Page 41 of The Book of Lost Hours

Lisavet’s nerves ramped up to an all-time high. A silent question hung in the air at the end of every visit. Then Jack came in one day carrying a coat and a cardboard box.

“Did you know it’s been one whole year since we took you out of the time space?” he asked after lighting her cigarette and taking his usual seat by the window.

“Has it?”

“Mm-hmm. A little longer, actually.”

That meant that the year was 1954. Amelia was four years old.

It also meant that, when they’d first brought her out, she was unconscious for over two months.

Her body and mind had taken two months to catch up to each other again, and even longer to return fully to normal. Just as Ernest had predicted.

“How would you like to get out of this room for a bit?” Jack asked suddenly, interrupting her thoughts.

She looked up in surprise. “R-really?”

“If you’d like. I’d say it’s been long enough for us to assume you aren’t going to suffer another mental disconnect, don’t you think?”

Lisavet’s mouth was dry with nerves. “I suppose.”

Before they left, he gave her the coat and a pair of gray slippers.

“Don’t be nervous,” Jack said as he held the door open to let her out. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”

Sure enough, she hadn’t taken more than a few steps before he took hold of her arm.

They passed through a set of locked doors that had to be opened by a guard and entered a part of the building Lisavet had never seen before.

Her eyes scanned the hallway as they walked, and she realized that this wasn’t a prison at all.

They were on the lowest floor of some kind of medical facility.

Patients dressed in the same gray garb she wore could be seen through the windows they passed, their eyes cloudy, expressions vacant.

Many of them were moving in erratic patterns, jerking as though their limbs were being pulled by an invisible string.

Lisavet looked up at Jack. Standing beside him, rather than sitting as she usually did, she realized that he was quite tall. Taller than she’d expected.

“Is this…”

“A psychiatric hospital. Yes. Finest one in the DC area,” he said without batting an eye.

“Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that,” he said, his hand shifting from her arm to the back of her neck.

“We needed doctors who knew how to help someone suffering a disconnect from reality. It was the best option.”

Jack took her past the front desk. The main entry was devoid of people. Jack opened the door and she stepped into the courtyard.

It was raining. Cold water droplets hit her cheeks.

The courtyard was walled off on three sides, leaving a small space for a wrought-iron gate that opened onto the street.

Dead leaves crunched underfoot, deafeningly loud.

Cars breezed past the gate just twenty feet away.

The sound of rain. The smell of the wind.

The rustle of trees. Lisavet’s heartbeat raced.

She swayed, overwhelmed by the rush of sounds and sensations.

Jack slid his hand around her arm again, this time to keep her steady.

He said something to her. She didn’t answer.

A car honked its horn. Rain hit the top of her head.

It was too much after so long with so little.

Too much light. Too much sound. On the verge of hyperventilating, she squeezed her eyes shut and heard the familiar hush of Time ticking in the back of her head.

Calling out to her with its soothing embrace.

As her mind turned toward it, everything around her stopped.

No more noises. No more rain. She let out a gasp of relief.

Beside her, Jack gasped as well.

“What the hell?” he murmured.

Lisavet opened her eyes to see that the world around them had stopped. It was frozen, suspended in time, unmoving.

“What did you do?” Jack asked, his voice hushed in either awe or horror.

“I… I don’t know.”

Lisavet’s pulse slowed and calmed as she looked around. At the raindrops hovering in the air. The cars and their occupants outside the gate, frozen midmotion. The tree branches bent midbreeze. Her doing.

Jack let out a rough, strained laugh. “You stopped Time,” he said, more curious than alarmed. “Have you ever done this before?”

“No. Never.”

She had never known this was something she could try. Time was still within her, even though she had returned to the physical world. It had not forgotten her. That single fact brought her more comfort than any poem ever had.

Beside her, Jack reached out to touch one of the suspended raindrops, letting his thumb and forefinger flatten it completely. “My god. You are a wonder,” he said. He started to let go of her arm.

“Wait,” Lisavet said. She latched on to his wrist, keeping him beside her. “Don’t let go of me.”

He gave her a strange look. “Why not?”

“Whenever I was time walking, Ernest could only touch things when I was holding them.”

“And?”

“And if you let go of me, I’m worried that you might freeze too. Like them.”

As she said it out loud, she wondered why she cared.

If he was frozen, she could leave. He would never know where she went.

But the thought of running off and disappearing into the world alone was unsettling at best. A familiar cage was less frightening than an endless void, even if there was a tiger inside.

“Alrighty then,” Jack said. He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze that made her want to punch him. “Okay. I think that’s enough. Undo it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t even know how this happened. I’m not sure if I can.”

“Try,” he said impatiently.

Lisavet shut her eyes. She could hear the seconds passing anyway.

Then the almost maternal whisper of Time.

The harder she listened, the louder it got.

Time spun closer, parting like a set of warm black curtains to beckon her in.

All at once, the rushing sounds of movement resumed.

Rain hit her cheek. The roll of car engines droned on.

Lisavet opened her eyes to find everything as it had been. Moving forward once more.

“Attagirl,” Jack said.

When Lisavet looked up at him again, he was looking at her with the glint of a man striking gold. As if she were something very valuable and he, the owner of it.

After their first outing, Jack took her outside every time he came to visit.

First their walks were confined to the courtyard, and then, eventually, other places.

He took her on brief excursions to the park nearby, taking her there in his car.

Then to more and more populous locations.

He slowly reintroduced her to the world through quiet cafés and shops.

For these outings, she was given normal clothing to wear.

Her long hair was braided by one of the nurses and the shoes they gave her were the kind that buckled, rather than the flimsy slippers from before.

For a brief two hours every Saturday, she remembered what it was like to be human.

She spoke to real people, although Jack usually did the talking for them.

She ate food that didn’t come from a plastic tray.

She heard music playing on the radio, saw real, living people.

As much as she hated Jack, she began looking forward to his visits, anticipating where they might go next.

She felt as she had when she was a child and Azrael had first taught her how to time walk.

Returning from each excursion became more and more difficult. She dreaded the moment when Jack would tell her it was time to go, knowing that she had another full week ahead of her until she could go out again.

One night in June, Jack came on a Wednesday.

“Good. You’re up,” he announced. “I want you to come with me. There’s something I want to try.”

He hadn’t brought her a change of clothes this time. Only shoes. Lisavet put them on, stealing a glance at his watch to check the time. Eleven thirty.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

Outside it was dark and dewy. They drove past monuments and large government buildings and pulled up to an office building not far from the center of it all.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice trembling. “What is this?”

He slid an arm around her shoulders and walked her forcefully up the stairs. “Nothing to worry about. This is where I work.”

He took her through the doors and down a series of long hallways. They encountered no other people until they reached the lowest level, where two men wearing watches and dark suits eyed her with curiosity.

“Is this her?” one of them asked, looking her up and down.

“Yes, this is her. Lisavet, do you remember Patrick Brady and George Collins?”

Lisavet suddenly recognized them as the timekeepers who had helped drag her out of the time space almost two years ago.

She recoiled as Jack ushered her into a room where a man lay asleep on a thinly padded bench.

His hands were bound and there was nothing else in the room. No table. No chair. Not even a window.

“What are we doing here?” she asked the moment Jack closed the door, leaving Brady and Collins on the other side of it. “Who is this?”

“This poor lad is named Harry,” Jack said, placing both hands on her shoulders. “He accidentally got himself caught up with one of my timekeepers. Saw some things he wasn’t supposed to. So we brought him in.”

Lisavet studied the man’s unconscious face. He looked young.

“I was hoping you could help me clean it up,” Jack continued.

“Clean it up?”

“His memory.”

Lisavet’s eyes grew wide. “You want me to…”

“Erase the memories, yes. Like you did to Ernest.” From his pocket, he took out a black notebook. Pages for storing the memories.

She shook her head, pulling away from him. “No, I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. I could only do that in the time space.”

“Have you tried?”

“Well… no.”

“Then try.”

“I can’t.”

“Lisavet.” Jack’s voice hardened.