Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel (22 page)

“And if her body meets her future body, that’s bad, right?”

“Let’s not risk it,” he said.

A roaring explosion from somewhere above us rattled the ceiling and sent dirt sifting down to the floor.

“They’re coming!” Right Ned yelled.

A second explosion blasted so bright, the light spearing the basement was blinding.

“Five!” Quinten yelled, but he might as well have been whispering, for all that I could hear him over the insane rattle of gunfire.

Neds stumbled down the stairs, half of him covered in blood and unresponsive, Left Ned’s head lolling to the side.

“No!” I yelled.

“Four!” Quinten said.

Gloria was running past me, trying to reach Neds in all the dust and debris that exploded through the door.

Slater, no longer tied to the chair, was tossed down the stairs. He scrambled to his feet, bloody but still mostly whole.

“Three!” Quinten yelled.

Foster was the last down the ruined stairs, firing round after round of ammo at the surge of soldiers clotting the doorway.

Foster was missing an arm and was drenched in blood. But he held that staircase like a lion taking a last stand. When the bullets ran out, he roared up the stairs and tore the soldiers apart limb from limb.

“Foster!” Welton screamed, “no!” Welton ran toward him, but Slater had found a piece of metal the size of a bat. He swung for Welton’s head.

Welton crumpled and fell.

“Two!” Quinten said.

A massive blast pulverized the basement.

It blew Quinten in half before he could say
one
, his mouth half-open in surprise, the top half of him twisting off while the bottom somehow stayed still.

My brother was dead. Gone. Dead.

Everything in me stopped, except my heart that throbbed hard once, twice.

The basement collapsed. Stone, wood, metal, dirt buried Neds, Gloria, Welton, and Slater. They were dead.
Even before I’d had a chance to try to save them, even before the break in time had mended.

Everyone was gone.

We had failed.

Then a great bell rang out, a sound that built up out of the marrow of my bones, filling me, filling the air I breathed, my skin, my muscle, my blood with a single cosmic peal of sound that was more than sound. The universe paused, its voice raised in ecstasy.

I thumbed the button on the watch . . .

...and screamed as the infinity bell shattered me to dust.

You gave up everything to change the world too. I never had the chance to thank you.

—from the diary of E. N. D.

C
old rain falling upon me, wet earth below. I was curled in a ball, shivering. Alone.

I opened my eyes. Darkness. Faint light just beyond me between slats of stone.

I was not in my basement. I was in the middle of a field, and it was the middle of the night.

Had I been thrown in the blast? Had I been knocked unconscious?

The light ahead of me moved, swinging in a long, slow arc. A single flame burned in the darkness and rain.

A lantern?

I pulled myself up straighter and was surprised when rain pattered against my bare legs.

I wore a dress and boots and a hat on my head. Even though I felt all the right proportions to myself, my arms were short and so were my legs. And in the nearly nonexistent light, I could see something else that had changed.

I had no stitches. Not on my hands, my wrists, my ankles. I ran my fingers across my neck, up the side of my cheek. Nothing but smooth skin.

What happened?

I ran away,
a tiny voice said.

I jerked and looked around. There wasn’t anyone I could see in the tall grasses surrounding me. But the slats of stone were curved at the tops, some shaped like crosses.

A graveyard?

By the church,
the little voice said. Only this time I realized the voice was inside my mind. More than a thought or a random impression. This voice belonged to a whole person. I could feel the heavy weight of memories and ideas and fears and needs coiled up in a tangled ball in the middle of my mind.

Are you an angel?
the little voice asked.
I prayed for an angel to find me.

What’s your name?

Evelyn Douglas. What’s your name?

Matilda.

Okay, this was all kinds of weird. Was I hallucinating? Possessed? Was there a little girl somewhere nearby and my ears were thrown off because of the rain and stones—correction: gravestones—surrounding me? And why was I crouched down in the middle of a graveyard at night in the pouring rain anyway?

I ran away,
Evelyn said again.
Can we go to heaven now?

Why did you run away?
I asked. I thought about standing up, and I did. A moment of vertigo swept over me, and I put my hands out to catch myself on the gravestone. Beneath my fingers was carved D
OUGLAS 1910
.

Whose grave is this?
I thought.

Mother and Father. They went to heaven. I want to go too.

Her sadness filled me, and I tried to think comforting thoughts, filling her with warmth and the image of my arms around her, rocking. She calmed almost immediately.

Can we go now?

Not yet. It’s not time yet,
I thought.

Time. I wondered how much I had left.

The watch! The paper. I checked my dress for pockets. Nothing. Then I crouched down and searched the grass. My fingers finally brushed the cool, smooth curve of the pocket watch, and I clutched it to me like the lifeline it was.

I knew where I must be—or, rather, I knew
when
I must be.

What year is it, Evelyn?
I asked.

Nineteen hundred and ten,
she said.
Are you a new angel?

Yes,
I thought.
Very new. Is this your dress, Evelyn?
I asked, touching the cloth at my waist.

Yes.

And I’m inside your mind. Talking to you?

Yes,
she said a little doubtfully.
A dream. You are a dream and you are going to take me to Mother and Father. Aren’t you?

I will. Of course I will. But I need your help. There’s . . . People are going to be hurt if we don’t . . . give a message to a man. Do you know a man called Dr. Alveré Case?

No.

Do you know a doctor or scientist who lives nearby?

No.

I got the distinct impression of her turning away from me and pushing shut something like a door between us. She found a pocket of her mind so far away, I couldn’t sense her anymore.

Evelyn? Evelyn?

She wasn’t answering. Maybe she thought she was still asleep and didn’t have to dream me if she didn’t want to.

I tucked the watch tightly in my fist—her fist? Our fist, since I was sharing her mind and body—and walked toward the lantern light.

The rain eased a little, but I had to watch the ground so I wouldn’t trip on the clumps of heavy wet grass.

That was probably good, because if I had the luxury to focus on anything else, I’d be in a panic. I’d gone back in time like Quinten had supposed I would, but he had been wrong about one thing: it was just my mind, my personality, my thoughts that had survived the travel and were impressed on the brain of this girl—the girl whose body I had been stitched into all those years ago.

Quinten certainly wouldn’t have survived this. I’m not sure any mortal human could.

He was right about the pocket watch traveling with me, though I didn’t know why it, of all things, would.

That didn’t matter. I had to find my great-great-and-then-some-grandfather and convince him I was a grown woman from the future with a highly advanced set of calculations he needed to use to adjust his experimental time machine.

He’d never listen to me in this little girl’s body.

I didn’t even know where to find him.

Quinten had told me to look for the tower, but it was
so dark out, I couldn’t see the top of the steeple on the church ahead of me.

Just take it one step at a time,
I told myself. Quinten had said the watch would count down to when the Wings of Mercury experiment was triggered. How much time did I have left?

I tipped the watch in my palm, trying to catch the watery light from the lantern a very tall man was holding just a ways off.

Yellow slipped across the wet pewter, revealing the watch face. Instead of a circle of numbers and two arrow hands, the watch was exactly as I’d seen it last: a liquid screen with a set of geometric shapes floating across it.

And in the center was a very plain digital countdown. Five hours, and steadily decreasing minutes.

That wasn’t enough time. Not nearly enough to find the tower, the scientist, and the machine in a world I didn’t know, in a time I didn’t know.

I hurried over to the man holding the lantern. Since I appeared to be a lost child, I hoped he would be willing to help me.

The lantern—a basic kerosene, lit-wick sort of affair—was low in his hand. The man was tall and wore a long black coat, slick with rain. He had on a brimmed hat and was leaning on a shovel, staring down at a fresh grave.

Seeing him nearly shocked me to silence.

I recognized him.

“Foster?” I said in a voice too young and too quiet. Then, a little louder, “Foster?”

He didn’t move for so long, I wondered if he could hear me. If maybe I wasn’t even substantial enough in this time to be heard.

Could I be a ghost? Could I be nothing but a stray collection of memories and random neurons firing in this girl’s mind?

Was I dreaming?

I tried again, this time reaching out and tugging on the sleeve of his coat. “Foster? Can you hear me?”

Finally, his head moved and he looked down at me.

Even in the uncertain light, I could see that there were no scars, no stitches crossing his face. He didn’t look younger, but he was not galvanized. His hair under his brimmed hat was still ghost white and so was his skin. His pink eyes were the same too, and so was the deep, wrenching sorrow in them.

“Go home, child,” he said in a rumbling whisper. “There is nothing but death here.”

“I’m lost,” I said, and I was not lying. “I need to find my family. I need to find Dr. Alveré Case. Please help me. Please.”

He stared at me for so long, I wondered if he was in a trance.

“Who did you bury?” I asked.

“My wife,” he whispered. “My son.”

I place my hand over his, my palm just wide enough to cover his knuckles. “I am so sorry for your loss. I know you need time to grieve. My family . . .”

The image of Quinten ripped apart, dead, filled my mind, and I couldn’t breathe past my sorrow.

“My family is dead too,” I finally said. “Except for Dr. Case. Please, please help me find him.”

“Go,” he said. “Run home. The night is dark and cold, and morning will be here soon.” He turned away from me and lowered the lantern to the ground. Then he sank
the shovel into what remained of the freshly dug ground, spreading muddy soil onto the graves. The lantern caught rain in gold sparks falling like a veil across the graves.

But the light did not touch his face, as if the shadows of his grief were too dense to pierce.

“I know when the world is going to end,” I said.

He just kept digging, dirt falling in steady rhythm on top of a grave already buried too deep.

“My world has already ended,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You are going to live a long life. Much, much longer than any man should, and it’s going to be filled with pain. But at the end . . . way at the end, you are going to be among your friends, among the other thirteen people who survive the disaster that’s going to hit this town in just a few hours.”

He stopped shoveling. “What disaster?”

“Dr. Case is a scientist. He’s going to experiment with . . . time. It will kill everyone in a hundred-mile radius.”

“What will kill people? Fire? Flood? Landslide?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Not exactly.”

He shook his head. “Who has been telling you stories?”

“No one. The disaster will happen. I can prove it.” I wanted to yell at him. Wanted to tug him with me, make him run, make him help me find the tower before it was too late.

Maybe I couldn’t talk him into helping me. Maybe his grief was too deep and my story too fantastic.

“Please,” I said, my voice soft but steady. “He built a tower that houses a great machine. He built a machine to break time. He wants to find a way for man to travel in time.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Because he did it. Only he did it wrong. His calculations were wrong. I’ve traveled back in time. To now, to stop it and try to change what he did before people die. Before my family dies.”

Another long pause while he considered me. “What is your name?”

“Matilda Case,” I said.

He bent, picked up the lantern, and rested the shovel over one shoulder. He started walking, the lantern swinging in his hand. Dawn was just starting to thin the fabric of night. The rain had stopped.

“Come with me, Matilda Case,” he said. “You are soaked to the bone.”

I hurried to catch up with him, and realized I was shivering. Evelyn hadn’t been wearing a coat out here, huddled on her parents’ grave. Maybe there was a reason she’d assumed I was an angel who could take her to heaven. Maybe she was hoping to die.

Foster’s stride was impossibly long, and I had to jog to catch up. Soon we were out of the tall grass and onto a trail that wound past a church to our left and then opened on a narrow lane.

A horse-drawn wagon waited there, trees lining either side of the lane. Foster pulled back a canvas tarp under which I caught a glimpse of saws and hammers and other tools. He set the shovel in with those tools, covered them, and hooked the lantern to the front of the wagon. He swung up easily into the driver’s seat and I stood there, feeling tiny and cold and lost.

“Go around the back to the other side,” he said.

I did so, and got a foothold on the passenger’s side of
the wagon. I pulled myself up. He reached over and gripped my arm, his hand warm, work hardened, and blistered, and helped pull me onto the plank of wood that served as a seat.

I braced my foot on the front edge of the wagon and held on tight.

Foster snapped the reins and clicked his tongue. The horse started off at a slow walk.

Too slow. At this pace, I’d never find the tower in time. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering in the wind but keeping my eyes open for any horizon line where I might spot the tower.

“Is that what you’re looking for?” he asked.

The wagon broke out from the cover of trees. We were on a slight rise, the lane leading into the town, where little flickers of light—lanterns and candles—shone from the windows of a dozen houses.

Behind those houses, not by more than half a mile, rose an eighteen-story tower that I would have guessed was a lighthouse, except the top of it was a rounded dome—an enormous bowl tipped upside down and balanced on top of the tapered column.

Dawn was smearing muddy yellow light low in the sky, and the sound of living and moving—a rattle of wooden wheels, the clanging of a hammer on metal, the
thunk
of an axe in wood—filled the air.

“That must be it,” I said. “Is there a building below it or near it? Do you know where Dr. Case might be? I need to go there now.”

“First we’ll get you dry,” he said.

“No. I don’t have enough time. I need to get to that tower.”

“I am taking you home,” he said, sending the horse down toward town.

“You don’t believe me?”

His face was illuminated by the pale sun rising. From his slightly annoyed expression, I knew the answer to my question.

“I can prove everything I said.”

“That you are from the future?” He slipped a look my way.

I held out the pocket watch.

He took it out of my hand, stared at it, then rubbed his thumb over the face and frowned. “What is this?”

“A pocket watch that has been in my family for a long time. My brother modified it—changed it—so it would count down how much time I had before Dr. Case’s experiment triggers the disaster.”

“How is this powered? How is it lit?”

“Batteries and light-emitting diodes. Future stuff,” I said.

“This is a countdown?”

“Yes. And when all that time runs out, everyone in this town is going to die. That”—I pointed at the tower—“is going to do something. . . . Maybe it’s an electric pulse; maybe it’s sonic. I don’t know, but when the experiment is complete, we die.”