by Anthology
To John Salvin it seemed as if he watched technical preparations for the show from faraway; the sound of voices grew fainter. Meanwhile, a frighteningly large pool of blood continued to grow on the ground between his feet.
Kamana strove to remain calm, yet there was a distinct note of tension in her voice. “Sit here, John. I’ll bring help.”
The evening sun dazzled him. Above the mountain, a light aircraft circled with determined persistence, the sound of its engine somehow becoming more penetrating and unsettling. Blood loss made his mind so light it seemed to detach himself from the Earth to float up there, high above the landscape where the aeroplane flew. In fact, when he opened his eyes he found himself occupying the seat beside the pilot; in the two seats behind him were Kerry and Laurel. They ooohed at the gorgeous scenery spread out below them. Kerry used the pink camera that she was so proud of to take photographs for her husband to see later. John had imagined hundreds of times before that this is how they’d be on that fatal flight out over the Norwegian fjord. Yet he’d always stopped himself from visualizing what happened to the plane, causing it to disappear. Today, however, he made the decision to keep the images rolling. On board, the engine grew louder, a sustained note of such power that the sound alone appeared to hold the plane high above the water. But just a moment later the engine died—this was followed by an alarming silence.
“Don’t worry,” said the pilot. “This isn’t a problem. I can restart her.”
Kerry and Laurel’s expressions were forensic studies in absolute horror. Their eyes had grown shockingly large in their faces.
“Not long now.” The pilot flicked switches in front of him, his movements becoming progressively faster. “The engine will soon be running again.”
However, that powerful sustained note of the aircraft’s one and only engine didn’t return. Apart from air rushing over the wings there was no other sound. Kerry put her arm around Laurel and held the ten-year-old girl tightly.
Then Kerry spoke gently, yet firmly, “Laurel, listen to me. I love you. Your daddy loves you. Now close your eyes. I want you to picture your daddy’s face.”
A calm ocean greeted the plane. The machine vanished beneath its surface the instant it struck. And John Salvin rode all the way down into that turquoise, undersea world with his family. Five years later they were still there—the pilot, Kerry and Laurel—one thousand feet deep on the ocean bed. Not lost as such. Because how can three dead people know what it feels like to be lost? Only those who are still alive and are still grieving are lost when such a tragedy occurs.
A colossal explosion of sound snatched John Salvin back to the here and now. Men and women ran for the shelter of the café. Lightning blazed from a black cloud that bruised the once flawless, blue sky. More thunder bellowed across the face of the mountain. A distinct odour of rain filled the air, prompting technicians to rush and cover the cameras before the deluge came.
John’s head felt as if his skull had emptied of blood—after all, so much had poured out of him in the last few minutes. Even so, he managed to voice what was on his mind: “I was on the plane with them . . . five years ago . . .”
“What plane? Sorry, John, I can’t make out what you’re saying.”
He smiled up at Kamana. “Oh? I didn’t know you’d come back.”
Thunder boomed across the Welsh landscape. Savage gusts of wind tore apart the tent that housed the broadcast equipment. Debris whipped through the air as people covered their eyes and fled for cover. The director stood on a rock and waved everyone toward the café.
The man yelled in frustration, “It’s over! We can’t do the broadcast in this! The show’s cancelled! Everyone get inside! For pity’s sake, don’t get yourselves struck by lightning!”
As Kamana helped John to his feet, her dark eyes brimmed with concern. “I think the bleeding’s stopped. But I want someone to take a look at you.”
Even though lightheaded, John managed a smile. “You know something? I’m relieved that the show’s been cancelled.”
“And so has their very expensive time travel experiment.” She shrugged and smiled. “Though it would have been a complete failure, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would.”
“What have you got there in your hand?”
“Just a camera. Someone must have left it back there on a chair. I think it belongs to the man in the straw hat.”
“The man in the straw hat?”
“He was in the same carriage as us. Looked pleased with himself. Always smiling.”
Kamana gave a puzzled shake of her head. “No, I didn’t notice a man wearing a straw hat.”
John paused at the café doorway. “You go ahead; I’ll give the camera to the director. He can find whoever it belongs to.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Had she noticed something significant in his face? Because she tilted her head as she glanced at him before going inside.
Blustery winds tugged John’s hair as he walked along the path. It’s funny how imagination can be so vivid, he thought. When he’d pictured himself in the plane he’d watched his wife take hold of that powder-pink camera of hers. Then she’d leaned forward from the back seat, handed him the camera, locked her eyes on to his, and said, “John, you decide whether you keep this. But if you’ll take my advice: get rid of it.” Then she’d leaned forwards even further so she could kiss him on the cheek.
John gazed at the camera in his hand—the one he’d found just a moment ago on the chair. He thought about all the photographs Kerry had taken to preserve those happy moments of their Norwegian holiday. If, by some extraordinary chance, he could recover those photographs—for example, if the lost camera could be miraculously returned to his possession—what would he do? Yes, they’d be precious mementos. But wasn’t there a danger that those snapshots would become nails that even more securely fixed him to the dead, if not forgotten, past? Ultimately, the decision wasn’t a difficult one to make. Without a shred of hesitation, he thrust the camera that he’d found, with its distinctive powder-pink livery, deep into a litter bin. Logic dictated that the camera wasn’t the one that belonged to Kerry, but this had become one of those extraordinary occasions when the rules of logic could be so easily broken. He didn’t want to take the chance of allowing the past to haunt him anymore than it did already.
As John walked through the storm to the café, he passed the man from the train—the winds blew harder and the stranger needed to hold his straw hat tight to his head.
The man’s expression was one of childish delight as he chuckled and spoke in an odd accent that John couldn’t quite place. “Well—so ends our famous experiment. Phew! Isn’t it about time that we all went home now?” Without waiting for a reply, the stranger hurried away through a sudden onslaught of rain; though why he headed out across the barren mountainside John couldn’t say.
John Salvin pulled out his phone—the one that contained the Parting Shot. With the storm breaking overhead this might not, he acknowledged, be the ideal place to watch the footage again . . . although in the past, he’d felt compelled to view the film at odder times than this, and in stranger places. So he touched “play” and focused his attention on the screen, which quickly became speckled with raindrops. The video clip revealed Kerry and Laurel once more, following the pilot to the aircraft. Raindrops beading on the screen acted as tiny magnifying lenses, enlarging random parts of the image. Kerry’s face seemed to loom into striking close-up as she called out her usual farewell. Or what should have been her usual farewell.
Only the words “We’ll be back at one. See you then” failed to emerge from Kerry’s mouth in the way he remembered so well. Instead, with a different expression on her face, this one utterly serious, she said: “You must not grieve forever, John. Don’t let the rest of your life slip away through your fingers and be wasted. Move on. Move on.”
Rain falling on the phone’s screen distorted the
image, blood loss fuddled his thoughts to the point where the boundary between the real and the unreal had all but melted away. Surely, this must be the case, because just for a moment he thought he glimpsed, there onscreen, that same man again—the one in the straw hat—only on this occasion he stood next to the plane that would take Kerry and Laurel away. The stranger appeared to gaze out of the film into John’s eyes. He didn’t move or say anything; in fact, he resembled a mourner standing beside a grave.
The haemorrhage, the distorting effect of raindrops on the video footage—surely they were creating this particular miracle, weren’t they? Perhaps no one from tomorrow would ever reach back and touch the actual fabric of this, our present world. However, he wondered, at some point in the future, will there be a remarkable invention that can reach back into the past to touch our minds, hearts and memories? What would our descendants’ motivation be to do this? For their amusement? Or a charitable desire to administer emotional first aid? If he allowed his imagination to wander further he might suppose that the savage thunderstorm had been triggered by the backwash from such a time-ship. Then, of course, imagination can conjure all sorts of magnificent possibilities, as well as disturbing outcomes. He could even picture himself deleting the Parting Shot film, but no . . . there would be no need for that, because from now on he suspected he wouldn’t feel compelled to watch it at least twice a day. Okay, yes, he would replay the Parting Shot every now again, and shed a tear or two. But he would no longer be enslaved by those nineteen seconds of heartache.
John Salvin put the phone back into his pocket and went in search of Kamana. Water running over the boulders transformed them into shining, silvery forms that seemed to be in the process of evolving into living creatures. Their brightness was dazzling. Meanwhile, the easing rain became a strangely soothing, melodious sound, and at that moment he realized he could no longer hear the haunting note of the aeroplane circling overhead. After glancing upwards into an empty sky he looked down to find Kamana standing there in front of him.
She had an extraordinary revelation of her own. “Until a moment ago, I couldn’t remember that as my husband lay dying in my arms he spoke to me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing to forget? Especially, when I recall every other detail so precisely? But just now I remembered his exact words.” Her calm eyes met his. “Murad said: ‘Kamana, I’m so sorry to leave you like this. Promise me that you’ll be happy again one day!’ ” A sad smile touched her lips. “Then I asked myself, did I imagine those words of his?”
“Ever since we started this trip up the mountain I’ve been imagining all kinds of things,” he confessed. ‘I even pictured myself starting a new life after losing Kerry and Laurel.”
“You know something, John? What you said on the train is perfectly true. Yes, we must tell those memory ghosts of ours to leave us alone. We should not let the rest of our lives slip away through our fingers. I now realize it’s time I moved on.”
He paused. Hadn’t he imagined Kerry using pretty much the same words? In any event, Kaman’s statement, as well as its significance, acquired a special glow in John’s mind as he thought about all that had happened today.
From up here, high on Mount Snowdon, it’s said that you can see many kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Heaven. What he could see clearly was the sun breaking through the cloud to shine on the hills, and into hidden valleys, and a moment later the sunlight illuminated Kamana’s face. What he could not see, of course, was any guarantee, or omen, or even a hint that he and this woman, for whom he had developed such a depth of feeling, would have any kind of future together. Such matters lie concealed, as they always have done, in the lap of the gods.
And yet, as they made their way toward the waiting train, that would take them on to the next chapter of their lives, he found, to his surprise, that he was smiling. After all, who knows what tomorrow might bring?
DEATHBED
Caroline M. Yoachim
“I remember dying,” my husband tells me. “Everyone I know comes to visit my deathbed.”
“It will be nice to see everyone,” I say, forcing a smile. I don’t bother to remind him that what he remembers hasn’t happened yet, at least not for me. We only have a few weeks left, and I don’t want to spend that time on explanations. Instead we take a long walk in the rain, huddled together under one umbrella, and then we come back home and huddle even closer to get warm.
“My body is old enough that I won’t mind dying,” he says, “but I wish I’d had children.”
Our daughter is nearly fifty now, with children of her own. She refuses to visit because my husband doesn’t remember her. He doesn’t remember her because she isn’t in his future. I invited her to his deathbed, but she refuses to come.
“I know there isn’t much time left,” he says, “but will you marry me?”
“Of course.” I say. We’re already married, but I still say yes every time he asks.
A week before my husband dies, he is strangely quiet, almost shy. We are in the kitchen, and I am making butternut squash soup. It is his favorite soup. He likes the soup because it’s loaded with spices to cut through the sweetness of the squash.
“This is delicious,” he says when he tastes it. “I don’t usually like squash, but it really works in this soup. You’ll have to make it for me again some time.”
It hits me then, that this is the last time that I will ever make him soup. Otherwise he’d remember it. Coming up with the recipe had been tricky. Will you make me that soup I like so much? he’d asked, a few weeks after we’d met. I’d asked him lots of questions about what was in the soup, and even then it took a few tries to get it right. I could save my past self some trouble if I told him the ingredients, but I cherish those early memories of failed soup, and I worry that giving him the recipe would change the past.
“I remember dying,” he says, his voice almost a whisper. For the first time, he seems anxious.
It had been such a good plan, inviting everyone to my husband’s deathbed. It ensured that he would remember them when they came to visit, and it gave him a happy memory to hold onto until the end. It was a good plan, but doomed to failure, and I should have seen it last week, when he stopped talking about his memories.
My husband is in a hospital bed, dying, and the room is full of strangers. I explain the situation, and they leave—a few with protests, but most with sighs of relief. I stay. He doesn’t know me anymore, but I hold his hand and do my best to comfort him.
“I remember dying,” he says, “and there is a beautiful stranger who is there to hold my hand. I wish there was time to get to know you better.”
He closes his eyes, and before the hour changes he is gone.
For the first time, I remember my husband dying. I am alone at his deathbed, our last moment together and the moment we first met. I remember our life together, filled with long walks in the rain and countless pots of soup. It would make a wonderful future.
DEATH SHIP
Richard Matheson
Mason saw it first.
He was sitting in front of the lateral viewer taking notes as the ship cruised over the new planet. His pen moved quickly over the graph-spaced chart he held before him. In a little while they’d land and take specimens. Mineral, vegetable, animal—if there were any. Put them in the storage lockers and take them back to Earth. There the technicians would evaluate, appraise, judge. And, if everything was acceptable, stamp the big, black INHABITABLE on their brief and open another planet for colonization from overcrowded Earth.
Mason was jotting down items about general topography when the glitter caught his eye.
“I saw something,” he said.
He flicked the viewer to reverse lensing position.
“Saw what?” Ross asked from the control board.
“Didn’t you see a flash?”
Ross looked into his own screen.
“We went over a lake, you know,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t that,” Mason said. “This w
as in that clearing beside the lake.”
“I’ll look,” said Ross, “but it probably was the lake.”
His fingers typed out a command on the board and the big ship wheeled around in a smooth arc and headed back.
“Keep your eyes open now,” Ross said. “Make sure. We haven’t got any time to waste.”
“Yes sir.”
Mason kept his unblinking gaze on the viewer, watching the earth below move past like a slowly rolled tapestry of woods and fields and rivers. He was thinking, in spite of himself, that maybe the moment had arrived at last. The moment in which Earthmen would come upon life beyond Earth, a race evolved from other cells and other muds. It was an exciting thought. 1997 might be the year. And he and Ross and Carter might now be riding a new Santa Maria of discovery, a silvery, bulleted galleon of space.
“There!” he said. “There it is!”
He looked over at Ross. The captain was gazing into his viewer plate. His face bore the expression Mason knew well. A look of smug analysis, of impending decision.
“What do you think it is?” Mason asked, playing the strings of vanity in his captain.