“That woman you couldn’t save,” Maggie said, filling in the rest.
“Yeah.”
“Go ahead, tell her who I am,” Harvey said. He and a chair had just appeared next to the kid. Corrigan thought it was good thinking, him bringing his own chair.
“She doesn’t need to know that, Harvey,” Corrigan said.
Erica, her curiosity overwhelming any outstanding concerns she might be holding about his ongoing conversations with nonexistent people, asked, “So how does it work? Do you see an entire chronoton at once, or—”
“Chrono what?” Corrigan asked.
“That’s what we called it. The period of virtual certain future time, up to the border of manifestly equivalent probabilities.”
“The hell is she talking about?” Harvey asked.
“Too many big words,” the boy agreed.
“You’re going to have to use smaller words,” Corrigan said. “We can’t . . . I can’t understand you.”
Erica explained. “The arrow of time moves down the most likely path, statistically, but the further away it gets from the present, the less likely it becomes. There was an uncertainty border we couldn’t see beyond.”
“They figured out how to do what I can do?” Corrigan asked Maggie.
“Would’ve told you about it if you’d answered your phone,” she said.
“And how far ahead was this border?” he asked Erica.
“Depended on how much was going on. I bet it’s the same for you.”
“What’s she mean?” Harvey asked. “This is interesting.”
“Yes, it is,” Corrigan said. “What do you mean, ‘depended’?”
“Do you have a harder time in crowds?” she asked.
“Yeah. The future gets all mucked up.”
“That’s because the chronoton is smaller the more variables there are, so you can’t see as far ahead as you’re accustomed to. That must make you very anxious.”
“Did you see the whole . . . chronoton, is it? Did you see it all at once with this machine of yours?” Corrigan asked.
“No, just the end of it. We had some problems with infinities whenever we tried working out the numbers for a period of less than one chronoton. At first we thought it was a flaw in our methodology, but when I redid the calculations, I realized it’s because there’s a qualitative difference between the points at the end of it and the period in the middle. The present and the lead edge of the chronoton . . . resonate. Kind of. I think of them as octaves. Anyway, that’s probably more than you wanted to know . . .”
“S’okay,” Corrigan said. “Sounds interesting.”
She blushed. “That’s why we looked at the other end of the chronoton. It was the only place we could look.”
He said, “I guess Archie Calvin was onto something after all. Almost makes me wish I had paid more attention to him.”
Tanya, who looked confused by the whole conversation, asked, “So now what happens? Are you here to protect her or something?”
“Unless she can wheel that machine of hers in here, I’m the only one who can see him.”
“It’s broken,” Erica said. “And it wasn’t portable, anyway. But how are you going to stop him if you’re stuck in the same end of the chronoton as the rest of us?”
“No idea.”
* * *
Time passed. Sustenance was located for Corrigan in the form of a few Snickers bars from the commissary. Maggie, after finding time to sneak outside for a desperately needed cigarette, took up a spot on the chair on the other side of Erica’s bed. Erica’s parents checked in via telephone from their hotel room a few miles down the road. Tanya left a few minutes after the call, having been assured that Maggie wouldn’t go anywhere and that Corrigan was motivated by good intentions and wasn’t usually insane.
Corrigan stayed right where he was—in the quite comfortable reclining chair in the corner of the room—and watched for Kilroy to darken the door. And since, for the past week, he’d been unable to get any sleep at all, now that he had a solid reason for staying awake, he was quite sure he would. Then, of course, he fell asleep.
He woke up back in his bedroom, which was the first indication that he wasn’t awake at all. This was another of his hauntings. Still, it seemed real enough to have him questioning whether the entire trip to Erica Smalls’s hospital room was the dream.
“She’s coming,” the kid said. He was standing at the foot of the bed again. There was a different quality to the ghosts when they showed up in his dreams than when they turned up as hallucinations. He couldn’t quite pin down what it was, other than that they tended to be less helpful.
“She can’t come now. I have to be someplace,” Corrigan said.
“She’s coming. Because you’ve been bad. You need to be punished.”
“Christ,” he said, rubbing his own forehead. “Enough already.”
“Who’re we expecting?”
Corrigan turned and discovered Harvey sitting in the bed next to him. “Oh wonderful,” he said. “I bet Ames would love to hear about this.”
“Wasn’t my idea. Now who’s coming?”
“It’s . . . ah . . .”
“The first,” answered Steve. He was a construction worker who’d fallen to his death because Corrigan couldn’t get past the foreman in time to warn him. He was lying on the floor next to the bed in much the same position in which he’d died.
“Her name was Diane,” Corrigan said. “First message I ever got.”
“Corrrrrigan . . .” Her voice felt like a hand around his throat. He lay back in the bed and tried to pull up the covers, hoping he would wake up sometime soon. I can’t do this now, he thought. I have to be awake . . . for something . . .
“You screwed up your first appointment?” Harvey asked. He didn’t look frightened at all.
“Didn’t know it was an appointment. I’d just gotten your money, and—”
“What did you do?” Diane roared from everywhere at once.
“And all I knew was I was supposed to show up someplace. I watched her die.”
“Well, this is not at all what I expected from you, boy. Frightened by a loud voice? Honestly. I thought you were made of tougher stuff.”
“It gets worse.”
“What did you do?”
“She was crossing the street to pick up her children when someone blew through a red light,” Corrigan said quietly. “The kids . . . they were standing right there when—”
The bed started to shake. It felt like it was on the back of something large and awful and that large and awful thing was trying to buck it free. Corrigan held onto the bed sheets for dear life. Harvey still didn’t seem bothered, like a man sipping tea on a boat in high seas.
“What a coward,” Harvey spat. “You were braver when you were twelve, young man.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Corrigan asked. “It’s my fault. I can’t change that.”
An arm burst through the middle of the mattress and grabbed Corrigan by the ankle. He let out a scream. Wake up, wake up, wake up . . .
“You didn’t kill her.”
Corrigan was being pulled down through the middle of his bed. He reached up and grabbed the bedpost. He didn’t know what would happen if he got sucked down because he always woke up before it happened. But he was never this tired before.
“I let her die, isn’t that close enough?” he shouted to Harvey. The disemboweling of his bed was making a horrendous noise, like a dump truck being torn in half.
“Join us down here!”
“Oh quiet, woman,” Harvey barked. “And no, Corry, it is certainly not close enough. I killed Osgood Pierce, remember? It took six months and a bout of sepsis to finally do him in, but I pulled the trigger. That is killing someone. You neglected to save her, and that’s completely different. You didn’t know any better at the time.”
“Tell her that,” Corrigan said. He was losing his grip on the bedpost. A second hand reached up and grabbed his other leg, an
d he couldn’t wake up—and he was pretty sure he had just wet himself. Violet would yell at him for that.
“All right,” Harvey said. He leaned forward and grabbed one of Diane’s wrists, pulling her hand loose from Corrigan’s leg with about as much trouble as one might remove an ant from a picnic table. “Go haunt the guy who was driving the car!” he shouted into the widening hole in the middle of the bed.
Corrigan pulled harder on the bedpost and somehow freed his other leg himself.
“Join us!” Diane wailed.
“No,” Corrigan said quietly, but firmly. “I have to be someplace.”
“He’s here,” the boy said.
“What?” Corrigan asked. The kid had moved from the foot of the bed to the side, and was staring Corrigan in the face.
“He’s here.”
Corrigan woke with a start. He was back in the hospital again, still sitting in the chair. The lights in the room had been dimmed, probably by some helpful nurse. He could see Erica lying in her bed, breathing steadily. Maggie was in the chair next to the bed, still in her fabulous evening gown, which was probably being ruined. She’d rested her head on the side of the mattress and fallen asleep that way.
And standing at the door, staring right at him, was Kilroy.
* * *
Don’t let them know you can see them.
Harvey’s words came back like a splash of ice water in the face. It was pleasantly surprising that Harvey wasn’t there saying it to him, meaning perhaps the short amount of sleep he’d just gotten had been enough to clear his head.
The creature—Kilroy—looked to have more in common with a species of bird than with a human being. His bald head was slightly oblong, perched atop a long buzzard neck. His nose, which came to a very precise point, seemed beak-like. And his eyes were black and without pupils. But there were other aspects that bespoke of entirely different species of animal. His head was cocked, which seemed nearly canine. The sides of his mouth curled up almost past his ears, and his lips didn’t completely cover a row of teeth that looked shark-like. His body—which appeared almost too skinny to support the weight of his head—came with arms that were too long, like an ape. That was, Corrigan realized, just an illusion. It wasn’t the arms that were long, it was the fingers. They extended so far from the wrist, there had to be an extra joint involved. In one of those hands the creature had a wooden bat, the end of which dragged along the floor.
The overall picture was of something only nearly human. It was the thing you see at the edge of your vision but which disappears when you turn your head. It was the thing that went bump in the night. It was the boogeyman. And it was really there.
Corrigan looked away quickly, mindful of Harvey’s warning and the general lessons McClaren had taught him. Kilroy hated to be noticed, and once he got a taste for mayhem he seem to enjoy it.
Is this the same one Harvey shot?
“Maggie,” Corrigan said. “Maggie, wake up.”
Kilroy turned his gaze to Maggie’s still form. She stirred a few seconds later.
“Whu . . . Corrigan, what is it?” Maggie asked. “Is it—”
“Shh.” He had to operate on the assumption that whatever Kilroy was, he understood the English language.
Maggie sat up and looked around. Kilroy moved to the open space near the closet, but Maggie’s eyes didn’t track that because she couldn’t see him. She instead looked over at Corrigan again. He nodded almost imperceptibly.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Positive.”
“Okay. Okay. Now what do we do?”
“Someone’s coming.”
The door to the room swung open, causing Maggie to jump and let out a little yelp that, in a different context, might have been very amusing. One of the floor nurses walked in.
“Hi!” she whispered, moving with the quiet grace of someone who was used to maneuvering around sleeping people on a daily basis. “Just doing my rounds, don’t mind me.”
“Sure . . .” Maggie said, rubbing her eyes. “Fine.”
Corrigan involuntarily found himself holding his breath as the future version of the nurse stepped right in front of Kilroy and around the end of the bed.
“What time is it?” Corrigan asked.
“It’s about one, dear,” she said. The nurse was at an age where she could call anybody dear and get away with it. “And what good folks you all are, staying with her like this.”
She went to work checking the IV drip and recording Erica’s pulse rate with her watch. “Yes,” she went on, “this one is a miracle, isn’t she? Steady as she goes.” She put down Erica’s wrist. “I think she’s going to be all right.”
“Is there still an officer outside the door?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Wide-awake and bored silly. You know, you two might want to retire for the night yourselves. I’m sure she’ll be just fine until morning.”
“I think we better stay here,” Corrigan said.
“Well then, at least make yourselves comfortable.” She was heading for the closet, which both Corrigan and Kilroy could see about to happen. Kilroy stepped to the side, well before the nurse reached the closet door and slid it open. “Hang up your coats.”
There is a demented semi-human killer standing ten inches away from you, Corrigan thought. And you don’t even know he’s there.
It occurred to Corrigan at that moment that he had no idea how a creature stuck in the future could do damage to people stuck in the present. Kilroy existed with their future selves, but by the time their future became their present, he’d already moved on, because he was always ahead.
The bat, he thought. He’d have to use the bat.
The dead in McClaren had been beaten with a mop-handle or shot with a gun or, in one case, slammed by a door. But if the Kilroy who’d been there that day was like the one before him now, he could just as easily have choked someone with those long fingers or done something comparatively gruesome. And Erica was stabbed with a kitchen knife and hit in the head with a baseball bat. Objects, it seemed, were not subject to the same restrictions as the one who held them.
“Thanks,” Maggie said to the nurse. “That’s a good idea.”
“Coffee’s down the hall,” the nurse pointed out, adding, “we’re always happy to help the FBI.”
“Glad to hear it,” Maggie said. The nurse left the room with a smile.
“Corrigan,” Maggie said, a bit louder with the nurse gone. “What now?” She looked ready to wake up Erica, even though she was clearly not ready to be moved.
“Don’t know,” he said, although he sort of did. When Harvey was put into a similar situation, he did the only thing he knew how to do. Try and kill the Kilroy before it hurt anybody. Unfortunately, in Harvey’s case he had also terrorized an entire hospital, accidentally killing a number of the people he had been trying to save. It made for an excellent cautionary tale, but it also held an important point. The thing went to the hospital to kill Harvey and went through anybody who got in the way. Which meant Corrigan and Maggie were hardly safe, provided this Kilroy had similar character traits—and given his track record, that seemed like a good bet.
But what Corrigan also knew was that if these things didn’t like to be seen—were, perhaps, afraid to be seen—the only way to keep Erica safe was to offer up a different target.
If Harvey were still there, he’d tell Corrigan he was crazy for even considering such a thing.
He pulled himself out of the chair, the blood rush causing the world to go squiggly for a second or two. It felt as though he’d been sitting there for days.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asked, or was about to ask. It looked like he wasn’t quite perfect with his identification of the present, as he heard her say it a couple of times. And the boy wasn’t around anymore to tip him off on when to speak.
“Just stretching,” he said casually. He kept Kilroy in view out of the corner of his eye. He still wasn’t moving. Corrigan stretched, just as he said
he would.
“Going for a jog?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
Maggie stood as well. And whether she knew it or not, she ended up positioning herself right between Kilroy and the still-sleeping Erica Smalls. “Did I tell you how much I like that dress?” Corrigan asked.
“Designer,” she said. “Probably ruined.”
Kilroy moved. It was an odd thing to watch, because unlike everyone else, the bald man didn’t have a past and a future, just a present in the future.
Thinking about it made Corrigan’s head ache.
He can’t stand around forever, was his next thought.
That seemed to be the same conclusion the killer reached as he decided, right then, to take care of all three of them, starting with Maggie. In the future, Kilroy’s bat connected with the back of her head.
“Maggie,” Corrigan said, “don’t move.”
At the last possible moment, Corrigan stepped between them and blocked the bat with his hand. From Maggie’s point of view, it must have looked like Corrigan was defending himself against empty air, even though the impact of the bat on the palm of his hand made a loud PAP!
Kilroy jumped back and shook his head, looking like a dog that’d been slapped across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Then he took a swing at Corrigan.
He saw in his own future how the bat impacted him flush across the nose. It was so real he could taste the blood and feel the solid shock of impact travel through his body and wobble his knees. He could even see the floor coming up to greet him. But then he dodged, and the bat whistled through empty space.
Again, Kilroy stepped back and looked about, confused.
“Corrigan, what’s—”
“He’s putting it together,” he said. “Guess he’s never met someone like me before.”
Kilroy looked him in the eye and displayed a new expression for him—fear.
“That’s right, asshole,” Corrigan said. “I can see you.”
And then, to his surprise, Kilroy turned and ran. Corrigan saw him doing it and dove at where his legs were going to be, but of course they were already gone. He saw the creature exit the room while lying on the floor.
“You stopped him!” Maggie said happily.
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