Lost Time: Parallel Society, #4

By Stuart Jaffe

In her short time with the Parallel Society, Roni Rider has faced many deadly creatures and horrifying situations. But nothing haunts her more than her Lost Time -- the large gaps in her memory stolen when she was a child. For Roni, it is a constant reminder the she is incomplete.

When a creature from deep within the Caverns reaches out to her, she is set upon a journey that will take her beyond anyplace she could imagine, a journey to find out what was stolen and why. She'll discover the truth behind her missing past, the dark secrets that had been kept from her for years, and the horrible repercussions of it all.

But first, she'll have to remember how she got there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Jaffe
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393451174

Book preview

Chapter 1

Before she opened her eyes, a man’s voice called Roni’s name. It started as a craggy sound in the distance but soon altered into a rich tone that reverberated in her ears. Her face scrunched tight. She smelled dampness in the air and her skin prickled. A rough thudding pulsated in her head as if her heart had decided it would be fun to repeatedly inflate her skull with sudden flushes of blood.

When she managed to open her eyes, she saw only white. She coughed and the white fluttered askew — a cloth had veiled her face. She reached up to remove it, causing thick aches to roll along her muscles. She groaned.

Pulling the cloth away, she gazed at the uneven ceiling of a large cave. It oscillated as if hundreds of creatures clung above. But as her eyes focused, she saw that they were chains. Thick, heavy chains. And what appeared to be books. Chained books bumping against the ceiling like abandoned balloons.

In a limp voice, she said, What the hell is going on?

A second later, Elliot’s comforting face looked down upon her. His dark, wrinkled skin and his broad, caring smile enveloped her like a favorite blanket. He put out his hand and helped her sit up. We are happy to see you alive, he said, his deep and precise way of speaking like a pleasant song.

Massaging her temples, Roni surveyed her surroundings. They were in a cave large enough to house at least a city block. Maybe more. Darkness shrouded the far end. Books littered the ground, some in tatters, some covered in dirt. A campfire crackled in front of her — its rich, burnt aroma rising into the air. Nearby, she saw stalagmites and stalactites reaching toward each other in massive columns while holes pockmarked the ground — some with half-buried bits of chains snaking out. Drips of water echoed in the distance.

From the fact that she had seen the chained books, she thought it safe to assume she was in the caverns below the family bookshop. Technically, not really below since the caverns existed in their own universe, but the access point sat beneath the bookshop, In The Bind, and that worked enough for Roni’s struggling mind.

She turned her head with deliberate care so as not to cause a headrush. Squatting off to the side, a black woman stared back. This woman looked strong, had short hair, and determination blazing in her eyes. Her outfit struck Roni as a cross between pragmatic, American denim and the colorful, African robes of Senegal.

Further back, standing near one of several exits, Roni spotted a short man wearing slacks and a simple button-down shirt. The man kept his eyes on the tunnel leading away. With his arms crossed and his body bent forward, he allowed the shadows to hide much of his face. Still, he reminded Roni of Sully, the Parallel Society’s leader, except this man was far younger and had a hue to his skin as if he spent too much time in a tanning bed.

She turned to Elliot, and the white cloth that had covered her face fell into her lap. What is all this? Who are these people? Where’s Gram and Sully?

We are deep in the caverns. The woman over there is Teanna. We met her on our way. And the one by the door is a golem Sully prepared for us.

Lifting the white cloth, Roni said, And this?

Elliot’s eyes glistened. Covering the face of the dead is a sign of respect.

I died?

I thought you might. But, happily enough, you pulled yourself back.

Teanna stood — not as tall as Roni had expected — and gestured towards the exit. When she spoke, her voice had a melodic, articulated accent unlike any Roni had ever heard. Teanna said, She is clearly going to be fine. Can we go now?

Slow down, Elliot said. She has been through a lot.

He raised his old, gnarled cane and proscribed a special motion over Roni’s head. Moments later, she felt warmth cover her body as Elliot’s healing magic took form.

The longer we wait, Teanna said, the greater our chances of losing her. If she escapes —

Shaking his head while continuing to cast his healing, Elliot said, That thing looked as confused as Roni. It has suffered as well, and it will require rest, too. We have time.

Roni grabbed Elliot’s hand. Please, tell me what’s happened? I don’t understand how we even got here.

Elliot gazed upon her with pity that reached into her core like a twisting blade. What’s the last thing you remember?

She closed her eyes and thought back. Her stomach dropped. Her brow tightened as she fought the fear mounting inside her. But then she smiled. She remembered. This morning. I had breakfast with you and Sully in your apartment. I had toast with raspberry jam. Sully had a bagel and coffee. And you went with only a cup of tea. After, Sully and I took the elevator down to the bookstore, and you said you’d be down after a morning shower. Gram was getting ready to open up. She wanted me to run the register for an hour around lunch so she could have a break, and I said that I’d planned to spend the whole day in the Grand Library catching up on work, so yeah, I’d do it.

Elliot placed a hand on her shoulder. That was days ago.

What? The word echoed from deep within. From her core. From her past. From a little girl learning that her mother had died in a car accident and her father had lost his mind with grief, yet she had no memory of it happening. Gram assumed the duties of raising her and called it Lost Time. But to Roni, it was a dark gap in her life — and not the only one.

Her body shivered, and Elliot returned to his healing motions. A scream gurgled up her throat, but she wrestled it back. Something bad had happened, and if she wanted to stop things from getting worse, she needed to be clear-headed. Besides, no way would she let herself fall apart in front of a stranger.

She eyed Teanna before leaning closer to Elliot. This can’t be happening again, she whispered.

This is different, he said. You’ll see. I’m here to aid you before the Lost Time can swipe everything. He glanced back at the large, empty cavern. Maybe it can’t ever do it again. Doesn’t matter. Give it a chance and I feel confident your memories will return.

I know what Lost Time feels like. This is exactly it, and I know what it’ll do to me. The panic rose up her chest. She clenched her muscles until it relaxed back into the pit of her stomach like a lump of mud.

This isn’t like what happened with your parents.

Why? What’s so different?

He gestured to the echoing space around them, the books on the ceiling, and those on the floor. This is all that’s left of the Cave of Lost Time.

Chapter 2

Roni opened her eyes and saw only white. A piece of paper had settled on her face. She pulled it off, and as she lifted her head from her worktable in the Grand Library, she swooned. Reaching for the edge to steady herself, Roni paused long enough to regain her equilibrium.

After several seconds, she grumbled as she picked up the papers that had dropped to the floor. She had never passed out like that before — just going along and then suddenly faceplanted into the wood. At least, never without a hefty amount to drink.

Maybe she had been working too hard. Not looking after herself. But that didn’t seem right. Ever since returning from Ireland, she had started to exercise and made sure to eat breakfast with Elliot and Sully at least every other morning. Although, the exercise mostly consisted of finding excuses to avoid the gym, and she couldn’t really call a breakfast of toast with raspberry jam good nutrition.

Okay, she told the empty library. Message received.

She would have to do better. After all, what was the point of going through all her hard work restoring the Library, if she only fell down dead the moment she could finally make use of it?

The Grand Library had become a treasure to Roni. Originally, Gram appeared to have used the place as a way to keep Roni out of trouble and limit her involvement. Let her join the Parallel Society but stick her in the Grand Library organizing for a few years. Even after Sully took over the leadership role, the job still felt like a way to sideline her. And with all that had happened in Ireland, it should have felt like a punishment.

Except, for Roni, the Library had transformed her as much as she had transformed it. Most of the texts were old diaries and journals of those who had been in the Society before her. Far too much to read for one person, but the act of sorting through it all had revealed plenty of exciting tidbits.

Like Benjamin Zepke’s 1924 descriptions of a universe with people that made the Lilliputians sound like giants. Or the 1872 account by Margaret Carnicero of a mermaid-esque creature that fell into the Atlantic Ocean and caused a lot of trouble with British sailors. And, of course, the rather flamboyant journals of Sasha Grace who spent more time discussing her desire to bed various men from various universes than actually detailing how she succeeded in her missions.

Roni glanced across the beautiful woodwork to the far corner where she kept her growing map of the caverns. It had been a project that consumed her from the start — combing through the drawings and sketches and anecdotes and descriptions of the caverns to compose a single, reliable map. Since much of the exploration had been done long ago, back when they knew far less about the dangers of traveling through the caverns, much of the information lacked an accurate scale. But Roni persevered.

All because of the one section labeled Lost Time.

The area had no known direct connection to the rest of the caverns, leaving Roni to resort to an educated guess as to its placement on the map, but over the last two years of work, she grew more confident that she could find it. In fact, she had moved its location three times — always a little closer, a little clearer, a little surer that she would one day step foot in the large cave. There were two clear gaps from the cave to the rest of her map. Somewhere in all the books of the Library, somebody had to have put the answer to paper. After all, somebody already found the Cave of Lost Time once before.

She glanced at her laptop’s clock. She had promised Gram that she would mind the bookstore at lunchtime and did not want to be late. Gram’s need for punctuality had worsened recently.

Not just recently, she said as she sat at the table.

When they had returned from Ireland, Gram became stricter, if that was possible. Roni tried to be understanding. The woman had spent decades mourning the loss of her daughter, and Roni’s actions at the Abbey had brought a lot of the secrets concerning that loss to the surface.

But Roni’s patience had begun to wear thin. Yes, Gram went through losing her daughter all over again, but that same daughter was Roni’s mother. An echo of her, at least. Losing the mother she barely remembered ripped through her whenever she thought of it. And as much as she had promised herself that she would ease back on the search for the truth of what had happened to her and her parents — her Lost Time, as Gram would say — Roni had pushed ahead with greater urgency.

Rubbing her face, she sighed. She could hear Sully in her head. Books are great, wonderful things but you still need people. Closing her laptop, she thought about going out later that night. Maybe drive into Philly and bar hop for a bit. Probably not what Sully had in mind, but she could use the break and the release.

Besides, she said. But she never finished the sentence.

The blast struck in the center of her head. It burst outward like a migraine volcano erupting throughout her brain. She cried out. Her knees buckled. As she crumpled to the floor, warm blood dribbled from her nose.

That warmth spread. Not in blood, though. When the initial shock to her system waned, the pleasant warmth that took hold reminded her of days spent under the sun in the Poconos.

And that thought brought to mind her father. Lawrence Rider. Before the death of his wife, Roni’s father was a vibrant man, truly full of life. She could see him standing on the shore of Lake Wallenpaupack, his thin but well-defined body golden and shining. He waved for her to follow him into the water. She was scared. Maybe only six- or seven-years-old. The lake was big. Maybe a few billion years old. It would gobble her whole.

Her concern rippled across her skin, and another painful blast in her head spun her world. She found herself sitting in the visiting area of Belmont Behavioral Hospital waiting to see her father. She was an adult again. And he was lost again. His gaunt and vacant eyes, his wasting body, his labored breaths — how could this be the same man?

He had leaned toward her that day. She had told him that she knew about the Parallel Society, and he inclined his head with the same water-gobbling fear she felt so long ago. More will be coming. His warning. His prophecy.

Come on, Roni, he said, his voice young and comforting.

She looked over her shoulder, back at her mother standing by a cooler filled with water, soda, and beer. Her mother, Maria, pointed toward the lake and smiled with rare sobriety. Go on, she said. Daddy will be with you.

Roni toddled across the stones and pebble-strewn shore until she reached the edge of the water. Her father stood knee deep and smiling. Children screeched and chased each other while adults waded in and out of the dark waters.

Dark. That’s how her mind felt most often. Lost Time.

Her father’s voice reached out to her from the same place the migraine had begun. Gram called it that for a reason, he said. It was his voice now, old and cracking, yet the tone held the potency of his life before.

Daddy? she said, her own voice a mixture of her adult and child selves as if only a thin membrane separated the different vibrations.

Come out to me, he said, standing in the lake, his arms wide open and welcoming. Come out to me. He stood in a hallway of the hospital, his eyes wide open and lost.

Daddy?

His call returned weaker, quieter, as if somebody faded down the volume control in her mind. She thrust her arms out, trying to snatch anything that might bring her father back. But as his voice swept out into the emptiness from where it had come, a new wave crashed over her — pain.

Gripping her skull, she rolled onto her side, her back banging against the Library worktable, and she screamed. The blood running from her nose trickled into her mouth, bitter and metallic. Tears welled in her eyes, leaking out of her tightly-closed lids, and her brain continued its painful pounding.

Then nothing.

Quiet.

She heard only her own breathing.

The pain dissipated. The pounding flowed away. Though her heart thrummed against her ribs and her muscles juddered when used, she managed to pull back up to the table. Gazing around the Library, she sought any sign that what happened had actually happened.

Of course, it happened, she said, the sound of her voice — her adult voice — easing her mind. I can still taste the blood.

What had happened was an entirely different question. She had experienced a flash of memory, a glimpse of her Lost Time. That much was clear. But what of the rest of it?

Ever since joining the Parallel Society, experiencing weird occurrences no longer jarred her as much, but that didn’t mean she accepted it all with ease. Or pain free, for that matter. But it did mean that she would not deny the experience. She had seen her father in the hospital standing in a hallway, beckoning her to come. He saw her, recognized her. It felt real.

This could not be a misfire in her brain. She refused to entertain the idea. Though a small whisper in the back of her mind suggested that she should see a doctor, check for a tumor, make sure nothing bled where it shouldn’t. After all, she had stepped into other universes. She had been exposed to alien environments and alien germs. The possibility that such exposure might cause a change in her physical chemistry — in her brain chemistry — could not be denied.

No. No. She could not allow those thoughts. It would be the cruelest irony for the universe to ruin her mind just as she had begun to find her place. She refused