Matt Eaton - Blank

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

“Luckman, you brought me here to help you.”

“It’s dangerous Mel.”

A sly grin crept across her face. “Don’t turn pussy on me now,” she goaded. “Have a little faith.”

He didn’t have the strength to argue. “I’m guessing we will need to be very specific.” He thought about it for a moment, trying to pick a potential target. “OK, I’ve got one – 12.30pm, November 22, 1963. Elm Street in Dallas.”

“The JFK assassination,” she realised. “Brilliant.”

She closed her eyes again and focused on that moment in time. In an instant it was like she had been physically transported to the streets of the Texan city. But it was so much more than virtual reality. She felt the wind in her face and smelt the freshly cut lawn on the infamous grassy knoll. It was just a few steps away. It’s real. She breathed it all in, willing herself to relax. “It’s like the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.”

“Where exactly are you?” he asked her.

“I’m standing on that semi-circular monument above the road.”

“Dealey Plaza.”

“Yeah, that’s it. I’ll walk forward. There aren’t too many people here. There’s a man I can see fumbling with one of those old eight-millimetre movie cameras.”

It had to be Abraham Zapruder . “That camera’s top of the line for 1963,” he told her.

“The Presidential motorcade has just come into view a couple of streets away.”

“Do you have a clear line of sight from where you are?”

“I’m moving forward to the top of the plaza steps. I should be able to see everything from here. There are people lining the side of the road in the park across from me. And there – oh wow, I can see the book depository. Holy shit.”

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure I just saw a rifle barrel poking out of a top-floor window.”

It was all happening too fast. But even before she had time to form a clear intention in her mind the chair had already responded to her instinctive wish to slow things down. “Everything just shifted to quarter speed. I think I did that – I was worried I was going to miss it. I guess the chair read my mind. I can see Kennedy clearly now. My God, this is incredible.”

The convoy moved slowly around the final turn and into Elm Street. She looked up again. The rifle was clearly visible through the window. Can’t the police see him up there?

“When you hear the first shot I want you to stay focused on the motorcade,” Luckman told her. “Don’t look up.”

Despite her best intentions to do as he suggested she found herself instinctively gazing up toward Lee Harvey Oswald’s window as the shot rang out. The muzzle of the rifle was still visible. The sound was strangely distorted in slow motion.

But now everything around her was quiet.

She returned her gaze to the road and saw an expression of shock and pain register on Jack Kennedy’s face. “The first shot’s just been fired,” she confirmed. “Kennedy’s been hit.”

“Now believe me Mel, you do not want to be looking at Kennedy. You need to search for a second shooter somewhere immediately behind the President’s limo.”

“What makes you so sure there is one?”

“Trust me on this,” he told her.

She gazed around urgently, trying to spot anyone with something resembling a gun. As the seconds passed, it became clear that no-one in the crowd had anything even resembling a weapon pointed at Kennedy.

“I can’t see anyone. No, wait. There.”

In the back of the convertible directly behind Kennedy’s car. A man in a dark suit had risen to his feet.

“Who are those men in the car directly behind the President?” she asked.

“That’s the Secret Service.”

“One of them has a rifle. His head is swinging around wildly like he’s looking for the shooter. He stood up.” She watched in fascinated horror at what happened next. “There’s smoke all around him now. Oh my God. That’s too awful.” She had seen the man who fired the fatal shot and its devastating impact on the skull of the President.

It wasn’t Oswald. It was a member of the President’s own Secret Service detail. Mel willed herself to leave. It took far greater effort than she had expected to open her eyes but she was relieved when she found herself back in the vault. She noted Luckman’s expression of concern and tried to push herself out of the chair towards him. He caught her as she collapsed to the floor under her own weight.

She began to cry uncontrollably. With nowhere else to lay her down, he knelt slowly and cradled her in his arms. She curled up around him like a sick child. He stroked her hair gently.

“It’s OK, you’re safe.”

“It was a Secret Service man… I saw it. He was right in front of me.”

“I know,” he admitted.

Her eyes widened. “How could you know?”

“General Shearer told me – years ago, one night when he was very drunk. But Mel you have to understand it was a terrible accident. Their car braked suddenly and he fired the weapon in error.”

“That’s one hell of an error. I thought they were trained not to do dumb things like that.”

“A lot of bad decisions were made that day. The Secret Service detail commander put the sniper’s rifle in the hands of a man who wasn’t trained to use it. He was one of the few men on that protection detail who hadn’t been out drinking all night. Kennedy’s excesses had started to rub off on them.”

“I smelt the gun powder, I heard the awful sound of that bullet hitting his head. I sensed the shock and horror and disbelief.”

“The Secret Service and the FBI closed ranks to keep the truth hidden,” Luckman explained. “They intimidated witnesses – they swore people to secrecy under pain of death. The Warren Commission was a whitewash. But you have to understand it was at the height of the Cold War. America would have been an international laughing stock if it had been revealed a man sworn to protect the president had accidentally blown his head off.”

Luckman pulled a strand of hair away from her mouth. She looked up at him like a small child. “How many more secrets are in that head of yours?” she wondered, closing her eyes again. Her breath was uneven, her heart racing. The remote viewing chair had consumed all her energy. He stroked her hair to calm her down, fearing she was so weak she could go into cardiac arrest. As her breathing returned to normal he asked her how she felt.

“Like I could melt into the floor,” she answered meekly.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this exhausted.”

Luckman checked his watch again. Just after three in the morning. Wow, where did that time go? Another two hours of darkness at most. He was tired too. He was nodding in and out of consciousness like a narcoleptic. Mel was asleep on his lap now. His back was hurting. He was too old for this shit. Too many nights on hard ground. His dad would say he’d gone soft.

But adrenalin cut through the weariness as he caught a noise outside the vault. There – the same noise again. Someone else had found their way to the chamber. He pulled out his revolver, lifted Mel off his lap and rose achingly to his feet.

A young Aboriginal man peered through the vault door wide-eyed and wary, the expression shifting to alarm when he saw the gun pointing at him. His face was familiar.

“Don’t shoot, hey. I come to get you outa here.”

“I know you.”

“Yeah. Pat Williams.”

“I’m Captain Stone Luckman.”

“I know.”

“How did you know we were here?”

Pat tapped his heart lightly. “Felt it. I spent so much time in this chair it’s crept inside mah head.”