The Time Travel Chronicles (41 page)

Juniper only used it in tiny drops, on the days the taunts about her father were the worst, and the nights when she dreamt that her mother called to her, far out at sea.

Today it had gotten so bad at school that she’d skipped out during lunch. She’d walked the five miles home, sweat collecting beneath her school uniform. The silver bodysuit extended from her neck to her wrists and ankles, enshrouding her entire body, protecting it from the deadly sun. A large-brimmed hat shaded her face.

Juniper’s dad claimed he could still remember Maine’s cool summers from when he was a kid, but she had never experienced anything but sweltering heat this time of year. The state’s population had exploded in the last ten years; many Southerners found moving North preferable to buying into the massive federal SUB-TERRAN initiative.

A collective of scientists and engineers was attempting to create sustainable underground cities in the areas where temperatures had risen above the safe level for humans. But who wanted to live underground their whole lives?

Juniper’s small town had remained largely untouched by the influx, in large part because of her parents. They’d lobbied town officials to raise local taxes and then bought every property that came on the market for two years. Most of those houses had been torn down and the land reclaimed by sharp, whispery beach grass.

Her father still held nearly half of the town’s land under his protection.

And it was slowly killing the village.

Juniper’s schoolmates blamed her father for their parents’ lost jobs and livelihoods. They taunted her, tripped her in the halls, whispered under their breath that her mother had died of shame.

Outside of Stone Harbor, the world was tearing itself apart. Here, it was Juniper who was in danger of annihilation.

Soon they’d all discover she was crazy, and her father would be forced to send her away. On days like today, when the phantom stench of death hung over her most strongly, she wondered if that‘d be such a bad thing.

Up ahead, a strange bluish light wobbled along a tumble of rocks, just before the pebbled beach became forest. Juniper blinked, shocked from her thoughts.

The light didn’t disappear. And just beyond it, under the first of the tree shadows, she thought she saw a figure. The light wavered, and the figure wavered too, as insubstantial as a ghost.

“I
am
crazy,” Juniper muttered to herself. She squinted harder and changed course, heading farther from the water. Closer to the light.

She probably should have run the hell away.

The rotting flesh smell intensified, and even her mother’s lotion couldn’t mask it.

The figure under the trees moved again. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, tall or short. The way the strange light flickered and pulsed, she couldn’t seem to get a good visual on anything in that stretch of beach. And she was only twenty yards away.

Maybe
…

Juniper scrambled over the rocky shore, breaking into a run.

If it
was
a ghost, who else could it be but her mother?

“Wait! I’m coming, Mama!” she yelled. A stone slid under her foot and she stumbled, falling hard on one knee. Her shins scraped against the barnacle-crusted rocks, but she got up and didn’t stop.

Ten yards.

Five.

She slowed.

The light pulsed, the blue edged with pink and a dark emerald green. The figure disappeared. A burn of tears built up behind her eyes.

“Don’t leave me! Please,” her voice warbled, drawn out like summer taffy until it sounded nearly inhuman.

What was happening?

Suddenly, the figure reappeared past the arc of light. She could see more clearly now. It wasn’t her mother. Or a woman at all.

Even though she was only feet away now, the man still faded in and out of her sight, as if she were looking at him through ancient warped glass. He was moving, waving his hands, and his mouth opened. He was yelling at her, but she couldn’t hear a word.

How could she not hear him?

The light shone more brightly the closer she came to it. Beyond, the stranger waved more and more frantically. His faded blue pants hung low on his hips, and his black shirt bore a stark white skull and crossbones. Where was his protective gear? In that clothing, he’d have enough UV damage to develop skin cancer by the end of the day.

His arms fell to his sides as she reached the light, and that’s when she saw the blood.

It was everywhere.

Streaking his forearms, his pants, even the side of his face.

Juniper froze.

All around her, the smell of death rose, thicker and thicker until the air itself choked on it. She couldn’t breathe, could hardly see.

The light beckoned. Was this insanity, then?

“Don’t—any closer.” The words were garbled, passing to her as if from a great distance. The man repeated them, and this time, as Juniper concentrated on his mouth, they sounded a little clearer. “Don’t come any closer. We don’t want you here.”

“You don’t want
me
here?” she shouted back. “This is a private beach.
You’re
the one who doesn’t belong here!”

His eyes widened. She couldn’t see his features clearly enough to judge his age or whether he was handsome.  Shadows swallowed his dark skin and the strange light that surrounded him never illuminated his face.

“You can hear me?” he yelled.

She nodded, stepping closer.

He raised his bloody hands. “No! Don’t walk through. Please.” His voice wavered, and she missed his next words, all but one:
kill
.

“What did you just say?” Unease twisted her stomach. What was happening? They were steps away from each other and she could barely see or hear him. And there was a ring of freaking light. And the smell of bodies.

And the blood.

Maybe he was a murderer. He was killing her and she was having some kind of out-of-body experience.

The man looked away for a split second as another faint voice yelled something. Juniper glanced in the same direction, but all she saw was rocky beach and sickly trees. When she looked back, the stranger was gone. She was tempted to go after him, his warnings be damned, but the stench and the undulating light made her nauseous, and she still wasn’t sure if she was suffering from some psychotic break.

On second thought, she
was
sure.

She had to be.

There was no other explanation.

Juniper trudged back up the beach, hot sun pouring lava on her shoulders, choked by the stench of her grief.

* * *

“You’re quiet tonight.” Juniper’s father studied her over the heap of lettuce and quinoa on his plate. His eyes, the pale blue of sea glass, held a question so clear he may as well have said the words.

“I’m fine, Dad.” Sometimes Juniper wished she could hate her father like the rest of the town did. Then she wouldn’t have to defend him. She wouldn’t feel torn between having a family and having a life.

“’Fine.’ The classic teenager response.” He scooped up a bite of salad. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Come on, kid. You look troubled. Are you sure there’s nothing bothering you?”

For the first three months after Juniper’s mother died, he’d put his head in his hands and said things like “your mom would know how to ask” or “she’d know what to do” when Juniper wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. That had ended in tears too many times.

Juniper spun her fork in little half circles against her plate. She wanted to spill it all…tell him about how she’d skipped school, the bullying, the man on the beach. The light.

But if she told him about the bullying, he’d do something that would make life in this town even more difficult for her. Calling out
any
of the students or teachers would just make the others worse. And she couldn’t tell him what had happened at the beach. Not unless she really was ready to be sent to an institution. She wondered what she would have said if the figure had actually been her mother’s ghost.

“Juniper.”

His voice startled her, and her fork fell onto her plate with a clatter. “It’s nothing. I just…I saw something weird on the beach.” She stabbed a blueberry and forced it to her lips. “No big deal.”

Her father went still, the outward energy of his movements turning to a suppressed current, rushing beneath the surface. “Where on the beach?”

Juniper cleared her throat, thrown off by his sudden intensity. “Uh, I don’t know…down around the first bend in the cove, I guess. Why?”

“What about it was weird? What exactly did you see?”

“Dad,
you’re
being weird,” she said. She wished she’d never said anything. Why did he even care? Maybe he knew it meant she was crazy. She swallowed.

“Was it a sort of circular light? Or maybe a starburst?” He leaned forward. “Was it a
light
, Juniper?”

She nodded slowly. “How did you know?”

His eyes lit up with excitement, even as his attention turned inward. “It’s here already,” he mumbled, obviously to himself. “I wasn’t expecting…months, maybe. Not so soon.”

“What
is
it?” She stared at him, thoroughly confused. But if the light was
something
, something her dad was aware of, that meant she wasn’t crazy. Probably. Then again, with the way her father was acting, maybe her mental health wasn’t the only one in question.

How could that weird, unnatural light be something her father had expected?

With a jerk, he stood up, rattling the table. “Show me,” he said. He didn’t answer her questions.

With a frustrated sigh, Juniper led him through the silent, empty rooms of their house and out onto the deck that overlooked the ocean. In the hours since she’d last been down to the rocky beach, the tide had come in, slurping over the seaweed-slicked rocks, hiding the dying starfish.

“What’s that smell?” Juniper’s father asked, covering his nose.

“I don’t know. It smells like that out here sometimes. It started a few weeks ago.” The scent of death was fainter than it had been earlier in the day.  The sun slunk behind the trees, and a breeze kicked up off the water, as if trying to wash the air clean.  “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Her father concentrated on picking his way across the hazardous rocks and said nothing.

Juniper couldn’t stand the silence. “I thought it was a ghost. Mom’s ghost. I thought I was going crazy.”

He didn’t look at her, but his sigh was audible, even over the ruffling waves and hissing wind. When he did speak, it was a story she’d heard before. “With our jobs, your mother and I were aware, long before the general public, that the Earth had become a ticking bomb.”

“’Humans have orchestrated our own extinction’ – I know. The whole world knows now.”  It wasn’t like it changed anything. As far as Juniper could tell, there were only a few differences in her small town. A lot more people went to church now. Some of the girls at her school had gotten married. Everyone was having a lot more sex, if the gossip in the halls was to be believed. And they all still hated her dad.

A few years ago, some entrepreneurial citizens down south had started suing politicians and companies that had “willfully ignored evidence of climate change and other threats to our planet.” Most of the lawsuits had been dismissed.

She, like most of the rest of the world, was still hoping for a last-minute Hail Mary solution. But in the end, her geographical location and her father’s wealth would probably only buy her some time. Estimates put the Earth at levels untenable for human life within the next ten to thirty years. Two billion people had already died.

Her mother used to say that everything came with an expiration date. Even the Earth.

But she’d never once said it without tears in her eyes.

Her father continued his lecture. “Some of my colleagues believe they’ve found a way to preserve the human race.”

“Send us all into space?” Political leaders all over the world had invested billions of dollars into large-scale spaceships, but as of yet, no country had launched its citizens into the black beyond.

Her father shook his head. “It’s an escape, of sorts. But…but not outward.”

Juniper shook her head.
Not outward.
What did that even mean? Before she could ask, she caught a flash of light and pointed.

Halfway down the cove, a blue glow flickered against the trees. Her father stopped and stared, slack-jawed. Then he hurried closer.

Juniper looked for the strange man she’d spoken to, but no one appeared beyond the pulsing circle of light. She was a few steps behind her father now, and for some reason, the closer he got to their destination, the more her stomach roiled.

When he reached out, she couldn’t help it. She screamed.

“Don’t touch it, Dad!”

He turned to look at her. “It’s perfectly safe.”