“The how is fine, I can relate to that, understand it,” Evan said, after a while. “The how is measurable, calculable, it’s numbers and math. It’s the why ...” His hand bunched into a fist and shook at his side. “The why is what gets me. It’s what makes me dream at night and wonder during the day. It never makes sense, and what really pisses me off is, there is no answer to that one.” He spun, seeing and not seeing her. “That’s the biggest joke there is, and it doesn’t have a punch line.”
Evan walked toward the kitchen, meaning to put on some coffee, but instead went to the basement door, pulling it open and descending before Selena could say anything more.
25
He sat in the basement staring at the clock.
The fucking clock. Its black skin, its quiet contemplation. Serene and uncaring.
“Damn you.”
The air was cold, and he shivered, his skin rippling. He could almost see the air he breathed out. Could that be? Evan stood and moved to it, staring up at its height, feeling like he was in front of an avalanche. Power. That’s what the air tasted like. An electric coppery tang, almost like simmering blood.
He put out a hand and touched the clock’s front. His arm went numb to the elbow, and he opened his mouth to gasp but stopped, letting the thrum travel through him.
Power.
Enough to scorch the outline on the wall. Enough to chill the air. He wasn’t imagining that. Power to change things, to make them right. He tried to pull his hand back, but it seemed glued there. The clock could explode at any second, he was sure of it, explode and blow him all the way across the room. It could— The feeling returned to his arm. He let it drop to his side, his eyes staring past the clock, through it.
“It was there the whole time.”
His eyes traveled up to the clock’s face, and he saw the position of the hands, a startled thrill running through him. A hand on the two, two hands on the zero, one hand on the eight. The year before Shaun’s accident—2008. Had he changed that the day before? No. A ripple of fear and wonder went through him as he remembered looking at the clock as soon as he’d come down to the basement. It had been at 1919 less than an hour ago.
Evan backpedaled, pausing to grab a flat-blade screwdriver from the workbench before flying up the stairs, three at a time, and bursting into the kitchen. Selena, sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in her hand, recoiled. Coffee spilled over the rim when she jerked, and she winced, setting the cup down.
“Evan, what—”
“Can you stay here with Shaun for me, just for an hour or so?”
“Sure, I—”
But he was gone, running toward the door, grabbing the key ring from the table near the entry.
“Evan, where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back. It’s okay now, I know where it is.”
He shut the door and ran down the dew-slicked bank toward the dock, a grin pulling hard at his features as he went.
~
It misted the entire way to Kluge House, the van’s wipers on intermittent as the day gained more and more gray light, which filled up the land with its cool embrace. The trees that passed on either side were matchsticks, burned in the early day, their crippled branches bent and misshapen against the gunmetal sky.
Evan drove across the small bridge, hearing the tires thunk on the ancient boards, knowing if fate was against him they would break now and leave him stranded. They held, and he emerged in the open yard a minute later.
The door creaked louder than the first time they’d been there, its shriek cutting through him, shaking him from the manic wave he’d rode from the island. The house was a tomb, a crypt of memories stale with history and secrets. Except now he knew one of them, its most precious of all.
The stairs complained under his weight, but he continued up until he stood in the master bedroom, the windows to the east silver squares of light, the floor slanted with dissolving shadows. The clock’s outline looked darker today, more pronounced. Evan walked to it, tracing its borders again, and pivoted, facing the opposite wall. He moved in a straight line and stopped in front of the painting, staring at the hole in the canvas.
Without hesitation, he pulled the screwdriver from his back pocket and slipped it into the hole. The driver’s tip disappeared, and he listened, knowing what he would hear.
The tool’s progress stopped with a little clink of metal.
Smiling, Evan tore at the painting, peeling the dried canvas back from the hole and exposing mildewed wallpaper. The key for the clock was embedded in the wall, its tip driven into the wood from the force that expelled it over ninety years before, splinters in a sharp crown around its black steel. With careful movements, he slipped the tip of the screwdriver into the key’s decorative grip and levered it free of the wall. It let out a short squeak, like a mouse being crushed, and popped into his hand.
Its thickness and heft surprised him.
Heavy with power.
Without another look around the room, Evan walked out and went down the stairs, leaving the house to mutter its creaks and groans alone.
~
When Evan pulled back into the parking lot of Collins Outfitters, he parked the van and shut it off, considering what would happen to it after he went back to the island, what would happen to it if they were able to go back. Would it sit here in the present and rust until Jacob had it towed away? Would it vanish the moment they did? Would Jacob forget they were ever here? Would Selena?
The implications of what he was about to attempt landed upon him like a giant bird of prey. Any assertions about what might happen fell away. He knew nothing about what would be waiting for them. Instead of a malleable past, it might be different. Alien. Unforgiving and unchangeable. An image of a blank wasteland of time, grim as the morning mist, settled before his mind’s eye. An ash-covered stretch that he and Shaun might wander until they died of thirst or starvation. Did the past tolerate visitors?
A rap of knuckles on his driver’s window shocked him, and he jumped in the seat. Turning his head, he found Jacob staring at him through the misted glass, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down close to his eyes. Evan tried to smile, then climbed out of the van.
“Mornin’, boyo, yer up early.”
“Yeah, didn’t see you when I came through.”