Besides John disappearing?she wanted to ask.
Con grinned.“Not that different.Maybe.”He tipped his head to the side.“It’s quiet.”
He rose and padded quietly to the door and tried the handle.It opened easily.He glanced at her and she rose and followed him.Moving seemed better than staying to see if John came back.
Outside, unlike when they’d arrived, the hallway was silent, not even the echo of distant voices or footsteps.
“I think we came in this way,” Con said.
“I think so, too.”The halls were depressingly uniform, but Rita began to feel a sense of the familiar.You were here a few minutes ago,she reminded herself.But it felt like more than that.
When Con began to turn right, she touched his arm.
“I think we need to go this way,” she said.
He opened his mouth to argue with her, but then just nodded.
The hallway was wide enough for them to walk side-by-side, which was a relief, though she didn’t know why.
Familiarity and unease warred for dominance inside her head as they paced quietly and carefully forward.
They stopped at a four-way junction of halls.Nothing and no one to see in any direction.And yet she knew there was someone, not close, but they weren’t alone.
The door of the smaller structure opened without even a creak, releasing into the cool of the night a familiar smell of his father’s soap.A light glowed on a messy desk, but there was no sign of anyone.
Jack walked slowly inside, his gaze tracking from one side to the other, remembering—a painful flood of remembering.
He was aware that Mel stayed by the door, that she watched him, that she was worried.
When he’d walked the length of the room and back to her, Mel finally spoke.
“What is this place?”
“It’s my father’s,” he hesitated, searching for the right word.“Well, I guess now they’d call it a man cave.”
“There’s no TV,” Mel pointed out.“This is mostly really old school.”
“Workshop, lab, office.”His gaze traveled along the papers pinned to that wall.“Take your pick.”
“What year do you think it is?”she asked.
He glanced down, saw a newspaper and picked it up.“It’s 1919.”One year before he’d be born.His mom, up in that house, was probably already pregnant with him.
“1919.”Mel spoke the date calmly, but her eyes were wide.
“What?”he asked her.
“I keep forgetting how old you really are,” she said, giving him a grin that wasn’t quite up to her usual.She edged past him and leaned into to study a sketch.“Isn’t that your,” her head turned his direction and he sensed the rest of the question was stuck in her throat.
“Yes,” he said.“That’s my vortex.”At least, he’d thought it was his.He had only the dimmest memory of this place with these things stuck to the walls.He’d been six?Seven?Maybe younger than that.
His father had caught him in here and he thought he was in trouble.He’d led Jack out, locking the door with care and then took him back to the house without any comment.
Was that what had imprinted the memories on his brain?That he didn’t get in trouble?
The next time Jack had visited, the door hadn’t been locked—but all this was gone.No, not all of it, he decided.But the vortex and the more…future-looking sketches…had disappeared.
“Your father likes to play with ideas,” his mother had said once.“It makes him happy.”
