Ripped - Peter Wallace (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗

fill up the space, and quickly switched from the alternative station I usually listen to over to the classical station. He seemed to relax in the seat then, more comfortable.

Every so often he would murmur “I think you should turn here” or “just a few more blocks” and point out the windshield. Finally, we found ourselves on Peachtree Street in front of the ComBank building.

“ComBank,” he said enunciating carefully, as though it were a foreign word. He was freaking me out. “Well! I suppose I should get out here.”

“Let me walk you in,” I said determinedly, and turned into the parking building next to it. Most of the slots were empty now at the end of the day, so I pulled into one near the front. We got out and walked up some steps to a glassed entryway and into the massive main lobby. He walked briskly to the bank of elevators and stood in front of the directory.

“Oh, yes. There I am. That’s me, Edwin Frances. Edwin Frances & Co., Brokers.” He pointed triumphantly and grinned at me. “Say, would you like to come up, Friend?”

“Um, sure,” I said, wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t rather bid him good-bye and put this strange experience behind me. But something compelled me to venture on to the elevator with him.

He pushed the button and stood back. The bell sounded. The door opened. On the elevator was a middle-aged African-American janitor with a cart full of cleaning supplies and a large trash can. In front of him on the floor of the elevator was a large black trash bag. It had been closed but not tied. A bulky shape pushed at odd angles from inside it.

“Evening, gentlemen,” the janitor said, pulling at the brim of his well-worn Braves baseball cap. We nodded politely. “You’ll never believe what I got in here,” he said, pointed to the trash bag. I looked at him curiously. “Oddest thing I ever seen, and I been here ten, twelve years now.” The man bent over and fiddled with the bag. “This afternoon, well, about lunch time I guess, this secretary found this thing dead, lying right in her boss’s office on the fifth floor. She like to die! She called everybody out and they looked at it. It was a pretty dog, but it was dead as a doornail, just lying there in the hall. Look.” He pulled the bag open.

I saw a shock of reddish fur. A bent paw jutted out from the trash bag.

I felt weak in the knees. Every trace of blood drained from the upper half of my body.

The janitor kept babbling on. “Pretty good size dog. Don’t know what kind, exactly. Red hair, dark red. Like one of those Irish settler dogs or something.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered. I rubbed my temples. The elevator seemed to be spinning in circles.

“You a dog lover or something?” the janitor asked me. I couldn’t say anything. The door opened to the fifth floor, home of the Edwin Frances brokerage firm.

“Yeah, this is where they found it, all right. Fifth floor.”

Mr. Frances stepped off first. I followed. The door shut behind us. The janitor bid us a cheery good night. I glanced at Mr. Frances; his face betrayed no emotion. It was as though he either didn’t know what to make of a dead dog in his office, or else things like that happened all the time in his world.

The place was quiet, but a few office lights were still on, casting a cool glow into the hallway. Frances looked around the reception area as though someone had rearranged the furniture while he was out. He winced in confusion, wrinkles springing out from the sides of his eyes.

I heard a noise down the hallway. A door closing. Someone walking toward us. It was a man probably in his mid-sixties. In fact, he looked a lot like Mr. Frances, but oddly different. A little older, heavier. Same hair. Same nose. Different mouth. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses. He was walking toward us, looking down at the floor as though lost in thought. Then he looked up.

He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw Mr. Frances.

“God!” he blurted, choking the word out as though he’d seen a ghost and swallowed his tongue. “D-Dad!”

“What the devil! Who--”

“Dad! You--you’ve been dead for-for-forty...” Suddenly the man’s eyes rolled back into his head, his knees buckled, and with a moan he collapsed forward straight into my arms.

I lay him down on the floor as gently as I could. I glanced up at Edwin Frances. His forehead was furrowed, his hand grasped his chin tightly. Absent-mindedly, he asked me, “Friend, what year is this?”

“T-twenty ten.”

“Interesting.”

Then he shook himself out of his reverie and knelt down beside me, waving his hand in front of the older gentleman’s face in a feeble attempt at reviving him.

“Well,” he said. “This must be my son Charles,” he announced blithely.

I looked at Edwin, and after a moment he returned my stare. His eyes were troubled.

“Um, why did you ask me what year it was?” I asked almost in a whisper.

“Because, my dear Friend, the last thing I knew, it was nineteen sixty.”


“Well, he hasn’t aged very well,” Edwin Frances muttered, “I must say.”

The father cradled the son--a man physically older by a decade or more--in his arms. Edwin was sitting on the hallway floor, his back against the wall, his arms circling his son’s shoulders. He loosened Charles’ tie, unbuttoned the top button. I watched this parental moment from the corner of my eye as I paced back and forth along a ten-foot stretch of hallway. I stopped pacing when I heard Charles moan.

He blinked several times, his jaw hanging slackly open. I could see the whites of his eyes as he gazed into his father’s face. “I... uh...” he stuttered. Edwin shushed him.

“Charles, I don’t understand this any more than you do. All I know is that for some astoundingly strange reason, fifty years have passed away from my life in the blink of an eye.”

Charles seemed uncomfortable being held by this strange man who seemed to be his father, and with his presence of mind, such as it was, having returned, he sat upright and scurried backwards to sit opposite his father against the wall. His jaw and lips moved soundlessly, then he began speaking furiously--his lips quivering as though his dialog had been badly dubbed.

“But you disappeared! You left us! You just disappeared, fifty years ago! The police searched for months, there was no trace, we couldn’t understand why you--”

His voice trailed off, his gaze sank to the floor. It was obvious that fifty years of pent-up fears, confusion, anger and angst were about to burst forth from the soul of a hurt boy. Yet it was also clear that the older, mature adult who sat in the hallway across from his father was realizing that his protests were nonsensical.

I stood in the center of the hallway, looking at the two of them, back and forth like a tennis match, my arms crossed in a judgmental posture. I guess I looked like I knew what was going on more than they did.

Finally Charles turned and stared at me. I think it was the first time he had even noticed my existence. “Who--who are you?” he asked full of hope, assuming from my stance that I knew what was going on and was waiting to be asked to explain it.

“My name is Friend Carlson. I, uh, met your father--”

“He found me piled in a gutter several miles away,” Frances explained with a slight chuckle. “He graciously brought me here, where I thought I belonged, but upon my arrival I found things had changed quite dramatically.”

“Fifty years’ worth of changes,” I interjected.

“This simply can’t be,” Charles announced. “This must be a hallucination. That new medication they put me on. That’s what it is.” He struggled to his feet, but still looked a bit wobbly. Edwin stood also.

“Well, clearly I am not a ghost. I’m solid flesh and bones. And besides, I’m hungry. Do ghosts hunger?” Edwin challenged.

Leaving the question unanswered, I realized I could shed a bit more light on my involvement in the situation if we were to make any sense of what had happened. I cleared my throat. “Let me tell you a little more about what I know. Maybe it will help.”

I recounted the story of hitting the dog and leaving it there, wincing with guilt as I did so. I shared how my guilt drove me to return to the scene of my crime, only to find Mr. Frances lying there rather than the dog.

“The dog!” Edwin erupted.

“Exactly. The dog we saw in the janitor’s bag was the dog I hit this afternoon, over on Dansle Street.”

“That dog?” Charles interrupted. “Oh my Lord, we had to send Evelyn home, she was so upset. There it was, dead, lying on the floor of my office! I was out to lunch at the time. Evelyn came in my office to put some things on my desk, and here was that mangled dog. She screamed bloody murder! When I returned from lunch, the whole office was in an absolute uproar. We couldn’t figure out if some disgruntled former client had done it out of spite, or if the dog had just wandered up into my office to die. I was absolutely astounded by it. And I kept thinking of that damned horse’s head in ‘The Godfather’--that maybe it was some kind of warning from--”

“‘The Godfather’? Horse head? What the devil are you talking about, Charles?” Edwin asked.

“Oh, Mr. Frances, he’s referring to a popular movie of a few decades ago. You, uh, would’ve missed it,” I dutifully explained. “But let me ask you, Charles, where is your office?”

“Down the hall there, on the left. It’s the corner office.” He gestured and started walking toward it. We followed him through the doorway.

“Um hmmm,” Edwin murmured. “This was my office.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “You see, somehow, and I don’t have the foggiest notion how, but somehow, when I struck that dog in twenty ten, it ended up where you were, Edwin, in nineteen sixty, and brought you to where it had been, on Dansle Street in twenty ten. It’s... it’s like you were ripped from your time and place into another time and place.”

“Did you notice whether the dog had any tags?” Edwin asked.

“Uh... I... uh--no.” I had to admit. “I kind of panicked at lunch, and then when I returned, well, the dog wasn’t there. You were.”

“But we can find out. The janitor disposed of it,” Charles interposed.

“That’s right. We saw him just a bit ago,” Edwin said.

“Where’s the dumpster?” I asked Charles. He merely pointed forward. We walked down the hall toward the elevator.

Warmly, Edwin broke the uncertain silence. “Charles, I realize we’re all in a whirlwind over this, but I certainly hope you and I have lots of time we can talk. I have so much to catch up about.”

Charles beamed. It was the shy smile of a son excited that his father was pleased with him.

The elevator door opened and we walked in and turned around. Charles pushed B