A Piedmont Porchlight Story
VI. The Price of Forever
Daniel Mercer had never considered himself particularly brave.
He’d once spent twenty minutes trying to remove a wasp from his automobile without opening the driver’s door. He disliked heights, avoided confrontations, and had never understood why people in horror movies insisted upon investigating strange noises in dark basements.
But there comes a moment when a man’s fear becomes so enormous that it has nowhere left to grow.
Daniel had reached that moment.
He looked at the thing standing before the Piedmont Springs Hotel.
Then at his mother.
“Did you ask it to make me?”
Rebecca’s face was wet with tears.
“Daniel…”
“Yes or no?”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
The word was scarcely audible.
Daniel felt something inside him go terribly quiet.
He looked toward the hotel.
“Then I’m not real.”
Rebecca seized his hands.
“Don’t you ever say that.”
“How can I be?”
“You’re my son.”
“But I wasn’t born.”
“Yes, you were.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
Rebecca drew a trembling breath.
“Sweetheart, you were born. I remember every minute of it. I remember holding you for the first time. I remember your father crying because he couldn’t believe how small you were.”
Daniel stared at her.
“My father?”
She nodded.
“Your father loved you.”
“He died when I was six.”
“I know.”
Daniel looked toward the creature.
“Did it make him, too?”
Rebecca couldn’t answer.
The thing beneath the verandah tilted its head.
“Would you like to know?”
“Be quiet,” Rebecca whispered.
“Would you like to know how many fathers you’ve had, Daniel?”
“Shut up!” she shouted.
The creature became still.
Then it laughed.
The sound wasn’t loud.
It was the sound of a thousand people chuckling behind closed doors.
Daniel felt the vibration beneath his feet.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
The thing regarded him.
“Doing what?”
“Tormenting us.”
“Torment?”
It seemed genuinely puzzled.
“I have given your mother precisely what she requested.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“No.”
The thing turned toward her.
“Did you not ask for a son?”
“Yes.”
“Did you not ask that he be spared the suffering you had endured?”
“Yes.”
“Did you not ask that he never be taken from you?”
Rebecca began to sob.
“Yes.”
The creature leaned closer.
“And when I asked whether you understood the meaning of forever, what did you say?”
Rebecca covered her face.
The thing waited.
At last, she whispered, “I said I didn’t care.”
The creature straightened.
“There.”
It looked at Daniel.
“You see? I have been most accommodating.”
Professor Whitcomb rose slowly from the grass.
“You’re lying.”
The creature turned.
“Am I?”
“Rebecca never understood what you were offering.”
“Understanding was not a condition of the agreement.”
“You deceived her.”
“I answered her request.”
“You knew what she meant!”
The thing regarded him.
For a moment, its impossible face seemed to change.
Not into a human face.
Into the suggestion of one.
An elderly man.
A little boy.
A woman with sunken cheeks.
Then nothing.
“I know what words mean, Professor. I do not always know what humans intend.”
Whitcomb stared at it.
“Then why keep doing this?”
The creature tilted its head.
“Because the boy keeps dying.”
Daniel felt his stomach turn.
The thing spoke almost apologetically.
“Sometimes at twenty-three. Sometimes at thirty. Once at seventy-nine. I was rather pleased with that one.”
Rebecca made a terrible sound.
“But every life ends,” the creature continued. “And every ending violates the agreement.”
Daniel stared.
“So, you start over.”
“Naturally.”
“And the other Daniels?”
The creature hesitated.
Daniel stepped closer.
“What happens to them?”
“They remain.”
“Where?”
The creature turned toward the hotel.
“In their rooms.”
Daniel looked at the windows.
The faces were appearing again.
Dozens.
Then hundreds.
His own face, repeated in every pane.
Some young.
Some old.
Some scarcely more than children.
One man stood behind the glass with white hair and a deeply lined face.
He raised a hand.
Daniel raised his own without thinking.
The old man smiled sadly.
Then pressed his palm against the window.
Daniel felt a sudden pressure against his own hand.
As though invisible glass separated them.
He jerked backward.
The old man disappeared.
“How many?” Daniel whispered.
The creature didn’t answer.
“How many of me?”
Agnes Bellweather stepped forward.
“Don’t ask that, sweetheart.”
Daniel turned on her.
“How many?”
She looked toward the hotel.
Then at Rebecca.
Her voice broke.
“More than there are rooms.”
The front doors opened wider.
A little boy stepped onto the verandah.
He was perhaps seven years old.
He wore a blue shirt, short trousers, and muddy sneakers.
Daniel recognized him immediately.
Not merely because the boy resembled his childhood photographs.
Because he remembered the clothes.
He’d worn that shirt on a summer afternoon when his father had taken him fishing.
He remembered dropping his sandwich into the creek.
He remembered his father laughing.
And he remembered the terrible moment when he’d slipped from the bank and fallen into the water.
The current had carried him beneath an overhanging root.
He’d swallowed water.
He’d struggled.
And then…
Nothing.
Daniel stared at the child.
“I remember that day.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“Daniel…”
“Daddy pulled me out.”
She began trembling.
“Yes.”
The little boy looked toward them.
Then shook his head.
“No, he didn’t.”
Daniel felt the world tilt.
The boy’s voice was his own.
Not similar.
His own childhood voice.
“I drowned,” the child said.
Rebecca collapsed to her knees.
The little boy looked at her.
“Don’t cry, Mama.”
Daniel stared at him.
“I remember Daddy saving me.”
The boy nodded.
“That’s what happened the next time.”
The creature stood motionless.
Daniel turned toward it.
“You changed it.”
“I corrected it.”
“You made me forget.”
“I spared you the memory of dying.”
Daniel looked at the little boy.
“Then what happened to him?”
The creature regarded the child.
“He remained.”
“Alone?”
The creature hesitated.
“Not entirely.”
The boy looked back toward the hotel.
In the dark entrance hall, other children stood waiting.
Some wore pajamas.
Some carried schoolbooks.
One had a baseball glove.
Another held a broken bicycle helmet.
Daniel felt tears running down his face.
He looked at his mother.
“How many times did I die when I was little?”
Rebecca couldn’t answer.
The creature spoke.
“Would you like an accounting?”
“No!” Rebecca cried.
Daniel looked at the thing.
“Yes.”
The creature raised one long hand.
The windows darkened.
Then images appeared in the glass.
A hospital room.
A highway.
A swimming pool.
A bedroom filled with smoke.
A school corridor.
A staircase.
A thousand ordinary places where ordinary lives had ended.
Daniel watched himself die.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until he couldn’t bear to look.
“Stop.”
The images vanished.
The creature lowered its hand.
“Your mother wished that you should never be taken from her.”
Daniel looked toward the little boy.
“But you took us from ourselves.”
For the first time, the creature said nothing.
Whitcomb approached Daniel.
“There’s something else.”
Daniel turned.
The professor’s face was wet with tears.
“What?”
“The night of October seventeenth.”
Daniel stared at him.
“1893.”
Whitcomb nodded.
“I remember now.”
Rebecca looked up sharply.
“Elias, don’t.”
He ignored her.
“The hotel wasn’t built over the spring because the water was medicinal.”
Agnes Bellweather closed her eyes.
“It was built to keep people away from it.”
Daniel frowned.
“Why?”
Whitcomb looked toward the creature.
“Because the spring wasn’t a spring.”
The thing remained motionless.
Whitcomb continued.
“People had been finding strange objects in the water for generations. Coins that hadn’t been minted. Letters addressed to people who hadn’t been born. Photographs of buildings that didn’t exist.”
Daniel remembered the glass plates.
“And then?”
“Then somebody discovered that the water could show them what might have been.”
Whitcomb swallowed.
“Not the future. Not exactly. Possibilities. Lives that could have happened if one small thing had been different.”
Daniel looked at the hotel.
“And somebody tried to change one.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Whitcomb closed his eyes.
“I did.”
Rebecca made a small sound.
The professor opened his eyes.
“I was young. Foolish. I believed that if history could be observed, it could be improved.”
He laughed bitterly.
“An archaeologist trying to correct the past. Imagine that.”
Daniel waited.
“What did you change?”
Whitcomb looked at Agnes.
She was crying again.
“I tried to save her daughter.”
Agnes covered her mouth.
Daniel stared.
“Her daughter?”
Whitcomb nodded.
“A little girl named Eleanor. She’d fallen ill during the summer. Fever. Pneumonia, perhaps. The physicians could do nothing.”
Agnes whispered, “She was eight.”
Whitcomb looked at her.
“I found a way to change the afternoon she became ill.”
Daniel felt cold.
“And?”
“She recovered.”
Agnes began sobbing.
“For three days,” Whitcomb said, “we believed we’d accomplished a miracle.”
He looked toward the hotel.
“Then the clock struck thirteen.”
The creature tilted its head.
Whitcomb’s voice dropped.
“Something came through.”
Daniel stared at the thing.
“You?”
The creature considered the question.
“No.”
The word seemed to freeze the air.
Whitcomb went still.
Agnes looked up.
Rebecca stopped crying.
Daniel stared.
“What?”
The creature looked toward the hotel.
“I was already here.”
A long silence followed.
Then the thing spoke again.
“What came through was your professor’s mistake.”
Daniel looked at Whitcomb.
“What does that mean?”
The professor shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
The creature seemed almost amused.
“Of course you don’t.”
It raised one hand.
The hotel windows darkened.
The verandah stretched impossibly long.
And from somewhere deep within the building came the sound of a child crying.
Agnes Bellweather made a strangled noise.
“Eleanor?”
The crying continued.
A little girl’s voice.
Weak.
Frightened.
“Mama?”
Agnes took a step toward the hotel.
Rebecca seized her arm.
“Don’t.”
Agnes struggled.
“That’s my baby!”
“No.”
“Mama?”
The voice came again.
Agnes began sobbing.
“Eleanor!”
Rebecca held her.
“Agnes, listen to me. That isn’t your daughter.”
The creature turned toward them.
“How can you be certain?”
Rebecca stared at it.
“Because Eleanor Bellweather died in 1893.”
Agnes stopped struggling.
The creature tilted its head.
“And yet she is also alive.”
Daniel looked toward the windows.
A little girl stood behind the glass.
She wore a white nightdress.
Her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders.
She pressed both hands against the pane.
“Mama?”
Agnes made a terrible sound.
Whitcomb fell to his knees.
Rebecca held Agnes tightly.
The creature looked at Daniel.
“You see the difficulty.”
Daniel stared.
“What difficulty?”
“Your professor saved the child.”
The thing gestured toward the window.
“And the child died.”
Daniel shook his head.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
The creature lowered its hand.
“Both things happened.”
The little girl disappeared.
The hotel became still.
The creature continued.
“Your professor believed he could replace one history with another. But the discarded history did not cease to exist.”
Daniel thought of the other Daniels.
The children.
The old man.
The faces in the windows.
“And you keep them here.”
“Someone must.”
“Why?”
The creature looked toward the ground.
For the first time, it seemed reluctant to answer.
“Because they have nowhere else to go.”
Daniel stared.
“Then let them go.”
The creature tilted its head.
“Where?”
Daniel opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
The thing waited.
“Where would you have me send a life that never happened?”
Daniel had no answer.
And that was when the professor began to laugh.
Not because anything was funny.
It was the laughter of a man who’d just understood the full dimensions of his own foolishness.
“Oh, God,” Whitcomb whispered.
Rebecca turned.
“Elias?”
He looked at the creature.
“You’re not the monster.”
The thing said nothing.
Whitcomb stared toward the hotel.
“You’re the keeper.”
The creature bowed its head.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked from one to the other.
“The keeper of what?”
The thing turned toward him.
“Everything that was lost when someone decided the world ought to have been different.”
A wind moved across the lawn.
The windows trembled.
Deep beneath the hotel, the ticking began again.
The creature looked toward the ground.
And for the first time, Daniel heard something in its voice that sounded almost like fear.
“But there is a problem.”
Whitcomb rose slowly.
“What problem?”
The creature looked at him.
“Someone has been opening the rooms.”
The first scream came from the second floor.
A man’s voice.
Then another.
Then a child’s.
The windows shattered outward.
Glass rained across the verandah.
Rebecca pulled Daniel behind her.
Agnes covered her ears.
The creature turned toward the hotel.
Its long arms hung motionless at its sides.
From the dark entrance hall came footsteps.
Many footsteps.
Then the sound of doors opening.
One after another.
A thousand doors.
Ten thousand.
Daniel looked toward the windows.
Faces appeared.
Not his own this time.
Strangers.
Men and women in clothing from different centuries.
Children.
Soldiers.
Old people.
People wearing clothes that hadn’t yet been invented.
All pressing toward the broken glass.
All trying to get out.
Whitcomb stared.
“Dear God.”
The creature raised both hands.
“Back.”
The footsteps continued.
“BACK.”
The ground trembled.
The hotel shuddered.
But the footsteps grew louder.
Daniel looked at his mother.
“What’s happening?”
Rebecca stared toward the entrance.
Her face had gone white.
“I don’t know.”
The creature turned toward her.
“Rebecca.”
She looked up.
“Yes?”
“Your bargain.”
Her eyes widened.
The thing spoke slowly.
“Someone has changed it.”
Daniel felt the cold return.
“What?”
The creature looked at him.
“The agreement was that you should never be taken from your mother.”
It turned toward the hotel.
“But someone has rewritten the words.”
Rebecca began trembling.
“What do they say now?”
The creature hesitated.
Then answered.
“That no mother shall ever lose a child.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Daniel understood.
Every mother.
Every child.
Every death.
Every loss.
Every life that had ever ended before a mother’s.
All of them.
The creature looked toward the hotel.
And its voice, when it spoke again, was almost human.
“I cannot keep them all.”
The front doors burst open.
Something enormous moved in the darkness.
Not a person.
Not an animal.
Not anything Daniel could name.
It was made of shadows and memories, of faces that appeared and vanished, of hands reaching from places where hands ought not to be.
And somewhere inside it, a thousand children were calling for their mothers.
Rebecca seized Daniel’s hand.
Whitcomb stumbled backward.
Agnes began praying.
The keeper lowered its head.
And whispered:
“Now it has found the door.”
