Nightwalk 2 Page 2

  “We all do, Mr. Garrett. I simply do it more consciously than most.” He smiled, then gestured at the small patio table and chairs near my back door. “But unlike our last encounters, I am slightly less rushed, and I’m starting to realize I have been terribly rude.by invading your domicile and putting you on the spot like this. Please, consider my oversight to be the faux pas of a far traveler who meant no offense.”

  “Right,” I mumbled. Then, seizing on my unexpected role as host to buy myself time to think, I continued with, “Can I get you anything?”

  The offer seemed to delight him.

  “Perhaps you can! The last time I visited this world, there was a popular drink known as a Cuba Libre that I grew somewhat fond of. Are you familiar with it?”

  “A rum and coke.”

  “Indeed,” his smile widened as he seated himself at the table. “The last writer I spent time with was surprisingly averse to all things alcoholic. Perhaps I have fared better in my choices this time?”

  “It appears you have.” I even managed a weak smile of my own. “Rum and coke, coming right up.”

  I stepped into the house and made for the kitchen, thinking furiously the entire way.

  What the hell was he doing here? He damn sure wasn’t just visiting, so he had come for something. Something he could get from me.

  The last time I saw him had been at the disaster in Coventry Woods. He had claimed to have simply stumbled across me after being attracted by the disturbance… so to speak. His role in the mess had merely been to inform certain people of a way out, and then help them if they made it to where he waited. Otherwise, I sensed he had been an idle spectator to a drama featuring players who were little more than bugs to him… like a walker who had stopped to witness a centipede struggling in an ant bed.

  But this time was different. This time there was no cataclysm to catch his attention, and he had come looking specifically for me.

  Needless to say, this didn’t exactly fill me with the warm fuzzies.

  Having mixed the drinks, I returned to find the man in white still sitting at the table. He had gone back to staring at the city in the valley below. Yet now his gaze had darkened, although with what I could not tell. I set the two glasses on the table and watched in silence as he lifted his and sipped while continuing to stare at the distant lights.

  “As I remembered,” he nodded with vague approval.

  I sensed I had been given my chance to gather my wits, but my reprieve had now reached its end. The time had come to screw up my courage and get down to business.

  “So,” I began, as I seated myself across the small table from him, “to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  That prompted a closed-mouth grin from my guest, but one of the most ironic sort.

  “Fate, I suppose. Or luck. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  Oh, how I just love those kinds of answers.

  “Would that be good luck or bad luck?” I pressed carefully.

  He still studied the city in the distance as he took another drink.

  “Well, there’s the rub, Mr. Garrett. I suppose it depends on what end of the matter you choose to view things.”

  Of course it did.

  “Aannnd I’m guessing the view from my ‘end of the matter’ isn’t going to be the one with sunshine and rolling hills of clover.”

  Now the amusement returned to his eyes, although they still contained that darkness when he turned to face me.

  “I’m afraid not,” he replied. “I’m afraid not. For you see, Mr. Garrett, I’m about to offer you an opportunity to try and save the world.”

  ###

  His words hung in the night air like a pronouncement of doom.

  “Save the world, huh…”

  “Yes.”

  I took a deep breath as I considered the implications. I couldn’t think of any good ones.

  “So, then you’re saying the world is in need of saving?”

  He studied me with his ironic grin and dark eyes, then took another sip of his drink before answering.

  “Yes, Mr. Garrett. If nothing is done tonight to alter the current course of events, your civilization will fall in eight to ten years. The end will be catastrophic, and all but a pitiful few of the human beings on this planet will die screaming.”

  Wow.

  That pretty much trumped everything I had been concerned about. What could I say to that? I simply stared open-mouthed at him from my side of the table. I finally took another sip of my own drink, before finding my voice again.

  “Eight to ten years?”

  “Yes. The exact date of the end will become clearer as the time approaches, but the date is not what concerns us here. The issue before you is tonight it is still possible to go back and alter the event which set your world on this course. Think of it as a bit of temporal surgery to correct a problem.”

  “And it has to be tonight?”

  “Yes. After tonight, enough consequences will have arisen from the event to fix it in history.”

  What was he talking about? Changing history? The future or the past?

  “I’m not a scientist,” I objected. “I don’t understand this kind of stuff.”

  “Neither do your scientists,” came the sardonic reply. “All you really need to understand is the past is not quite as rigid as you think, nor the future as fluid as you might hope. And in this case that works in your favor as a race, although maybe not so much for you as an individual.”

  Right. I could see where this was going. Might as well jump straight to the chase.

  “Because by ‘altering things’ you mean going back to Coventry Woods and changing something, and I’m the one who has to go back and do it.”

  “Very good, Mr. Garrett,” he replied, watching me with cryptic intensity, “but only if you so choose. Only if you so choose.”

  “I have a choice?”

  “Indeed. Eight years is a long time for one of your race, and you might prefer to settle for those instead of attempting something you may not live to finish. You have built a comfortable life here, and I certainly wouldn’t fault you for choosing a guaranteed eight more years of it. I would simply advise you to arrange the means to end things quickly when the time comes, and spare yourself the worst.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s that bad.”

  I began to find it a little hard to breathe again, and for one brief second even considered asking him to leave. Why the hell come to me? I didn’t want to know this. I didn’t want to know anything about this. But now I did know, and it was too late to send him away. His leaving would only give me eight years of hell without knowing what could have been done.

  “And it has to be me?”

  “You, or one of two others. If you decline, I will approach one of them next.”

  “Who are the two others?”

  “A young photographer named Paul Maris, and an even younger college student named Casey Stafford. Mr. Maris has spent the past two years in federal detention, and while his incarceration poses no obstacle to me, I’m afraid he has not fared well in their care. He would be my last choice on who to send on this venture.”

  Of course he would. But it wouldn’t matter anyway because there was no damn way Casey would say no.

  Which meant there was no damn way I could say no.

  “And it absolutely has to be one of us?” I swallowed. “Why?”

  “Because, Mr. Garrett, you humans are four-dimensional creatures, which limits my options when it comes to these types of things. To send a human back to a time they existed before, I have to “amputate” them at their current point in the present and then “graft” them to themselves back at that point in time. What this means to the person involved is I would be required to place them physically near their former selves, which comes with its dangers because they must not let their former self see them. From there, they can go their own direction… the sooner the better. And since the three of you were the only one
s physically in a position to reach the objective in question, you are the only viable candidates for the job.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t really follow his explanation, but at the same time I sorta did. It had a sense of logic to it, even if I got the feeling it was grossly oversimplified and incomplete. In the end, I guess the fact that the man in white hadn’t lied to me yet came as the deciding factor.

  I had to do this. Only twenty minutes ago my greatest concern had been making sure I turned all the lights back off in time to hide my problems from Stella. Now, as impossible as it sounded, I would be plunging back into the source of those problems at the behest of a being I didn’t understand. And from the tone of things, I would be doing it almost immediately.

  My evening was now officially shot.

  “So,” I exhaled, “do I get to gather a few things first? Maybe write a couple of goodbyes?”

  “There would be no point in the latter,” he answered. “If you succeed, you will return to the very same spot within an instant of when you left. If you fail, your body will be found in the condition it was at the time of your departure. There will be no discernable cause of death, but they will probably come up with something.”

  At least I knew how things would shake out for Stella and Casey if this didn’t work.

  “But by all means,” he continued, “run gather anything you might find useful. I will make my preparations while you do. But do not tarry. Ironically, time is now becoming of the essence.”

  “Yeah.”

  I walked back inside, moving with all the enthusiasm of the condemned. This wouldn’t take long. I went straight up the stairs to our bedroom, where the three items I would take awaited.

  The first was a small backpack hidden in the back of our large walk-in closet. I thought of it as my security blanket. It held things I intellectually knew I would never need, yet had gathered because… just because. If Stella ever noticed it she hadn’t said anything.

  The second lay concealed in a box under my bed marked “old manuscripts”. If my wife had found this, it would have definitely been mentioned. I pulled the weapons belt and pistol out and strapped it on. In truth, I wasn’t quite the recluse Stella believed. I simply didn’t want her to know of my trips to the shooting range, and how many there had been. While I had always been ambivalent on the matter of guns, she had strong feelings about them and would have been horrified to discover I now owned one… and probably even more horrified to find out how good I had made myself become with it.

  I had never intended to use it, and it stayed under my bed unless at the range. I was no warrior. I can’t honestly say I even had the idea of personal or home protection when I purchased the weapon. There are other models better suited for that anyway. Like the backpack, I didn’t envision needing it, yet had acquired and mastered the thing… just because.

  The last item hung on the top of my bedpost… a new, authentic replica of the fedora Humphrey Bogart wore when playing Philip Marlowe. The only difference was the pencil stub I had shoved in the hatband as a token of my craft. I loved it, and whether I ended up saving the world or getting buried, I might as well do it with a little style.

  I looked around the bedroom with the understanding it would quite probably be for the last time.

  To see it now, one wouldn’t believe we had lost everything a mere two years ago. Not simply because the furniture had been replaced, but for all the little things. All the little pictures, knick-knacks, and personal touches Stella had added to craft this house into a home. While I did my part to support the place, she had been the heart that brought it to life.

  I tried to think of some parting words to say to the woman who was there in every way but in person. Yet, in the end, I realized they all amounted to the same thing. And when it came right down to it, I just couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye.

  “You’ll never know I left,” I promised instead, fighting with every fiber of my being to believe it.

  Then I turned to go downstairs and dive back into hell.

  ###

  I stopped in surprise and surveyed the scene on the balcony before me.

  The man in white remained at the table, but now he leaned over and fiddled with a bunch of strange apparatus spread before him. They were mainly fashioned from what appeared to be blown glass, and seemed to contain varying degrees of electrical glows. I couldn’t begin to discern their function. Honestly, they looked like something more from an ancient Frankenstein laboratory than today.

  The other items catching my attention were three objects which looked like tall, skinny lava lamps… only with the lava removed and replaced by lightning. They were about five feet tall and arranged in a triangle on the floor before me. They reminded me of the small glass sphere full of lightning he had pulled from his pocket during our escape last time, and I remembered him saying later how he had an affinity for electrical devices

  Yet somehow this looked like stuff belonging in a magician’s side show… which, considering his choice of dress, suited him perfectly.

  “Wow,” I murmured, “so this is how you do time travel?”

  “Indeed!” he replied with cheerful enthusiasm as he studied the chaotic assortment before him. “I think you will find that no matter how great one’s abilities or skills, there is nothing like a little instrumentation to improve precision. We do want me to be precise, don’t we, Mr. Garrett?”

  “I guess,” I shrugged in helpless confusion.

  “Think of it this way, sir. I am about to fire you at a very small target lying two years in the past and millions of miles away, as both we and it are spinning and orbiting other bodies while hurtling through the universe at many thousands of miles per hour. And if I miss by so much as an inch, or I’m merely off by a few feet per second, your mission will end in a glorious bloody mess before it even starts.”

  Well, there was a happy thought.

  “Oh.”

  “But fear not, I have not missed in millennia and have no intention of starting now. The danger for you begins once you’ve arrived. But I’m sure you remember the situation.”

  I remembered. I remembered all too well. But I wasn’t ready to focus on that yet. And since I didn’t care to know any more about the mechanics of this jaunt, I figured the time had arrived to address the matter I had been putting off. Now came the question I hated to ask.

  “So, who are you sending me back there to kill?”

  The man in white straightened from his table and looked at me, his dark eyes now black in the gloom. He still wore a smile, but I swear I could feel the shadows gather close on my balcony.

  “Very good, Mr. Garrett,” he replied in a soft voice. “I see your wits serve you in more than merely the mysteries you write.”

  Yeah, hooray for me. I can spot an ugly inevitability from a mile away. Not that it ever does me any good.

  “It’s the only logical scenario,” I replied. “Other people must have escaped, if for no other reason than it would have been impossible for the police to completely seal off such a large area in such a short time. And since all the monsters and the people who didn’t get out were annihilated by the bomb, they couldn’t have done anything to threaten the future. So somebody who knows something, or found out something, or carried something out of there, has to be the threat.”

  Then I took a deep breath and exhaled before finishing with the logical conclusion of that line of thought.

  “And the event I’m being sent to change is their escape.”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Garrett.”

  So there it was. I would either be going back to Coventry Woods to die and lose everything, or kill somebody whose only crime had been doing the same thing as everyone else… trying to understand the hell-spawned insanity going on around him, and getting out of there alive.

  And if I failed, the world died with me.

  “So who is this lucky person?”

  “His name is Jason Hallett. He is a member of your law enfor
cement establishment and was the sole survivor of the conflict that erupted at Robert Chandra’s house.”

  Oh, God.

  A police officer? I needed to hunt down and kill a police officer? I may not be the most straight-laced person on the planet, but I had known enough police officers through Casey to understand most were truly decent human beings who were in the profession for all the right reasons. Other than a kid, he would be one of the last people I would want to offer harm.

  Yet that also added one more reason I couldn’t refuse. The idea of Casey being faced with this mission was unthinkable. Even if she somehow managed to succeed, it would destroy her.

  “And where do I find him?”

  “Mr. Hallett,” the man in white continued, “will be in motion, meaning I can’t give you directions straight to him. But he will be taking an irregular, west-northwest course from Chandra’s house and exiting at a point less than four hundred yards north of the northern overpass. At the time luck was with him and he was crawling through a pipe at the edge of the event when the bomb fell. He escaped in the confusion immediately afterward.”

  Yeah, lucky guy. He had probably faced and fought through a whole menagerie of horrors, only to nearly have his ass blown off by his own government as he crawled to safety. Now, even though he would never know it, he would be doing it all over again… and this time with an assassin on his tail.

  This just kept getting better and better.

  “And there’s no way I can talk to this guy and convince him to fade into obscurity, or whatever it is he needs to do to not screw things up?”

  “No, Mr. Garrett. If Jason Hallett leaves the area alive, the future is set and the dominoes will start to fall.”

  Damn.

  “In that case, can you do me one favor?” I asked as I reached back into a side pocket of my backpack. “Can you tell me the exact time it will be on the other end when I arrive?”