It was the night of the fourteenth of July, 1981.
Six gunshots rang out in the darkness, winding their way across the hills and valleys deep under night's black cloak. The sounds' roar gradually diminished until they ceased entirely, the silence returning as crickets resumed their nightly song. In the small shed far off in the woods, that horrible orchestra in four parts played for the first time to Logan's reeling ears. Buzz. Patter. Rattle. Click. He let out a tremendous sigh that shook his entire frame and managed to still the twitching finger that rested fitfully on the trigger. He set the revolver on the table and only then did the full-body tremors begin. They started in his fingers and hands, but soon they swept down his spine through his back and abdomen to his legs and torso, shaking him in violent fits of adrenaline. As he regained control, he deliberately refused to look at the slumped form before him, knowing that Skinny would not yet be dead and also knowing he would be utterly unable to meet the boy's gaze. Logan wouldn't hold him while he went or try to offer any words to ease his passing. After all… what would be the point?
He glanced at the small clock in the corner of the room, noting the time. 9:50.
"I'm late," he muttered to himself, reaching back for the gun. Remembering then that the cylinder was empty, he set it back down on the table and began to move through the shed, searching. He found the fire ax hanging on the wall and gripped its handle, hefting its weight about in the air. Finding it satisfactory, he moved to the door and pushed it open with the ax's handle, pausing for a moment at the threshhold. Should I look back? Is there anything at all I can say? Before his mind could answer, his feet were in motion. He stepped out into the cool night and shut the door behind him, locking the grisly scene away. He set his back against the door and tried to catch his breath, feeling a rising dread at what work he knew waited ahead. He felt the momentary doubt of someone who's already taken the plunge and was now in free-fall. No point resisting at this point… best to just let gravity and momentum take over. Follow the plan. Setting away from the door, he staggered for a moment, wiping at his eye. He then resumed his brisk pace, ax in hand. He had a very specific appointment to make.
An owl's hoot overhead reminded him that he wasn't the only nocturnal animal in these deep woods… and yet, he didn't feel afraid. Gripping the ax tightly in his right hand, he felt damn-near invincible. His left aimed a flashlight about in the dark, searching out landmarks and distinctive markers so he could make his way in the black nearly entirely on auto-pilot. His mind was a cinema screen, and the picture of the night was Betrayal in the Shack in the Woods, starring Jackson Trent Junior and Logan Kessler. He watched that picture over and over again, every detail leaping to cruel life as he re-lived it over and over still. He tried to command his mind into silence, to break the incessant recollection, but it seemed to ignore his efforts to corral it in. He paused for a moment and charged a battery with the Empathizer, immediately feeling more in-control. He then looked around, surprised. Somehow, he'd arrived at his destination: a small clearing not particularly far from his house. He checked his watch: 10:09. Shit. I missed it, he thought, before laughing at himself.
I don't have to have missed it… Let's update the plan—well, I guess I already did. 10:15 will work. He removed a notebook from his pocket and wrote down that number, locking it into a tangible record for his own use later on. Memory wouldn't be trustworthy enough for something so important…
Swinging his flashlight left and right, he found the stump at the center of the clearing. He tried his best to visualize it in the daylight, and imagined which direction they might approach from. I'll stand him here, he thought, noting a spot near the stump. Orient him that way.
Logan then stood in position a single foot behind the space he'd noted and tested the ax's weight with a few practice swings. It was unexpectedly heavy when swinging at full extension. I'll have to go for short-arm swings to maintain control of the thing. He then checked his watch. 10:11. Shit, this was going slowly.
Doubts began to creep into Logan's mind, as did deep pangs of a soul-shaking guilt. Simultaneously, tongues of the flames of self-loathing began to lick upwards from his gut, and Logan felt momentarily driven to drop the ax to the ground. One quick use of the Empathizer later and he again had the weapon in hand, waiting. One down tonight, one more to go. One down, just one to go. This'll be easy… the hard stuff is past you. No need to lie this time. No need to look ok when you aren't. Just something quick, all over in an instant. You can do this.
He checked his watch again. 10:14. He took a step backwards and breathed in deeply. He then frowned and took another three steps backwards, and then another two. Wouldn't want to be too close. He then wondered what might happen if he stood precisely in the arrival zone… an experiment for another time. He looked at the empty air in front of him and began to tremble slightly in anticipation. He raised his left arm and positioned it across his face, covering his eyes. He then closed them for good measure.
10:15. Even with his eyes buried into his arm and his eyelids closed, Logan saw a sudden burst of light. The shockwave of sound arrived in that same precise moment, rattling him, and that sound was the starting gun to Logan's now-beginning sprint forwards. He opened his eyes and was distressed to see that his night vision was momentarily disrupted, but Parker's would be as well. Logan still had surprise, and he had to press that advantage. As he surged forwards, the arm in front of his eyes levered downwards to join the right on the handle of the ax, which he then swung downwards in an overhead chop. He couldn't see the boy, but the sudden and sharp resistance to the swing told him all that he needed to know.
Parker did not scream, nor did he fight back. He instead immediately began to leer to the left, while Logan's momentum continued to carry him forwards. Parker's motion pulled the ax—now embedded into his shoulder—out of Logan's grip. He twisted, trying to grip the handle again, and spilled over sideways in the process. Parker began to flee the clearing, a hand on the ax head to stabilize it as he ran. Logan scrambled to his feet and gave chase.
Both ran only by the dim light of the moon overhead, which did little to illuminate the path beneath the canopy of trees overhead. Logan felt the sting of thorns and branches he ran through that he could not see. He nearly tripped twice on raised roots along the floor, and, in his stumbling, he lost direct sight of the fleeing boy. A sudden and loud tumbling noise just ahead as Parker tripped set Logan back on the hunt, and he closed the distance to the downed boy quickly.
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Logan ran to him and found the grip of the ax, wrenching it free. He then brought it down in a reckless swing, but Parker rolled off to the right as the ax sailed downwards. The blade contacted a stone on the ground and set out a spark, a momentary dot of light in their blackened brawl. Logan swiped the ax towards where Parker had been momentarily illuminated by the spark, and felt the slightest resistance of a glancing slash. "Wait," the wounded boy finally said, but Logan couldn't and wouldn't be talked down.
Parker rolled to his feet and took off in a crouching run, trying to keep himself low to the ground, perhaps as though to hide in the dark. It would've been a decent approach, but Logan could hear the boy's panting breaths and unsteady footsteps. He chased and swung at the sound, his ax striking a tree at a shallow angle and bouncing off. His wrist cried out in protest, but he pushed on, closing in again on the sound and swinging. He scored a partial hit, again emedding the ax. He pulled it free and swung once more, this time missing and finding himself blindsided by a tackle from the wounded boy in the dark. They both spilled over backwards, Logan barely managing to keep the blade in hand. He swung it overhead blindly, the blade striking into empty rock. A kick in the dark struck Logan's side. He instinctively curled in, and, as he did so, he swiped the blade at the source of the kick. Another shallow hit, slicing through clothing and continuing on barely impeded.
A rock then struck Logan in the chest, hurled from the dark. A second was thrown a moment later, each impact seeming to jolt Logan's entire body and set his teeth rattling against each other. He charged at the direction he heard Parker's breathing and collided into the boy, dropping the ax as both locked into a grapple. Logan pushed, but Parker pushed back fiercely, gaining the upper hand and now charging forwards as Logan was taken backwards. The two collided into a tree, Logan's back smashing into it as Parker drove him against it. The breath shot from Logan's body, and he was relatively sure a knot lower on the tree had punctured him somewhere on the back. A major bruise, at the very least.
Logan then felt Parker's hands close around his neck. Logan grasped at Parker wildly, but the larger boy was undeniably stronger. Logan reached up over his head and found a loose branch, which he snapped off and used to strike Parker's head. The boy's grip loosened, and Logan managed to wrench himself free and slip underneath Parker's pressing weight. As he retreated backwards, Logan saw the ax barely illuminated in a gap between the trees, as though the night itself had wanted Logan to regain his weapon. He recovered the ax and pushed forwards, swinging. He saw Parker's right hand manipulating the watch on his left, and knew that the entire operation could be compromised if he didn't close right now. His first swing barely slashed the boy's left arm, but Parker continued twisting the dial. The second swing struck the right arm more solidly, yanking it aside as the blade embedded in his forearm. Logan pulled it back and scored two deep gashes to the face, causing Parker to drop to his knees. How much easier this would've been if I'd saved a couple rounds in the revolver's chamber, he thought. But it seemed most of the fight had gone out of Parker now. He tried to twist the dial on his watch once more, but his fingers were clumsy and numb with the deep gashes in his arm. His left began to hang looser and looser. Best to end this quickly.
Logan took another overhead swing, striking the boy in the neck. He pulled the blade out and swung once more, striking the boy's left arm. He hit it with such speed that Parker's arm jerked back and struck the tree to his back—
and a bright flash blinded Logan as a thunderous boom shook the dark woods once again. Logan fell over backwards, stunned. A bright afterimage of the flash danced across his vision, but, as his night vision slowly returned, he saw that the tree in front of him had no bloodied, bleeding boy propped against it… Logan was alone in the woods.
"Shit, shit, shit!" he cried out into the dark, feeling his plan unraveling before his eyes. "Shit!" He rummaged into his backpack and pulled the flashlight back out, and he used it to look around the area, searching for a blood trail or some sign that Parker hadn't done what he'd very very obviously just done. If he'd stumbled away, Logan could catch him. But if he fled backwards into time…
Logan felt the black bile of fear begin to rise. He felt revulsion, and he felt hate, and he felt guilt at the murder of Skinny that would turn out to amount to nothing in the light of his failure. He pulled these out with the Empathizer, and then he pulled out yet a second round, so deep as his revulsion was. But, finally, in the cool emptiness left in the device's wake, he pointed the flashlight back at the tree as he gathered his wits. Unexpectedly, the light caught. There was something there, against the base of the tree.
He walked in, and his breath caught in his throat: it was yet another gift from the night, a miracle if Logan had truly ever seen one. Along the ground ran a gnarled root of the tree. Underneath one root, partly obscured by the thing and thus undisturbed for dozens of years, was something metal. Something familiar.
Logan leaned in and laughed. Underneath a root of the very tree Parker had been leaning against was a watch, and one that Logan immediately recognized as Parker's. He hefted the ax with a jolly grin and began to swing, chopping at the roots as the stifling summer wind began to rise.
* * *
The flash and its accompanying crackle receded into night, leaving Parker slumped breathlessly against the sapling. His body burned and it shivered; everything ached, and felt as though he were submerged deep in molasses. Stinging pains ran up his neck and down his back. He wanted to wince, to grip at the pain, but his legs shouted out painful protest when he tried to stir.
In the moonlight filtering through the canopy, he'd seen glimpses of his attacker… he pushed that out of his mind. Survival first, thinking later. He knew at once where he was, but the when was the question of deeper concern. He lifted his left wrist to his face to read the watch dial—or, at least, he tried to move his left arm. He found it refused to move outright. In fact, beyond the searing pain and sensation of warmth bleeding outwards from a gash in his left shoulder, he didn't feel his left arm much at all.
He reached over his body with his right arm and gripped the left. It was a bizarre sensation, to be moving the dead weight of one's own body when all sensation fled… it sent a chill down Parker's spine. His arm flopped about pathetically, listing at such an angle that Parker still couldn't read the watch dial. He tried to sit up, but found that he still couldn't manage anything better than a slumping lean against the tree. His face now stung acutely, and blood dribbled heavily onto his chin and dripped to his body below. Biting back the frustration, Parker set his left arm down and then probed with his right arm for the watch's release latch. After a protracted struggle, he detached the thing and hoisted it towards his face, scowling at the dark. In the barely present moonlight, he saw that the watch face was smeared opaque with blood. He wiped it against his chest and tried again, finding it even bloodier this time. With a shriek of frustration, he rubbed the watch against the mud and loose leaves along the floor. He then pulled it back and stared at it, eyes searching for any reflection of the light… he finally saw the date on the clock face, and with the shock of his discovery, the shock of his wounds caught up all at once and pulled him down, down twisting and falling into a black and dreamless void.