by E. R. Mason
“Stole a truck?”
Skyla blurted out a quick laugh. She covered her mouth with one hand and squinted as she tried to hold back more. It didn’t work. She blurted out another and turned to cover her face. Tears began to stream down as she tried to choke it back.
“Well I’m glad you find this all so humorous!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just the thought of you and grand theft auto just does not compute.”
“Yeah and I didn’t wipe my fingerprints. What if they ID me and show up at my Mom’s?”
“Was it a very expensive car?”
“No. Kind of a piece of junk but it saved my ass.”
“Have you ever given the police your fingerprints?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Then even if they bother to dust the thing they have nothing to compare the prints to.”
“Still, it makes me nervous.”
“Well why don’t you sit and be nervous while I clean up and make something better than powdered eggs.”
“What about Remy?”
“He hasn’t shown up at the meeting place, or at his home, thank God. He’s smart. We’ll look for him some more after breakfast.”
“What if we get thrown again?”
“Well, Mr. Sunshine, that would be a mess, wouldn’t it?”
“Sorry. It was a tough night. Where do we go from here, would you say?”
Jax watched as Skyla found bacon he had missed in the freezer, along with beans from a cabinet. As she began to cook, she answered in a tired tone. “Back to Demon House to resume digging. There’s no other choice.”
Jax sat at the galley table. “I would have thought that was a crazy idea a few days ago, or should I say a few days from now.”
“You catch on fast, Superdude.”
“It’ll be a complete do-over.”
“Yes. But, we’ll know exactly where to go, and exactly where to dig. And if necessary, we’ll try to put everything back the way it was so our other selves can find it again next month.”
“Oh, that just blows my mind.”
Skyla turned the bacon and looked back at him with a half-smile. “We’ll need to clean up here and get out completely this morning. I come and check on this boat once a week every Tuesday. My other self will show up this afternoon. It really doesn’t matter, we need to set up at Demon House and get to work as fast as we can.”
“You gonna buy all that climbing and sleeping gear again?”
Skyla laughed. “Technically, it will be my first time. Tell me exactly how you got here.”
As they ate, Jax recounted his adventures in grand theft auto. Together, they cleaned up the galley so that it looked as it should for the next Skyla. They headed out to Skyla’s latest rental car which oddly enough was exactly the same car she had rented last time. With heightened anticipation they drove the short route to the Leigh Library building. As they approached, a lonely, desolate figure was sitting on the steps with a pizza box next to him. His appearance reminded Jax of a cat that had been unceremoniously thrown into a canal. Remy looked up and frowned.
No coaxing was required. At the first sight of them, he stood with drooping shoulders and a successive array of irritated expressions. He tip-toed quickly down the steps, then remembered his pizza and went back for it. He climbed in the back seat and exchange looks with his friends that said more than any politician’s prepared speech could have.
As Skyla pulled away from the curb, Jax’s humor kicked in. “So, what’d you want to do today?”
Remy snarled.
“It’s to The Outdoorsman Shop and then on to the place,” said Skyla.
Remy made a weeping sound.
Skyla tried to sound sympathetic. “Where did you end up, Rem?”
After a great sigh, Remy replied, “Still at the house, sometime last night.”
“How did you get here?” asked Skyla.
“Waited outside till this morning and when my mobile came back alive I called for a taxi.”
“That’s probably okay, but how did you pay for it?”
“Cash. I had cash in my pocket.”
Skyla dared a look back at him as she drove. “That was smart. You did good, Remy.”
“I lost all my stuff. When I woke up my laptop, my notebooks, everything was gone. All I had was the clothes on my back. Lucky my mobile phone and wallet were in my pocket.”
Jax smirked. “No laptop! How will you live?”
“Very funny, Superdude,” replied Remy sarcastically. “Even if I could get my hands on my laptop everything’s a month behind anyway so I’m still screwed either way. And what are you so jolly about? You’re just as screwed as I am.”
“Touché, Rem,” replied Jax.
“Have you guys considered maybe we should just give up and go to the police or government and tell them what’s going on?” said Remy.
Skyla spoke without looking back. “Okay, Rem. Let’s pretend I’m the officer sitting at his desk waiting to hear your complaint. What would you say?”
“Well if there were three of us, though?”
“There’s plenty of room in the asylum, Rem, or in the police cell for pranksters,” replied Skyla.
“At least we’d escape at the next time jump.” Remy stared out the side window at the world going by, and realized it was a world no longer his. It belonged to another Remy who had no idea of the fate that was about to befall him. He realized that for the first time his life was completely out of control. No amount of computer code or gamer software could make this go away. Real life was imposing itself upon him.
The crew packed up and as inconspicuously as possible loaded into Skyla’s rental car. At The Outdoorsman Shop, Skyla piled up the equipment needed, while Jax and Remy stocked up on supplies at a grocery nearby. One hour later they pulled into Demon House to find it as deserted as ever.
“Place is like a roach motel,” whined Remy. “People go in, but they don’t come out.”
Once inside, there was very little conversation. Skyla changed into a work suit with lace-up boots and a lightweight miner’s cap with light. It was apparel much more suited to digging. When Jax returned from parking the car, she threw a bundle of the same clothing at him. Remy sulked around mumbling and unpacking.
When she was ready, Skyla interrupted the pair. “Stop and come over here guys.”
The two stopped what they were doing, looked up blankly, then complied without question.
Skyla reached in her pack and pulled out two wallets and held them out. “These each contain £1000 in gold coins, undated. They’re in case we get out of time with each other again. You can use them to get to the meeting place and survive if you have to.”
There was a somber silence for a moment, the thought of being thrown apart again a depressing possibility.
“One more thing,” said Skyla. She stooped over and pulled out what looked like a thin backpack. “Jax, we both need to wear these while we’re down there and we should never take them off. There’s 30 feet of nylon climbing rope, karabiners, and some other stuff. The salesman called them flatpacks. They’re in case a climber loses his gear. There’s just enough to get by with. I was stupid to go down there without anything. If we had been thrown back while we were down there all of our gear could have disappeared. We wouldn’t have had a way to climb out. It scared the hell out of me when I realized that.”
The two men returned a somber stare. Remy rolled his eyes.
Thirty minutes later the climbers were again set. Jax and Skyla lowered back down into the well. They gathered up their digging tools and went to work. In less than an hour they had gained access to the adjacent chamber. This time they ignored the other items in the cavern and went directly to the rockslide where Skyla had been digging.
“So you really think it’s here?” asked Jax.
“It’s something silver and really big,” said Skyla.
“Something not of this world according to the dead man in the next cave?”
“And wasn’t there a note about him wishing he hadn’t messed with it?” said Jax, and he began to dig alongside her.
One hour of digging exposed the first glint of silver. It jutted out shoulder-high, an arc of polished metal. Jax began to dig out above it while Skyla worked below.
Two more hours of digging revealed a very large silver object that was beginning to look like a giant dish-shaped child’s toy top.
Jax stood back to catch his breath and looked down at the glistening mirror surface. He cast aside his pickaxe, slid down, and dropped to a kneeling position in the dirt to rest a moment. Skyla came up beside him and sat, her shovel in her lap.
“I really don’t believe this,” said Jax between steamy breaths.
“Are you really so surprised?” replied Skyla.
“So I’m not being stupid then? We really are digging out a buried UFO? Is that what’s happening here?”
“I’d say so.”
“Where you expecting a flying saucer?”
“I didn’t know what to expect, but this fits the bill perfectly.”
“So you know all about UFO’s as well then?”
“Not really. But I know enough.”
“Isn’t it about time to explain all this?”
“No! We need to get inside this thing before it pulses again and sends us packing. Are you completely drained?”
Jax hung his head and picked up his pickaxe. “No, I can go some more. Will we make it?”
“I don’t know. The time pulses are impossible to predict but there’s a pattern. They’ve been coming more and more quickly and throwing us back farther and farther. We’ve been irradiated with temporal radiation. We’re in sync with this thing. When we find the hatch, even that could cause a pulse just from opening it or from entering.”
“And what will you do if we get inside?”
“First shut the thing down, if that’s possible. Then come back later and destroy it.”
“You know how to shut it down?”
“We might not be able to. With something that’s corrupted in time, you can accidentally set off a temporal explosion that would spread around the planet like a giant nuclear blast. Nothing would be left. But we’re wasting time. We should start digging faster.”
“I’m not sure how much longer I’ll last. What about you?”
Skyla stood and wearily went to her spot. “I’ll be needing a break. It’s too bad Remy can’t help us, but he’s way too big to make that climb. We’d have to lower him down, and then I’m not sure we could pull him back out. He probably couldn’t dig that much anyway.”
Jax climbed back up and began swinging his pickaxe. “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be able to take the complaining.”
Skyla stepped back and looked up with a smile. “We’re lucky to have him, you know. He figured out there was a second chamber. And, I’d hate to be doing this with no one knowing we’re down here.” Skyla dragged her shovel along and went back to work.
“So what about these other people down here?” asked Jax.
“Henry Lathkill must have been down here working and got pulsed back in time just like us. His ropes or ladder or whatever were suddenly gone and he had no way out. He had some water down here, but probably nothing else. It did him in.”
“What about the skeleton over there under water?”
“I have a suspicion about that but I’m not ready to say. He didn’t know old Henry. He’s from sometime before.”
“Well let us not join them.” Jax began digging with added determination. “Isn’t it weird there’s not a single marking anywhere on this thing? It’s all just some kind of hard, polished metal.”
Skyla continued digging. “Keep looking.”
After ten minutes more, Jax suddenly stopped and called out. “Hey! I’m hitting more of the thing. It’s like there’s a bubble on top of it.”
“We must be getting near the center. Keep going! I’ll come up.”
Jax fought to uncover the dome that topped the object. Skyla joined in and tried not to get in the way. After a few minutes of hurried digging, Jax yelled excitedly, “Okay! Finally a marking! Some kind of black symbol on the side right here!” He scrambled to wipe away the dirt and debris, then pushed back on his hands and knees to look.
“It’s a cross!” he said and he turned back to Skyla hoping for an explanation.
Skyla sat up on her knees and stared. “An Iron Cross, Jax. My suspicions were correct.”
“An iron cross? You don’t mean a German Iron Cross?”
Without warning, a blinding bright flash of golden light suddenly pulsed the cavern.
Jax screamed, “Noooo!” and lunged in Skyla’s direction, but when his vision returned a moment later, she was gone. The equipment was gone. The freshly dug entrance to the cave was sealed shut. Jax was on the ground by the rockslide, completely alone.
Chapter 10
Jax adjusted his headlamp and stood in a moment of helplessness. A wave of fear and emptiness passed through him. He turned to point his headlamp at the blocked exit. He slapped at his back to confirm that Skyla’s flatpack of climbing gear had made the jump with him. His wallet and mobile phone were there as well.
A new burst of fear struck. How much battery time was left in his headlamp? When that went out, he would be in total darkness with no way to escape this tomb. It had been a mistake to put down his flashlight while digging. Like everything else, it was gone now.
In desperation he shuffled around in the dirt and found a crowbar that had been left by others doomed long ago. Climbing to the top of the sealed exit, he began to dig and stab with it, being careful not to bump his headlamp. After only ten minutes of digging, he realized a new dilemma. He was already exhausted. He had been digging for hours before this new cursed time jump.
Wiping cold sweat from his brow, he forced himself to continue. He drove the bar into the top of the blockage and dragged down the dirt and rock. Loose dirt made it difficult to hold his position.
Ten minutes into the effort, the bar broke through. Air from the adjacent chamber flowed in. With renewed effort he continued until finding the back of the large boulder that he and Skyla had rolled away together. He repositioned himself so that he could brace and push with his feet. It took several minutes of rocking, but mercifully with one last push it tipped, lingered, then rolled down the embankment on the other side.
Jax tried to scramble through the tight opening but his flatpack caught and stopped him. He had to unstrap it and pull it through separately to reach the next chamber. Already fearful of what had just happened, he quickly put it back on and headed for the well area. As he searched the ceiling for the opening that meant life, yet another new pang of fear struck. He looked back at the opening he had just come through. In all the previous time jumps, everyone had ended up in the same exact place but at different times. That had to be true on this throwback as well. That meant Skyla would materialize in that cavern just as he had. But, the dirt blocking the opening to this chamber had been undisturbed. That had to mean that Skyla had not arrived here yet.
Jax stared up and found the well opening in the ceiling. It was 20 feet to the opening, and then another 5 feet or so to the last rung of the ladder. The haze within the well was thinner now, slightly more transparent. The base of the ladder was barely visible. Getting a line to it would be an interesting proposition, and it had to be done before the lamp battery died.
Hastily he pulled the flatpack off, afraid to let go of it. Being trapped in this cave and dying a slow death in total darkness was a very ugly possibility. Thank God Skyla had the forethought to bring the flatpacks. At least there was now a chance of getting a line up. As he fumbled with the pack, his arm bumped something on his belt, something he had forgotten. He glanced down and quickly realized it was the walkie-talkie. Still holding tightly to the flatpack, he unsnapped it and held it to his mouth. “Remy, can you hear me?”
“Rem, are you up there. We need you.”
No response.
“Rem, pick up.”
Still no answer.
Jax cursed and clipped the communicator back on his belt. He turned his attention to the challenge at hand. The tightly stowed climbing accessories in the pack were of good quality. Included were two collapsible mini grappling hooks. They were lightweight aluminum, not heavy enough for throwing. There were four good ascenders. No Prusik knots would be necessary. The 8mm rope was high grade. There were several other good items including an odd flat chemical light. Jax yanked it out of its place and stuck it in his leg pocket where it could not be lost. He would save it until his headlamp ran out.
Having these tools in hand allowed him to relax and focus. He looked back at the opening to the other chamber. At some point, maybe an hour from now, a week from now, or a year from now, Skyla would appear in the next chamber. Like him she would probably have only her flatpack and headlamp. The thought of her being alone down here and trying to escape on her own frightened Jax. He could not accept it. Somehow he would need to be here. Some kind of arrangement had to be worked out.
Struggling within himself, he again realized nothing at all mattered unless he could reach that ladder. He stared up at the well opening. The grappling hooks were too light to throw, but every size and shape of rock was scattered around the cavern. Jax searched and quickly found a stone with edges that would help bind it. He knelt in the dirt, attached a grappling hook and then tied the rock to the rope a few inches below it. With the line coiled to feed, he took a position beneath the well and pitched the line upward. His first throw was pitiful. It missed the opening completely and bounced off the wall. Next, an underhand attempt worked better but was still not enough to reach up into the opening. Jax began spinning the rope like a sling. The first attempt went high but lacked accuracy. It bounced of the ceiling close to the opening. Two more tries did the same. On the next attempt he flushed with excitement as the line streaked up into the fog within the well, but rock and hook fell freely back down. Being careful to spin just the right speed with a timed release, two more attempts went up into the well but again failed to catch.