Time Out of Mind (3 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
Police!” she screamed. ”I need you! Police!”
hear it. The wind seized her words and shredded their
sounds and threw them back past her face. The woman
pushed heavily to her feet and lunged in the direction of whatever salvation she saw, but the wind did to her skirts
what it had done to her plea. Her feet were slashed from
under her. On hands and knees, she shot a desperate glance toward Corbin’ s advancing form, then turned, crawling her
way across the avenue.
began to feel a stirring of pity for her. He wanted to tell
her that she needn't scream, that she needn't run. But an
other part of him knew that was wrong. It was right that
she should suffer. It was right that she be punished for the terrible wrong she had done him. Corbin placed one hand
upon the thick fur hat that he wore and leaned into this new
avenue, crossing at an upwind bias as one would attempt
to swim a rapids. A short block into the wind he saw
through squinting eyes the aid the woman had sought but
had not had the strength to reach. Two uniformed police
men were struggling to raise a fallen horse. On the open seat of the delivery wagon to which the beast was har
nessed, Corbin saw the dead or senseless body of the driver.
He was hunched forward. Frozen. The loose end of a long scarf streamed out in the wind and slapped unheeded at his
face. Corbin hesitated. He thought he should offer assis
tance. But no, he decided. The driver was either beyond his
help or already in the good hands of the two patrolmen.
And the woman had reached the shelter of the building line
and was now regaining her feet. If he let her go to find
new sanctuary, what stories would she tell? What new humiliations would she bring upon his name? Corbin turned after her.
They were near the end of a second long street when
Corbin was again close upon her. There was a house. A huge house. A mansion of brick and stone set well back
from the sidewalk behind a high spiked fence of wrought
iron. The gates of the fence were fully open upon a drive
way and garden well lit with electric lamps. The curved
driveway led to a porte cochere big enough to accept the
largest barouche or coach and four. She stopped there, shiv
ering, staring at this house. Corbin could almost hear her thoughts. Another windswept avenue lay ahead of her, this
one even more open and exposed than the last. He knew
that she could not bear to attempt another crossing. She
would not have the strength. But this great house. Surely
she could find refuge here. The servants would take her in.
She could ask them to say nothing to their mistress. Only to let her warm herself in the kitchen. She could sit in a
chair until morning. Their mistress need not know that she had forced herself upon this house uninvited and in such a
state. But it was no use. They would surely tell her. Or
worse, they would sell this intelligence to that dreadful Col
onel Mann for a silver dollar and within a week her hu
miliation would be made public in his newspaper.
would not seek shelter there. It would mean the end of all
she valued. With an anguished waving of her arms she
turned from the warmth of those lights and plunged in
sanely back into the storm.
square, was another building in the early stages of construction. All around it were piles of bricks and lumber under wind-whipped tarpaulins. The storm made small mountains
of these and filled in the passes between them. It was in
this direction that the woman ran. There was no light there.
Only the distant glow of the mansion's arc lights. But it
was enough that when she turned at last to face him he
could see the full measure of the mocking contempt in
which she held him. There was a smear across her mouth
that looked like blood. Her hair, once piled high and teased
into ringlets at her brow, was now a fallen, frozen reddish
mass. He knew all the more clearly why she had turned
from those gates. Vanity. Shame. The fear of being whispered about in drawing rooms, of her name being stricken
from guest lists, of heads in passing carriages turning away
from the woman who had the coarseness of manner to appear at the door of Alice Vanderbilt in such a state of dis
habille. If only they knew, Corbin thought. If only they knew the true depths of her shame.
until its silver tip was level with her breastbone. She backed
away, her lips curling into a sneer. A word. She spoke a
word.
Children
is what Corbin thought she said. Only that.
Inflected upward at the end as if spoken as a warning. Cor
bin advanced upon her, his cane held poised, steering her backward into the construction site, into the farthest and
deepest drifts. Against one of these she fell. She reached
both arms behind her to break her fall and these plunged
into the soft snow almost to her shoulders. She did not try
to rise.
“
Be done with it,” the young woman spat at the figure
standing over her. “Beat me, children.” That word again.
breasts. There was something hard there, a wire form be
neath her clothing. The cane did not seem to hurt her as he
pushed down upon it, pressing her more deeply into the
bank of snow. Her head was buried past the level of her
ears. The lighter edges of the imprint she made crumbled
in against her cheeks. The woman was struggling at last,
spitting, biting uselessly at his cane, but the effort left her arms impacted behind her all the more. She tried to kick at
him. Corbin saw his own right foot rise and then come
down across the buttons of her coat at a point between her
knees. She was pinioned. Helpless. Unable to move at all.
woman in this manner. Not for any reason. If only she
would say something. Some small spoken kindness. Any
thing that might serve to take away a hurt he keenly felt
but whose source he could not remember. He would let her
go if she would ask his forgiveness. Or even if she would
cry. He would let her go as far away as possible. Away
from him. And take the humiliation with her.
What humiliation?
then she said, “He'll be twice the man you are.”
And the other?” Corbin heard himself ask. His voice
was flat and cold.
”
I warn you.” She coughed.
repeated. “What sort of man is he?”
Twice.” She raised her face and shouted. “Twice as
well. Twice and more. Twice in all ways, damn you, sir.”
Nothing more was said for several minutes. She lay quiet and still. As still as the dead man named George except for
the shallow rise and fall of her bosom.
”
I cannot feel anything,” she whispered sleepily.
“
No,” he answered, ”I fear that you cannot.”
And Corbin held her there until his own feet were numb
and the snow stopped melting on her face.
Two
T he slender, honey-haired Englishwoman had been in a windowless conference room for four hours when she was called to the telephone and heard the worried voice of Jon
athan Corbin's secretary. She frowned. She knew at once that it must be snowing outside.
Gwen Leamas listened, her frown deepening. “It's been
since before noon,” Sandy Bauer told her. “There's al
ready going to be trouble because he bagged his lunch date
with the people from the Masters golf tournament. And now I hear things breaking in there.”
“
Why didn't you call me before this?” she whispered.
“
Because it was hardly snowing,” Sandy told her. ”I
stayed and had a sandwich at my desk just in case. It only
started really coming down a few minutes ago.”
“
You're a love,” Gwen said. “I'll be there in two
minutes.”
She made her apologies to Bill Stafford, citing a minor
but urgent personal matter. Their meeting, held to discuss
the format of a new magazine show, was essentially over anyway. Stafford, who adored his wife but loved to watch and listen to Gwen Leamas, was visibly disappointed. He
liked to say she gave the dump some class. She'd already
thoroughly charmed the new show's prospective host, an otherwise difficult columnist named Hobbs.
Sandy Bauer breathed deep relief at the sound of the
jingling chain jewelry and the
whoosh
of leather pants that
signaled the approach of Mr. Corbin's girlfriend. Used to
be, anyway. If the office talk was right, they had lived to
gether for a couple of years in Chicago until she left six
months before he did and came here. Sandy knew for a fact
that Mr. Corbin had lived at her place while he looked for
a place of his own. But whatever was between them seemed
to fade away as soon as Mr. Corbin found that crazy old house of his in Connecticut.
Gwen stopped at Sandy Bauer's typewriter, glancing at
Corbin's closed door and placing her hand over the several
bracelets she wore to silence them.
“
Has he not been out at all?” she asked in the soft precise accent that Sandy sometimes tried to imitate.
“
Not since he saw it was snowing.” She cocked her
head toward the phone console on her desk. “I've been
saying he's in a meeting, but it's only a matter of time
before Stafford or someone else I can't stop decides to walk
in on him.”
Gwen nodded, looking down to check the watch she
wore looped over a silver belt. Stafford would be busy a
while longer, she knew. Another hour of swapping stories with those left in the room and then drinks with Mr. Hobbs
at “21 ” or the Algonquin. Still, “I'm going to try to take
him out of here,” she said quietly. “Do you think you can
keep everyone at bay a bit longer?”
Sandy nodded. “Miss Leamas, are you going
to...”
Corbin's secretary bit her lip. “If all you're going to do is
put him on his train, I'd just as soon take him to my place
and let him stay there.”
Gwen Leamas met her eyes. “I'll take care of him,” she
said evenly. And then she softened. “That was very nice of you, Sandy. Very nice indeed.”
The younger girl smiled, pleased with herself that she
had the nerve to ask and relieved that she got away with
it. As for being nice, though, Sandy didn't know how nice she'd be if Mr. Corbin ever looked at her the way he still looked at Gwen Leamas sometimes. Not that I'm jealous,
Sandy thought. What's to be jealous about a model's
cheek
bones
and huge brown eyes that can look smart and nice
at the same time, and good boobs, and also a skinny body,
which is especially aggravating since I know for a fact she's
a cheeseburger freak.
hoped was reassuring but hesitated with her hand on Cor
bin's door. It crossed her mind to ask Sandy to say nothing
of Jonathan's emotional state or about them leaving to
gether. But the request, she decided, would be gratuitous
and probably offensive. Jonathan Corbin was Sandy's boss,
but she clearly liked him in the bargain. To say the least.
In any case, there would be no gossip. Gwen settled for a wink, then took a breath and stepped through Corbin's of
fice door.
