John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

“Listen,” I said, passing a hand over my face. “I can’t—”

“Normally, Waldy, this would be People/Feelings territory. But nothing about what happened to those aunts of yours was normal. Therefore—”

“They were your aunts, too, the last time I checked.”

“Once removed,” Van said tartly. “Don’t go changing the subject. It’s been bothering me all week, what to do about you.”

“About me? I don’t—”

“You’re depressed,” Van declared. “And why wouldn’t you be? Your parents have split, you’ve just dropped out of college, and the bodies of your father’s only sisters, the people you’d come all the way from Ohio to visit — for Christ knows what reason — have just been dug out from under seventeen tons of—”

“Enough!” I said, turning to check on my visitor, who suddenly was nowhere to be seen. “What’s the answer, Van? What’s your brilliant solution? What are you going to do about me?”

“I thought you’d never ask .” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’m going to throw you a party.”

Monday, 09:05 EST.

The Timekeeper just left, Mrs. Haven, for the very last time. We’ve gotten what we hoped for from each other. He doesn’t need me any longer, because I’ve helped him to see how this history ends — and I don’t need him, either. I’ve finally remembered for myself.

I was sitting at my usual station, revising my next-to-last chapter, when the air heaved a sigh and pulled soundlessly back, disclosing the crown of my great-uncle’s head. He was pushed through the skin of this world, Mrs. Haven, like a baby pushed out of a birth canal. He dropped onto the floor with a damp, muted thump, barely clearing the table, then lay facedown on the parquet. The coat he was wearing hung off of him strangely. I got up and went to him and turned him over.

I should have been prepared, Mrs. Haven, for what I saw next. He was coming apart, warping and buckling, like a plastic plate held over a fire. It seemed impossible that he could speak, but he did speak. He forced his lips apart and spoke my name.

“What is it, Waldemar?” I said. “What can I do?”

He asked me to help him raise his head and I obliged. I could feel his deformities through the jacket’s threadbare tweed, and what I felt there made my stomach twist.

“Where are you coming from, Uncle?” I pulled him up by the shoulders. “The Forty-Fourth Street apartment?”

He moved his head in what I took to be a nod.

“What were you there for? Did you have something to tell me? Was it something important?”

His head jerked again, downward and to the left. I was suddenly less sure that he was nodding. It might have been a gesture of denial, or of helplessness, or simply a spasm of pain.

“Tell me what I can do. Can I bring you some water?”

His head lolled forward and he took my arm and gripped it. I was surprised by the strength in his hands. His ruined mouth twitched and came open.

“What was that, Uncle? I didn’t quite hear.”

He pulled me closer, slowly and irresistibly, until I was within a hair’s breadth of his face. It took all my self-control to keep from retching. His breath smelled of dust and old newsprint: the dead, airless smell of the Archive.

“Read me the last one, Nefflein. Close the loop.”

I went back to my armchair, relieved to get away from him, grateful to have been asked a thing that lay within my power. I read the last chapter to him, taking care to enunciate clearly, unsure whether his ravaged ears could hear me. You’ll say he deserved what he got, Mrs. Haven, and most likely you’re right — but still it was a grievous thing to watch him suffer. The chapter was a long one and I read it slowly. His name was mentioned more than once, in the most damning of terms, which seemed to give him some small satisfaction. When I’d finished he forced his eyes open as best he could, turned his head in my direction and beckoned me to him. He was saying something almost inaudibly, repeating it with each exhalation, and I knelt down next to him to make it out. It was a request, Mrs. Haven — the last request he’d ever make of me. I let him say it a dozen times, then as many times again, to make sure there was no misunderstanding. Then I squatted beside his right shoulder, braced a knee against his collarbone, and brought my hands together at his neck.

Disfigured though he was, Mrs. Haven, his life took a long time to leave him. He put up no resistance, even lifted his chin to help my hands find purchase, but the force that had deformed him had tautened his skin, and it took all my strength to press his windpipe shut. The live-wire sensation returned to my palms, and my own throat seemed to close along with his, but I didn’t let go until the thing was done. I’d foreseen this, after all, and I knew how it ended. Waldemar had said it himself long before, in his last conversation with Sonja. The ultimate Lost Time Accident is death.

It was at this instant, watching the Timekeeper’s body resolve itself into its component particles, that I remembered how I’d fallen out of time. I hadn’t fallen at all, Mrs. Haven. I’d jumped.

IT WAS MENÜGAYAN, fittingly enough, who broke the news about your disappearance. After a week in Vienna being ministered to by the Kraut (who’d managed, by a heroic effort of will, to conceal her relief at how things had turned out) I got a standby seat on a direct flight to Newark, rode a series of progressively more malodorous buses into Manhattan, and found a hostel in Chelsea that I could just barely afford. I kept away from West Tenth Street, for obvious reasons, but eventually I dialed your neighbor’s number. I could tell right away, by her grunted “Who’s this ?” that she was even more depressed than usual. I assumed the reason must be Haven’s triumph.

“I need to see you, Julia. I need to ask—”

“Tolliver?”

“Of course it’s me. I’ve come back.”

No response.

“What is it?” My throat went tight at once. “Is this line not safe?”

“Don’t be an idiot. What do you want?”

“To see you, that’s all.” When no answer came, I said, “I shouldn’t have run away, Julia. I should have listened to you. I should have trusted in your plan, even though you never told me what it was. Now something terrible has happened, the worst possible thing, and I need your advice. Can I meet you somewhere?”

Her breath came through the line in a low, toneless whistle, as if she were falling asleep.

“All right, Tolliver,” she said finally. “Come on over.”

“Over there ? Are you crazy? The last time I saw Haven—”

To my bewilderment she gave a stony laugh. “Shut up and get over here, Tolliver. It’s never been safer.”

“Listen to me, Julia. I don’t think—”

She set down the receiver with a bang.

* * *

I knew your brownstone was vacant as soon as I saw it. No one had been home for weeks and the place had been gutted. Menügayan confirmed this when I asked her.

“I grokked that something pesado had gone down as soon as those movers showed up. They didn’t leave beans behind, either — just some Klimt posters down in the basement.” She shuddered. “Piles of them, actually. Hideous stuff.”

I told her about our meeting at the post office, about our elopement, about our time in Vienna and Znojmo — I told her everything, Mrs. Haven, down to the most piddling detail. She was the only person I could tell it to, the whole hopeless fiasco, and it felt good to tell it. She sat there like a pile of rocks and let me ramble on.

“You see, Julia? That’s why Haven has shifted his base of operations. He’s finally got what he needs: he can chrono-jump now, or so he believes. He doesn’t know about the changes Artur made, apparently, or he doesn’t care. My guess is that he’s relocating upstate, to that villa of his, to work on a new type of exclusion bin, or some other device we don’t know about yet. Which means that if I want to find her — to find Hildy, I mean — all that I have to do—”