by Wyatt Kane
April smiled and tossed her soft hair. She wore a blueish shirt and brown pants that matched June’s dress and hugged her in all the right places. Of course, I’d just seen a whole lot more of her and her sister while they were on stage, but I did my best to pretend like their beautiful bodies weren’t in my mind as I said my hellos.
They were ready to go. June took April’s hand and pulled her to the door. I shut off the lights and opened the door. Looking outside, I didn’t see anyone out back who might be suspicious, but that didn’t stop me from checking every dark corner.
“All clear, ladies,” I said.
April smiled. “Are you always this polite, Caleb—?”
I smiled back. “Winter,” I supplied. “And I try, April. So, where are you from?”
V
Back in the present, the old man answered my question. “All you need to know is that this whole thing, the anomaly, the bug demons, it’s all because of you, Caleb Winter,” he said.
“Me?” I asked, mostly confused by his words. “It’s my fault a giant bug jumped out of another dimension and attacked a strip club?” As I spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder how he knew my name.
The crazy old man raised his unruly eyebrows. “Good, good. You’re started to understand. Except no, not quite. Best I can figure is these bugs never intended to come to this time at all. They only did so because something pulled the rift in this direction.”
He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, and I couldn’t escape the idea that I was that something.
The twins both missed the significance of the implication. They were both looking his way with expressions of uncertainty mixed with concern. June shifted about on the cushions to find a more comfortable spot, wincing as she jostled her ankle. “Another dimension?” she said. “What do you mean?”
Her sister turned to me. She was sitting almost close enough to touch. The van wasn’t exactly bigger on the inside but there was still more than enough space for all of us to spread out. Even with the floating egg-thing in the middle.
“Do you know what that thing was? That magic hole, and the monsters that came through it?” April asked me. Maybe she found being close to me comforting, given what we’d just been through.
I shook my head, still wondering if someone had slipped something into my beer. Even though I hadn’t managed to drink any of it, it was still the best explanation for everything that had happened. “This is the weirdest night I’ve ever had.”
The wizard grinned. “But it won’t be the weirdest night you’ll have.”
“What?” June asked. Then she frowned as if it didn’t matter. “Whatever. I’m getting out of here. Come on, April. This guy is nuts.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant me or the wizard, but I’d had about enough as well. When April moved to get out, I followed.
The blonde twin opened the door, and bug goo dripped from the top of the van onto dark pavement. I hopped out and then turned to help June, but she gripped the van instead, leaning most of her weight on one leg.
“You can’t go,” the old man said casually from his place among the cushions.
“Watch us,” I spat. The adrenaline rush was fading, and I found myself fed up with the whole situation. It was late. We’d all had a fright. All I could think about was getting June to a hospital and then getting myself home to bed.
But something was wrong. The road was quiet. We had stopped on a one-lane track running through dark trees. The full moon rose over the treetops, illuminating an eerie mist that blanketed the forest.
I frowned. Trees? The club was near the middle of town. There were no forests nearby, and we hadn’t traveled that far.
Then it hit me. The moon. It hadn’t been full at the Club.
“Where are we?” I demanded.
“Ah,” the wizard said, as nonchalant as you like. “You noticed.” Still sitting on the cushions, he reached around to root in a rusty foot locker behind the driver’s seat. When he turned back, he held a bottle of bourbon.
“Are you purposely trying my patience?” I asked, using my most intimidating bouncer’s voice.
The old man took a long swig from the bottle and then peered at me, completely unfazed. “The question isn’t ‘where’ but ‘when’. You can’t go back because we’ve left 2019. One of the minor bug demons ended up here. It’s an unfortunate side effect of those time displacers.”
April had wandered a short way away. At the wizard’s words, she edged closer to the van. “One of those bugs is in the creepy forest?” The fear in her voice was noticeable.
“Just a little one,” the wizard said. As if that made a difference.
“We’ve left 2019,” the old man had said, but it seemed as if I was the only one to focus on that particular nugget. June had turned herself around and glared at the old man again. “I’m not getting back in there,” she said.
“My dear June,” the wizard said, treating her to one of his knowing looks. “You have about two minutes before the demon senses us and makes its way onto the road. I suggest that just for this once, you give up that stubborn front and get in the van post haste.”
June gaped at him. She could have asked a million questions, but the one that came out of her mouth was, “How do you know our names?”
It was a good question. I followed it up. “Who are you?” I asked.
“What are you?” April added.
They were all fair, logical questions, but the wizard answered none of them. Instead, he took another swig of bourbon and began muttering to himself.
Finally, I’d had enough. Even though I preferred to handle things without resorting to violence, sometimes there was just no other way. I reached in past June, grabbed the old man by his raggedy collar, and jerked him clean out of the van.
“Hey!” he yelled, grappling with me.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on! Where are we? When are we? And how the fuck do we get back home?” I shouted in his face. “Or so help me, I’m going to leave you for that demon bug’s dinner!”
The wizard chuckled again, which only soured my mood more.
“It’s not funny.”
“Oh, yes, it is, from where I’m standing,” he said.
I wanted to smash his head against the van, but he was an old man, guilty of nothing more than saving my life and not giving me the answers I sought. The best I could do was give him a shake. “I’m warning you,” I growled.
He continued to chuckle. “Whatever makes you happy, I guess. But you might want to ask yourself one question before feeding me to that beast in the woods. Do you think you can drive my van by yourself?”
It was an odd question to ask, but I didn’t get a chance to answer it. From the trees, a soft scuttling noise caught my attention. The girls heard it too, and there was no more hesitation. They scrambled back into the van.
But I was feeling stubborn. I didn’t let go of the wizard, who managed to take another drink even as I half choked him with his shirt.
Then his chuckling stopped. “Oh, damn,” he said softly.
“What now?” I asked, caught between anger and worry.
This time, he actually answered. “The timelines are shifting. Always at the most inconvenient moments.” He looked down at his arms, which seemed to be fading.
This wasn’t happening, I said to myself. It was all a dream. A terrible, terrible dream.
The bottle of bourbon shattered onto the pavement. The old man hadn’t dropped it. Not exactly. His arms had just become too insubstantial to hold it. At the same time, something in the darkness screeched. My heart began pounding, and I let go of the old geezer to turn and watch the trees.
“What are you going to do?” he asked from behind me.
It seemed like a random question. “I’m not going to do anything. Aren’t you going to use some of your mumbo jumbo on it?”
“A time incursion, yes?”
“What? How should I know!” But when I glanced at the wizard, he wasn’t addressing me,
but the glowing, floating egg-thing in the van.
This dream, I thought, was becoming more and more surreal by the second.
“Yes, yes, I thought so,” the old man said.
The tell-tale click-click-click of pincers on pavement told me our time was up. I shoved the man—or what was left of him—into the van and slammed the door shut just as the monster emerged from the forest. It was a small one, as the old man had said, about the size of a lion, and it was armed with oversized scorpion pincers that gleamed in the moonlight.
I shuddered, recognizing it as the one that had nearly killed me.
To their credit, the girls didn’t do that woman-in-jeopardy-Hollywood-scream thing, but they did back away from the door in real terror.
“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.
The wizard looked at me and the twins as if assessing something. “I think you may be right. Time to get started!”
He made his awkward way into the cockpit and tried to pull the lever next to the steering wheel. But his arms were no more than ghostly memories of what they once were. Despite this, he looked at me and grinned.
“A little help?” he said, and I pulled the lever for him.
The van lurched into motion with a cough that didn’t sound right, and this time I fell onto April. She moaned under me, and not in a good way.
“Sorry,” I said, moving off her.
The van bumped along the forest track, going faster and faster. The time bubble appeared again, and once more I worked my awkward way to the front.
I made it just in time to see something materialize in front of us. “Look out!” I yelled. The old man was guiding the van with his teeth on the wheel and didn’t let go to reply. We lurched over or through whatever it was without slowing down.
The whole thing felt different this time, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because I’d pulled the lever first rather than at the critical moment. Either way, everything outside became a blur, and this time the girls did let out a quick squeal or two in sheer fright.
Then we careened out of the time bubble, hitting the road so hard I thought the wheels would fall off. The Bedford catapulted toward a stand of trees, and for the third time in less than an hour, I was sure I was going to die. And not just me, either. April, June, all of us. Tires squealed, and the vehicle skidded along the road, failed to make the bend in front of us, and skidded sideways toward the trees.
We sputtered to a stop with a gnarled old trunk inches from the passenger window. I was sure that the trunk wouldn’t have budged an inch if we’d hit it.
Fortunately, we had not. Thankful that we’d somehow managed to survive yet again, I pulled myself up from the floor to cuss the old wizard.
But he wasn’t there any more.
VI
Everything was quiet. The van had conked out when the old man disappeared, and the headlights had died. Yet, with the glowing egg thing floating in the back, it was still light enough to see clearly.
“We’re still in the forest,” April said haltingly.
With the tree inches from caving in the passenger door, I’d already figured that out. Except that as I peered through the windshield, I could see the moon, no longer full, shining between the branches above.
“We’re in a forest,” I said. “Who knows if it’s the same one? But we’re in a different time.”
April moved up to the front with me. “How can that be?” she asked in an uncertain voice. “And where is the old man?”
Good questions, I thought. The same ones I’d been wondering about. As incredible as it seemed, I couldn’t deny that we were actually travelling through time. And not just at a rate of one second per second, in an exclusively forward direction.
As to the how, I had no idea, but I was starting to wonder if it might be related to my talent. Hadn’t the old man hinted as much?
I shook my head, not knowing how to answer. For a moment, all was silent in the back of the van as each of us consulted our own thoughts and feelings.
Then, out of nowhere, someone spoke. “Ahem,” it began. “If I might be so bold?”
All three of us flinched in surprise. The voice came from the glowing, floating egg, which until then I’d simply accepted as being just another weird little part of this entire adventure.
I hadn’t even considered that it might start talking. Even when the old man had spoken to it, I’d just assumed he was mad.
“Uh, go ahead,” I managed.
“Thank you. The forest is the same one we were in before, time shifted by a week to escape the immediate attentions of the minor insectoid demon,” the Egg explained. Its voice was feminine and soothing, and hinted at an English accent. “That demonic entity has created – or will create – a disruption in the timeline that has resulted in the Wise One’s present non-existence. It is only by your presence, Caleb Winter, that I have been able to anchor the van itself to this reality. I am afraid it is up to the three of you to correct the disruption. If you fail, the Wise One will not return.”
All three of us simply stared at the floating, egg-shaped source of unexpected information. June was the first to find her voice. “That’s not the worst thing that could happen,” she said caustically.
Part of me tended to agree. Even though he’d literally saved my life, there was much about the old man I found irritating.
“If the Wise One does not reappear, you will be unable to return home,” the Egg said.
“Perfect,” I said. But June seemed unwilling to accept the pronouncements of an electronic device on faith.
“We’ll see about that,” she said. She looked about as if searching for something. “Damn. I don’t have my handbag. April, do you have your phone?”
The blonde twin looked momentarily surprised. She didn’t have a handbag with her either, but at least her pants came with pockets. She dug around in one of them and brought out a phone.
“No service,” she said after a moment, sounding disappointed.
“Maybe we could wander around a bit?” June suggested. “Pick up a signal?”
“Please accept my apologies, but that will not work,” said the Egg.
“Why not?” June demanded.
“Because we are no longer in the year of 2019.”
The three of us took a moment to digest this. Of course, it made perfect sense, I thought. We’d already accepted that we’d traveled through time. It was just that none of us had yet asked the important question.
Until now. “Um, what year is it, then?” April asked.
“The current year is 1954.”
1954. I didn’t know when cellphones were invented, but I was pretty sure it was a long way after that. Nor was it just cellphones. I mean, not even my favorite classic car had been designed. As an added bonus neither I nor the twins had been born, not by a long way.
I wondered briefly if I should try to find my parents, but then realized neither of them had been born either. Maybe my grandparents?
June stared at the Egg for a moment, then, without saying a word, tucked her phone back away.
“Okay,” I said. “So. As much as I hate to ask, how do we get him back?”
“You must neutralize the insect-demon haunting these woods. If you succeed at that, before it disrupts the time line, then the Wise One will reappear and we should all be able to go home.”
That’s when everyone started to talk at once.
“You can’t be serious,” June said. “Didn’t you see how that thing killed that man? Eddie, or whatever his name was?”
At the same time, I ran my fingers through my hair. “How do we defeat the bug demon?”
And April asked, “Is your home the same as ours? What are you, anyway?”
The Egg addressed each question separately. “The demon in these woods is not the large one that killed Eddie Tompkins outside the Good Times Club,” it said. “This is a much less powerful insectoid. Yet it is dangerous still, and more than capable of causing death. There is only on
e way to defeat it, and that is by killing it. If it lives, it will by reason of its very nature continue to disrupt the timeline. And that can and will result in ramifications beyond calculation.”
The Egg paused. Its surface was featureless, yet it still seemed to turn to face April. “As for my home, it is difficult to explain to those without a detailed knowledge of temporal mechanics and quantum field generation. Suffice it to say that my home is both here and not here, in much the same way as Schrödinger’s cat is concurrently both alive and dead. I am an Artificial Intelligence, and it is my role to track and preserve the timelines. Call me Shell.”
I stared at the Egg. The AI. Shell. I didn’t know quite what to say. It was a lot to take in.
April was quicker. “Shell. What about the bugs? The insect-demons?” the blonde twin asked. “What are they? Why are they here?”
“They are demons, but not in the sense of Heaven and Hell. They are extra-dimensional entities from beyond the space-time continuum as we know it, and they are forever seeking to bring destruction to this dimension. They look for weak spots and critical time nexuses, and do what they can to work those weak spots into tears in the fabric of time and space.”
Shell paused again. Perhaps the AI was organizing its thoughts. More likely, it was just giving us the chance to catch up. “The insectoid in this forest has trapped this area in a localized malformation of time. The forest is shrouded in darkness, skipping all daylight hours. If this continues unabated, the darkness will spread, potentially causing a tear that could eventually grow big enough to end all of time.”
I could only stare at the Egg, but it – or she – hadn’t yet finished.
“You must stop it,” Shell said.
Both April and June gasped in surprise. They did it in unison, as if of a single mind, and I was reminded that they were twins even though they seemed quite different from each other. April was friendlier by far, while her sister seemed more aggressive and highly strung.
My reaction was different. “How?” I asked.