3 Ghosts of Our Fathers (17 page)

Roy found himself back in an empty
house. No Steven, no Eliza waiting for him to return. At first he was pissed
they weren’t there, upset they’d leave him while he was occupied with such an
important task. Then he realized they hadn’t left him; they’d simply never been
there to begin with.

He went to the phone and called
Steven.

“Hello, how are you feeling?” Roy
asked.

“Fine, and you?”

“Fine, fine. Any trouble sleeping
last night?”

“No, no trouble there. The ghosts
have been gone for months, Dad.”

“Heard from Jason lately?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,”
Steven said. “He and I are getting together for a dinner this weekend. Why
don’t you join us?”

“Sure, no problem, sounds like
fun. So…everything’s fine?”

“As far as I know. Why? Is
something wrong?”

“No, nothing,” Roy said. “Sounds
like everything’s good. Talk to you later.”

“Goodbye, Dad.”

Roy hung up the phone. Next he
tried Eliza.

“Hello, Eliza? It’s Roy.”

“Well, Roy!” she said. “How good
to hear your voice, it’s been so long. How have you been? All busy practicing
being handsome, I expect.”

Eliza
, Roy thought.
So
easy to like.

“Well, I guess it has been a while,”
he said. “How long has it been, exactly, since we saw each other last?”

“Three months?” Eliza said.
“Something like that, at Pete and Sarah’s. When are you gonna come down for a
visit and bring that son of yours?”

“Soon, Eliza, soon,” Roy said.
“Hey, I need a favor. I’m wondering if you would point me in the right
direction with something.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Well, I’m in need of some advice
from someone who knows a lot about time, time-related things, that type of
stuff.”

“I’ve got just the person,” Eliza
said. “His name is Daniel and he lives in Spokane. He’s a friend of mine. Knows
more about time than anyone I know.”

“Perfect,” Roy said, “would you
mind referring me to him? I’d like to talk to him about something I’ve
discovered, see if he has any insight on it.”

“Sure, why don’t I give him a call
right now, and then you call him in half an hour?”

“Sounds good, what’s his number?”

Roy jotted down the number Eliza
gave him, thanked her and assured her he’d plan a visit soon, and hung up. Then
he waited forty-five minutes for good measure and called Daniel to invite him
over to Seattle. He had somewhere he wanted to take him.

-

“I can’t say I’m comfortable with
this,” Daniel said as Roy led him down the dark hallway of the church. “It’s
bad enough breaking and entering, but a church? This seems wrong.”

“Trust me,” Roy said, “you’ll
think you’ve hit the lottery when I show you what’s down here.”

Roy led him to the door with the
padlock. Roy removed a pair of bolt cutters from his bag and clipped the
padlock off.

“I hope you’re right,” Daniel
said. “We could get into a lot of trouble for this.”

“No, not really,” Roy said. “We’re
not going to take anything, and even if we get caught, I know the owner.”

They twisted their way through the
basement of the church, Roy shining his flashlight ahead of them. They stopped
at a pile of boxes near the back of the basement. Roy pointed his flashlight at
the corner of the room, casting enough ambient light to illuminate the boxes.

“This is what you wanted to show
me? What we broke in here for?” Daniel asked.

“Wait,” Roy said. “Just wait.
Sam?”

Roy stared at the gaps between the
boxes where light didn’t penetrate. “Sam? Are you in there? It’s me, Roy. Do
you remember me?”

A pale face appeared in one of the
gaps. Daniel gasped when he saw it. He gasped again when he saw the face change
age, from a young man to a toddler.

“Yes,” the boy said. “I remember. The
garage. Sean and Garth.”

“I brought you something,” Roy
said. “Do you remember these?”

Roy opened his hand, holding the
wooden matchbox and the envelope of powder.

“Yes,” the boy said. “I remember.
I gave those to Davy.”

“I thought you should have them
back,” Roy said, “since Davy never used them. They were yours. And I wanted to
thank you for what you did back then. You saved my father’s life.”

“Davy was your father,” the boy
said, changing from a toddler to a six year old. “I remember. He let you get old.”

“Sam, there’s someone I’d like you
to meet,” Roy said, backing up and extending his arm to Daniel. “His name is
Daniel. He knows a lot about time.”

“Hello, Daniel,” the boy said.
“Pleased to meet you.”

“Hello, Sam,” Daniel said.

“Sam wants to be younger,” Roy
said. “It’s all he wants, more than anything else. He’s found a way to become
younger for a few seconds at a time, but it doesn’t last.”

“Why do you want to be younger?”
Daniel asked Sam.

“So my mother will love me,” the
boy said. “She wants a baby, not a boy. Can you help me?”

“You’ve found a way to become
younger already, I see,” Daniel said.

“Yes,” Sam said. “Martha’s friends
helped me. Look.”

Sam rapidly changed from a small
infant to a ten year old, morphing through all ages in between.

“But I can’t stay anything but ten
for very long.”

“You just need a stabilizer,”
Daniel said. “If you use the stabilizer when you’re the age you want to be,
it’ll stick.”

“How do I get a stabilizer?” the
boy asked.

“I have several at home,” Daniel
said. “I’ll give you one.”

“Oh, would you? That would be so
kind of you, I would be so grateful.”

“Sure, I’ll bring it to you the
next time I visit here.”

“How soon will that be?”

“Well, I do live a ways away. It
takes me a day to drive home and another to drive back.”

“Would it help if I gave you
these?” the boy said, and the pale arm extended from the pile, holding two
objects. Daniel took them from the open palm and the arm retreated back inside
the pile.

“Wow,” Daniel said. “These are
magnificent! But you don’t have to give me these, I’ll bring you the stabilizer
regardless.”

“If you do, I’ll become a baby
again, and my mother will take me away. I want you to have all of my
collection. Martha’s friends gave me lots of things like those. You can have
them all, because if I’m a baby, I won’t need them anymore.”

Daniel turned to look at Roy.

“Told you,” Roy said.

“I’ll bring you back the
stabilizer,” Daniel said. “Right away. And thank you, Sam.”

“Oh, thank you, you don’t know how
happy I am now. Please hurry back as soon as you can.”

The boy’s face faded, and Roy
grabbed Daniel by the shoulder.

“Show me what he gave you,” Roy
said. Daniel held the items up for Roy to see.

“Good. When you get access to the
rest of his stuff, do not – and I mean
do not
– open a carved box about
yea big,” he held his hand up to illustrate the size. “And keep an eye on the
rest of that stuff. That box is dangerous, and the other items might be too.”

“I’ll be careful,” Daniel said.
“But you can’t imagine what a find this is. I collect rare time objects, you
know.”

“Yes, I know,” Roy said.

“This looks like it might be a
chronosphere. I’ve never seen one before, in person.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

-

Roy drove Daniel back to his car
so he could return to Spokane with his prizes. The drive from Marysville to
Seattle would take an hour, and Roy realized it would be filled with Daniel’s
enthusiastic thanks and observations about Sam and the items he might possess.
Daniel knew a long list of rare time-related items, many of which he’d only
read or heard about, and he imagined them all potentially being in Sam’s pile.
He was like a kid who’d just been taken to Disneyland, and he wanted to go
back.

Roy listened to Daniel for a
while, then began to tune out, nodding enough to keep Daniel thinking he was
listening, but not really paying attention to what he was saying. He’d just
returned from a timeline that was now gone, with Frank’s return and Daniel’s
death obliterated. None of those things happened in the timeline he was now
participating in, and he was a little unsure if everything he remembered from
birth onward had actually happened in this new timeline. It appeared they had,
but there should be tiny differences. Everyone still answered the same phone
numbers, buildings were still in the same places, and relationships seemed the
same. Steven still had a son named Jason.

Now that Jason’s unfortunate
exposure to the River was also gone, Roy felt Steven had a new chance to
present things to Jason correctly, so he could understand the power and
responsibility having “the gift” entailed. He’d waited way too long to present
it to Steven, and he felt Steven needed to speak to Jason about it soon, to
give him a chance to learn about it at a younger age.

Steven had been right. Leaving
things unresolved may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but his
encounter with Frank reminded him that sometimes evil had to be stamped out
completely, not left to return. If there was any hope of getting Steven to talk
to Jason sooner rather than later, Roy would need to find a way to resolve
these problems from the past.

Problems from the past,
Roy
thought. You don’t often get a chance to go back and correct problems from the
past. You usually have to live with the consequences of the present moment,
which could be cruel and unforgiving.
I was lucky. I got to correct this one
,
he thought.
I need to correct others as soon as I can.
He felt like a
man who’d lived through a near-death experience and was being given a second
chance to live his life differently.

Daniel was still talking, and Roy
would normally be annoyed, but he wasn’t. He was happy to hear Daniel’s voice,
pleased that the plan worked. The alternative would have been much worse for
everyone, including himself. Daniel talking his ear off in his car meant they
won, they pulled it off. And Roy now had an opportunity to set some things
right.

My time will come soon,
Roy
thought. It was always out there, the frustrating thoughts about what would
happen when his time was up and he was forced to move on. He tried not to think
about them, tried not to be scared by them, but the thoughts came with more
regularity these days than they did in the past, now that Steven was aware of
his gift and was using it.
I need to accelerate things,
he thought.
Can’t
waste time.

Daniel was going on about
something “on a molecular level.” Roy smiled and nodded, continuing to feign
interest.
Why not start now?
he thought.
The present moment is all
I’ve got. Why not live it to the fullest?

He stopped thinking about the
future and returned to the discussion of time objects, time dilation, and
spatial symmetry. Daniel was brilliant, and Roy was determined to learn something
from him, to make this hour-long car ride count.

After all, wasn’t that the
point? To make the present moment count?

He leaned back in the seat and
listened.

Michael Richan lives
in Seattle, Washington.

-

Visit

www.michaelrichan.com

for more information
about the books in
The River
series.

-

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