It was bright and tiny, and so close to his face he couldn’t focus on it. Or it could have been miles away, distance making it small.
There was a drawing sensation, and he distinctly felt the flesh around every follicle of hair tighten, drawing them up in a rush. Then the light was huge, all around, encompassing him entirely and pressing in on him. He was suffocating, breath squeezed from his lungs like the bellows of an accordion that wasn’t allowed to expand and refill, getting tighter and tighter, the air so thick it couldn’t move through his airways. Agony was everywhere, nothing immune, and when he closed his eyes, the light seeped in anyway, burning and scorching as he was drawn into the brilliance. It dragged on forever, a lifetime, longer, and he felt as if he were moving in slow motion, walking backwards through thick mud. It became dark, and the scent of whiskey hit him suddenly, whiskey and beer, mixed, overlaid with the smell of ancient cigarettes.
Clive opened his eyes and blinked, vision blurring before he saw himself. He panicked at seeing himself from the outside until he realized it was only a mirror. Hair styled, he was wearing a suit, the crisp lines of his dry cleaner’s pressing still in evidence. He lifted a hand and patted his cheek sharply, feeling the sting at the same time the smack sounded in the room.
He looked around. There were posters taped to the walls advertising concerts and events. A clipboard was tied to a nail, the heading on the yellowed sheet of paper naming a bar he’d heard about but never frequented. The stalls were a final giveaway, and Clive winced at the unexpected sound of someone retching behind one of those closed doors.
Nothing made sense.
A moment ago, he had been standing in his and Claire’s kitchen, having a conversation with a man who, for all intents and purposes, had appeared from thin air. Now he was standing in a dirty bar bathroom.
Then the door opened, and a dead man walked out.
Did I do this
Clive stared at the man weaving in the doorway to a stall, toilet still gurgling and flushing behind him. Eyes red and bloodshot, the man worked his teeth over the surface of his tongue, as if to try and rid himself of the taste of the vomitus his body had just expelled.
Wayne Brownwitte, the driver who’d killed Claire.
“What the hell?”
The man’s chin lifted antagonistically, and he slurred, “Wadd’re you lookin’ at?”
“Oh my God. It’s you.” Clive was stunned. “How? How did you…” He took a step towards the other man. “You’re Brownwitte. Tell me it’s you. You’re Wayne Brownwitte.”
“Who’s askin’?”
“It is you. What day is it?” Could he have been sent back in time? Was that a thing? Clive had to know. “You’re Wayne Brownwitte, and you’re drunk.”
“’S it to ya?”
“What day is it?” Clive patted his pockets but came up empty. No phone. Figures, he hadn’t had the phone on him in the kitchen, since he’d been working in his office. Of course he’d also only been dressed from the waist up, pajama bottoms safely hidden from an earlier video call by the edge of the desk. “I have to know, what day is it?”
“Don’t know.” The man’s head tipped back, and he staggered sideways, saved from falling by leaning heavily against the wall. “Don’t care.”
Clive forced his way out of the bathroom and into the bar proper. He scanned left and saw tables and a pair of TVs mounted to the wall. To the right was a long bar, and he covered the distance in long strides. “Hey. What day is it?” He punctuated each word with a thud from his palm on the top of the bar. “What day is it?” The bartender, a blowsy blonde, stared at him, pausing in the act of drying a glass. “Well?” He enunciated clearly. “Please, I have to know.”
“It’s Friday, why?”
Claire had died on a Friday. It’s today.
There was a noise behind him, and the skin along the back of Clive’s neck prickled. He turned to see the bathroom door slowly closing. “That man, Wayne, he’s drunk.”
The expression on the blonde’s face hardened, and she stood straight, posture stiff. “I haven’t served him over the limit, if that’s what you’re saying. He came in that way. I just asked him if I could call a taxi and he said no.” She shook her head. “No ATF agent is going to trip me up like that. I didn’t serve him.”
“I’m not—” Clive looked down at himself, seeing the normal work attire of two-piece suit, jacket and pants set off with his brown leather shoes and belt, and a muted blue tie. “He’s going to kill my sister.”
“Wayne?” She waved a hand and chuckled softly. “Pffff. He’s harmless. He might be a drunk, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
A car engine roared outside, and Clive looked back towards the bathroom, noticing for the first time how the hallway led to an outside door. He lurched towards the bathroom and shoved the door open to find it empty, stall doors yawning wide. Racing outside, he tripped on the threshold and pinwheeled, hands outstretched. There was a gust of wind that blew back his hair as a car came to a halt inches from his legs. Shaking, Clive looked from where his hands had landed on the hood to the windshield and saw Wayne sitting behind the steering wheel, mouth open in shock. Breath still coming in great heaves, Clive took a wooden step to the side on nerveless legs, intending to talk to the man through the window, to convince him to get out of the car, but Wayne spun the tires, raising a cloud of dust as gravel ricocheted off the wall. Then he was gone, taking the corner at the end of the parking lot fast, sliding sideways before correcting.
Eyes wide, Clive stared after him, only now feeling the tiny cuts on his face where some of the gravel had struck him.
He glanced around the lot and was dazed to see his car sitting parked nearby. Of course it is. This is Never-Was World. Not allowing himself to hope, he fished in his pocket, came up with the keys and, after staring at them for a long moment, followed Wayne up the street. He gritted his teeth when the man took a ramp he recognized, feeding into a long line of cars going onto the highway. It was the road where Claire had died. Mashing on the accelerator as if his life depended on it, he recklessly dodged around vehicles, trying to keep Wayne in sight. The man was speeding, going faster and faster, almost as if he knew Clive was pursuing him.
Just in front of him, a car changed lanes without signaling, cutting Clive off from the next clear stretch of highway. His tires squealed as he briefly slid, brake pedal pulsing under his foot. It was a near thing, but he avoided striking that vehicle and was about to swing out and around them when another slipped into the space instead. “No!” He pounded on the wheel with one hand when he realized he’d lost sight of Wayne entirely, the man’s nondescript blue car blending into the dozens of others on the road.
Brake lights flashed in front of him, vehicles slowing abruptly, and within moments, Clive found himself at a standstill, pinned in on all sides by cars and trucks. Staring through the windshield, he saw the first wisps of smoke rising ahead and his stomach clenched. Clive froze as the realization of what had happened crashed through him. He slammed the gearshift into park, opened his door, and stepped out into air that felt still, pregnant with something. Slowly at first, he walked forwards, edging between two vans until he could see the traffic jam extended for some distance.
The thickening smoke’s origin was just underneath a bridge about half a mile away. That’s wrong. They were nearly three miles from where the accident had happened. Would happen. He shook his head, dismissing the confusing thought, gaze focused on that damned telltale smoke.
Clive picked up his pace and shifted to a quick trot, nodding without speaking at people who had also climbed from their vehicles to look at the disruption. Sirens sounded in the distance, but closer to hand he heard something else. Something like a siren but warbling, gaining volume and then losing it, a shriek nearly like a panther he’d heard at a zoo once. The smoke thickened, spinning into a blackened column rising to the sky, and then he was running, each jarring footfall slapping on top of the white stripes separating the two lane
s, twisting his way past the mirrors and car doors left hanging askew by gawkers. His hip caught the corner of a mirror and the cowling around it bent back, swiveling instead of breaking. The sting and throb were immediate, but he didn’t stop to look at the damage. I’ve got to see.
He made it past an eighteen-wheeler blocking his view and stopped short, his heart jumping into his throat. There was a large yellow vehicle, twisted and mangled, lying on its side across several lanes, four or five cars and vans half buried into its belly. Another crumple of cars was off to the right, the force of their impact against a bridge column nearly shearing it in half. All told, it looked like eight cars or vans and a school bus. No, no. God, no.
He’d taken another step forwards when a sound seemed to bend the air around him; the weight and force of an enormous concussion sent him stumbling sideways, much as Wayne had in the bar’s bathroom, and Clive barely caught himself against the side of a SUV. He turned, and through the dim reflection of his own face, he saw a crying child buckled into a back seat.
Heat hit him, enough to scorch and crisp his lashes, and Clive lifted a hand to block it, trying to stare past and into what had turned from a wreck to an inferno. The flames jumped from vehicle to vehicle, burning fiercely between them, spilled gasoline on the highway a wick easily followed to the secondary wreck. An instant before the flames rose around, engulfing and consuming it, he recognized Claire’s car.
His blood ran cold as he saw movement inside, the silhouette of his sister wavering back and forth, hands pounding on the unshattered side window, before the flames took everything. His muttered response was lost in the sound of engines surrounding him, in the growing roar of the fire. “That’s not what happened.”
He turned to look at the main accident and saw a blue trunk lying on the shoulder, apparently ripped from Wayne’s vehicle when he’d struck the bus. He screamed, “That’s not what was supposed to happen.”
Swallowed alive by darkness, he was Jonah in the belly of the whale, and the pressure crushed him as he was spun out thin, stretched to the edges of the universe before he folded in on himself again. The transition took only a heartbeat, so he was still screaming when he realized he was back in the kitchen, cold coffee wet against his back, surrounded by shards of bulb glass that glittered in the sunlight streaming through the window.
Clive stared at the single spatula lying between his feet. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. She died instantly. They said so.” He was babbling and didn’t care. If it hadn’t been for the barrier of broken glass littering the floor, he would have grappled with the man, gripped his throat and strangled him for doing that to Claire. “She wasn’t supposed to have pain. That wasn’t right.”
“You were warned.” The man crunched closer, and as he walked, Clive saw a newspaper held to the front of the refrigerator by a line of Claire’s damn magnets. The headline read: 45 DEAD IN FIERY CRASH.
“That.” Heart pounding, Clive pointed at the article. “That’s not right.”
Blue eyes stared at him with compassion, an ocean of shared pain reflected in their depths. Clive’s stomach swooped and sank, nausea threatening to overwhelm him as the reality of the hugely inflated number sank in.
“No, it’s not. Not right at all. It was just her and him. Claire and Wayne. Why is it changed?” He took a faltering step towards the refrigerator, forgetting the glass strewn on the floor and wincing as something pierced the edge of his foot. Undeterred, he shuffled closer until he could read the opening paragraphs. “No, that’s not…”
Two toddlers and 35 high school students on the Ochawhalla track team were among the 45 people killed in a fiery crash on Friday afternoon. Police and fire officials say Wayne Brownwitte was drunk when he caused the chain reaction crash by striking the school bus from behind. Others killed include Claire Dunwoody, also of Ochawhalla…
The article went on to list the people killed in the other vehicles, and Clive stumbled over the long list of names, each representing a life cut short. His stomach gave another warning heave, and for a moment he was certain he’d be sick. He stared at the newsprint, running everything through his head. The encounter in the bathroom, the bartender’s reassuringly dismissive laugh, the heart-stopping terror when his hands touched that car, his footrace between the stopped cars, arriving just in time to be caught in the blast’s backwash.
“I tried to stop him.” A wave of power blasted through him, leaving his muscles stiff. It was so strong, Clive wasn’t surprised to see a long spark arc from his finger towards one of the magnets holding the paper. “I saw him in the bathroom of a bar, and he was drunk. Wasted, just like they told me. So drunk he could hardly stand.” His gaze traced the headline, then dipped to the paragraphs and paragraphs of names, the ages listed ranging from three to seventy. “He nearly ran me down. I chased him.” He turned his head, staring at the man who now wore a sympathetic expression. “With my car. I chased him. Did I do this?” Without looking back, Clive lifted a hand and pointed, feeling the sting of another zap of static electricity. “Did I? Did I kill them?”
“Biocac tamma sseccus.” The man inclined his head, and his eyes dipped closed, pain written on his face. “There are some decisions that should not be made. Sometimes only one path is true.”
“Oh God.” Clive’s chin dropped, and he stared at the floor, gaze tracking between large and small pieces of glass, trying to make sense of the random pattern. “What if I’d stopped him entirely?” The air in the room grew thick, similar to the darkness he’d passed through, and Clive lifted his head, looking into blue eyes beginning to streak with gray. “What if he wasn’t on that highway?”
“Rules must be followed.” The man’s head shook back and forth slowly, making that arc only once. “It was a blessing.”
“A blessing that I’m alone now? A blessing that she didn’t have a chance to find love again? How is that a blessing? Huh? How?” Clive’s muscles shook, and he heard his teeth clacking together. His breath plumed in front of him when he shouted, “How is any of this a blessing?”
“You should not ask.” The man’s head tipped back at a rumble from overhead, like something heavy was being moved across the floor above them. “Aire sseccus. So biocac tamma. So aire parehat eriferus rebme cedrebme enyd.” The temperature plummeted further, and Clive trembled, his fingers aching. Each indrawn breath hurt, the skin of his face and arms stinging fiercely, and he watched, disbelieving, as tiny white patches appeared and spread on the backs of his hands. “Rgua epywar ur ua geibf. Si rewui elaib. Aire biocac enyd rgua. So biacac. So enyd. So sseccus.” The tips of Clive’s fingers pruned, wrinkling as if he’d spent hours in a hot tub, but the burning in his extremities wasn’t due to heat. “Aire sseccus.”
The man’s chin lowered, and Clive saw his gray eyes, the color rolling and churning in an impossible patternless movement. “You may ask.”
There was a pop, and the terrifying cold was gone as if it had never existed, except in Clive’s fingers and nose, in his toes, and the chill that remained in his gut.
He looked at the article, slowly reading the list of names again. “I want the chance to stop him from killing all these people. From killing Claire. Send me back so I can do that.”
Just a question
He didn’t think pain as enormous as this could be anticipated. It was tangible, fingers of suffering digging grooves along his skin. Clive’s spine arched with the jolts of electricity that coursed through him, each spasm more painful than the one before until he was one long agonal ache, the torment wavering and strengthening but never really waning. It spun him thin, stretching the cells of his body as he lost shape, becoming a thought, a wisp of experience cast to the winds like a balloon carrying a wish, a memory, a cry for help.
This time when he landed, it was with a thud, and he cried out as his legs collapsed underneath him. The echoes of agony still rang inside his skin, and he shook, trembling in the savage grip of whatever it was the man had done to him. Gradually the pain l
eft, and when he tried to sit, he was shocked at how weakened his muscles were.
Looking around, Clive was surprised to find he wasn’t lying on the dirty floor of the bar bathroom but in his own office at the main plant. Once on his feet, he leaned heavily on one stiffened arm as he reached for the desk phone. He hesitated, then turned it towards himself and looked at the display. Friday. In terror, he checked the time and found it was exactly two hours before the accident. There’s time.
He pulled the chair around, thinking, but his legs gave out as he sat, and he fell into the chair with a cry, leather creaking.
How do I manage to derail Brownwitte without seeming crazy? When Clive had stood in his kitchen, he’d had the first inkling of an idea, but now that he was here, it was gone, seemed too fragile to grasp, which made sense, because it hadn’t happened yet. But then how do I know what will happen? He shook his head in frustration, knowing he could debate this all day. It already felt as if he’d lived a lifetime trying to navigate Claire’s death, and he needed it to end. There was no time for that internal discussion; he had to take it on faith that the man had sent him back to a place where Clive could successfully alter the fabric of Claire’s future.
Clive tapped a button on his phone. There was a buzz before his assistant answered, her voice softly confused, and he thought, Join the club. “Clive? Are you calling from Mexico? It came through as an internal call.” The air rippled, and she sighed, “Of course not, you’re back here.” There was a beat of silence. Then back to her normal efficient self, she asked, “What do you need, boss?”
The Gray Zone Page 3