David Lomax: Backward Glass

For all my caution, I misjudged my balance. I got a look at a flickering light, and maybe two figures near it, then I tumbled out, the mirror loosening its grip on me, and fell onto the floor of the carriage house.

“There he is,” said a voice from below. “Get him!”

The Rules

5. The mirror only picks one kid every decade. It never picks anyone older than sixteen.

Boots thumped up the stairs, and before I could get on my feet, someone grabbed me. Two someones. They grasped my arms, pulled me up, and marched me down the stairs. I slipped once and cracked my knee, but they didn’t let go.

The flickering came from a Coleman stove. The bigger of the two kids holding me turned me toward him. “Well,” he said. “If it isn’t the kid from the future. What’ve you got for us, H. G. Wells?”

He was bigger than me, seventeen or eighteen maybe. “Here,” he said, “let’s have a look at the backpack.” He took it from me. I held my hands at my sides and shivered. The hand warmers helped, as did the flickering flame of the Coleman stove, but I was still almost incapacitated by the chill of time travel. “I’m Rick,” he said, opening my backpack and looking at my thermos, wrapped coins, spare batteries, pen, paper, and Hershey bars. “No smokes? What’s your name, kid?”

“Kenny Maxwell.”

“Well, Kenneth Maxwell,” he said, “welcome to the past. Have a seat.”

He put a hand on my shoulder and I let myself be guided down. He sat too, and waved to the other kid to do the same. “Listen, Rick,” the other kid said. “Maybe I should go. We don’t want my folks to wake up.”

Now that I could see him, this other kid was only an inch taller than me. He had a mess of sandy hair and looked nervous.

“Sit down, Jimmy,” said Rick. “You got no curiosity? Kid’s from 1977. Isn’t that right, H. G. Wells?” I nodded. They had seen me come out of the mirror and seemed to know what was going on. Why deny it? “So, what’s happened in the future, Kenneth? We’ve been waiting a while for you. We were beginning to think you’d had a nuclear war up there and you weren’t coming. You look kind of good for a mutant monster, though. Did the Ruskies attack?”

“No,” I said. “Not even in 1987 or 1997 or 2007.” Instantly, I knew I had said too much.

Rick leaned forward. “Really? Time traveler knows a lot. Who you been talking to, H. G?”

“A girl. She came back from 1987. She told me about the other ones.” I tried to think about what Luka had said. You were only allowed to go forward if you were going with someone from the future. Maybe Rick didn’t know that.

Rick took my things out of the backpack, giving Jimmy a running commentary. “Nice flashlight. Bet I can get a buck or two for that. Chocolate’s always good. What’s this? Trying to make a black jack?” He took my quarters out of the socks and as soon as he saw what they were, vanished the money into his pockets. The Hershey bars he shared around, even handing one to me and insisting that I eat it. “Come on. We’re all in this together, right?” He looked at Jimmy, who nodded reluctantly.

As Rick did all this, I studied him. His head was covered in a cloud of black curls and his face still troubled with acne. His hands were huge, but his shoulders weren’t as wide as I had thought at first. Once he had finished with the backpack, he made me turn out my empty pockets. He took my hat and gloves and gave them to Jimmy.

“What’s your story, Kenneth Maxwell?” Rick said. “How’d you find out about my little mirror here?”

His mirror?

Thinking as fast as I could, I told him an edited version of the facts. My encounters with Luka, my journey into the future. He was interested to hear that the mirror was still in the carriage house in my time, and even more interested that the place itself was gone ten years later. He wanted to know if I knew who my dad had bought the house from. I told him nobody had lived in it for a few years, and I didn’t know who was there before. “Hear anything about the Beech family? No?”

He didn’t ask about the other kid’s family. Jimmy sat looking miserable.

“You ever think about what you could do with this?” Rick said. “Friend of my dad’s deals in old stuff. This one time, I helped some old lady clean out her attic after her husband died. I found these boxes of old magazines and comic books. The old lady paid me a dollar to take it to the dump, then my dad’s buddy paid me twenty bucks for the stuff. Twenty bucks. That’s nothing compared to what we could do. Go back ten years, buy up a bunch of cheap stuff, then go up to your time or that girl’s and sell it all for a mint.”

“I don’t think that’s what it’s supposed to be about,” I said, reaching out to warm my hands in the small flame of his Coleman stove.

Rick looked up sharply. “You don’t think what? What’s what supposed to be about, Kenneth?”

I flinched from his anger, but pushed on, pretending it was like the impersonal cold or heat of the mirror. “The mirror,” I said, not even wanting to look up to the second floor, not wanting to let him know how much I just wanted to run back into it. “I don’t think it’s about us getting rich. I got a—there was a note. Left for me. It said my name. Somebody was asking me for help from the past. Something about a baby that got killed.”

Rick greeted these revelations with a long, stony silence. “Well,” he said at last, “nobody here’s asking for your help.”

Fine, I wanted to say, I’ll just be on my way, then. But I didn’t want to let him know just how much I wanted out of here.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Jimmy. “Things are just fine here. How do we know you’re telling the truth, anyway? Maybe you broke into my folks’ house to go into the mirror. See, Rick, I think we gotta get rid of that thing. There’s no telling who could—”

Rick raised his hand to shut Jimmy up. “So what are you here for? That’s the question, isn’t it? You came here to help somebody, is that it?”

I studied his face for a moment before answering. It wasn’t a bully question, the kind where there’s no right answer and you’re just going to get interrupted or pushed or hit whatever you say. He actually wanted an answer. “How could I not go?” I said. “It’s time travel. And there’s something about a baby. I think I’m supposed to save it. It was—it was hidden in the walls. Like someone killed it and hid it there. With a note asking me for help.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Man, that’s crazy. I mean, you’re lucky it was us here. This old place—technically, my folks rent it from Rick’s dad, but he doesn’t come out here much. All kinds of stuff goes on here. I’m not even allowed to be here. Kids with wild parties. Pete Masterson’s crew gets drunk here sometimes. Like if it was a Friday or a Saturday night, and you came out of there—no way.”

“That’s why he’s got us,” said Rick. His gaze still hadn’t left my face.

Jimmy swallowed. “Sure, Rick, sure. But he should just stay home is all I’m saying. You know? I could even—we could give him back his stuff, too. We could give it back and just push him back through and—that’s it. Too dangerous, you know?”

“Jimmy, shut up a minute, will you?” Rick said it without any inflection. He scratched his chin and kept looking at me. “What about it? Is that what you’re going to do? Never come back?” He waved his hand impatiently when I hesitated. “Not what you think I want you to say. The truth. Are you coming back?”

A long moment stretched between us. Jimmy cleared his throat. “Uh, Rick? My dad? He could wake up any time. He don’t find me in the house, he’ll come looking, you know?”