by Sean McMahon
The discovery of the hot tub jets had proven that they could change the course of past events, but accidentally killing Robert changed everything. It meant they could truly impact the past in ways they had never imagined. Hal echoed his thoughts to Kara.
‘What happened to Robert changes everything,’ he said.
Kara leaned back on the bench, looking into the contradiction that was a perfectly clear sky tainted by the thin veil of static fog. They really needed to talk about that soon.
‘It didn’t change everything though did it?’ pointed out Kara. ‘I mean, we still ended up restarting, just like we always do.’
‘Thank god,’ exclaimed Hal. ‘Can you imagine if we had broken that chain of events? If past-us had found Rob’s body and not left Fir Lodge? We may not have been here right now, but Rob’s death would have been irreversible!’ he added with a shudder.
‘We don’t know that…maybe he would have inherited the restarts?’ said Kara.
‘Maybe. But he would have been on his own, with no guidance, no support network…he could have been stuck here forever.’
‘Like we are,’ murmured Kara, vehemently.
Hal activated his selective hearing, as if Jess were asking him to take the rubbish out.
‘He could have gone insane Kara. Think about that…’
And she did for a moment. ‘Nah, he’s way too stubborn to lie down and take a punch in the face from space-time.’ But, secretly, she agreed. ‘The big question is, why didn’t he come back with us?’
Hal had been thinking about that, and offered up his thoughts on the matter.
‘My guess? His death didn’t stick because we restarted. Our past-selves still went to Kevin’s and…whatever happened there…happened again.’
Kara raised an eyebrow.
‘So…you think that, because the timeline carried on as normal, everything went back to how it was before?’ she said.
Hal nodded.
‘So as long as you don’t kill him again today, like by dropping an anvil on his head or whatever, he’ll be perfectly fine?’ asked Kara.
‘Funny. But yeah, basically, I think that’s how it works,’ said Hal. ‘But it’s highlighted a serious problem; we really need to start considering the butterfly effect…’
‘The Kutcher movie? That was great!’
‘Yes Kara. I want us to form a film club and discuss the filmography of the unsung heroes of perfectly okay movies.’
She filled her cheeks with air and pulled a silly face, indicating she was ready for whatever it was he was getting at, as Hal sat up and began to explain the concept.
‘The idea is that small causes can have larger effects–’
‘I know that Hal, I’m not an idiot,’ said Kara, cutting him off. ‘A flutterby flaps its wings in, Tibet or wherever, which then causes a tornado in Peru or something.’
‘Precise– wait, did you just say flutterby?’
‘Clearly a better name for an insect that literally flutters around,’ said Kara, straightening up in her seat. ‘I mean, it was such an easy win, why the hell did they settle on butterfly?’
Hal stared at her incredulously.
‘I…well, shit. Okay, I’ll give you that one. I can’t argue with that.’
Kara was beaming; she loved it when someone came around to her way of thinking over things she didn’t really care about.
Hal flicked his cigarette over his shoulder with reckless abandon and continued.
‘My point is, that in our desperation to change events, we could inadvertently make things a billion times worse. Our lives are not worth anything if it means risking the safety of our friends.’
‘Obviously I agree with you,’ said Kara, as a thought occurred to her. ‘What I don’t get, is that you’ve tripped that hot tub countless times, causing everyone to get out, move around, change the order of small encounters and interactions. Why did that one in particular cause such a huge discrepancy in the lead up to a restart?’
Hal cast his mind back to the frantic events of the previous evening.
‘I think…I think I knocked his beer off the side as I ran past?’ said Hal, trying to piece it together. ‘He must have leant over the edge to check it out, slipped maybe? The control panel was in the tub with him, wasn’t it? It all happened so fast.’
They sat there in silence, once again, as Hal’s past-self entered into their line of sight through the back door, striking up a conversation with Jon, as the repetitive rhythm of the jets continued, entirely undisturbed.
Kara thought she should lighten the mood, feeling a little bad about chastising Hal as much as she had, and decided to highlight how the means of what had just happened may well have actually resulted in justifying the end result.
‘Santa made a good point though,’ she said. ‘If we wait inside Kevin’s place, we can sit right by the door, see if there’s something we missed.’
Something deep inside of Hal wanted to change the subject, to talk about anything but this. But Kara continued, preventing him from formulating a solid argument against it.
‘I mean, I know we’ve followed ourselves back when we dropped Jerry off, but we’ve always kept our distance. Become distracted. The restart kicks in as it always does. If we’re already inside...’
Hal thought about that, an icy chill running down his spine.
‘What could possibly be in there Kara? We took Jerry back, we walked back to our lodge, that’s when all this mess started!’ He hadn’t noticed that he was standing now, his past-self getting ever-closer to claiming their current spot, as Kara jumped out of past-Hal’s way just in time.
‘Hal, calm down, you’re kind of shouting a bit...’
‘Because you’re not listening to me Kara, you’re just coming up with distractions when we need to be focusing on more important things, not this STUPID expedition into the DAMN–’ Hal saw her slightly frightened face, and he stopped talking immediately, covering his mouth with his hand.
‘Kara, I’m so sorry! I have no idea what got into me,’ said Hal, noticing that she had taken several steps back from him during his tirade and was looking at him with a face that was filled with both concern and unease, as if she didn’t recognise him.
She couldn’t remember ever seeing him this angry before.
‘Hal…it’s cool, everything’s cool…I think it’s pretty obvious at this point what we’re going to see there…’
Suddenly, whatever had been keeping him from concentrating, whatever untold force was clouding his mind, forcing him to deter them from pursuing this line of thought, slowly dispersed, like a fog being sucked away through a jet engine. He swallowed, his mouth dry, not entirely convinced that he could get the words out without something preventing him from doing so.
‘Kara…’ his voice barely a broken whisper, as true terror enveloped him and caused his eyes to water, as the realisation of the truth set in. He cleared his throat, determined to release the words from their captivity.
‘Kara…I think something terrible happened there.’
And then Kara felt it too. The fragmented images that kept popping into her head, the ones she’d never told Hal about. Her ice-pick migraines that lasted for only a second. All of the pieces began to swirl in her brain, like a kaleidoscope coming into focus, as the images gained solidity in her mind. Her redacted memories daring her to ask more questions. In that moment, they were so lost in their own personal terror that they hadn’t noticed the static fog thickening around them, or that their surroundings had evaporated almost entirely. With Fir Lodge itself nowhere to be seen, their happy place slowly began to abandon them.
*
As the fog began to dissipate, they realised they had been transported to somewhere new. Had their vision not been so exceptional, the darkness may have blinded them. But with their heightened senses, they could see everything with perfect clarity; the wooden panelling of the walls surrounding them, the faint light of the porch outside all but burning their retinas. Ha
l noticed that the kitchen counter to their left was immaculately clean, and that the usual suspects adorned the countertop; an old-fashioned cream-coloured kettle, with matching containers indicating their contents; an archaic radio was playing a familiar tune. The tinny reverberations of the music did little to lift the suffocating mood and oppressive claustrophobia of their new environment.
It was then that they saw him. Standing behind a wooden support beam to the left of the kitchen, in front of a blue door that led further into what they now realised was a lodge. And then they saw themselves. They saw Hal calling from the doorway, stepping one-too-many steps into the living area next to the kitchen, bringing Jerry inside the house.
It was then that they saw how they died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Man Comes Around
Saturday Evening, 9:01pm
Everyone thinks they’ll be ready. That in the event that something atrocious is about to befall you, you’ll react efficiently and effectively. That perhaps you won’t truly know what you’re capable of when the time comes until you’re tested. But that wasn’t the case for Hal.
The blade, and the man wielding it, appeared without warning, without conscience, and with a primary agenda that no rational-thinking human could ever predict, let alone plan for. The cold, tempered steel perforated his upper torso with such speed and force that he didn’t even have time to consider if it had cut through a major artery.
Hal looked downwards, as his own blood pulsed from his body, a wet blackness glistening in the dark, as the force of nature responsible twisted the blade counter-clockwise, then clockwise, the jagged teeth of the blade causing irreparable damage to his soon to be vacant body. Though it was the internal bleeding, that coursed up through his oesophagus and out through his mouth, simulating the sensation of drowning, that really hit home that this was truly the end.
He flailed his arms, grabbing at the assailant’s hands that were now working together to drive the hilt of the blade forward, even further into his weakening frame. Hal fell to the ground, staring with wide, desperate eyes as the looming shadow strutted with malicious intent towards Kara, who had proceeded further across the threshold of the doorway and, unknowingly, closer to a hell reserved just for the both of them.
“Could she not see what had happened?!” thought Hal, one of many thoughts that were swirling amidst his mind, as he was consumed by the pitch-blackness permeating throughout the cabin.
Hal tried to shout out to her, though the result was a dull and breathless gurgle that was nullified by Cash’s “The Man Comes Around”, which was spilling out from a radio he couldn’t see, coupled with the defiant barks of a nearby dog.
“Shelby? Run Shelby!” thought Hal, as his oxygen-deprived mind became muddled amidst the unfolding insanity, fearful his attacker might focus his attention on the barking dog instead of him, desperate for the innocent pup to escape.
The beast was on her in an instant, his wraith-like strides morphing into an arm-shaped shadow that, from Hal’s perspective, looked as big as a tree. In one swift movement he grabbed her head and smashed it against the kitchen cabinets.
Dazed, and understandably confused, due to the monumental concussion her nervous system was trying to make sense of, the ringing in her ears drowned out the unearthly grunt made by her assailant. But as the stars and ever-increasing black spots in her peripheral vision conjoined, acting as the first real early-warning system that something was terribly wrong, her personal harbinger of impending death arrived far too late.
The moonlight glinted off what must have been a second blade, which the demon plunged into her neck with such ferocity that Hal was certain she must have died instantly from the blow. She lay there, silent and still.
The monster, breathing heavily, let out what seemed to be an almighty roar, and stood there, looming over Kara, panting emphatically. Hal closed his eyes, praying that he could summon the strength to stand so that he could avenge his friend. He had always considered himself to be a good man, flawed of course, immensely flawed, but he would fight this evil standing before him. He would destroy him for what he had done. He would stand tall and go toe to toe with this ungodly goliath and he would do…precisely nothing.
As the giant’s hands clenched around Hal’s throat, draining the last breath of air from his body, the only thing he could do was bleed-out the remaining reserves of his blood, pint by pint, knowing that he had failed his friend.
Images of Jess swirled in his mind. Their first touch, the electricity he had felt. The first time she smiled at him. Her laugh, her eyes…eyes he would often get lost in.
“I’m sor–” but his half-finished thought, much like his time on this earth, was cut short.
And mercifully, finally, it was over.
Kara and Hal were dead.
*
Hal and Kara stood there, staring at their past-selves. Their eyes wide, unable to find the words, given that there was nothing that could be said after witnessing their gruesome deaths, as an all-too-familiar fog began filling their tomb, seemingly erasing their dead bodies from time itself. They closed their eyes, as the maddening ethereal force engulfed them, claiming them once again as it always did, whisking them away to what they now realised was their eternal purgatory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Chain
11th Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:01pm
The restart happened around Kara as it always did. But, for the first time since this nightmare began, she felt disconnected from it. Like a spectator, rather than an active participant. She didn’t wait for the restart to set in. She walked as if she were on auto-pilot, directly into the oncoming red car, yet again playing a one-sided game of chicken, given her current invisibility, with no regard for consequence. She was vaguely aware of Hal calling her name, but the sound barely registered in her mind.
She felt the familiar surge of energy shoot through her arm as someone, presumably Hal, grabbed her by the wrist, which she deep-down acknowledged as being an act of misguided kindness, as he attempted to pull her out of the path of the rapidly approaching vehicle. But even the pulsating energy couldn’t eradicate the numbness in her heart.
Her unbeating heart.
She was dead.
Kara felt an intense pang of anger, and the shimmering blue light connecting her and Hal throbbed wildly, forming a spherical shape that expanded to encompass both of their entire arms, as she continued to drag him along on her new mission.
Will’s side mirror collided with her hip, and exploded into pieces. She inattentively took on-board that “The Chain” was bellowing from Will’s car radio. Hal must have let go of her arm, because the rapidly-intensifying sensation of being electrocuted ceased immediately.
She continued onwards, towards her goal.
“No more. This ends today,” she thought to herself.
Or maybe she screamed it. She honestly didn’t know anymore. Forwards. All that mattered was moving forwards.
*
The restart displaced Hal, as it always did, back to the start. He fell to his knees, though it wasn’t due to being drained exponentially from the time-jump, He was getting used to that now. It was starting to feel like being a passenger in a car, and suddenly dropping down a steep incline without warning.
‘Shit,’ he said out loud. ‘Son of a damn bitch.’
He remembered it all now. Why had those memories been kept from him? This changed everything. Once again, they’d been going about this all wrong. He lashed out at the ground beneath him, driving a fist into the stones. How many times had he said that? That each new discovery “had changed everything?” That he had been wrong. Again. They weren’t joyriding time travellers. Nor were they superheroes, blasting their way through time with mutant powers that had only just manifested. He wasn’t Marty. They weren’t any damn thing. This wasn’t even air he was breathing.
He forced himself to snap out of his self-inflicted cycle of negativity, realising that somethi
ng wasn’t quite right with Kara. She was walking directly into the path of Will’s car, which was fast approaching.
‘Kara?’ he said softly. ‘Kara?!’ he projected louder this time. ‘Kara, move out of the way, it’ll hit you.’
Entirely unsure of the ramifications of what would happen if they collided with a few tons of fibreglass and metal that was moving at twenty miles per hour, he jogged to close the distance between them.
‘KARA!’ he shouted.
Could she not hear him? He reached out instinctively to pull her out of the way of the car, electricity immediately erupting from the connection, but he didn’t let go. He gritted his teeth, pushing through the sensation that could only be described as two insanely over-powered magnets trying to repel each other. He yanked at her arm, but she was like solid marble, her arm barely moving, despite his desperate efforts. And then the car hit her. The side-mirror splintered into countless shards, as if hitting a brick wall. He released his grip, accepting that he was making this worse.
Will did an emergency-stop, clicked on the hand-brake, and jumped out of the driver’s seat, as Hal noted that Fleetwood was blasting out from the speakers of the car.
Will was clearly alarmed, searching for the object he had apparently collided with, as Rachel and Jon came running out of the lodge, reacting to the sickening sound of a car being struck. On closer inspection, Hal noticed that Kara had somehow carved away the paint on the driver’s-side door.
He set off after her, not knowing what he would say when he reached her.
*
Kara was at the beginning of the driveway now. She closed her eyes, not slowing her pace, as Jasmine’s car shot past her. She couldn’t bear to see her own face, laughing, joking and knocking back a beer. Jealousy took over her soul for a moment, but was quickly replaced by despair. But she kept walking.