Somewhere in Time (8 page)

I found a book spine dated 1896 and pulled it from between two heavy ledgers, gagging at the dust that clouded around my head. It was a book of correspondence carbons. I glanced through them quickly; maybe there was something there.

Many of the pages were as blank as though the carbons had been typed with vanishing ink. My heartbeat jumped as I saw a letter dated October 6 which began "My Dear Miss McKenna." Drops of perspiration ran into my eyes, stinging them. I rubbed at them hastily, fingered drops of sweat from my eyebrows and flicked them away. "I take great pleasure in answering your note of September 30. We are looking forward with anticipation to your arrival and the performance of The Little Minister at the hotel."

The letter went on to say that he (the manager) was sorry they could not have presented the play during the summer season when there were more guests at the hotel; but "beyond question we would rather have it now than not at all."

I shook my head abruptly. I was getting faint. I wiped at my face and neck again. My handkerchief was getting soggy. Sweat was trickling down the small of my back and across my stomach. I had to step into the next room for a few moments. As warm as it was in there, it felt, in contrast, as though I were moving into cool air. I leaned against the concrete wall, gasping for breath. If it isn't in there-It was all I could think. If it isn't in there-

I went back into the storage room and started rubbing my palms quickly and impatiently across book spines. Come on, I mumbled. I kept saying it again and again like some desperately stubborn child who will not allow himself to see that what he wants is unavailable. "Come on, come on." Thank God, Marcie Buckley didn't come back then. If she had, she'd have felt compelled to get a doctor, I'm sure. I was no longer, as they charitably put it, "in control of my faculties." Only one thread kept me from unraveling entirely: the thing I sought.

I had to concentrate on that because, by then, I was enraged at the hotel, enraged at all its past authorities for permitting these records to come to such a state. If they'd only seen to it that the records had been stored the way they should have been, I would have had my answer in seconds. Instead, the minutes dragged by maddeningly as I searched in vain for the one scrap of evidence I needed to survive. I felt like Jack Lemmon in that scene in Days of Wine and Roses where he runs amuck in the greenhouse, looking for a bottle of whiskey. What kept me from running amuck I'll never know; my quest, I can only assume. Otherwise, I would have howled and ranted and flung books and papers in all directions and wept and cursed and become demented.

I didn't even bother wiping off the sweat now. What point was there in that? My handkerchief was soaking wet; my underclothes clung to me as though I'd gone swimming in them. My face was probably beet red. I'd lost all sense of time and place. Like a somnambulist, I searched and searched, knowing that my search was futile but so caught up in the stricken madness of it that I couldn't stop.

I almost missed it. By then my eyes were barely focusing. I kept discarding books, putting them aside. I put aside the right one too. Then something-God knows what- pierced the murk of my brain and, with a shocked gasp, I twisted back to the book and picked it up. I flung it open and turned the pages with a shaking hand until I'd reached the one on which it read, in giant letters, Thursday, November 19, 1896 / HOTEL DEL CORONADO / E. S. BABCOCK, MANAGER / CORONADO, CALIFORNIA.

I was so dehydrated, I suppose, so dazed I couldn't manage, for what seemed like endless moments, to realize that dates fall on different days each year, only coinciding periodically. I stared at the page in baffled disbelief, then, abruptly, shook myself in anger as it came to me.

My gaze leaped to the columns headed Names, Residence, Rooms, and Time; ran down the list. The writing blurred in front of me. I rubbed a shaking hand across my eyes. E. C. Penn. Conrad Scherer and wife (odd way to write it, I remember thinking). K. B.Alexander. C.T. Laminy. I looked in dull confusion at the word do written many places in the columns. Only now do I realize that what it meant was ditto and that it was used instead of the ditto marks we use today.

I looked to the very bottom of the page but it wasn't there. The sound I made had to be one of pain. I stared at the dried-ink patterns on the blotter page. The smell of musty paper and dust filled my nostrils and lungs. Feebly, I turned the page to Friday, November 20,1896.

And started crying. Not since I was twelve years old have I cried like that; not with sadness but with joy. Suddenly without strength, I sank down, cross-legged, to the floor, the heavy hotel register on my lap, tears streaming down my cheeks, lost in rivulets of perspiration, my choking sobs the only sound in that dead, hot oven of a room.

It was the third name down.

R. C. Collier, Los Angeles. Room 350. 9:18 a.m.

� � �

One twenty-seven p.m. Lying in bed, a delicious sense of expectation in me. Took a shower, bathed away the dust and grime and sweat, threw my clothes into the laundry bag. Glad I was able to lock the storage rooms and leave before Marcie Buckley returned. I telephoned her office several moments ago to thank her again.

It's a temptation-because I feel so good, so certain-to do nothing now but he here and wait for the inevitable to happen.

Yet I sense, despite assurance, that this isn't a matter of inevitability at all. I still have to make it happen. I believe completely that it has been done but, after reading Priestley's book, I also believe that there are, in fact, multiple possibilities not only for the future but the past as well.

I could still miss it.

Accordingly, my work is not yet over. Although I believe without reservation that, tomorrow night, I'll watch her perform in The Little Minister, I also believe that I have to put out effort before this is possible.

I'll do it in a little while; right now, I want to bask. It was a horrible experience down there until I found the hotel register with my name on it. I need to let my strength build up again before I start.

I wonder why I wrote R. C. Collier. I've never written my name that way before.

I also wondered about moving to Room 350 but decided against trying. I don't know exactly why but, somehow, it felt wrong to me. And, since most of what I have to go on is feeling, I'd best go along 'with it.

� � �

It is November 19, 1896. You're lying on your bed, eyes closed, relaxed, and its November 19,1896. No tension. No distress. If you hear a sound outside, it will be carriage wheels turning, the thud of horses' hooves. No more; you'll hear no more. You are at peace, at utter peace. It's November 19, 1896. November 19, 1896. You're lying on a bed in the Hotel del Coronado and it's November 19, 1896. Elise McKenna and her company are in the hotel at this very moment. The stage is being set for their performance of The Little Minister tomorrow night. It's Thursday afternoon. You're lying on the bed in your room at the Hotel del Coronado and it's Thursday afternoon, November 19,1896. Your mind accepts this absolutely. There is no question in your mind. It is November 19, 1896, Thursday, November 19,1896. You're Richard Collier. Thirty-six. Lying on your hotel bed, eyes closed, on Thursday afternoon, November 19, 1896. 1896. 1896. Room 527. Hotel del Coronado. Thursday afternoon, November 19,1896. Elise McKenna is in the hotel at this very moment. Her mother is in the hotel at this very moment. Her manager, William Fawcett Robinson, is in the hotel at this very moment. Now. This moment. Here. Elise McKenna. You. Elise McKenna and you. Both in the Hotel del Coronado on this Thursday afternoon in November; Thursday, November 19, 1896.

� � �

(This hypnotic self-instruction by my brother continues on for the equivalent of twenty-one more pages.)

� � �

I have forty-five minutes on the cassette now. I'll lie down, close my eyes, and listen to it.

� � �

Two forty-six p.m. I feel more confident than ever. It's a strange sensation, one beyond logic, but I'm convinced that this transition will take place. The conviction forms an undercurrent of excitement beneath the mental calm I also feel; the tranquillity of absolute assurance.

Lying on the bed those forty-five minutes, I don't know whether I eventually slept or went into a hypnotic state or what. All I know is I believed what I was hearing. After a while, it was as though some voice other than my own was speaking to me. Some disembodied personality instructing me from some spaceless, timeless zone. I believed that voice without question.

What was the phrase I read so many years ago? The one I was so impressed with that, at one point, I considered having it printed on a piece of wood and hanging it on my office wall.

I remember. What you believe becomes your world.

Lying here before, I believed that the voice I heard was telling me the truth and that I was lying on this bed, with my eyes closed, not in 1971 but in 1896.

I'll do this again and again until that belief has so completely overwhelmed me that I'll literally be there and rise and leave this room and reach Elise.

� � �

Three thirty-nine p.m. End of another session. Similar results. Conviction; peace; assurance. At one point, I actually considered opening my eyes and looking around to see if I were there yet.

A bizarre thought just occurred to me.

What if, when I open my eyes in 1896, it is to see somebody in the room with me, gaping at me in shock? Could I cope with that? What if - Good God!-some married couple had just begun to experience "nupital conjugation" as I suddenly appear in bed with them, most likely under or on top? Grotesque. Yet how can I avoid it? I have to lie on the bed. I suppose I could lie under it, just in case, but the discomfort would undo my mental concentration.

I'll have to risk it, that's all. I can't see any other way. My hope is that-recalling Babcock's letter to Elise-the winter season bringing fewer guests, this room will be unoccupied.

Regardless, the risk must be taken. I'm certainly not going to let that problem undo the project.

A brief time-out, then back to it again.

� � �

Four thirty-seven p.m. A problem; two in fact, one irremediable, the other with a hoped-for solution.

First problem: The sound of my voice, during this third session, began to lose its abstract quality and become more identifiable. Why is that? It should be drifting further from recognition each time I hear it, shouldn't it?

Maybe not, though. Maybe problem two ties in with it, said problem being this: Although the conviction remained as I listened, it began to fade because I was hearing the same words over and over-which was valuable hypnotically but not of value to the portion of my mind that still supports logic as its king. That mental portion finally asked the question openly: Is that all you know about this day in November 1896?

Got it! Will run downstairs and buy a copy of Marcie Buckley's book in the Smoke Shop, give it a quick reading, and pick up facts pertinent to 1896, then record a different forty-five minute instruction and enlarge upon the evidence that I am here in November 19, 1896; set the stage with more detail, as it were. Elise would approve of that.

� � �

Later. An interesting book. Well, not a book actually; she's working on a full-length version now. This is more an oversize pamphlet, sixty-four pages in length with sketches, chapters on the building of the hotel, some on its history and the history of Coronado, photographs of its present appearance and a few of its past, photographs of celebrities who've visited the hotel (the Prince of Wales, no less), plus notes and drawings re the contemplated future of the hotel. I've compiled enough items to enrich my next instruction, which I'll start in a few minutes.

� � �

It's Thursday, November 19, 1896. You're lying on your bed in Room 527, eyes closed. The sun has gone down and it's dark now. Night is falling on this Thursday at the Hotel del Coronado; Thursday, November 19, 1896. The lights are being turned on in the hotel now. The light fixtures are for both gas and electricity but the gas is not used.

They're installing, on this very day, a steam heating system which is scheduled for completion by next year. At the moment, every room is heated by a fireplace. This room, 527, is being heated by a fireplace. At this very moment, in the darkness of this Thursday, November 19,1896, a fire is burning in the hearth across from you; crackling softly, sending waves of heat into the room, illuminating it with firelight.

In their rooms, other guests are dressing, now, for dinner in the Crown Room. Elise McKenna is in the hotel at this very moment; perhaps in the theater checking some detail of her production of The Little Minister, which is scheduled for tomorrow night, perhaps changing clothes in her room. Her mother is in the hotel. So, too, is her manager, William Fawcett Robinson. So, too, is her acting company. All their rooms are being heated by fireplaces; as is this room, Room 527, on this late afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1896. There is a wall safe in the room as well.

You're lying quietly, at peace, your eyes closed, in this room in 1896, November 19, 1896; Thursday afternoon, November 19, 1896. Soon you will get up and leave the room and find Elise McKenna. Soon you will open your eyes on this now dark afternoon in November 1896 and walk into the corridor and go downstairs and find Elise McKenna. She is in the hotel now. At this very moment. Because it is November 19,1896. November 19,1896. November 19, 1896.

(And so on, for another twenty pages.)

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Six forty-seven p.m. Had a meal brought to my room. Some soup, a sandwich. A mistake. I was so imbued with 1896 conviction-despite the 1971 appearance of the room- that the entry of the waiter was a jarring intrusion.

No more of that. A backslide but not beyond remedy. I'll buy some crackers, cheese, et cetera, in the Smoke Shop, eat in the room from now on. Just enough to keep me going while I continue with my project.

Still another problem. Well, actually, the same one.

The sound of my voice.

It's becoming increasingly distracting. No matter how far I drift mentally, I know inside of me, in some deep core of realization that will not be deceived, that it's my voice talking to me. I can't imagine what else to do, but it is unsettling.