Chapter 4
After Sam had eaten, Al left him to check on Peter. Finding him still at the bar, he felt it was safe to leave the Imaging Chamber for a while to snatch a break.
Sam meanwhile, took a bath, found some antiseptic cream to put on his knees and got ready for bed. He climbed onto the top bunk and sat fingering the five little toys, hoping Zach would approve of his choice. He unzipped Scruff's hidden compartment and concealed the toys safely inside, before settling down on his back and gazing at the photograph, imagining how life might have been in the Slater house if Emma had lived. After a while his thoughts drifted to his own family and he surprised himself by recalling a couple of long buried memories from his own happy childhood.
When Al returned later, he found Sam asleep with the photograph resting on his chest. Scruff seemed to be keeping guard at the top of the ladder.
"Sam, wake up! Sam!"
Sam sleepily opened his eyes and turned on his side to face Al. "You're back," he croaked.
"Yes, I'm back. And so is he! Well, nearly anyway."
Sam pushed himself upright and pulled Zach's clock out from beside the mattress. "It's half past eleven."
"Yeah, it's late. Listen, Sam, he's pretty drunk. Maybe you should leave this until the morning."
"If I do that, he'll probably be out the door before I get a chance to speak with him. At least tonight he's not …" Sam paused as the front door slammed, "… not going anywhere."
"But maybe that's what Zach did wrong. He was probably so desperate to find out the truth that he confronted his dad with it at a bad time. At least if you wait until tomorrow morning, it'll be daylight. If Peter tries anything there might be witnesses who could stop him." Al stopped and then added, "If you decide you're not going to tell him tonight, maybe you'll leap."
Sam lowered his voice now that Peter was back in the house. "I'm not sure I want to leap yet. I want to make sure things are better when Zach comes back."
"Well, maybe you won't leap. Just please, don't speak to him tonight. Get up early and make him listen to you tomorrow," Al pleaded.
Sam stared silently at the photograph for several seconds. Then he looked back at Al. "OK. I'll wait. Now ask Ziggy if Zach lives."
Al pressed a few buttons on the handlink and his expression grew concerned. "Sam, Ziggy still says the same. Zach is reported missing tomorrow and found dead in the quarry on Sunday."
Suddenly the door to Zach's bedroom was flung wide open. Al froze and Sam quickly slapped the photograph frame face down on the bed. Peter stood in the doorway, eyes glazed. He tottered into the bedroom, stinking of cigarette smoke and beer and leaned on the safety rail of the bunk.
"Zachary … good … good … night," he slurred. And then he stared, unseeing, at Sam in a way that even Sam found unnerving. For a small child woken late at night, he imagined it would be terrifying.
"Good night, Dad," Sam responded, hoping he would go away. But he didn't. He just carried on staring. Finally, he pushed himself away from the bunk, swaying slightly and it seemed he was about to turn back towards the door, when something caught his eye.
Both Sam and Al followed his gaze to the photograph frame, which lay beside Sam's left thigh. Peter leaned back against the safety rail and slowly reached out and turned the frame over. For a few seconds, he continued to stare unseeing. Then a hint of recognition flitted across his face before he broke into a smile. He ran a finger over Emma's face and said her name aloud, his eyes becoming watery.
Without warning his gaze abruptly broke away from the photograph and he stared intensely at Sam. He opened his mouth and said quietly and searchingly, "Where'd you get that from?" Before Sam had a chance to answer, Peter leaned into his face and yelled, "Where'd you get that from?"
And suddenly everything happened very fast.
Peter grabbed Sam by his upper arms and hauled him inelegantly out of the bunk. Setting Sam's feet on the floor, he shook him and again yelled in his face, "Where'd you get it from?"
Sam, completely taken aback by the sudden violence, stuttered clumsily, "From ... the attic. I needed it for s… school. My homework."
"Don't ever go up there." The tirade continued. "That's … private." His speech was still slurred, despite the effort he was putting into volume and aggression.
Al watched the unfolding drama in horror, willing Sam to recover his senses and respond in some way productive.
The scene seemed freeze-framed for a moment, before Peter flung Sam backwards as hard as he could, snatched up the photograph and staggered from the room without looking back. The door slammed violently and the room fell quiet.
Al had watched helpless as Sam fell, and flinched as he heard the side of Sam's head smack hard on a piece of metal protruding from the dismantled cradle. Sam remained where he landed, sprawled unconscious on his side between the bunk beds and chest of drawers. Beneath his head, fresh blood soaked into the carpet.
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"Sam!" Al crouched beside him and silently cursed that he couldn't reach out to help him. He leaned over Sam's body and was relieved to see the steady expansion and contraction of his friend's chest. Seeing the blood, he knew there must be a bad gash hidden under Sam's thick hair. He called again to him, "Sam, can you wake up for me? Sam?"
Gradually, Sam's eyes flickered open. He lay still for a moment, seemingly digesting the image of Al before him. Suddenly, he appeared startled, sat up sharply and backed up against the wall, raising his right hand to his injured head as he did so.
"Sam, are you OK?" Al ventured, still crouching on the floor just in front of Sam.
Sam already looked wide-eyed and afraid, but drawing his hand away from his head and finding it covered with blood, he looked as though he was about to cry.
Al shelved his growing unease at Sam's behavior and tried to reassure him. "Sam, you fell and hit your head. It's bleeding a little bit, but you're OK. Talk to me, will you?"
Sam put his hand back over the gash and stared at Al. Then he opened his mouth and said in a tiny voice, "My name's Zach." He began to chew on his lower lip, not daring to take his frightened eyes away from Al's image.
"Oh, boy," Al breathed out. He backed away from Sam a little and sat cross-legged on the carpet, trying to make himself look as unthreatening as possible. He spoke gently, "You're not Zach. Your name's Sam Beckett. You're a scientist and you time travel and leap into people's lives to make things better for them." Al paused, recognising the confusion in Sam's face. They had been down this road before. "This time you leaped into Zach Slater. To everyone around you, except me, you look like Zach. But you're not Zach. You're Sam. You've swapped places with Zach and he's back at … a place we call the Waiting Room … waiting for you to save his life so he can come back."
Al waited for a hint of a memory in Sam's face, but was instead dismayed to see his friend becoming tearful. Sam opened his mouth, but could hardly speak. "I'm Zach. Please don't hurt me."
Desperation clawed at Al. He knew that if Sam had somehow got some of Zach's mind muddled with his own, he was in great danger of meeting the same end as the child. He needed to get 'Sam' back, but was struggling with the distress he was causing. For a few seconds, the dilemma consumed him, but a decision had to be made and for the moment it wasn't productive to upset Sam further.
Al took a deep breath. "I'm not going to hurt you, Zach. I promise. Look, I can't even touch anything, so I can't hurt you." He demonstrated by swinging his arm through the bottom bunk.
Sam gazed at this action, both fearful and amazed. "Are you a ghost?" he whispered.
"No. I'm something called a hologram. I'm a real person in the future, but I'm not really here right now. You can just see kind of a picture of me."
"Why are you in my bedroom?" Sam took his hand away from his head again. Blood was starting to trickle down the side of his face.
"I'm trying to help you. How about you go and get something to hold on your head."
Sam still seemed uneasy about moving in any way closer to Al and recognising this, Al shuffled backwards a bit towards the bedroom door. Very slowly, Sam got up, but instead of moving forward, he stayed rooted to the spot. When he spoke, his voice was very trembly. "I don't feel very good."
"Sit down, Sam … Zach," Al said quickly, but Sam barely needed telling. He had already dropped to the floor and was on his knees with his elbows resting on the carpet and his head in his hands. "Just stay quiet and still for a little while. You'll feel better in a minute."
Al was unsure whether to believe his own statement. He sat quietly watching Sam and didn't say anything when after a minute or two, Sam slowly uncurled himself, picked up Scruff from where he had fallen beside the bed, crawled up onto the bottom bunk and lay on his left side with his bloodied hands clasped together in front of his mouth and Scruff resting against his chest. His forehead was sweaty and blood-smeared, but there no longer seemed to be any fresh blood emerging from his hairline, although Al noticed that his knees were again bleeding and weeping through his pajamas.
After another minute or so of silence, Al moved from the foot of the bed, and sat cross-legged again directly in front of the bunk ladder, where he could see Sam's face between the rungs.
"Are you feeling a bit better?"
Sam made eye contact with Al and whispered, "Yes."
Al continued to look at Sam and frowned. "Then why are you crying?" He was somewhat taken aback by the tears that had started to slide sideways down Sam's face and into the mattress. "Zach?" Al was frustrated with himself. Had he been in the Waiting Room with the real Zach, he would have pulled the little boy into his arms to offer some solace. Here, he only had words.
Sam wiped at the tears with his fists, rolled onto his back, pulling Scruff into his arms and stared resolutely at the springs of the upper bunk. He seemed to be battling with something in his head. Al watched another tear escape down his temple, but still Sam said nothing. Al was about to try to draw him out of his silence when the handlink squealed, startling both of them. Al smacked it hard, not wanting Sam to be interrupted if he had something to say. The squealing stopped. Sam still stared at the bed springs, but timorously and child-like, he began to speak.
"I heard a noise."
"Sorry, Zach, it was this stupid handlink …" Al began, but was interrupted by Sam.
"No. No, it was a bang. There was a big bang. And I went to see what it was. I pulled the door open and Mom was lying on the floor and … Dad was leaning over her. He was shouting and hitting her and pushing down on her. I think … he killed her."
Even with his suspicions about Peter, Al was surprised by this memory dredged up from Zach's mind. But before he had the chance to respond to Sam, the handlink started to make a fuss again. This time it wouldn't allow Al to ignore it. He tapped a few buttons and suddenly felt weak as he read the display.
"SAM … ZACH, you've got to get out of here, QUICKLY. He's outside the door!"
This was as far as Al got, as the door burst open and Peter stalked in expressionless, yanked Sam from the bed and dragged him from the room.
Al felt sick with fear. He re-centred himself on Sam, who was now being pulled out through the back door. He rushed helplessly beside them, as Peter plotted an unsteady course across the garden, through the shrubbery and into the woods marching Sam along with one hand locked round Sam's wrist and the other hand grasping the back of his neck. Sam still had a comforting hold on Scruff with his free arm.
Sam stumbled along barefoot, unable or unwilling to try to escape his captor. Al caught sight of his terrified, tear-streaked face in the moonlight and wanted to scream for help. But it was useless. His only hope was to break through the paralyzing memories of the child to reach the man inside.
"Zach, listen to me. You're Sam Beckett. You're a six foot something, adult man. You can take this guy on. You know martial arts. Fight him. Fight him and get out of here before he kills you. Listen to me Sam. It's Al. I know you're in there. You need to get away, Kid. Quickly."
Al kept up the encouragement and pleading, the desperation in his voice increasing as they closed the distance to the quarry. His words seemed to have no effect, and all too quickly they arrived at a clearing where the ground sloped slightly upwards towards an unguarded edge. Peter stopped, swaying slightly about two feet from the pit.
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Peter sat down on the edge, pulling Sam down with him. Together they sat, with their legs dangling into the pit, gazing out across the moonlit water far below. They sat in silence for several minutes and in the tranquillity of the setting, Al could almost see Peter's anger draining away. He was confused. He had expected and dreaded a dramatic scene, but now the unpredictability of the situation was making him very uneasy. And all Ziggy would say was that nothing had changed.
"I used to bring your mother here," Peter began slowly and quietly. His speech was now far more coherent than Al would have given him credit for. "We sat like this and dropped stones down into the water. Other girls wouldn't come near the edge, but she was fearless. She was my best friend." He paused as though reliving the memories. "We lived with your grandma at first. And then we got the house when you were little and we were decorating it together, making it ours. She wanted to put some shelves up and I let her, because she was smart and she could do it, and I could see she wanted to prove that to me. So she started measuring and then drilling and I wasn't watching. And there was a bang and she was on the floor. I knew the instant it happened … she had hit an electric wire in the wall. I should've seen she was too close, but I wasn't watching." Peter paused for several long seconds as his voice filled with emotion. "Maybe it was my fault, but I didn't kill her. I tried to save her. I really tried. But she was gone."
There was another silence, before Sam said quietly, "It was an accident, Dad."
Peter reached out and ruffled Sam's hair. It was a simple gesture, but in that instant he began to bridge a gap.
"Can we go home now, Dad? I'm cold." Sam hugged Scruff tightly in his arms as if to demonstrate this fact.
Al, who had been monitoring the events with unease, was struck with the stark realisation that if something was going to happen, it had to happen now. He edged along beside Sam, trying not to startle him. Sam caught sight of Al and their eyes met.
"Zach, listen to me very carefully. Back slowly away from the edge. Don't get up until I tell you to. And tell your dad to do the same as you."
Sam nodded and turned back to Peter. "Dad, don't get up yet. We need to slide away from the edge. Watch me." Sam tossed Scruff a couple of feet behind him, shuffled back slightly and waited for Peter to do the same.
Peter grinned at Zach. "I've been coming here for a lot of years, Zach. I think I can manage on my own." Before Sam or Al could say another word, Peter leaped to his feet. He stood on the edge smiling down at Sam, and for a moment he looked so sure of himself, Sam forgot Al's warning. Peter offered his hand to help Sam up, and Sam began to reach towards him.
"No!" Al snapped sharply at Sam, and Sam withdrew his hand, surprised, and looked round at Al. As he did so, they heard a shower of gravel patter down the quarry side and both looked back to see Peter lose his footing and topple over the edge. From his seated position, Sam had no time to reach and grab him, but in a desperate and thoughtless attempt to arrest his fall, Peter lunged out and snatched at one of Sam's legs that was still partly dangling over the edge. Peter only had a grip on him for a moment, but it was enough to unseat Sam and he slid helplessly out of sight.
Al gasped in horror as Sam disappeared over the edge. His mouth and throat went dry and his stomach seemed to plummet through the floor. He couldn't move for a moment, but forced himself to look over the edge. He was almost overcome when he saw that a small ledge just below had broken Sam's fall.
He quickly centred himself in mid air right beside Sam and immediately established from his demeanor that Sam still believed himself to be Zach. "Zach, are you OK?"
Sam was crouched on his knees and forearms, trembling and pressing himself tightly against the quarry side. His head was bowed and his breathing quick and shallow. He seemed to be in shock, which Al considered was hardly surprising.
"Zach, can you look at me?" Sam slowly turned his head and looked at Al. "That's good, Zach. Listen, you didn't fall very far and you need to get off this ledge. I think if you stand up, you should be able to climb up quite easily."
Sam said nothing, but just stared at him. Al quickly punched some buttons on the handlink and grimaced at the result. Ziggy was predicting a ninety-eight percent chance that the ledge would crumble away before anyone would be able to rescue Sam. Al knew he needed to be firm.
"Zach, stand up," he said, in his most commanding Admiral-like voice. To his relief, Sam carefully got up, still pressing himself against the rock face.
"Good. Now turn around to face the rock. That's right. Now Zach, stretch your right arm up, as high as it will go and see if you can feel the top of the quarry." Al watched as Sam extended his arm. His fingers just reached over the top.
"See. You can feel the top. You only need to climb a little way, Zach. You've got the ledge under you and me beside you and I'll show you where to put your hands and feet. You're going to be fine. First hand hold for your right hand is here and ... uh ... your left foot can go ... there." He pointed to an indentation in the rock, a bit lower than the top of the quarry edge and within comfortable reach, followed by a narrow shelf about a foot higher than the ledge. Sam reached upwards and found the indentation with his fingers before placing his foot on the shelf. He looked intently at Al for the next instruction. He seemed to be running on autopilot. Al suddenly became very aware it was all down to him to get the instructions right. If he had been talking to Sam as himself, Sam would have evaluated Al's instructions and made his own judgements if he thought Al was wrong. Zach's persona was causing Sam to place his life in Al's hands, without question. It was a terrifying thought.
Gradually, Sam worked his way up the rock face. It was such a short distance, but Sam was struggling to climb with bare feet and for Al, it seemed like a decade had passed. Sam was still silent, doing exactly as he was told. As Sam's chest leveled with the top and his right foot found a final protuberance that would support him to safety, Al moved his position from hovering beside Sam, to sitting at the top. He watched as Sam rose up higher, leaned his upper body over the plateau and started to follow with his left leg. Al almost started to relax, when without warning Sam's left leg disappeared again and his torso slipped several inches back over the edge with a sharp jolt as his toes lost their grip on the foot hold. Sam looked at Al with wild eyes, feeling himself slipping further as his fingers clawed at tiny tufts of grass and his feet flailed frantically for support.
Instinctively Al dove for Sam's hands, although a slower, rational thought was telling him this action was futile. When he felt Sam's hands solid beneath his own, it again took another moment for his brain to process this. When he did so, he ignored the apparent collision of impossibility and reality and focused all his strength into pulling Sam to safety.
They both rolled clear from the edge and Al lay panting on his back, still feeling himself shaking. When he felt able to move, he crawled over to Sam, who was also on his back, still silent. "Zach, are you OK?" He rested his hand on Sam's shoulder and spoke as gently as he could. "You're safe now, Kid. Come on, talk to me." Hoping for a reaction, Al reached out, picked up Scruff from the ground and placed him on Sam's chest. He watched as Sam rolled his eyes downwards and caught sight of the toy. Sam raised his hands and caught hold of Scruff's ears, one in each hand, twisting them between his fingers.
Slowly, Sam's eyes shifted to meet Al's and Sam tentatively reached one hand out to him. Al took his hand and carefully pulled him upright. From his seated position, Sam glanced around dazedly. His eyes fell on the place where Peter had tumbled out of sight and he gasped.
"My dad," he choked and dissolved into tears.
Pained by Sam's desolation, but finally able to comfort him, Al drew the child into his arms and held him tight.
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