Lock & Key Read online

  Contents

  Copyright © 2015 by Gordon Bonnet

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  - Part 1: When You Have Eliminated What Is Impossible...

  - Part 2: The Keymaker

  - Part 3: A Dog and Pony Show

  - Part 4: The City By Night

  - Part 5: Accidents and Corrections

  - Epilogue

  - About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 by Gordon Bonnet

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Fleet Press

  Oghma Creative Media

  Fayetteville, Arkansas

  www.oghmacreative.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-63373-111-0

  Interior Design by Casey W. Cowan

  Editing by Gil Miller

  I am deeply grateful to Casey Cowan of Oghma Creative Media for overseeing Lock & Key’s journey into print. My hearty thanks also to Gil Miller, my sharp-eyed editor, for his many hours of hard work in preparing the manuscript for publication. I couldn’t have done this without both of their support, skill, and expertise.

  Thank you also to Staci Troilo for her invaluable assistance with marketing and promotion.

  I would also like to thank my writing partner, Cly Boehs, whose encouragement, not to mention her sense of humor, has kept me putting words on the page, if for no other reason so I’d have something to read each Tuesday evening. Every author should be so lucky! My deepest appreciation also to my dear friend and sister-under-the-skin K. D. McCrite, who has been my most constant cheerleader. And last, to my lovely wife, Carol Bloomgarden… thank you for always believing in me.

  To my son Nathan.

  Your interest in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics gave me the idea for this story. At the very least, you deserve a guided tour of the Library of Timelines.

  Part 1: When You Have Eliminated What Is Impossible...

  Darren Ault woke in pitch darkness, which was odd, because he was fairly certain he was dead.

  He brought his hands to his face, tentatively, and felt for gunshot wounds. Finding none, he sat up, blinking, and began to move his hands around. This was done with considerable trepidation. He was understandably curious about his surroundings, but at the same time, the problem with darkness is that anything could be in it with you and you’d never know until it was too late. As far as he knew, he could be sitting in a tiger’s lair, the cat’s dark-adapted eyes already sizing him up and deciding which parts of him would be the tenderest. He could be in a basement, at the mercy of the gangs his mother had repeatedly warned him about during his childhood in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. Worse still, his high school chum Lee McCaskill could still be there somewhere, with the neat little pistol aimed at his forehead, like it had been minutes ago. Only this time, Lee would be wearing night-vision goggles, so he could see him in the dark.

  Or maybe all three at the same time. Just because those were unlikely scenarios didn’t mean they were mutually exclusive.

  But whatever horrors might await him in the dark, he couldn’t sit where he was forever. For one thing, the floor felt like tile, and was hard, uncomfortable, and cold. And for another, much to his own surprise, beginning to be more curious than afraid.

  This was largely because, however impossible it seemed, he had evidently survived a shot to the head not only without dying but without injury. He had felt the bullet strike his forehead—the sensation had been pressure rather than pain, and over in a flash—but now there was not so much as a scratch on him, much less the kind of wound that a point-blank gunshot to the head would cause.

  Honestly, he should have been dead, and missing a considerable portion of the top of his skull.

  “Wait,” he said aloud. “Maybe I am dead. Maybe I’m a ghost.”

  That explanation immediately made sense to him, but it raised a host of new fears, all of which crowded about him in the darkness, vying for his attention.

  “I’m dead,” he repeated, trying the idea out. “I’m a ghost.”

  He squinted, but still could make out nothing in the dark. Were ghosts able to see? He thought they were, but who really knew about ghosts? To be propelled into the afterlife, but to find oneself unable to see, would seriously suck.

  Maybe that’s why ghosts bump around so much. They run into things.

  He got to his feet, a bit stiffly, and took one step forward. There was a whirring noise, and a loud click, and the lights came on.

  He gave a feeble scream and whirled around, but there was no one there, or at least no one that he could see. More likely, it was some sort of motion-activated lighting. The light came from overhead. It had that pale, glassy look fluorescents give off, but the ceilings were so impossibly high he couldn’t see the fixtures.

  He looked around, and recognized his surroundings instantaneously. He was between two long rows of shelves, lined with books. Only one sort of place looked like this. As unlikely as it seemed, he was in a library. This was peculiar, but preferable to tigers, gangs, or an armed Lee McCaskill, and he gave a little shudder and a sigh of relief. It still didn’t remove the possibility that he was a ghost, but at least he could see, and he reasoned, philosophically, there were worse places to haunt than a library. At least he could count on its being quiet.

  Even accepting the fact that he had survived a pistol shot to the forehead didn’t end the mystery. However comforting it was to be in a library, it did bring up the inevitable question of how he’d gotten there from Lee’s apartment with no apparent awareness of the passage of time. He patted his pockets. His wallet was still there, and so were his car keys, with the attached mini-flashlight and electronic air horn that his mother insisted he have.

  “You never know when you might be in trouble,” his mom had said, when she’d given them to him, a statement that seemed to sum up her general approach to life. “What if you get a flat tire at night? You’ll need a flashlight. What if you get mugged? You could use that thing to call for help.”

  He looked down at the little plastic square in his hand, which had a gray button with an icon of a blowing horn. He tentatively pressed the button, releasing an earsplitting honk. His mother’s cat leapt off the sofa, overturning a potted African violet, and ran under a chair.

  “See?” his mom had said, after she’d recovered her composure. “It’ll be useful. Clip the horn and the flashlight onto your car keys. I’ll sleep better at night, Darren, dear.”

  Well, he could only hope Mom was sleeping well, because he’d just sat there in the dark for ten minutes without remembering the flashlight in his pocket.

  He went up to the row of shelves on his right. They were the typical metal affairs you find in an average library, but there were several odd differences. First, they were far taller than ordinary. He looked up, squinting, and could not see the tops. They receded upwards to the vanishing point, merging with the diffuse overhead light. Second, the books were all of uniform height and coloration—bound in what looked like crimson Naugahyde—and all of the ones he could see had the same legend, printed on the spine.

  RICHARD PRESTON THATCHER, born 18 March 1832, Scarborough, England.

  In smaller print, beneath this, was a seemingly arbitrary series of numbers and letters.

  He selected the book at the end of the shelf on his eye level, and opened it up to a random page. Each page had a date. This one was J
uly 19, 1858. He read, “… and feeling the need to finish the job that he had left incomplete because of falling ill with influenza the previous week, he skipped the Sunday church services, and taking a ladder, went up onto his roof to continue replacing shingles that had been torn off in the storm the previous month…”

  He flipped ahead a few pages. An entry for May 2, 1860 said, “… he overslept that day, and his wife was unhappy with him. He ate breakfast, finishing at a little before ten o’clock, then went out and fed the chickens. His wife had already milked the cows, and she told him that she was angry about his oversleeping…”

  He went ahead a few more pages. More trivia about country life. If this was a novel, it was a singularly dull one. No dialogue, no apparent plot, just a list of the daily occurrences in the life of some country farmer in nineteenth century England.

  He flipped to the last page. It only had a few lines.

  “The doctor, Andrew Smithfield (TYH149087-1011) came to attend to him, but was unable to bring down his fever. He became unconscious at 3:02 in the afternoon on September 29, 1864, and died without ever regaining consciousness. His wife and all of his children, as well as Dr. Smithfield, were there.”

  And below that final paragraph was the cryptic phrase, END TRACKING CODE ZCV781540-4891 (ALTERNATE)

  He closed the book, frowning in complete incomprehension, and put it back on the shelf. Then he looked around a little, hoping something would appear that would make sense of this place.

  And that was when he noticed a third odd thing about the shelves. In between each of the sets of shelves was a handle with a black plastic grip, sticking out of a slot. Above the slot were arrows, one pointing up, one pointing down. He was not normally someone given to messing with things for no good reason. It never ended well. Today, however, was not a normal day. He reached out and pulled downward on the lever.

  There was a groaning noise, as some large machine underneath the floor kicked into action, and the shelves descended into the floor, bringing new ones downward. Darren understood immediately. The shelves were on some kind of vertical conveyor belt, so the upper ones could be accessed without a ladder. You simply pulled on the handle, and the shelves came to you.

  He let the shelves descend for nearly a minute, curious to see if there was an end, or at least a change, to all of these rows and rows of identical books. It didn’t appear that there was. But then he realized that some of the books rumbling by did have a minor difference. Running down the spine of several shelves’ worth was a gold stripe.

  He released the lever, and with a grating noise, the shelves stopped. He leaned forward, and studied the gold-striped volumes. The spines still had the same legend—the name Richard Preston Thatcher, with a set of numbers—but there was that little strip of gold foil pressed into the spine. He pulled the last of the gold-embossed books from the shelf, and opened it to the last page. The date was July 19, 1858. He read, “… and feeling the need to finish the job that he had left incomplete because of falling ill with influenza the previous week, he skipped the Sunday church services, and taking a ladder, went up onto his roof to continue replacing shingles that had been torn off in the storm the previous month. He had only been working for five minutes when he caught the toe of his shoe on a loose shingle, lost his balance, and fell off the roof. He broke his neck and died instantaneously.”

  This was followed by

  END TRACKING CODE ZCV781540-8103 (ACTUAL)

  There was a slight noise behind him, and he whirled around, once again giving a little shriek. The book tumbled from his fingers, and landed upside down on the floor.

  Standing a few feet away from him was a young man, perhaps twenty-five years old. He had straight, white-blond hair that fell lankly across his forehead, partly obscuring his eyes, which were large, long-lashed, and pale blue. His face was narrow and clean-shaven, and he had a black stud in his right nostril and three rings in his left ear. He wore an overlarge black t-shirt with a drawing of a kitten with enormous eyes, one of which had a bright blue teardrop suspended below it. The overall effect gave him the appearance of an emo elf.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the elf said.

  “Darren Ault. Where am I?”

  The elf ignored the question. “How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know. Lee killed me, and then I was here. Is this heaven?”

  The elf scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Hell?”

  “You don’t seem the type that would ever do much of anything that would merit hell,” the elf observed.

  “Well, then, where am I?”

  “You’re in the Library.”

  “Okay, I can see that. What kind of library?”

  The elf didn’t answer. He turned and walked quickly down the aisle. Darren heard him mutter, “I’m going to kick some ass in security over this,” as he walked.

  Darren had always hated to put anyone out, and however inadvertently, his presence seemed to be causing the elf a considerable level of distress.

  “Look,” he said, and followed, jogging to catch up. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave if you can tell me how.”

  “You can’t,” the elf said, without turning. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Who are you?” Darren said, a little louder than he generally spoke.

  This brought the elf to a halt. He turned and faced Darren, his bright blue eyes rolling upwards a in disdain, and gave a harsh little sigh.

  “I really don’t have time for this,” he said. “The idiots up in security seem to have fucked up big time, and I’ve got to make sure it’s not worse than it seems.” He looked Darren up and down. “And it seems pretty bad already. But three questions. I’ll give you three questions. Then you need to shut up, stay out of the way, and let me do my job.”

  Darren swallowed. “What is this place?”

  “It’s a library.”

  “I know that. You told me that. What kind of library?” He put up one hand. “And that only counts as one question.”

  The elf sighed again. “Fine. It’s the Library of Timelines. And no, I’m not going to explain what that means, because it would take too long. Next question.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Fischer. I’m the Head Librarian. Although on days like this, I wish I had listened to my father and gone into manufacturing.”

  “Okay, Mister Fischer. And last… Why am I here? I’m sure I should be dead. I got shot point-blank in the forehead.”

  “Drop the ‘Mister’ crap. It’s just Fischer. And I don’t know why you’re here. That’s one of the many things I’ve got to find out.” He rubbed his eyes with an angry little gesture, and brushed his hair back. It immediately fell forward again. “Right after I twist off a few heads in security. And put some coffee on.” He turned and walked away down the hall.

  Darren trotted after Fischer again.

  As they reached the end of the aisle, Fischer turned right to head toward what appeared to be an office, muttering “Jesus, days like this make me want to puke.”

  Fischer pushed the door open with unnecessary force, and he followed him in. The office was a mess. There was an old-fashioned mahogany desk in the middle, home to a telephone, a computer, and a number of untidy piles of paper. A filing cabinet stood in the corner, one drawer open because it was stuffed so full of folders it wouldn’t close. A number of cardboard boxes sat on the floor, some with their lids askew, filled with more papers and manila folders. Fischer swiveled the desk chair around, and a large ginger tomcat vacated the chair with an aggrieved meow, then jumped up onto the desk and began to wash himself, only giving one momentary glance about the room to see if everyone appreciated how little the disturbance had bothered his equanimity.

  Fischer didn’t so much sit down as drape himself over the chair, and tapped a few of the keys on the computer. There was a chiming noise as the machine roused itself from sleep. He then picked up the telephone and punched in three numbers.

  A
fter a brief pause, he said, “Maggie, can you get down here? We got a problem.” There was another brief silence, and Fischer rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know, but the filing will have to wait. We got a problem. A big problem. One I’m gonna have to talk to Fassbinder about.” He frowned. “Well, of course it’s because there’s been a breach. Why else would I want to talk to Fassbinder? I don’t talk to him for the stimulating conversation.” He sighed. “Look, just get down here and see for yourself. And did you put the coffee on?” Only a moment’s pause this time. “Good. Can you bring me a cup?”

  Fischer hung the phone up, and typed commands into the computer. Darren, finding himself ignored, looked around the office. There was a calendar, tacked crookedly to the wall on the other side of the room, depicting a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he noted with a frown that the calendar was open to the page for February 1982. A series of sticky notes were affixed to the wall next to him. These had various scrawls, most of them either too far away to read without being obvious about it, or else in a handwriting so bad as to be nearly indecipherable. He noted that one of the nearer ones read, “Fix linear time sequencing, First Battle of Bull Run, possible divergence,” and almost asked Fischer what that meant, but the librarian was scowling so darkly at the computer screen that he didn’t dare interrupt him.

  His gaze dropped to the desk, and he noted that in the midst of the piles of paper, barely visible, was a nameplate. It read, “Archibald Fischer. Head Librarian.”

  He stared at the Librarian in some amazement, and spoke before he could stop himself.

  “Archibald? Your first name is Archibald?”

  Fischer looked up, his lips tightening and his scowl deepening even further. “I told you. My name is Fischer. Just plain Fischer. Now shut up and let me do my job, before I send you to the north wing, where we keep the records for medieval China, and have you spend the afternoon doing a little light reading.” He looked back down, muttering, “My parents couldn’t name me for my other grandfather. No. Jim wasn’t aristocratic enough. Fuck.”