The Relapse Door

Tom, bewildered, looked through the glass -- at least it appeared to be glass to him -- to see another woman appear in the snow where Margarethe had disappeared. Looking deeper into the gray scene, he saw a man...Mark, from his company, Tom realized. Could Mark be looking for him?

Mark wasn't facing the door, so he didn't see the woman who had appeared where Margarethe had disappeared. Now she caught Tom's attention: a thin African American woman, with big hair and even bigger breasts, swathed in a prom dress. What on earth, Tom wondered...then he realized that she was Margarethe, appearing as Mark's ideal fantasy. At the same instant that Tom made that realization, Mark turned to see her. With a shocked grin he dropped the stick -- or maybe it was a rifle -- he was carrying, and turned to run. But he tripped over something and was soon out cold. Margarethe picked up the weapon and threw it somewhere; perhaps in the creek, Tom thought. Then she turned back to face the window, and leapt through.

Back inside, Margarethe was once again Tom's vision of Margarethe, with the red hair and the green dress. "Don't worry," she told Tom, who was still gaping at Mark's still body. "He'll wake up in a few minutes and he won't remember anything. And if he's got any sense he'll never come near the door again."

"What if he does?"

Margarethe looked apologetically at Tom. "It's a matter of life and death that we keep them away from here, Tom," she said. "There must be casualties."

"So he'd have fallen through the door and drowned in the ocean?"

"If he was lucky," Margarethe said bluntly. If he made it to shore, well, I don't want to know what might have become of him should he begin attracting appeals to the dangerous past. That has never happened yet, if it makes you feel better. But I cannot promise it never will."

"Not unless we can shut the door," Tom said.

"Exactly," Margarethe said. "And I am afraid that may require some ugly actions on your part, Tom. That is why I showed you the wasteland inside the first door. If your era's values escape past you and me, that nightmare could return. That is why I showed you the scene from your home era inside the second door. No matter how pure of heart you are, Tom, you are not going to change everyone's mind. Furthermore, everyone you saw there whose lifespan is beyond fifty more years is doomed to a miserable end in any case. It's a war against an evil from the past, Tom. Do you understand?"

"I think so," Tom said. "But if they're all going to die in a few more decades anyway, is it really necessary for us to kill anybody?"

"I hope not," Margarethe said. "But you must be prepared for that possibility if we are to close the door."

Tom gazed out into the bucolic scene he had once been paid to destroy. "Then why can't we just close the door already?"

"We don't know exactly how," Margarethe said. "That you have arrived is the first step, assuming that you are the good-hearted member of the last generation, and I believe you are." With a saucy grin she looked him up and down and added, "And more than ever, I hope you are!"

Tom laughed, and longed for a kiss or more. But he knew it wasn't to be yet.

"The prophecy holds that the chosen one -- apparently you, Tom -- will create a drastic change of environment just on the other side of the door. That will further warp the fabric of time and force the gap to close, but not before you return to our time and to me." Margarethe smiled gently. "Now you see why you must draw upon all your inner strength, whether you are aware or not that it is there. I can see it, Tom. Can you?"

"A drastic change of environment," Tom repeated uncertainly. "What do I do, set the woods on fire?"

"If necessary," Margarethe said frankly.

"A forest fire? I could destroy acres of land! Homes! People could die!"

"That's all going to happen to them in a few more years no matter what you do," Margarethe reminded him. "And those beautiful woods of yours are going to end up at the bottom of the ocean. You and I cannot stop that from happening."

Tom sighed. "I am not a firebug, and I love those woods. There must be another way."

"If you can think of one, you are welcome to try it," Margarethe said. "But the longer you wait, the higher the risk that someone will escape to our time and reignite the longing for destructive creature comforts that nearly wiped out the human race in your time."

Tom felt compelled to turn away from the window. He stepped back out into the hallway, followed by Margarethe, who did not try to stop him. "Fine," he said flatly. "I guess I'll do what I need to do. Under one condition."

"You want to bring Jim back with you," Margarethe said.

Tom nodded.

"Even after what you saw just now," she said incredulously.

"That's not the real Jim!" Tom snapped. "He was just putting on a show for his buddies, and trying to impress those women. The real Jim has a heart of gold and he'll respect the new ways. I know it! Besides that, he owes me. I kept a humiliating secret for him once."

"I feared this would be necessary," Margarethe said. "Come with me." She led him back up the hallway to another door. "You may spend all the time you need here, Tom, in order to see the truth. You can even open other doors within and wander around the memory all you want. But I implore you to be brutally honest with yourself." With that she flung open the door and stepped aside.

Tom peered in and felt his heart leap into his throat. It was his room, back home. Late afternoon on a school day from the look of it, and he and Jim were sprawled on the floor playing cards. Probably about ninth grade, Tom guessed from the look of his younger self.

He turned back to see Margarethe standing in the doorway. She held it open for him, but shook her head when he bade her follow. "Take all the time you need, Tom," she called, her voice coming across the threshold like an echo. "But this is a bridge you must cross alone."

Tom had to confess to himself that her refusal made sense. He turned and regarded his long-ago conversation with his dearest friend.

"So you want to hang out at Corey's after school tomorrow?" he heard himself ask Jim, then known as Jimmy if they were as young as Tom thought. "They have pepperoni slices a buck each until four-thirty."

"Can't," Jim said. "I have basketball practice."

"What?!" Tom asked. "We talked about that, Jimmy. I was gonna try out but you said we weren't good enough!"

"I didn't say we weren't good enough," Jim shot back. "I said you weren't good enough."

"What the fuck, guy?" Young Tom stood up and kicked at the discard pile in outrage.

"Kidding!" Jimmy said. "I tried out, I made second string, knowing that was good enough for me and I quit the team. Yeah, I'd love to go for pizza with you."

"But maybe I wanted to try out for basketball!" Tommy snapped. "I'd have been fine with second string, and you don't know I wouldn't have made the team!"

"Yeah I do," Jimmy replied with a grin.

"Fuck off!"

"Kidding! Just messing with your mind, Tom. And if you ask me I did a pretty good job, too."

Adult Tom had seen enough. He remembered the conversation now, including how it had devolved into a fistfight soon afterward. He turned back to look at Margarethe, who pointed at his closet door across the room. Tom nearly tore the door off its hinges, so eager was he to get away. Stepping through the doorway, he found himself on a ratty-looking expanse of asphalt, just inside a chain link fence. The city pool, he realized, just down at the end of the cement path before him. Midday in the middle of summer, from the looks of it. In turn he recalled how the pool had always been closed for an hour at lunch while there was no lifeguard on duty. As usual, though, a glance down at the pool showed a few brave souls had snuck in one way or another.

On the pavement, a dozen or so kids were milling around just outside the fence, but Tom didn't see himself anywhere. He did see Jimmy -- probably about twelve -- walk brazenly though the gate and down towards the pool.

"Hey kid!" called an older teen from outside the bathhouse, probably a lifeguard.

Jimmy turned around. "Yeah?"

"The pool's closed."

"Well, my friend is already in there," Jimmy replied, and a memory arose for Tom.

"Go tell him to get out, then," the older boy told him.

"Okay." Jimmy set off again.

"Leave your towel up here."

Jimmy did as he was told. Tom set off after him, invisible to one and all. Soon he saw Jimmy flagging down Tom's younger self as he swam. "Tommy! You have to get out of there! The pool's closed!"

"You're here too, jump in!" Tom called.

"Can't! They know I'm down here and they made me leave my towel there and come get you."

Young Tom reluctantly got out of the pool and toweled off. "You shouldn't have told them I was here," he grumbled. "Just 'cause you weren't able to sneak past them."

"I didn't!" Jimmy lied. "They saw you and told me to go tell you to get out!"

Tom had seen enough. He recalled the incident now, and he recalled that he had always believed Jim's silly story. But through his annoyance, Tom was soon able to rationalize it all. Jim was just a kid then, and kids always get jealous of anything their friends get that they don't. Tom looked around and saw a storage shed by the pool, and opened the door.

He stepped out onto a different expanse of worn-down pavement. The elementary school playground, he realized after a moment's reflection. It was the end of recess, and the kids were lining up to return to class. Tom watched as his much younger self walked meekly up to boys' line outside the classroom door. Jimmy was just ahead of him, and turned around to see the boy he would one day call "bro" just behind him.

"Back up," Jimmy said gruffly.

Tom -- Tommy in those days -- did as he was told.

"Another step."

Tommy complied.

"Keep going," Jimmy snarled.

"How far?" Tommy asked obediently.

"Like till you hit California." With a snotty giggle, he turned and went inside without another word.

Well okay, Tom thought now, but all kids that age are nasty to each other sometimes, even with their friends. At that point he saw the door open, and out stepped Mrs. Perkins, their fourth grade teacher. Now Tom was further satisfied: the soccer field incident of fifth grade had not yet happened. Jim would never again mouth off at him like that after that day! Tom followed Mrs. Perkins and the kids through the door, undetected.

Inside, he found himself in a school, but it wasn't his elementary school. Junior high, he soon recalled. Must be late in the school year, he further mused, as all the kids he saw were dressed in light clothes. Tom walked down the row of lockers, winking undetected at a few of his old crushes and wondering what life-altering occasion he was about to relive.

Wait a minute, he realized with a start. Late in the year, eighth grade...it couldn't be the time he'd made such an ass of himself asking Polly Wilson to the dance and Ricky Mason, the smarmiest bully of all, had found out about it somehow?

To Tom's chagrin, it was. On the fourth or fifth row of lockers, he happened upon his angst-ridden fourteen year old self rifling angrily through his locker. Tom remembered it all too well -- any second now, Jimmy would show up...

And there he was "Hey Tom, I heard some people found out?"

Young Tom pulled his head out of his locker and glared at his friend. "Yeah, you told 'em!"

"What?! No way, man, I didn't tell anybody!"

"That's not what I heard!" Tom mouthed the words along with his younger self.

"Who told you I told them?" Jimmy looked just as righteously furious as Tom recalled.

"Ricky!" Tom snapped.

"I would never tell that creep! What are you talkin' about?"

"Ricky came up to me singsonging her name this morning, and said you told him! He said he bribed you for a dollar and you told him everything!"

"That liar!" Jimmy kicked a closed locker. "I wouldn't sell you out for anything, man, not after -- well, you know what! I know better than that!"

Adult Tom looked up the way to see the subject of their argument slithering up the hallway with his usual smirk. "Oh Tommy!" he teased, knowing Tom would be at his locker.

Jimmy barged out to meet their nemesis.

"Ah, Jimmy. Thanks for your help!" Ricky said.

"I didn't tell you nothing, liar!" Jimmy snapped.

"No need to lie to him now," Ricky said, continuing on the way to his locker. "The word's out, after all."

Jimmy looked back at Tom. "Let's punch him out."

By now adult Tom knew his former self would be two or three steps behind Jimmy. But he remembered every moment of this particular incident to begin with. Jimmy marched up to Ricky's locker with Tom just behind him. Ricky, still with his smirk, looked up from his locker to see Jimmy glaring at him. "Having second thoughts about selling out your bed-buddy, are you?" he asked smarmily.

Jimmy kicked the locker door hard enough to hit Ricky in the head and also knock him into the doorjamb. Ricky managed to keep from crying until the two buddies sauntered off.

The satisfaction of seeing that climax again was all that had kept Tom from turning tail and running for the nearest door as soon as he'd realized just which memory this was. He did not need a reminder of the humiliation of the days and weeks that followed as Polly and her friends stared at him in the hallway as if he were from the moon. No wonder he hadn't started dating until most of the way through high school.

With the satisfaction of finally learning that Ricky did in fact cry a bit once the coast was clear, Tom was late for the door -- any door. Feeling a bit naughty now, he headed for the women faculty's restroom. He got there just in time to see Miss Plamier, his seventh grade math teacher, leaving the room. No surprise that she'd been in the bathroom, Tom recalled, as she used to guzzle diet cola all day long. Chuckling with self-deprecation that he should recall such a thing, Tom pushed in the swinging door. At least this stop had proven that Jim's good side was not all in his imagination. He had, on the other hand, never learned how word really had gotten out about Polly.

Now it was a summer's day on the corner of Pearl and Larchmont, the block that separated Tom and Jim's childhood homes. The neighborhood looked ratty as ever and Tom found he hadn't missed it at all for those past seven months. He imagined it now as either a quaint village like modern Mascawad, or as unspoiled countryside, and he found he wished he could see it. For now, though, he was treated to a misty vision of the two of them on their bikes. No doubt we're on our way home from a wishful-thinking ride through a much nicer neighborhood, he thought as he watched the riders approach.

"So did you catch hell last night from the flavor of the month?" Jim asked.

"Nah, Mom didn't bring him home until I was already in bed," Tom replied. "So I stayed out of his sight this time."

"This time."

"Yeah," Tom said, and the implication remained unspoken.

"Is this the one who..."

"Yeah," Tom said. "Him. I'll probably just stay away until dark and climb in my room window. He can't catch me with his belt if he doesn't know I'm in the house." Adult Tom remembered all too well which of his mother's boyfriends that was, and why climbing through the window was worth all the trouble and then some.

"Aw, man, come over my place then," Jim said. "You can stay all night if you want."

"Won't your mother say no?"

"Not if she doesn't know," Jim reassured him. "Worse comes to worse, you sleep in the closet. She'll never know you're there!"

Tom remembered now: he had indeed spent the night in Jim's closet, and escaped that weekend with no bruises. And he hadn't even had to ask Jim for the favor. "All right, then, now I know," Tom said out loud.

He headed for what had once been his front door, wondering if he could will himself back to Margarethe's house. After the briefest glimpse of the dilapidated couch in the living room on which he had lost his virginity at seventeen, Tom saw a bright light and found himself back with Margarethe in the hallway. "Now do you see?" she asked him. "Yes, Jim has been a good friend to you, but he can also be selfish and cruel. And you never did see any proof that he didn't tell the other boy about this Polly girl, did you?"

"Well...no, but I mean, she must have told all her friends that night on the phone anyway! I remember, there was just enough time for him to find out from any of them."

"Perhaps," said Margarethe. "Tom, I can see he was a very good friend to you. But what I have seen does not indicate that he is pure of heart like you are, and indeed there is strong evidence that he is quite far from it."

"You don't know him like I do," Tom insisted.

"And you don't know what became of your world like I do," Margarethe countered. "Because of people like Jim who didn't care!"

Tom could not deny that. "Fine. Maybe you're right, but there's one thing I can do that will settle it once and for all."

"You want to go back to 2012 and invite him to join you here," Margarethe said with a knowing nod.

"Why not?" Tom replied.

"Why not indeed," Margarethe agreed. "You do have to go back through the door at least once anyway. In any case it is not for me to decide what you shall do back in your own time. But I shall warn you, Tom, I believe you are inviting a broken heart."

"That's awfully easy to say when you're not losing your best friend!"

"My family lost their entire world!" Margarethe countered, beginning an angry walk back towards the foyer. "For generations we were isolated here in a desert hell created by your generation and its predecessors, and as a result my own fate has been to guard the door against intruders from your time lest they do it all again, and to have to kill them when all else fails! My darling, the prophecy may call for me to love you, but that does not mean you may take me for granted and deny my losses and sacrifices!"

Tom followed in silence, considering all that she said. As they retreated into the silence of the foyer, he knew what he had to say. "Margarethe, I'm sorry. You're right. About everything. But please try to understand I can't just give up on Jim. We have a bond."

Margarethe turned around and looked mollified. "I accept that, my dear. But please do understand that your chances of success are quite small."

"If you say so," Tom admitted.

"I do. And as for your bond, Tom --"

"I can tell you about that if you want," Tom said.

"I know about it," Margarethe interrupted. "Fifth grade, on the soccer field." She gave him a knowing nod.

"Good heavens, how did you know that?!"

"The same way I know all I know about you, Tom, and that does not matter. What does matter is the nature of that bond. Think about it, my friend: who benefitted from that incident, and which of you suffered in the end?"

"Yeah," Tom admitted, "But from then on he was always there for me!"

"Always? What about the basketball team?"

Tom sat at the table in the center of the room and buried his face in his arms. He could feel his resolve weakening, but he couldn't give up on Jim. Not after all these years.

"Tom," Margarethe said evenly, still not touching him per the plan. "If you wish to see Jim one last time, I recommend you go through the door in the morning. It will take you some time to make your way back to Mascawad. Please get some sleep, and think about the repercussions of what you wish to do. I shall now be off to my own bed, which shall be our bed once this is all behind us. I wish you a very good night, my darling."

Tom raised his head to watch as she floated across to her bedchamber door and vanished inside. There was nothing to be done now but follow her advice, so he stood up and let himself into his bedchamber. An oil lamp on the bedside table illuminated the whole room, and a stack of logs awaited him in the fireplace. He struck a match and had the fire lit shortly, and slowly peeled off his clothes as the room warmed up. The bed looked inviting after the long swim, but his mind was racing and conflicted and he foresaw little chance of falling asleep anytime soon.