A paperback copy of Mossflower was on the bed. He hadn’t seen it in ages.
A hockey uniform lay on the floor, identical to the one he’d worn the day of the accident.
A spiral notebook was next to it— marked ADAM SARNO, 5-208.
Grade 5. Room 208.
All my old stuff.
In my old room.
A dream. He had to be dreaming.
Adam set the camera down. He rubbed his eyes, then cast a long, level glance around the room.
Everything was normal. No dresser. No uniform.
He pinched himself. Hard enough to hurt.
Okay, you are officially awake. Do not freak. Look through the videocamera again. Everything will be normal. Then you can go eat breakfast.
He swallowed. Lifted. Looked.
“Adam, you’re going to be late for school!” his dad’s voice boomed out.
Adam opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out.
My old pajamas…the Monopoly game, with the cover still intact…the radio I threw out last year…
WHAT IS GOING ON?
His eye shot down to the bottom of the frame. To the electronic indicators.
The correct time. The correct month and day.
But Adam stared at the last numeral. The year.
He clicked the RESET button. He tried to change the setting.
Nothing happened.
The YEAR setting was stuck.
Four years earlier.
He doesn’t have much time.
Who?
Adam.
I thought you meant the other one.
5
ADAM RAN DOWN THE stairs two at a time. He darted past the kitchen.
Please please please let this be a figment of my imagination.
His mom and dad looked up curiously from the morning newspaper.
“Forgot to do some homework,” Adam called out.
He went into the den, pulled a blank video-cassette from a shelf, and tucked it under his shirt.
If it’s not a figment, I want proof.
He bounded back up to his room. Quickly he inserted the tape into the videocamera, pressed RECORD, and looked through the viewfinder.
Yes.
The old room filled the frame. The wrong year glowed on the indicator.
He would have it on tape.
Evidence.
“Homework?” his dad’s voice thundered up from the kitchen. “Adam Sarno, I want an explanation now!”
Adam jumped.
“Coming!” He lowered the camera and set it on his desk. Then he ran for the door.
And the room blipped.
Not a flash of light, exactly. A flash of something. A momentary blur of colors. Along with an odd popping sound.
Adam stopped. He looked over his shoulder. The videocamera was angled slightly away from him, pointing to the center of the room. Still on.
Slowly he retraced his steps backward and sideways, closer to the camera’s line of sight.
Blip.
The old hockey uniform materialized on the floor. Under his foot.
He choked back a gasp.
Slowly he lifted his eyes upward.
The videocamera had disappeared. Only the lens remained. It floated in the air, a hovering eye.
Under it was a mess of papers.
Fifth-grade homework.
The Monopoly game, Mossflower, the spiral notebook. It was all exactly as he’d seen through the lens.
But he wasn’t looking through the lens anymore.
He was in front of it.
In the room.
In the past.
Trapped.
Panic raced through him. He had to get out.
The lens. Move away from it.
Adam darted to the left. Toward his door.
Blip.
The flash again. The shift in colors. The popping sound.
He was back. His room was exactly the way he’d left it. The old stuff was gone.
The videocamera was intact on his desk. Not just a floating lens.
And Adam’s mind was racing.
Can I control this?
Can I go back and forth?
Am I nuts?
Before he could answer that last question, he stepped in front of the camera again.
Blip.
The flash and the popping noise no longer scared him.
As the past reassembled itself, Adam took a long, hard look around.
He noticed what he’d been too panicked to see before.
The colors, for instance. They were muted, a little too brown. The sounds—a passing car, the hissing of the upstairs shower—were dull, softened.
The light through the window was unusually bright. He looked out.
Snow.
He thought about what he’d seen through the viewfinder last night, outside of Lianna’s house. The bleached-out street.
The camera wasn’t broken at all. I was seeing snow.
He thought back to four years ago. Had it snowed then? He couldn’t remember.
Adam walked across the room. He ran his fingers over the bedsheets. He reached behind his headboard and felt the hardened lumps of chewed bubble gum he’d always put there.
Until Mom made me clean it all off. At age ten.
He turned toward his shelves and saw a book—Time and Again by Jack Finney, which he hadn’t seen since he lent it to Lianna in seventh grade.
He reached for it.
His finger made contact. He could feel the texture of the binding as he pulled.
But the book barely budged.
It was as if it were made of some strange new substance—somehow solid but somehow not, a density of air.
He pulled harder. Really yanked. The book teetered toward him.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Adam spun around. Behind him, the book fell to the floor.
Dad was charging angrily up the stairs. Adam recognized the heavy footsteps.
But which Dad? Past or present?
Whatever. He was in the wrong place for either.
He leaped out of camera range.
Blip.
His room—his current, totally solid room—materialized around him.
Dad of the present charged in. His eyes shot right to the videocamera. “This is your homework?”
“Video class,” Adam blurted out. “I mean, video project. Communication arts class.”
“Where’d you get this?” He was heading for the camera now.
“No!” Adam rushed in front of him.
But it was too late.
Dad lifted the camera to his right eye.
And looked through.
Order a file on the father.
Not necessary.
Why?
Because only the boy can see.
6
“IT’S BROKEN.”
All day long, Mr. Sarno’s words stayed with Adam.
He didn’t see it. Lianna didn’t see it.
I’m the only one.
Which meant either the camera was defective, or Adam was crazy.
The tape would tell. He was dying to see it.
He kept the videocamera with him in school. It was in the old backpack, stuffed into the bottom of his pack. Now, as he pedaled away from school with Lianna and Ripley, he could feel it jabbing against his back.
“I hate surprises,” Lianna remarked.
“You’ll like this one,” Adam said.
“It better be good,” Ripley grumbled. “And quick. I have hockey practice.”
They glided onto Locust Avenue and then swerved up Ripley’s driveway. “Ripley,” Adam said as he dropped his bike in the backyard, “it’ll blow you away.”
If it works.
Adam hadn’t seriously thought about the alternative. But as he climbed the stairs to Ripley’s room, he began shaking.
What if it doesn’t?
Humiliation. His friends would know he was loony.
Stop. Think posi
tive.
If it did work, if he’d captured the past on tape, if the camera was seeing what happened four years ago…
Saturday. Three o’clock.
The accident.
He would have to go there. Take the video-camera to the lake.
And see.
No. Don’t even think about it.
It would happen again. Before his eyes. No more fragmented visions. No more blocked memories.
Cold, hard images.
He would know. For sure.
And that part scared him the most.
Ripley had to force his bedroom door open against a pile of old clothes. They slid into the room, sweeping puffballs of dust before them.
“How can you live like this?” Lianna asked.
Ripley picked up the pile and tossed it onto a wicker basket full of mud-encrusted football gear. “The butler’s on vacation.”
Her lips curled in disgust, Lianna sat on the edge of Ripley’s bed.
Adam set his backpack next to her. He pulled out the other pack and placed it on the bed. The unmarked manila envelope peeked out of the open zipper. Taking out the videocamera, he ejected the tape.
Rrrrrrip. Lianna was tearing open the manila envelope.
“What are you doing?” Adam cried out.
“It might have ID.” Lianna pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings. “Oops. I’m sorry, Adam. Why didn’t you tell me this stuff was yours?”
She held out the pile. From the top article, a headline jumped out at Adam.
TEN-YEAR-OLD EASTON BOY FALLS THROUGH ICE, DIES
Death Could Have Been Averted, Police Chief Says
Adam quickly paged through the others.
Inquest Rules Death an Accident…Suspicions of Foul Play Investigated…Easton Parents Demand Safety Referendum …
All clippings about Edgar’s death.
Fresh clippings. With straight-cut edges, unyellowed by time. Police memos, hospital notes, detective reports—stuff Adam had never even seen before.
What on earth—?
“They’re not mine,” Adam said.
“Who else could they belong to?” Lianna asked.
“I don’t know!” Adam replied.
“And why would anybody be carrying them around?”
Good question.
The camera, the clippings. The backpack.
Whose?
Why?
“Maybe the guy is a reporter. Or a cop.” Ripley took an article from the top of the pile and began reading: “ ‘Ten-year-old Easton native Lianna Frazer was lauded by the Easton Chamber of Commerce for her heroism in response to a tragic accident in which horseplay during a hockey game led to the drowning of Edgar Hall, also ten. Her quick actions in summoning adult help were credited for saving the life of Alan Sarno…’ Well, at least they got one name right.”
“This is too weird,” Adam muttered.
“Okay, simple explanation,” Lianna said. “These belong to your parents. They fell off a shelf into the backpack.”
Adam shook his head. “When I opened the backpack last night, this envelope was already in it. I saw it.”
“You thought you saw a lot of things last night.”
“You…are…being…followed,” Ripley intoned dramatically, picking up the videocamera and pointing it at Adam. “Uh-oh. Bad news. The camera, she is broken.”
“I could have told you that,” Lianna said.
The camera. Think about the camera, Sarno. Worry about the clippings later.
“Actually, this is why I wanted to come here,” Adam said, measuring his words. “See, the camera isn’t broken.”
“Look for yourself.” Ripley held the camera to Adam’s face.
Adam took it and looked through the view-finder.
Blue.
Blue wallpaper. Blue bedsheets and carpets. He was staring at an image of Edgar’s room.
And then he saw Edgar.
His feet were propped up on his desk. He was fiddling with a handheld video game. Avoiding homework:
Oh my god.
He was alive.
Happy.
The indicator light read January 13. Edgar died on the fifteenth.
He had two days.
Warn him!
“Ed —” he blurted out.
Adam cut himself off.
This was insane. Edgar couldn’t hear him.
As he put the camera down, Lianna and Ripley were both staring at him.
“Uh, Earth to Adam?” Ripley said.
“I—I saw—” Adam stammered.
Don’t tell them. They won’t believe it.
Let them see for themselves.
Show the tape.
Adam grabbed the tape from the bed and put it in Ripley’s VCR. He rewound it and pressed PLAY.
The screen blinked to life.
A fuzzy image took shape. Bed. Dresser. Hockey uniform on the floor.
Yes.
YES!
“You see?” Adam blurted out.
“Adam, that’s your old bedroom,” Lianna said.
“Exactly. When I was ten.” The view began to shift—just as Adam remembered it, moving around as he had moved the camera.
“This is what you wanted to show us?” Ripley said. “Your very first home video?”
“You didn’t have a videocamera when you were ten, Adam,” Lianna remarked.
“Right. I recorded what you’re seeing with this camera. When I look through the lens, the camera sees the past. The place is right, the time and day are right—but it’s all four years earlier.”
“Four years?” Lianna gave him a sharp look.
She gets it.
“January thirteenth. Two days before Edgar died. Which means—”
“You expect me to believe this?” Lianna asked. “Why can’t I see any of it? Why can’t Ripley?”
“I don’t know!” Adam replied.
Ripley reached for the remote. “This is ridiculous. I have to go—”
“Wait,” Lianna said. “What’s that?”
Something in the image was moving.
Not a solid object, really. More like a distortion in the air, a shimmer in the shape of a human.
Adam’s shape.
It passed into the frame on the right side, then out again.
The same path I took this morning when I started to go to breakfast. In and out of the past. The first time the room blipped.
The shape reappeared.
Yes. When I stepped back in. To look around.
It wandered across the frame, stopping at the window, reaching behind the headboard, trying to pull the book off the shelf…
Adam could barely breathe.
I am not insane.
The scene I saw was real. It’s on tape.
And I was in it.
“Now, that’s pretty cool,” Ripley said. “How did you edit your image in like that?”
“That’s me!” Adam protested. “I stepped in front of the lens, and I was in the image. In the past. Well, maybe not totally, physically. You saw the shape. Maybe just a part of me was there. My body aura or something.”
Ripley nodded solemnly. “Or your body odor. Sometimes that takes on a life of its own.”
“Adam, you’re scaring me,” Lianna said.
“You don’t believe me?” Adam asked.
Ripley burst out laughing. “I believe you are seriously, seriously ill.”
From the TV, Adam heard a faint whistling. He turned to look.
The image was still. The angle was low, about waist level.
The camera was resting on the desk. I was downstairs, eating. I’d left it on.
Another figure was entering the frame.
This one was not a ghostly shimmer.
It was Adam. At age ten.
Me.
I’m watching me, not knowing I’m being watched.
Ripley narrowed his eyes. Lianna watched intently.
The younger Adam pulled the sheets up on his bed. Then he grab
bed some books from his dresser and quickly stuffed them in a backpack.
As he was about to leave the frame, he stopped.
Leaning down, he picked up a book. Even in the dim light, the title was visible. Time and Again.
The ten-year-old Adam looked puzzled. Wondering how the book got there.
Only the fourteen-year-old Adam knew.
A tape. We should have planned for this.
He is resourceful.
But the girl—must not know.
Nor the boy.
Perhaps we should pull the project.
Give it time.
7
“ADAM, THIS IS CREEPY.” Lianna paced the room.
I can convince her.
“I saw Edgar,” Adam blurted out. “A few minutes ago, when I looked through the lens.”
Lianna blanched. “But you couldn’t. Edgar is dead.”
“Not four years ago. Not yet.”
Ripley glared at him in disbelief. “You superimposed images over an old cassette.”
“Then how did the image move that book?” Adam asked.
“Coincidence,” Ripley said. “It fell.”
“I pulled it down!” Adam insisted.
Ripley grabbed the camera and thrust it toward Adam. “Okay, time traveler. You have special powers? Prove it.”
Adam’s fingers closed around the videocamera. He looked for a place to set it down.
No.
You’ll be in the same room as Edgar.
Inches from him.
Knowing he’s about to be killed.
And you won’t be able to do a thing.
“I can’t,” Adam said. “Not here.”
“I thought so,” Ripley said with a grin. “Okay, guys, we’ve had our fun. I have hockey practice in ten minutes.”
“Adam?” Lianna said. “Was this all some kind of joke?”
She was glaring at Adam. Disappointment, accusation, betrayal, and fear all passed across her eyes.
He was losing her.
His only possible partner.
Do it, Sarno.
Stand up for the right thing once in a while.
He slid a pile of papers to the back of Ripley’s desk and set the camera down. “Okay. I changed my mind.”
He turned the camera on.
Lianna’s eyes fixed on him.
Ripley yawned.
Slowly Adam stepped in front of the lens.
“I still seeeeee you…” Ripley taunted.
Blip.
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