When I was twelve, my mom got too drunk and left me at the afterschool program. I say it like it only happened once, but it was actually a pretty common thing until she finally sobered up the month I left for college. But the time I’m talking about, a gray day in October when I had just turned twelve, always stood out to me.
By five o’clock I knew she wasn’t coming, so I walked the mile to the bus station to wait until the 5:30 bus came by. It was a hassle, but I knew the way home well enough, and it was a lot easier to get back on my own than deal with her icy silence and glares that night if I’d called and woken her up. Besides, if left undisturbed, she might not get up til eight or nine, which meant hours of my pick for t.v. and dealer’s choice for dinner.
I reached the bus stop about 5:20 and was glad to find the bench empty. I wasn’t too worried about strangers generally, but sometimes there were older kids looking to push someone around or some homeless guy you had to keep an eye on the whole time like he was a strange dog that might decide to bite. So having the bench all to myself was a relief.
“It’s different than it’s supposed to be.”
I jumped and looked toward the voice with widening eyes, surprised to find a middle-aged woman sitting next to me on the bench. I hadn’t heard her come up at all, much less sit down, and when I jerked my head around, she didn’t even seem to notice I was there. Dark, grey-streaked hair pulled back in a tight bun and lips drawn down in a quivering scowl, she was like a character from that old Ichabod Crane story. Not because she was dressed old-fashioned, because she wasn’t, but more just the way she looked and carried herself—thin and gawky, fidgety and yet somehow dignified, she reminded me of a strange, out-of-place bird as she stared out with an expression that was both blank and searching. I was about to look away and try to stay quiet when she rolled her large green eyes in my direction.
“Can you tell me when it is?”
Flinching slightly, I nodded, looking down at my digital wristwatch. It had been my birthday gift the week before, and the plastic strap was already starting to crack, but it kept good time. “Um, it’s 5:24.” Swallowing, I added “Ma’am” to the end, like an offering to some unknown god I wanted to pass on by without further incident or conversation.
Instead of satisfying her, it just seemed to agitate her further. “No, no, stupid boy. The date. What is the day, month, and year?”
I glanced around as I studiously avoided reacting to her odd question. I’d seen this before. Some nutjob wanting someone to listen or maybe scream at, just looking for you to take a slight interest or trigger them in some inscrutable way. Still, she was staring at me, and she was an adult. I’d just answer her and then casually walk away a bit from the stop. I could always run back when the bus showed up.
“Um, it’s October 5th.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And the year? What’s the year?”
I felt my cheeks flush. “1992.” Gripping the straps of my bookbag like they were lifelines, I stood up from the bench and started heading over to the corner, not looking back or going too fast, wanting it to seem like I’d just remembered something I wanted to see or do, not that I was trying to get away from anyone, certainly not the crazy woman who didn’t know what year it was.
I made it to the corner before I gave in and glanced back. I was half-afraid she’d be staring at me, or worse, following behind me, but to my surprise, she wasn’t there at all. I glanced further down the street and across to the other side, but there was no sign of the woman anywhere. This was at the edge of the suburbs, so there were a few houses around she could have gone behind, but why? I stuck to the corner for a couple of more minutes, but she never came back, and when I saw my bus rounding the turn on the far end of the road, I made my way back to the stop.
That was when I saw it. Lying on the bench where the woman had been sitting was a small blue pamphlet. At first I thought maybe it was a church tract, but when I looked closer at the cover, I saw a penciled figure walking down a dark road that split into a dozen directions ahead. Below the drawing, was a slash of red words that burned out from the indigo like a scar:
Did you Know Time tRAvel is botH reAl and Possible?
I heard the bus hiss to a stop behind me. Taking a final glance around, I snatched up the pamphlet and ran onto the bus, showing the driver my pass (laminated by Mr. Friel at school when he saw how tattered it had become), and heading back to an empty seat to look over my prize.
It was only a few pages long, and many of those pages were filled with abstract symbols and figures I didn’t recognize then and don’t remember clearly now. But the text was clearer, and I committed those words to heart, first because of their exotic flavor, and later as a touchstone to something miraculous during the days and years that followed—times when the weight of reality was rough-edged and heavy and grey. And when I sat back on that same bus stop bench almost three years ago, waiting for…something, though I wasn’t sure what…those words kept me company until I was no longer alone.
Seize the hand of fate!
The path of time travel isn’t found through scientific mastery. It is a thread of perception. Or a line of experiences your consciousness defines into a sequential order. The razor of human reason is far too blunt an instrument to fully understand it. And that, coupled with the inherent fallacies associated with time as a construct for the perception of reality, leads to one of the major obstacles most face when attempting time travel.
It bleeds the vigor from those that attempt to manipulate it with quantum theory! Wards you away with vague ideas of impending scorn or mockery if its discussed seriously among most circles of discussion and schools of thought!
Well…until you realize that all the tools you actually require?
Those you already possess. To finish your journey, you must simply know how to begin it. And it depends almost entirely on your ability to perceive the world not as it appears, but as you wish it to be.
Fiction or lunacy, you may ask? When it comes to this matter, friend, it is neither. Everything finishes as soon as it is properly begun. And you begin by understanding one maxim above all others: Time is a lie.
The rest of the pages were filled with more drawings, but the only one I remember clearly is a drawing of a blue chess piece…a knight I think. A man stares at it, a thought bubble above his head saying “I am in a place where that piece is RED” and then the next drawing is of the man smiling as the knight becomes red.
It sounds silly talking about it now, but the impression I got from all of it back then was that you could change time, or at least change what path of time you were on, if you could just find a particular thing…it could be anything really, just something you could alter so completely in your mind that it changed in reality.
Except it wasn’t really it that changed, it was you. You traveled to another place, another timeline, where that reality you had pictured was for real.
I spent hours trying to make it work as a kid. I’d pick out a poster on my wall or the color of my pen or the type of car that always sat across the street from our apartment building and try to will some detail of it to change. It never worked, of course, but that never stopped me from trying, from always looking for that magic switch that could flip things from bad to good.
Come to find out, the switch was just getting away from there. Not that I didn’t have any problems or heartaches after I left home, but college showed me so many new ways of living, so many new friends and opportunities to learn and grow…well, it may not have been a secret path to a different timeline, but it was good enough for me.
And over the years I’ve been fairly lucky. No big romances, but a few small ones, and I’ve never done without work or fun for long. All things considered, this version of things has turned out okay for me.
Or at least I thought it had.
On June 30, 2018, I got a text message from a number I didn’t recognize. It didn’t say who it was, just simply this:
Go back to the bus stop. It’s different than it’s supposed to be.
My heart leapt in my chest. I knew immediately what it was referring to, impossible as that seemed. I’d never told anyone about that day at the bus stop, never showed the pamphlet to anyone before it eventually got lost somewhere between moves over my early adult years. And normally I’d be a thousand miles away from any shot of visiting the old spot, but not that week in June of 2018.
That week, I was home burying my mother.
I thought of a hundred reasons not to go, the chief among them being it was going to be some weird coincidence or a waste of time. Still, what were the odds of getting that exact message that was uniquely meaningful to me? Especially when I happened to be back in town for the first time in years? And it wasn’t a question of time. My flight back out wasn’t until the following day, and I’d had all the memories and mourning and catching up I thought I could stand for one trip. So I went.
The bus stop wasn’t much different than it had been twenty-five years earlier. Someone had installed a new overhang that was maybe a little better at keeping rain off than the old one, and the neighborhood itself had grown up considerably since I’d stopped coming out that way for the after-school program at fourteen, but the benches were the same I thought. Glancing around and seeing no one, I sat down in roughly the spot I’d been in that day when the woman had appeared and left the mystery book behind.
My pulse was up a little, some faint and prickly mix of fear and excitement riding in my blood as I waited for a sign that this was something other than the diversion of a middle-aged man not wanting to spend more time around his old home than necessary. I saw no one out on the street, despite it being just after five on a weekday. Looking around, my eyes caught on a rust-red word scrawled onto the bench down from where I sat. Squinting, I read it out loud.
“What”
Just that, nothing else, and the writing seemed new enough that it was unlikely something more had been obliterated by time, the elements, or even waiting bus passengers, as the word “what” was in the middle of where someone would sit and it seemed wholly intact. I stared at the word, trying to puzzle out what it meant, or if it had any meaning at all aside from being some kid’s idea of cool grafitti. I wasn’t even sure what it was written in, thought it almost looked like…
“Fucking bitch.”
I turned with a jolt to see a man a few years older than me standing a couple of feet away. Dressed in a rain jacket and jeans, he might have just been some random dude coming to wait for the bus if not for the faint buzz he set off in my head. It was a feeling that said this man with his thin face and deep-set, dark eyes was serious, and dangerous, in a way most things I’d encountered in life were not. My legs began to tremble as I searched for the right response.
He smirked at he met my eyes. “Not you.” The man gestured toward the writing on the bench. “The woman behind that. Thinks she’s very cute. Always encroaching on someone’s territory, acting as though she was above it all.” His expression was hard as he found my gaze again. “She’s not.”
I nodded, trying to act like I knew what he was talking about, when I had no clue. Then a thought occurred to me. “Are you talking about an older woman? She’d be…I don’t know, maybe sixty-five or seventy something by now?” When he just stared at me, I rambled on, “I met someone like that when I was a kid. Right here at this bus stop.”
His eyes widened as he let out a bray of laughter.
“Her? No, that’s rich. She’d think that was funny though.”
I frowned. “Who? The woman I met here?”
The man nodded. “Yeah. She’s my mother. Her name’s Rowena. Mine’s Owen.”
I offered a weak smile. “I see. Good to meet you. I’m Mike.”
Owen chuckled. “Well, yeah. You know I’m the one that sent you the text, right?”
Swallowing, I gave a nod. “I was guessing that when you said she was your mother. I don’t know how you found me or got my number though.” I paused, giving him a chance to answer. After several moments of silent staring, I looked away and went on. “But I guess I was curious. Curious why I got the text and what it meant.”
The man stepped closer, sitting down on the “What” pointedly as he turned to face me. “Do you remember much about meeting Rowena?”
I nodded again, more emphatically. “Yeah, I do. Very much so. She surprised me. I hadn’t known she was there until she said something, and then when I…um, when I looked away she left without me seeing her go. I think she must have left this little booklet I found.”
Owen grinned. “Little blue book? Talking about time travel and shit?”
Brightening, I smiled back. “Yeah! It was really cool. I read that thing over and over growing up. Always wished I could figure out how it worked.” I laughed. “I guess every kid wants to go back in time.”
The man’s smile froze on his face. “That’s not what the book said.”
Frowning, I shook my head. “No, I guess not.”
He leaned forward, his teeth gritted. “Tell me what it did say then. If you remember it.”
I felt heat flush my face as a mixture of embarrassment and anger bloomed in my chest. Who was this guy? And where did he get off texting me, tricking me out here, and then giving me attitude about something that happened over twenty-five years earlier? I wanted to meet his eyes and tell him off, but I didn’t quite dare to either. Instead, I just lowered my eyes and responded as calmly as I could manage.
“Um, it was about changing your timeline. Like you imagine something is different until you wind up in the timeline where that difference is real.”
Owen was smiling again, and before I could react, he’d reached over and patted my shoulder. “That’s it, man. I couldn’t have said it better myself.” His smile widened as he went on. “Did you ever try it? You know, to make it to another timeline?”
I felt myself relaxing a little. “Um, yeah, a lot actually. My life was kinda shit growing up, and it was a cool way to daydream.” I trailed off as he started laughing. “What is it?”
Owen shook his head. “It’s just so funny. You were such a big deal to me at the time, and now? I can see how small and unimportant you really are.” His eyes widened. “Not to me, you understand. You’re still hugely important to me. But just generally. To imagine that I worried about it back then.”
I stared at him in confusion. “Worried about what? What’re you talking about?”
Snorting, he shook his head again as he smiled ruefully. “Killing you. That day on the bench, I was supposed to kill you. I’d dreamed about it, you see. My family always dreams about the important kills, and I’d had a dream about you.”
I felt my legs tensing as I tried to judge the distance to my car, but then I felt a hard pressure on my thigh. Looking down, I saw a small knife tight against my inner leg. When I looked up at Owen, any trace of humor or warmth was gone.
“I don’t plan on killing you now, but I can adjust that plan if you decide to act stupid. So keep still while we have our nice little talk, okay?” I gave a trembling nod, and apparently satisfied, Owen sat back with the knife in his lap. “Good.”
“Why?”
He nodded as he looked out at the empty street. “That’s not unreasonable.” Letting out a small sigh, he went on. “My family, going back quite a few years, is special. Part of a very old way of living…call it a philosophy or religion if you like, though I think it’s something both simpler and more complex than either.” Glancing at me, he smirked again. “Most people are born like you. Little more than cattle or sheep. You live small lives and die small deaths, usually with little impact on anything other than the couple of cows standing nearest to you, and even they start grazing around your body soon enough. I don’t say this to be condescending, as I truly don’t think you have a choice in the matter. It’s simply your nature.”
Clearing his throat, he went on. “Then you have the anomalies. The serial killers and mass murderers. Maybe some of them sense something of the truth, but most are just mistakes of nature—mad animals with a drive to inflict pain because they feel so much themselves or because they can’t feel any at all, and it drives them crazy.”
“And then there are us. Something higher and better. We kill, not out of some warped desire or aberrant purpose, but as part of our journey of ascension toward a higher realm of existence. This may all sound crazy to you, and for that, I apologize. There’s a part of me that realizes trying to explain this to you, to make you understand, is like you trying to teach a dog how to do calculus or compose a sonnet. But I do feel compelled to try out of some strange respect for you, or at least what you mean to me, and perhaps to honor my mother’s memory now better than I did when I was young.”
Sucking in a shaky breath, I shrugged. “Tell me what you need to. I’ll listen and try to understand. Just please don’t kill me.” Worried I wasn’t responding enough to what he was saying, I threw in, “How does this honor your mom’s memory? Was she…um, was she like you?”
The corner of Owen’s mouth ticked up as he watched me. “Oh yes. She was quite wonderful. Always so clever and full of life and mischief.” He gestured in my direction. “The time travel pamphlet, for instance. That was taken from some of her things. At one time it had been used as a talisman—a means of safe travel in the territory of another.” Leaning forward, he tapped below his eye. “We can often sense others of our kind, but not always, and that by itself is not a guarantee of anything. But there are talismans—coded books and symbols, behaviors and phrases and acts that can, to those that know, act like a secret handshake. A way of saying we share the same way of living and walk the same path, at least for awhile.”
He let out a small laugh. “Mother’s way was to make curiosities. Obscure figurines engraved with the right markings or coded messages hidden in what appeared to be secret knowledge or forbidden ritual. I always thought her time travel pamphlet was silly when I was growing up, but after I lost her, I appreciated it more. She always had quite a sense of humor.” Wiping at the corner of his eye, he went on. “So I decided to honor her that day by carrying the booklet with me. And when I realized I couldn’t kill you, I left it behind on impulse.” He leaned forward again and squeezed my arm. “I was so happy when I saw you had picked it up, and it thrills me that you treasured it as well.” Owen raised his hand to cover his mouth as he snickered. “Though I’ll chalk your actually buying into the time travel shit as the credulity of youth.”
I blinked as I tried to order everything he was saying in my mind. “Okay, so…wait. You’re saying your mother was dead when I saw her at the bus stop growing up?”
Owen rolled his eyes. “Jesus. No. That was me. I know I’m older now and without the schoolmarm get-up, but can’t you remember enough to see it was me that day?”
He…he was right. I’d put it off as a family resemblance, but if he’d made himself look older back then and used a more feminine voice…I could see it being him, even if I still didn’t understand why. “Did you do all this because you thought you had a dream about me back then? A dream that you were supposed to kill me?”
His gaze grew cooler. “Not thought I did. I did. And no, I hadn’t ever seen or known about you before the dream, and yes, it was specific enough that I knew it was you, though I admit I didn’t understand the details at the time. That’s why I made the mistake of thinking I was supposed to kill you that day.”
I felt my stomach turning to ice as something occurred to me. “That’s why you said that. ‘It’s different than it’s supposed to be.’”
Owen immediately brightened. “Yes! Very good, yes! That’s exactly right.” He chuckled. “Our family is strong with guiding dreams for our important prey, but they are still dreams of a sort. Slippery and easy to misinterpret if you are young and dumb like I was.” He shrugged. “Still, when I sat down next to you, I immediately saw my mistake. And I was actually relieved! Even growing up like I did, I was still pretty new to hunting, and the idea of killing a kid…it was messing with me a little.” The man’s face grew a shade of red. “I even worried at first that I’d let you go out of some sort of misplaced guilt. Until I realized I could still see you, that is. Still find you when the time was finally right.”
I felt my head swimming. I wanted to run, but something told me I’d never make it to my car or any kind of help, and even if I did, I wasn’t sure it would stop him. I just needed to keep him talking, buy time until I thought of an escape or convinced him to let me go.
“But…but you said you aren’t going to kill me, so I guess it worked out, right?”
Owen shook his head slightly. “No, I said I wasn’t going to kill you today. And I won’t unless you make a scene. It’s not your time quite yet.” When he grinned at me this time, I saw a hungry-looking wolf. “But it’s much, much closer than it was before.”
“Please…please don’t. Just let me go and forget about me.”
The man folded up the knife and slipped it into his pocket as he studied me. “Don’t ruin this with begging. I’ve found you quite likeable, all things considered. And I’m glad I decided to share this with you. Yes, it will make you dread and worry until the day comes, but maybe it’ll also help you understand that it’s a worthwhile sacrifice you’re going to be making. I can feel apotheosis…or at least epiphany…in your blood. And I promise not to waste it.” He leaned forward and patted my leg. “I’ll always treasure your death.”
I sat staring for awhile, afraid to move or even breathe, casting about for some magic combination of words or actions to scare him off or make him change his mind. But there was nothing. All I could do was survive the encounter, go to the police, and then make sure I never saw him again.
“When are you supposed to do it then?” I knew I’d said the words, but I barely recognized my own voice. It drifted out of me, disconnected and thin, to hang between us. And I didn’t really expect him to answer, but then he did.
“March 19, 2021.”
I let out a gasp, the certainty and solidity of his prediction cutting through me like a cold wind. “Uh, okay. Um…um, where? Where is it going to happen?” So I can make sure I’m fucking far away from there.
Owen shrugged. “I don’t know. Me meeting you, telling you all this, it’s going to change things. You’ll try to get help. Get me arrested or something. When you realize no one can find me, you’ll try to run, maybe even hide.” He sighed softly. “I didn’t tell you this to make your last years full of fear and trying to escape, but I can see why it would go that route.” He patted my leg again. “I know it’s probably going to sound insincere, but I encourage you to not give into that fear. Live your life. Appreciate it more because you know it has a short expiration date. Don’t waste it worrying about me.”
I surprised myself by laughing bitterly. “Sure. Just give up. Make it easy for you, right?”
It was Owen’s turn to look surprised. “No, not at all. I thought you understood.” He leaned toward me, his face serious but not unkind. “I can always see you, like a distant light, no matter where you go. I’ve seen you since the day of the dream, and I’ll see you until I take that light out of the world. And no matter where you go, no matter what you do, it won’t matter. I’ll always find you.”
I jumped as I heard a hiss a few feet away. Looking up, I saw that the bus had arrived. Owen stood up and gave me a parting nod before getting onto the bus. The driver looked past him and called to me.
“You coming too?”
I shook my head and then the bus took my killer away.
In the almost three years since, I’ve tried to live my life while also protecting it. I did go to the police, but they never found Owen or anything about who he really was or where he had gone. Maybe they thought I was lying or crazy…I don’t know…but after the first month I gave up trying. For the next two years I lived my life fairly normally—I got an alarm system and a gun, but not much else changed other than my being more frugal than normal. I started tucking away what money I could when I could, not admitting to myself until late last year that what I was actually doing was building up resources so I could run.
And the second week in January, that’s exactly what I did. I traveled to New York and then to London, and from there I went to France, where I’d already paid cash to rent a small house in a tiny village outside of Nice. I didn’t speak a word of French before December, and I’d never really wanted to go there, but I thought that made it a better spot than somewhere I might have talked openly about or searched on the internet before. As it turned out, the town was beautiful and the people were very warm and friendly. And by last month, I could stumble along enough in their natural tongue to keep most of them from having to revert to English out of pity.
My life here is a good life that I am coming to not only appreciate, but truly love. I had planned on going back at the end of my lease, but the more time that passes, the more I begin to wonder if I’ll ever leave at all.
Especially after today.
This morning I was walking out past the edge of town when I saw a figure standing under a distant tree. It was far enough I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like an old woman in a long, dark blue dress, her head wrapped in a thick, grey shawl. An old woman…or someone wanting to appear as one. I tried to act casual, not glancing in their direction again until I was close enough to get a better look. But then when I did, they were gone.
I told myself it was nothing—my mind playing tricks on me as I got only two days from the date of Owen’s promise. I’d spent a lot of time in the past couple of years learning to control my fear, and by the time I reached the house, I was almost at peace again.
That’s when I stepped inside and found the gift waiting for me on the kitchen counter.
It was a wooden chess piece. A knight. Originally it had been a deep blue, but you could hardly tell it now, hidden as it was under the new layer of paint still drying across most of the horse’s head and neck, the color vivid against the pale countertop.
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