A young woman came out and greeted him.
“I was in yesterday and gave the owner, a wig to look at for me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, but she’s not in today.”
The Final Play Page 5