Time Out of Mind (2 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Alberts that reached well past their knees. Most carried
walking sticks. All of them wore hats, either high silk or derbies. Nearly all were mustached or bearded. And they
would see him.
They would not seem afraid, or at all surprised, or even
especially interested that he was among them. But they
would see him. A tall policeman would pass, acknowledg
ing him with a nod and a touch of his truncheon to the brim of his helmet. The helmet was the sort British bobbies wore,
except that his seemed not so high and was a lighter shade.
There were two women, Corbin recalled, the last time he
saw the policeman. They were following close behind him
as if determined to stay under his protection as long as
possible. The two women, girls really, were escorted by a third woman, who appeared to be in her thirties. A chaperone, Corbin realized. The two younger women modestly dropped their eyes as he passed, but the older one glowered at Corbin as if he'd committed a breach of etiquette by even
noticing the girls in her charge. Corbin was struck by the
tiny steps they took. Quick mincing steps that seemed to
cover only inches. It occurred to him that all three were out
of breath but trying to avoid the appearance of breathing
hard. It was their corsets, he realized. Contraptions of wire
and whale-bone cruelly choked their waists and stiffened
their spines, making exertion almost impossible. Knowing that, thinking that, Corbin felt an unaccountable sense of
embarrassment, as if he had committed another, graver
breach. What was it? The corsets? Yes. He should not have reflected upon their undergarments. Not even to himself.
Corbin felt curiously protective of these women. It was
clear that they could never have begun to defend themselves against any form of assault, nor could they have
reacted to any minor emergency that might require quick
physical movement. Small wonder, he thought, that these creatures swoon as often as they do. It's a marvel that they even manage to cross a busy street without more of them
being knocked down by one of those maniacs who drive
hacks these days.
Still vaguely ashamed of allowing his thoughts to pene
trate their outer clothing, Corbin watched as they struggled to board the rear platform of a two-horse omnibus. He felt
an urge to go and stop them, to offer to engage a hack to
take them home. They certainly dressed as if they had the means to pay for a cab. They must have gone abroad with
out sufficient funds, not sufficient, at all events, to meet the larcenous demands made by New York's hack drivers every
time an unpropitious turn of weather turned them into
grasping auctioneers. Corbin made no move toward the la
dies, however. The risk of embarrassing them was great
and, worse, his motives might well be misunderstood. Still,
he regretted that they must endure the discomfort of a
tightly packed horsecar whose only protection against the
cold would be a host of steaming bodies and four inches
of filthy straw on the floor. But at least the conductor, Cor
bin saw, seemed like the sort who would do well by them.
He'd stepped to the street to offer an arm and to hold back those who would crowd past the three women. They de
clined the arm, as the conductor might have expected. They
would need both hands to carefully raise their skirts high
enough to step onto the platform but not so high as to
permit the display of an ankle. Two men promptly offered
their seats. The conductor glared at a third, in a laborer's
peacoat and wool cap, until he, too, surrendered his seat to the chaperone, who was the last to board. Satisfied, Corbin
adjusted his hat and turned into the wind.
he found himself wondering how they would manage it.
All three wore bustles and panniers and enough heavy fabric to clothe half a dozen of the women who worked in his
office
...
in
his
office. As he held that thought, Corbin spun
around and focused once more upon the omnibus. It was
fading. A shift of wind, an updraft, something, had created
a lull in the storm and everything was changing again. The
horsecar was almost gone. The outline of a Fifth Avenue MTA bus was materializing in its place. And he became
afraid again, realizing only then that he did not belong in
the world of these women and the policeman. If there really
was such a world. If he was not, in fact, going out of his
mind. Hadn't he just straightened his hat against the wind?
He wasn't wearing a hat. What's going on here? What the
hell is happening? Corbin staggered forward in the direction
of Grand Central. Soon he was running.
That, at least, was what had happened one time. One of the first times. Back just after Thanksgiving. But it was
always different. The street scene always varied from one
time to the next, as it did between any two ordinary strolls through midtown Manhattan. Yet three things were always
the same. Jonathan Corbin was seeing, living, a time long
past and dead. And there was always the snowstorm. And
when the blizzard was at its worst and the night at its blackest, he would see the bareheaded woman running from him.
The woman he would murder.
He would be on a corner, he wasn't sure where, leaning
into a wind of astonishing force and sleet that threatened
to seal his eyes. It was useless, he knew, to move in that direction. The woman would not have gone there. Wind or
no wind, she would have gone the other way. Corbin, in fact, knew exactly when and where he would see her, yet
he felt compelled each time to act out a search, as if he
were living these moments for the first time. He would turn,
toward the north, he thought, and on the sidewalk before
him he would see a half-buried clump that looked like a
dead raven. It was a hat. Her hat. A narrow, tapering toque of cloth and feathers from Lord & Taylor's Broadway store. As the woman had reached this corner, the full force of the
gale had torn the useless ornament from her head.
Now the same wind would shove at Corbin’ s back, push
ing him forward in the direction she must have taken. He lurched on, digging his heels into packed snow and ice for purchase, finally reaching the next corner, where he paused
in the doorway of an apothecary.
She'd turned right, he was sure, from this corner. Her
reason for turning right caused a churning of hurt and anger
in Corbin’ s stomach, although as yet he had not the
slightest idea why. But he knew that he must hurry. Corbin pulled a collar up against his cheek, mildly startled by the
scratch of black lamb's-wool trim he hadn't known was
there, then plunged forward across the north-south avenue
that was funneling the winds into hurricane force. Twice
he fell, tripping over a tangle of fallen telegraph wires that
sagged everywhere over roadway and sidewalk alike. He
could scarcely believe that the woman would have tried this
crossing, but he understood that she would have had no
choice. How desperate she was! How depraved she was by
a sin that would lead her to ever greater shame and condemnation. Corbin drove himself on. A snowbank blocked him on the far side. He stepped into it and cried out. There was someone in there. Beneath the snow. Corbin's gloved
hand locked fingers with another that was stiff and unyield
ing. A large hand. Gasping, Corbin threw himself back
ward, but the other gloved hand stayed entwined in his
own, only for an instant, but long enough that his momen
tum pulled the upper torso of the hidden body free. A fro
zen face stared past him through half-open eyes.
Corbin knew the face. George. His name was George,
but any other knowledge of him stayed just out of Corbin's
reach. The corpse was a big man. Corbin’s size. Thickly
mustached. His dead eyes were wincing as if in pain, and
his mouth gaped open to receive a breath that never came.
George was dead. He'd fallen here. Hours ago. There was
no connection, Corbin knew, between the man in the snow
bank and the woman somewhere up ahead. He was sure of
that. But for that reason a part of Corbin wondered why
this man was here in this dream, this nightmare. And why
was another part of him sorry at this man's death? Who
was George? Not a friend, he felt sure. Not a close one at
least. A business acquaintance perhaps. Or a neighbor. Cor
bin eased him back into the shelter of the snowbank and
gently covered his face. He clasped the dead man's hand
for a moment, as if in apology for leaving him, then
crawled over him toward the lee of the nearest building.
He was now on a very long and narrow side street with
a downward slope. By a trick of the wind the walks of the
side he was on were swept almost clear of snow. Yet on
the windward side, to his left, first-floor doors and windows
were fully covered by drifts, some to a height of ten feet
or more. A huge building was there. A single massive struc
ture that looked like the wall of a great white canyon. Its windows, ledges, and cornices were obscured by a troweling of packed snow and ice all the way to the ragged line
of its roof, which must have been eight or ten stories above
the ground. This building seemed to go on for the entire
block. Corbin felt another stab of anger as he looked at it,
but he forced his attention back down along the dark and
snowless windbreak where he stood. It was then that he
would see her. She would be some fifty yards ahead of him,
moving haltingly, and almost invisible but for the light she
reflected from an occasional uncurtained window. There
were gas lamps at intervals along the street but none were
lit. No lamplighter would make his rounds tonight.
She would move a few steps, then pause and turn toward
the building across the street, then move on again. Corbin
could see that she was baffled by the drifts that began in
the middle of the roadway and rose up against all the build
ing's entrances. She stopped again. Both hands came up to
warm her frozen ears as she searched in vain for a crossing
she could manage in the heavy floor-length coat she wore.
It was then that she saw Corbin’s shape closing in upon
her. She screamed. It struck him that it was a cry more of hatred, of vexation, than of fear. He saw a flash of teeth as
she gathered up her frozen skirts and turned from him, run
ning.
This was Corbin’s first clear look at the woman. She was
young, no more than twenty-four, he thought. In daylight
he would remember her as pretty, almost beautiful. But now
she seemed ugly, hateful. Corbin was moving again. In his right hand he noticed the glint of a polished ebony cane. It flicked forward in rhythm with his pace. He could feel the cane's carved silver knob against his palm. And he saw his
sleeve. More lamb's wool at the cuff. The rest was a soft
gray plaid unlike any coat Corbin owned. When he looked
up again, he saw that he had halved the distance between
himself and the woman.
She was becoming frantic. And exhausted. She staggered
against a high iron fence in the light of a brownstonè's
parlor window. A man came briefly to the window, pausing only long enough to steam it with his breath, then he turned
away.
“
Sir, please,” he heard her call. “Sir, please help me.”
Corbin knew it was useless. She would not be heard
against the whistling wind. And if she tried to climb the
steps leading to the door and if her knock were not
promptly answered, she would be trapped.
The woman seemed to realize that as well. Again she
ran.
one, Corbin saw, had some monstrous unlit structure above
it which straddled the roadway like a giant spider. A rail
road. Yes, that's what it was. An elevated railroad and a
large terminus. He thought he heard a wail of despair as
she peered through the blast of wind at the lifeless building
above her. There would be no help there, either. The trains
had long since stopped running, unable to make the
slightest grade on icy tracks. The terminus and platform
would be another trap at best. Corbin watched her stumble
on toward one of the steel columns that supported the el
evated. She fell to her knees as she reached it and held on, chest heaving, gathering her strength for a dash to the col
umn’ s opposite number on the other side. Suddenly she
straightened. She had seen something. She raised a hand to
shield her eyes against the ripping sleet.
