Authors: Geoff North
“Come on, old man!” Hugh yelled as they
spun around in circles. “You think you’re tough trying to murder kids in their
sleep?” He drove more hay into the man’s open face until he started to gag.
Then he drove it in harder. Nelson bit down on his thumb. Hugh tightened his
hold around his throat and jammed his bleeding thumb into one of his eyeballs.
“You liggle fugger!” He screamed with his
mouth full. The effort made him cough violently, and when he tried to inhale
fresh air more rotten chafe worked its way down his throat. Nelson fell to
knees, choking.
“Not so nice, is it?” Hugh put all his
weight behind an elbow into the middle of the man’s back. Nelson continued to
writhe and gag, spinning on the floor like a top with a decided wobble. Hugh
jumped off him and went to his friend. “Billy? You okay?”
He was rubbing his sore neck and still
struggling to breathe freely again, but he managed to offer Hugh a weak smile.
He kicked out and caught Nelson square in the face with his heel. “Sh-shit that
felt good!”
They watched with sick fascination as he
thrashed about. It was obvious to both boys that he wasn’t going to be a threat
to anyone for much longer. Surprisingly he managed to lift himself back up onto
his knees, and a few seconds after that he pushed back up to a lurching,
unsteady stand. Hugh and Billy backed away, terrified and amazed.
Nelson turned around once, twice, his arms
stuck out straight to the sides, fingers clutching and grasping for something
and finding nothing. He took one step away from the boys, then another. On the
third step he was almost running and banged his head into a support beam.
Instead of falling back down though, he just stood there.
The boys looked at one another, eyes wide open
and unblinking, mouths open wider still, and then they looked back at Nelson.
His choking gurgles had ended and his arms lay still at his sides.
“Jesus, that’s gross,” Billy said turning
his head away.
Hugh stood up and took a few careful steps
forward. Had Nelson worked the hay out of his throat? Was he catching his
breath, getting ready to finish them off?
“Oh,” was all Hugh could manage to say
after he’d seen what happened. A thick, rusty spike nailed into the beam had
pierced through Nelson’s nostril and into the back of his brain. The top of his
skull was the only thing holding him up.
Billy had crawled back to the window. “Someone’s
coming! They’ve found us!”
Hugh saw the yellow headlights flicker and
bob off his friend’s face. His features started to blur and things started to
darken. He wouldn’t get a chance to see who their rescuers were. He fainted to
the loft floor, his head less than three feet from Nelson’s left foot.
On Tuesday morning Hugh looked out the
window of his Braedon Hospital room, over the parking lot and across the entire
town of Braedon to the forested ridgeline of valley to the south. Physically it
looked much the same as it did, or would look over thirty years in the future. Unlike
cities, small towns didn’t change that much. People packed up and left, fewer
moved in, and an unfortunate few passed on altogether. Mr. McDonald was one of
those latter few, and Bob Roberts, future manager of Little City Food Store,
high school jock and stud, had joined him. So had Thomas Nelson.
Hugh was a hero, at least that’s what
everyone was calling him. He’d told the authorities and all the concerned
parents what had happened. Billy’s story matched up perfectly with everything
he said. And why wouldn’t it? He told everyone the truth. He kept the part
about travelling through time and living his life again to himself, but that
could hardly be considered lying. Recovering from dehydration and being patched
up for a variety of cuts and bruises was better than living in a room padded with
rubber.
“You saved my life.”
Hugh hadn’t heard Billy enter the room. He
turned and faced his friend, winced when he saw the brace around his neck, and
shook his head. “We saved each other.”
“I just saw your mom and dad at the nurse’s
desk. They’re here to take you home.”
“What about you?” Hugh asked. He slipped a
sweatshirt over his aching shoulders. The thick bandage around his thumb
throbbed making it difficult to work with.
“They’ll probably release me this
afternoon. The doctor wanted to take one last look at my throat.”
Hugh looked down at the picture on the
front of his shirt. Luke Skywalker held a light saber in two hands and Darth
Vader stood ominously behind him. “It’s the movie Bob wanted to see.”
“What?”
“Star Wars. Bob wanted to see Star Wars
last weekend.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he sat down on the corner of the
stiff hospital bed. “He should’ve seen it. He should’ve told me to go to hell
and gone to the movie instead.”
“I heard it was pretty bad. He probably
wouldn’t have liked it.”
Hugh
knew
he would’ve liked it. “But
he would still be here.”
Billy didn’t have an answer for that.
Instead he picked up the duffel bag with Hugh’s old clothes and get well soon
gifts packed inside. “Come on, I’ll walk you outside.”
“I heard that Mrs. McDonald committed
suicide.”
“Yeah, the nurses were talking about that
last night.”
“That’s three deaths, Billy. Three deaths
where there should’ve only been one. Shit, no one was supposed to die. I could’ve
stopped it all.”
“No more ghost stories. No more talk about
coming from the future, alright?” Billy looked out the door to make sure no one
was listening. “You gotta stop talking about that stuff.”
“You believe me then?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. All I
know is that
we’re
still alive. All that talk about what happens in the
future, about what you become and what happens to me--I just don’t wanna know.”
Hugh crossed the room and hugged Billy. He
kissed him gently on the cheek and whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry for
everything. No more talk.”
Billy hugged
him back and handed the bag to him. “Here, carry your own shit. My neck hurts
like a bastard.”
June 1981
The dreams he used to have nightly about his
lost family were less frequent. Once a month now, if that, and they’d become
more nightmare than dream in quality. The faces of his children were being
replaced by the faces of his siblings. Dana always appeared as Lorna, Julie as
Heather, and worst of all, Colton looked like Gordo. Cathy at least still
looked like Cathy, but the image of her was never a happy one. There was a
constant scowl on her face, a look of deep hatred in eyes that were darker than
normal, almost black, an unblinking stare of betrayal and abandonment that
always made Hugh waken in a cold sweat.
It had been almost seven years since he’d
last seen them.
8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36
There was no need to write the numbers down
anymore. Hugh remembered them as easily as the letters of his own name. He
still liked to look at the numbers on the news letter from time to time. He
would run his fingers along the wrinkled, worn surface of paper and try to
recall as much as he could from that first life.
The numbers were fading; the crumpled black
and white photos of lottery winners were smudged with dirty finger prints, enough
ink had rubbed away to make most of their features unrecognizable.
Just like the dreams.
He would meet Cathy in the fall if history
repeated itself correctly. They would date four years before getting married.
Bob wouldn’t be his best man, that task would now be assigned to Billy. The destined
farm accident of ‘79 never happened. The boy’s father had taken his religion to
an extreme. He quit farming all together and rented their half section to a
neighbor. Tom Parton had come to view planting crops as a form of gambling, an
output of money on an uncertain outcome. Billy never was crushed behind a grain
truck, and in some ways Hugh had to respect the boy’s father for his
fanaticism. It had saved Billy’s life.
Benjamin would be born two years after the
wedding, and if Hugh sat back and did nothing, the child would die less than
two years after that. Hugh wasn’t about to let that happen. He had interfered
enough to save Billy’s life, he was certain he could do the same for his first
born son.
Hugh remained a virgin through the high
school years even though it was a monumental struggle. Theoretically, if you
added up the years of both his lives, the girls he was expected to be chasing
after were young enough to be his granddaughters. It just didn’t seem right,
and the fear of knocking up anyone but Cathy scared the hell out of him.
Billy had grown into a strapping young man,
his complexion cleared, and his constantly runny nose finally dried up. He was
dating Caroline Sterling. Gordo had moved away after graduating and Hugh hadn’t
seen him since the Christmas before. He was the last kid still living at home
and he would have the remainder of grade eleven and twelve to live out his
teenage years in peace.
“You should get yourself a girlfriend,”
Scott Harder told him through a mouthful of bologna sandwich.
Hugh looked up from his own lunch and
sneered at the boy sitting backwards in his homeroom school desk. Scott
reminded him of Bob Richards, built like brick shit-house, his blonde hair a
mass of tight curls hanging all the way to his shoulders. A lot of boys grew
their hair like that in the late seventies-early eighties. Hugh liked his hair
short, without the perm. “Girls are more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Never seen you with a girl, Hugh…a lot of
kids’ figure you might be gay or something.”
Hugh shrugged his shoulders and tossed the
remainder of his own lunch into the trash bin. The unintentional insult had no
effect on him. Scott kept at him. “You’ll look like a real tool if you go to the
dance this weekend all alone.”
“I hadn’t planned on going.”
Scott leaned in and grinned. Close enough
that Hugh could see the bread on his gums. “What if I told you Mandy Wood’s
been asking about you?”
“I’d say you have bad breath, and you’re
full of shit.”
“It’s true! She dumped Todd Kay a couple of
weeks ago. She’s single, man, and she’s looking for a little Nance to fill the
void.”
Mandy had been Bob’s girl. She’d been out
of Hugh’s league in elementary, and she was even farther out of his league now.
Or was she? Hugh could feel the hammer of his heart between his ears, that
familiar warm butterfly rush that started in his stomach and worked down.
Damn teenage hormones.
His analytical mind went to work alongside
the hard-on in his pants. Didn’t he need some time away from home? He was a
kid, wasn’t he? Didn’t he deserve a bit of happiness now and then? He pictured
Mandy with the art-appreciative part of his mind. Her long auburn hair full of
bounce and shine, her breasts straining against the too-tight red turtleneck
sweaters she liked to wear.
Analytical mind and art-appreciative mind
worked well together at times.
Hugh looked out the classroom window and
saw a group of senior students chasing a soccer ball around the yard. Todd Kay
had the ball. “For sure they’re broken up?”
“Would I lie about something like that? She
has the
hots
for you!”
“Guess it couldn’t hurt to check things
out. Are you going to finish the other half of that sandwich?” His appetite had
suddenly returned.
Asking her out
was harder than he had imagined. He’d caught up to Mandy on Wednesday morning
and he definitely sensed her interest in him before asking. But it was still
incredibly difficult. He stuttered and kept looking down at her feet as he
spoke. He chewed a giant wad of gum in an attempt to keep his mouth from drying
up. Kids, he supposed, were still kids whether they had lived an extra fifty
years or not. She said yes.
***
On Thursday Hugh accepted a ride home from
school in Billy’s rusty Ford Mustang. Billy steered with one hand and held the
other out for him to shake. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Maybe. We’ll see how things go tomorrow
night.”
“Caroline just told me this afternoon
during history. Good for you, man. You need to get laid.”
“Still feels kind of unreal to me.”
“Don’t worry, buddy. It will all feel real
enough when you two are slow dancing. You wanna smoke a joint?”
“I don’t touch the stuff, you know that.”
Hugh eyed the pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray. His friend had developed
a number of nasty habits. He was tempted to ask for a smoke. Billy had only
driven half a block when he pulled over again and jumped out of the car before Hugh
could ask for one. “Where are you going?”
“Wait there while I get a bottle.”
Hugh watched him cross the street over to
Reynolds Liquor Mart and shouted. “Are you kidding? You’re only seventeen!”
Billy waved without looking back and continued into the store. Hugh waited in
the car and pictured a younger Gary Reynolds sitting behind the counter reading
his newspaper. He was the last person Hugh had spoken to in his first life. He’d
sold him the lottery ticket that changed everything. Billy emerged outside a
few minutes later with a brown paper bag nestled proudly in one arm. He sat
back in the car and exhaled heavily. His cheeks were beet red.
“That’s the first time you ever tried that
isn’t it?”
Billy nodded, started the car, and squealed
the tires. “Yeah, I heard a couple kids say he doesn’t care who gets booze, as
long as they spend money at his place.”
“That sounds like Gary.” Billy raised an
eyebrow at him but didn’t ask what he meant. Hugh dug through the bag. There
were two magnums of cheap bubbly wine and a twenty six ounce bottle of vodka. Teenagers
drinking tastes weren’t very refined. “I’m not drinking any of this crap.”
“Who said it was for you?” Billy crumpled
the top of the bag shut and pulled it in beside him. “I’m saving this for the
dance. Maybe then, if you treat me nice, I’ll let you have some.”
Why did teenagers think drinking was such a
privilege? Hugh hadn’t touched alcohol since the Nelson incident. If he never
drank again it would still be too soon.
The boys drove around town aimlessly for
another thirty minutes, talking about their girls and about the dance.
When Hugh
finally got home he was feeling less guilty about asking the seventeen year old
out. He
did
deserve a little fun in his life. What could possibly go
wrong?
***
“What do you mean I can’t go?”
“Because it’s your brother’s wedding on
Saturday, sweetheart,” Hugh’s mother said at the supper table later that
evening. “How could you forget that?”
Quite easily.
“Why do I have to go? I can’t even stand
who he’s marrying.”
“Give Gordon a break,” his father said. “I
don’t like Sandy much either but you don’t see me trying to get out of it.”
“Steve!”
A comment like that would normally make Hugh
laugh. Not tonight. “But I haven’t gone out for so long, and well, there’s this
girl…”
“Bring her along,” his father offered.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful
introduction to the Nance family?
He remembered Gordo’s nuptials all too
well. A drunken uncle on Sandy Lewinski’s side of the family had fallen into
the wedding cake during the reception. A fist fight involving the entire
wedding party and a dozen or so guests had broken out as a result. “It’s a
first date for crying out loud! I can’t ask her to come all the way to Winnipeg
for that.”
“Then have your date tomorrow night,” his
mom said. She started to clear the table. “You’re standing up for your brother
on Saturday afternoon and that’s final.”