by what he’d seen and had found himself self-destructively drawn to that
nightmare place. In any case, he and Randolph hadn’t met at a church
supper or a strawberry festival.
The skin was still crawling on the nape of my neck. Although the Mystery
Train building had been deconstructed down to the last chip of concrete
and the final scrap of steel, I didn’t feel that we’d reached closure in
this matter.
John Joseph Randolph hadn’t been at the window, however, now I was sure
Conrad Gensel had his nose pressed to the pane. Because I had lowered
the blind after checking for mad Johnny, I crossed the room again.
Hesitated. Yanked up the shade. No Conrad.
The dog and the cat were watching me with interest, as if they were
being highly entertained.
“The big question, ” I said to Mungojerrie and Orson, as I led them into
the kitchen, “is whether the door Johnny opened was really a door into
Hell or a door to somewhere else.” He wouldn’t have submitted a grant
application with the promise of building a bridge to Beelzebub.
He’d have been more discreet. I’m sure the cloak-and-dagger financiers
believed that they were funding research and experiments in time travel,
and because they are all comfortable in their lunacy, that seemed
rational.
As I took a package of frankfurters out of the freezer, I said, “And
from what he was ranting in that copper room, I guess it must have been
time travel of a sort. Forward, back but mostly what he called sideways.
” I stood pondering the problem, holding the frozen hot dogs.
Orson started pacing in circles around me.
“Suppose there are worlds out there in time streams that flow beside
ours, parallel worlds. According to quantum physics, an infinite number
of shadow universes exist simultaneously with ours, as real as ours. We
can’t see them. They can’t see us. Realities never intersect.
Except maybe at Wyvern. Where the Mystery Train, like a giant blender,
whipped realities together for a while.” Mungojerrie was now pacing
around me, too, following Orson.
“Isn’t it possible that one of those shadow universes is so terrible
that it might as well be Hell? For that matter, maybe there’s a parallel
world so glorious we couldn’t distinguish it from Heaven.” The pacing
pooch and the pacing cat were so focused on the hot dogs, in such a
solid trance, that if Orson had suddenly stopped, Mungojerrie would have
walked halfway up his butt before realizing where he was.
I cut open the package of frankfurters, spread the sausages on a plate,
headed for the microwave oven, but stopped in the middle of the room,
pondering the imponderable.
“In fact, ” I said, “isn’t it possible that some people genuine psychics,
mystic shave actually at times looked through the barrier between time
streams? Had visions of these parallel worlds? Maybe that’s where our
concepts of the afterlife come from.” Bobby had entered the kitchen from
the garage as I’d launched into my latest monologue. He listened to me
for a moment, but then he fell in behind Mungojerrie and Orson, pacing
circles around me.
“And what if we do move on from this world when we die, sideways into
one of those parallel to us? Are we talking religion or science here?”
“We’re not talking anything, ” Bobby said. “You’re talking your head off
about religion and science and pseudoscience, but we’re just thinking
hot dogs.”
Taking the hint, I put the plate in the microwave. When the hot dogs
were warm, I gave two to Mungojerrie. I gave six to Orson, because when
I had lifted the cut chain-link and urged him to enter Wyvern the
previous night, I had promised him frankfurters, and I always keep my
promises to my friends, just as they always keep their promises to me.
I didn’t give any to Bobby, because he’d been a smartass.
“Look what I found, ” he said, as I was washing the frankfurter grease
from my hands.
My fingers were dripping when he gave me the Mystery Train cap.
“This can’t exist, ” I said.
If the entire building that housed the project had unraveled from