“Fool,” gasped the long-haired man. “Nothing can change.” Then his eyes darted back to me. “Kennit, help me. He’ll shoot you. Help me. I’m the obie one. That’s what she said. Rose. Said you’d know what it meant. I’m your obie one. Me, old John Wald.”
It must have made sense to Luka at the same time as it did to me. She grasped my arm and I turned to her. The scratched note on the underside of the dresser drawer. Trust John Wald. Kenny says he is the auby one. And the rhyme, “truth and wisdom deeply walled.” Or deeply Wald? And Jimmy’s words just last night, which Luka mouthed now. “We need an Obi-Wan.” I finished the sentence with her.
Not obie one. Not auby one. Obi-Wan.
That was enough. I wrenched away from her, her own feeble strength shoving me on my way, though I had made my decision too late. I got to the struggling pair just as, with a ferocious rush of strength, the gun-wielder spun John Wald around and threw him at me. We collapsed back in a clutter of limbs and landed on Luka. By the time we had all struggled out from the tangle of our own bodies, the man with the widow’s peak was standing directly above us, his gun leveled.
“Stay where you are,” he said to John Wald, who eyed the gun warily. “This is him. Don’t you see? This is him. If I kill him, none of it ever happens. I live, she lives, everyone lives! It’s all his fault.”
“What’s his fault?” said Luka, struggling to put some part of herself between me and that gun.
The gun-wielder’s eyes narrowed on her. “You’re his accomplice. But you don’t matter. It’s him who did it.”
“Wait it,” pleaded Wald, sitting up as much as he dared. “Will ye hear no reason?”
“Shut up,” said the other. He turned to me. “This is it,” he said. “If I kill you, it’s all over. Do you see that? You started it all.” He took his left hand from the gun and roughly wiped tears from his dirt-streaked face. “You were there. Every time. Always you. Pretending to be my friend.”
“Kenny wouldn’t do that,” said Luka. “He’s never even met you before, right Kenny?”
“Never met me?” said the man with a snort. “Wouldn’t do that? When I was little, Kenny was, for just a while, my only friend.” His hand grew firmer on the gun and he stood straighter. “Weren’t you, Kenny? He said he’d help me. But you know all he did? Or had you done it already? Did you know, even then, that you had done it?”
“What?” said Luka. “Done what?”
He looked at her disdainfully. “Kenny Maxwell killed my wife,” he said, and fired his gun.
Five
The thing about getting shot is that you don’t exactly follow what happens next. It didn’t even register at first that he had shot me.
The gun went off, and I felt a giant’s fist punch me in the side. Luka later told me that she had seen in his eyes that he was about to do it, and tried to push me out of the way. At first I thought the pain in my side was somehow her fault, like she had punched me.
There was shouting above me and another gunshot, all the sounds retreating as though I had slipped into a deep grave. I found myself looking at the concrete floor as a film of milky white curtained my eyes. “But … ” I was trying to say. “But … ” I don’t even know what the rest of that sentence would have been. I started breathing in tiny gasps to minimize the agony building in my side.
I think time must have sped up for me then. I didn’t lose consciousness, but events started happening at a faster pace. There were more bangs and scuffles and shouts. Twice someone tripped over me. Groaning made the pain worse.
Rolling onto my back, I saw the raincoated man with the gun straining to turn it toward me, wresting against John Wald. “Leave off, ye mad fool,” shouted the bearded man. “Tha canst not hold off what’s done.”
“Let me kill him,” said the man with the gun. “Then it all gets better.”
He kneed Wald in the crotch and pushed him as he doubled over. The barrel of the gun strained closer to me. Part of me wanted to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see it coming, but before I could decide, another figure launched itself at the man, more like a jaguar than a person.
Luka.
She grabbed his gun hand and heaved herself up at the shooter. She didn’t speak. She must have been too angry or desperate or scared for that. She just smashed her face toward his.
With his other arm, the man with the gun smashed her against the wall, but when he did, a splatter of blood came with her, and I could see that she’d bitten his cheek in her rage.
The bearded man rose up again, overcoming his pain. My shooter still had his gun, but he looked scared now. Before Wald could grab him, he snarled in frustration and backed into the mirror.
In the midst of my pain and the odd coldness flooding my body, I had a moment to be shocked at this. An adult going into the mirror.
What about the rules?
Strong hands rolled me over. I heard a man’s voice, talking softer now, but I couldn’t understand a word.
I tried to pay attention, but fingers started examining my wound, and I felt like throwing up. I began to tense and buck. The hands withdrew and instead turned me on my side so I could heave the contents of my stomach onto the concrete floor.
I heard Luka’s voice again. “I have to go. That was—he went forward. I have to see if Jimmy and Rick are okay.”
“Wait it,” said the bearded man. “Boil some water and search me out a needle. I’ll go along to aid thy friends, but we must first stitch this wound.”
He probed my side again, and all I could get through the agony were confused impressions. More gibberish talk from the bearded man, impatience from Luka. More pain in my side. Some lost time. Minutes? An hour?
“I have to go,” said Luka’s voice. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I have to go. You have Anthony now. He can help.”
A different voice. Anthony? “I think you should wait for John. What are you going to do against that guy by yourself?”
“Something.”
More talk. Maybe more time passing.
I was picked up with what might have been gentleness, though I only felt pain. The veil of white that had descended across my vision had begun to thin, so I could see as we turned to the mirror.
“No,” I said feebly. “No, it’s going to—”
Burn was what I thought, but it didn’t. I didn’t see in the mirror who was carrying me, but I saw the glass come toward me. I flinched and felt the chill of downtime travel.
We were going further into the past.
There followed an endless series of bounces and jostles. I could feel the wetness of my blood around the agony of my wound. I could make out the foreign man’s voice, and the boy’s.
If that journey was five minutes, an hour, or a year and a day, I couldn’t have told you. Sometimes we were in light, but mostly not. Where were my parents? Were they going to find out that I was gone? Had those gunshots been loud enough for them to hear in 1977? Would my dad hold my shoulders when they took the bullet out like in the movies?
The giant who was holding me stopped and began to put me down. I tried to speak, but a voice said, “Hush now. Old John Wald’ll stash us sound in the fool’s mucky hiding hole. Hush.”
My dreams were about pain. Spears and knives stuck in my side, usually from behind so I couldn’t get them out. Luka was there, telling me about the bad man from the mirror, and how he wanted to crack my head open, but I kept trying to tell her that we had it wrong, what he really wanted to do was shoot me to stop his wife from dying.
I woke in a muddy hole with dim, grey light leaking in from beneath my feet. I could smell smoke.