Slithers

by Mortensen, WW

  Nothing is created. Nothing is lost.

  Scottie’s essence, tethered simultaneously to endless worlds, had been tied to that moment, to that horrible time and place when he’d drawn stagnant pond water into his lungs and had disconnected from that world and then somehow swapped the tethers and returned, had somehow transferred his essence—a dying version of himself, with a living one—as simply as a single breath is exhaled and another inhaled.

  He’d had infinite universes—and infinite versions of himself—from which to choose.

  Ebb and flow.

  And now, Scottie had done it again, hadn’t he? But this time, he had swapped them—Tobe, and Rachel. Somehow, he’d pulled the two of them from the other accident, from where they’d been destined to return, and had sent them here, to this accident—another place, and another time—

  —and yet a place and time already known to him.

  Tobe sensed Rachel beside him, hugging the kids, and then hugging him, too.

  You need to remember, Tobe, remember everything. It’s important.

  The lights, two of them—the ‘spirits of the living’, Scottie had called them. Scottie had seen them, and Ethan had, too.

  Two lights. Two survivors.

  We were always going to survive the accident, the other accident, weren’t we? Rachel and I? We would have healed and lived and carried on in the other world, if Scottie hadn’t pulled us away.

  So why did he pull us away? Why did he bring us here?

  Rachel said something, and although Tobe heard it, at first, he didn’t understand.

  Try to understand, Tobe, it’s important.

  In this time and place, right here, right now, Tobe’s essence—and Rachel’s—had reached an end. That version of themselves—the Rachel from here, and the Tobe from here—had died, here and now, in this accident—just as everyone involved in that terrible accident back in the other world, where the truck and the van had collided head-on, had died, too.

  No survivors.

  Here—for Tobe, and Rachel—there had been a vacuum, and yet for Scottie, there hadn’t been. This time he couldn’t transfer himself, couldn’t pull free of the accident like he had when he had been a child.

  Why not?

  Why, Tobe?

  Because Scottie had no place here.

  And with that, Tobe remembered.

  There had been nowhere for Scottie to go, no vacuum to fill, because here, he’d already had his time. Tobe remembered his brother, his brother here, in this place, thought of him now like he thought of him every day, because there wasn’t a single day in which he didn’t think of him, his twin, taken from him so young, so unexpectedly, in that terrible, tragic accident where he’d drawn pool water into his lungs and never revived…

  As he clutched his own children, Tobe thought of his parents and what they’d lost that day, and he began to cry.

  That day, Scottie had pulled his essence from here, and had taken it to the other place.

  In the temporary world—the bubble created after the near-miss—Tobe had wondered about the special bond he and Scottie shared. He’d wondered how they could know each other’s thoughts and feelings, and how they’d been able to speak to each other without words. It was clear now, of course, and he thought of that unique bond of twins, where siblings were almost a reflection of each other, not merely in body, but in mind and spirit, too.

  For Tobe and Scottie, that special union had extended across time and space.

  Brothers, the two of them. Always and forever.

  Tobe started to tremble. He could never know how Scottie had done it, how he’d crossed the tethers as a child, or how he’d done it again now. He could never understand what strange and wonderful gifts his childhood friend—his twin—had possessed. But he understood why Scottie had done it, and so did Rachel.

  Just now, Rachel hadn’t spoken out loud. But she had spoken to him.

  He swapped us for the kids, Tobe. He swapped us so the kids wouldn’t lose their parents, wouldn’t lose us.

  As tightly as he could, Tobe hugged his family, hiding his tears in the warm nape of his wife’s neck.

  Scottie made sure we found the kids, and that the kids found us.

  And with that, having remembered what he had come to remember, Tobe understood what he had needed to learn.

  He promised he would carry that knowledge forward, promised not to waste his chance at life.

  And he promised to remain forever mindful that while there may be other times and places, all that mattered was the here, and the now.

  DAWN

  34

  MOUNTAIN VIEW

  PRESENT DAY

  “That’s it,” Tobe said. “That’s what happened.”

  “It’s quite a story,” Leticia said. “Of course, I’d never call myself ‘Teesh’.”

  “No,” Rachel said. “But a version of you goes by that name.”

  Thunder rumbled distantly. Tobe glanced out through the bay window of the Henderson home. The house was a little different to the version he had known previously—slightly smaller layout, with a verandah running the length of the facade. But this room, the living room, was eerily similar, right down to the lamps and leather furniture. It was weird—some of the smallest details were the most vivid, the ones most easily retained. Certain sights, certain smells, he clearly recalled.

  Other details came not as easily.

  His memories of the other place—some distinct, some hazy—ran parallel with those of here. He’d come to believe that déjà vu wasn’t a feeling of having already experienced the present moment. It was the feeling of living a moment concurrently, experiencing a situation at the same time another was living it. No, not another. At the same time he was living it, elsewhere.

  Sometimes he wondered about the other places in which he lived right now—the countless realities. He sensed he stood between a pair of mirrors that reflected into eternity.

  Leticia slid a manila folder across the coffee table. “This is what I found out.”

  Rachel spun the folder and opened it. She leafed through the various papers. “The dates match,” she said.

  Leticia nodded. “Ethan James died in a car accident not far from here, on the very same night you survived yours. Coincidental.”

  “There are no coincidences,” Tobe said.

  “So you keep telling me,” Leticia said. She jutted her chin at the folder. “The police report doesn’t tell us much, but following your request, I was able to track down his girlfriend.”

  “Tory?” Rachel said.

  “Victoria,” Leticia said.

  Tobe raised his eyebrows.

  “She calls herself Tori, for short,” Leticia said.

  “Coincidental,” Rachel said with a wry smile.

  Leticia went on. “It seems Ethan had done some seasonal work up north—fruit-picking. Tori found out he’d had a one night stand up there—had gotten the girl pregnant. She was eight months along when Tori found out. Of course, she broke things off with Ethan, who had only just found out himself. Apparently furious, he vowed to win her back. Said he’d fix the problem. Said he’d ‘set things right’, whatever that means.”

  “He was on his way to see the other girl,” Rachel said. “He was on his way to do something bad.”

  Tobe nodded. “He was hitching there. He didn’t make it.”

  “There’s more,” Leticia said. “And it’ll blow your mind.”

  “Tell us!” Rachel said.

  “The driver of the car involved in the accident—the car that picked Ethan up—was an ex-cop with a real shady past.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened.

  “Seems this guy had gotten mixed up with the wrong people—a real piece of work who’d done time for drug trafficking and violent assault.”

  “Ressler.”

  “Different spelling, but yeah—Jake Wressler.”

  So Wressler was the driver of the car here in this world. Tobe cast his mind back to the moment where
, following the near-miss with Ganson’s truck, he’d woken and heard voices—his children’s voices. They’d become entangled across time and space. He wondered if Ressler, in the truck with Ganson, had somehow become intertwined with that other aspect of himself, here in this reality. Maybe Ressler—dazed and confused—had believed he was the driver not of the car, but of the truck.

  It’d explain his mixed-up story, his strange behaviour.

  Leticia had said Wressler had been a criminal—a disgraced ex-cop, and a drug trafficker. Maybe back in the other world—when Tobe and his companions had encountered Ressler—he’d still been a cop. Maybe there, he hadn’t yet reached the tipping point, hadn’t yet crossed the line from dirty cop to outright criminal. Or maybe he was in the process of crossing that line right then and there. What had Ressler and Ganson been up to that night? Perhaps Ganson had been tied up with the wrong people, too. Maybe he was one of them. Maybe he and Ressler were using the truck for some sort of criminal purpose…

  It didn’t matter. Everything was entwined somehow—everyone, across time and space. That night, when things had been disrupted, energy had flowed back and forth.

  “The circumstances may have been different,” Rachel said, “but Ethan wasn’t meant to follow through with his plan that night, either here, or there.”

  “And neither was Ressler.”

  Outside, thunder murmured. Leticia’s Siberian husky, Trooper, trotted into the living room, plonked down on the rug in front of Tobe. He had lovely blue eyes that, depending on the angle of the light, sometimes looked green. Tobe scratched Trooper behind the ear.

  “There’s one other thing,” Leticia said. “The night of the accident, Ethan’s one-night-stand went into labour prematurely. That night, his son was born. I’d say that was coincidental, but…”

  Tobe smiled faintly.

  “You know, the girl up north, her name was Lysa,” Leticia said. “That is coincidental.”

  Without realising he’d done it, Tobe had moved a hand to the scar on his back, near his kidneys. Sometimes when he thought about Lisa—the Lisa he knew, back in the other place—the scar tingled. It tingled now. For months after the accident, he’d been plagued by recurring nightmares, had obsessed over how Lisa must have felt when she’d heard about his death. Not so much anymore. Every now and then, he’d get a feeling—a little like déjà vu, but different—that all was well with her. It was a general feeling of contentment. Somehow he knew that Lisa was doing fine.

  He realised he’d moved his hand from the scar and had sought Rachel’s hand, which he now took. She smiled at him, gently and knowingly.

  Perhaps sensing the moment, Leticia smiled faintly, too, and then turned to gaze pensively out the window. “Do you think much about Scottie?” she said at last.

  “Every day,” Rachel said.

  Tobe nodded. “Me too, I feel his presence everywhere, still alive and strong, telling us he’s okay, and that we did good and he’s happy for us, proud of us.”

  Leticia smiled, a little sadly.

  “Like us, I think something woke in Scottie as we neared the end,” Rachel said. “I don’t think he knew everything, remembered everything. Not all at once, not all the time.”

  “Our insight dawned,” Tobe said. “The closer we came to the truth, the more we remembered. I think it was the same for Scottie. I think that’s why he wrote—he knew he had special abilities, insight, but he learned about himself as time went on, like the rest of us. Some things he knew, some things he suspected. He wrote to get it out, to get out those things that confused him. He wrote to make sense of things. To understand.”

  “That’s a nice way to think of it.”

  Tobe nodded. “Scottie’s out there somewhere. We’ll see him again soon. If not here, in another time, another place.”

  “You find each other,” Rachel said. “Sarah, and Brad, too—we’re all connected in every place, in some combination. You come back to each other.”

  Leticia looked at Rachel. “Is it weird, knowing you and Scottie were together?”

  “No. Tobe and I have always been together. This is real, this is our life. We respect what happened, it’s a part of us, and always will be, but it doesn’t change who we are and who we’ve always been. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I think I understand,” Leticia said, and smiled. “Speaking of Scottie… the book.”

  “Will you do it?” Rachel said. “Will you finish his story?”

  Leticia shifted in her seat, glanced at the tiny voice-recorder on the coffee table between them. On her lap was a pad of paper. She repositioned it. “It’s not a matter of finishing it. I’ll have to write it from the start, you realise that.”

  “Like we discussed, we’ll pay you,” Rachel said. “We’ll commission it.”

  “This is way out of my comfort zone,” Leticia said. “I hope you understand why I pressed you earlier. All this stuff about fate, about destiny—”

  “I understand.”

  “—and alternate realities? It’s hard to get your head around.”

  “On the surface, Scottie’s story was a thriller, a fictional story about a protagonist with paranormal abilities, able to impact events across worlds. But I think at the heart of it, he was trying to write a love story.”

  “I’m a journalist, not a science fiction author. And I definitely don’t write romance.”

  “Scottie was a journalist, too,” Rachel said.

  “Then I’ll think of it as non-fiction,” Leticia said. “Because really—after what you’ve told me—it is.”

  Tobe smiled. “I’ve thought of a title. You should call it, ‘Slithers’.”

  Rachel screwed up her nose. “What?”

  “The creature…”

  “There’s no need to include that. Such a boy-name… and an even worse boy-idea. A love story? How about ‘Spirits of the Living’?”

  Tobe rolled his eyes. “We’ll leave it up to you, Leticia.”

  Leticia smiled. “Why don’t you write it yourself, Tobe? You have talent.”

  Tobe smiled wryly. “You know, Picasso once said something—a quote that stuck with me. He said: “When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the Pope.’ Instead, I became a painter, and wound up as Picasso.”

  Leticia looked at him, not quite understanding.

  “We’re all here to be who we are, Leticia. We’ve all got a job to do, a destiny to fulfil. I can paint, but you’re the writer. It’s all part of the plan.”

  With that, Tobe stood, smiling, and walked to the shuttered bay-window to gaze peacefully into the rain.

  EPILOGUE

  “The kids are tucked in,” Tobe said. “I had to read two Goosebumps.”

  “Right the way through?” Rachel said. She was standing in the kitchen, cradling a cup of tea.

  “Yeah,” Tobe said. “One for the kids, and one for me—I love those stories.”

  Rachel smiled, placed her cup on the counter, and slid her arms around his waist. “I know we’ve talked about this a hundred times, a thousand times, but I still can’t get it out of my head.”

  “That’s partly why we’ve asked Leticia to write the book,” Tobe said softly. “It’ll be therapy.”

  Rachel smiled faintly. “I hope so,” she said. She placed her head on his chest. “Are you coming to bed soon?”

  “Shortly. I want to finish the painting first. I’m nearly done.” He glanced across the open-plan kitchen and into their living room. His art adorned the walls, almost all of it, in some way or another, depicting the glowing spheres, the Min-Min lights. His latest work was no different.

  “I think we should contact her,” Rachel said.

  “Lysa? I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Rachel lifted her head, looked into his eyes. “Out on the road, back in the other place, we were tasked with stopping Ethan. We did so. And then here, on the night of the accident, Ethan’s son—
Lysa’s son—was born. You’re not curious?”

  “It was our job to stop Ethan there. It wasn’t our job to stop him here.”

  “You can’t ignore the parallels. And you’ve always said there are no coincidences.”

  Tobe nodded. “There are no coincidences.”

  “Stopping Ethan came at a great cost. People lost their lives. Our task was important. We were meant to protect the child.”

  “You think he had a child back there, too?”

  “He must have.”

  A memory rose in Tobe’s mind. When he’d discovered Tory in the car, near to death, she’d urged him to stop Ethan, had said to him, ‘he’s going to hurt her’.

  Did she mean the mother of Ethan’s unborn baby? Had Tory only recently learned of Ethan’s infidelity, and his murderous plan?

  It seemed to fit. Ethan was trying to get back and make good on his promise to ‘set things right’.

  Tobe drew a long breath. “Maybe we’ll contact Lysa. But let’s talk about it in the morning. For now, you should get some sleep. I’ll be up soon.”

  Rachel nodded. “Please don’t be long,” she said. “I need you.”

  “You okay?”

  Rachel dropped her gaze. “I guess so,” she said. “Like I told you, Tobe, I can’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes, I don’t know how to feel. I mean, of course, I’m grateful we were given a second chance, a second life here… and God, I’m beyond grateful for you and the kids, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you know I would never trade any of that, not in a million years. Even if we could do it, Tobe, somehow go back, swap back to how it was. But those two people…” She paused, tears welling in her eyes. “We replaced them, Tobe. We took their place, and I don’t know how to feel about that…”

  Tobe drew her close, easing his arms around her in a gentle, loving embrace. At the feel of her quaking body, he held her even closer, wanting to meld into her, and as she nuzzled against his chest, he threaded his fingers through her hair. He said nothing. This wasn’t the time for answers, wasn’t the time to presume he even had the answers to give. It was a time to absorb the trembling, absorb her fears and worries, and if that wasn’t possible, to hold her so she knew he was there, not merely physically, but all of him, every part of him and in every way. He needed her to know he understood her, and that he would do anything for her. For what seemed like forever, no words passed between them. He held her until he had conveyed all of this to her, without words, in the way that only lovers could convey such things. He held her until she calmed, and the trembling subsided.