"Hide and Seek" (Part 1 of ?)

  Prologue to this story posted previously (here)

I don't know how many pieces this story will come out to or how often I will post pieces of it, but it's going to be a while at least. My current, perhaps-half-done draft of "Hide and Seek" stands over 10,000 words, so it stands to reason that there will be 8+ parts to this story, depending on where it ends.

“...Yeah, Mom, I’ll go check on her.” Mark Farner said resignedly into the phone. His mother was hysterical, as usual - something about Carrie acting strange, worried she was off her meds. In Mark’s opinion, of course, his sister needed no medication, but no-one ever listened to him. Why, after all, would anyone listen to Caroline’s closest confidant when they were making decisions for her? For that matter, why would anyone listen to Caroline herself? “No, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about... No, no trouble.”

It was, though. Mark’s job had him living closest of anyone in the family to the university where Carrie was studying, so naturally when one stuffy professor or other called his parents to express concern over some aspect of Caroline’s behavior, he was the one dispatched to talk to her, regardless of previously-scheduled conflicts. Well, that and Mark was apparently the only one in the known universe to actually understand his sister. “All right. ‘Bye.” Mark pulled the phone from his ear, and stabbed the touch screen in the place marked “End Call” midway through his mother’s transition into another subject. She’d be angry about that, of course, but Mark knew that if he hadn’t done that she’d talk his ear off until his phone ran out of charge. With an exasperated sigh, He turned and headed back toward his desk. Whatever it was could wait until after work - he would be at Carrie’s place by six if he went right there.

Four hours later, armed with a pair of greasy fast-food burgers and matching chocolate milk-shakes, Mark climbed the last set of stairs and headed down the hallway to his sister’s dormitory room. The university’s accommodations were a bit cramped, but far better than the ones Mark had had during his own education, half the state away. Of course, he hadn’t gotten himself into one of the more selective and challenging universities in the state either.

The door was slightly ajar, but Mark knocked anyway, as best as he was able with the food in his hands. “Come in.” The voice wasn’t Caroline’s - probably the roommate, who Mark had only met a few times. Despite having been introduced to the girl at least twice, he couldn’t remember her name.

Mark pushed open the door with one knee and peeked in. Sure enough, Caroline’s room-mate was the only person in the room, seated cross-legged on the top bunk with a textbook in her lap. “Is Carrie around?” Mark held up the burgers. “I thought I’d drop by.” The white lie would probably get by the room-mate, after all, she probably didn’t know that Mark lived over forty-five minutes away.

The book shut with a thump and was set aside. “Around? Probably. Here? No.” She got up, went to one of the desks along the wall, and started digging through the drawers. “But she said last week you might be coming by.”

Mark wondered what that might mean. Most probably, it meant that, as Mark expected, Carrie wasn’t any crazier than usual, and that, as per her norm, she’d predicted that something she was doing would lead eventually to Mark’s presence. That in turn probably meant that Carrie had intended that Mark come here at some point, egged on by their mother’s hysterics. “Any idea where she might be?”

“Nope. Finding Carrie when she doesn’t want to be found is impossible.” The last door slid squeakily shut, and in her hand Carrie’s roommate had a little book, tied closed with an intricately tied ribbon. “She said if she wasn’t here when you got here, to give you this.”

Mark accepted the object carefully. “Any idea what’s in it?”

The girl shrugged. “No, sorry. She said not to open it, and I’ve learned not to dig through her stuff anyway.“ The roommate trailed off, holding out the book. “Good luck finding Carrie before the shakes melt.”

Mark took out his phone to call his sister, but just as he was punching in her number he spotted a familiar cell phone, plugged into a wall charger, on one of the desks. With a shrug, he put his phone away, thanked the girl (whose name he could still not remember), and headed back to his car. He knew his little sister enough to know the kinds of places she’d spend time, but he knew more than anyone that what the room-mate had said was correct - if Carrie didn’t want to be found, she couldn’t be. She’d always been a master at concealing things, especially herself.

The weather was promising to eventually worsen, with gusts of wind blowing beneath a low ceiling of gray clouds, so Mark hurried to get in his car. The hurry was probably pointless, of course - after all, it still wasn’t raining when he got in the decade-old sedan - but an oncoming storm always made Mark feel like he needed to scurry for cover. This would be the first real storm of the spring, Mark knew, and the first storm of the season always seemed to loom on the horizon for awhile before striking, as if waiting for the proper moment.

Before he put the car in gear, Mark paused to take a good look at the little book that Carrie had left for him. The ribbon knot was so complicated that even if he could undo it, Mark couldn’t put it back the way it was. That, he decided, was a sort of seal - Carrie wanted to know whether it had been read. Mark’s pocketknife would make short work of the ribbon, he knew, but there was no reason to do anything about it now.

It was beginning to rain when Mark arrived at the university’s library. The building was nearly empty - most students saw no need to find things in a library that the web could provide. Caroline liked quiet places, though, and Mark knew from previous visits that his sister preferred a specific desk in the corner of the three-story library’s top floor as a place to be free of distractions. That said desk was directly adjacent to a pair of shelved dedicated to old, rarely-read books of fiction and fantasy, Mark knew, played a part in Carrie’s preference. She’d always loved stories, the more fantastic the better. She’d never admitted to it, but Mark would bet money that sometimes, Carrie sat up in her corner reading until long after the library people left for the night, not even realizing she was still there.

Before he got out of his car, Mark paused, looking back to the tied-shut little book. He debated for a moment, wondering if he should bring it or leave it here, and decided to carry it in, tossing it in his jacket pocket to shield it from the slowly-worsening rain. If he was successful in locating his sister, Mark decided, he’d ask her what it was for.

The library’s student workers barely glanced at Mark when he came in - from their postures behind the reception desk they were all playing games on their computers, and only looked up long enough to determine that Mark was not going to request their assistance. Without a pause, he headed for the stairs and ascended to the third floor, making a beeline for Caroline’s desk in the corner, remembering its position from the last time he had visited his sister.

Mark was a little disappointed when he rounded the last shelf and she wasn’t in her corner. It wasn’t just that the shakes and burgers were hopeless now (though the hot and cold elements of the meal in Mark’s car were swiftly heading towards the same tepid midpoint), it was that this was Mark’s best bet as to where to find his little sister. The desk surface was clean and bare, but still Mark poked around, opening the drawers and looking for anything that would indicate if his sister had been there lately.

---

Mark was almost done with the worksheet - simple algebra homework, when the conscious part of his brain finally recognized the words of Carrie’s distracted little song.

“Five nineteen, eleven eight four, three minus-one two nine...” Carrie was singing softly as she lay on the floor behind Mark’s chair, scribbling in one of her coloring books.

Rubbing his eyes, Mark read down the answers side of his worksheet. Leaving the last two blank spaces unfilled for the moment, he pushed the chair back a little and turned around, leaning over the back. “Carrie...?”

“Mark?” She didn’t even look up from her scribbling.

“Where did you get those numbers?” Mark was annoyed - he hated these games, where Carrie knew something and let it out in little bits and pieces. If she’d had the answers already he could have been done with the tedium of the worksheet thirty minutes ago.

“Your homework.” Carrie replied boredly, in a sing-song tone. She wasn’t kidding - Mark had taken notice because those numbers were the ones written in the answer blanks on the paper in front of him.

Mark made a face in confusion. “But it’s up here.”

“Rozzie likes your homework better than mine.” Carrie looked up, and Mark thought she might be looking at him, but he realized after a moment that she was looking to his left, behind him. “She wants me to ask if the answer to the next problem is twelve.”

An adult or even a child unused to Caroline might have been frightened, but Mark merely felt a little cold, as he always did when “Rozzie” was supposedly nearby. Carrie’s mythical companion might be called by adults things like “imaginary”, or “make-believe”, but Mark knew better. He’d seen Carrie pull this trick before. Rozzie wasn’t omnipotent, but she was usually looking at things from somewhere other than Carrie’s perspective, and apparently when Rozzie spoke only Carrie could hear it. Twelve-year-old Mark accepted all this in the way only an imaginative child can, and he had grown to resent adults for condescending his little sister, though she seemed not to mind nearly as much.

“Let me do it, and we’ll see.” Mark slid back to facing the desk, and looked at the next problem: “2x-3y = 3. y=7, x=?”

Before he started, though, Mark scrutinized the air around the desk. Carrie had always said he wasn’t looking hard enough to see Rozzie. For the zillionth time, he tried looking at that air in every way he could: squinting, using only one eye, using the edge of his vision, blinking rapidly, and finally by staring, refusing to blink even when his eyes began to burn from the dry air. After almost a minute of staring and hoping, Mark thought he saw something, a slight wavering in the air - of course, all the air was wavering, his eyes were so dry.

It was at that exact moment Carrie popped up from below the lip of the desk. “Boo!” Her appearance made Mark jump, so much so that he almost fell out of the chair. His sister, of course, thought that was hilarious, and leaned on the desk’s edge, shaking with laughter.

Mark was a little angry at the joke played at his expense, of course, and silently went back to work. The second-to-last problem took him a moment to solve, but soon Mark’s pencil traced a concise “12” in the blank spot. “You were right, Rozzie, if you can hear me.” He muttered quietly, moving on to the next question.

“Rozzie hears just fine. It's not her fault you can't see her.” Carrie, back at her coloring book, broke in. Mark had thought he’d spoken too quietly for his sister to hear. Either Carrie’s hearing was extraordinarily good, or “Rozzie” was still about and Carrie was translating.

Three minutes later, Mark’s homework slid into a folder and that folder slid into his beat-up backpack. When he got back to the front room, where the “homework desk” was, Carrie had vanished, leaving her coloring book and implements in the middle of the floor.

Mark noticed that his favorite pencil was still on the desk, and clambered up into the chair to get it. When he did, he had the briefest sensation of a slight chill, the same way he always did when Rozzie was supposedly around. Of course, he usually needed Carrie to tell him when that was. This time, his sister wasn’t anywhere near.

Taking out a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, Mark scribbled, as legibly as possible, a simple question on it. “Can I learn to see you?” He set down the pencil, counted to thirty, expecting something to happen, anything. But nothing did. Forty. Fifty. Still nothing.

After he got to sixty, Mark gave up, and crumpled the paper into a ball, tossing it into the trash can on his way out of the room.

Story continues in part 2 (here).

"12-24-40"

[Archive transcript of author/columnist Adam Ginsburg’s interview with temporal
pioneer and Nobel-winning physicist Dr. Howard Whitway, November 22, 2090]

Dr. Whitway, thank you for sitting down with me today. I know you’ve gotten a lot of interview requests, most of them with people better-known than me.

Whitway: Bah, they all want to either do puff pieces or use me as a prop for some other purpose. Though I suppose I’ll do some of ‘em eventually out of boredom, so I’d better not put them down too much.

Dr. Whitway, you are aware this interview is being recorded, correct?

Whitway: Yeah. If sayin’ something that tame puts ‘em off, oh well. If I were to really say what I thought about most of the talkin’ heads you’d never be able to play the recording in polite company, Ginsburg. Let ‘em scratch their heads on that, and I wager eight of ten will still want an interview.

Er... Okay. Dr. Whitway, I really have only one major question to ask, however short or long it takes to answer.

Whitway: One question? Is it a multi-part or somethin’?

Perhaps, but it’s pretty simple. You’ve seen a lot in your lifetime, which for us spans fifty-eight years but in your subjective time has been a good deal longer. What’s the one thing you’ve seen in all your travels, physical and temporal, that sticks out in your mind the most? I know you’ve told stories of hundreds of memorable things, but I figure for every story you’ve told to the world there are three you’ve kept to yourself.

Whitway: Most people would sit an’ think for a while on that one, Mr. Ginsburg, but I won’t. There’s really only one event like that.

Go on.

Whitway: I saw this early in my career, on the fifth or sixth trip. Same trip as where I sat and listened to Churchill’s ‘fight on the beaches’ address on a cracklin’ old nineteen-thirties transistor radio. I think it was after that, though. I was fiddling with the TSF settings, castin’ about, since I was already in London. I stopped to make another change, and I heard the sound of cello strings from nearby, so I went to check. Now, I could tell right off that I’d landed in the Blitz - the building I stabilized in front of was totally bombed out, nothin’ but two walls and a pile of burnt bricks. It was a cold and gloomy early evening, and there was dirty, crunchy snow pushed into all the corners and nooks, so I guessed February, maybe January or December at the earliest. The cello sounded like he was warmin’ up, and pretty soon there was the sound of a couple of other guys there with violins tunin’ up too. It was only a two block walk, so I got to the little street corner just as they started in earnest. And d’you know what they were playin’, Ginsburg?

What was it, Dr. Whitway? A patriotic tune, perhaps?

Whitway: Ha! No. It was the first few notes to the old carol “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” [Whitway hums a few bars slightly off-key.] You know it?

I think I’ve heard it once or twice. You don’t hear the old carols much anymore.

Whitway: Yeah. Anyway, they get those few notes in, and the air-raid sirens start screaming, and the floodlights go up, and over the sound of the wind I start hearing the buzz of German planes. There weren’t that many people there, maybe two dozen plus the three players, and at the sound of the sirens the players falter, and the one lady with her two kids kneels down and holds on to ‘em like the world’s gonna end, ‘cause for all she knows, it might, just like it might have all those raids before. But the cellist, he got this wierd, solemn look in his eye, and he put the bow back to the strings, and louder than before played those first few notes again, and one or two of the guys in the crowd start singing along, quietly, like they’re afraid the Germans’ll hear ‘em. The first bomb hit the city right on time, just as the singers got to the “Tidings of comfort and joy” part. The violin players flinched, but I’m not sure that the cello man even noticed. When the second verse started up, the whole crowd was singin’, me included. I didn’t think I knew the words, but somehow I found ‘em, as the planes buzzed overhead, and the bomb blasts kept beat. Every time I looked around, the crowd had gained another few people.

I’d imagine that the police broke that up rather rapidly.

Whitway: Well, a group of six or seven of ‘em came around, but they got one look at the scene and took off their hats and just stood there. It was the strangest thing. One of ‘em looked like he was tryin’ real hard not to shed a tear, and to be honest I didn’t blame him. There was somethin’ just... unnatural about the whole thing, but not in a bad way. Like God ‘imself was there with us, shakin’ his fist at the German bombers.

You’re a physicist, Dr. Whitway, who believes in God?

Whitway: Up until that night in London, Ginsburg, I would’ve laughed in your face for even askin’. ‘Physics is no place for religion’, I would’ve said. But when the players started the old carol up a second time, I sung those first few words like a prayer: ‘God rest ye merry’ - in today’s English, you’d say ‘God keep you strong.’ In that moment, I was sure that there was a God, and that he had picked sides in that war. And judging by the expressions on the other faces on that street corner, I think that’s what everyone else saw too. The bombs kept droppin, and the sirens kept screamin’, and you know, I didn’t really notice ‘em. All there was was the cellist player, the two violin players, and the crowd. Even when one of the bombs hit a building across the street, lightin’ the whole crowd up like a bolt of orange lightning, no-one seems to notice, ‘cept the policemen. It was like we’re all in a bubble.

The building across the street was hit, and no-one was hurt?

Whitway: Don’t ask me to explain it, Ginsburg. But I tell it like it was. The wall on our side stayed up, and the rest of the building fell down in the other direction. But the cops all dove for cover when it happened, and I lost track of ‘em. Anyway, those players repeated “God Rest Ye” one more time, then switched carols, and did a bunch of others. The air raid sirens died down at some point, but we kept on going. It felt like hours, but I don’t recall more than six more carols, so it might’ve been more like half an hour after the sirens stopped.

That’s a... powerful story, Dr. Whitway.

Whitway: Ginsburg, if you don’t believe me, if you want to call me a loony, say it. But wait ‘till I’m through, ‘cause there’s more.

I’m sorry. Please continue.

Whitway: Anyway, after the last carol, which was “Silent Night”, the crowd begins to break up and go home, because it is gettin’ really cold. And for a second, there’s a clean path between me and the cellist, and I swear he locked eyes with me. Normally, y’know, if you’re outta your own time you’re a ghost, no-one notices you and you can’t change things. But darn it all, I swear for that one second that ol’ cellist knew who I was and where I was from. It was like... like God was telling him that there was a better future coming, and that he and everybody else in England just needed to stay strong for a little longer. Like he was gettin’ a gift for havin’ enough faith to keep playin’ when the sirens started, that he was gettin’ a look at the way the whole war would play out. After that second, the man just bent down and packed his cello into its case. When the crowd cleared, he was gone.

What happened next?

Whitway: Nothing. That’s it. I didn’t want the night to end, but time moves on no matter what we do to stop it. And I’ll never forget that night, Ginsburg. You might say I’ve spent the rest of my life looking for its equal, and I never did find it.

I can understand why. And you’ve never told anyone this?

Whitway: Not a soul. And if anyone else that was there ever told the story, I never saw evidence of it.

Lucky, then, that you found your way there.

Whitway: Ginsburg, I don’t think luck had a thing to do with it, any more than the epilogue of a novel is placed there by chance. Believe it or don’t, I’m convinced that there was purpose to my being there.

I see. Dr. Whitway, thank you for your time.

Whitway: You don’t believe a word of it, do you?

It doesn’t matter. What matters is whether my readers will. And I intend to let them decide for themselves.

Whitway: I can respect that. But may I make a suggestion?

What’s that?

Whitway: Christmas Eve, nineteen fourty. That was the date. I pulled the log data from my TSF unit after I got back. Next month’s the hundred and fiftieth annniversary of that night. If you’re gonna put this in one of your columns, it might do better if you released it before then.

I imagine you’re right, Dr. Whitway. I’ll see what I can do.

This story written for Klazzform's Short Story Competition on dndonlinegames.com.