Killing Time - A Time Travel Adventure Novel

by Jack Hunt

  “Alex? Kelly?”

  “Hi Mom.”

  It was beyond strange. The look of confusion on her face as we walked out of that room. She had known about my father’s work. I didn’t imagine that he could have kept it from her. She was as sharp as a tack.

  “But?” she muttered only for a few seconds and then I held up the watch on my arm. That explained more than any words could.

  “You found out.”

  She leaned back against my father’s desk and looked us over.

  “Your hair is shorter,” she said.

  I smiled with the corner of my mouth and ran a hand through it. “Yeah.”

  “How many years?”

  “Three.”

  “Why are you here?”

  I cleared my throat and Kelly looked at me. I knew that telling her that my father would die today wasn’t a good idea. First, I didn’t want to see her cry. Second, I didn’t know what that would change about the future.

  “You need to trust me, Mom. It’s important.”

  “It’s about dad, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. I felt compelled to tell the truth when I was around my mother. It wasn’t that I hadn’t lied to her before but I was never very good at it.

  “But he’s left… with you. I mean the other you.”

  No matter how many times I heard it, it never got any easier.

  “I need to borrow your car.”

  She motioned with her head. “The keys are on the—”

  “Hook.” I finished her sentence and she smirked.

  Neither of us hugged each other. I guess the idea of doing anything that might affect the present or future was at the forefront of both of our minds.

  “I have to go, Mom.”

  She nodded. I could see she was full of questions. How many times does a person see his or her own son from the future? What questions would they have? I took a hold of Kelly’s hand and we eased our way out of the room. I didn’t know what to think or say beyond what we had told her. We left the house fairly quickly and Kelly kept yakking about how my mother looked surprised.

  “The look on her face.”

  “I don’t think she was surprised to see us as much as she was concerned about why we are here.”

  We pulled out of the driveway and Kelly ducked down but not before taking a peek at her parents who were in their front yard. Her father was mowing the lawn and her mother was planting some new flowers.

  I gunned it down the road and kept a steady pace.

  “I thought you were going to the gun range?”

  “I am but we didn’t go there first. We paid a visit to that guy who was on the news. The one who shot Harry.”

  It didn’t take us too long to arrive in the downtown business district. When we arrived, my father’s SUV wasn’t there. They had probably already been and gone. I was about to leave the vehicle when coming out of the building with the folder in his hand was the man I’d seen. Tall, and with shifty eyes, he glanced around before getting into a blue sedan and peeling away.

  I parked and pushed out of the vehicle.

  “Alex? What are you doing?”

  “Going to find out who this guy is.”

  Kelly came around the car, I took a hold of her hand and we dashed across the road and up to the building. I pulled on the handle but it was locked. It was a glass door but I wasn’t going to smash anything with pedestrians walking by. I glanced down the alley that went around the side of the building. Against the side of the red brick was a black fire escape that snaked its way up.

  “C’mon.”

  We hurried down the alley. I jumped up and pulled the ladder down. We climbed our way up until we were on the roof. As soon as we climbed over we went to the fire escape and yanked hard on the door. It opened up into a well-lit stairwell. Slowly we descended down to the next floor and let ourselves into a corridor. It was narrow and there were only two doors. We ventured down and I saw the name on the door. Simons Investigations.

  “He’s a private detective?”

  I gave the door handle a twist and it was locked. The door across from us was for an insurance company. Marlan Insurance.

  “Which do you think it is?” I asked her.

  We gave the handle a twist and it opened. Inside there was a secretary at the desk.

  “Hello, how can I help you?”

  I cleared my throat and tried to act normal. As normal as you could for someone who had just journeyed back through time.

  “I was wondering if you have someone working for you who is tall, sports a dark beard and wears a tweed jacket?”

  “Oh you mean Carl Simons from across the way. I just saw him step out.”

  “Do you know when he will be back?”

  “No idea, he might have had an errand to run.”

  I glanced at Kelly. Had he been the one that had shot my father?

  “Let’s go.”

  We flew down the stairs and out the front door nearly knocking over two pedestrians in the process. Cars honked their horns as we rushed out into the road to get back to the car. Back inside I peeled away in the direction of the gun range. I glanced at the dashboard clock.

  “He doesn’t come out for another thirty minutes.”

  It didn’t take us long to get over there. We parked in a space that gave us a good shot of the front of the gun range. My father’s vehicle was directly across from the doors.

  “Do you see him anywhere?”

  Our eyes darted around the parking lot looking for any sign of the man. There were about sixteen other vehicles in the lot. Some of them had tinted windows so it was hard to tell.

  “I need to go in.”

  “You can’t go in, if you bump into yourself this is all over and I will be trapped here.”

  I sucked air in through my teeth and waited. She was right, it was too risky. We waited in the parking lot until I saw myself come out of the gun range and amble back to the SUV looking at my phone.

  “There.”

  “It’s now or never.”

  “Wait,” she said.

  We waited until my younger self was in the SUV before I got out of the car and dashed across the asphalt never looking once at the SUV. I burst into the gun range and looked over to the front desk. My father was still talking to the clerk. I breathed in deeply almost hyperventilating when I approached him.

  “Dad.”

  He turned around with a smile on his face, it slowly morphed into a frown.

  “How did you get changed?”

  I wasn’t wearing the same clothes and my hair looked different.

  I yanked him to one side and pulled back the shirt that went over the watch.

  “How did you get that?”

  Without saying any more words he went over to the front doors and looked out. He was checking to see if I was in the SUV or this was some game. He looked back at me.

  “How? Why? When?”

  I cast a glance around the room and pulled him into the washroom.

  “In a few minutes you are going to walk outside and be shot dead by the same guy that shoots the president three years from now. Carl Simons.”

  He stared at me. Even though he did this for a living, I could see his mind was working overtime trying to comprehend.

  “How can you be sure it’s him?”

  “Let’s say it’s a hunch.”

  “You found my watch?”

  I nodded. I brought him up to speed on what had happened. How I had tried to change the future and it had all screwed up on me.

  “It’s because you visited Harry,” he said.

  “And?”

  “The reason he told you not to visit him was because he must have felt that he was being watched. The same as I do.”

  “You knew they were on to you?”

  My father went over to the sink and splashed cold water over his face.

  “Dad, you can’t go out there.”

  “I have to.”

  “But?”

  “You
don’t get it, Alex. I’m in too deep. If I don’t die now, they’ll get me another time. It’s going to happen.”

  He stared back at me.

  “There must be another way.”

  “There isn’t son.”

  “But… I don’t want to lose you.”

  I shook my head and leaned back against the door. My father came over to me and laid his hands on my shoulders. He pulled me into him and hugged me.

  “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Those were words I had wanted to hear for a long time. It only made it harder to let him go.

  “There must be a way to fix this?”

  My father looked at his watch and walked back and forth for a minute.

  “There is one possible way.”

  My eyebrows rose. “What?”

  He pulled out a pen from the back of his shirt pocket and then a piece of paper from his jeans. He pressed it against the wall and wrote down an address in Maine with a name. Richard Hartridge.

  “Take this and go see him. He might know what to do.”

  I glanced at it with a confused look. “Who is this?”

  “The creator of this,” he pointed to the watch I was wearing. “Dr. Martin Whetherby.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  My father shook his head. “No, that was a cover-up. He’s very much alive. Just go here. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what to do.”

  With that my father gave me another hug. “Look after your mom,” he said.

  “Dad.”

  He looked back at me and shook his head. I could already see that he was in a different headspace. You had to be if you knew you were about to be shot. From the bathroom I watched him go over to the door. He hesitated for a few seconds and then stepped outside. Through the glass I saw him take a few steps, then I heard a gun go off and he collapsed. Seeing it a second time wasn’t any easier. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I waited until employees in the gun range went out to help, and then I slipped out. I returned to my mother’s car. Kelly was still waiting. She didn’t say a word. The expression on my face said it all. I glanced at the crowd that had gathered and saw my younger self beside my father, blood covering his hands.

  Chapter 22

  As we tore out of there, my mind was all over the place thinking about what my father had said and seeing the image of him falling to the ground. I returned home. We parked in front of the house. I hung the keys on the hook and saw my mother sitting in the back room on the phone. I didn’t go in to comfort her as I knew that she would soon be leaving to meet with myself. I knew what transpired after that point on.

  We took Kelly’s car to the airport that day. Along the way I told her about what my father had said.

  “So what can he do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  We caught a flight from Sacramento airport to Portland, Maine, and then took a bus from there to a small town called Cape Elizabeth that was about twenty minutes away. When we arrived in the town a harsh coastal wind blew against our skin. I looked down at the address which read Ocean House Road. It took us another twenty minutes to find the residence. It was a white clapboard house with a white picket fence that over looked Maxwell Cove. There was a small car parked in the driveway. I opened the gate and went up to the door. Gave it a knock and waited. Both of us looked worried. This had all spiraled out of control so fast.

  When there was no answer, we went around the back to see if he had stepped out. There was nothing there except a few pairs of pants and shirts on a washing line blowing in the breeze.

  “He’s out fishing,” someone hollered.

  I looked left and saw his neighbor. She was a woman in her mid-fifties outside hanging clothes on her line.

  “Where?”

  She turned and pointed towards the cove. I cupped a hand over my eyes to block the glare of the sun. Out on the water I could see a boat. It was a small rowboat. I nodded to make it clear I appreciated it and we went around the front of the house and waited on the step. We could see him from where we were but there was no point us going all the way down to the cove. He probably wouldn’t be out there long.

  As we sat there waiting on the step, Kelly glanced at me.

  “You haven’t said much.”

  “Seeing my father again just brought back a whole flood of memories. I know we aren’t meant to change the past but I just wish I could.”

  She placed her hand on mine and we sat in silence looking out across the ocean. A seagull squawked and rested on top of his fence. A few cars drove by as well as people on bicycles. When his boat eventually came in, he disappeared out of sight. I stood up and was looking around. About five minutes later a large black truck came up the road hauling the rowboat. It slowed down to a crawl before pulling into the driveway. The driver’s head turned towards us. He was wearing sunglasses. Gravel spit as he pulled into the driveway and came to a halt. Kelly stood up and both of us waited for him to get out of the vehicle. Instead he just looked at us tapping his fingers against the steering column. Finally, the door creaked open and he stepped out. He was a short man, no facial hair and looked about sixty years of age. He was wearing a yellow fisherman’s jacket and thick black knee-high boots. He came around the vehicle and approached the house.

  “Dr. Martin Whetherby?”

  He removed his sunglasses. “I think you have the wrong address.”

  He pressed past us and unlocked his door. We remained where we were even when he looked back scowling. “My father sent me. Bryan Flynn. He said you could help.”

  “I don’t know any Bryan Flynn. I’m sorry. You must have me mistaken with someone else.”

  With that he closed the door. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. We had come too far and taken way more shit than I was prepared to deal with. I banged on the door with the side of a closed fist until he opened it.

  I raised up my wrist to show him the device hoping that would change his mind.

  “What? It’s a watch. Now go on before I call the police.”

  “Call them. I’m sure they would be interested in knowing about how you created the technology that was used to assassinate the president of the United States years from now.”

  He let out a laugh. “Yeah, that story is going to go over like a lead weight.”

  With that said he closed the door. I spoke through the door. “I have seen my father die twice now and I will be damned if I’m going to walk away from here without getting some answers. He said you were the only one that could help. So if you want to keep playing these games, so be it. But I’m not leaving here.”

  There was no answer. I assumed he wasn’t listening or he hadn’t heard. I turned back around and looked out at the ocean. Frustration, anger, fear, worry all bombarded my mind.

  “Come on, maybe we can figure out another way of doing this,” Kelly said motioning me to leave.

  “No. I’m not leaving until I get answers.”

  “He’ll call the cops.”

  “Let him,” I said out loud. The neighbor across from us looked over her fence. She had a look of concern on her face. We must have waited outside in his yard for another five minutes before the door opened.

  “Are you hungry?”

  We looked at each other in surprise.

  “Well, are you coming or not?”

  We went inside before he could change his mind. Inside his house it was every bit the kind of place I would imagine to find in Maine. There were paintings on the wall of ocean shells and others of fishermen bringing in their catch in large nets. The walls were white, and the floors were made from hardwood that had been stripped back to its natural state.

  In the kitchen Dr. Whetherby opened a cupboard and took out two cans of soup. He grabbed a pan and emptied the contents in before starting a burner. A blue flame licked up around the metal pan as he began to stir. We took a seat at a large oak table.

  “Now what’s this about your father?”

  “He’s dead.”

  He glanced o
ver his shoulder and stopped stirring.

  “How?”

  “It happened today in my town outside a gun range. I believe it was Carl Simons, the same man who three years from now will assassinate the president. Do you know him?”

  “Not directly, but I knew your father well. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Well, we can change that, right? I mean, we have the means to travel back in time.”

  He returned to stirring. “What did your father tell you about what he did for a living?”

  “He didn’t. I found out through Harry.”

  He snorted a little not even looking back at us. “Harry Castle.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Of course, I was one of the ones who trained him along with your father.”

  He took two bowls out and placed them on the counter. From there he poured the soup in and cast a glance our way. I brought him up to speed on what had happened with us.

  “Why are you trying to change the future?”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to change the past in the hopes the future will correct itself.”

  “Now you are splitting hairs. You can’t change what has been.”

  I frowned, then looked at Kelly. “Of course you can. If the past can’t be changed, why would they come back and kill Dempsey?”

  “They aren’t changing it. No matter what you do, she will still die.”

  “And my father?”

  “The same.”

  “Then what’s the point of time travel? Why did you even create it?”

  He came over to us with two steaming bowls and placed them in front of us. The steam swirled up in my face bringing with it the smell of clam chowder. He went over to the cupboard and pulled out a small bottle of bourbon, poured himself two fingers and then took a seat.

  “I didn’t create it. It’s always existed. I merely put together the research that Tesla had done and found a way to harness and tap into what has always been there. I didn’t want to use it for sending people back in time to make changes. That creates too many problems, which I can tell you already understand. I wanted to use it for medical reasons only.”

  “To regress disease. Yeah, already heard it. But that doesn’t change the fact that the next president is going to be killed and her successor will cause a chain of events to unfold that will end with North Korea hitting a button and launching a nuclear attack that will kill millions.”