After and Again (26 page)

  “Oh, I
am
sorry, hopefully he has a speedy recovery. Now I must dispense with the pleasantries as time is short, please follow me.”

  “What have you done with Emily?” Zack demanded, feeling confused at discovering the voice that he’d believed to be someone good, involved with all of the horrible things that had been done.

  “If you really want the answer to that question you will have to come with me. Otherwise you can step back through that confounded rip in the fabric of the universe and face Desmond Trask; who would certainly kill you the very moment that you appeared on the other side. Choose wisely but quickly.” The man stood and walked through the door, stopping in the hall, his back turned. Again, realizing that his choice was not a choice at all, Zack followed.

  The man walked silently and briskly down the corridor, stealing occasional glances over his shoulder. He stopped, opened a door, and stood aside so Zack could enter. Once inside, he shut the door and turned what was likely a lock. The room was large and furnished with three sofas, and several stuffed chairs, all white. Zack recognized the large black rectangle on the wall as a television, almost identical to the one at Toby Martin’s house. Zack sat in one of the chairs, and the man took a seat on a sofa next to him. Zack noticed one thing immediately that he hadn’t seen in the other room. The man was scared.

  “I apologize sincerely for the ambiguity but there are many sets of ears in this compound and they all belong to Paul Nesbitt, otherwise known as The Man in Charge.” Zack had heard the name previously but it was a moment before he could place it.

  “He was your friend, the one that you worked with….before,” Zack said.

  “Just so, and I am Weston Presley,” The man extended his hand.”

  “Zack McQueen,” said Zack, cautiously shaking the man’s hand.

  “Very pleased to meet you Zack, now I must tell you some things quickly as we don’t have much time. Paul is busy with Emily at dinner and his outside men—men not from this world, but yours, or
ours
rather—will be loath to disturb him. He will find out however, and probably sooner than later.”

  “He’s with Emily?” Zack asked, anxiously.

  “Yes yes, she is unharmed, and fine for the moment. Which is more than I can say for you or I if we don’t move quickly. I am going to arrange for you to free Emily, and then I have a task for you….a quest if you will, that will repair the damage done and save your world from the likes of Paul Nesbitt forever.”

  “How can you still be alive?” Did you just put that stuff in the cave for someone to find recently? Was it all a trick?”

  “I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can….beginning with this; I am over three hundred and fifty years old, and everything that I said on the recording was the absolute truth.

  I left the cave that day shortly after making the recording; to this day it’s not really clear what compelled me to leave it in the first place. Perhaps, on some level, I knew that I was bound to fail at turning back the clock. I suppose I wished for the discoverer of the treasures that Marjorie and I had saved to have some sort of a history.

  I never succeeded in going back through the time-rip, so I suppose my presentiment was accurate. There were men guarding it, and I was held there until Paul Nesbitt, my old friend whom I had presumed dead, showed up in a jeep with more men.

  Paul had found a second rip; the one right here, that we now call The Crack. He walked through it starving and sick, and was taken care of by the people of this world. The Lenhoans; a people of peace, a people naïve to the ways of deception, and wickedness. He has paid back their kindness with corruption and slavery.

   Paul discovered that in this world, the laws of time for people from
our
world no longer applied, and that here time virtually stops for us. Somehow though, we are still attached to our world because if we return there, the decay of time that we have eluded here in Lenhoan will catch up to us. If I were to walk through The Crack this very minute, I would be so much dust the moment that I arrived on the other side. I do not pretend to even vaguely understand the mechanics of all of this. I can only tell you that the knowledge we had as humans, at the height of our intellectualism, with our computers, our satellites, and all of our dreadfully shallow comforts, never even came close to unlocking one tenth of one percent of the universe’s secrets.

  When Paul discovered this umm….effect of the rip, the fact that he could be nearly immortal, he proclaimed himself a god and called himself Wung-Fordic Reen, The Man in Charge. He tricked and manipulated the Lenhoans into believing him, worshipping him. They began building him a palace—which he eventually abandoned for this compound—and they obeyed his bidding without question.

  Paul however, completely and utterly mad now, began to grow paranoid about the time-rip that we had originally discovered together. He was worried that if someone ran across it, entered it, and then returned after an extended stay—thus turning back time in
our
world—that it would affect Paul as well—even here in Lenhoan—turning back
his
clock and so undoing everything that he had begun. Paul could not bear risking his newly found divinity, so he embarked on a mission to protect the time-rip.

  He convinced some men to follow him, promising them immortality if they would only serve him. I imagine it was fairly easy to do at that time, people were lost and confused, and he portrayed himself their savior. He provided them with food and water, he even took some of them on a tour of Lenhoan to help prove his claims.

The Lenhoans cannot live in our world. Paul took a small group of them through; it would have made things easier for him as he would not have had to recruit men from our world, but every single one of them sickened and died within days.

  He had the men begin guarding the time-rip. They shot animals that wandered too close, but I was the first person that they found. I rode up on my motorcycle and was promptly surrounded by men at gunpoint.

  Paul showed up—much to my shock—and forced me to return to Lenhoan with him. He told me of his plans; grand plans, and how I fit so neatly into them. I was an engineer you see, and Paul, well Paul had been a manager, and now he wanted to begin managing things again.

  He started recruiting more men, he was sending them to all points of the compass, to collect things; building materials, electrical wire, solar panels, computers, crockery, furniture, all kinds of machinery, generators, manufacturing equipment and more. Eventually there was no more gasoline to be found and he had them on wagons drawn by horses. All of it was brought to the rip here—which we now call The Crack, and used to build this very compound that you now sit in. I supplied the brain, and the Lenhoans, already great craftsmen, supplied the brawn. The men from
our
world are not allowed here for any length of time. Paul said he feared that they would infect the Lenhoans with things like greed, hate….murder, but in reality he feared that they would learn of his lies.

  He lies to get the men to do his work. He promises them that if they work for him for twenty-five years, or complete certain tasks, that he will bring them to live in Lenhoan, where they would be immortal, or near to it. Meanwhile he supplies them with food, and clothing and the like, and, when the twenty-five years is up, he brings them here, has a celebratory dinner with them, serving food laced with poison. As far as the men outside of The Crack are concerned there are hundreds of men from our world living happily in Lenhoan just outside of this compound. The truth of the matter is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of murdered men buried in a pit just outside of this compound.

  I of course have not left Lenhoan since the day that I was brought here; I was his prisoner, and after I had been here for fifty years or so, when escape would only mean death to me, or arriving on the other side a decrepit man in his nineties, he began trusting me; as much as a man such as he is
can
trust anyway, and I eventually became his confidant, his advisor. He himself only left a few more times after he brought me here. Now all business is done through the anteroom where The Crack is located. The room was actually built around The Crack when we were still calling it a rip, and it was several times the size that it is now. I will explain more about The Crack in a moment.

  Time went by; the population of
our
world began to bounce back, towns started popping up, Paulo, Fordham, Payne’s Station, Auburn….commerce was beginning again as well. Paul started having his men collect all firearms, and bring them here. He had become increasingly paranoid; he was afraid that men would arm themselves and overthrow him.

  All of the firearms are secured in a vault-room just outside of The Crack and only one man at a time outside of myself and Paul has the combination. No guns have ever been allowed here in Lenhoan, He allows the guards of The Crack and time-rip to have small arms, and occasionally lately, a few men like Trask.

  Finally he decided that the only way for him to truly be secure would be to shut the door between the worlds. He believed, and still believes, that if The Crack is closed then his connection to the other world would be severed and he would be safe; even if someone used the time-rip.

  One hundred twenty years ago, around the time when he started collecting the firearms and all of that nonsense, he had me start working on a device that would close the rip that we now call The Crack forever. I tried to explain to him that it would be impossible, that I just did not posses the technology to even make an attempt. He only smiled and said that he had faith in me.

  Ninety years and thirty one failed attempts later I succeeded, well nearly anyway. I set off the newest version of the device near the ten foot by ten foot rip; it failed to close it completely, but it shrunk the rip to the size and shape that you now see. The end result was that it resembled a crack, and the name simply stuck.

  I never really believed that I would succeed; and when I did—nearly anyway—it caused me to take pause and think about what I was doing. For some reason I didn’t want to close The Crack.…so I dragged my feet. Even after I knew why the device had failed to close the rip completely, and knew what I needed to do to make it work, I dragged my feet. I think that maybe I still held the hope of somehow using the time-rip, or having someone else use it rather, to turn back time to before our world was destroyed, to give mankind another chance….to bring back Marjorie. I realize now that those were foolish thoughts, the old days and old ways are over. my delay however had disastrous results.

  Paul began a campaign to murder anyone within five hundred miles of the time-rip, something that he did not share with me. I found out late last year when they started bringing the women and young girls here by the score. I started asking questions, and when I found out what he was doing I was nearly suicidal with grief. Then I began thinking of the time-rip again, and of making things right. I, of course, could not make the journey. So I thought about finding someone that I could trust….someone like you Zack, that could go through the time-rip, to before all of the murders and town burnings, then come back here and close The Crack for good. I will commit the final murder of this wretched ordeal, and kill Paul Nesbitt. Then I will free the Lenhoans.”

  “I don’t understand why he was bringing the women here,” Zack said.

  “There is a two part answer to that question. Paul has a taste for beautiful women and has been bringing them here for a long time. However he tires of them quickly….more quickly all the time, and requires new ones. More importantly, to him at least, is the fact that there are only about twenty thousand Lenhoans, as far as we know, in this whole world. They have a history dating back thousands of years and only twenty thousand people to show for it. Women go their entire lives without becoming pregnant. He tried forcing the Lenhoans to mate more, and that didn’t work, he made the women that he brought here mate with Lenhoan men, there were no pregnancies, now he is getting the women that he brings here pregnant, and plans to re-seed the entire planet in his image.

  “You should have put a stop to all of this a long time ago, you are as much to blame as he is,” Zack said angrily.

  “You are quite right of course,” Weston Presley said, beginning to weep. “Will you help me right these awful wrongs?”

  “I was going to the time-rip anyway,” Zack said, “but I wanted to come after Emily first. There are three women from Payne’s Station on their way there right now. Are they going to be killed?”

  Weston nodded, not meeting Zack’s gaze. “I am afraid so.”

  “They have guns, and are pretty smart….maybe they will get through,” Zack said.

  “Perhaps, but I must tell you that over the past twenty years or so the guards have killed a great many people that have wandered too close to the time-rip. For many years its remote location and the fact that the world’s population was so drastically diminished, made instances where folks came across it rare. But more and more often an unlucky traveler would come, perhaps drawn by the cook fires of the guard’s little village, only to be killed to protect Paul Nesbitt’s kingdom. Curiously, before a man named Ben Grayson, and then Desmond Trask, it had been difficult for Paul, even with the promise of immortality, to get men to kill for him. They would guard things, and capture people, but were reluctant to kill….” he trailed off.