And then I leaned back against the wall, both wrists dangling over the slowly filling bucket and I closed my eyes. And I waited.
I felt like I was slowly lifting out of my body. My thinking got fuzzier and fuzzier, and the pain was going, going … gone. My last thoughts were of Tabby, and how, at long last, I'd be able to see that soft smile I loved so much.
My ears fell gradually silent, as though there was a volume control in my head and somebody was slowly turning it off. My heart beat slowed and slowed and finally stopped.
I was dead.
Epilogue
I was dead, but I was still thinking. I hung suspended over my corpse for a moment, watching it gasp its last. No blood had spilled out of the bucket, but the pale, dead looking hands flopped off the rim into the corpses lap, spilling a few last drops on the newspaper. Nice and neat.
And then suddenly my incorporeal essence was yanked upward through the roof, as though it were on a string and somebody who was really, really pissed was yanking on it.
I flew up through the cloudy sky and then, before I could blink, there was an odd flipping sensation, like I was being turned inside out and upside down all at once, and I was standing before a clearly angry Tabbitha Langston.
"Robert Torrence!" she screamed. "Do you have any fucking idea how god damn pissed off I am at you right now?"
"Uh," I said intelligently. Seeing her had totally floored me. I didn't really expect there to be any kind of afterlife. I thought I would just go out like a light and never wake up again.
She hadn't changed a day since I last saw her, back before I got drafted into the army. She didn't have a harp or wings, she was just Tabby. I felt all the old love rise in my heart and I started to sob.
She threw herself at me, and at first I thought she was going to hit me, but she wrapped her arms around me and sobbed with me.
Then she did hit me.
"You asshole," she cried. "How could you do that? You threw your life away! Do you have any idea how angry I am at you?"
"Tabby," I croaked, "you were my life. You were the reason I did everything I did. Everything I did was with one goal in mind: so that we could settle down and raise a family. Nothing was more important to me than you, and it hasn't been that way since you rescued me from Frank Shepard on those school steps. When you died, most of me died with you. I just didn't see any point in living anymore. I was all alone in the world and I didn't want to go on."
"Bobby," she sighed softly. "I've watched you all these years, although out here it was really more like a couple of hours. Time is different here. I was there when you fainted at the airport and I was there when you went through all those dangerous missions in Viet Nam, trying to get yourself killed. You didn't find another girl, hell you didn't even try to. I wanted more than anything for you to be happy, but all these years you just dragged on.
"This afternoon when you cried on the guitar that was given to you with love from me, the guitar that you played for all those years while I cheered you on, it set up something miraculous. There was so much love in that guitar that your tears for me caused an echo effect."
"What do you mean?"
"She means that you may have another chance," said a voice from behind me.
I turned but there was nothing there. "Who said that?"
There was a chuckle from nowhere. "That doesn't matter, child. Your love for this woman and her love for you was so great that it transcends time and space. When her essence fled her body, she thought of nothing but you. And when yours fled, you thought of nothing but her. You shed tears of love into an instrument that carried much residual love. Love is one of the greatest forces in the universe, and events have conspired to allow you to rectify some of the wrongs that have occurred in your life. Choose wisely, Robert Torrence, because this may only happen once."
And then I was sucked away down into a spiraling vortex of energy. I had only time to say "I love you" to Tabby before I was gone.
* * *
I came to rest standing on the access driveway to the Langston farm. It was a soft spring night, the buds beginning to open up on the trees. Somehow I knew just what night it was too.
I hurried up the long driveway, just in time to hear Tabby say, "Down boy, you'll get your chance." And then I was certain. I was back on prom night, 1966.
I was then faced with a couple of choices. I could stick around here and try to save Tabby's parents. But, and it gave me a sinking feeling to realize it, tonight was probably their night to go. When you gotta go, you gotta go. I doubted I could change much. They would be dead sooner or later, with or without my intervention.
And then I got a shock. I knew that I had been here already. I caught sight of myself, reflected in one of the living room windows. I looked like that creepy old guy I had seen at the steakhouse. I had seen myself, all those years ago. And I had felt something, an eerie premonition of events to come, looking at that old haggard face.
My decision made, I had no time to loose. I had somewhere to be.
It appeared that I was semisolid. As long as you didn't look at me in direct light, I was normal. I was like a hologram, not like a stereotypical ghost. I could pass through walls if I wanted though.
Feeling a bit low, I went in through the bedroom wall and, while Barbara and David were in the shower getting ready for their own date, I borrowed fifty dollars from Mr. Langston's wallet. He wouldn't be needing it anymore, but I still felt like a scuzz for doing it.
It took me a bit of time to get the hang of grasping something, while not trying to slip through it, but I finally managed. I was no sooner back out through the bedroom wall when I heard giggling and smacking sounds coming from the bathroom. It appeared they were going to have a quickie before dinner.
Using a mechanism I didn't quite grasp, I floated across the river into Portland faster than seemed possible. Then I walked normally in through the steakhouse door.
I was seated and had a newspaper someone had abandoned here in front of my face when my younger self and Tabby arrived. I watched them out of the corner of my eye. Did my face really light up that much when I was in Tabby's presence? I was amazed how much hand touching we had done. It was so natural that I never had even noticed it.
Once they had finished their meal, I signaled the waitress and gave her the fifty dollars. "They remind me of me and my wife at that age," I said in my cracked old man's voice. "It is so good to see that love never dies."
"Yes, sir, it is," smiled the waitress, before going over and whispering into my younger self's ear.
He looked over and I nodded at him, before getting up and heading out to wait by the lamp pole. I snagged a pack of cigarettes from the machine in the lobby and I was smoking one when they came out, giggling together and still touching.
"This isn't up to my usual standards," I heard Tabby say, bringing a lump to my throat, "but since it's all we have I suppose I can cope with it tonight."
I straightened up from my leaning position. Last time, I hadn't said anything. If I said something too overt, however, they might just write me off. I had to make a decision fast before they drove off in that fast Mustang. If I did the right thing, would my shimmery self just cease to exist? I didn't care, I wanted to save my younger self the agony of turning into what I would eventually become with the death of his woman.
I moved over before younger Bobby could close the door to the Mustang. "Avoid Flight 1203," I said.
"Huh?"
"Just remember that, son. Avoid Flight 1203. Please do not forget it."
He nodded at me, but I could tell he was just humoring me, and I felt a sinking sensation. He didn't believe what I told him, he thought I was just another crazy old man.
"Okay, sir, if you say so," he said cautiously.
Then he closed the door and his car was gone.
Well, that's that, I thought dismally. Guess I can't really expect -
And then, suddenly, I was gone.
* * *
"Bobb
y, wake up," said a voice.
I groaned and rolled over. "Ye gods, woman," I mumbled into my pillow, "you wore me out last night and I only got to sleep two hours. Haven't you done enough?"
"I don't recall you saying no," Tabby smirked, pulling the blankets off me and exposing my bed warm skin to the cold air. "Now up and at 'em, it's Jenny's birthday and you know how she gets."
I groaned again and rolled over to sit up on the edge of the bed. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was still only seven in the morning. On a Sunday. But it was my daughter's thirteenth birthday, and nothing was too much for my little girl.
I pulled Tabby over and buried my face in her softly rounded stomach. I had put two babies in there, but to me, she was still the sexy young woman I had taken to bed on prom night. She still had flashes of guilt over that, given how her parents died, but they were fewer now.
"God, I had the most horrible dream last night," I murmured into her soft skin.
"What happened?" she said, stroking my hair.
"Remember that old guy who bought our dinner on prom night?"
"Yeah, and he told you to avoid Flight 1203. We both thought he was a little touched in the head."
"Exactly. And then I joined the army and you told me you were pregnant with Christopher, and I asked you to marry me."
"I remember being so happy I thought I'd burst," Tabby said, now settling onto my lap. Her butt was much bigger and softer after those two babies, and I felt myself rise to meet her. She wiggled and smiled at me.
"And then I realized I couldn't get home and back and give you the wedding you deserved on a weekend pass. Chaplain Bradbury arranged the flight, and you were originally going to be on 1203."
"You said you felt a chill go down your spine then," Tabby added. "You practically begged for another flight."
"And then we found out that 1203 crashed," I said, squeezing her tighter and feeling the horrible agony I felt in the dream. "Well, in this dream I just had, you died on that flight, and part of me died along with you. I lived a half life for thirty years and killed myself, which was when I woke up."
Tabby clutched me. "My poor Bobby. Do you think maybe we had some kind of psychic vision way back then? I remember you went back later and nobody remembered seeing the old guy that night."
I shrugged and stroked her sleep tangled mop. "I don't know if it was a psychic vision or not. I do know that it was horrible, living without you, even in a dream."
"You never will, my love," Tabby said in her low, husky voice. "I'm never leaving you for anything."
"Nor am I leaving you, my Ebony Eyes," I murmured, nuzzling her neck. "Forever and ever."
Then from out of the air there was a soft run of guitar notes. We both snapped our heads around, looking for the source, but nothing was there. But I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Something had been averted, way back on that prom night. Something horrible.
I looked up at my first guitar, mounted in a wall bracket near the room's fireplace. I still played it when I wanted to sing love songs to Tabby, and it always felt warm. Like part of the love we had for one another had imbued the instrument with warm energy. And it never got dull, it was still bright and shiny, even after all these years.
I clutched my woman tighter and thanked whatever power might be listening for her love. And life was good.
The End
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Ebony Eyes Page 12