3 Ghosts of Our Fathers (14 page)

“Dad, could I talk to you?” Jason
asked, once the introductions were done and people had returned to their
conversations. “Privately?”

“Sure,” Steven said. “Let’s go in
here.” He led Jason to the back bedroom.

Once they were both inside, Steven
shut the door. “What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

“It’s about this,” Jason said,
holding the rectangular object. “A friend of mine saw it. She wigged out.”

“I told you to keep it to
yourself,” Steven said.

“And I did,” Jason said, “but she
came across it.”

“What, you left it out?”

“No, it was on me, as we
discussed.”

“Then how did she…” The light bulb
turned on for Steven. “Oh. I see.”

“So she wigs out,” Steven said.
“Because she thought she knew what it was.”

Steven didn’t like where this was
going. He wanted to be able to talk to Jason about the gift on his own terms,
when he felt they were both ready. This felt like an outing, like he was being
forced to either lie to his son or come clean about everything, and he wasn’t
ready to do that.

“What did she say about it?”
Steven asked, stalling for time to think.

Before Jason could respond, they
heard Eliza calling from the hallway outside the door.

“Steven! Come quickly!”

Steven looked at Jason and gave
him a “hold that thought” hand gesture, then he went to the door to open it and
see what Eliza wanted. She wasn’t in the hallway, so he went to the living
room. It was empty, but the front door to the house was wide open. He went out
the door, Jason following him.

“Eliza?” he called, walking down
the front deck and onto the sidewalk. Eliza was chasing after Daniel and Roy,
who were further down the block. He ran after them. Jason was not far behind.

When he reached the three of them,
he could tell something was wrong. Daniel was walking slowly and deliberately,
his eyes fixed forward. Roy and Eliza were on either side of him, talking to
him.

“What’s wrong?” Steven asked.

“No idea,” Roy said. “He got up
and walked out the door.”

“Daniel,” Eliza said, “what’s going
on? Where are you going?”

“I have no idea,” Daniel said. “I
can’t stop my legs. I don’t have control of them.”

Daniel kept walking. They were
approaching an intersection, and Daniel wasn’t slowing, not caring about
traffic. They surrounded him, trying to stop him.

“Daniel, you’re walking into
traffic,” Steven said. “We’re going to stop you.”

“Please do,” he said. Steven
reached out to grab him, but Daniel brushed off his hold.

“I didn’t do that,” Daniel said,
continuing to walk and now halfway through the intersection. They held their
hands up to stop the cars that were coming. The cars slowed and let them pass.

“Dad, what’s wrong with him?”
Jason asked.

“Not now, Jason,” Steven said.

“Do you think it’s Sean?” Eliza
asked. “Is it Sean controlling you, Daniel?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said.
“Maybe. I can’t say. It’s the damndest thing. I’m so incredibly thirsty.”

“If it was Sean,” Roy said, “I
don’t think Daniel’s personality would be at the forefront like this.”

“Maybe it’s Sean trying to gain
control,” Steven offered, “and only succeeding half way.”

“Why would Sean make him get up
and walk?” Eliza said.

“Maybe Sean is trying to figure
out how to control him?” Steven said.

“What are you guys talking about?”
Jason asked.

“Jason, please, not now,” Steven
said.

Daniel was crossing into the
grassy area that sloped down to Lake Washington. He walked over a jogger’s
trail and continued down the slope. In another minute he’d be at the lake’s
edge.

“If he tries to go into the
water,” Steven said, “I say we all grab him and physically restrain him.”

“Agreed,” Eliza said.

They continued to surround him.
Steven stood in front of him, facing him, but Daniel was not deterred and kept
walking. Daniel looked at Steven. “I can’t stop it,” he said. As they got
closer to the water, Daniel began to look scared.

“Are you going to go into the
water?” Steven asked, walking backwards. He was now a couple of yards from the
water’s edge. He extended his arm and placed his hand on Daniel’s chest,
pressing him back. Daniel met the resistance and pressed forward.

“I don’t know,” he said. Tears
were beginning to form around the edges of his eyes. “I don’t know. Help me,
please.”

When Daniel was about five feet
from the water, he stopped. They all took a step back from him.

Daniel slowly bent down and then
fell forward, on his hands and knees. He moved a few more feet towards the
water.

“Get ready to grab him,” Steven
said.

Daniel stopped as his hands came
within a foot of the water’s edge. His head started to shake.

“What the fuck?” Jason said.

“The River,” Roy said. “Quickly.”

Eliza and Steven both jumped into
the flow. Roy was already there.

Steven saw the back of Daniel’s
head split apart, and a translucent stalk about two inches in diameter began to
grow out of it, rapidly. He could hear Daniel crying, gasping for air.

What is happening to him?
Eliza thought.

I have no idea
, Steven
thought.

As they watched, the stalk
extended upward about two feet. A joint formed, and the stalk bent, growing
rapidly towards the water. Within seconds it extended another four or five feet
out from the joint. A bulb formed on the end of the stalk and grew, like a
balloon filling with air. It popped, and dozens of smaller bulbs fell lightly
out of it. They drifted down to the water, some moved by the air to spots
several feet away. When they hit the water, Steven saw small fins emerge and they
descended below the surface. Within a few more seconds they had all disappeared
below the water.

They exited the flow. Daniel was
still on his hands and knees at the water’s edge. Eliza knelt down to feel his
neck. There was no pulse.

“Call an ambulance,” Steven said
to Jason, knowing he’d have his cell phone on him. “Do it now.”

Daniel remained frozen. Steven
bent down to look at him. He was rigid and unmoving. His mouth was stretched
open as though he’d been trying to scream, and his eyes were bulging out of his
head. Steven turned away, holding his hand over his mouth.

People walking the jogger’s trail
had begun to stop. A couple had come over.

“Is he all right?” a man asked,
his wife with him.

“We’ve called 911,” Roy said. “We
think he might have had a seizure.”

After a couple of minutes passed
they could hear the siren in the distance. The medical crew turned him over
onto his back and lowered his arms and legs. They worked with him for a few
moments, but he didn’t recover. One of the medics told Eliza that he was dead.

Things were going by in a blur.
Steven was only catching pieces of what was happening, here and there. He
watched as they carried the body bag on a stretcher back to the ambulance and
placed him inside. Eliza was crying and Roy was holding her. Jason stood next
to Steven, unsure if he should say anything.

“What just happened, Dad?” Jason
asked.

“Honestly, son, I don’t know. I
really don’t.”

“He had a seizure?”

“That’s what they think.”

“But you don’t think that, do
you?”

 “Why would you ask me that?”

“When he reached the water, all
three of you knew something else was going on. I saw it on your faces. Right
after Grandpa Roy said ‘the River.’”

Steven realized the time had come,
whether he wanted it to or not. It was here. He was going to have to tell Jason
about the gift, and about him and Roy. It couldn’t be a worse time, with Daniel
gone, Eliza upset, and Garth – they would have to let Garth know that Sean was
probably gone now too. He wanted to get back to the house and find out from Roy
and Eliza what their perspectives were on what they had just seen, but he
couldn’t do that with Jason here, not until after he had a chance to introduce
Jason to this world properly.

Fuck it
, he thought.
Why
fight it?

“You’re about to jump right into
the deep end of the pool,” Steven told him. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

“I’d rather know than not,” Jason
said.

“Come on then,” Steven said.
“Let’s go back to the house.”

He led Jason, Roy, and a sobbing
Eliza back up the embankment, past the onlookers, and up the street towards his
home.

They walked back to Steven’s house
and fell into the chairs and sofas in the living room. They sat quietly for a
while, Eliza stifling an occasional sob.

“I’d like to know what’s
happening,” Jason said. “I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

Steven sighed. “I always planned
on telling you,” he said, “but not like this. Still, here we are, so here goes.
Your father and my father can enter a place called ‘the River’ when we want to.
It’s a flow all around us that most people can’t see or access. You see things
differently from within it.

“What happened to Daniel,” Steven
continued, “that we could see, that you couldn’t, was a long stalk emerging
from his head. It extended over the water, and some kind of seeds emerged from
it, falling into the water and then disappearing below the surface.”

Jason’s mouth hung open.

“I’m guessing that wasn’t what you
were expecting to hear,” Steven said.

“So this is how you’re going to
dump it on him?” Roy said. “Like this?”

“Wasn’t how I’d planned it,”
Steven said, “but yes, like this. He wanted to know.”

“Just because he wanted to know
doesn’t mean you have to tell him.”

“Frankly, Dad, I’m sick of secrets
and I’m sick of half-assed work. This is partly your fault.”

“My fault? How do you figure
that?”

“It was your father who fucked
this up. He should have eliminated Frank, not caged him. He didn’t solve a
problem, he created one.”

“Frank was abusing those boys,”
Roy said defiantly. “He did what he thought was the right thing to do.”

“It wasn’t the right thing, that’s
my point,” Steven said. “He should have stayed out of it if he couldn’t
actually solve it.”

“If he’d stayed out of it, Sean
and Garth might not have survived. Frank might have killed them.”

“And Daniel might be alive, now.”

“You want to say all this, in
front of your boy?”

Jason’s mouth hadn’t yet closed.
He was looking from Roy to Steven, like a tennis match.

“Why not?” Steven answered. “Why
not let him see how his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have
fucked it all up? Maybe then he’ll think twice before he steps in. Or maybe
he’ll actually finish something once he starts it, unlike you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“In the short time I’ve worked
with you in this shitty business, you’ve left two monsters alive. Michael and
Jurgen. Time bombs waiting to come back and blow up in our faces, just like
Frank came back. How many more time bombs are there, Dad? How many more did you
and your fathers create? Don’t you think he should know about them, since he’s
going to have to clean up all of the shit you were too lazy to clean up?”

Roy stood up. He walked over to
Jason and looked down at him. “Your father is a disrespectful bastard,” he
said. Then he turned and walked out the door, slamming it as he left.

“Fucking prick,” Steven said as
the slam reverberated through the house.

Jason was looking at the floor,
unsure of what to say or think. He looked up at Steven.

Steven was fuming over Roy. He
glanced over to Jason and saw him looking at him.

“Welcome to the deep end,” he
said.

-

Eliza was packing up Daniel’s
things. She had piled all of the medical supplies into a corner of the guest
room. It had been an hour since Roy had left. Steven had sent Jason home,
telling him they’d talk more tomorrow. Steven stepped into the guest room to
see how Eliza was doing.

“I’m so sorry,” Steven said.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“And it’s not Roy’s, either.”

“I know,” Steven said. “I’m just
angry and frustrated. Daniel was a good friend to you. I guess the option of
Troy ever knowing him is gone now.”

“True,” she said. She was folding
clothes, placing them in Daniel’s bag. “Who knows how that might have gone. You
know, I’d like to get to Daniel’s place and try to salvage some of his time
artifacts before his family gets to them. They won’t know what they are,
they’ll just throw them away as trash. I might be able to get them to sell me
his library. It would be nice to try and preserve his collection, it’s his
legacy. Maybe Troy can see that someday.”

“I’ll come with you if you want,”
Steven said.

“That’s kind of you to offer, but
I think I’d rather do it on my own,” she said. “I think you’ll have your hands full
here, with Roy and Jason. There’s a lot you need to do on both fronts.”

“I know. I probably could have
handled that better. But I’m just so tired of the half-assed approach. Is this
normal? Is this how you do it?”

“Well, I don’t kill people, if
that’s what you’re asking.”

“Michael was a child killer.
Jurgen, well you know about him. Both deserved to die.”

“If the Manitou didn’t finish
Jurgen off, there was a reason for that. I promise you.”

“What reason could there be?
Jurgen was a horrible person.”

“Justice, Steven. It measured out
the exact amount of justice for what he’d done. You might have misjudged his
history.”

“And Michael? Why leave him
alive?”

“That was Roy’s doing?”

“Yes, and I was too inexperienced
to argue with him. I didn’t like the decision at the time, and I told him so.
But he thought it was best to ‘let sleeping dogs lie,’ those were his words.”

“Roy is a smart man,” she said,
“and he’s had many years of experience, whereas you’ve had less than one. I
don’t know the whole story, but I do know Roy, and if he thought it was best to
leave Michael alone, there had to be good reasons for it. Either reasons you’re
not telling me or that you don’t know.”

“Arrrrghhhh!” Steven said in
frustration, raising his hands over his head and leaving the room to walk into
his bedroom.

“Steven, come here,” Eliza said.
He stopped and returned to the guest bedroom.

“What?” he asked.

“Look at these,” she said, holding
the objects Daniel had been examining earlier in the day.

“He got those from Sam,” Steven
said. “Wasn’t sure what they’d do.”

“Yes, he told me. But he also
figured them out, this morning. He told me what they were.”

“Really?” Steven asked.

“He said this one was a
chronosphere, and this one held a demon. A minor demon.”

“Oh?” Steven said, approaching her
to look more closely at the objects.

“He said the demon was a time
demon.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know, but I would like to
find out. I remember a section on demons in Roy’s book, when we were looking
through it while you were in Oregon. I’d like to see if it has more information
on this.”

“I need to apologize to him,”
Steven said. “How about we go over there first thing in the morning?”

“Deal.”

“I think I’m going to turn in. Are
you going to be all right?”

“Yes,” she said, “I just want to
finish packing up these things of his, and I’ll be turning in as well.”

She turned to look at him, and he
saw the pain in her eyes. He extended his arms and she gave him a long hug. She
started to cry again.

“I really am sorry,” Steven said.
“So sorry.”

-

The next morning Steven called Roy
to tell him they were coming over. Roy didn’t pick up, so Steven left him a
message.

“Look, I know you’re pissed at me
and that’s why you’re not answering your phone. But Eliza and I are coming
over, so try to look respectable.” He hung up.

“Nice,” she said. “That’ll start
things on the right foot.”

“He’s much worse than me,” Steven
said. “You should see him sometimes.”

Eliza smiled. “Let’s go.”

When they arrived at Roy’s, they
knocked but didn’t get a response at the door.

“Listen, Roy, I know you’re in
there. Open up. Eliza’s out here in the cold.”

The door finally opened and a
grumpy Roy turned without greeting them and walked back into the house. Steven
and Eliza went inside.

“Here to berate me some more?” Roy
said.

“No,” Steven said. “The opposite.
I’m here to apologize.”

“You can shove your apology up
your ass,” Roy said, sitting at the kitchen table. “Eliza, would you like some
coffee?”

“Thank you, Roy, that’d be nice.”

He poured her a mug and handed it
to her, then replaced the pot in the coffee maker.

“None for me, that’s my penalty
for being mean to you last night?” Steven said.

“Eliza, do you hear a buzzing
sound? Like the sound of a buzzing ungrateful piss-ant?”

“I’m staying out of this,” she
said.

“She urged me to come over and
apologize,” Steven said. “And I mean to. I’m sorry, Dad, I shouldn’t have said
those things to you, especially in front of Jason.”

“You needn’t have urged him to,”
Roy said to Eliza. “He was bound to come over sooner or later, as soon as he
needed something. I’ll bet he needs something now, am I right?”

“Actually I’m the one who needs
something,” Eliza said, taking some of the heat away from Steven. “These
objects Sam gave Daniel. Daniel knew what they were yesterday, after he woke
up. One of them holds a time demon. I was hoping you’d help me look through
your book for information on it.” She smiled.

“I’d be delighted to help you,” he
said. “You’re a kind person who is always respectful and grateful, unlike
others. Let me get the book.” He rose and walked into the back bedroom, and
returned with the book, which he sat between himself and Eliza where they could
both see it as he turned the pages.

Steven sighed and let Roy help
Eliza without his involvement. He’d apologized, and he knew that he just needed
to let it sink in with Roy, and he’d accept it. But not right at first – Roy
would make him pay first.

Steven walked over to the chairs
in the living room and sat in one of them.

“He often sulked as a child,” Roy
said to Eliza as they scanned the pages. “A very bad habit, hard to grow out
of.”

Steven bit his lip and stayed
seated in the chair. He pulled out his phone to check his messages and kill
some time while Eliza and Roy worked their way through the book.

“I know I saw a section on demons
when we were looking through it the other day,” Eliza said.

“That would be back in the Thomas
pages,” Roy said, flipping to the earlier sections of the book.

“Yes, here it is,” Eliza said. “Wow,
he has quite a catalog here. Dozens of them.”

“Here’s the info on how to release
demons from objects,” Roy said.

Eliza kept scanning the list,
looking for something related to time.

“Found it!” she said, delighted.
Steven got up out of his chair and joined them.

She read the paragraphs under the
entry she’d marked with her finger. “It’s simple,” she said.

“What?” Steven asked. “How does it
work?”

“Well,” she said, turning to look
at Roy and Steven, “the steps Roy found will release it from the object. The
demon can traverse time and will take you where you want to go and back, but
for a price.”

“Let me guess,” Steven said. “A
soul.”

“It’s always souls with demons,”
Roy said.

“Yes,” Eliza said, “which is why
they’re not often used. If you don’t have a soul to offer up to the demon,
it’ll take you instead. So it’s a dangerous move. But it’s what I suspected.”

“Well, hold onto it, and it can be
part of the collection you save for Troy,” Steven said.

“Oh, no,” Eliza said. “I was
thinking something else.”

“Such as?” Roy asked.

“I was hoping you’d be willing to
use it.”

“Use it?” Steven asked. “How?”

“Roy,” she said, “I was hoping
you’d convince David to use this demon to go back to 1933 and kill Frank.
Outright.”

Roy was taken back, and Steven was
stunned.

“Kill him, instead of cage him?”
Roy asked once he had regained himself.

“Yes,” she said. “With Frank dead,
he can’t come back to cause the trouble eighty years later.”

“Oh, yes he can,” Steven said.
“He’ll just be a ghost, but he can come back. They always can.”

“Not if the demon takes his soul
right after David kills him.”

They both sat stunned again. Eliza
saw the slightly confused look on their faces.

“You contact David,” she said.
“You explain to him the deal to cut with the demon, which is, if he will take him
back to 1933 so he can kill Frank, the demon can have Frank’s soul as payment
for the trip. David can correct the mistake of caging Frank, and we’ll get
Daniel back, because none of this would have happened.”

“But,” Steven said, “if this never
happened, there would have been no object for David to use to go back and
correct anything. Doesn’t that cause our timeline to…implode or something?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Look, time
has more continuity than people think. It was Daniel’s belief that there are an
infinite number of simultaneous timelines playing out. We’re in all of them,
but we’re only aware of one of them because that’s all our mind can handle. If
this timeline ends, we’ll instantly become aware of another that’s at the same
point in time. We won’t even be aware of the shift. They’re all essentially the
same, with just minor differences. I’m fine with this timeline we’re in
imploding. I want to go to the one that has Frank dead and Daniel alive.”

“How do you know so much about
this?” Roy asked.

“I lived with a time freak for
several years, Roy,” she said. “You pick up things.”

“What do you think, Dad?” Steven
asked Roy.

“As much as the idea of a timeline
blipping out unnerves me,” Roy said, looking at them, “I’ll try. I’ll ask David
if he’ll do it.”

“Thank you,” Eliza said.

“Will he be hard to reach?” Steven
asked. “When’s the last time you talked to him?”