"Beyond the Void Darkly"
Chapter One
The silent darkness of the Void engulfed him as he stepped through, holding his breath. It always felt as if he were floating in the vacuum of space; devoid of all that he once was, all that he once knew, all that he could ever be. As if he’d never been born.
Completely alone.
His mind emptied; his senses felt nothing. No sight, no smell, no touch. He had no pulse; he was in that eternal moment between heartbeats.
Time stopped.
He always mused on the idea of death while in the Void. Was this what it was like? Just silent, black, nonexistence?
Was he dead now?
In that instant, panic always began to grab hold, clenching a fist inside his gut that made his chest hurt. What if something went wrong? What if he was lost in the Void forever? What if he never reemerged?
Faces, faces, faces. He couldn’t remember their faces. Surely there were people he cared about, somewhere out there, beyond. Why couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he feel them inside, in his heart? There must have been someone he loved, someone he would miss. Someone who would miss him. Wasn’t there?
Then he could smell it. The world beyond the Void. It always began with smell. The Destination announced itself with fragrances which let Matthew know he was alive: pine trees and magnolias before he glimpsed his first dinosaur; mud and feces before he saw his first knight; tanned leather and tobacco before he witnessed his first cowboy.
And now… it was… citrus… a sweet orange fragrance, mixed with lavender. The tinny notes of a music box flowed to him—sound always followed smell. Then he felt the ground under his feet. Vision was the last sense to come back to him on the other side of the Void. Matthew listened to the music in the darkness, trying to identify the melody. It was familiar to him… a classical song that he liked, though he was unable to recall its name. His panic subsided.
“I’m emerging.”
“Okay, Matt,” a man’s voice responded through the plastic comm device in his ear, “remember: Just relax and let it come to you.”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Blurry images slowly formed around him like an old-fashioned photograph in developer fluid. Emerging from the Void, he always felt like a newborn child, seeing a new world for the first time. The shadowy silhouette of an adult human became distinct before him. A shapely woman… in a long, flowing Victorian dress.
Glancing around, he noted the shadows of bedroom furniture taking shape; a full-sized bed with a high mattress on box springs and a tiny bedside table with an unlit oil lamp, a curvilinear dressing table with a mirror and short stool, a dainty Victorian wash stand with twisting wooden legs, which held an empty white basin with a blue flower design and a matching pitcher below, a dresser, and chest of drawers, which the woman was facing, with her back to Matthew. There was a doorway with a closed door next to the bed, to Matthew’s left. To the right was a window with curtains pulled open and sunlight shining through.
“I’m inside a house.”
“That’s great, Matt. Let’s hope it’s the target’s home. Are you in the laboratory?”
“No, it’s a bedroom, and there is a woman…”
“Well, if you’re in the right place, she is most likely the doctor’s adult daughter,” a female British voice chimed in. “Remember, Matthew? She lived with him, as he was a widower. Took care of him and assisted with his experiments.”
“Right.”
“Is she, uh, decent?” the man’s voice said.
“Yes, Frank. She is fully dressed.”
“Okay.”
Colors began filling in the shapes around him like an animated coloring book: a deep oaken brown for the hardwood dressing table; beige for the cushion on top of the stool; the bedspread was off white, a French lace fabric with shapes of flowers sewn in; the walls were ornately adorned with a rose-colored wallpaper with intricate tulips of gold imprinted.
The woman’s flowing gown was deep scarlet, with the shine of fine silk. The drapery of the expensive fabric was gathered at her back, just below her waist and over a bustle. The dress swept the floor, completely covering her feet. In fact, the fabric was sweeping back and forth. Matthew cocked his head, studying her. Then it dawned on him: She was swaying to the music.
She’s dancing, he thought.
He took a couple of steps toward her. “She’s facing away from me. I’m going to get closer, try to confirm identification of her as the daughter.”
“Okay, Matt.”
He remembered the faded old sepia tintype of the woman posing in a similar dress before a painting of an open veranda with a Roman column to her right and a manicured garden beyond. In the picture, she was attractive but stoic in the classic non-smiling pose of the 19th century.
“I’m going to compare her to the…”
She turned around.
Matthew gasped and stood still, transfixed. The woman’s face was close enough to touch if touch were possible. It was as if she were turning to him, waiting for him to take her hand and waist in hand and dance with her, though he knew he was invisible. She could not see, hear, or touch him. For all intents and purposes, he was a ghost, haunting her in mute rapture, beholding her beauty from the silence of eternity.
This was no stoic face from a century-and-a-half-old tintype. This was a living, breathing woman, with long chestnut hair pulled back behind clear china skin which was dotted with a smattering of freckles; and soft, pink, full lips that hid a secret smile as she swayed to the tune from the music box with closed eyes.
“You’re going to compare her to the old picture?”
The subtle scent of lavender emanated from her hair when she swept past him, passing through his incorporeal form and dancing to the other side of the small room. He watched her pass by, captivated by her.
“Matt?”
A soft breeze from the open window caressed her hair and dress as she swayed. Then the tune slowed and finally stopped, and she stopped with it, her head cocked to one side and smiling.
“Matt! Are you okay?”
Matthew sucked in a breath and blinked as if waking up from a dream. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, Frank. Uh, yeah… I, um…”
She opened her eyes and they were crystal blue, almost aquamarine, as if her eyes were the seas of distant lands, deep and clear, yet mysterious. Is she looking at me?
“What’s going on, buddy?” Frank’s voice harbored a tinge of concern.
The woman was gazing directly at him, still smiling. But that was impossible… He glanced over his shoulder and realized she must have been looking at the music box behind him, which sat on top of the chest of drawers. His heart sank, wishing she were looking at him.
“Matt!”
He shook his head. “I hear you, Frank. Sorry. I’m here, I’m fine. Just a little taken…”
“Taken with what?”
Her dress flowed across the floor as she passed, returning to his side of the room. He could feel the breeze of air from her movement past him, he could feel the heat of her skin, he could smell the aroma of her perfume. His hand involuntarily reached out and tried to caress her hair, passing through her.
“Her,” he whispered.
“Repeat?”
A male voice called out from somewhere beyond the closed wooden door of the bedroom. The woman said, “Coming,” then walked past Matthew, opened the door, and hurried out, closing the door behind her. Matthew stood in silence, staring at the door.
He had never experienced anything like that before, being immediately taken by the sight of someone, with anyone from the past or his present. He felt completely enchanted and confused.
“Matt, give me a quick status,” Frank said.
Matthew blinked. “I’m fine.”
“Give me a rundown.”
Matthew sighed. “Visual, auditory, sensual, and olfactory contact with the Destination. I’m right there with them. Everything’s fine, Frank.”
“Give me a heart rate.” The only thing the lab received through the Void was auditory contact, so they couldn’t monitor his vital signs, much to Frank’s ongoing chagrin.
Matthew pressed two fingers onto his right wrist, just below his thumb, and counted as he stared at the blue watch on his left wrist. Completely constructed of plastic, the watch’s design was like an old-fashioned, wind-up watch, with hour, minute, and second hands jerking around a face full of numerals. A quirk of the Machine prevented metal from passing through the Void; in fact, metal entering the vortex would most likely destroy the Machine, he had been told. Why, Matthew had no idea—he left questions like that to the physicists. Anyway, a smartwatch would be no good here, with no signals to sync with. “One twenty-nine.”
“Okay, you need to relax, calm your breathing. What’s got you worked up?”
Matthew paused. How could he report that his heart was beating fast because of her? He felt as if he were back in middle school and had suddenly developed a crush on a cute new girl in class. “I’m fine, Frank. I’ll slow my breathing.”
He passed through the closed door, which was just as incorporeal to him as he was to this reality, and entered a narrow hallway with shined wooden floors. He followed it to a living room filled with Victorian furniture, stone fireplace, and box heating stove, and scanned the house.
To the right, he saw an empty kitchen with a black wood-burning cook stove, to the left was the front door. Across the room was another hallway, which he entered. There were three closed doors and the first one he stuck his head inside was an empty examination room. Going to the second door, he thrust his head through the wood and there she was, along with an elderly man who must have been her father.
He shivered at the sight of her.
The old man said something and she laughed, and her smile caused her countenance to radiate with an internal glow. Matthew entered the room and approached her slowly, his heart rate increasing. Her chestnut hair flashed red in the sunlight from the window, which kissed the skin of her face and he wished with everything inside him that it were him instead of the sun who was blessed with that honor.
Her scent, citrus and lavender with hints of clove, enveloped him as he approached. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He stopped a few feet from her and marveled. “Hear my soul speak,” he said. “The very instance that I saw you…” he took a step closer, “…did my heart fly to your service.”
“Matt, stop whispering; we’re having trouble hearing you,” Frank complained.
“He’s quoting Shakespeare,” the female voice answered.
Matthew ignored them. This woman, this beauty, from another time, another place, had captured his full attention. And he wondered for the first time in his life if there really were such a thing as love at first sight.
“Matt, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m becoming a little worried, and if you don’t start responding like a scientist I’m going to pull you back.”
Matthew turned his head and closed his eyes again, trying to focus. “No, it’s okay, Frank, I’m fine.”
“Then report.”
He opened his eyes and forced himself to think. “Okay, sorry. I’ve located the makeshift lab, and the doctor. She’s… she’s with him.”
The voices in his ear cheered. “Great job, Matt,” Frank said. “Locating this man in the wide expanse of time has been like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Matthew smiled absently, watching the doctor’s daughter.
“We have Phillip to thank for that,” the female voice said. “His altering the Machine to locate individuals using their DNA as the tracking mechanism was right brilliant.”
“Good job, Phil,” Frank said. A male voice in the background murmured thanks. “Okay, Matt,” Frank continued, “let’s recap what we discussed when we began this project. We know that the doctor has been working in his spare time to find a cure for tuberculosis, which he never succeeds at, but which we believe may be useful for our purposes. We have a partial formula from his surviving journal, but we need the completed version. Right?”
Silence.
“Right?”
Matthew shook his head as if waking from a dream. “Yeah, that’s right. I remember.”
“Okay. So, what you need to do is either locate a completed formula or learn, by observing their experiments, what the formula is.”
“Yep.”
“So now—”
Frank’s monotone voice was suddenly smothered when the door burst open. The woman before Matthew gasped in surprise, raising her hand to her chest. Matthew swung around and saw a large, sweaty man in rough brown pantaloons with suspenders and a long-sleeved dirty white smock shirt enter the doorway holding a twelve gauge shotgun, which he held at his waist with both hands and pointed at the doctor.
“There you are!” the man shouted.
The doctor, a tall, white-haired, distinguished-looking gentleman in a dapper suit raised his hands toward the man. “Mr. Barnes, hold steady, there. What is this about?”
“Matt? Did you hear me?” Frank said.
“Wait a minute, Frank,” Matthew replied. “We’ve got a problem.”
The man’s face was red and wet. “What this’s about is MY WIFE IS DEAD!”
The doctor’s shoulders sagged and he lowered his hands. “Oh, John. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry. Yer sorry. Well, my Rebecca is DEAD!”
“We tried everything we could for her, John. Consumption is a terrible thing. There’s no cure.”
“Consumption! T’was yer potion that killed ’er.”
The doctor shook his head. “No, John. I gave her that medicine to try to help her. You know that.”
“What I know is that my wife was livin’ and breathin’ ’fore you came out to our place and made her swallow that snake oil poison.” He stepped closer. “And she’d still be alive if t’weren’t fer you.”
“Your wife was dying of consumption. I gave her medicine to try to help. I’m sorry it didn’t. But, as you can see, I’m still working on a cure.” The doctor’s face softened. “I lost my wife to that same, terrible disease, John.”
“Then you can go be reunited with her ag’in!”
The farmer raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed. The woman screamed, “Daddy!” and stepped in front of the doctor as the gun exploded.
“NOOOOOO!” Matthew shouted, breaking into a sprint toward her.
The woman fell against her father, the force of the blast ripping a hole in her chest and shoving her backward. The two of them dropped to the floor next to the table.
For Matthew, time slowed, not because of anything to do with the Void, but as the horror of the moment overcame him. He stopped next to them and saw the large blood stain spreading over the beautiful woman’s torso, her eyes and mouth wide open. She lay across her father’s lap, who leaned over her.
“Lizzy? Lizzy?” her father coughed, then looked up at the farmer. “John, what have you done?”
Matthew turned to the approaching farmer and swung his fist at him with all his might. It swished through the man’s head, meeting no resistance. “Stop! You shot her!” Matthew shouted, but no one could hear him. No one, except the ones a hundred and forty-eight years in the future, who sat in dumbfounded silence.
Matthew tried to shove the man back, away from her, and fell forward, landing on the floor. He turned to see the man’s back as he stood over the doctor and his daughter.
“That was meant fer you, doc. But this one won’t miss. ’Least yer family’ll be together in the hereafter. That’s more’n I got right now with my Rebecca.”
The doctor lowered his head and touched his forehead to his daughter’s, rocking her back and forth. Matthew yelled something unintelligible, grabbing at the farmer’s legs futilely, his heart feeling as if it would burst.
The gun exploded again. The doctor slumped down over his daughter. The farmer lowered the shotgun and exhaled, then looked down.
Matthew crawled across the hard wooden floor to the doctor and his daughter and peered up at the farmer. Tears fell from the man’s blood-spattered face as his body shook.
“I got ’im, Becky,” the man mumbled. “I got ’im.” He stepped around the two dead bodies and swiped his arm across the table, knocking the test tubes and wires and flasks and papers to the floor in one great heave. Glass smashed around Matthew. Then the farmer turned and strode out the door.
Matthew’s eyes blurred with tears as he tried to pull the doctor back, to hold the woman who was underneath the old man's torn body. Of course, Matthew couldn’t. “No no no no no no no no no no…”
“Matt…”
“He killed her! Frank, he killed her!”
“I know, Matt.”
“She was only trying to protect her father!”
“I know.”
Matthew’s words came in short sobs as he leaned over the doctor and stared into the beautiful woman's sweet, angelic face, now lifeless. “Frank— she’s— she’s dead— she’s dead—”
A male voice in the background shouted into Matthew’s earpiece, “You need to get him out of there, now!”
“Back off, Phil!” Frank said.
“Let’s bring him back,” the female voice said.
Matthew rocked back and forth over the doctor’s daughter and wept. “She’s dead, oh, she’s dead. He killed her.”
“Frank!” the woman said, her voice raising an octave. “Bring him back!”
“Don’t you bring me back,” Matthew said, rolling his blurry eyes around the room as if he could find the voices in his ear. “Don’t you take me out of here.”
But it was too late. His surroundings began to fade like an old photograph, first losing color, then form, then he was overcome by a floating sensation. The sound of a dog barking outside the window disappeared, and the last thing he lost was her scent, which lingered in the Void with him for a moment, as if she were still alive, as if it were just she and him, alone in the darkness, where he could keep her safe, where no one could interfere.
And then her scent was gone.
A lump formed in his throat, feeling a sense of loss. He wanted her back, he wanted to return, he wanted to see her again, to help her…
What was he thinking?
She was a shadow, a shadow of the past. She was dead and gone, a century and a half ago. He had been looking at a ghost, that’s all.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about her as he passed through the Void. And as the panic in the darkness began to grab hold, he clung to her memory tenaciously, refusing to let her go. He held her in his mind, and her death haunted him.
A great mourning filled his soul.
She was gone.
© 2016 by Douglas L. Tanner. All rights reserved.
Completely alone.
His mind emptied; his senses felt nothing. No sight, no smell, no touch. He had no pulse; he was in that eternal moment between heartbeats.
Time stopped.
He always mused on the idea of death while in the Void. Was this what it was like? Just silent, black, nonexistence?
Was he dead now?
In that instant, panic always began to grab hold, clenching a fist inside his gut that made his chest hurt. What if something went wrong? What if he was lost in the Void forever? What if he never reemerged?
Faces, faces, faces. He couldn’t remember their faces. Surely there were people he cared about, somewhere out there, beyond. Why couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he feel them inside, in his heart? There must have been someone he loved, someone he would miss. Someone who would miss him. Wasn’t there?
Then he could smell it. The world beyond the Void. It always began with smell. The Destination announced itself with fragrances which let Matthew know he was alive: pine trees and magnolias before he glimpsed his first dinosaur; mud and feces before he saw his first knight; tanned leather and tobacco before he witnessed his first cowboy.
And now… it was… citrus… a sweet orange fragrance, mixed with lavender. The tinny notes of a music box flowed to him—sound always followed smell. Then he felt the ground under his feet. Vision was the last sense to come back to him on the other side of the Void. Matthew listened to the music in the darkness, trying to identify the melody. It was familiar to him… a classical song that he liked, though he was unable to recall its name. His panic subsided.
“I’m emerging.”
“Okay, Matt,” a man’s voice responded through the plastic comm device in his ear, “remember: Just relax and let it come to you.”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Blurry images slowly formed around him like an old-fashioned photograph in developer fluid. Emerging from the Void, he always felt like a newborn child, seeing a new world for the first time. The shadowy silhouette of an adult human became distinct before him. A shapely woman… in a long, flowing Victorian dress.
Glancing around, he noted the shadows of bedroom furniture taking shape; a full-sized bed with a high mattress on box springs and a tiny bedside table with an unlit oil lamp, a curvilinear dressing table with a mirror and short stool, a dainty Victorian wash stand with twisting wooden legs, which held an empty white basin with a blue flower design and a matching pitcher below, a dresser, and chest of drawers, which the woman was facing, with her back to Matthew. There was a doorway with a closed door next to the bed, to Matthew’s left. To the right was a window with curtains pulled open and sunlight shining through.
“I’m inside a house.”
“That’s great, Matt. Let’s hope it’s the target’s home. Are you in the laboratory?”
“No, it’s a bedroom, and there is a woman…”
“Well, if you’re in the right place, she is most likely the doctor’s adult daughter,” a female British voice chimed in. “Remember, Matthew? She lived with him, as he was a widower. Took care of him and assisted with his experiments.”
“Right.”
“Is she, uh, decent?” the man’s voice said.
“Yes, Frank. She is fully dressed.”
“Okay.”
Colors began filling in the shapes around him like an animated coloring book: a deep oaken brown for the hardwood dressing table; beige for the cushion on top of the stool; the bedspread was off white, a French lace fabric with shapes of flowers sewn in; the walls were ornately adorned with a rose-colored wallpaper with intricate tulips of gold imprinted.
The woman’s flowing gown was deep scarlet, with the shine of fine silk. The drapery of the expensive fabric was gathered at her back, just below her waist and over a bustle. The dress swept the floor, completely covering her feet. In fact, the fabric was sweeping back and forth. Matthew cocked his head, studying her. Then it dawned on him: She was swaying to the music.
She’s dancing, he thought.
He took a couple of steps toward her. “She’s facing away from me. I’m going to get closer, try to confirm identification of her as the daughter.”
“Okay, Matt.”
He remembered the faded old sepia tintype of the woman posing in a similar dress before a painting of an open veranda with a Roman column to her right and a manicured garden beyond. In the picture, she was attractive but stoic in the classic non-smiling pose of the 19th century.
“I’m going to compare her to the…”
She turned around.
Matthew gasped and stood still, transfixed. The woman’s face was close enough to touch if touch were possible. It was as if she were turning to him, waiting for him to take her hand and waist in hand and dance with her, though he knew he was invisible. She could not see, hear, or touch him. For all intents and purposes, he was a ghost, haunting her in mute rapture, beholding her beauty from the silence of eternity.
This was no stoic face from a century-and-a-half-old tintype. This was a living, breathing woman, with long chestnut hair pulled back behind clear china skin which was dotted with a smattering of freckles; and soft, pink, full lips that hid a secret smile as she swayed to the tune from the music box with closed eyes.
“You’re going to compare her to the old picture?”
The subtle scent of lavender emanated from her hair when she swept past him, passing through his incorporeal form and dancing to the other side of the small room. He watched her pass by, captivated by her.
“Matt?”
A soft breeze from the open window caressed her hair and dress as she swayed. Then the tune slowed and finally stopped, and she stopped with it, her head cocked to one side and smiling.
“Matt! Are you okay?”
Matthew sucked in a breath and blinked as if waking up from a dream. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, Frank. Uh, yeah… I, um…”
She opened her eyes and they were crystal blue, almost aquamarine, as if her eyes were the seas of distant lands, deep and clear, yet mysterious. Is she looking at me?
“What’s going on, buddy?” Frank’s voice harbored a tinge of concern.
The woman was gazing directly at him, still smiling. But that was impossible… He glanced over his shoulder and realized she must have been looking at the music box behind him, which sat on top of the chest of drawers. His heart sank, wishing she were looking at him.
“Matt!”
He shook his head. “I hear you, Frank. Sorry. I’m here, I’m fine. Just a little taken…”
“Taken with what?”
Her dress flowed across the floor as she passed, returning to his side of the room. He could feel the breeze of air from her movement past him, he could feel the heat of her skin, he could smell the aroma of her perfume. His hand involuntarily reached out and tried to caress her hair, passing through her.
“Her,” he whispered.
“Repeat?”
A male voice called out from somewhere beyond the closed wooden door of the bedroom. The woman said, “Coming,” then walked past Matthew, opened the door, and hurried out, closing the door behind her. Matthew stood in silence, staring at the door.
He had never experienced anything like that before, being immediately taken by the sight of someone, with anyone from the past or his present. He felt completely enchanted and confused.
“Matt, give me a quick status,” Frank said.
Matthew blinked. “I’m fine.”
“Give me a rundown.”
Matthew sighed. “Visual, auditory, sensual, and olfactory contact with the Destination. I’m right there with them. Everything’s fine, Frank.”
“Give me a heart rate.” The only thing the lab received through the Void was auditory contact, so they couldn’t monitor his vital signs, much to Frank’s ongoing chagrin.
Matthew pressed two fingers onto his right wrist, just below his thumb, and counted as he stared at the blue watch on his left wrist. Completely constructed of plastic, the watch’s design was like an old-fashioned, wind-up watch, with hour, minute, and second hands jerking around a face full of numerals. A quirk of the Machine prevented metal from passing through the Void; in fact, metal entering the vortex would most likely destroy the Machine, he had been told. Why, Matthew had no idea—he left questions like that to the physicists. Anyway, a smartwatch would be no good here, with no signals to sync with. “One twenty-nine.”
“Okay, you need to relax, calm your breathing. What’s got you worked up?”
Matthew paused. How could he report that his heart was beating fast because of her? He felt as if he were back in middle school and had suddenly developed a crush on a cute new girl in class. “I’m fine, Frank. I’ll slow my breathing.”
He passed through the closed door, which was just as incorporeal to him as he was to this reality, and entered a narrow hallway with shined wooden floors. He followed it to a living room filled with Victorian furniture, stone fireplace, and box heating stove, and scanned the house.
To the right, he saw an empty kitchen with a black wood-burning cook stove, to the left was the front door. Across the room was another hallway, which he entered. There were three closed doors and the first one he stuck his head inside was an empty examination room. Going to the second door, he thrust his head through the wood and there she was, along with an elderly man who must have been her father.
He shivered at the sight of her.
The old man said something and she laughed, and her smile caused her countenance to radiate with an internal glow. Matthew entered the room and approached her slowly, his heart rate increasing. Her chestnut hair flashed red in the sunlight from the window, which kissed the skin of her face and he wished with everything inside him that it were him instead of the sun who was blessed with that honor.
Her scent, citrus and lavender with hints of clove, enveloped him as he approached. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He stopped a few feet from her and marveled. “Hear my soul speak,” he said. “The very instance that I saw you…” he took a step closer, “…did my heart fly to your service.”
“Matt, stop whispering; we’re having trouble hearing you,” Frank complained.
“He’s quoting Shakespeare,” the female voice answered.
Matthew ignored them. This woman, this beauty, from another time, another place, had captured his full attention. And he wondered for the first time in his life if there really were such a thing as love at first sight.
“Matt, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m becoming a little worried, and if you don’t start responding like a scientist I’m going to pull you back.”
Matthew turned his head and closed his eyes again, trying to focus. “No, it’s okay, Frank, I’m fine.”
“Then report.”
He opened his eyes and forced himself to think. “Okay, sorry. I’ve located the makeshift lab, and the doctor. She’s… she’s with him.”
The voices in his ear cheered. “Great job, Matt,” Frank said. “Locating this man in the wide expanse of time has been like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Matthew smiled absently, watching the doctor’s daughter.
“We have Phillip to thank for that,” the female voice said. “His altering the Machine to locate individuals using their DNA as the tracking mechanism was right brilliant.”
“Good job, Phil,” Frank said. A male voice in the background murmured thanks. “Okay, Matt,” Frank continued, “let’s recap what we discussed when we began this project. We know that the doctor has been working in his spare time to find a cure for tuberculosis, which he never succeeds at, but which we believe may be useful for our purposes. We have a partial formula from his surviving journal, but we need the completed version. Right?”
Silence.
“Right?”
Matthew shook his head as if waking from a dream. “Yeah, that’s right. I remember.”
“Okay. So, what you need to do is either locate a completed formula or learn, by observing their experiments, what the formula is.”
“Yep.”
“So now—”
Frank’s monotone voice was suddenly smothered when the door burst open. The woman before Matthew gasped in surprise, raising her hand to her chest. Matthew swung around and saw a large, sweaty man in rough brown pantaloons with suspenders and a long-sleeved dirty white smock shirt enter the doorway holding a twelve gauge shotgun, which he held at his waist with both hands and pointed at the doctor.
“There you are!” the man shouted.
The doctor, a tall, white-haired, distinguished-looking gentleman in a dapper suit raised his hands toward the man. “Mr. Barnes, hold steady, there. What is this about?”
“Matt? Did you hear me?” Frank said.
“Wait a minute, Frank,” Matthew replied. “We’ve got a problem.”
The man’s face was red and wet. “What this’s about is MY WIFE IS DEAD!”
The doctor’s shoulders sagged and he lowered his hands. “Oh, John. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry. Yer sorry. Well, my Rebecca is DEAD!”
“We tried everything we could for her, John. Consumption is a terrible thing. There’s no cure.”
“Consumption! T’was yer potion that killed ’er.”
The doctor shook his head. “No, John. I gave her that medicine to try to help her. You know that.”
“What I know is that my wife was livin’ and breathin’ ’fore you came out to our place and made her swallow that snake oil poison.” He stepped closer. “And she’d still be alive if t’weren’t fer you.”
“Your wife was dying of consumption. I gave her medicine to try to help. I’m sorry it didn’t. But, as you can see, I’m still working on a cure.” The doctor’s face softened. “I lost my wife to that same, terrible disease, John.”
“Then you can go be reunited with her ag’in!”
The farmer raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed. The woman screamed, “Daddy!” and stepped in front of the doctor as the gun exploded.
“NOOOOOO!” Matthew shouted, breaking into a sprint toward her.
The woman fell against her father, the force of the blast ripping a hole in her chest and shoving her backward. The two of them dropped to the floor next to the table.
For Matthew, time slowed, not because of anything to do with the Void, but as the horror of the moment overcame him. He stopped next to them and saw the large blood stain spreading over the beautiful woman’s torso, her eyes and mouth wide open. She lay across her father’s lap, who leaned over her.
“Lizzy? Lizzy?” her father coughed, then looked up at the farmer. “John, what have you done?”
Matthew turned to the approaching farmer and swung his fist at him with all his might. It swished through the man’s head, meeting no resistance. “Stop! You shot her!” Matthew shouted, but no one could hear him. No one, except the ones a hundred and forty-eight years in the future, who sat in dumbfounded silence.
Matthew tried to shove the man back, away from her, and fell forward, landing on the floor. He turned to see the man’s back as he stood over the doctor and his daughter.
“That was meant fer you, doc. But this one won’t miss. ’Least yer family’ll be together in the hereafter. That’s more’n I got right now with my Rebecca.”
The doctor lowered his head and touched his forehead to his daughter’s, rocking her back and forth. Matthew yelled something unintelligible, grabbing at the farmer’s legs futilely, his heart feeling as if it would burst.
The gun exploded again. The doctor slumped down over his daughter. The farmer lowered the shotgun and exhaled, then looked down.
Matthew crawled across the hard wooden floor to the doctor and his daughter and peered up at the farmer. Tears fell from the man’s blood-spattered face as his body shook.
“I got ’im, Becky,” the man mumbled. “I got ’im.” He stepped around the two dead bodies and swiped his arm across the table, knocking the test tubes and wires and flasks and papers to the floor in one great heave. Glass smashed around Matthew. Then the farmer turned and strode out the door.
Matthew’s eyes blurred with tears as he tried to pull the doctor back, to hold the woman who was underneath the old man's torn body. Of course, Matthew couldn’t. “No no no no no no no no no no…”
“Matt…”
“He killed her! Frank, he killed her!”
“I know, Matt.”
“She was only trying to protect her father!”
“I know.”
Matthew’s words came in short sobs as he leaned over the doctor and stared into the beautiful woman's sweet, angelic face, now lifeless. “Frank— she’s— she’s dead— she’s dead—”
A male voice in the background shouted into Matthew’s earpiece, “You need to get him out of there, now!”
“Back off, Phil!” Frank said.
“Let’s bring him back,” the female voice said.
Matthew rocked back and forth over the doctor’s daughter and wept. “She’s dead, oh, she’s dead. He killed her.”
“Frank!” the woman said, her voice raising an octave. “Bring him back!”
“Don’t you bring me back,” Matthew said, rolling his blurry eyes around the room as if he could find the voices in his ear. “Don’t you take me out of here.”
But it was too late. His surroundings began to fade like an old photograph, first losing color, then form, then he was overcome by a floating sensation. The sound of a dog barking outside the window disappeared, and the last thing he lost was her scent, which lingered in the Void with him for a moment, as if she were still alive, as if it were just she and him, alone in the darkness, where he could keep her safe, where no one could interfere.
And then her scent was gone.
A lump formed in his throat, feeling a sense of loss. He wanted her back, he wanted to return, he wanted to see her again, to help her…
What was he thinking?
She was a shadow, a shadow of the past. She was dead and gone, a century and a half ago. He had been looking at a ghost, that’s all.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about her as he passed through the Void. And as the panic in the darkness began to grab hold, he clung to her memory tenaciously, refusing to let her go. He held her in his mind, and her death haunted him.
A great mourning filled his soul.
She was gone.
© 2016 by Douglas L. Tanner. All rights reserved.