THE POWER OF THREE Read online

  But on her return to the present day time, John always shook his head and told her it had happened another day and she’d gone back to the wrong one. Before she went, it was a certain day. After her return it changed to something else. Finally she sat with her coffee in front of the long window having a serious talk with her grandson. It was noon, hot as blazes in her apartment, and sweat trickled down the back of her collar.

  “We can’t save her,” she said. “I’ve tried and tried, but it’s never the right day. I don’t think we’re permitted to enter the time stream to prevent someone’s death, John. It’s just not going to happen.”

  He tried to understand. To him the day his mother died hadn’t changed at all. Each time he told her it was some other day, he never remembered it had changed after his grandmother traveled into the past. By her changing the past with her warning, she didn’t stop the killing of her daughter, but she did change the future for her grandson enough for him to believe it had always been a certain way.

  “I’m changing your past when I change Carol’s. Still, her death is pre-ordained and if I save her on one day, she dies on another the same way. She’s still gone to us in this present and nothing is really changed for any of us.”

  John wept then, held in his grandmother’s arms, just a child again longing for his mother.

  Jane wanted to stop the experiments. Visiting the past without the power to change it had left her even more unsettled. She really needed to talk to a learned person, a philosopher or a priest, who could explain to her the theory of pre-ordination. The people on Long Island begged her to stay in the program for just a little while longer. They wanted to try something else. Tired, her thoughts far from the discussion, she gave into their pressure. This time they didn’t ask her for a date. They told her not to trouble herself over it. They would handle everything.

  #

  She opened her eyes and knew immediately she was not where she had ever been before. She lifted her head from where she’d had it resting against the window of the flying vehicle. She stiffened when she looked out and saw she was a hundred feet above the streets of New York City. All around her sat passengers in seats on each side of a long aisle. One man piloted the vehicle, flying it through the canyons of buildings with expert ease.

  She was in the future. That was the only explanation. There was no flying public transportation in her world.

  “My God,” she breathed. She looked down at herself and she was aged, her hands crippled, her fingers swollen and bent like the hands of a crone in a fairytale. Her knees hurt, her back hurt, and she knew if she lifted her hand to her face she would find the skin of her cheeks creped and wrinkled.

  What had they done? She was told they couldn’t project subjects into the future, that they could only go into the past, specifically the past of those who had lived it.

  Liars!

  What were they expecting to get from sending her into the future? Had that been the plan all along and the travel into the past just a ruse to lull their subjects? What was she supposed to see or tell them when she returned? This was terrible. Not as terrible as discovering she could not change what happened to her daughter Carol, but this was definitely a betrayal of her trust.

  The flying machine set down on a rooftop and Jane hurried as quickly as she could to exit it. She followed slowly behind others who went toward a gated area and then through an open door. She waited her turn to take the elevator.

  On the street, she stood shakily, looking about in wonder.

  Not a lot was changed, but enough to make her feel it wasn’t her city anymore. The buildings had new fronts, as if they had been plated with aluminum armor. The windows appeared not to have glass in them. She reached out to put her arm into the open space and her hand slammed into an invisible barrier. She pulled back her hand, wincing, massaging it.

  She knew her own street was not far distant. She hurried that direction. It was almost noon—11:29AM according to a scrolling marquee on a building front--and John would be visiting.

  #

  Her apartment was the same, even shabbier if that could be truly possible. The window air conditioner hiccoughed often, the compressor stopping and starting up again by itself. The floors were worn, the rugs faded to colorless coverings. Her favorite easy chair had worn holes where she rested her hands on the arms, and the material was thin on a spot where she laid back her head. The windows were grimy and the water pipes kept up a racket to wake the dead.

  She had hardly settled herself into the chair, confused by the decrepitude of her place, when she heard the key in the door.

  She turned, waiting for John to enter.

  The person who entered instead was Barb.

  “Hello, old woman. I’ve got something for your coffee.” She carried a little evil looking brown vial. She lifted it in the air, shaking the contents. “It will make you sleep like a baby.”

  Jane flinched at the woman’s cackle. “Where’s John?” she asked.

  “Dead as you’re going to be in just a few minutes. If you won’t drink your coffee—where is it, by the way?” She moved toward the kitchen. “If you don’t drink your coffee, I’ll have to force this down your gullet and it won’t be nice for you.”

  At hearing her grandson was dead, Jane thought she would die herself and save Barb the trouble. “What happened to him?”

  “The bastard thought he could divorce me. He thought his high-priced lawyer could make me go away with a tiny settlement. Well, he thought wrong. He had coffee this morning before leaving for work. He didn’t make it to work, alas. Oh, alas, alas.”

  She returned to the living room with a steaming cup of coffee. She set it on the little side table near Jane and, twisting the lid on the vial, poured the contents into the dark steaming liquid.

  “Drink it,” she commanded, holding out the cup to Jane.

  “Fuck you, Barbara. I won’t make this easy for you, you murderer, you black-hearted demon.”

  In the end she drank it and she dreamed.

  #

  She had seen her death. What she couldn’t live with was her grandson’s death.

  She stumbled from the time machine, white in the face, panting. They took her to the medic, who said her heart was racing and her blood pressure was wildly erratic and elevated. They rushed her to the hospital without the chance to question her about the trip into the future.

  John came to the private room where she had been sent after an emergency doctor put her on a nitroglycerin patch and monitors.

  “John!” She reached out her hands to him.

  He came to her side, obviously in a state of panic. “What happened? Did something happen when you traveled back in time?”

  “I didn’t go back. I went forward. John, they sent me into the future. It wasn’t far, maybe five or ten years, probably closer to ten. Things were changed and you’d already married Barb. She wanted a divorce and you threatened to leave her without money. She killed you! John, she killed you!”

  He sat down hard in the vinyl-covered hospital chair near her bed. He stared at her, his lips trembling. “She wouldn’t do that. She loves me.”

  “She doesn’t love you, not in ten years from now, and she probably doesn’t love you now. She’s a horrible woman, I knew that from the beginning. Now I know it for sure. She came to poison me after she was rid of you. We must prevent this. It cannot happen! I don’t care about me, honey, I’ve already lived a life and ten years from now I’m in much more pain, my circumstances greatly diminished. It’s you who cannot die. It’s you I must save.”

  “I just won’t marry her. If you say that’s what you saw then I believe you. You’ve always been truthful and straight with me, Me-ma. I would do anything for you.”

  Jane remembered how she could not prevent Carol from a pre-ordained death at the hands of strangers. How was she now to prevent her grandson’s death in a pre-ordained future? Even if he said today he would not marry Barb, experience with time travel assured her that he
would change his mind. He would marry her. She would use him and try to divorce him and, threatened with penury, she would kill him.

  Unless…

  “What, Me-ma, what is it?”

  She pressed his hands and let them go. She would lie to him. She would lie, cheat, steal, and kill if she had to, in order to change the future. “It’s nothing. I have to think. I’m very tired. They’ve shot me with something to relax me.”

  When she opened her eyes a half hour later, her grandson was gone. She crawled from bed after taking out the IV drip and disconnecting the heart monitor. She had her clothes on and was in the elevator before the nurses even came to check why the monitors were going off.

  #

  She still had the gun her mobster husband had given her and she still knew how to use it. She put the small caliber pistol into her purse and caught a bus to Barb’s apartment. John had told her where she lived. It was a new high rise, much too expensive and lavish for the likes of old women. Only young, upwardly mobile, elegant people lived here, Jane realized. She wondered if the whole building was inhabited by black-hearted demons or if it only harbored one.

  Barb was home, it being late afternoon. She was surprised to see her boyfriend’s grandmother at her door.

  “May I come in?” Jane asked, shouldering past the woman into the hall. She strode down it to an open living area facing a wall of windows overlooking the city. It was a splendid view and nothing like the squalid view from her place.

  She turned then. Barb stood looking perplexed and not a little put out. “What’s this all about?” she asked.

  “It’s about prevention, my dear. It’s about saving someone I love more than I love myself.” With that Jane withdrew the pistol and shot the woman in the heart.

  #

  Being a ward of the state and sentenced to her last remaining years in prison didn’t bother Jane in the least. She was let out of the time travel program, of course, for she was a murderer—confessed and convicted.

  She sat across a bare table from John smiling at him. A guard stood near the door pretending not to listen.

  “How are you doing?” she asked. She wanted to lean across the table and take his hands, but they wouldn’t let her touch him.

  “John F. Kennedy died yesterday,” he said. “An assassin, a lone gunman, they say.” He looked older with a touch of grey at his temples. He seemed to have lost his young effervescence, his energy.

  “They brought him back, did they?” And still he died as he was meant to, she thought.

  “Who? Oh, the machine. Yes, I suppose they did. Not that it made a big whooping difference in the course of the world. They thought it would. The same with some other people they saved.”

  She didn’t care how they’d tampered with history or who they had kept alive. All she cared about was what she had done, and it was a good thing.

  “So, what about you? Are you still involved with the program?”

  He shook his head. “After…well, after what happened with you and Barb…”

  “I understand. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about ruining your chances in the program, not the killing of Barb.”

  His eyes darkened. “I loved her, Me-ma. Di you ever take that into consideration?”

  “That’s exactly what I considered,” she said. “Trust me, John, it had to be done.”

  He shook his head and then shook his shoulders and upper body as if to rid himself of a bad vision. “Well, I have to go. I’m having lunch with someone.” He stood, the chair scraping the floor.

  “Is it a woman? A nice woman?”

  “I think she is. Of course, that’s what I thought about Barbara, too.”

  This time his gaze failed to meet her eyes and she knew why. There was blame in them. She mentally shrugged. It was all for the best no matter what he thought. She could live in her prison cell with the thought he loved her a little less. She just couldn’t have lived with the thought he would die before his time.

  #

  The years flowed on and the world changed but a little. Jane only got one cup of coffee in the mornings, but she had grown used to that. She hardly saw her grandson anymore. He was busy, that’s what she told herself.

  She read books from the prison library and watched old movies on the TV in her cell. She wasn’t treated badly, due to her age, and she saw a doctor once a month whether she wanted to or not.

  When she reached her eighty-eighth year, John came to see her on her birthday.

  She found him in the room with a woman standing at his side where he sat at the little bare table. “Me-ma, I want you to meet my wife, Kerry.”

  Jane looked at the woman and…instantly…knew what she wished she didn’t. Kerry looked nothing like Barb. This woman was brunette and petite, with brown eyes and a high forehead. But she had exactly the same devil in her.

  Jane dropped into the chair across from her grandson. She hung her head and sighed.

  “What is it, Me-ma? Cheer up, I’ve brought you a birthday present.”

  The future had changed again, but not in any way that mattered. Given that she had discarded Barb, her grandson had found his killer in another woman and married her. They might not divorce. He might not die of poison.

  But Kerry would kill him just as thoroughly as Barb would have done.

  She saw the gay birthday wrapping and the ribbon as it was pushed over to her. Guards would have already unwrapped it and done an inspection. As she untied the gift, one tear fell and spotted the colorful paper. Jane was so glad she was old and rapidly approaching her Maker. She couldn’t do one single thing with this world. No one could save another. No one could change what would be.

  It was the worst thing she’d ever learned in her long life. She withdrew a small e-reader from a box, looked up and said, “Thank you, John.”

  “It’s filled with a thousand books, you’ll never go without something to read.”

  Just what I need, she thought. Maybe she would read “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells and laugh at how wrong he’d gotten it.

  Back in her cell, the e-reader lying in her lap, the screen dark and empty, she felt her heart give a lurch. She sucked in her breath. Her heart lurched again, this time sending such a sharp pain through her chest that it was as if a scream had been hidden inside the organ, only now breaking free.

  She felt life leaving her, her world closing in, the cell growing darker and smaller, the walls coming toward her. She blinked. Her last thought was: I hope no one tries to bring me back. I curse time travel! Let my future die with me.

  #

  John came through her apartment door, slipping the key into his pocket.

  “Hello, Me-ma! What do you remember? They let me back into the program. Kerry’s father is on the committee. Isn’t that lucky for us? I got them to let me go back in time. Now, it wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. They balked until I told them you might be able to tell them something about the glitch they were having in time travel. Finally they let me go.”

  He plopped into the second easy chair and grinned at her. “I had the prison treat you for your heart condition. They have some marvelous medicines now, you know. You never had the heart attack.”

  She blinked at him, recalling her own sad death. She shuddered.

  “Then once you were well enough, I went back and made Barb leave the state weeks before you could kill her. You must admit I am a clever boy! And look, here we are and I have you back. I knew it would all work out. You never killed anyone and never had a heart episode.”

  Jane sat in the easy chair with her coffee. She lifted the brew to her old lips and took a careful sip. Her hands were shaking. She remembered all right; she remembered too much.

  Surely there was something she could do about this.

  “Where do you and Kerry live now, dear?”

  Before he thought about why she asked, he had told her the address.

  She noted it to memory and hoped she still owned the little pistol. She would defini
tely need the pistol.

  THE END

  WALLS OF THE DEAD

  by

  Billie Sue Mosiman

  Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 2012

  What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  The house was alive, always had been, from the first foundation stone to the shingles on the rooftop.

  On the doorstep the realtor handed over the keys to 2242 Maycroft Street to Linda Broderick. The realtor smiled knowing the commission she was receiving would pay off her new outdoor swimming pool. Though the house had been empty and for sale for a long time--two years--the price was still high for the area and the small town of Hayden, Alabama.

  "We're happy you've moved here and I hope you enjoy your house," she said.

  Linda nodded and took the keys. She waited for the realtor to leave. She wanted to go into the house alone this time. She had bought the house through the internet without ever stepping foot in it. It raised eyebrows in a town this size, but her business was strictly her business and this is how she meant to do it. Once in town she had taken a tour with the realtor and that was enough. She signed the papers and now had possession.

  "Well..." the real estate lady stepped back a step.

  "Thank you for all your help," Linda said, her back to the unopened front door.

  Now the realtor smiled, said, "Okay then," and turned for her car at the curb.