Look Inside

Here’s a sample of Susan’s voice: 

[Susan is visiting her widowed Gramp’s ancestral townhouse, and has been lying in his “time machine” all night in an attempt to get his hopes up.]

Something startled me, but it wasn't a noise. Maybe it was the quiet, if quiet can startle somebody. I felt like I'd been in the chest for hours, the same way you know you've slept all night even when you can't remember dreaming. There were no horns from the street now— that meant it was very late at night. Gramp must have gone to bed.

I lifted the lid. It was dark, even darker than it had been that afternoon with the long drapes pulled. Definitely night. The only sound was the tick-tock of the old clock on the mantel.

The house smelled funny. Maybe Gramp had forgotten to cover the garbage. Maybe he'd been treating some of his old leather books. There was an odder smell, too, but I couldn't place it. I wondered if Gramp had left the gas in the stove on, but it didn't smell like gas exactly.

It smelled wrong, though. Something was wrong. I stepped onto the floor. The carpet felt different. I knelt down to touch it, and it smelled faintly like old manure.

Just then the clock struck. Five or six, I was too startled to count. It was a soft, beautiful chime, high and pure and lingering, the prettiest chime I've ever heard, but the point was I'd never heard it. The chime on that clock had been broken since before I was born.

Fast as I could I slid open the door into the front room. Pitch black. I ran to the front window and tore back the curtain. Still couldn't see anything. Felt for the window and hit wooden shutters with the slats closed tight. Found a clasp and opened them, and pressed my face to the window.

The street was lit up, but mainly from an almost full moon. Flickering street lights up and down the street didn't make much difference. No asphalt over the paving stones. Slate sidewalks. No cars parked. And the high-rise across the street was missing.

I raced back to the chest and jumped in. My mouth was dry and my skin was clammy and my heart was going a mile a minute.

I wasn't supposed to be here. Any second a poison dart or something would probably shoot out of the wall and put me away. I grabbed the lid. When I got home, everything would be like it was before.

But it wouldn't.

When Gramp told me about his disease I thought it was hopeless, but now maybe it wasn't. Our crazy plan was actually working. I could save him. All I'd have to do… was find my ancestor’s dissecting room and steal the fresh brain of a man who'd died in 1872. I shut the lid and lay there, real tense.

I hadn’t really agreed to do this. I’d agreed to lie down in a boring box for a few hours to keep Gramp's spirits up. Nobody would blame me if I went back.

But Gramp would probably die.

I raised the lid slowly and sat with it open. Whenever Gramp talked to me about the old days, even though I was real interested, I would think how glad I was not to live then. Everything was covered with a layer of germs. The manure smell on the carpet was probably because of people tracking it in from the horse-filled streets.

More than that, I was doing this weird thing nobody knew about. Maybe there were bad side effects to traveling in time, just like from not having gravity in space.

But Gramp must have done it, too, if I was doing it. So he wasn't out of his mind, and I could still trust him. That meant a lot. Even if I did catch something, modern medicine could cure me... if I got back. Now that I was here, maybe I could at least look for where the dissection room might be, if I kept the way clear back to the chest.

I got out and slid open a door. Moonlight shone on the hall and stairs from a skylight four floors up, which I'd never seen in Gramp's place because the upper floors are closed off to be different condos.

At the foot of the stairs there was a kid pointing at me!

No, he was too still. I edged over and touched a wooden statue, which was holding up a plate for some reason. There was a mirror in the middle of a fancy hat rack. The double front doors had patterned glass windows I could feel with my fingers. When I opened them, there was an entryway, and another pair of double doors, solid wood, locked.

Frantic barking from upstairs, and something charging down the hall steps before I could even start for the dining room. I shut myself in the entryway between the sets of doors, and saw the shadow of a dog rise, again and again against the glass. A shout from upstairs. I would be caught, and with no explanation whatsoever.

I struggled with the bolt on the outer doors. Got it! Out to the street— a gate, another latch. It was only three feet high. I scrambled over it and ran down the street.

Now I’ve done it, but good!