by Anthology
Billy backed away from us, not wanting to turn his back till he had to— then he hustled through the door. “Frank!” he shouted, as he went in. “We got to go to the OK Corral!”
I was too busy staring at myself, this other version of myself, too busy trying to cope, to interfere with Billy. Finally I managed, “What . . . uh . . . ?”
“I’m you,” I said, stating the obvious with an apologetic shrug. “From a little bit in your future—your future a little later than the Bill Washoe of 1976 that you were, when you came here. I tried to get here earlier in the day but somehow—I was drawn here, and now. Probably by you. There’s some kind of psychic magnetism between us—and you reached some kind of peak intensity here when you interfered with Billy. This is the point where you started changing events.”
Bill Washoe of 1976! The wooden walls of the buildings around us wavered, and began to seem distant. The sounds from the street became murky, distorted . . .
“Don’t!” I said. “I am here—here in October 26th, 1881!” I looked down the alley to the side street and saw a buggy going by with a lady in a bustle sitting up very straight in it, buggy whip in hand. 1881. Renewed by my focus on that distinct feature of the time, the alley reified, became more definite.
The later me made a suggestion. “There’s a secret Collier didn’t know, for staying in the past—pain.” He . . . the other I . . . raised his hand and I saw he had a badge in it, an antique U.S. Marshal’s badge from this era—he’d held it so tightly it had bloodied his hand. He squeezed it there again so that fresh blood dripped. “Once you’re in the past, pain fixes you there, if you sustain it.” He tossed me a similar badge. I caught it. “Squeeze it till it hurts, cuts your hand. That’ll keep you as I tell you what I must.”
I squeezed it till the pain came and he went on: “Billy stayed with Isabella, because of what I did—what you want to do—and her son stayed with his wife and so on. And Becky’s father stayed with the family. That much you accomplished. Some behavior is imprinted—but some is inherited. Like the tendency to cruelty. And it can be carried on both by imprinting and genes. Billy abused Isabella and the boy abused his wife and child and . . . and Becky’s father carried it even farther.”
Blood was dripping from my hand . . . 1881 stayed firmly in place, stuck on the thorn of my pain . . . and my growing fear.
“He raped Becky.” The two of me said it, together. As I realized and he simply explained. He spoke on, alone: “When I . . . when you . . . got back from Tombstone, it was hard to find Becky. I established that she hadn’t committed suicide—but where was she? We were no longer married. But she was out there, alive somewhere—I found her in Phoenix, found her by harassing her sister till she told me what had happened to her. Sandra got away from the family before the father returned from jail—and it seems Becky’s dad made her his little sex slave. Eventually she ran away, only to become a junkie. To pay for the heroin she fell into prostitution. She was stoned out—so she wasn’t careful. She got serum hepatitis, and syphilis. Got very sick—very, very sick—and when I left the future to come back here again, she was dying . . . dying very slowly. It was too late to treat the syphilis and she was . . . Oh, God, she would have been far, far better off dead.” The other Bill Washoe swallowed and went on. “I came back to stop you from saving Billy. If you’d left it alone, she would have had some happiness. And it would have ended quickly, at least, in that empty swimming pool . . .”
I stared. “I don’t care,” I said at last. A terrible momentum was on me. My sense of purpose had a life of its own. “I can go back to our time—I can perfect time travel and I can go back to save her from her father and . . . and . . .”
“No, no you can’t. I’ve tried. You can’t travel in time endlessly—you go mad if you do. Maybe I have gone mad. I’m not even sure I’m talking to you now. You seem real enough . . . I mean—I seem real enough . . .”
I shook my head emphatically. “I’m not going to lose my focus. I’m going after Billy and I’m going to save him. Stop him from the OK Corral fight. Then I’ll do something about her father—I’ll save her from that life too. I’m going after Billy now—don’t try to stop me.” I started for the OK Corral.
“No!” The other, later Bill Washoe stepped in front of me. He was reaching for his pistol . . .
I drew mine first. I outdrew myself. I think I—he—had been drinking . . .
And I shot him down. Shooting myself down felt kind of good, really.
The other Bill Washoe lay there in a pool of blood . . . I was aware of the portly, aproned bartender coming to the door behind me, staring.
The dying man looked up at me and said, hoarsely, “You slowed Billy down already . . . you, trying to stop him . . . from before . . . time has an inertia . . . it’s . . . psychic, what we do. Our minds will . . . and you will . . . you must . . .”
He didn’t finish saying it. His eyes went glassy and his let out a final breath—and died. But I soon knew what he was trying to say. Because in a few moments I felt a long, icy shiver pass through me, as his consciousness left him . . . and merged with mine.
We were the same person. The same soul. The spirit has its own thermodynamics, its own “law of conservation of matter”—so our souls merged. And I knew what he knew. What he’d been through, since he’d gone back to our time, poured into me, when our souls combined. His memories became mine.
And the most aching of his memories asserted itself: Rebecca Clanton lying in the hospital bed, covered in sores, foaming at the mouth, her face the color of rancid butter, her wrists raw in the restraints, as a droning doctor explained that it was too late for her, too late.
It would be a slow, horrible death. A murder, really—by her father. By extension. And maybe, by me. Maybe I’d murdered her with my interference.
I saw the other Bill Washoe had been right. I knew what had to be done. I had slowed Billy Clanton down, interfered with the original pattern. Things would be a little different. He would be a little later getting to the OK Corral, and even more on his guard now. Maybe he wouldn’t die in the gunfight . . .
I ignored the shouting bartender, and I ran to the OK Corral.
The OK Corral was actually a long strip of land between Allen and Fremont Streets. I ran through the corral, past horses and water troughs, and climbed the fence, coming to the narrow strip alley behind Camillus Fly’s Photo Gallery, a small building that stood behind Camillus Fly’s Boarding House. I still had my gun in my hand—and I saw the two parties lined up in the eighteen-foot-wide lot, with Tom McClaury to one side, standing behind a horse, his hand on a Winchester in its saddle scabbard; Doc Holliday, a small ash-blond man with a black mustache, bringing a shotgun from under his gray cloak; beside him were Virgil, Morgan—and there was Wyatt, with a droopy sandy mustache: a tall, almost skinny man in a long black coat, wide-brimmed black hat. He was just pulling a pistol from his coat as Billy Clanton—not standing where I thought he’d be, historically, but now half hidden behind a post—drew his pistol and fired, at the same time as Earp. But Earp fired at Frank McClaury, hitting him in the stomach—McClaury already had his gun out, while Ike Clanton shrieked that this must stop, and he tried to grab Wyatt Earp’s gun hand, saying he was not armed himself, and Earp shouted, “The fight has commenced! Go to fighting or get away!” and shoved him so that Ike turned and stumbled into Fly’s Boarding House, as the wounded McClaury shot Virgil in the leg, knocking him down, and Doc fired at Tom McClaury with the shotgun before Tom could get that Winchester free, hitting him twice, then dropping the shotgun to pull a silvery pistol which he fired at Billy—
But the bullets hit the post, and Billy wasn’t hit yet—my interference had been just enough. He was going to get away! He was turned sideways—and he was aiming carefully at Wyatt Earp . . .
Firing from the corner of Fly’s Photo Gallery, out of sight of the Earps and everyone else, I shot Billy Clanton, twice.
I shot the son of a bitch down myself. Saw him sp
in and fall.
Then I drew back under cover and let go of the bloody badge, and as the pain ebbed, I thought about 1976. I thought about disco, and hollow-eyed Vietnam vets . . .
The last of the shooting died away. Billy was lying on the ground screaming in pain . . . his voice becoming distant, distorted . . . the wall beside me wavered . . . and then became solid again. And it stayed that way.
I looked around, and realized that I was going to stay in this time. Pain and time and my interference and thus intertwining with this time, perhaps, had fixed me here.
There was shouting from the lot beside Fly’s Boarding House. Someone was saying, “Was there shots, too, from back there?”
I turned and stumbled away, around the corner, through the Corral, between buildings, almost blindly . . . till I found myself approaching a group of men behind the bar where I’d shot . . .
Where I’d shot myself dead.
I expected to find them marveling at the bartender’s story—how a man had shot his twin and the twin had vanished. For surely the body would not remain in this time.
But there it was—six men turned to stare at me, and the portly bartender pointed. “Why, it’s the killer himself! Look at his face and the man dead before you! He is the spitting image! He has killed his own twin brother!”
“They even wear the same clothing!”
Guns were pointed at me then and, numbly, I dropped my own.
Now I sit in the territorial jail awaiting execution. The gallows has long been built—I watched from my jail cell window as they used it for a couple of renegade Apaches just last week. I have asked for this sheaf of paper and this pen so that I may write this account, to seal in an envelope and give to the exasperated man appointed as my lawyer. I wish I had the clip from the Nugget to include—but it exists in my own time. Old West historians routinely read the pioneer newspapers, and I remember once, in my time, reading in the Nugget, with some bemusement, about the man who killed his own twin, in Tombstone, and how the man would say only, “Is it a murder for a man to kill himself? I cannot explain, gentlemen, you would not understand.” I said the same yesterday, and never remembered the article till I spoke those words. The story about twin murdering twin had been buried in all the excitement about the “OK Corral fight,” scarcely noted. I’d assumed the article a fabrication, not uncommon in frontier newspapers, in the effort to amuse the public. Especially when it was revealed that neither man had identity papers and the surviving man would not reveal his name. Surely it was a story someone had made up.
I chuckled then—and I laugh sadly, now, thinking about it.
I will ask my lawyer to send this to a certain library archive in San Diego, which exists even in this time, the envelope addressed to “Doctor Crosswell”—who does not yet exist—in the hopes it may find its way to him someday. Someone should know what I shared, and didn’t share, with Richard Collier. Not just time travel—but love lost.
Perhaps there’s an afterlife. Perhaps I’ll meet Becky there, her burden lifted at last.
The only thing certain, though, is that at dawn they will hang me for murdering myself.
I might’ve made up a story about my psychotic twin, and shooting him in self-defense, to save my life—a gun was found on him, after all. But I didn’t have the heart for it. You see, Bill Washoe was an arrogant man, who did too little for the woman he loved when she was alive; who did all the wrong things once she was gone. So I was glad to shoot Bill Washoe dead. And it will be a good thing when he has been marched to the gallows and hung.
For he deserved it.
TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE
Vicki Steger
Evelyn watched water swirl around the bathroom basin through puffy red eyes as she thought, there goes my marriage down the drain after all these years. A quick cell phone call late the previous evening from what sounded like a noisy restaurant let her know he’d be working late and sleeping on the sofa at his downtown law office—again.
Evelyn knew better. This wasn’t the first time her husband had strayed. She’d seen the signs develop for months. When she bundled his clothes for the laundry she noticed an unfamiliar scent. The woodsy aroma that clung to his shirt collars was not a fragrance she wore. The late nights, distant demeanor, restlessness and irritability, all signs her husband Peter McAdams was not acting like the man she’d known for most of her adult life. Peter had been working out at a gym on his lunch hours, recently updated his wardrobe, and had his temples darkened by a new hair stylist.
One evening while Evelyn sat alone gripping an empty wine bottle, she wondered how her husband could dismiss her so readily after all their years together. Just yesterday she discovered a shiny Jaguar convertible had taken the place of his silver Mercedes sedan and feared she too was about to be replaced by a younger model. Her hand shook as she opened its door and inhaled the distinctive smell of leather upholstery. Sinking into the sumptuous passenger seat she discovered an exquisite diamond bracelet cradled in a plush velvet box hidden deep inside the glove compartment. Evelyn’s face drained of color and she suddenly felt faint. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo when she realized her husband of forty years had chosen this expensive piece of jewelry for someone else.
Evelyn’s rage was palpable as she proceeded to her husband’s closet. With scissors in hand she angrily snipped the crotch out of every pair of his trousers.
The following morning after her daily morning run along the lakeshore that bordered their exclusive property, she padded to the shower. Feeling refreshed, she emerged, swaddled in a luxurious bath towel, and ran her fingers through tangles of gray hair. From the bedroom windows she glimpsed the landscaper as he carefully tended the sunken rose garden that surrounded her newly constructed glass gazebo.
There on their king-size bed lay Peter’s clothes, keys, and belongings. She heard the whooshing sound of water issue from his bathroom. After a quick check to assure her husband was still in the shower she pried his briefcase open. Her hands twitched as she fumbled with the clasp. I shouldn’t do this. There’s probably confidential client stuff in here. Still, Evelyn searched for evidence of the new woman.
She discovered a brochure from Timeshares Travel Agency stowed in the pocket of his briefcase. The strange stiff flyer appeared to be papyrus printed with thick black ink. Under the business name was a tag line: TAKE THE VACATION OF A LIFETIME.
That cheating bastard was taking his new woman on vacation. Her calmness evaporated quicker than the steam from her bathroom mirror. She dug through folders, sending correspondence to swirl around her in a paper storm as she searched for his vacation itinerary. There, under a yellow legal pad, she glimpsed a black state-of-the-art device.
He must’ve bought one of the new iPhones. She gritted her teeth as she rolled the sleek gadget over in her hand and hastily prodded it to find any concealed photos or text messages that may be secreted inside.
The metallic slam of the shower door startled her as Peter entered their room clad in a towel; his new physique proved the hours at the gym had been well spent. Evelyn glared at her husband, contraption in hand.
“So you bought a new phone. To converse with the new girlfriend, I suppose?”
“Evie, give that to me. It’s not what you think.” Peter grabbed in her direction.
“So is there a picture of the woman who’s been sleeping with my husband in here?”
She held the phone behind her back as Pete lunged to take it. While battling to keep him from retrieving the phone, she fought an intense urge to punch him square in the mouth.
They wrestled, thrashing about for several minutes on the bed before Peter overwhelmed her and reached the device, unaware it had developed a slight hum and an eerie pale glow.
In a whirl of color and wind they were transported.
The couple rolled onto hard ground as each struggled to catch their breath. Waves of nausea washed over them. An intense pain throbbed at Peter’s temples while Evelyn reeled from double vision that made
it impossible for her to focus for several minutes.
They lay at the base of a mountain, definitely no longer in Lake Forest. Unable to speak, they stared in bewilderment at their surroundings, then at each other’s naked bodies. Somehow in the fury their towels had been swept away and now clung to a prickly bush cactus.
“What the hell happened?” Evelyn wheezed, her green eyes wide with fear.
“Well, um, I,” mumbled Peter, “I-I, think we’ve been transported. But to where and when I, um, I’m not exactly sure. Give me that remote control thing and I’ll get us back.”
“Back? Back from where? And what does this phone have to do with anything?” Evelyn’s voice broke.
“I’ll explain everything when we get home, just hand over the transporting device. It’s new. The travel agency just started offering them. It has a preprogrammed battery, good for only so many days.”
She stood shivering, holding out her empty palms. “I don’t have it.”
Peter grabbed his wife’s wrists, turning her hands over in disbelief before he dropped to his knees and furiously searched the underbrush. Evelyn stomped her bare feet and demanded an explanation.
“Now stay calm, okay? I’ll get us back, promise. You need to calm down,” Peter implored.
“Don’t you tell me what to do, you cheating son-of-a-bitch,” she bellowed as her open palm swiftly met his astonished face.
“We just need to find that device so we can return.” Peter rubbed his stinging cheek before he returned to feverishly pat the surrounding ground.
Several feet away large bubbles burst to the surface of oozing muck as the travelers’ eyes met, reflecting their mutual horror.
“Oh no,” they said practically in unison.
Their only means of escape had been gobbled into a bottomless pit of quicksand.
Peter scanned the countryside. “We have to find a higher elevation and weigh our options. And we have to find help.”