Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  TIME OUT OF MIND

  BY

  JOHN R. MAXIM

  For lrwin Shaw ... who always had time.

  I'll be with her again, in this life or next, I'll go back to the past if I must.

  I'll be with her again in time out of mind, Where who hate us ne'er were, or are dust.

  —C. G. Sterling, “Outback”

  Make no mistake. The genes we're born with carry memory. They carry knowledge we've never learned, talents we've never studied, even fears of things that have never frightened us.... But someone, some time, in our blood lines, had. these memories. Yes, you might say that all of us are haunted to some degree. You might very well say that.

  One

  He did not have the look of a man who frightened easily.

  But what made him afraid, in a way no bar bully or snarling dog could, was snow. Ordinary snow. The kind that dusts and occasionally blitzes New York City between November and April. Jonathan Corbin saw things in the snow. Things that could not have been there. Things that could not have been living.

  He'd moved to New York just last September. From Chicago. That was what made all this so absurd. Chicago got twice as much snow as New York. All his life he'd lived through midwestern winters harsher than anything seen in the East. And he'd liked the snow there...The heavier the better. Snow was beautiful as long as you didn't get stuck in it on a highway at night. Two or three inches of fresh snow could cleanse and soften even the meanest city streets. But with two months remaining of his first winter in New York, all that had changed. Now the first few flakes from any passing cloud had come to seem like living creatures. Malevolent, probing things. Like scouts for an advancing army. They would float slowly past the window of his office, sometimes stuttering along the glass as if to make certain he was there, catching a rising current to come back for a second look.

  On this Friday late in February, the first random crystals appeared an hour before noon. Jonathan Corbin saw them, not through the office windows at his back, but in his secretary's troubled eyes as she stared past his shoulder. He did not turn. He sat frozen until she closed her book and stepped wordlessly from the room, shutting the door behind her.

  Corbin buzzed her extension minutes later. In a carefully measured tone he instructed her to cancel the luncheon meeting he'd scheduled at the Plaza Hotel and said he'd take no calls. Not from anyone.

  Four hours passed. It was after three when Jonathan Corbin allowed himself to hope that he might make it through this day after all. From his window, where he'd been standing almost constantly, he looked down on Sixth Avenue, four floors below. The snow was still not sticking. Only a wet gauzy layer clung to the tops of cars. The stored-up heat of Manhattan swallowed all others as they touched. Maybe, Corbin told himself, nothing would happen this time. He dug his fingers into the thigh of one leg to halt the trembling, which came in spasms. It would not happen this time. It could not. The snow was going to stop.

  He pushed the draperies aside for a better look, and his eyes fell upon his own reflection in the double-paned glass. What he saw disgusted him. A grown man quaking. Cowering at the sight of a little wet snow. Hiding out in this room like a whipped dog. Angrily, he turned from that image and forced himself back to his desk. Anger, he knew, was a good sign. It always came when the fear began to recede and his fury at himself became stronger than the terror. He'd be fine now. As long as the forecast turned out to be right. As long as there was no more snow.

  He wished that he'd kept that lunch date. It was important. Weeks in the planning. He could have handled it. They'd have noticed that he didn't look good, that he was pale and sweating and barely touched his food, but he could have bluffed his way through. As long as the snow didn't start to pile up outside. As long as he didn't start to see people who were no longer alive strolling past the windows of the Edwardian Room.

  But that wasn't going to happen. Not this time. The forecast was accurate after all. Light snow. Flurries. Rain toward evening, possibly heavy at times. The weather page of the New York Times had promised that the main storm would pass well to the south. The weather bureau agreed each time Corbin called. He began to forgive himself at last for not checking the forecast before he left his house in Connecticut. He'd overslept and had to rush, unshowered, for his train. The morning sky had been more clear than clouded, and he'd smelled no moisture in it. Temperature in the low forties. Still, he should have checked.

  But maybe, he thought, it was just as well he hadn't. Corbin knew that if he'd flipped on the marine weather station he kept mounted by his back door, and its tinny voice had even mentioned snow, he might never have left the house. He might not have even looked out a window until bright sunshine had baked a sealing crust onto whatever had fallen. And he'd end up losing his job. This time or the next, the terror he could not bring himself to explain would get him fired. They would have no choice. If he had a drinking problem, a drug problem, if he was depressed or a casualty of executive stress, if he had any kind of problem that they could at least begin to understand, they would try to help him. The Network was decent enough that way. Like they were with his boss, Bill Stafford, who was afraid to fly. They got Bill to enroll in one of those anonymous nervous flyers classes, and even when he flunked out a second time they just gave up and started booking him on trains for trips he couldn't avoid. Corbin had heard of other Network people who'd been put through detoxification or counseling programs of one kind or another. But what do you do with somebody who's afraid of snow? Demote him to some Sunbelt affiliate? Ship him back where you got him? Back to the Chicago station? For all Corbin knew, Chicago's snow would have changed, too, and twice as much snow would end up driving him out of his mind twice as fast.

  March. A few more days to February and then March. If he could only get through March.

  Corbin blinked. The room was suddenly darker. He spun out of his chair and again stepped to the window. The whole of Sixth Avenue seemed to be in deeper shadow. And the snow had thickened. It fell more purposefully now. A light veil was forming over untrod sections of the sidewalks and on the branches of young elms whose buds had just begun to swell. And the sky. It was lowering even as he watched, swallowing lighter shades of gray as it eased downward, digesting the tops of taller buildings. Across the street, the Warwick Hotel was already in soft focus, and to his right he saw that all the upper floors of the rival ABC television building had vanished. The people! It suddenly struck Corbin that there were people up there. A part of his mind saw them screaming and crying as they began to realize that the city they knew was fading away and that something long dead was coming to life in its place.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. Jonathan Corbin pressed both palms against his temples as if to squeeze away that image. “Oh, God, don't let me be going insane.”

  Corbin knew there would be no panic at ABC. No screaming. At worst there would be a little worry about what the subways would be like and whether their bosses would let them out early. Or they'd be wishing they'd brought overshoes and umbrellas. Some would be happy because ski conditions would be excellent this weekend. Or because they thought snow was pretty. Some would like it, some would grumble about the inconvenience. But they wouldn't be afraid. Because they wouldn't see the things that Jonathan Corbin would.

  Then don't look, damn it. You don't have to go out. You can sleep here on your office couch. You don't even have to look out this stupid window.

  Corbin snatched at the cord of his drapes and yanked, too hard. He'd found the wrong cord and it snapped away in his hand, dragging a potted plant to the floor with it. Outside he heard his secretary's chair slide backward at the sound of the breakage. Corbin stepped to the door and listened, hoping that Sandy would stay away, that she wouldn't knock. H
e waited there until he heard the chair again. He could not see the worried shake of her head or her hand reaching for her telephone.

  Once again, Corbin was drawn to the window. The snow was coming faster still and at a driven slant. A new wind had risen from the south. It came in waves. Gusting. Its great breaths swatted umbrellas aside and slapped at the hems of topcoats. Within minutes all the city he could see had faded to a whitish blur. It was no longer solid.

  Too late now even to run. Grand Central Station was twenty minutes away on foot. There would be no cabs. Corbin knew that he would get no farther than a block, to Fifth Avenue at best, before the city began to change.

  His first sensation would be that it was shrinking. It would be as if all of Manhattan were made of modeling clay and some giant hand was slowly pressing down on it. Buildings would become squat at their bases and they would ooze closer together, narrowing the streets and sidewalks. This giant pressing hand would distort the features of the buildings, breaking up clean lines, creating bulges and ridges and a sense of massiveness rather than height. Then the hand would lift and the tops of the buildings would be gone. Not hidden in cloud. Just gone. Faded away. And among the home-bound office workers he would see people dressed in clothing that was no longer worn and pass buildings that were not there in sunlight. Corbin would be on the street and he'd notice that the midtown trucks and buses were becoming translucent, and through them he would begin to see other shapes.

  He'd see wagons drawn by horses. Not just the Central Park kind that tourists hire during the warmer months, but every size and shape of unmechanized vehicle. On Fifth Avenue, Corbin would see little horse-drawn trolleys that had not appeared on New York streets for... Corbin didn't know. Eighty years? A hundred years? He'd see ponderous freight wagons, brewery wagons piled high with kegs, sleek black broughams and landaus with liveried drivers sitting erect at the reins, fully exposed to the weather. And they'd be moving. Living. He'd see the breath coming from the horses' nostrils and the steam rising from their flanks. He would actually smell their manure, mounds of it, everywhere, being churned into a repulsive brown slush by passing hooves and wheels. The people on foot would be mostly men. Few women anywhere except in carriages, holding buffalo robes across their laps. The men, the business types at least, would nearly all be dressed in black. Fur-lined inverness coats, or ulsters, or flaring Prince

  Alberts that reached well past their knees. Most carried walking sticks. All of them wore hats, either high silk or derbies. Nearly all were mustached or bearded. And they would see him.

  They would not seem afraid, or at all surprised, or even especially interested that he was among them. But they would see him. A tall policeman would pass, acknowledging him with a nod and a touch of his truncheon to the brim of his helmet. The helmet was the sort British bobbies wore, except that his seemed not so high and was a lighter shade. There were two women, Corbin recalled, the last time he saw the policeman. They were following close behind him as if determined to stay under his protection as long as possible. The two women, girls really, were escorted by a third woman, who appeared to be in her thirties. A chaperone, Corbin realized. The two younger women modestly dropped their eyes as he passed, but the older one glowered at Corbin as if he'd committed a breach of etiquette by even noticing the girls in her charge. Corbin was struck by the tiny steps they took. Quick mincing steps that seemed to cover only inches. It occurred to him that all three were out of breath but trying to avoid the appearance of breathing hard. It was their corsets, he realized. Contraptions of wire and whale-bone cruelly choked their waists and stiffened their spines, making exertion almost impossible. Knowing that, thinking that, Corbin felt an unaccountable sense of embarrassment, as if he had committed another, graver breach. What was it? The corsets? Yes. He should not have reflected upon their undergarments. Not even to himself. Corbin felt curiously protective of these women. It was clear that they could never have begun to defend themselves against any form of assault, nor could they have reacted to any minor emergency that might require quick physical movement. Small wonder, he thought, that these creatures swoon as often as they do. It's a marvel that they even manage to cross a busy street without more of them being knocked down by one of those maniacs who drive hacks these days.

  Still vaguely ashamed of allowing his thoughts to penetrate their outer clothing, Corbin watched as they struggled to board the rear platform of a two-horse omnibus. He felt an urge to go and stop them, to offer to engage a hack to take them home. They certainly dressed as if they had the means to pay for a cab. They must have gone abroad without sufficient funds, not sufficient, at all events, to meet the larcenous demands made by New York's hack drivers every time an unpropitious turn of weather turned them into grasping auctioneers. Corbin made no move toward the ladies, however. The risk of embarrassing them was great and, worse, his motives might well be misunderstood. Still, he regretted that they must endure the discomfort of a tightly packed horsecar whose only protection against the cold would be a host of steaming bodies and four inches of filthy straw on the floor. But at least the conductor, Corbin saw, seemed like the sort who would do well by them. He'd stepped to the street to offer an arm and to hold back those who would crowd past the three women. They declined the arm, as the conductor might have expected. They would need both hands to carefully raise their skirts high enough to step onto the platform but not so high as to permit the display of an ankle. Two men promptly offered their seats. The conductor glared at a third, in a laborer's peacoat and wool cap, until he, too, surrendered his seat to the chaperone, who was the last to board. Satisfied, Corbin adjusted his hat and turned into the wind.

  He hadn't waited to watch them take their seats. But now he found himself wondering how they would manage it. All three wore bustles and panniers and enough heavy fabric to clothe half a dozen of the women who worked in his office ... in his office. As he held that thought, Corbin spun around and focused once more upon the omnibus. It was fading. A shift of wind, an updraft, something, had created a lull in the storm and everything was changing again. The horsecar was almost gone. The outline of a Fifth Avenue MTA bus was materializing in its place. And he became afraid again, realizing only then that he did not belong in the world of these women and the policeman. If there really was such a world. If he was not, in fact, going out of his mind. Hadn't he just straightened his hat against the wind? He wasn't wearing a hat. What's going on here? What the hell is happening? Corbin staggered forward in the direction of Grand Central. Soon he was running.

  That, at least, was what had happened one time. One of the first times. Back just after Thanksgiving. But it was always different. The street scene always varied from one time to the next, as it did between any two ordinary strolls through midtown Manhattan. Yet three things were always the same. Jonathan Corbin was seeing, living, a time long past and dead. And there was always the snowstorm. And when the blizzard was at its worst and the night at its blackest, he would see the bareheaded woman running from him. The woman he would murder.

  He would be on a corner, he wasn't sure where, leaning into a wind of astonishing force and sleet that threatened to seal his eyes. It was useless, he knew, to move in that direction. The woman would not have gone there. Wind or no wind, she would have gone the other way. Corbin, in fact, knew exactly when and where he would see her, yet he felt compelled each time to act out a search, as if he were living these moments for the first time. He would turn, toward the north, he thought, and on the sidewalk before him he would see a half-buried clump that looked like a dead raven. It was a hat. Her hat. A narrow, tapering toque of cloth and feathers from Lord & Taylor's Broadway store. As the woman had reached this corner, the full force of the gale had torn the useless ornament from her head.

  Now the same wind would shove at Corbin’ s back, pushing him forward in the direction she must have taken. He lurched on, digging his heels into packed snow and ice for purchase, finally reaching the next corner, where he paused in the doorway
of an apothecary.

  She'd turned right, he was sure, from this corner. Her reason for turning right caused a churning of hurt and anger in Corbin’ s stomach, although as yet he had not the slightest idea why. But he knew that he must hurry. Corbin pulled a collar up against his cheek, mildly startled by the scratch of black lamb's-wool trim he hadn't known was there, then plunged forward across the north-south avenue that was funneling the winds into hurricane force. Twice he fell, tripping over a tangle of fallen telegraph wires that sagged everywhere over roadway and sidewalk alike. He could scarcely believe that the woman would have tried this crossing, but he understood that she would have had no choice. How desperate she was! How depraved she was by a sin that would lead her to ever greater shame and condemnation. Corbin drove himself on. A snowbank blocked him on the far side. He stepped into it and cried out. There was someone in there. Beneath the snow. Corbin's gloved hand locked fingers with another that was stiff and unyielding. A large hand. Gasping, Corbin threw himself backward, but the other gloved hand stayed entwined in his own, only for an instant, but long enough that his momentum pulled the upper torso of the hidden body free. A frozen face stared past him through half-open eyes.

  Corbin knew the face. George. His name was George, but any other knowledge of him stayed just out of Corbin's reach. The corpse was a big man. Corbin’s size. Thickly mustached. His dead eyes were wincing as if in pain, and his mouth gaped open to receive a breath that never came. George was dead. He'd fallen here. Hours ago. There was no connection, Corbin knew, between the man in the snowbank and the woman somewhere up ahead. He was sure of that. But for that reason a part of Corbin wondered why this man was here in this dream, this nightmare. And why was another part of him sorry at this man's death? Who was George? Not a friend, he felt sure. Not a close one at least. A business acquaintance perhaps. Or a neighbor. Corbin eased him back into the shelter of the snowbank and gently covered his face. He clasped the dead man's hand for a moment, as if in apology for leaving him, then crawled over him toward the lee of the nearest building.