Force

by A.R. Rivera

World Two

  ELI SAID TO PAY attention and I did.

  Crossing over is like opening a door. The violent conduit disrupts the plane I’m on the same way a door swings back into a room; creating a single-sided breach. Once I cross the threshold, there’s only uninterrupted calm and I am standing in the same spot but not the same place.

  The trees behind me are still there, only smaller, younger. Saplings. The fence, once concealed by branches, is now visible. Green slats run through the chain link obstructing public view of the private resting places on the other side.

  The zipper on the rubber bag draws closed just as overwhelming nausea engorges my throat. I double over, gripping the pain in my stomach as the crisp world blurs. Spit glands work overtime as I flip the hood back to draw breath. The air’s cold and inviting.

  I forgot to close the seal on my hood before activating the gateway and I feel sick, maybe from radiation. Guess I’ll find out the next time I brush my teeth.

  From the roadside, the lazy sun looks like its marking late afternoon. I don’t know why I feel like I’m forgetting something.

  There’s something about being nauseous that makes me want to curl into a ball and die. It’s the worst kind of sick. It sucks the joy out of everything because you can’t get past the overwhelming feeling that what’s inside is going to make its’ way outside at any moment.

  My stomach rolls, amplifying the disgusting feeling. I can pretty well tolerate any type of cold symptom: sinus pain, congestion, headaches, fever, chills, whatever. But the flu, I hate. Because every time I get sick, I puke and I hate puking more than anything. I especially hate that I could have prevented this if I’d just sealed my damned hood. There’s no point in wearing this rubber blanket if I’m not taking the time to seal it up.

  But I wasn’t thinking beyond leaving evidence to convince DHS that Eli wasn’t my willing accomplice. The only things that came to mind were hitting him and making a break for it. It probably didn’t work. They had to have already suspected he was helping me; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been tailing him.

  He better not puss out. I’m counting on him.

  It’s time to stop second guessing and focus on the objectives: not puking and finding Daemon.

  Murderous thoughts paint visions in my head—I close my eyes to better enjoy the show. I imagine myself shooting him—what it would feel—as my gloved hand grazes the skin grown over the hole that Daemon’s bullet left behind. A gun would do nicely. It would have to bigger than the one he used. I’ll leave him at least three new holes.

  My images are interrupted by the memory of Eli’s petulant instruction. “Mark the time differential!”

  I roll up onto folded legs, open my backpack and search for the stopwatch. I’m supposed to make notes on the gap between seconds the moment I get to the new place. Shit. Less than five minutes into my mission and I’m already screwing up.

  The watch isn’t in the place I left it and I don’t want to dig. It’s probably too late, anyway. I crawl towards the long shadows of the young trees, locked in a roll of dry heaves and collapse.

  Twenty minutes... maybe. It feels like twenty minutes have passed but the sky says it’s been less and I feel much better.

  I’ve got to do it or I’ll never hear the end of it.

  I move just enough to get a peek down the street at a traffic light. When the green changes to red, I count and keep going until it changes back to green. It isn’t as accurate as the stopwatch, but it’ll have to do. After counting to nearly three-hundred, the light finally changes.

  Once my bulky suit is off and folded, I set it inside the bag and find there’s barely enough room. Makes me glad I went with my gut and left some stuff behind.

  My everyday runners fit easily between the chain-links of the fence. It’s a quick climb over. Inside the gated cemetery, out of the view of the nosey passers-by, I can gather my thoughts. I pick a spot in the fading sun noting that the biting wind is really picking up.

  In the notebook I’ve sworn to keep, I jot a brief apology for forgetting to mark the time differential but add that at home, the traffic light at this particular intersection has never stayed red past... I can’t remember, but I’ll count it out when I get back.

  Eli mentioned something about this place. About comparing the amount of time I was gone to the passage of time here. He used a ratio. My fingers acknowledge the numbers before I consciously think them. Seven-point-six to... I don’t know. My head’s fuzzy.

  A penetrating gust sweeps across the naked grass. My attention’s drawn to a rustling tree branch waving over a row of trimmed brown hedges that outline a large section of plots. In the center, sets the familiar mausoleum. The entrance is marked by a dry fountain and saintly statues. Large thorns encase the damp remains of rose bushes.

  Turning, I find the expected flag flying at full mast over the old cannon. The war memorial at this cemetery has a small plaque mounted on the side of the canon that glistens in the afternoon sun. Behind that, a marble bench curves around the flagpole. The sides are adorned with plaques bearing the names of fallen soldiers.

  Carrie was buried near here, so, of course, I have to search for the mound or new sod that marks all fresh graves. The cemetery is neat and clean, despite the fall leaves littering on the garden of remembrance.

  A narrow lane for funeral processions separates each section of green. As I cross from one to the next, I spot clumps of wet dirt spoiling the grass around row three. Some clumps of dirt are large enough have freshly stomped waffle patterns in them. There’s no mound in sight, but a green canopy is sitting near the seventh row in back, two spaces from the end near the cannon. Her spot.

  My pace quickens.

  Eager and awful, my mind produces a perfect picture of her gravestone, though I haven’t seen it for years. It was the usual marble, adorned with two angels holding her framed picture. Below, it had her name, Carrie Allison Springer, and then the phrase, ‘She sleeps with Angels.’

  Clumps of scattered dirt stick to the soles of my shoes as I cross between the rows of markers. The sickening feeling grows as I close in on my little sisters’ fresh grave. So fresh that, the headstone has yet to be placed on her plot. My vision locks on a wooden dowel sticking up out of the ground. At the top, a small, white ribbon bears the printed name of this one forgotten soul… Henry Gale.

  Wait a second.

  Recounting the rows of headstones, I double-check the line of the cannon and the rose garden. Is it possible I’ve been wrong all this time? No, I recall the spot. If anything, it’s the wrong cemetery. All of them look the same. Grass, headstones, and a flag; most have memorial cannons, too. If the brain fog would lift, I’d be able to tell if this is the right place or not. Probably not, as this is the only fresh grave at the moment.

  I won’t let myself hope. The wreck happened the same way as before so the same result follows. Unless I’m actually in the right place at a different time, say before her accident? But that doesn’t make sense because Henry Gale is in her spot.

  Choosing to live with that unknown, I make for the easiest way out of the cemetery, through the back. Climbing a few stone walls, I cut through one gated community after another, then another couple of alleys and come out about a half mile away from the entrance to my old subdivision. To be sure, I pull out a city map and a sweatshirt.

  The winding road leading to my childhood home doesn’t take long to find, only to reach. Along the way, the scenery is confusing. House after house is decorated with lights. It’s dark out, but I know it wasn’t even Halloween when I left. I spent about three weeks at home in 2012, while back here, in 1996, Mrs. Gluckman has already put out the Hanukkah lights.

  That can’t be right. Better find a newspaper.

  Memory Lane is quiet. The brown house where I slept for almost a month, across from my childhood home, is still empty. A bleak ‘For Sale’ sign swings in the sharp breeze.

  Neglected grass crunche
s underfoot as I swerve to avoid that spot in the front yard, the spot where she landed. Crossing the corner of the driveway, I open the front gate and notice that the yard stays black. Odd. I’m on the front porch realizing the motion activated light out front never turned on.

  Actually, there are no lights on anywhere. No cars on the driveway. The rising wind and cold keeps me from settling in to wait for someone to return. I grab the fake rock with the spare key hidden inside the fig tree planter beside the front porch.

  A howl-like squeeeeaak marks the front door opening. I reach for the wall switch and flip it up. Nothing. Dropping my bag to the floor, I wade through the black, aiming for the sofa since I still remember where that is. The plush velveteen material presses against my cheek.

  Christmas lights. It would have to be well past Halloween, near Thanksgiving at least, for Christmas lights to be out.

  When the tunnel opened, I was thinking of this place. Under all that satisfaction at outsmarting those agents, I was remembering, and I wished to come back to the last morning. About an hour before I realized the day. Her death day. But part of me was thinking of her funeral, too. Maybe because I was on the road that I thought ran alongside her cemetery.

  Memories came in flashes as I stepped through the gateway. I saw her simple shroud and the flowers in her hands as she laid low in the small church. Pink ribbons wrapped around pigtails. When I kissed her goodbye, the silken material brushed my cheek. I hadn’t thought of that moment in years and just when I needed to ponder her beaming grin as she played with Mary in the park, that miserable moment marched in and took over.

  Concentration is the key. I must focus harder next time.

  There is no electricity which means no coffee.

  It’s morning and I’m staring blankly into my parents’ barren dining room. My grandmother’s hutch is there, but the fancy dishes are gone. The cupboards are also empty, like the bedrooms.

  I don’t know what to do next.

  The Christmas lights don’t make sense. Neither do the uncollected newspapers rolled up on the front porch—nine in total—and the mailbox is stuffed. The most recent date on the newspaper is December 14th. The postmarks on the corners of their envelopes stretch back to the second.

  I grab a pen from the coffee table and jot numbers in the margin of the newsprint. From the time of the first bus accident to the day I was shot on the side of the highway—it was three weeks. I was at home less than a month recovering, grieving and then preparing to leave.

  If Eli is right and I have not traveled back in time, if I’m somehow inside another world and its forty-eight days after my sister’s death, then Halloween, her funeral, and Thanksgiving have already passed. Still doesn’t explain Carrie’s missing grave, though, unless I really was in the wrong cemetery.

  Inside my parents’ room, the closets are bare. There are a few broken hangers and a garment bag with a moth-eaten brown suit I don’t recognize. My old room has no tapes or CD’s and the stereo is gone. Last time I came through this room, everything but the stereo was coated in dust. The bathroom is empty, save a half bar of crusty soap resting on the corner of the shower. Carries bed, like the other three, hasn’t been made. Brightly colored cartoon horses cover her rumpled bed sheets that lay tossed in a pile on the floor. Her overstuffed chest of toys is in the corner and all of her clothes are gone. The way I remember it, my mother never touched Carrie’s things. She shut her bedroom door and went off to have her nervous breakdown. My dad and I had to clean it out when the bank seized the house. Carrie’s bed had been made by me that last morning.

  Back at the dining table, I sift through the mail. There was one envelope in particular that just seemed out of place.

  The Department of Motor Vehicles seal decorates the left-hand corner of the envelope I’m tearing open.

  Inside, I find my—well, younger me—little G’s first drivers’ license. The picture is straight-up awful. I’ve never been accused of being photogenic either, but his teeth look way too big. I remember right before the heavily perfumed woman behind the DMV counter took my picture, I sneezed. She must have felt bad because she took a second one. My eyes were closed for that one, too, but there was no way she was going to take a third and I didn’t have horse teeth like little G.

  I touch the plastic card, run my fingers over the smooth front and try to think. No struggling-for-independence teenager of the nineties would leave his first license behind. Having it was the ultimate thrill, a mark of passage into adulthood. Why would it be here if he’s not? This crappy picture isn’t a good reason.

  The dishes in the sink reek of rot.

  “Where did you go?” I ask the empty house, trying to imagine what state this family was in when they took off. Without more clues, all I can do is sit on the small couch and think.