Rules Are Rules Read online

  “What would you do?” The question had less weight than a feather in his mind, and he ignored it.

  Kevin floated alongside the man as they traveled through the forest, and his gaze marked the features his imagination had given the man. A piercing shriek lanced through him, and everything went faster. They were out of the forest and into a parking lot, then reversing through the country roads back to a town, turns coming out of nowhere, the motion nauseating. In a flash, the car parked and the man exited, long strides retreating to a building and up the stairs, into a room not unlike Kevin’s, except it was occupied by another human. An older woman sat smoking, a glass of amber liquid at her elbow. Everything stuttered and stopped then, and Kevin felt as if he were snapping back into focus. There was a solid blow against the side of his head, stinging warmth flooding his face as he heard a woman’s voice. “So stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t end you.”

  He jerked awake, hands coming up to defend against another hit. “Jesus,” he breathed, and scrubbed at his face. There was an odd sensation, a slightly slimy feeling as he rubbed his fingers across his forehead, and he looked down at his hands. The fingers of his right hand were covered in a mix of clear gel and red paint. “What in the…” He levered off the couch and hurried towards the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. Half his face was covered in that drying goop that looked like an ointment had been mixed with colored drink powder. It originated from the same place as the blow that had woken him up from sleep. “Weird days, man.”

  He made brisk work out of washing his face, staring at himself over the top edge of the towel he used to dry off with. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but for the first time in a while, he took serious measure of himself.

  As it had with Diane, the death of Chloe and accompanying chaos and pain had left its mark on his features. There were deeply etched lines in his forehead, the result of his poring over reports and information. Crow’s feet lived at the corners of each eye, and he’d developed a permanent squint from staring at computer screens, running search after search to try to find other crimes similar to the one that had taken his daughter from him.

  There were correlations that could be drawn between a dozen other deaths, based on his research. The police and sheriff’s departments didn’t agree, but more than one online group had found his arguments compelling, some folks jumping in and helping dig up even more deaths, some spinning off his theories and creating their own. It had taken a while, but eventually he’d realized those groups were riddled with the unbalanced, those begging for a conspiracy to blame everything on. He’d argued with himself over abandoning them, but spending time discussing Chloe’s case with them was spinning his wheels, not getting him any closer to finding the real killer.

  Kevin hung up the towel and went to the efficiency’s kitchenette, pulled an iced coffee from the mini-fridge, and, after taking a big slurp from it, dumped in a shot of a highly caffeinated concentrate before upending it and drinking it down. Within minutes, his heart was pounding, and his hands shook in the way they always did. He stood, face inches from the surface of the closed cabinet, and stared at nothing, letting the stimulant flood his system.

  Finally ready to begin his day, he made his way to the wall with the clippings, pictures, and hand-scrawled notes.

  What if

  The end of shift rolled around, and he clocked out, leaving through the back door after giving his coworker a wave goodbye. There was a never-ending buzz in his ears that matched the tone of the hum he’d been imagining, but at a much higher frequency. The sense of urgency it invoked had him riding the edge of anxiety and had made him snappish all day. In the car, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to find a relaxing center of calm inside himself before the drive home.

  The dream took him by surprise, because he hadn’t been planning on dozing off, just trying to unwind even the barest iota before he drove home. He was alone on the path, rushing along only feet above the forest floor. The roads and highways and streets bled past in a blur until he stood in front of the same building again. He looked around to pick out a street and address, but even as he turned, the facades changed, brick fading to stucco, then back to brick, buildings shortening, doors and windows getting smaller. The building in front of him held steady for the most part. There were only minor differences, as colors changed repeatedly, swapping from cream to brown to a dark red, and the stoop shrank, handrails disappearing.

  That went on for what felt like a lifetime, moments stretching and elongating, lines of the structures wavering into the distance as if they were being pulled like taffy. Then everything snapped sharply into focus, and a young woman slowly made her way up the steps to the door. She walked heavily, as if every movement was a struggle, and with a second glance, he saw she was pregnant. There was a stutter in the air, he blinked, and she was back at the bottom of the steps, headed up to the door again, this time with a baby in her arms.

  Another glimmer and she sat on the top step, brows drawn together in a deep frown as she stared at a blue-clad toddler playing on the sidewalk. Another flicker and she’d aged more than a decade, the little boy now a teen glaring up at her from the bottom step. Their mouths moved, lines of anger evident on both of their expressions. There was a growing bruise on the boy-child’s jaw, flesh reddened all along the side of his face.

  The scene sparkled and changed, and the woman watched, face impassive, as an older teen was loaded into the back of a police cruiser, the vehicle’s model about three decades away from new. His lip was split, bleeding, nose running blood, too. Black and purple battled for space around one eye, and he glared up at her through the window of the vehicle. She stood and stared, fist flexing at her side, closed and opened, then closed, as if her knuckles ached.

  Kevin coughed and sat upright, his breath blowing plumes of condensation through the chilled air inside the car. Heart pounding, he felt every beat in his temples, in the throbbing of his jaw. He blinked and, in the microsecond his eyes were closed, a flash of light blew past his eyelids, making them translucent enough to see veins running through the flesh. An instant later, the cold was gone, replaced by a heated layer of air that scorched his throat with every breath. The flash came again, and his eyes burned and watered, tears overflowing the lower lids in a flood. Cursing, he struck the water from his face with the back of a hand and realized the heat was gone now, too.

  “What is going on?”

  From the seat behind him, an impossible voice asked an impossible question: “What would you do if you could change things?”

  Nothing reflected in the mirror, and he whirled to stare into the empty seat, balanced delicately between terror and an intense curiosity. “I’m really going crazy.”

  Once back in his apartment, he stood over the sink to eat his supper, a cold sandwich purchased from work. But when he put it to his mouth, he found the insides were hot, cheese melted and gooey. It tasted fine, but after a couple of bites, he threw it into the trash, the condiments slimy in his mouth.

  “What?”

  Bent double, hovering over the garbage, he lost the small amount of food he’d consumed, angry for no reason, pulse pounding behind his ears as he grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed viciously at his lips.

  Turning to face the wall, he stared at it for a moment, then stalked over to the series of images he’d blown up to better see the face of the man emerging from the forest. He ground his jaw back and forth, teeth gritting across the surface of their neighbors as he glared at the features. He felt confident it was the same person he’d chased backwards through the forest, the same sullen teen who’d sat in the back seat of the cop car, the same toddler playing in the gutter riddled with cigarette butts—all seen in his dreams. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “What would you do?”

  Kevin dropped his chin to his throat and shook his head in broad sweeps. If he ignored the voice, maybe it would go away. Back and forth, he physically denied what he’d heard and seen. Deep and
throaty, the voice sounded almost as if it were speaking a foreign language, the syllables breaking apart in unexpected places, accents misplaced like keys lost in a drawer.

  “If you could…”

  The words trailed off into a growing racket, an intense hum that pulsed under his skin uncomfortably, making it feel as if every muscle were rubbing across raw nerves, his flesh jumping and jittering with a shudder not caused by cold. “What?” Echoing through the room, loud as a car crash, the single word came at him from all sides, his body pummeled by the question. “What?” And again. “What?” The sound changed, stretching as thin as spider webs pulled to snapping tautness. “What would you do?”

  “I’d bring her back, okay?” His shout took him by surprise, ripping through his throat and leaving bloody ribbons of pain behind. “I’d bring her back, trade my life for hers. I’d give up everything to have her back, okay? That’s what I’d do. I’d do anything.”

  Vibrations tingled his toes, causing the sole of his foot to lose traction with the floor, sending him stumbling to one side, hand out to catch himself on the back of the couch. Like a train approaching, the oscillation crept upwards through his legs, causing his scrotum to shrink, testicles trying to crawl back into his body. He ducked his head, crouching in place as he balanced against the shifting of his bones. He screamed as dread and fear powered through his brain, his hearing overwhelmed, all the sounds mixing together to create a bowl of white noise that made him nauseous again, stomach lurching behind his sternum.

  A pop sounded overhead, and he craned his neck just in time to see a fist-sized, glowing ball of white light wink into existence near the ceiling. The hair on his forearms jumped to attention, a swell of what felt like static electricity passing through the room. The back of his neck tingled, crawling as the short hairs there were triggered, too. The light grew in size and changed as it drifted lower, a brilliant mote caught on a stray breeze of wafting air. He watched as it swung in tiny arcs, each a little wilder than the previous path, until it was darting around the room. To the sink, then hovering over the trash can, and for a moment he thought it would slide down and inside. To the wall, and there it paced with intent, moving from image to article, to the plain paper renderings of ideas and theories he’d typed up and printed. It spun, leaving flaming tracers in his vision, and he blinked. The second time his eyes opened, it was directly in front of him, a handspan from his face. It was all he could see, red and white and a thousand colors between blinding him to anything else in the room. Waves of hot and cold radiated from the light, the temperature finally settling into a just-too-warm range.

  “What?”

  “I’d bring her back.” Kevin repeated his words, and he imagined the light—which was now the size of a basketball—dipped in place, like an agreeable nod. “I’d do anything.” Another brief dip and raise.

  The light strobed, going from steady to an insane pace in an instant, and he flinched away, hand up in front of his face protectively in case it exploded. When he opened his eyes, a man stood where the light had been, face upturned towards the ceiling. As Kevin sat immobile, staring at him in shock at the sudden materialization, a string of unintelligible babble flowed from the man’s lips. “So biocac aire tamma, parehat enyd rebme cedrebme vonrebot, biocac aire eriferus ruof sseccus.” With the last pair of sounds still ringing around the room, the man crouched, placing first one knee and then the other on the floor before settling back on his heels. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, then his ears, then his eyes again in a foreign ritual. “Biocac aire tamma.” He bowed slightly, the barest of inclines of his upper body, not towards Kevin but the window behind his couch. “Aire sseccus.”

  “What…?” Kevin sucked in a shocked breath, clamping his lips tightly to silence himself. This is a psychotic break. He shook his head. This is what it feels like to go crazy.

  The man lifted a hand towards Kevin, palm cupped as if he intended to catch something. His other went to the back of his own neck, fingers digging deep into the muscles there as though to knead a headache away. There was a pulling sensation behind Kevin’s eyes, a stinging in his sinuses like jumping into a pool without plugging his nose, and then it was gone, along with his nausea. The man’s lips pressed tightly and he swallowed hard, his features twisting disgustedly. “Aire sseccus.”

  “What are you?” Heart pounding, Kevin pushed against the back of the couch. He fell backwards and shoved hard with hands and feet in a fruitless effort to get away.

  Every retreating movement was matched by an advancing one from the man, and when Kevin wound up with his back against the wall, there was no escaping the presence right up in his face. Features calm, the stranger repeated those nonsensical words, “Aire sseccus.” He came closer and his torso pressed against Kevin’s folded-up legs, trapping his bent knees between them as his face thrust right into Kevin’s, out-of-sync mouth asking with grave emphasis, “What?”

  Slowly, carefully, the man lifted his hands and placed a palm across Kevin’s throat, pressing hard enough that each breath in or out gave a wheezing whistle. Then, body angled awkwardly, but suspended as if gravity meant nothing to his limbs, he curled his other hand around the back of Kevin’s head, thumb pushing hard against his temple.

  They sat like that for a second; then the man’s mouth opened, his eyes closed, and he spoke an endless stream of disjointed syllables, creating a lyrical flow of sound. “Enyd biocac aire tamma, enyd ruof parehat, enyd rebme qhwew lew tiy. Eykwa lew eykwa. Fiubf ginw enyd. Tiy hyar qlbr ri veubf gwe ginw. Aire cedrebme, aire enyd vonrebot, biocac aire eriferus ruof sseccus.”

  Like an old rolling and staticky TV picture jumping suddenly into focus, the sounds transitioned and became words, and Kevin was lost in the midst of ideas that seemed drawn from his mind, insanely echoing all the things he’d whispered or screamed in his midnight prayers, in his three a.m. rants, in his exhausted pleas as he stumbled through the forest looking for a clue to solve his daughter’s murder.

  “You would bring her back. Trade for her. Change the path. Restore her future. Let her live. There is a chance.” Pain spiked through Kevin’s head from where the man’s thumb dug deep, nail raking the skin with a vicious dig. Something trickled along Kevin’s cheek, tickling. “Eykwa. You have to choose. Rules are rules. There are always rules.”

  Kevin ignored everything except what the man had said, latching tight to the unbelievable hope offered by this impossible being. Normal people, mere mortals, didn’t appear out of nowhere. If he says he can do this, then what I have to do is believe. “How? Just tell me how, and I’ll do it. Take me. Take me instead and bring her back.” Every word he spoke was echoed in a slight delay, the being’s lips moving a split second after his. Kevin was vibrating with need, desperate to pull an agreement out of thin air, to cement the bargain, no matter the cost. “I’d do anything. Anything. She’s my daughter. It’s not right, parents burying their children. She had so much to give. So much to live for. Tell me how and I’ll do whatever it takes. You want to kill me? Do it. Do it… Just bring her back.”

  “Rules are rules.” There was a subtle stress on the last word as the man’s chin lifted and he stared into Kevin’s eyes. “There are limits to everything.”

  “Tell me what they are. I can work within whatever you’ve got. Just give me a chance.” His voice had hoarsened, dropping to a croak at the end, and Kevin swallowed, feeling his Adam’s apple struggle to get past the constrictor of the man’s hand. Chloe, my God. Chloe, alive. “Give me a chance to save her. She deserves to live. Please.”

  “Your form is imperfect.” His hand dropped from Kevin’s throat to his chest, palm flattening just to the left of his sternum. Kevin’s heart raced, pounding even harder against his ribs, and the long-lived ache in his jaw redoubled. “Flawed. There will only be one time.” The top of the man’s head jerked to one side, and he lifted his eyes towards the ceiling. The man nodded as if he were agreeing with someone. “Perhaps two.” His gaze returne
d to Kevin and he frowned, brow creasing deeply, unlined skin looking artificial in that moment. “No more. You won’t last.” He removed his hand, and Kevin’s heart rate returned to normal, or as normal as it could be in such circumstances.

  Trembling with hope, Kevin asked for clarity. “You can…what? Send me back in time?” The man didn’t speak, didn’t move, just stared. Kevin’s hands curled into frustrated fists at the continued silence. I need to know, dammit. This man, this being, had sprung into life in an instant, and Kevin couldn’t allow himself to question anything at this point. I don’t care if he’s angel or devil—if he can give me Chloe back, I’ll do whatever he wants. “You can send me back, and I can save her, but I just have one chance? I can’t screw up, because there’s just one chance of getting it right?”

  The man blinked and released his hold on Kevin’s head, thumb brushing over the skin of his temple. His hands fell to his thighs, where they rested, palm up. “One would be preferred.”

  Kevin pushed against the wall and slid upwards. He swayed on his feet, then braced himself, staring down at this impossible man who’d appeared from a floating globe of light, who promised to give Kevin the ability to turn back the clock and save his daughter, who offered an end to this perpetual torment.

  “What do I do?”