A Parish Darker: A Victorian Suspense Novella (17 page)

-:-

As he laid out his plan for me, I imagined the proposal came now in much the same way as it did before. The Baron told me I would be entering the machine deep into the night and would be transported back over two decades earlier. It would be on a day right as the machine would become fully operational, but the younger Baron would not yet have realized its potential.

What most surprised me was that the Baron shared this plan with great wherewithal. I knew he had spent twenty years planning this. This would be a correction of course—a means to an end that would satisfy his life’s work without conceding to his enemy.

“Edwin, you must realize now the importance of following my every instruction without deviation,” said the Baron as he circled the library and rested his hand on my shoulder from behind.

“But, Baron,” I began in a hushed tone, “why has it come to this?”

“No other version of myself understands the importance of what I am doing here. I do not trust them—not in the past, and not in the future. When your older self visited me back then, you said plainly and resolutely: ‘Twenty years from now, the war that is soon to begin rages on. You have spent twenty years sending assassins back to kill your past self to no avail. You realized when no further attacks were being made on you that your future self was finally out of the picture and it was time to make your move.’

“It was then that I called upon you, and it is now that I call upon you for the same reason. You must realize now that you cannot deviate from the plan. This is what must happened—you have to kill me. If you do not, neither of us will ever escape this.”

I asked the Baron of the dangers involved. His response seemed both measured and rehearsed—designed to keep me at calm and focused on the task he had given me.

“When I sent the others back, I did so on those applicable days in which the conditions were right. I am sure some did not survive the journey due to even the slightest of miscalculations. I would send them back at different points but their destinations would come on the same days. In this way, I felt I had devised a means with which my past self would not be able to overcome the odds. Alas, he was more cunning than I initially supposed.”

There was only one question I had to ask of my host, and he knew it would come sooner rather than later.

“What should I use?” I asked. “What should I use to kill you?”

He shook his head as if he had traced my thoughts. “I cannot risk sending you with a gun lest we possibly lose you or the machine in the process. It will need to be a blade, as it was with all the others in the past. All the same, my past self may sever the hand you use to hold the gun before you are able to raise it. You will simply need to wait for your chance to strike him—preferably through the heart, or the head.”

The Baron turned and stood with his hands crossed behind his back as he gazed out the window that looked out onto the withered garden below.

“Just ensure you finish the job this time. You may think him innocent, but do not let your good nature get the better of you. You have seen for yourself what he can become. If one of my lesser selves wins this, the consequences could be utterly dire. I know that now. That past we have discussed is unchangeable. Yet, it is certain that our chance to change another future is here.

“Back in that time, you betrayed the trust of the Baron who sent you back to rid of me. You said to me, ‘I do not want this to end how he wishes. I want to set all of this right, without having to kill anyone. I need you to use this information to never activate the machine. You need to ensure that the machine is never used so that the cycle stops here.’ ”

I knew not what my past-future self thought, but I clapped my hands together in a tapping rhythm, stretching the remaining time as long as could be done. “Why can you not just destroy the machine and be done with this?”

“Even if I destroy the machine now, it will mean nothing in the past. My past self will continue to use it to his own ends—and I will be unable to make any effort to stop him. I must ensure that my best self perseveres and emerges the victor, even if it means my eventual final life ends with this endeavor.

“I discovered something that could change the course of human history, but I know its power is too great to ever be used for more good than bad. Our motivations for changing the past are nearly universally selfish, in some form, and nearly always detrimental. I know that better than anyone.”

Upon raising from my chair, the Baron made his way to my position and stretched out his hand.

“Edwin,” he began, “you are one of the few friends I have made in this life—I only hope that we will not have to acquaint each other again in another.”

I nodded and took his hand in mine. This would be one of the last times we would ever be in such a position—of that, I somehow felt certain.

-:-

The two of us were soon on the move, making our way up the steps to the upper floor of Castle Savanberg. Before long, and with few words, we made our way to a place I was most familiar.

“These shall again be your quarters, my friend. They have changed little—no, they have changed not at all in your absence,” The Baron spoke with an abundance of eagerness as he showed me around the room I had spent several nights in twenty years earlier. “I have preserved it all exactly as it had been, including your choice of book. I thought you may wish to finish it someday upon returning. Please, do make yourself at home. You will have several hours of time before we are to begin.”

It was almost as if our dispositions had been swapped with one another’s. His temperament had gone from confident but concerned to almost jubilant. I had come in with untold confidence and felt as if I had been left with only apprehension.

Shaking the nerves from my hands, I caught the Baron before he left the room. He promised with the utmost certainty that each and every word I would write on these pages—the words you now read—would immediately be delivered to Morse Cottingley at the address I have prescribed. I do not know if I believe he will go through with such assurances once I am gone. If he intends for his life to be complete with this maneuver, he may well allow it.

That is where I am now, as I hurriedly write my way through this manuscript in the hours I have left in this time.

-:-

The Baron has just visited my room, for the final time. His demeanor was calm and familiar, and his words were unusually brief, having said only:

“Come soon, dear friend. The machine is ready.”

A chill serviced my spine. I knew what must be done, for the sake of all involved. Righting this did not seem my responsibility. Certainly I did not feel it would come to this all this time later. Not then and not now did I expect my young self to so intimately become involved with the machinations of this place.

I go now with the vain hope that these words will not be filed away in the library downstairs or become ash in the fireplace therein. What becomes of these words from here I will likely never know.

The Baron has returned, reminding me that time has run its course. I do not wish to stop writing as I fear it may be the last time I ever hold a pen in hand.

The Baron had been right: Time is a fickle, cruel monster. Any derivation from its concept of Order invites only its vengeance in the most unpleasant manners the mind could ever conjure or endure. I feel now, here at this end, that we are all being punished by her, by Order, for ever having taken part in what the Baron has done in this place. If I do not return and end this in its infancy, untold victims will be drawn into the void as the sequence repeats, expanding with each ripple and wave.

This storm has caught in it so many lives, willfully destroying so many in passing glances. Its torture is eternal and inescapable—one you cannot anticipate, nor recognize until its roots begin starving you of air.

I do not know if I subscribe to all of the Baron’s theories. Lest he read this, I cannot go into detail what my plans will be. All I may say is that this is my only option, my only chance, to restore things to how they once were. For myself, for Emilia—this is our only chance to break free.

My only remaining hope is that, as an unfortunate consequence of having read of my undoing, you won’t soon suffer the same fate.

Edwin Ramsett