Time Out of Mind
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
TIME OUT OF MIND
BY
JOHN R. MAXIM
For lrwin Shaw
... who always had time.
I'll be with her again, in this life or next,
I'll go back to the past if I must.
I'll be with her again in time out of mind,
Where who hate us ne'er were, or are dust.
—
C. G. Sterling, “Outback”
Make no mistake. The genes we're born with carry
memory. They carry knowledge we've never learned,
talents we've never studied, even fears of things
that have never frightened us.... But someone,
some time, in our blood lines, had. these memories.
Yes, you might say that all of us are haunted to
some degree. You might very well say that.
One
He did not have the look of a man who frightened easily.
dog could, was snow. Ordinary snow. The kind that dusts
and occasionally blitzes New York City between November
and April. Jonathan Corbin saw things in the snow. Things that could not have been there. Things that could not have
been living.
He'd moved to New York just last September. From Chi
cago. That was what made all this so absurd. Chicago got
twice as much snow as New York. All his life he'd lived
through midwestern winters harsher than anything seen in
the East. And he'd liked the snow there...The heavier the better. Snow was beautiful as long as you didn't get stuck
in it on a highway at night. Two or three inches of fresh
snow could cleanse and soften even the meanest city streets. But with two months remaining of his first winter in New
York, all that had changed. Now the first few flakes from
any passing cloud had come to seem like living creatures.
Malevolent, probing things. Like scouts for an advancing
army. They would float slowly past the window of his office, sometimes stuttering along the glass as if to make cer
tain he was there, catching a rising current to come back
for a second look.
not through the office windows at his back, but in his sec
retary's troubled eyes as she stared past his shoulder. He
did not turn. He sat frozen until she closed her book and
stepped wordlessly from the room, shutting the door behind
her.
Corbin buzzed her extension minutes later. In a carefully
measured tone he instructed her to cancel the luncheon
meeting he'd scheduled at the Plaza Hotel and said he'd
take no calls. Not from anyone.
Four hours passed. It was after three when Jonathan Cor
bin allowed himself to hope that he might make it through
this day after all. From his window, where he'd been stand
ing almost constantly, he looked down on Sixth Avenue,
four floors below. The snow was still not sticking. Only a
wet gauzy layer clung to the tops of cars. The stored-up
heat of Manhattan swallowed all others as they touched.
Maybe, Corbin told himself, nothing would happen this
time. He dug his fingers into the thigh of one leg to halt
the trembling, which came in spasms. It would not happen
this time. It could not. The snow was going to stop.
He pushed the draperies aside for a better look, and his
eyes fell upon his own reflection in the double-paned glass.
What he saw disgusted him. A grown man quaking. Cow
ering at the sight of a little wet snow. Hiding out in this
room like a whipped dog. Angrily, he turned from that im
age and forced himself back to his desk. Anger, he knew,
was a good sign. It always came when the fear began to
recede and his fury at himself became stronger than t
he
terror. He'd be fine now. As long as the forecast turned out
to be right. As long as there was no more snow.
He wished that he'd kept that lunch date. It was impor
tant. Weeks in the planning. He could have handled it.
They'd have noticed that he didn't look good, that he was
pale and sweating and barely touched his food, but he could
have bluffed his way through. As long as the snow didn't
start to pile up outside. As long as he didn't start to see
people who were no longer alive strolling past the windows
of the Edwardian Room.
But that wasn't going to happen. Not this time. The forecast was accurate after all. Light snow. Flurries. Rain to
ward evening, possibly heavy at times. The weather page
of the
New York Times
had promised that the main storm
would pass well to the south. The weather bureau agreed
each time Corbin called. He began to forgive himself at last
for not checking the forecast before he left his house in
Connecticut. He'd overslept and had to rush, unshowered, for his train. The morning sky had been more clear than
clouded, and he'd smelled no moisture in it. Temperature in the low forties. Still, he should have checked.
But maybe, he thought, it was just as well he hadn't. Corbin knew that if he'd flipped on the marine weather
station he kept mounted by his back door, and its tinny
voice had even mentioned snow, he might never have left
the house. He might not have even looked out a window
until bright sunshine had baked a sealing crust onto what
ever had fallen. And he'd end up losing his job. This time
or the next, the terror he could not bring himself to explain
would get him fired. They would have no choice. If he had
a drinking problem, a drug problem, if he was depressed
or a casualty of executive stress, if he had any kind of
problem that they could at least begin to understand, they
would try to help him. The Network was decent enough
that way. Like they were with his boss, Bill Stafford, who
was afraid to fly. They got Bill to enroll in one of those
anonymous nervous flyers classes, and even when he
flunked out a second time they just gave up and started
booking him on trains for trips he couldn't avoid. Corbin
had heard of other Network people who'd been put through
detoxification or counseling programs of one kind or an
other. But what do you do with somebody who's afraid of
snow? Demote him to some Sunbelt affiliate? Ship him
back where you got him? Back to the Chicago station? For all Corbin knew, Chicago's snow would have changed, too,
and twice as much snow would end up driving him out of
his mind twice as fast.
March. A few more days to February and then March.
If he could only get through March.
Corbin blinked. The room was suddenly darker. He spun
out of his chair and again stepped to the window. The
whole of Sixth Avenue seemed to be in deeper shadow.
And the snow had thickened. It fell more purposefully now.
A light veil was forming over untrod sections of the side
walks and on the branches of young elms whose buds had just begun to swell. And the sky. It was lowering even as he
watched, swallowing lighter shades of gray as it eased
downward, digesting the tops of taller buildings. Across the
street, the Warwick Hotel was already in soft focus, and to his right he saw that all the upper floors of the rival ABC television building had vanished. The people! It suddenly struck Corbin that there were people up there. A part of his mind saw them screaming and crying as they began to re
alize that the city they knew was fading away and that
something long dead was coming to life in its place.
Oh, God,” he whispered. Jonathan Corbin pressed both
palms against his temples as if to squeeze away that image.
“Oh, God, don't let me be going insane.”
screaming. At worst there would be a little worry about
what the subways would be like and whether their bosses
would let them out early. Or they'd be wishing they'd
brought overshoes and umbrellas. Some would be happy
because ski conditions would be excellent this weekend. Or
because they thought snow was pretty. Some would like it,
some would grumble about the inconvenience. But they
wouldn't be afraid. Because they wouldn't see the things
that Jonathan Corbin would.
Then don't look, damn it. You don't have to go out. You
can sleep here on your office couch. You don't even have to look out this stupid window.
Corbin snatched at the cord of his drapes and yanked,
too hard. He'd found the wrong cord and it snapped away
in his hand, dragging a potted plant to the floor with it.
Outside he heard his secretary's chair slide backward at the sound of the breakage. Corbin stepped to the door and lis
tened, hoping that Sandy would stay away, that she
wouldn't knock. He waited there until he heard the chair
again. He could not see the worried shake of her head or
her hand reaching for her telephone.
Once again, Corbin was drawn to the window. The snow
was coming faster still and at a driven slant. A new wind
had risen from the south. It came in waves. Gusting. Its
great breaths swatted umbrellas aside and slapped at the
hems of topcoats. Within minutes all the city he could see
had faded to a whitish blur. It was no longer solid.
Too late now even to run. Grand Central Station was
twenty minutes away on foot. There would be no cabs.
Corbin knew that he would get no farther than a block, to
Fifth Avenue at best, before the city began to change.
clay and some giant hand was slowly pressing down on it.
Buildings would become squat at their bases and they
would ooze closer together, narrowing the streets and side
walks. This giant pressing hand would distort the features of the buildings, breaking up clean lines, creating bulges
and ridges and a sense of massiveness rather than height.
Then the hand would lift and the tops of the buildings would be gone. Not hidden in cloud. Just gone. Faded
away. And among the home-bound office workers he would
see people dressed in clothing that was no longer worn and
pass buildings that were not there in sunlight. Corbin would
be on the street and he'd notice that the midtown trucks
and buses were becoming translucent, and through them he
would begin to see other shapes.
Park kind that tourists hire during the warmer months, but
every size and shape of unmechanized vehicle. On Fifth Avenue, Corbin would see little horse-drawn trolleys that
had not appeared on New York streets for
...
Corbin didn't
know. Eighty years? A hundred years? He'd see ponderous
freight wagons, brewery wagons piled high with kegs, sleek
black broughams and landaus with liveried drivers sitting
erect at the reins, fully exposed to the weather. And they'd
be moving. Living. He'd see the breath coming from the
horses' nostrils and the steam rising from their flanks. He
would actually smell their manure, mounds of it, every
where, being churned into a repulsive brown slush by pass
ing hooves and wheels. The people on foot would be
mostly men. Few women anywhere except in carriages,
holding buffalo robes across their laps. The men, the busi
ness types at least, would nearly all be dressed in black.
Fur-lined inverness coats, or ulsters, or flaring Prince
