THE TRAVELER 

     It took her exactly one minute to die.

     At 7:59, Tanya Emerson was as healthy as could be expected for a woman of fifty. Her neurons were firing, sending messages back and forth about the rain lashing against the windows and the ominous rumble of thunder sounding from outside and train delays and how she could not be late. Her heart was beating, pushing forward the blood that was turning her face red from exertion as she flew around her apartment in a whirl, throwing on blood-red lipstick and tugging on her pearls and evening gloves. Her hands were fluttering, smoothing down her hair, an auburn iteration of Marilyn Monroe’s current style. And her eyes. Her eyes were watching everything. As she left her hotel room, she saw the big marble clock on the wall, pushing ever closer to 8:00. She saw the light of the elevator arrow, the ficus plant that needed watering, and the yellow-painted door that opened with a clang.

     It wasn’t until she stepped through, looking back toward a sudden noise behind her, that she realized she hadn’t seen everything. As she stepped forward, she hadn’t seen that behind that yellow door, there was no ugly olive floral wallpaper.

     There was no floor.

     It took her five seconds to fall and fifty-five seconds to bleed out on the floor of the elevator shaft.

     At 8:00, Tanya Emerson was dead.

​

     At 7:50, Terrence Myers charged into the lobby, ignoring the raised eyebrows and muffled coughs that sprung up at his outfit. He’d gotten the clothing wrong, hadn’t dressed for far enough in the past. It wasn’t until he’d arrived that he’d realized his wild hair and neon clothing belonged in the middle of 1988, not 1958.

     But there wasn’t time for something as trivial as a trip to the clothing shop now. His need to find her was an insatiable hunger, and he couldn’t stop himself from picturing the moment, the feel of the knife sliding through her skin. He reached down into his case and wrapped his hand around the knife hilt once more. He’d held it so many times, playing the moment over and over in his mind until it felt like a movie scene, each line delivered with heart-pounding intensity. Just the touch of the smooth metal sent a thrill through his body, racing down his back all the way down to his toes.

     Tonight.

     He was going to enjoy this, take his time. As he pulled his hand back out of his case to open the door to the stairwell, the metal orb inside of the bag fell out and turned on. It rose up to eye level and then hovered, lighting up with a hologram display of a recent broadcast he’d viewed. He hastily snatched it out of the air and shoved it into his case, signaling with his retinal display to shut off the device. The light emanating from his bag dimmed, and he glanced around the lobby to make sure no one else had seen it. Thank goodness he’d turned the sound down. He wasn’t sure which would garner more questions: the technology that wouldn’t be invented for centuries, the headline screaming about a time-hopping serial killer, or the date at the top of the broadcast: March 25th, 2194.

     The government’s Department of News and Public Information, the only source of information in North Mexico these days, had been detailing the Traveler’s kills for months now.  Terrence didn't much like the name “The Traveler.” It sounded more like an old rock band than someone who was slicing through history like a blade, the most feared―and skilled, he added silently―murderer of all time.

     From the perspective of the people he’d just left in the lobby, the events the broadcast described wouldn’t happen for over two hundred years. For Terrence, it was his yesterday. He started up the staircase, mulling the broadcast over in his head. The police were making progress in the investigation, the article said. He scoffed as he began the hike up to the thirty-third floor, thinking about those idiots with their badges and laser guns, inept as always. Morons. Their reliance on their elite retinal displays was absurd: they saw so much, but they missed seeing anything at all. It had taken them a lifetime to even figure out why the victims were dressed so strangely.

     Each outfit was distinct, carefully chosen. The most recent, a woman of forty, was found tightened into a corset. A blood-soaked powdered wig was jammed over her disheveled dark hair, hinting at the mirrored palaces and painted faces of 18th century France. The one before that was a redhead, only seventeen, dressed in the style of ancient Egypt. Heavy eye makeup was streaked down her face, carried by rivers of tears before she’d died. Before the teenager were two males, also dressed from different periods of history: one was wearing the long pants and jacket of the Han dynasty, the other the rich apparel of the ancient Mayans. Those kills were sloppier, less refined and precise, but they still puzzled the nation. And the first one, the very first…

     Terrence closed his eyes, his heart thumping faster. No, he couldn’t look backward. Tonight is what mattered, just tonight and the woman waiting at the top of these steps. He was so close. No use getting distracted now.

There had been plenty of theories from the fear-mongering news in the early days, all wrong. Why the costumes? they asked, buzzing like fat fruit flies. Was it a strange fetish? One journalist speculated that the Traveler might be reproducing murders from history. The cops, the stupid cops, had started looking for historians and professors.

No one even guessed that it wasn’t a simple reproduction of murders throughout history, a series of copycat kills.  It was an endeavor that spanned time, twin kills committed in the past and the present by the same person. They should have known that someone like the Traveler wouldn’t be hindered by such a piddly, insignificant barrier as time. But they didn’t understand, didn’t open their minds to the possibility. Not until they received the note, speckled with blood.

I claim one in the past for each one in the present. Two bodies, a bridge through time. The perfect balance. Where will I strike next, I wonder… Or when?

     It should have been easy, then. To kill men and women throughout the centuries, time travel had to be involved. Temporal leaps were limited, obviously, which shortened the list of potential killers. But even with a note, with a clue so clear it boggled Terrence’s mind, the detectives hadn’t been able to figure it out. Terrence was smarter than them, it was that simple. And there was murder in his eyes tonight.

 

     At 7:45, Greg Dunk’s keys fell out of his tool belt as he leaned over to flush the toilet. He plunged his hand in, hoping to catch them before they swirled down forever, but he was too late. Groaning, he pulled his drenched hand out, his sleeve dripping, and checked his watch. After being completely submerged, the second hand was twitching back and forth between the four and five instead of moving forward. Well, that was just swell. He only had forty-five minutes until he was meeting Tanya, and now he had to get home, change his shirt, and then get to the restaurant on time. Without his keys or a watch that worked.

     Honestly, it had been that kind of a day.

     His first job was to work on a fraying elevator cable at the Dourman Hotel downtown. He arrived at the hotel an hour later than planned due to an unfortunate incident with a pothole and a very lucky labradoodle. The hotel had already rung Handyman Repair’s main office, and Greg knew his boss would be in a rage tomorrow morning when he checked in. He could picture Mr. Beadle’s red face and bulging eyes now.

     His first task, according to the thin-moustached bellhop who greeted him at the door, was to go to every single level of the thirty-eight floor hotel and hang up an Elevator under maintenance, please use stairs sign. Greg sighed, resigning himself to wasting half an hour doing something he’d just have to undo at the end of the day.

And then came the bright, sunny moment in his cloudy day. On the thirty-third floor, a middle-aged broad with curling brown hair and kind eyes emerged from one of the hotel rooms just as Greg was putting the sign on the elevator. She was wearing a flowered dress and evening gloves, this early in the morning, carrying a clutch in her hands. When she saw his sign, she stopped, wrinkling her nose. “It seems I chose the wrong floor to stay on. There are a great deal too many stairs in this hotel, aren’t there?”

     He mumbled out an apology, scratching his head, but she laughed it off. “I need the exercise. Beside, the lovely view is worth it. I’m Tanya. Tanya Emerson.”

     “Greg Dunks,” he answered.

     “Did you start at the top or at the bottom, Greg?”

     “Top,” he said. She really was lovely, now that he got a look at her. She likely wouldn’t catch anyone else’s eye; her face was just as wide as it was tall, and she was a bit thin for modern sensibilities. But there was a spark of humor dancing about behind her big brown eyes, and when she smiled at him Greg couldn’t help but smiling back. “Six floors down, thirty-two to go,” he added.

     “I’ll start at the bottom, you start at the top,” she suggested. “If I’ve done more floors than you have by the time we meet, you’re treating me to dinner tonight, Mr. Dunks.”

He choked out a surprised laugh. “I can’t accept that deal,” he said, though he wanted to. “I’m not going to make a dame do my work for me.”

     “I see.  Pardon me for being forward, Mr. Dunks, but how else is a modern woman supposed to find a beau?” she asked.

     “I guess a man will just have to have the courage to ask you to dinner,’ he responded. He swallowed hard. “Mrs. Emerson, will you―”

     “Miss Emerson,” she interrupted.

     “Miss Emerson, will you accompany me to dinner tonight?”

     She smiled prettily. “Indeed I will.”

     They exchanged a few more pleasantries, set a time and a restaurant for that night, and then he made his way down to the next floor. The day had, in all appearances, turned itself around.

     He immediately fell down the next flight of stairs and gave himself a bloody nose.

     The whole afternoon, he was plagued by misfortune after misfortune. His hammer fell down the elevator shaft, his pants ripped right down the bottom when he crouched down, and his tools spilled out with a loud cacophony and bangs and clangs in front of an unusually irate German’s room, setting off a cascade of Bavarian profanity.

     Not only that, but he was so distracted by his date that night, the first in far too long, he kept making silly mistakes and having to redo his work. Everything took twice as long as usual. By the time he left for his next job around four o’clock, he was surprised he hadn’t broken the elevator entirely and sent it plunging to the basement. He could only imagine what his boss would say to that. Men, Greg decided, should not be allowed to do manual repairs on heavy equipment when under the influence of a broad as pretty as Tanya.

 

     At 7:59, Terrence reached the top of the stairs, his hand wrapped around the knife again. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, his hair was plastered to his forehead and neck, and his breath was coming out in short, painful bursts. There were a lot of floors to this hotel, and Tanya Emerson was only five from the top. Despite the exertion, Terrence had sped up as he ascended instead of slowing down. Unable to hold himself back, he’d run the final few floors. What if he missed her? He’d been picturing this moment, and he wouldn’t let it be thwarted due to lack of aerobic exercise in his life.

     He took a few seconds when he made it to the door of the thirty-third floor, pulling the knife fully out of his bag and catching his breath. Then he opened the door.

     She was there walking toward the elevator, just as he’d imagined her, dressed in a sunny yellow dress and hat. She looked just like everyone else, but she wasn’t. Not to Terrence. Not at all. As he watched, the elevator doors in front of her slid open with a smooth glide.

     As she stepped forward into the elevator, Tanya Emerson looked back at the sound of Terrence’s heavy breathing. Her eyes widened. She recognized him.

     And then she disappeared from sight, dropping down through the elevator floor that only now Terrence could see didn’t exist. His breath caught in his throat as she vanished from his view.

     She screamed on the way down, a high-pitched squeal of animal fear. He couldn’t hear the thud, not like he would have if this were a movie, but the screaming stopped abruptly when she hit the bottom. He stood there in shock for just a moment.

     Once his limbs started moving again, he advanced toward the elevator door. It was too dark to make out anything so far down, but squinting down into the darkness, he could easily picture the mess at the bottom. Shaking his head, he walked back toward the stairs.

     He stopped at the bank of payphones when he got back down to the lobby and called the police. He didn’t know how operators worked, but he figured it out quickly enough. He put on quite a show, trying to capture the panic and shock that he should have been feeling. Voice pitched too high, words running together. In truth, he didn’t feel anything at all. Just empty, hollowed out like a jack-o-lantern.

     At the ground floor, a group had already gathered around Tanya Emerson’s body, a mass of surging onlookers. It was the demon in all of them, that kept them rooted to their places, the dark part of human nature that couldn’t look away. Terrence knew they were all fighting fear and curiosity in equal measure, but he still felt that strange ringing emptiness. The hotel manager was assuring everyone that everything was under control, urging the chattering guests to return to their rooms… using the stairs, of course.

     Hotel security was keeping the crowd at a distance from the elevator, at least, where the doors had been pried open. Even from ten feet away, Terrence could tell she was dead.

     The Traveler was dead.

     Of course she was. He knew no one could survive that fall, but somehow he’d thought that her malice alone was enough to keep her alive, like evil could sustain a body even after everything else failed it. It had been a quick way to die, for someone who had tortured and killed so many, but she was gone, and that was enough. He’d thought he wanted to do it himself, to take his time, but now that it was over he was glad it had gone quickly. Justice had quenched his thirst for revenge.

     Terrence knew this wouldn’t bring his sister back. He knew that. He would never be rid of the image of Tara, dressed like a dancer at a disco hall, covered in blood. The Traveler’s first victim. This death, however, would save someone else’s sister. The Traveler would never kill anyone again, in any time. She’d been leaving for somewhere, for someone, when she’d fallen, and now that person would wake up tomorrow. Somewhere in this city, there was a person who would have died tonight, and they would never know. Terrence wrapped his hand around the knife one more time, squeezing the hilt as hard as he could, and then he let go. Finally, he could let go.

     He surreptitiously turned on his retinal display, taking a photograph. His newsfeed tomorrow would have a very different headline. With one final glance at the broken body, Terrence turned and walked out the front door. The police would be looking for him, the stranger who’d called after witnessing Tanya Emerson’s fall. They’d have plenty of questions, holes in the story, but they wouldn’t get them from Terrence. They wouldn’t be able to locate him, the mystery man who’d vanished almost as soon as he’d arrived. He wasn’t sticking around in this bygone era to answer their questions.

     He had a future to get back to.

 

     At 8:02, Greg got out of the taxi cab he’d taken home and raced up to his doorstep. He checked the old clock hanging on the wall. He would never make it to the restaurant in time. He quickly changed into another clean shirt and pants that weren’t shredded, grabbed his spare car key, and ran back out to the idling taxi cab. As soon as the driver hit the gas, heading back to Greg’s office to drop him off at his car, Greg began planning an apology for his tardiness. I’m so sorry. I have a story to tell about why I’m so late. I think it will make you smile. He thought she’d be forgiving. She was kind-hearted, he could tell. There was something about the way she’d smiled at him that made him feel seen. And she’d chosen him, of all the people in the bustling hotel, to take her to dinner tonight.

     Despite his off-kilter day, Greg was going to have an amazing evening, he could just feel it. Tanya was something special, and he couldn’t wait to get to know her better.