She kept throwing-up until there was nothing left, just dry heaves that forced the breath from her until she thought she would choke to death. And, when finally it was over, she had started screaming. A shrill horrified ululation escaped from deep down within her very soul, shattering the calm of the room before petering off to a low sobbing howl of pain and fear.
The door to her bedroom burst open. Between her wracking sobs of terror, she managed to lift her head toward the two people who now stood in the doorway and mumble through chapped, vomit caked, lips, “Mom… Dad… he killed me. He killed me.”
In the doorway, Mr. and Mrs. Lacey stood in confused disbelief. As the early morning sun shone through the bedroom window, framing them both in a beam of dust-mote filled light, Jim Lacey, his eyes wide with shock, fell to his knees and began to weep like a baby. His wife, Sarah, her hair disheveled and tumbled, crossed the space between the door and her daughter in two quick bounds. She wrapped her arms around the weeping girl and pulled her close until Rebecca could barely draw breath, all the while keening in her daughter’s ear, “You’re alive, praise Jesus. You’re alive.”
Seven
“Oh, if only Jupiter would give me back my past years.”
“…fine.”
Jim Baston blinked in the sudden change of lighting.
His skin tingled as a light coat of static electricity played across it. There was an odd leaden fluttering sensation in his stomach and he felt as though he had come to a sudden and abrupt stop after a long fall.
He breathed in. Leather, like expensive new shoes; the smell filled his nostrils.
The young store assistant stared back at him across the counter top. She looked to be about to speak, her rouged lips opened… and then closed again as a cloud of confusion passed across her face. Her brow knitted above brown eyes, the pupils of which had suddenly and fully dilated. The left side of her mouth lifted while the right side dipped down, her head tilted toward her right shoulder as though she was suddenly deep in concentration.
“I… I,” she stammered as the cloud of confusion turned rapidly into a storm of bewilderment that billowed and rolled with her expression.
“I’m terribly sorry but I… what were you saying?” she asked. There was a momentary pause in which Jim could have answered but did not, his own confusion freezing his tongue, arresting any possibility of a reply from him as his mind furiously tried to understand what was going on. The silence between the two strangers stretched out before she asked in an apologetic, frightened voice, “Where am I?”
Her auburn hair whipped back and forth across her face as she glanced frantically left and then right; panic now superseding confusion. Her cheeks flushed as blood rushed to them, and Jim could see her breathing rate increase rapidly.
He regarded the confused woman standing across from him for a long second, his own head now cocked questioningly to one side. Jim was sure he had a similar look of confusion on his face because he had no idea on God’s good green earth where he was or why he was here. He could not even remember how he got here. Panic began to claw its way out of its hiding place in the pit of his stomach, crawling on taloned fingers towards his throat.
The last thing he could remember was answering the phone to his agent. He had been talking to him just a second ago — the phone had been in his hand. It was New Year’s Eve. He had been out, had a couple of drinks and made it home sometime after midnight; exactly what time he couldn’t recall. A cold shiver of fear ran down his spine as a single thought filled his mind: Alzheimer’s. They could fix it nowadays of course but they had to catch it early enough to stop any damage. Once memories were lost to the disease, that was it, they were gone forever.
It had been four years since Jim had been to see his doctor for any kind of a checkup, and he mentally kicked himself for not keeping those yearly appointments. He swung around and took in his surroundings. He recognized nothing. This was not the comfortable hotel room in New Orleans he thought he had been standing in, seemingly only an instant before. Instead, he found himself next to a glass counter-top, on the other side of which stood the woman who looked as confused as he felt. Three rows of display racks ran through a store lined top-to—bottom with expensive looking leather luggage, clutch bags, women’s purses, and crocodile skin briefcases. A rotating display unit off to his left was full of men’s wallets, and a sign fixed to the top of the stand proclaimed finest calf leather in an elegant hand.
Behind the glass counter, the young store assistant had started speaking again, calling out as if to a lost child or dog, “Steven? Alison?” A disturbing edge of panic growing in her voice each time she called out the names.
How the hell did I get here, he thought to himself again. Where am I?
“Do you think I could use your phone?” he asked, but the girl did not even register his question, her gaze swept over him like a searchlight and moved on having found nothing of interest.
“Steven? Alison?” The panic in her voice was now pronounced.
“It’s just that I don’t seem to remember where I am. It’s just a local call,” he said. He was disturbed to hear a note of desperation in his own voice.
“Alison? Oh, my God.” The young woman’s voice now so alarmingly tremulous he could barely understand what she was saying.
Something was not right here. Jim could see three other customers in the store, all of them a lot younger than him but as he regarded each of them in turn, he could see the same strange look of confusion reflected back from each of their bewildered faces. They looked as though they had all just walked into a room and then forgotten why they were there or what they had come to do; as though they had left something undone but just could not remember what it was.
There was a large glass window at the front of the store. Through it he could see a white marble-effect walkway running parallel to the store. Across the walkway, he could make out two other shops: a Gap and a Pretzel-Time. Reflective aluminum safety rails ran down the center of the walkway, guarding an open space which, he guessed, dropped down to at least another level below the one he was on.
Several people had gathered in front of the window, milling aimlessly. Jim watched them looking around in the same confused manner. One of them — a young woman who until seconds ago had been turning in slow circles as she gazed up at the ceiling somewhere outside of Jim’s vision — seemed oblivious to the baby stroller her left hand rested upon, it’s plastic hood concertinaed forward into the closed position. As the young mother completed one more slow turn, the clutch bag slung loosely over her shoulder clipped the handle of the stroller and sent it rolling noiselessly away from her. Noticing it for the first time, she took two quick steps after it, taking hold of the handles with her outstretched hands she brought the stroller to a halt before stepping around to the front of it. Kneeling almost reverently before it, Jim was sure he could see tears beginning to flow down her face; her jaw was vibrating with emotion. Reaching out, Jim watched as her hands disappeared inside the stroller, when they returned into his view she held a baby, no more than six months old. Her mouth began moving but he could not hear what she was saying. Whatever it was, she was repeating the words again and again. A smile of utter joy lit her face as she stared at the child she now held cradled to her breast.
Jim’s confusion deepened as two balding middle aged men who had been walking hand-in-hand now turned and faced the other, each regarding the other as though they had not seen them in many years. Almost in unison they threw their arms around the other’s neck and fell to their knees, locked in an embrace.