Thick white cedars, a pathway and park benches border the central rectangle of grass at the center of which is an ornamental basalt column surrounded by flowers. This is where there should have been my favorite Thai restaurant, a barber shop, a bakery, and a movie theater. I drove past them just this morning and I did not drive past a park and a basalt column. My heart races. I look at passers-by. A woman with a dog, teenagers walking hand-in-hand. None of them seem bewildered, looking around themselves in shock. It’s only me. Two boys run by me into the park and begin to toss a frisbee. My legs feel shaky and I lean back against my car.
As I drive on I am now looking side-to-side for signs of weirdness, of anomalies. Now and again I convince myself I’ve seen something–that building was never there before, that crossroad is new–but it’s just my paranoid imagination. These things haven’t changed.
I get to my neighborhood and slow down to a crawl. Are there cars I don’t recognize? Pedestrians in black suits and sunglasses? It all looks normal and I pull into my driveway. Bess’s car isn’t there. More importantly, neither is Den’s. I notice the place is looking a little run down. My fault, of course. I’ve lived here since childhood and I held onto the place after my parents passed. When I moved back to Risley with my new bride, she was never keen on us living there, but after a while it got comfortable and Bess made the place her own.
I enter and quickly step back out. I look along the street to my left then to my right and then again into the house. It’s wrong. But not completely wrong. That’s the most disorienting type of wrong. It’s dark instead of light, dank instead of fresh. The furniture is in the wrong positions and is the wrong furniture. But I recognize this stuff, or some of it anyway. It’s stuff we trashed years ago. Our bright, airy decor is now replaced by my old, dark junk, and a picture window in the back wall has been ... uninstalled. It’s oppressive and airless.
I had always assumed that when I was first confronted by a temporal anomaly that I’d think to myself Of course. That’s how these anomalies resolve themselves. It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I predict that? But that is not what I’m thinking. I’m bewildered. The other possibility I’d taken on board is that an anomaly would carry me along with it and I’d be oblivious to any weirdness at all. I’d just be part of it. But that isn’t happening either because my head and my memories are in how it used to be and not with how it now is.
I remember I’m here on a mission and navigate the dilapidated furniture toward the main bedroom. At least I assume it’s still the main bedroom. It is. It contains an unmade bed and several sticks of furniture that should have been, in fact were, dumped long ago. Instead of the fancy French blue drawer chest that Bess bought there’s a bookcase with yellowed, peeling paint. On top of it is not the porcelain Imari vase that had been inherited down generations of Bess’s Japanese family, but a flexible desk lamp contorted to illuminate a wall photograph of my mother and brother.
I try to set this all aside. The question is, is it still here? I slide open the closet door and look into the shadows of the interior. All my stuff. Nothing of Bess’s. I slide shirts along the wardrobe rail and pull clothing from shelves. Nothing of Bess’s. More importantly, I’m not seeing it, the thing I’m here for. I slide the door closed and open the adjacent door. I feel relief as I see it. The safe is half-concealed by draped clothes and I sweep them away. Next question is, is the safe’s combination the same? Hand slightly atremble, I jab in the numbers and I’m relieved to hear the whirr of the locks. I exhale, swing open the door and remove the black canvas roll-on bag. I’m about to unzip it when, in the corner of my eye, I detect motion. I turn cold as an exclamation escapes me. There’s a figure in the doorway. It takes a step toward me. I squint at it, a silhouette at first.
“Kasper?”
“Hello Joad,” Kasper Asmus replies.
“You scared the living crap out of me,” I say, fighting a full-body tremble. The room is poorly lit but enough that I begin to notice something. He’s not the same. Where yesterday there had been a shock of pale brown hair, there is now a receding hairline and a deeply creased forehead. Heavy bags hang from his eyes and the jawline that had been crisp a day before now sags. Yesterday Kasper was a decade younger than me, and now it looks like the age gap has reversed. He stares.
“What’s happening?” I ask. “Do you know?” He blinks but doesn’t answer. “Where’s the team?” I take a step toward him and he takes a step backwards.
“All seems a long time ago,” he says quietly, to himself more than to me. He looks around the half-lit room and I sense he’s as discomposed as me. “Should have known Joad Bevan keeps his own schedule.” He shakes his head slowly.
“What’s a long time–?” He removes a pistol from his pocket. I gasp and back up against the closet door. He doesn’t point it at me, just holds it by his side. I want to look into his face but my eyes are frozen on the weapon. He follows my stare and looks down at the pistol. Then