Time Out of Mind (4 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
window. The draperies at his right hand were swinging
slightly, as if just released. She could see a large wrinkled area where his fist had been clutching them. Jonathan was posing now, she realized, trying to look like an executive pondering a problem while gazing thoughtfully out a win
dow. Yet she felt sure that his eyes were tightly closed.
It's Gwen, Jonathan.” At her words she saw his shoul
ders sag and heard his lungs expel the air they'd been hold
ing. His head shook slowly but he did not turn.
These things you see,” she asked gently, “are they out
there now?”
“
No.” The word croaked from a dry and tight throat.
Corbin coughed and swallowed. “Not from here. I never
see them from here.”
“
From the street then. You see them when you're down
on the street?”
Corbin hugged himself and nodded.
She touched her fingertips against the door to see that it was securely closed, then stepped to his side. Gwen barely
glanced at the gray-white blur outside the window. Raising
her hands to both his shoulders, she turned him, Corbin resisting at first, until he faced her. Only then did Corbin
open his eyes. Leaning closer, she placed her palms against
his cheeks and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“
Jonathan?”
“
\”
‘Yes?.”
“
Will you show me this time?”
“
No.” He tried to pull away.
“
Do you ever see them when someone is with you?”
“
Yes,” he answered, then blinked. In truth he wasn't
sure. He'd seen them when there were other living people
around. Always. But with someone he knew? Someone
whose hand he could hold and maybe keep from slipping
back into another time? ”I don't know,” he added dis
tantly.
“
Let's try, Jonathan.”
“
No.”
“
You can't just bury yourself here all weekend like some
den animal. What will you do for food if the snow doesn't
stop?”
Corbin had already thought about the coffee and candy
machines near the freight elevator, and the partially uneaten lunches that were often abandoned in the refrigerator of the
office kitchen. He shook his head miserably. “Gwen, you
just don't know what it's like.”
“
Then tell me, Jonathan. What is out there that a man
who's never shown the smallest spark of timidity would
fear? Are there monsters? Do these people you see try to
harm you?”
“
No, nothing like that.” A hand he could hold, he re
peated to himself. Except it wouldn't work. It's supposed
to be ghosts who fade while what's real and alive stays that
way. But out there it's the living who fade. The flesh and
blood.
“
Then if you really do see the things you've told me
about, Jonathan, I should think it would be bloody fasci
nating. My God, it's like time travel.”
“
Time travel?” he snapped. An angry spark lit his eyes,
as if she'd just said something dangerously foolish.
Gwen Leamas said nothing, satisfied at least that she'd
managed to stir a little life into him.
“
What if your time travel isn't a round trip, Gwen? What
if one of these times I can't get back?”
Gwen wet her lips. “You think this is real then, don't
you?”
No, damn it.” Corbin turned away from her helplessly.
”I know,” he said softly, “that I don't really go back in
time. No matter how real it seems, I know that I'm only
going there in my mind. But if I can go there in my mind,
I can get stuck there in my mind.”
“
That's what you're so frightened of?”
“
That's a big part of it, yes.”
“
What's the rest of it?”
curl that fell across one eye. He sighed deeply, his lips
moving tentatively, reluctant to form the words.
“
The same thing you're afraid of,” he answered finally.
“
Which is what, Jonathan?” she pressed.
“
That I'm flat out going nuts.”
Gwen took his hands and squeezed them. ”I know you,
Jonathan,” she said firmly. “Better than anyone, I'll be
bound. There was nothing at all odd about you until weeks
after you moved to New York. Whatever change came over
you began the moment you laid eyes on that ridiculous house of yours and then all the more when the weather
turned wintry. In Chicago we've walked blithely through
snow that was deeper by half than anything New York ever
gets and it never bothered you one whit. It seems to me,
then, that the cause of your difficulty is out there on those
streets as much as it's in your mind and that there is a
perfectly sensible explanation to be found. But it must be
sought and faced, Jonathan. I will not have a man I
...
respect... hiding from it.”
trench coat he kept on a hook behind his door. She held it
outstretched and open, but Corbin made no move to take
it.
Tomorrow,” he said quietly. “I'll call you tomorrow.
We'll talk.”
We'll talk today.” She shook the coat impatiently.
“I'm going to plunk you into a hot bath at my flat with a
good stiff drink or two in you and then we're going to
thrash this out.”
“
Gwen . . .” Corbin shook his head again but his refusal
seemed less definite this time,
One block,” she insisted. “It's just one short block to the subway entrance on this end and scarcely a hundred
paces to my front door on the other.”
His eyes narrowed slightly and darted twice to the street below. She could almost see the circuits opening and clos
ing as his brain calculated the speed and distance. One short
block. Perhaps eighty yards from the Burlington Building's
doors to the BMT entrance at Fifty-fifth Street. Under a minute on foot. Twenty seconds if they ran. Then safety. There would be no falling snow, no ectoplasmic buildings
materializing through it, no dead people. Only crowds and
noise and dirt.
Come on, Jonathan.” She threw the trench coat over
his shoulders and was steering him through his office door
before the glaze that covered his eyes could clear. Sandy
Bauer was ready with Gwen's coat. She led them both
down a short corridor that led through an empty mailroom and out the back way to the elevator banks. There was a reception desk at the far end. As Gwen pushed the Down button, Sandy walked, chatting, toward the receptionist,
blocking her view of the trembling Jonathan Corbin and
the look of panic that was building on his face.
Three
On the fourth floor of the Warwick Hotel, in a room di
rectly facing Corbin's office, a thickset man of about fifty
rose from his chair at the open window and slammed it
shut over a half inch of snow that had collected on the sill.
He twisted the 200-millimeter lens off the Nikon he held
and set the pieces into a padded camera bag. He logged the
time and date in his notebook and buttoned the topcoat he
had not removed since taking his position five hours earlier.
Using the fire stairs, Raymond Lesko took less than a
minute to reach a new position at the corner entrance to the
Warwick Bar. From there, as long as the Sixth Avenue
buses stayed out of his field of vision, he could watch the
entire plaza of the Burlington Building and all its exits.
Unless Corbin grabbed a cab, and fat chance of that,
thought Lesko, he would have to pass this corner on his
way to Grand Central Station.
Two or three incoming bar patrons eyed Lesko uneasily
as they shouldered past him. He ignored them, being long
accustomed to people looking at him that way. Lesko had
a wrestler's body and the intimidating eyes of an aroused
bouncer even when he wasn't mad at anyone. He had a
tight, cruel mouth that concealed perfect teeth of which
Lesko was proud. But even the perfect teeth frightened peo
ple when he showed them. Sometimes that made him sad, especially when he meant to be friendly, but more often it
turned out to be useful.
Raymond Lesko's mind, however, was not on his ap
pearance. It was on Jonathan Corbin and the paying job at
hand. A hunch had warned him that something would be
different about today, but even so he came close to losing
Corbin. The snow was what was different. What Lesko was
hearing about Corbin was right. The guy's a wacko when it snows. Not that he's any tower of mental health when
it's balmy. Here's your basic eligible bachelor who has all
of New York and its women to play in after work but all
he does is bust out of those doors at five o'clock and runs
with his head down for his Connecticut train. Same way he
runs for the office in the morning. Head down. Not even looking sideways. Like a guy who's scared to death of this
whole town. Which is why it's such a pain in the ass to
get a decent picture of him except through his office win
dow.
Lesko checked his watch. Where the hell is he? Damn.
Lesko realized he'd been looking for Corbin's trench coat,
Corbin all by himself in his head-down run. But the Leamas
woman left with him. Lesko stood as tall as he could and
scanned the Burlington's doors, nearest to farthest. There
they were. He'd almost missed them but there they were,
just clear of the last revolving doors and heading the wrong way, north; running like a pack of dogs were on their heels.
With a curse, Lesko stepped into the storm and followed.
across Raymond Lesko's field of view, he was able to lock
on Corbin easily. Corbin stood out from the others who rushed toward shelter along the same sidewalk. There was
a special frenzy to his movements. The head wasn't down
this time. He was glancing around wildly as the woman
steered him. Did he suspect he had a tail? Lesko wondered.
He decided not. Corbin wasn't looking at people and things so much as he was looking through them. Now he's looking
up. And flinching. What do you see, Corbin? What do you
see, right this second, in the wind above Sixth Avenue?
And the woman, yelling into your ear. She's asking you
the same thing, isn't she?
