The absence of activity was almost surreal, magical, on their busy street.
Jess ran effortlessly while he struggled to keep up, the breaths he took coagulating in his lungs like thick maple syrup. His chest burned and his thighs ached even though they had only gone a quarter of a mile. It was no surprise how much his body had deteriorated. He hadn’t exercised since the day after the funeral.
“Down this way,” Jess said, making a sharp left.
Dutton knew the trail well. It had been his favorite place to run.
A worn, hard-packed dirt path cut through the dense forest of pine, maple, and oak, winding along for a mile before it sidled up against the river. The path widened there, leaving enough room to run two abreast as it followed the peaks and valleys of the hillside, the river crawling along below.
They didn’t make it that far. Another half mile into the forest, with Dutton heaving for air, his chest feeling tight and compressed as if he was buried with Lucy six feet under the topsoil, Jess stopped and pointed toward a small cluster of rhododendrons.
“It’s still there,” she said.
Between gasps, Dutton asked, “What… what’s down there?”
“Can’t you see it?”
“Jess, I… No. What am I looking for?” He suspected she was going to show him a dead person. Hikers and joggers were always on the news, forever stumbling across bodies in the woods. Just last week, some woman in upstate New York had been hiking with her golden retriever and found that young mother who had disappeared in August. National news. He wondered if the same had happened to Jess. Had she found something?
Or, for a dark, horrid moment, he considered the possibility that Jess had grown tired of his shit and planned to leave his body here for someone else to find.
“Just there,” she said. “Next to the biggest rhododendron.”
Dutton squinted, trying to see anything out of the ordinary. “The biggest rho—wait. Right there?” He pointed.
“Yeah, right there. I told you. I just happened to look over and there it was.”
Dutton watched again as the air in front of the largest rhododendron shimmered and rippled in a wide circle. “What the… What is that?”
“You tell me.”
Stunned, he repeated the question.
Jess answered, “I have no clue but it’s... magical.”
Magical, he thought. Or freaky.
They stood in silence, watching in disbelief.
Jess started to speak, the words catching in her throat.
“What?”
She said, “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I feel like it’s a sign from her. I feel something but I can’t explain it, like… sort of like a warm aura. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, maybe.” His tone was cautious, questioning.
“Dutt, don’t take this away from me.”
“No, no, sorry. I don’t mean to, it’s just that…” Whatever this was, there had to be some scientific explanation for it, and yet he truly didn’t want to ruin the moment for Jess. For the first time in a year, there was light in her eyes. And just as he had done with Lucy, he thought, Let her have this one. “It looks like… You know when you drop a pebble in water and then the little waves spread out?”
“Exactly.” Jess moved closer to him. He could smell the detergent on her clothes. She hadn’t been close enough for him to feel her body heat in months. “What’s she trying to tell us?”
“I wish I knew.” Dutton leaned forward for a better look. “We’re awake, right? I’m not dreaming?” He turned to her. “Are you dreaming?”
“Nope.”
“Should we go check it out?”
“I-I’m scared. I think. I don’t know. Like I want it to be a sign from her but—but what if it…”
“What?”
“What if it swallows us? Or… something.”
Dutton chuckled. “Swallows us?”
“I don’t know, okay?”
“If it’s a sign from Lucy then it would never be something that would hurt us, right? I swear to God, Jess, I’m not trying to steal the warm fuzzies from you but it’s probably just… maybe it’s some sort of new hunting device? That’s all I can think of.”
“A hunting device,” she said flatly.
“Like maybe it’s for squirrels.”
Jess raised an eyebrow. No words were needed to question his sanity.
“Like a trap. A giant sheet of sticky tape, and it’s humane.” He added a small lie, maybe to make her feel better, maybe to bail himself out of his ridiculous suggestion. Save some face. “I’ve seen that before. On Animal Planet.”
Without her usual malevolence, Jess said, “The brilliant doctor should probably stick to the hospital.”
It felt good to hear her joke with him. A fleeting reprieve from their typical vitriolic interactions.
A ray of sunshine on a gloomy day.
On a gloomy life.
She shook her head, ponytail swaying. “I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right. I got caught up in the moment. We were talking about her and then… this unexplained thing shows up.”
“I know. It’s easy to do.” He put his arm around her waist, silently thanking her for allowing him to keep it there. “But now I’m curious. Let’s go look.”
“You go first.”
“Chicken.”
She slapped his shoulder playfully. Yet another reminder of the old Jess, the one who had yet to watch their daughter waste away, taken too early by fate and chance, that wicked pair of dice—sometimes kind, often cruel.
“Fine, but I’m blaming you if I get caught up in a giant squirrel trap.”
Dutton stepped off the dirt path and carefully picked his way over the forest floor, crossing over downed limbs, listening to his shoes crunch against dry leaves that would soften with the coming snowfall. Wind whispered through the boughs above, the mountain maples and ancient oaks creaking as they swayed. He kept his eyes on the rippling circle, surveying the area around it, expecting to see guide wires attaching this thing to the nearby oaks and maples. Could it be some sort of optical illusion? A trick of the dim light reflecting off a massive spider web?
His rational mind, the one that operated on science and facts, reason and rationale, cycled through possibilities as it searched for a logical explanation. Jess was right; he was brilliant, though not arrogant or overtly confident about it. His intelligence was a talent he possessed, not something to flaunt. Babe Ruth could swing a bat and launch a baseball hundreds of feet. Dutton Quinn ingested information and immediately understood it. That’s the way things had always been.
Yet now, as they crept closer to this thing in the woods, his talent failed him, leaving him confused about the possibilities.
He saw no strands of silky web holding it in place. No filament line. It wasn’t a sheet of cellophane, nor was it a giant strand of tape like he had jokingly suggested. His logical and technical mind was at a loss.
It was what it appeared to be: a flat, floating disc of undulating, pulsing air. He told Jess to stay back as he sidestepped around it, mouth agape, thoroughly mystified. It looked the same from the back as it did from the front.
“Well?” Jess asked. A slight edge of anxiety had crept into her voice, the lifted mood from earlier replaced by apprehension. “Don’t get too close.”
“I’m not. It’s just—I can’t even begin to guess what this might be, Jess. I mean, good God, it’s amazing. Did you bring your phone?”
“No.”
“Damn. Neither did I.”
“Why? To call the cops?”
“Pictures. Proof.” Hands on his hips, Dutton backed away, shaking his head. The wonder and excitement warmed his stomach, raised the hair on his arms. He could no longer feel the nip of the wintry morning. He giggled. Pure child-like joy and disbelief. “If we could get some pictures, maybe I could send it to Jeff Parker. He might know.”
“He’s the meteorologist?” Jess asked.
“
Yeah.” Dutton had successfully brought Jeff Parker, local meteorologist and television personality, back to a healthy life after an eighteen-month fight against thyroid cancer. There were rumors of viewers crying when he went back on air for the first time and it didn’t surprise Dutton in the slightest. Parker was a wonderful human being that had never let the light dim on the future.
Exactly the opposite of he and Jess after Lucy lost her battle.
“Do you want to go back and get yours?”
Dutton shook his head. His breathing had returned to normal but his legs felt flimsy and weak. “Nah, I’ll pass out. Do you mind? I’ll stay here and make sure it—uh, doesn’t… evaporate?”
Jess frowned and bit her bottom lip. Reluctantly, she obliged, and told him to be careful, to stay away from it until she returned. “I’ll be quick. Ten minutes, tops,” she said, then kissed him on the cheek.
Dutton softened with her touch, the first sign of true affection from her in months.
And all it took was an unexplainable miracle.
He began calling it the vertical pond in his mind as he tried to rationalize the scenario. He pinched his arm—he was definitely awake. He touched limbs, bushes, and bent to scoop up soft earth underneath dead leaves. Tangible. Authentic. His visceral reaction said this was as real as the snowflakes that landed on his cheeks and bare neck, caressing the breeze as they drifted along. If it wasn’t reality, this was the most corporeal dream he had ever experienced. Unnaturally so.
The vertical pond shuddered and appeared to expand. Dutton flinched and stepped further away. “Whoa,” he said. A new sound followed his voice.
Music? No. A hum? Not quite.
More like damp fingers on the rim of a wine glass. A tender thrum at first, the sound gently rolling in slow circles. Close, far. Close, far. Miles away but emanating from the rippling air directly in front of him. It was soothing, like a tender melody in a spa, manifesting images of a Japanese garden in his mind. Brightly colored koi swimming lazily in a pond. Peace. It reminded him of the soothing environment he tried to create in his mind during meditation.
Was that it? Had he been meditating? He couldn’t recall. Maybe that’s why everything felt so real—not quite asleep, not quite awake, while his senses weren’t numbed by the darkness of slumber.
Couldn’t be. He hadn’t meditated since… well, since the morning when Jess had first accused him of not acting remorseful enough about Lucy’s death. Had accused him of being hollow inside, a casket without a body.
Dutton twisted, looking past the trees, searching for his wife. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been gone. Hardly five minutes, if that. “Hurry,” he whispered. He returned to his station in front of the rhododendrons, worried that it would disappear if he lost focus. The air gleamed as small waves lapped away from the center. The thrumming persisted as he stepped forward, the sound tickling his eardrums.
A closer look wouldn’t hurt, would it? His curiosity pulled from the front and pushed from the back, begging him to find an answer, a reason that this was happening. The last time he had failed to find an answer to something, they had to bury their child.
Medically, the reason behind Lucy’s early death was faulty wiring in the system. Genetics gone awry. Cancer behaved a certain way, which resulted in certain outcomes. A plus B equals C.
Emotionally, there was no reason. An ignorant God? A negligent God? A God that had looked the other way and said, “Nature can take this one.”
Even being a doctor, a scientist, a reasonable man, his faith had never wavered, and in fact, his learning had helped reaffirm his conclusion: there was too much order and continuity within the universe for there not to be some sort of higher power. And if not some giant man who lived in the sky, then intelligent design that came from energy or a unified force of love and life.
Until it allowed Lucy to be taken away too early. There was no justification for that. No rationale. It was beyond any measure of fair and unfair. It was senseless.
Dutton stepped closer. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he was certain he could feel subtle energy emanating from the vertical pond.
Then, something moved on the opposite side.
Dutton yelped and skipped backward, fear lifting the hair on his arms. He had been statue-still—perhaps a small forest animal had scampered up for a peek, yet when he scanned behind it, he saw nothing but limbs swaying in the wind. He told himself that wasn’t what he saw. He was sure of it.
Dutton returned to the northern side where he felt safer being uphill. Escape was a straight shot from there. The trail was nearer, and it was always advantageous to be higher up than the thing you feared. Better leverage. Better observation.
He bent to pick up a fallen branch, thinking maybe he should touch it, see what happened, surprised that he hadn’t thought to try that yet. With the length of the stick, and his arm extended, at least five feet separated him from the vertical pond. It would have to do.
Dutton nudged forward, arm shaky, stick wobbling, and when the tip pierced the surface, he was caught unawares by the forceful tug from the other end. He didn’t let go fast enough, stumbling forward, falling into it with two faint words whispering in his mind: Jess… Lucy…
* * *
Dutton sat up and listened to the sound of mallets pounding against wood in a staccato rhythm, coming from multiple places at once. Bright sunshine, unfiltered by snowy storm clouds, hindered his vision. He squinted, readjusting to the light, then cursed in amazement.
He was... elsewhere.
The vertical pond was gone.
All around him, hundreds upon hundreds of trees had been felled, their remains dotting the landscape.
Where the hell am I? he thought.
Acres of stumps covered the land to the north, east, and south, separated only by a wide path that carved its way over to the remaining trees, curving to the right and then disappearing in the distance.
The land was flat, unlike the low, rolling hills of the Appalachians near their home.
Behind him, a voice shouted, almost as if it was trying to get his attention.
He whirled and shifted his gaze up and up to the bow of a massive wooden boat, propped up by stabilizing beams and surrounded by makeshift scaffolding.
The man overhead wore what appeared to be a brown robe made of wool, cinched at the waist by a length of rope. His beard was long, his hair cropped short. He shouted something again in a different language, Hebrew maybe, and pointed to Dutton’s left.
Dutton didn’t respond. He could only stare, amazed, at the wooden behemoth in front of him. He shielded his eyes and looked down the colossal length of the boat. It had to be the size of a football field, maybe even larger, and resembled images he had seen all of his life.
An ark? The ark.
Impatient, the man at the bow shouted and pointed again at a stack of thin beams, lifting his arms as if to say, “What are you waiting for?”
Great heaving bouts of laughter erupted from Dutton’s chest. He roared until he doubled over, until his cheeks ached. “Finally. Thank God. I’m dreaming and you’re Noah, right?” he asked, raising his voice to the man. Then to himself, he said, “It’s a… what’s it called?” Dutton snapped his fingers, searching for the proper term.
Lucid dreaming. That was it. Had to be.
He recalled Lucy’s wish; she had wanted to go back in time and help Noah save the unicorns. That explained so much. He’d been thinking about that memory of her a lot lately. One of his favorites.
Noah, if that truly was him—and since Dutton was dreaming, of course it was Noah, he could make him whoever he wanted—waved a dismissive hand and stepped back, out of sight.
Dutton spied two men sawing limbs off of a larger trunk near the stern. Beyond that, a young woman carried water in a large bucket. Since he was here until the dream world switched, he thought he might as well have fun with it. Before long, the scenario would morph into something new as his mind processed different information f
rom the day’s events—maybe he’d be on a tropical island next, sipping beer from a frosty mug like the commercial he had seen yesterday.
Back home, he was in bed, working his way through REM sleep.
Surely.
Dutton cupped his hands around his mouth and called up, “Hey, hang on. I’m coming. You need these beams brought up?”
And so it went. They eyed his pajamas, jacket, and sneakers with raised eyebrows. He didn’t understand a word spoken to him, and Noah and his family couldn’t understand anything Dutton said either.
Dutton thought that was odd, especially in his own dream, and odder still that he didn’t have complete control over things happening around him, which was highly unusual for a lucid dream. He decided to go with it. Perhaps he’d only achieved partial lucidity, if that was a thing.
Hours later, he found himself hammering a slat into place, and when he accidentally smashed his thumb, the pain was strikingly real.
Days and nights passed, close to a week or more, he wasn’t sure. Without clocks, phones, apps, and laptops, he lost track of time.
Noah’s family gave him a spare robe and sandals. Food and water.
He slept in the ark on a bed of hay when the sun set in the west and rose when it climbed over the horizon in the east. He worked hard, communicating through grunts and gestures until they grew to understand each other, at least enough to accomplish tasks.
He kept thinking that soon he would wake up in his bed at home.
Or, he would climb the ramp into the hull one final time and wake up.
Maybe he would sit down for mealtime, break bread with the family, and find himself in his kitchen instead.
He never did, but the time was coming; he was sure of it.
Dutton reminded himself to take notes once he finally escaped his slumber. He had a friend from medical school, Joseph Drake, who had done some work on sleep science, if he remembered correctly. Joe would love to hear about a dream this epic.
He awoke one morning to the intense drumming of pouring rain outside.
The flood, he thought. It’s coming.
He jumped to his feet and scampered up the closest ladder.
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 9