The next morning, the sound of Chloe's deep and heavy doorbell roused us from sleep. Chloe tugged a long t-shirt down over her head and left her hair a mess as she left to answer the door. I took a little more time, using some mouthwash and putting on something far closer to a complete outfit.
I came downstairs to find Maxine sitting stiffly on the couch as Chloe bustled about preparing coffee. Every time Chloe reached up to grab something off of a higher shelf, her shirt rose up and she gave us a clear view of her naked butt.
A step creaked below my foot and Maxine looked up.
"Hello, Max," she said, fixing me with her unblinking stare, "did you have fun last night?"
Her tone and her expression reminded me, quite forcibly, of my mom; specifically, my mom catching me doing something that she didn't approve of. I paused on the stairs and felt my face heat up. Then I remembered that Maxine fully expected that Chloe and I could get intimate. So I forced myself to relax.
"I did," I said with a smile.
"That's good," she said, "and you're looking forward to tonight?"
"Of course," I said with a grin.
That seemed to be the exact response she wanted: her shoulders relaxed and she smiled at me.
Then Chloe called out, "Interdimensional Max, master of having her cake and eating it too, amirite?"
She grinned at us over her shoulder. When she saw Maxine's narrowed eyes and my raised eyebrow, she snorted.
"Oh, come on," she said, "we all know what's what around here, and sharing is caring or whatever. Anyways, Maxine, you still like those fancy lattes?"
"No," Maxine said, standing up, "and that won't be necessary, Chloe." She gestured at the coffee pot. "I'll be on my way. I just wanted to check in on Max." She turned and winked at me. "And to remind you, Chloe, that today's rounds will begin soon. We'll need your assistance at the freight station in about forty minutes. Please remember to put on pants."
"Sure thing, Maxine," Chloe said, still fumbling with the coffee maker, "I always put on pants for you."
Maxine sighed and made her way to the door. Before stepping out into the dark hallway beyond, she looked over her shoulder at me.
"See you at lunch, Max," she said, "and later, of course."
She winked again and left; a few seconds later, I heard the little pop of a time-step.
Chloe turned away from the coffee maker and she and I shared a long look before she shrugged.
"Do you like those fancy latte things? I know how to make a damn good one," she said.
"Sure," I said, "that sounds amazing right now."
"I also have toaster waffles and shit…unless you want to catch breakfast at the Two Whales. Her excellency's court won't be there," she said.
"What are you having?" I asked.
She shrugged and said, "well, pants, for one. But breakfast? I might just down a couple of granola bars or some shit."
"Here," I said, "you make coffee, I'll make breakfast."
"Won't say no to that," she said with a grin.
We were bustling about for only about a minute before Chloe spoke up.
"So, not to be stereotypical but…about last night…," she said.
I turned to her, scooted over, and placed my hands right on her butt beneath her shirt. She squealed and jumped.
"Cold hands," she said.
"Sorry," I said with a wince.
"That's okay, can't complain too much when you touch my ass," she said.
"Sorry," I said again, "I wanted to try to say that last night was perfect without saying it."
And to emphasize my feelings on the matter, I stepped up on my toes and gave her a long kiss. When I dropped back down, she grinned at me.
"I'm glad," she said, "I mean, for touching my ass and for last night. It was perfect for me too. I haven't felt that way in a long time." She furrowed her brow and then winced. "Um, sorry if that's awkward."
"No, I understand. I mean, I don't really understand, but I empathize," I said, "I just…I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with Maxine and her libido tonight."
Chloe shrugged and said, "fuck her."
I furrowed my brow and said, "I'm not sure I should be dismissive of her feelings like that, especially since we're trying to keep her happy while we find out more."
"No, I meant that literally: fuck her," Chloe said.
My eyes went wide.
"But…but Chloe," I said, "we…"
She put a hand on my shoulder.
"Max, you and I have something special. I can feel it. It's a lot like what Maxine and I had but it's different, something that's just you and me. It's like…a different shade of the same color or whatever. But all of this shit," she made a vague gesture around her, "is bigger than us. And here's the thing: Maxine's got some kind of…thing with people she has sex with. She gets a big blindspot or some shit. You wanna know how I know?" I nodded and she continued, "well, about a dozen people have been caught working with Kate and Victoria's group over the years. Most of them get stuck in Maxine's creepy statue park. The ones who didn't? The ones who got a slap on the wrist?"
She raised her eyebrows at me.
I said, "they all had sex with her?"
"Exactly," she said, "I don't know why that is but it seems pretty fucking consistent."
"I think I know," I said with a frown.
Chloe raised an eyebrow.
"No one ever used to think of me that way," I said, looking at the floor, "you know: romantically, sexually, anything like that. Almost none of the boys ever had any interest in the pretentious photography girl who looks like a twelve-year-old and the only ones that did were super creepy. And I never really thought about the girls who might have liked me." I shrugged. "So for me and Maxine, it means something extra when someone has that kind of interest. It is a special bond."
"I see," Chloe said, "well, you don't look like a twelve-year-old and I think your pretentious photography thing is pretty fucking hot."
"Thanks, Chloe," I said.
"Just tellin' it like I see it," she said, "but seriously, if Maxine makes a move, don't let whatever you think my feelings are get in the way, okay? I'm not going to be weirded out or crazy jealous or anything."
"You're sure?" I asked, "it…feels like it should feel like cheating."
She shrugged and said, "maybe in a normal world. But hey, I had sex with her a lot and you doing it? Kinda seems like boss-level masturbation more than anything."
I laughed out loud and said, "I thought the exact same thing."
"See," she said with a laugh, "so don't hold back, Max. I'm serious. Once we're out of Purgatory Bay, we can figure it all out and maybe become something normal. But until then…"
She shrugged again and I sighed.
"Okay," I said, "it does feel weird but you're right."
"Of course I'm right," she said, "just don't fuck Warren or Megan. Gotta draw a line somewhere, you know."
She grinned at me and I grinned back.
"Oh, don't worry," I said, "you're drawing the line where my interest ends."
She laughed and said, "good to know. And hey, it's not like you get many opportunities in life to get it on with another version of yourself, right? I'm actually kind of curious how it goes."
"Do you really want me to tell you?"
"Um, not really, no. But maybe at some point." She pursed her lips to the side. "I don't know, ask me later. Oh, and I obviously won't go fucking anyone, just to make it clear where we stand. I mean, it's not like I was getting much anyways."
"Why not?"
"Didn't feel like it," she said with a shrug.
"What if another version of you shows up?" I asked.
"Oh, I'd hit that so hard," she said, "I mean, as long as you were okay with it."
"It would only be fair," I said.
"Yep, yep," she said, "and now let's eat. I've got that appointment with your future sex buddy. And that means Wells' place will be empty, if you're up for it."
"I am," I said.
. . . . .
It didn't require much in the way of stealth to approach Principal Wells' place unnoticed; the dorm building sat dark and empty and no one moved about in the foggy gloom.
At the short steps leading up to the Wells' tiny porch, I stopped and held out my hand, viewing the fractures of time around the building: the front door and the windows had the same kind of alarm structure as what Maxine had created around the secret bunker, with dense clusters of spacetime rising up into the clouds. I frowned: the alarm structure at the bunker had been far more complex. Did Maxine feel that this place didn't need as much security? Had she done the bunker one first and decided that something less extensive was equally good? Or had she come up with something very different to guard this place?
I wasn't about to assume the easy option so I'd need to be careful.
I walked up onto the porch between the entry's narrow white columns and peeked in through a window: I could see part of the entry hall through a doorway, where motes of dust sparkled in harsh white light. It was enough of a view for me to navigate and I time-stepped into the building.
The floor creaked beneath my shoes and my arrival pushed out a wave of dusty air. The hallway's lightbulb, the only one in sight, hung on a chain from the ceiling and rocked back and forth, making sharp black shadows tilt back and forth on the colorless walls. I furrowed my brow and leaned towards the nearest wall: a set of jagged furrows marred the wallpaper and they looked a lot like what fingernails might make. I took a step back and looked around: there were a lot of those cuts in the walls. A shiver ran down my spine and I turned to a side table that sported a thick coat of dust, interrupted in a few spots by what looked like hand prints. All of the doorways leading off from the hallway had empty hinges where the doors would have been. The rooms beyond were all pitch black.
This place looks like something out of a horror film, I thought, swallowing hard.
I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I peeked into each of the front rooms first, the cone of my phone's light sweeping over dust, an empty desk, some crumpled pieces of paper, and wooden floors with scrape marks where furniture had been removed long ago. Both rooms smelled like an attic that no one had been in for a very long time.
This place seems ancient, I thought, far older than it should.
I continued down the hall and found a bathroom that didn't look ancient at all: a fresh pink towel hung from a hook next to a pristine sink and a clean mirror; the white wallpaper looked brand new and the floor tiles were shiny and clean. But further down the hall, I found a kitchen stripped of its appliances, the rotting doors of its cabinets falling off of their hinges and the ceiling corners sporting what looked like dark spots of mold.
Next to the stairs, I found what might have originally been a living room or library. Unlike most of the other rooms, it was clean and largely dust-free. A lone wingbacked chair sat near the center of the room atop a small circular rug. A lightbulb hung suspended above it and a small desk sat at a height that would be comfortable to write on. The room was otherwise bare and empty up to the walls, which were lined with built-in bookshelves. Nearly half of the shelves were packed with copy after copy of what looked like the same book. I took a couple of steps into the room and crouched down to look more closely: the books were all journals, similar to mine. I slid one off of the shelf and opened it: as I expected, my own handwriting filled the page. I skimmed through the text: it seemed like a straightforward description of one of Maxine's days, including a list of what she rewound, some annoyed comments on the behavior of a group of middle schoolers, and a description of a sexual event with Warren and Megan that left me blushing and shoving the journal back into its space. I turned around and spotted stacks of binders up against the far wall. I went to those and opened a binder on top: each sheet inside had a short description of an alternate universe and a sampling of Polaroid photos. This, then, was where Maxine kept track of the other worlds she found.
I backed away and marked this spot in my head: if there was a place where I could learn more about Maxine's secrets, this was it.
Back out in the hallway, a set of creaky stairs took me up into a dark hallway, where I found two bedrooms with their doors ajar.
The first room appeared empty when I stepped in, seemingly filled with nothing but stale dust in the air. But then I noticed that the walls seemed oddly textured. A closer inspection revealed rows upon rows of little markings on the walls, each one a short, vertical line. The marks covered every single wall, from baseboards to the ceiling. I found tidy rows of marks, angled sets of jagged ones, and some where the marks were stabbed into the splotchy wallpaper. The sight of an old step ladder made me point my phone up: the marks covered part of the ceiling as well.
It took me a moment to realize that the markings looked like how prisoners in films would mark time on their cell walls. And that gave me a sudden feeling of light-headedness: there had to be tens of thousands of marks in the room. What were they? Hours? Days? More? How old was this house? How old was Maxine?
My heart began to thunder in my chest and I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to take a deep breath. I couldn't let myself make assumptions: perhaps the marks weren't of time at all, perhaps they were of universes she'd found or something else entirely.
I backed out of the room and moved to the second one, the floor groaning under my shoes.
In the second room, my phone light swept over broken pieces of furniture, mostly wooden chunks of chairs and stools scattered about on a pitted and scarred floor. And there were photos, a lot of them, scattered in little piles. I picked up one close to the door and found it scribbled with so much Sharpie that it was unrecognizable. I picked up a piece of a photo that had been torn to pieces and recognized part of Kate's face. And I found more: Kate, Victoria, Chloe, Brooke…almost all of them people I knew. Every photo was destroyed: torn, crumpled, smashed, slashed, burned, or drawn over with Xs, frowning faces, or just angrily blotted out.
I couldn't even count the number of photos…and that was before getting to the walls: I gasped aloud when I angled my phone light up: pinned onto the walls were hundreds or perhaps thousands of photos, all in the same states of destruction as those on the floor. Some of the photos even had versions of me (or perhaps photos of Maxine herself). There were even a few of Rachel.
I stepped further into the room, my shoes crushing more photos, and turned all the way around. When I saw the front wall, I nearly dropped my phone…
Words in black ink, like those in Chloe's old room, covered the wall around the door, all of it in my handwriting. Among incomprehensible scribbles were phrases like "IT'S ALL MY FAULT" and "THEY DON'T LOVE ME" and "TIME BRINGS PEACE" and what had to be a completely unironic "ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES MAX A DULL GIRL" alongside single words like "TIME," "FEAR," "NO," and "PURGATORY" written over and over.
My breath caught in my throat and I nearly stumbled over a pile of torn photos as I rapidly swept my phone back and forth. It was too much: the words, the dark corners, the dust and the creaking and the ancient deadness of the rooms. I expected to see Maxine appear out of thin air at any moment; I expected something to come out at me from the shadows. My hands trembled and I could almost hear her voice, my voice, whispering the words on the wall.
I sank to the floor, dropped my phone with a clatter atop a pile of photos that had all of the eyes cut out, and raised my trembling arm. I managed to freeze time around me and the moment I did, I felt my breath start to come back. I held time at a standstill and took slower and deeper breaths until I could reach out and grab my phone with a steady hand. I slowly panned the phone around: I was alone. No Maxine, no monsters, no nothing. Just me. With another deep breath, I pushed myself off of the photo-littered floor and stood. Part of me desperately wanted to escape this hellish place in that instant…but I wanted to leave with more than just a notion of an ancient and creepy hideout. I'd discovered plenty that didn't exactly put Maxine's mental state in a good light but nothing truly specific.
I let time flow again and slowly made my way back to the library, taking deep breaths the whole way. Once there, I focused on the task at hand and it took only about a minute for me to figure out how Maxine organized her journals: the one on the bottom shelf furthest to the right was her first one while the last one on the left in the middle shelves was her newest one. I rewound and went to the most recent one, standing and holding my phone light over the journal to read.
To say that Maxine's mood had been dark before my arrival would be an understatement: her journal entries included a remarkable amount of swearing, along with angry blots of ink, smudged text, and little circular wrinkles that looked like they came from tears. She'd clearly been in a downward spiral, and her fading powers were leading her into a state of panic. One entry described how she'd started to lose her ability to maintain a confident public visage, a problem that required her to perform ever more painful rewinds to cover up outbursts and break-downs in front of others.
Maxine wasn't well.
Okay, so that had been glaringly obvious based on what I'd seen so far. But actually reading about it in her own words drove it home. And I couldn't help but feel for her, even if the ways she'd expressed her mood were disturbing as hell. And with a sickening swoop, I realized that had I been in her shoes, I'd likely be doing the same things.
Then I flipped a page and blinked at a sudden explosion of color: Maxine had drawn a good representation of my smiling face, surrounded by a rainbow and rays of sunshine (and yes, I could tell that the face was intended to be me because of the shorter hair). The passages that followed read:
It seems impossible, after so much time, that another version of me, alive and well, would appear in this place. My heart bursts with delight; she is beautiful in her newness to this world and hearing her voice, a reflection of my own, strikes chords in my heart that I had believed silenced forever. And I cannot ignore the timing of her arrival. As my powers fade, fate has dropped a solution at my feet. Fate, perhaps, or dear Rachel, seeing and understanding the enormous risks to this world that grow as I weaken. The exact purpose of this new Max, already so precious to my heart, is not yet clear. Perhaps she will grant me her powers, refreshing that which fades. Or perhaps the two of us together shall sustain one another and maintain eternity as one. Or perhaps she is to be my replacement, allowing me to pass the Great Responsibility to her. If the latter case, perhaps it will finally be time for me to rest, to move on to a new eternity.
If it hadn't been abundnatly clear what she intended in that last sentence, she'd drawn a tombstone, surrounded by flowers, in the margin. The sight made my heart ache: did she really want to die? She continued:
Whatever the purpose of our new resident, I shall bring her close and teach her all I know. I shall provide the practical matters quickly and the context slowly, for so much of it is so difficult to bear. And I will need to protect her from the whispers, the whispers that challenge the necessity of this place. But I am confident she will see the truth. She will see it and understand it because she is me. And yet, her history is different than mine. It is possible that she cannot handle the burden. So I must provide information and affection and vision to her. Then I will see if she is strong. And perhaps that will determine the fate of us both. Until that fate is determined, I will have her sit at my right hand and we shall rule our little universe together. Until our path is clear, this Max shall be my partner. And perhaps ever after.
To my utter embarrassment, Maxine had drawn pink hearts and red lips around my name. I turned the page but Maxine hadn't entered anything else yet. I shook my head, put the journal back on the shelf, and rewound several minutes.
There was one particular piece of the puzzle I was looking for and I intended to find it.
. . . . .
It took something like forty short rewinds before I found what I was looking for: details on how to go home.
And what I found made it abundantly clear that Maxine had, in fact, discovered a means to travel to other universes and determined that it was safe. At the time, she'd decided to hold off on revealing that information to anyone else or acting on it. Obviously, she'd decided sometime after to keep interdimensional travel a secret. But the passage I did find included the most important pieces for me: a description and crude sketch of the tablet involved, along with detailed instructions on how to use it: a photo of the desired universe (or some other identifying marker or set of symbols) had to be placed in a zone on the tablet and then the tablet had to be placed in contact with any kind of opening (Maxine felt that a doorway would be the simplest and most apt) and the tablet would open a portal in the opening to the chosen universe at the indicated place and time.
It was that simple.
But where was that tablet? Had Maxine even kept it in one piece?
Clearly, I wouldn't find that information in this journal. And I wasn't about to go looking for more: I'd become tired of standing in a creepy, dusty, ancient building while reading in the harsh light of my phone. If I was right, I'd have plenty of opportunities to come back and go through more of Maxine's journals.
I put the journal away and memorized both its location on the shelf and its "date," a number that represented days after the storm and something that Maxine had stopped including in her journals at some point about halfway along the lowest shelf. I nodded to myself and stepped back out into the dim hallway.
Despite all of the rewinds, I had a deep sense that I'd overstayed my welcome in this house of old age, dust, and darkness. The creeping, tingling sense of horror that had been crawling over my skin since I arrived had become constant and uncomfortable. Fearsome thoughts had begun to slither into my head: what if I couldn't leave this place? What if I saw something here that literally drove me crazy? What if Maxine found me and somehow froze me into the walls or something?
And so you can imagine my reluctance when I saw a door I hadn't noticed before, tucked into a shadowy corner beneath the stairs.
I stopped and bit my lip.
Over the years, I'd seen plenty of horror films, most of them with Chloe when we were probably too young for them. And based on horror film logic, I figured that whatever that door led to, it would probably be messed up. And as I stood in that creepy hallway with the thankfully no longer swinging lightbulb, my brain battled back and forth on the wisdom of exploring further.
Then I sighed to myself; there were two good reasons to ignore the cold fear that had settled in my stomach: first, I could control space and time; and second, I was a natural and persistent snoop.
I went to the door.
It opened on squeaking hinges to a set of stairs that vanished down into a pitch-black space. A musty smell wafted up and the sound of slowly dripping water echoed from somewhere below.
"Fuck," I murmered aloud.
I pointed my phone light down the stairs and started down. Each step groaned underfoot and a concrete basement slowly came into view, its floor cracked and damp. When I reached the bottom, I found the source of the dripping sound: a leaky pipe, from which a drop of water would fall, hit the floor, and immediately vanish in a little rewind loop. I also found three doors. The first had mostly rotted away and hung loose on its hinges: inside, a dirt-encrusted mirror reflected my light and a cracked and yellowed toilet sat in a grimy corner. The second door stood wide open into a room with empty metal shelves that had nearly rusted away. And the third door, closed tight, was fully intact and looked almost new.
I paused; my breath came out in little visible puffs, making this the coldest place I'd been in this universe so far. And aside from the dripping water, the basement was silent. Too silent. It wasn't a good silence, it was the kind of silence that made the hair on the back of my head stand up. Something wasn't right down there. And if I had to guess, it wasn't the toilet.
I gripped my phone tight, mumbled, "fuck" again, and stepped over to the third door, my shoes scraping on the pocked concrete. I took a breath to steady myself and opened the door.
At first, the room looked empty and so I moved further in and began sweeping my light around. When the light reached the wall off to the right, I gasped and my whole body seized up.
Then I screamed; I screamed hard.
I'm not the type of person to scream. What I saw there, though, could bring out no other response: bodies. Bodies, all lined up against the wall. In my suddenly frayed and scrambled mental state, I couldn't quite count them but some small rational piece of my brain reported ten to fifteen of them.
Random bodies would've been bad enough but these, every single one of them, were all me.
My phone light jerked in my shaking hand and threw reflections off of open and glassy eyes. As my own eyes darted rapidly to and fro, I caught glimpses of bloodstains, burns, exposed bones, and worse.
My breath came in rapid, panicked bursts and I reached out, my hand blindly clawing for the door; in that moment, it didn't even occur to me to try to time-step away. But the door wasn't close; upon seeing the bodies, I'd jumped out of shock and landed further into the room. I began to stagger towards the door when a voice brought me to a sudden and adrenaline-spiking halt.
"Hello, Max," it said, soft and gentle.
I looked up to see Maxine standing in the doorway. A harsh light from behind her threw her entire face into shadow but I could see her eyes, fixed on me.
I screamed again and stepped back, away from her.
"It's okay, Max," she said, stepping inside.
She reached over and flipped a switch on the wall; fluorescent lights flickered to life, bathing the concrete room in a sickly blue light and clearly showing the pale, gray faces of the dead Maxes.
"It's not what it looks like," Maxine said, taking another step towards me.
I backed up to the cold wall, my brain spinning.
"Max," Maxine said, stopping halfway to me, "do you remember when I first saw you here? How surprised I was? I wasn't surprised to see another version of myself here. I was surprised that you came alive."
Enough of my brain rebooted to let me process what she said. My fight-or-flight reflexes, which were starting to resolve into a thought to time-step away, held still.
"W…what?" I asked.
She gestured to the bodies against the wall, her lip trembling.
"They arrived like this," she said, "appearing just inside the edges of the Barrier. I felt it when they arrived." She looked at me. "I can only guess that I didn't feel it when you arrived because you arrived outside the Barrier. And that haunts me: how many versions of me might have appeared outside but were never found?"
"Chloe would've found them," I found myself saying.
"Perhaps, but would she tell me?" Maxine asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," I said.
We held each other's gaze for a long moment.
"Perhaps," Maxine said, looking away, "nevertheless, these Maxes all arrived in fatal conditions. All but one were already dead."
I finally had enough of my wits back to really pay attention to her: she wasn't lying.
She stepped over to the bodies and crouched down next to one at the end, inches from that Max's shoes, which were the same ones I was wearing. I forced myself to watch as Maxine reached out and ran her fingers above that Max's head, as if stroking her hair, barely an inch away. I looked down: the dead Max's shirt had been soaked through with huge splotches of blood and her face was frozen in a permanent mask of surprise, her motionless eyes wide open.
"Three bullets to the chest," Maxine said, "she lived for only three seconds after arriving, the only one to come alive. She was dead when I found her and I rewound her until she came back to life. I tried to save her. I brought her to the clinic and they tried to save her. Nothing worked, she was too far gone. And the rest? The rest were already dead."
She stood up and faced me.
"So no, Max, I'm not going to kill you and dump your body down here," she said, and I could tell that she was telling the truth, "I wouldn't do that: you're precious to me. You're alive and well, unlike our sisters."
"What…what happened to them?" I asked.
She glanced back at the line of bodies.
"Various things," she said, "blunt force trauma for five of them. Three of them drowned." She pointed at ones that still had droplets of water time-frozen onto their dead faces. "Two died from gunshot wounds." She pointed to another Max who had a single dark red hole in her forehead. "One has severe radiation burns." She pointed to one with red and white splotches on her skin. "And that one should be obvious." She pointed to the first body in the line, which had a large piece of jagged metal embedded in her chest. "As for what happened, I can only guess. I think the storm killed at least some of them. There are universes where we die, Max, and I've seen things like all of these. Well, not the radiation burns." She frowned. "But one of them had a journal with her and I was able to use that to trace her universe and photograph it. In that one, Arcadia Bay was hit with a tidal wave instead of a tornado. Nearly everyone died and most of the bodies were drawn out to sea. Most were probably never found. And so I have a theory: all of these Maxes were pulled into this universe at the point of death…and they came from universes where, to be blunt, they wouldn't be missed, either because of a much larger disaster, because many bodies went missing, or some other factor."
"But why?" I asked.
"Perhaps these were tests," Maxine said, "tests to see if someone or something could pull a Max in from another universe. I suspect Rachel. So perhaps these were the precursors to you, Max."
"But why bring me?" I asked.
Maxine bit her lip and looked away.
"I have theories," she said, "and I'll tell you, I promise. But not now. This is not a good place to dwell in, Max. This, this whole place, this is where I bring my darkness. It's not healthy to stay here."
I nodded.
"You saw the rest of the house, didn't you?" she asked, her eyes steady and unblinking.
I paused before saying, "I did."
She stepped forward slowly; when I didn't withdraw, she came closer and held her hands out towards me. I mirrored her and she took my hands.
She sighed and said, "then you've seen the parts of me that no one else has seen. You've seen a part of yourself that no one should have to see. This is my dark side, Max, the place of my anger and fear and despair. I hope you won't let part of yourself live here. I hope you'll never have to."
I nodded.
"And you saw the photos?" she asked.
"The…the destroyed ones? Yes," I said.
She looked down.
"So you saw that many of them were of Chloe," she said.
I nodded.
She looked up at me, her face hard.
"She betrays us, Max," Maxine said, "Chloe. In every future, she always betrays us. She sides with the others to destroy this place. I've tried everything I could think of to keep her by my side. By our side. But it's never enough. I'm never enough."
She squeezed her eyes shut and I had no idea what to say.
"I gave her everything, Max," Maxine said, opening eyes with tears in them, "more than everything. And I still love her. But I hate her, too. She was always my anchor. She still is, in some ways. I'm terrified every time she walks out past the Barrier, Max. Because if something happens to her out there, I can't save her. Yes, I can rewind it all and she comes back. And I've had to do that a couple of times. But I hate it, I hate it when she dies. I never wanted her to die again, not after that week."
She gritted her teeth.
"But this place must last, Max," she said, "it's more important than anything."
"Why?" I asked.
She raised her eyebrows and blinked.
"Why? It's…it's…unique," she said, "from here, we can see everything. That's why it all happened, Max, it's why we're here. There has to be a reason for it, for this gift to us of an ageless place."
A shadow crossed her face.
"Mostly ageless, I suppose," she said.
She had to be speaking of her fading power. But she didn't know I knew about that, so I kept quiet.
"Come now, precious Max," she said, tugging gently on my hand, "let's leave the death and darkness behind. If you ever need to use this place, this house of darkness, it is for you, too. I hope you'll never need to use it. But if you do, I won't ask why."
"Okay," I said.
"Just…if you're going to start journaling, please keep yours separate from mine," she said, scrunching her nose, "I like to keep mine organized."
I nodded.
She nodded back and smiled before turning to the dead Maxes.
"I'm glad you all got to meet our home's newest Max," she said to them, "but don't worry: I'll still visit you. No matter what, you're still in my heart and I love you, all of you; remember that."
Just as the creepometer was starting to go down, I thought with a wince.
"Alright, Max," Maxine said, grabbing both of my hands, "come."
I let myself move and Maxine pulled me into a time-step; a moment later, we stood outside of a coffee shop, its windows soaking the mist outside with orange light.
"You must need something strong after that," Maxine said, pulling me toward the door, "so let's just relax."
. . . . .
You'd think that coffee would be the worst idea if your nerves were as frayed as mine were. But the familiar flavors of my favorite drink, prepared by a barista trained by Maxine in how to make it, certainly helped to calm me down.
Truth be told, no amount of cozy beverages would ever get those images out of my head: the harshly-lit ancient hallway, the photo-strewn room of destruction, the phrases of despair blotted onto on the walls, and, obviously, the dead versions of myself.
But Maxine talked me through it. And that in itself was a strange experience: a conversation that humanized something that seemed utterly inhuman. And again, I felt the dichotomy at the heart of Maxine as a person: she spoke with empathy and calm and understanding…about things that were objectively insane.
And in her speech, I saw what Chloe meant: Maxine was lost. She'd tied herself completely to this world…and although she tried her hardest to meet the needs and wants of her people, it always came back to the world. And the clash of those two things was inevitable: the people would never be fully satisfied being trapped in a gloomy bubble of darkness and mist. Maxine, however, thought of it as either a curse that she was forced to bear or as a problem that she simply had yet to solve.
Part of me wanted to help her solve the problem, despite the seeming futility of it. And part of me wanted to confront her, to try to make her see the reality of her situation.
But I did neither: I didn't have the energy or the depth of thought for either of those actions. Instead, I treated her gently, mirroring her attitude towards me, and we left the cafe with smiles. She hugged me tight, gave me a long kiss that left me with flutters, and then reaffirmed that we'd be meeting at the Prescott Estate later.
Then she time-stepped away.
. . . . .
My first instinct was to go straight to Chloe and tell her what happened. But I resisted that: I had the sneaky suspicion that Maxine was watching to see what I'd do next. And running right to Chloe wouldn't look good at all. So instead, I took a walk along the beach, gazing at the tornado and tossing stones out at the water. I walked all the way up to the lighthouse and took in the nightmare vista of the storm before walking all the way back into the fog-bound town.
It pains me to admit it but my mind was almost completely blank for a good portion of that walk. And when it wasn't, I just reviewed the things I'd already been thinking about. I had no revelations or realizations or brilliant ideas. After what I'd experienced, my brain apparently just needed to shut down for a while.
I came across Chloe near the gas station, where she gave me a brief eyebrow raise.
I smiled at her, gave her a hug, and whispered, "I'll tell you later."
She stepped back with the barest of nods, ruffled my hair, and said, "have fun with Maxine tonight."
"I will," I said.
And we left it at that.
. . . . .
I arrived at the Prescott Estate carrying a small bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine; the latter came recommended by a liquor store employee familiar with Maxine's purchases (Arcadia Bay had become rather lax in its enforcement of age restrictions).
I'd put on a flowery white dress and flats, both of which I'd found in my Blackwell closet after showering. Someone had placed several new pieces of clothing there while I'd been out, ones that hadn't been there earlier.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered to dress up…the idea might not have even occurred to me, which should tell you how often I wore something like a dress. But a certain party of me wanted to impress Maxine, an idea that made me feel more than a little weird (impressing one's self came as an odd flavor in my head). And, of course, it was obvious that Maxine, or someone under her orders, had placed the extra garments in my closet with the hope that I'd like them. It was an odd game that everyone in this version of Arcadia Bay seemed to be playing, once I thought about it: sneaking and contriving to meet Maxine's expectations and wants. And I could easily imagine that after a while, such consistent efforts would become exhausting, which perhaps explained everyone's eventual desire to rebel.
And there was an irony to it that I was uniquely placed to recognize: Maxine, who still had, at her core, the same personality as me, would be horrified to learn that people were going out of their way to accommodate her. If I'd picked jeans and a t-shirt instead of the dress, Maxine would have been perfectly happy; she'd probably placed the new garments in my closet as a sneaky little gift, not as a demand. But Maxine, like me, would have no real way to tell people not to go out of their way without making it sound like she actually wanted them to do so.
For a brief moment, out there in front of the Prescott gate, I wondered if I'd stumbled across the solution to Maxine's problem: what if she could convince everyone that she didn't want to be their overlord? That she didn't want to be catered to and that people could do what they wanted? I could feel, in that moment, a piece of what Maxine must have felt every day for a long time: the sense that there had to be a solution that would both save this world permanently and keep people happy.
But no, I couldn't let myself fall into that trap. I didn't want to become like Maxine, with a horror house of madness kept just to take out frustration and despair. And besides, the problem was more complex than that: it wasn't just about people trying to keep Maxine happy, it was about the very nature of being trapped in a gloomy world, cut off from everything else. Shiny, happy feelings with regards to a single subject wouldn't fix the bigger problem.
I shook my head and stepped forward; the Estate's gate swung open in front of me and I walked up the softly-lit stone path, a cloud of mist hanging just above my head.
. . . . .
A half second after I rang the doorbell, the oversized front door swung open. For a moment, I didn't recognize the woman on the other side. She wore a midnight black robe with red trim that fell about halfway down her pale thighs. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulders in luscious waves and she leaned against the doorframe, her arm extending up towards the top and one bare foot pressed against her other leg.
"Hi, Max," she said, a sly smile on her face.
Her voice snapped me out of it: it was Maxine.
"Oh, wows…," I got out before she continued…
"You are gorgeous, Max," she said, stepping out and running her fingertips from my collarbones to my shoulders.
My brain was still having trouble recognizing that she was my physical twin: she'd applied a spectacular combination of eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara and I wondered how many rewinds she'd taken to get it so perfect (or if she'd had someone do it for her).
"Are these for me?" she asked, her fingers tracing mine where they gripped the flowers.
"Oh, um, yes," I said, holding them out.
She took them, inhaled deeply over them with her eyes locked onto mine, and smiled.
She sighed and said, "they're almost as gorgeous as you."
"I…wow…I…you too, Maxine," I managed, "I'm…kind of speechless."
"I can see that," she said with a sly grin, "now come inside and make yourself comfortable. I've cleared everyone out so it's just you and me here tonight."
She walked backwards into the foyer, her eyes unblinking as I followed her. Inside, I slipped off my flats and set my messenger bag down on a bench by the door. I fumbled inside and and took out the camera Chloe had given me.
"May I take a photo of us?" I asked.
Maxine hesitated, her fingers twitching just enough for me to notice. Then she tilted her head back and forth in a brief stretch and sighed.
"Yes," she said, "please."
I stepped over next to her and she snaked an arm around my waist. I held up the camera, looked over my shoulder, rotated us a bit, and then took the shot. Maxine stepped away immediately and moved towards the living room, where she'd set the lights low and reflections of a fire flickered on the walls and ceiling.
"I think you'll enjoy what I have planned, Max," she said over her shoulder, beckoning me with a finger.
I followed; the cool tile of the entryway gave way to heated wooden floors under my feet as I stepped up into the living room. I set the camera down on a small table as Maxine turned to me with a grin.
"Tonight will be a night you won't forget," she said.
. . . . .
We began in the living room, sitting on a soft rug a few feet from a crackling fireplace. Maxine had time-frozen two glasses of white wine and small plates of thinly-sliced sashimi drizzled with a sweet sauce; she unfroze them as we sat. We lounged there, eating slowly and taking small sips of wine while chatting about Maxine's big plans, which included the under-construction dome I'd seen at the edge of town. Maxine explained that the dome would house enormous overhead lights to mimic the color and heat of a sunny day.
When we finished the food and drinks, Maxine slid close to me and ran her fingertips over my face and into my hair as she spoke of some of the town's artists and how they made beauty out of the gloom.
I found myself playing with Maxine's hair in return as I listened and responded to her questions, questions that included requests for my opinion on her big ideas for Arcadia Bay. I found myself quite flattered, even though I considered my answers neither insightful or particularly deep. But Maxine seemed to drink them in and it made me want to give her more, more dumb ideas and half-baked thoughts just to keep her staring at me like that with her little half smile.
And yes, the part of me that found Maxine's affections disturbing still rang with alarm bells…I chose to mostly ignore them.
After a while, Maxine stood up and offered me her hand, pulling me up and guiding me out of the living room. She convinced me to put on a silk blindfold and then maneuvered me through a doorway and down a hall before sliding the blindfold away: we'd stepped into a two-person dining nook, lit with candles. A window provided a view of an elegant fountain outside, its lights casting reflecting ripples of water into the dark.
An elaborate spread of sushi sat on the table, along with two more glasses of wine. According to Maxine, she'd time-frozen all of it at the moment of maximum freshness.
It was, quite simply, one of the most incredible meals I'd ever had.
We took our time eating, reliving stories from our shared past (especially of our time in Seattle) and telling jokes about various teachers and peers from those times. Maxine unabashedly stroked my feet and legs with her toes and I responded in kind.
When we'd finished every last bite and sip, Maxine led me into a space that had all of the features of a garage but with clusters of art gallery lighting mounted on the ceiling. The walls, along with a handful of plinths and free-standing panels, hosted dozens of photographs, sculptures, and paintings. As we entered, Maxine handed me a plate with a big slice of moist chocolate cake paired with little spheres of vanilla ice cream, all drizzled with chocolate fudge. We walked around the gallery, plates in hand, as Maxine described each piece of artwork. Many were from the Prescotts' original collection but a good portion came from a post-storm flood of art made by students and workers that no longer had much of anything else to do. Maxine glowed with pride over the pieces that came out of the studios she'd established at Blackwell and it was readily apparent that the artists, who ranged from middle school students to grizzled fishermen, had abundant talent.
Exiting through the other side of the garage gallery, Maxine took me to a cozy sitting room and we sat on a small sofa by a fire, sipping at tiny glasses of port.
"Have you enjoyed the evening so far?" Maxine asked.
"It's been amazing, truly amazing," I said, "especially the artwork. You've made this a perfect evening, Maxine."
She grinned and raised her glass in a toast; I clinked mine against hers and took another sip.
I pursed my lips to the side and said, "although I have to admit, after this many drinks, I'm surprised I'm not running into walls."
Maxine laughed and said, "that's because I know my own tolerances very well and spread the drinks out appropriately. And I made sure you were drinking plenty of water."
"Oh," I said, glancing at the tall glass of water next to me.
She laughed again, gently this time, and put a hand on my leg.
"Max, I want you to have a clear head," she said, "I'm going to offer you a lot of myself over the next few hours and it's up to you to decide how much you accept. Will you do that for me? Don't just say yes? I want it to be truly you. To be truly us."
I swallowed and said, "yes."
"Good," she said.
She set her empty glass down and stood, walking towards a curtain that covered part of the wall. She slid it aside and a blue glow washed through the room: it came from a hot tub, sitting outside under a cloud of mist.
Maxine smiled at me and opened the door, letting in a wave of air that felt cool and crisp in the fire-warmed room. She then snapped her fingers and the hot tub, which had been silent in a frozen pocket of time, began to happily bubble, its roiling surface sending curls of steam up into the air.
Maxine stepped to the edge of the door and shrugged her robe off of her shoulders; it slid off and fell to the floor in a pool around her feet.
My mouth fell open: I'd known she wasn't wearing anything underneath because she hadn't exactly been cautious when bending over, sitting down, or crossing or uncrossing her legs all evening. But still…
Her body stood in shadow but in the glints of firelight, I could see the smooth tone of her muscles; her body was, technically-speaking, almost exactly the same age as mine. But a form of time had nonetheless passed, time in which Maxine had been active every day, and it showed.
She looked over her shoulder at me; blue reflections rippled over half of her face and the other half flickered with orange shadows.
"Would you like to join me, Max?" she asked.
"I…I would," I said.
She laughed and stepped outside. I followed, clumsily undressing as Maxine slid gracefully into the water and turned to watch me, leaning back and spreading her arms out. After I awkwardly tossed my underwear to the side, I climbed up and into the tub. I sighed as I lowered myself in: the water was perfect. Maxine immediately crossed over and knelt in front of me, her chin touching the water's surface.
"Will you be with me, precious Max?" she asked, her voice a whisper, "will you share my love?"
My brain fizzled with my now-familiar internal conflict over Maxine's affections. But I couldn't really delay the decision any longer: I knew myself well enough to recognize this as a make-or-break moment. Maxine had put tremendous and precise effort into this evening and I knew she must have put a mountain of emotional investment into it as well. If I pushed things off, she'd take it as a rejection. So if I wanted to make that bond with Maxine and reap the benefits of it, it was now or never.
For a moment, thoughts of Chloe nearly made me say no. Chloe and I had the tender beginnings of a real relationship, something that could go far and something that I didn't want to wreck before it could begin. How would I sort through my feelings if I started something with Maxine? But then I realized that the feelings would be different, fundamentally different. I could never think of Maxine the same way I thought about Chloe. And with that, Chloe's previous words on the subject swept into my head and I made my decision…
"Yes," I said.
Maxine smiled, her lips trembling and small tears growing in her eyes. She slid up on top of me in the water and sat on my lap, her skin hot and smooth. I watched water droplets stream down from her shoulders and over her chest before she lifted my chin with her finger and kissed me.
. . . . .
What happened over the next few hours was, to put it mildly, intense. With Chloe, the intensity had been complete: emotional and physical, rising and falling in smooth waves. But with Maxine, the intensity came in frantic and erratic bursts of physical energy.
In the tub, Maxine slid around and sat behind me. She whispered into my ears as she reached down between my legs. It was as if she wanted to emphasize our shared identities, starting that way. And I suppose it had the desired effect: she knew my body well, especially from that position. The familiarity of it inflamed a discordance in my body that I found both disturbing and arousing ini equal measures. And when she brought me over the edge, we held each other in the water, letting the tub's jets massage our backs, until I swapped with her and did the same to her. And what a strange and exhilarating thing, to touch a body so intimately familiar and yet not your own.
After the tub, Maxine took me through the Prescotts' "wellness wing," skipping the sauna and cold plunge and leading me to a steam shower where water sprayed out from all sides and above. In there, under those waterfalls and up against the smooth, heated walls, we washed one another and then tasted one another, taking turns on our knees and with fingers clutching at hair and palms pressed against the walls.
We dried off with the most luxurious towels I'd ever touched and then Maxine laid me down on a massage table. I closed my eyes as she rubbed my feet but when she began working her fingers up my legs and between my thighs, I sat up and told her that I was getting a bit sore (after all, I'd had more stimulation in the past two days than I typically had in a month or two). She grinned at me, stood, and walked her fingers up my leg and to my hips.
"Remember how I said we can rewind parts of people?" she asked.
My eyes widened.
"Let me show you," she whispered, taking my hand.
It was an odd sensation: after picking out the sore and overworked parts of my anatomy, rewinding them separately from the rest of me made it all go numb until I released it. And quite suddenly, the soreness was gone.
"Wow," I said.
Maxine bent down and whispered into my ear, "how do you think Megan, Warren, and I go at it so often?"
After I reciprocated the foot massage, Maxine took me to the bedroom suite. It must have been the space originally shared by Sean Prescott and his wife: it stretched from an opulent bathroom all the way to a wide balcony with a view of the ocean (currently obscured by fog). And the bed…the bed was the largest I'd ever seen and must have required a custom mattress.
Yet another fireplace lit the room, its warm glow flickering off of the ceiling and walls. I stepped inside slowly, my feet sinking into a deep and luxurious carpet.
Maxine climbed into the bed and laid down on her side, propping her head up with her arm and smiling at me. The firelight gave her pale skin an orange hue and the flames danced in her eyes.
"Are you ready for more?" she asked, in a sultry voice that I didn't know I was capable of.
I was ready for more.
. . . . .
I'm not sure I could describe the exhaustion that I felt. Physically, I was wide awake. Mentally, I was fully sharp. Emotionally, I was just as confused as I'd been before. And the parts of me that should've been worn out were, due to selective rewinding, completely rested. I think, perhaps, it was a kind of spiritual exhaustion: deep inside, I knew that after hours of what we'd been doing, I was supposed to be exhausted in pretty much every other way.
And Maxine must have felt something similar: we came to a nonverbal shared agreement when we reached the end of our long series of sexual events. We scooted to the head of the bed and sat staring at the fireplace in silence.
Maxine's fingertips made small circles on my arm and I slowly rocked my toes back and forth on her leg beneath the jumbled covers.
After what seemed like an hour, Maxine sighed.
"Max," she said, "there's something I need to tell you."
I twisted to face her and she turned to me, leaving half of her face in shadow.
"My powers are fading," she said.
Shit, I thought: in the midst of some time-stretched post-coital numbness, I had to be a halfway decent actress and pretend I didn't know that.
So I widened my eyes and put a hand on Maxine's wrist. Whether I made a good show of it or the room was simply too dark for Maxine to read into my expression, she didn't seem to realize that I already knew.
"It's true," she said, "I find it hard to rewind when other people are around. Small things, like rewinding a broken bone, are still easy. But not the kinds of rewinds that you're used to; those have become too painful."
I squeezed her wrist.
"And it gets worse," she said, "I'm not sure I'll be able to do another big rewind, the kind that can take us back years."
"Do you have to do those?" I asked.
She nodded.
"There's always a rebellion. Always," she said, "they made a guillotine one time, Max." She laughed. "A guillotine! But yes, whether it's five years or ten or something else, they always rise up. Sometimes they try to knock me out. Sometimes they try to kill me. Each time, I rewind to the same point, years before, and try again."
I hesitated before asking, "how many times?"
"Too many," she said, taking my hand in hers and intertwining our fingers, "so the next time, it may be up to you to bring us back. If I die…if we die, this place dies too. Everyone starves. It's even possible that the Barrier would fail." She shuddered. "I can't let that happen to them."
"Is there anything else we can do?" I asked.
I knew that that could be a dangerous question but I wanted to probe the limits of Maxine's trust. And it turned out that her trust went further than I thought…
She paused for a long time, squeezing my hand and looking off into the distance. Her face looked tired and her eyes hard. Then she sighed, dropped her gaze to the sheets, and rubbed her forehead with her free hand.
"No," she said, "but…there's something else I should tell you. And I hope that one day, you will understand why I haven't allowed it. And until then, I hope that you can trust me that it's important."
She looked at me, her gaze imploring, and I nodded.
She sighed again and said, "Max, there is a way for you to go home."
I held my breath and did it so swiftly that it sounded a bit like a gasp, which was the perfect sound to make over this "new" revelation. I'd love to say I did it on purpose but I'm definitely not that good of an actress.
Maxine continued, "there's a way for everyone here to go somewhere else, a tablet that can open a doorway to any universe. I discovered it a few months after discovering other universes. And for a time, I considered it. I considered having us all leave this place."
"Why didn't you?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
She laughed and said, "so many reasons, precious Max, so many. And more came as time went on. Many more. But when I first discovered the portal tablet, I had no guarantee that such a journey would be safe. I know now it would be but that took time, time during which I learned more. I learned that if I opened a portal and allowed a person to leave, there would be no way to bring them back. And I learned that most of Arcadia Bay would choose to leave. But not me: I would need to stay, to keep this place alive and to keep its purpose alive. Some others would stay with me, I am sure. But without a larger community, those few that remained would decay: our minds, our relationships, everything. Decay and death in a deathless place. And even if people wanted to return to the loving embrace of this paradise, I have no method of replicating whatever it was that brought you here. Once someone leaves, they are lost to us forever."
She paused again before continuing, "and to leave would be to refuse the gift of this place: eternal youth and everlasting life. Anyone who left would grow old and die. Injuries could kill them. Illnesses could kill them. There are those here who would die within months if they left. And how many would die from car accidents? From murder? From just falling off of something?"
Her fingers tightened around mine.
"And if we abandon this place, the sacrifices become worthless. Rachel's sacrifice, the sacrifice of our entire world, all of it. All of it would be for naught, Max. This place's purpose, its meaning, would vanish. There could be no replacing such a loss. So no, Max, we must keep the vigil in this lighthouse of the universes. The people must remain because they give this place life and this place gives them life. And we will keep trying until we bring lasting peace."
She looked at me, her eyes blazing in the firelight.
"I believe that's why you're here, Max," she said, "it's providence. It's this place acting to preserve itself, whether through its own volition or through Rachel, I do not know. But what I do know is that with your powers, fresh and strong, you can allow me space and time to rest…and perhaps my powers will return. Or you can help share the load. Or perhaps you are here to replace me…perhaps eternal life is not for me, the one who brought us here and the one who keeps us here."
She looked away and I reached up, cupping her cheek and turning her head back to me. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
"Maxine," I said, "I'm here, okay? I'm here."
She flung her arms around me and held me tight, crying as she repeated, "yes, yes you are," over and over.
When she finally calmed down, she thanked me, gave me a long kiss, and then asked me to rewind enough to allow us a full night's sleep. I did so, watching ghostly versions of Maxine and I doing things that looked rather different from a third-person perspective. When I reached the beginning of the night, Maxine and I crawled deeper into the covers, scooted close to one another, and drifted off to sleep.
. . . . .
As I fell into the warm abyss of sleep, my feelings wrapped around Maxine's struggles like a blanket.
Perhaps I should be helping her instead of the others, I thought, after all, what if she's right? This place must exist for a reason. If we take everyone away, it will die. Is that the right thing to do? When it's something so unique and powerful? And if we just rewind everyone's memories away every few years, is there really any harm in it?
Those thoughts echoed in my head as sleep claimed me.
. . . . .
I woke up in Principal Wells' old home, standing upright in the front hallway. Right above my head, the dangling lightbulb swung slowly back and forth, carving sharp shadows on the dusty floor and colorless walls. I glanced down: before falling asleep, I hadn't been wearing anything. Now I was wearing what looked like one of Maxine's outfits.
"Huh?" I said aloud, my voice echoing.
I turned around: behind me, instead of Wells' front door, the hallway extended out further than I could see, like Maxine's photo tunnels.
"This isn't real," I whispered.
Then I heard something from upstairs, something that sounded like a person crying. I pulled out my phone, turned on its flashlight, and crept up the stairs. The door to the room with Maxine's torn photos stood ajar; the crying came from inside.
I stepped in: the room extended off into impossible distances, the far walls and ceiling all lost into darkness. And the photos on the walls, all intact, showed the same thing: Kate, her head in her hands, crying. Suddenly, I had one of the same photos in my hand.
"Tear it," came a voice.
I looked up to find Maxine watching me; her hair fell all the way down to the floor and pooled around her bare feet.
"Do it, Max," came another voice, from right next to me.
I jumped: it was Mark Jefferson, standing over my shoulder and looking down at the photo.
"You must destroy anything that will hold you back, Max," he said, "Maxine understands that."
"I do," Maxine said, "now tear it, Max." Her face twisted into an ugly snarl.
I tried to drop the photo but instead, I dropped my phone and my fingers tore the photo in two. Kate screamed and ink poured out of the jagged cut, gushing down to the floor and spreading in a dark puddle. The photos on the walls all tore in half and drifted to the floor like autumn leaves. Behind them, photos of Chloe appeared. Tears were in her eyes and her lips were stretched in a grimace. One of the same photos appeared in my hand.
"They all stand in the way," Maxine said, "all of them."
"Tear it, Max," Jefferson said.
My heart pounded in my chest and I hurled the photo away.
"No!" I screamed.
The photo room vanished and I stood in the basement room with the dead Maxes. Except now there were dozens of them, sitting neatly arranged on hefty shelves and staring at me with lifeless eyes. A glow drew my gaze: a tablet with symbols on it sat propped up next to the door. As I watched, the doorframe rippled with white light and another Max came through. She wore a yellow dress and had a white flower in her hair. She smiled and then her face twisted in confusion.
"Another," said Maxine, suddenly standing next to me, her hair trailing in a braid that snaked its way throughout the room, winding in between the dead Maxes.
The new Max drew a sharp breath and her eyes rolled up into her head. She fell to the floor, blood seeping from her mouth and her ears.
"It must continue," Maxine said, "it must go on forever."
Another Max stepped through the glowing door and I squeezed my eyes shut; when I opened them, one of Maxine's photo tunnels stretched out into the distance, the familiar rows of photos glinting under the long line of globular lamps.
"Forever, Max," came Maxine's voice, rushing down the tunnel so quickly and with such volume that I cried out and ducked.
When I looked again, I stood at the end of the tunnel. Several people from the town hammered away at the rocky end with pickaxes, their clothes stained with sweat and dirt; one of them was Joyce.
"Pay them no heed, Max," came Jefferson's voice.
I jumped and spun to find him right next to me, uncomfortably close.
"Take the shot, Max," he said, pointing to the tablet Maxine used to photograph other worlds, "there are so many vulnerabilities that you can capture with photos taken in secret. Through this window, you can see into so many lives, Max. And with that, you can capture anything. Maxine has done it; she's captured moments that no other photographer could. I'm jealous of what you have, Max. Use it. Use it forever."
"Forever," Maxine said, standing behind Jefferson.
Jefferson turned to her, his eyes wide with surprise. She smiled and, with an unnatural slowness, sank a long blade into his chest. As he fell to his knees, she leaned forward and kissed him before slamming her knee into his face with a sickening crunch. I had to turn away…and when I did, I found myself in the center of Maxine's time prison.
In all directions, out into impenetrable clouds of mist, figures stood rigid and silent. A few feet away, Daniel sat on a stool, sketchbook in hand.
"Are they not perfect, Max?" he asked, "they all stand still. They let me draw them. I do not want to. But I must."
I backed away slowly from where Daniel sketched, his pen moving in precise motions as tears fell from his eyes onto the page. He vanished into a cloud of fog and I looked around with a shudder: there were dozens of people frozen here who shouldn't have been. I saw Juliet, her face frozen in surprise. I saw the kid from the takeout place I'd been to the previous night, cowering. And I saw Chloe, both hands raised with middle fingers up; her face showed rage…but her eyes were sad, so sad.
"It's how it must be," said Maxine, appearing out of the mist, her impossibly long hair trailing behind her like a thick snake, "they all betray us. All of them. It will be us, you and me, forever."
Above us, the thick shroud of mist parted and dissolved, revealing roiling clouds high above. A beam of light from the lighthouse swept by and illuminated a cage hovering above us. Inside sat Rachel, clutching the bars with wrinkled hands. Her hair had gone white and she stooped over with age but her eyes were sharp and hard.
"All of us must be free or none of us will be," she said.
A twig snapped and I lowered my gaze: all of the people had turned into animals, still frozen in place. And right in front of me, the doe statue from the junkyard stood with red tears leaking from its eyes. Then, with a snap and a rumble, cracks appeared on the stone doe's chest, spidering out as if it had been struck. A moment later, the hundreds of animals around me lurched into motion; they glanced at me before trotting off and disappearing into the mist.
I blinked and I suddenly stood in the Prescott living room, a glass in my hand with amber liquid swirling at the bottom. In front of me, Sean Prescott stood with a similar glass; it glinted in firelight. He raised the glass.
"To you, Maxine Caulfield," he said, "successor to the throne of Arcadia Bay. That is, if you choose to seize it. If you choose to follow the path laid out, the path of eternity, which I shall help you achieve."
He began to laugh, his laugh getting louder and louder.
I hurled my glass to the ground and backed away. I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them, I stood in front of the giant statue of Rachel. Someone else stood at the base, staring up at the glowing red heart behind the stone hands.
"Hello?" I asked.
The person turned and lowered a hood; it was Rachel, her blonde hair its original color and a warm smile on her face.
"Rachel?" I asked.
She gave me a slight nod, a lopsided smile on her face.
"What…?" I began.
"It's your choice, Max," she said, her voice soft, "and you're at a tipping point. I know you don't see it, there's no way you could. But the choice you make, in your mind and in your heart, will send you down one path or the other. And now you know where Maxine will take you if you follow her."
A shiver ran down my spine.
"And…and if I choose the original way? Away from Maxine? Where will that take me?" I asked.
"Home," she said with a smile.
. . . . .
I bolted awake, covered in sweat. My heart pounded in my chest and I looked back and forth, half expecting the scene around me to change.
But no, I was back in reality; it felt firm, it felt normal.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I looked to my side, where Maxine had been; she was gone. A note, sitting on her pillow, told me that she'd gone to her morning meetings.
With a sigh, I pushed myself up and sat against the headboard, letting the covers fall away. I had a moment of panic: what if someone walked in while I was sitting there naked? Then I remembered I could just rewind it away.
Then I remembered the dream.
I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips: that had been no normal dream. It had to be Rachel, getting into my head to send me a message. And the message, despite coming in so many shifting places and with plenty of cryptic images, had been abundantly clear: Maxine's path led to places I would never want to go. But had I really been, as Rachel put it, at a tipping point? Had I really been at a point where a coin toss could have led me to such things? To Maxine's horror house? To Jefferson and Prescott? To shutting out and even freezing Chloe? To murdering other versions of myself?
How much of what I saw was even real or possible? Had Rachel seen those futures? Had they happened?
I dropped my head into my hands. And with a cold feeling in my chest, I realized that Rachel had been right: last night, I'd started to look at things from Maxine's perspective. Not just out of an attempt to understand her but with real sympathy for her goals. I was her and she was me, after all; it would be hard not to find some parallel with her thoughts, as far-gone as they might be. But I hadn't made any decisions yet…I hadn't even thought of what those decisions would actually be. And that meant that Rachel had caught me not before I could fall but before I could even step to the edge.
I imagined that alternate future then: waking up without the dream, mulling over the night with Maxine with a warm feeling in my chest, deciding not to tell Chloe everything, spending more time with Maxine, coming up with plans and ideas with her, and falling right into it. And the funny thing was that I didn't think Maxine was trying to sway me into her camp: I was pretty certain that she just assumed I was already there, that me being a version of her meant that I would automatically join her, even if I dallied around with the ideas and plans of others.
At that thought, I shivered and hoped I'd never be so blind.
And with that, my decision became concrete: I couldn't follow Maxine's path. I could barely believe it had been a possibility, but it had. I'd never know how close I came to it and I didn't ever want to find out. But now that I knew for sure that we could escape and that Maxine wasn't the all-powerful time goddess she'd once been, what now?