“Oh, we’ll be stressed,” Patty said. “I never thought I’d have to relive those hours of sheer terror again.”
“I didn’t either,” Screamer said. “I had nightmares for years about bodies materializing inside of each other.”
“We got to do this,” I said, shuddering at the memory of that exact same nightmare. “And we have to get it right.”
“Because if we don’t,” Screamer said, “we’re destined to relive what we are about to try over and over and over inside a time loop.”
“That’s not a time loop,” I said. “That’s hell.”
“I’ve been down on a visit to hell,” Sherri said. “This would be worse.”
Everyone but Screamer looked at her. I think I had my mouth open.
She looked around and smiled. “What? An old boyfriend is all. You know how kids are.”
“Before my time,” Screamer said, shaking his head.
11
A SECOND TIME THROUGH A NIGHTMARE
We told Madge what we were planning and she cleaned off the table and brought us all pads of paper and pens and some fresh glasses of water.
While she was doing that, Sherri and Screamer jumped to her mother to tell her the plan and I called to Stan to come back and I explained the plan to him.
Lady Luck and Stan both thought it was a good idea.
While we were getting set up, Stan got the list from the Bookkeeper of the names and location his computers told him were the ones from the future we stranded in the past.
I wouldn’t let Stan show it to us, since I didn’t want what we were about to try to be contaminated in any way.
Stan thought that very smart and agreed. He jumped away to continue to get help from the police on the overall list of names.
So as we all slipped into the booth, we put Screamer in the middle in the back. Sherri was on one side of him and Ben beside her.
Patty was on the other side of Screamer and I was beside her.
Patty and I and Screamer had had our minds together a lot over the years, but this was the first time we had tried it with both Sherri and Ben also in the mix.
“Stay focused on the memory,” I said and everyone agreed.
“We start from the first one and go through?” Screamer asked.
“From the first one,” I said and he nodded.
Why he had asked about the first one was because the first person out of the machine had been Geneva, a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun who we had sent in so that we could communicate with someone inside. She and her boyfriend, a cop friend of mine named Johnny, had developed a very tight mental connection that we used.
I wanted to make sure we didn’t get confused in the order and miss anyone.
“Ready for a ride back to hell?” Screamer asked.
Patty and I both nodded.
Sherri took Ben’s hand on top of the table and touched Screamer’s leg with the other.
Patty touched my leg and then took Screamer’s hand on top of the table.
Instantly there were four other people in my head.
I tried to only focus on my memory of that hot day in that graveyard of slot machines.
Patty and Screamer did the same and Sherri sent some waves of calming energy as we were again back in front of those monster machines ten years before.
Ben just felt like a shadow in the distance, watching.
The intense terror I felt overwhelmed me and I could feel Patty’s and Screamer’s fear as well.
We were standing right in front of the pulsating machines. I was touching Screamer and Patty was holding my hand.
I got the distinct smell of raspberry shampoo, but pushed that thought away and focused on what was about to happen.
Patty had slowed down time and then, slowly, in the chair in front of the right-side slot machine, a woman’s body started to materialize seated in the wooden chair.
Screamer reached out when she was complete and shoved her hard out of the way.
I focused on her mind, what was in it, and caught a lot about her and her new relationship with Johnny. More than I thought I could get, actually.
The next person, a woman, started to materialize and I remember thinking how close that was and how fast that was happening, even with Patty slowing time.
Scary fast, Patty thought at me. I had my eyes closed and hadn’t realized it was that close. No wonder you and Screamer have nightmares of people materializing together.
More than you want to know, Screamer thought at her.
As the woman finished materializing, Screamer pushed her hard out of the way and onto the mat beside the chair. She landed in slow motion on top of Geneva.
The woman’s mind seemed open to me. I scanned as much as I could in the fraction of a second Screamer was in contact with her. I could see in her memory that when she was taken by the slots, there was a 2004 Mercedes spinning slowly on some progressive slot machine display to her right. And she was thinking she would really love to win that new car.
Casinos didn’t give away old cars, so she was from that time, not today.
The next one out was Ben, the man Patty and I had seen taken from Binion’s.
We knew he was fine as well.
Back then we had taken two minute rests between every group of three, but we didn’t need to do that in memory, so we jumped over the two minutes and went through the next three people out of the machine, then did that again with three more.
Then both Patty and Sherri broke their connection with Screamer as we planned.
“Wow, you three were terrified,” Sherri said. “I’m impressed you managed to save all those people under that kind of stress and fear. And working with untested superpowers as well. Amazing.”
“Thanks for keeping us calm this time through,” Screamer said and leaned over and kissed her. “That was a lot better than the first time we had to live that.”
I had to agree with him. Sherri was managing to keep the fear in all of us that we felt back then pushed back.
I turned to Ben. “Did you get it all?”
“Every detail,” he said. “We start from the first person.”
We all grabbed our papers and pens and Ben gave us the first person’s full name and when she was born and how she had gotten taken.
We all agreed on the first one, that what he said matched what we saw as well.
He went on to the second woman, then on to Ben, detailing all three out.
Then he went to the next three, and again all three were taken in 2004. That much was clear, without a doubt.
On each person who was clear they were from 2004, I drew a line through their name on my pad.
It wasn’t until we got to number eight out of the machine that we found our first person from this present time.
There was no doubt at all with him.
His name was Willie (William) Jamison. He had been taken as the last one from this time period. He had been twenty-one when taken.
“Oh, no,” Patty said as Ben described him.
“What? I asked.
“Remember his face,” Patty said. “Do you recognize it?”
“Oh, bloody hell,” Screamer said, shaking his head.
I could picture the guy’s face and it did look familiar, but darned if I could remember from where.
“He took on the name Kent Williams,” Patty said, “back in 2004.”
And then it flooded over me. Kent Williams had killed a middle-aged couple in a very brutal and angry fashion in what was called a home invasion. He was found covered in the couple’s blood holding their twelve-year-old son. He was sentenced to life in prison and the press said he never showed remorse.
“He was an abused child,” Ben said softly. “When he found himself stuck in the past, he had to save his younger self from his own parents.”
“And that’s why we have alternate realities,” Lady Luck said, appearing in front of the booth. “Kronos didn’t notice that one forming because it made so little impact, si
nce his parents did nothing and in the main timeline will die not many years from now anyway.”
“And the young Willie?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“He killed himself in foster care at the age of sixteen.”
“Keep up the good work,” she said, nodding to the silence in the room and then vanishing.
We had one.
We had gone through only nine of over a hundred.
This really was hell. We just had to make sure we didn’t miss anyone from this time so that we didn’t repeat this hell into eternity.
No pressure.
12
THE SWAMP OF PEOPLE’S LIVES
We made it through the next nine without finding anyone from our time. Of that I was 100% sure. With Patty slowing down even more the moment that Screamer had touched each person, we were all digging into each person’s life.
And there was a lot of it I flat didn’t want to dig into.
One was a child molester that when we went over it with our pens and paper, both Screamer and I made a note to look up to see if he was still alive.
Others had strange sexual habits that were not illegal, but made me look away. Others were buried in loneliness, others still were using gambling as a way to escape one ugly thing or another in their life. Of the nine, not a one of them was a happy person.
I’m not sure if that was a comment on slot players or just the luck of the draw.
As we finished with the third nine and came back to the present, Madge brought us all milkshakes and big baskets of hot fries. The vanilla milkshake tasted wonderful and the fries were perfect.
I didn’t realize how much I needed both.
We again went over each name and it was number twenty-two that had come from today.
Penny Smith was her name. She had been widowed the year before at the age of fifty-four and was using gambling with slots to take her mind off her sorrow of losing the man of her life to cancer. I had no idea what she had done when she discovered she was trapped in the past, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Screamer said the same thing.
Patty and Sherri said nothing.
Ben seemed to never make a comment on the people whose privacy we were invading.
So we had two after going through twenty-seven people.
We found the next one from this time two groups of nine later. Number forty-two.
She was a widower at thirty-five because her husband had been murdered. Actually, it was clear in her mind that she had murdered him for having an affair on her.
She had gotten all his money, played the grieving widow for a year or so, and then moved to Vegas last year.
“We’ll deal with her after all this is settled,” Screamer said, smiling at me.
I had no doubt he and the police would deal with her just fine. But after seeing the inside of that woman’s evil mind, I wanted to help, or at least watch the police arrest her. She had already been plotting on finding her next rich husband when we stranded her in the past.
Beside me, Patty shuddered. “There is true evil out there, isn’t there?”
I touched her arm and gave her energy to go on.
She smiled and me and said, “Thanks. Not so sure how I got so lucky to find someone like you.”
“Raspberry shampoo,” I said.
Screamer snorted and Patty had the decency to blush.
I had a clear memory of being in lust with Patty right from the first time I saw her. But all these trips into the memories of that time were making the fact that I really had fantasies about her and her raspberry soap in a shower, long before we climbed into that first shower together.
I loved that soap then and now.
“Clear your mind, mister,” she said, softly smacking my arm. “We have work to do.”
And I tried, I really did. But it’s raspberry shampoo, after all.
13
JUST ONE SMALL PROBLEM NAMED HANK
We got through all of the people we rescued from the ghost slots and found eleven.
We were all convinced there were only the eleven. I’m not a betting man, but I would have bet that was it. Of course, we were betting our entire lives and all the lives in this timeline that we were right.
We were also all exhausted, completely and totally.
“All right, Stan,” I said into the air and he appeared.
“Ready for the Bookkeeper’s list?” he asked.
“We are,” I said.
Lady Luck appeared and sat at the end of the table with Stan. She grabbed one of the cold fries and started biting on it.
I had a master list in front of me and Patty, so I said, “Read off your names.”
Lady Luck seemed to have a list as well and was following along.
He did, and I put a check beside each name that agreed with our list.
And then he read the name Hank Carson.
No Hank Carson on our list.
We all looked up at him and he clearly read our expressions.
“Oh, oh,” he said.
“Hank’s on my list as well,” Lady Luck said. “Kronos and I put it together from studying time stream shifts over the last ten years.”
I looked at Patty, then at Ben.
“No Hank Carson came out of the machine,” I said.
Stan nodded and went on with the list. Everything agreed except that one name.
“How many people are between the two names we agree on?” Stan asked.
“Thirteen,” Ben said. “Is Hank Carson a man or a woman?”
“A man,” Lady Luck said.
“Then only four men are candidates,” he said.
I flipped back through my notes to the four he was talking about and looked at them again.
All five of us did the same. I remembered all four men clearly. All had clearly been from 2004.
After a moment I looked up. “We go back. Look for anything out of place, dig deeper into these four.”
Screamer nodded and said, “Ready.”
Sherri took Ben’s hand, Patty put her hand on my leg.
I took Screamer’s hand and Sherri touched his leg.
And once again we were back in front of those damn evil machines.
Concentrate, Ben thought at us.
The first man came out and Screamer pushed him aside. But as he did, Patty slowed down time and we all dove into the poor man’s mind.
After what seemed like far too long inside a stranger’s head and looking at his very personal thoughts and actions, Screamer thought to us, He’s clean.
We went on to the next guy.
Same.
And the next guy.
Same.
And the final guy.
Same.
There was no doubt, all four of them were taken by the slots in 2004.
Screamer broke the connection and we all turned to look at Stan and Lady Luck.
“No Hank Carson?” Stan asked.
“No Hank Carson,” I said.
“Damn it,” Lady Luck said again as she stood. “What the hell is going on here?”
And with that she vanished.
“I hate it when Mom swears,” Sherri said, shaking her head and looking at her notes. “Things tend to turn ugly when that happens.”
I could sure understand that. Never wanted to get Lady Luck mad. Something about that just seemed really, really dangerous.
I looked over at Stan. “How many hours do we have left?”
“Ten,” he said.
Ten hours to save everyone in the world from being trapped in a nasty time loop. No wonder it was strictly against the rules to time travel. This kind of stuff was just far, far too dangerous.
14
LOOKING FOR HANK IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
The moment Lady Luck vanished, Stan got back onto the phone with the Bookkeeper and gave him the name of Hank Carson. “We need every detail about the guy, right down to his shoe size,” Stan said.
He listened to the Bookkeeper say something fo
r a moment, nodded and then hung up without saying another word.
“He’ll have it all within a half hour,” Stan said, sitting back down at the table.
Around us the sky was starting to darken and now the planes coming into the airport had lights on. Pretty soon, stretched out below my invisible floating office, the lights of Las Vegas would be on and in full glory. Normally, I loved looking at those lights from here, but right now I didn’t feel much like looking at anything except my hands.
Finally, I took a deep breath, put my hand on Patty’s arm, and looked at the group. “So if we didn’t pull Hank Carson out of that machine, why are both Kronos and the Bookkeeper showing that he was there and part of what caused this alternate timeline?”
I looked around at my team. “I’m open for theories or even wild speculation.”
Screamer shrugged. “He got with one of the survivors and discovered information about the future and used it, thus causing Kronos and the Bookkeeper both to pick up the disruptions he caused.”
I nodded. I had figured as much. So if we pulled the others from the past and brought them back to the present, they would never hook up with Hank and thus that would take care of him.
But that was taking a horrible gamble I didn’t want to take.
And it honestly didn’t feel right to me. My little voice I trusted in poker said that wasn’t the right way to go.
“A second option,” Sherri said, “is that he’s some sort of time traveler that used the trips by the Slots of Saturn to cover his tracks from Kronos.”
“There are time travelers?” I asked, feeling stunned.
Sherri nodded. “Mostly from the distant future, but Kronos and his teams keep them out of these times for just this reason.”
I glanced at Stan and he was nodding.
“If that’s the case, it’s out of our hands,” I said.
Everyone around the table agreed. If that was the case, that was a problem for Kronos and Laverne.
I looked at everyone. “Any more options, suggestions, or just flat wild theories?”
“The first one seems the most logical,” Ben said.
“But that seems like something that Kronos and the Bookkeeper would have taken into account,” I said. “All of these people will have talked to some people at one point or another.”
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