” he asked, and then disappeared into the murky red elevator, becoming
another maroon blur.
The past-time Sasha, Doogie, Roosevelt, and even the past-time Chris
Snow looked confused, and the past-time Chris said to me, “What are we
supposed to do? ” Addressing myself, I said, “You disappoint me. I’d
expect you, at least, to figure it out. Eliot and Pooh, for God’s sake!
” As the oscillating thrum of the egg-room engines grew louder and a
faint but ominous rumble passed through the floor, like giant train
wheels beginning to turn, I said, “You’ve got to go down and save the
kids, save Orson.”
“You already saved them.” My head was spinning. “But maybe you still
have to go down and save them, or it’ll turn out that we didn’t.” The
past-time Roosevelt picked up the past-time Mungojerrie and said, “The
cat understands.”
“Then just follow the damn cat! ” I said.
All of us present-time types who were still in the corridor roosevelt,
Sasha, me, Doogie holding the elevator doorstepped back into the red
light, but when we were in the cab with the kids, there was no red light
at all, just the incandescent bulb in the ceiling.
The corridor, however, was now flooded with red murk, and our past time
selves, minus Bobby, were maroon blurs once more.
Doogie pressed the button for the ground floor, and the doors closed.
Orson squeezed between me and Sasha, to be close to my side.
“Hey, bro, ” I said softly.
He chuffed.
We were cool.
As we started upward at an excruciatingly slow pace, I looked at my
wristwatch. The luminous LED digits weren’t racing either forward or
backward, as I had seen them do previously. Instead, pulsing slowly
across the watch were curious squiggles of light, which might have been
distorted numbers. With growing dread, I wondered if this meant we were
beginning to move sideways in time, heading toward the other side that
Randolph was so eager to visit.
“You were dead, ” Aaron Stuart said to Bobby.
“So I heard.”
“You don’t remember being dead? ” Doogie asked.
“Not really.”
“He doesn’t remember dying because he never died, ” I said too sharply.
I was still struggling with grief at the same time that a wild joy was
surging in me, a manic glee, which was a weird combination of emotions,
like being King Lear and Mr. Toad of Toad Hall at the same time.
Plus my fear was feeding on itself, growing fatter. We weren’t out of
here yet, and we had more than ever to lose, because if one of us died
now, there was no chance that I’d be able to pull another rabbit out of
a hat, I didn’t even have a hat.
As we ground slowly up, still short of B-2, a deep rumbling rose through
the elevator shaft, as if we were in a submarine around which depth
charges were detonating, and the lift mechanism began to creak.
“If it was me, I’d sure remember dying, ” Wendy announced.
“He didn’t die, ” I said more calmly.
“But he did die, ” insisted Aaron Stuart.
“He sure did, ” said Anson.
Jimmy Wing said, “You peed your pants.”
“I never, ” Bobby denied.
“You told us you did, ” said Jimmy Wing.
Bobby looked dubiously at Sasha, and she said, “You were dying, it was
excusable.” On my wristwatch, the luminous squiggles were twisting
across the readout window faster than before. Maybe the Mystery Train
was pulling out of the station, gathering speed. Sideways.
As we reached B-2, the building began to shake badly enough to cause the
elevator cab to rattle against the walls of the shaft, and we grabbed at
the handrails and at each other to keep our balance.
“My pants are dry, ” Bobby noted.
“Because you didn’t die, ” I said tightly, “which means you never wet
your pants, either.”
“He did too, ” said Jimmy Wing.
Sensing my state of mind, Roosevelt said, “Relax, son.” Orson put one
paw on my shoe, as if to indicate that I should listen to Roosevelt.
Doogie said, “If he never died, why do we remember him dying? “