Theoretically, yes, I can see it. The idea of traveling back in time to recover knowledge that had been lost sends shivers through me. All the information lost during the Dark Ages could be restored. All the mysteries throughout history could be explained. Ancient treasures uncovered. The reason for the disappearance of certain civilizations revealed.
Maybe even the information Mom needs to perfect Audrey’s cure could be handed to her on a silver platter.
But the logic is still fuzzy. “How did they travel?”
“By accessing Limbo.”
“Limbo? Like Dante’s Limbo?”
Porter’s eyes light up like he’s impressed. “Exactly, yes. The Isle of the Blessed. Elysium. Abraham’s Bosom. Barzakh. They’re all referring to the same place. Everyone passes through Limbo on their way to Afterlife when they die, but only a few can access Limbo while still alive. Gesh discovered how to do it as a child. He later taught Flemming.” He levels his eyes at me. “And then he taught you.”
A chill washes over me. Goosebumps rise and salute on the back of my arms. “How could he have taught me? I’ve never met him before in my life.”
“You have. You just don’t remember.”
I narrow my eyes at Porter. “Right. Like I don’t remember meeting you?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
I stare at him for a moment longer, but he doesn’t elaborate. I want to know what he means, but there’s something else I want to know about even more. “Is Limbo the ‘black’?” I ask, recalling the deep darkness that envelopes me before my visions.
“Yes, the black is part of it. But there is so much more to it than that.” He tilts his head to the side. “Have you figured out how to access Limbo on your own yet?”
I frown down at my cold cappuccino. “No. I just get yanked into the black randomly, whether I want to or not.”
“So you haven’t figured out what triggers the pull?”
I look up at him. Was there a trigger? “I used to think it was déjà vu, but I disproved that theory a long time ago.”
Porter cracks the smallest grin at the corner of his mouth. He reaches into his jeans pocket, pulls something out, and sets it on the table between us. It’s a pure white stone the size of a quarter, smooth and round, shaped like an M&M. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s a game piece,” I blurt out without thinking. Then, once I realize what I said, I cover my mouth with my hands. It wasn’t a guess. I know it’s a game piece, but I’ve never seen one like it in my life. Not even in my visions.
Porter says, “Do you remember what the game is called?”
“Polygon,” I whisper through my fingers.
Porter’s grin widens, and he nods. “Exactly right.”
How do I know the name of a game I’ve never played?
He slides the game piece closer to me, and I reach out to touch it. Someone carved thin letters on both sides of its smooth surface. LVI on one side, IV on the other. As I rub my fingers across the engraved letters, trying to figure out what they mean – are they Roman numerals? – my mind is suddenly flooded with memories. The sights and sounds of the restaurant fade away as thousands of images shuffle before me. Hundreds of faces I’ve never seen before, places I’ve never been, sounds I’ve never heard; they all flurry around me, each image as brief as a camera flash, gone before I can fully examine it.
Then one single image, clearer than the others, comes into focus: I’m a little girl with long blonde braids, sitting at a little white table in a little white room. I’m playing Polygon with a little blond boy with dark brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. I place a white stone on the game board, then he places a black stone next to mine. He bursts out laughing because it’s the first time he’s ever beaten me at this game. He pumps a fist into the air and shouts in a language I’ve never heard before, “Til sidst, vinder jeg!” But I understand his words perfectly. Finally, I win.
I can’t explain how I know this little boy, why my memory of him is so strong, how I can understand his language, or why I have that niggling feeling like I’ve known Porter my entire life. All I know is that I’ve never felt such strong déjà vu before. The letters carved on the game piece, the way the light winks off the little boy’s wire-rimmed glasses, the way Porter rubs his pinky knuckle with this thumb – it all combines and swells and swirls until the black swallows me like a tidal wave, and I am plunged into the dark.
LIMBO
This time, the light doesn’t rush in and flood my senses. I remain in the black. As silent as death.
No breath, no sound, no taste, no touch.
Just black.
Lonely, lonely black.
It feels like hours, days, even weeks pass, staring into that yawning black, feeling nothing but nothing itself, before I finally see something in the far distance. A blue-white flicker of light, like the guttering flame from a match. Hauntingly faint. So faint I can’t tell if I’m really seeing it at all. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking.
Then, a voice.
“I’ll just let you settle in, shall I?”
Porter stands next to me in the dark. I can make out his polo, jeans, and ball cap, but only just, as though he’s illuminated by the faintest glow of a crescent moon. Has he been there the whole time?
“It’s a bit disorienting at first,” he says. “But you’ll get used to it.”
I look down and realize I have a body too, faintly lit. I’m still wearing my nerd glasses, my army-green parka, jeans, and Gran’s old flowery scarf from the Seventies, but my body doesn’t work quite right. I feel sluggish and willowy, and, at the same time, like I’m not there at all. “Why are you still wearing your cap?” I say, gesturing to it. “Have our bodies left the restaurant?”
“No, only our souls have left.” He taps his cap with his finger. “My cap isn’t really here. You’re seeing my soul through a perception filter. My body. Your body. You see what you think our souls should look like. You hear my voice as you recall it in the restaurant.”
I gape back at him in awe. The thought is too profound to grasp. “What’s happening to our bodies right now? Are we slumped over at the table?”
“No,” he says with a chuckle. “Time does not pass in Base Life while our souls are in Limbo. Our time spent here will be but a fraction of a second there.”
“So I’ll return to the same time I left? Just like every other time I have a vision?”
He nods, and I turn my gaze back to the faint flicker of light in the distance. “And the light? Is that just my perception too?”
“No, the light is real. That’s where we’re headed. That region of Limbo is called Polestar. That’s where every soul passes through on its way to Afterlife.”
I expect to get a chill when he says that, an overpowering sensation of wonder, but my body remains somewhat unresponsive. I look down at my hands, turning them front to back, back to front, slowly. They look translucent. I lift a foot, then I lift the other. It feels like I’m pulling my shoes from mud. I expect to hear the slurp of suction, but there’s no sound.
“Like I said, you’ll get used to it,” he says. “It takes a lot of practice, but soon you’ll be bounding around this place like a young colt. Just like you used to.”
I frown because he keeps saying confusing things like that. “What do you mean, ‘just like I used to’?”