A short story from the past

Haunting Infinity

S.M. Thygesen. Copyright 2004-2024. All rights reserved.

Durwood gained consciousness and turned the steering wheel by instinct, narrowly avoiding driving through the railing and flying off the mountain road. He stomped the breaks. The car slid and crashed sideways into the opposite vast mountainside. The windows on the left side were smashed in, and debris flew right at him, cutting his brow.

    The car had come to a halt, but the windshield wiper continued its steady movements, unfazed, still sweeping off the heavy-falling snow. Where was he?

He must have fallen asleep behind the wheel. Getting all the way to the outskirts had been no easy task under these circumstances. Especially after he had lost the radio signal and the sweet, enlightening music had died out, leaving him with the cold mountain atmosphere as his sole companion. He assessed the situation: Aside from his cut brow and the shock itself, he was miraculously unhurt.

    The car had completely shut down. Durwood took a few breaths to calm himself and then turned the car key, but only a muffled sound came from the worn-out engine as it refused to start again. What now? He couldn’t just sit here and wait for someone to pass by in this awful weather. He’d be late for his meeting, he recalled.          He looked at his watch. Almost five o’clock. With a loud sigh, he crawled to the passenger seat and opened the door, assisted by an angry kick. Durwood got out of the car, slammed the door behind him and walked onwards at a quick pace, clutching his arms to his chest to keep warm. The thick snow underneath creaked with every step he took, compressed by his heavy feet. Hopefully he’d be able to walk the last mile to his destination without succumbing to drowsiness or the dense snowfall.

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    After a short while, he could just barely see the front of the car when he turned to look over his shoulder. It was off the road, so no one would crash into it in the low visibility. Durwood hated that old wreck. Hopefully it would disappear entirely in this pale storm, and that would be the end of it. Besides, it wasn’t even his car. Come to think of it, he couldn’t even remember whose car it was or where he had attained it. He was likely just in a confused state of shock, unable think clearly yet in the freezing cold. The wind thrust the snowflakes against his cold skin as if they were a volley of sharp arrows, fired without end. Fortunately, not much time came to pass before he caught the glimpse of vague lights ahead of him: He had arrived at the small village.

    Blood was running into his one eye. Durwood unfolded a small piece of paper on which the address and directions had been scrawled. He memorized the writing in case the blood he was about to dab off his brow would blur the ink. He tucked it back down in his pocket and continued moving through the snow.

    As he made his way along the crooked streets toward the town circle, he convinced himself he could feel the warmth from beyond the windows of the tightly packed, medieval-looking houses. Some people were eating supper, he could see, while others sat in front of their fireplace, whole families, perhaps listening to tales of folklore. Some even stood up by the window, glaring suspiciously out upon the stranger who strode by their house.

    When Durwood had reached the town circle, he found a humble fountain. He knew that the village was mainly inhabited by peasants who preferred to live in a small community, secluded from the rest of the world, which explained the few cars in the

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streets. Under the snow, it appeared that their roads weren’t even macadamized but instead consisted of cobblestones cemented into the pavement. He walked farther, through the circle and on, past a well-kept old church before he was at last outside Candler’s Corner No. 29.

    He held his breath before knocking. Suddenly, creaking footsteps in the snow could be heard behind him. Durwood slowly turned. Someone was approaching: A stranger clad in a coat much like his own. Someone else coming for this five o’clock meeting? Durwood squinted and couldn’t believe his eyes. The face of the stranger getting clearer and clearer in the falling snow was that of his own. Except no cut brow, nor did he look as weathered as Durwood felt. The tidier Doppelgänger looked equally horrified. Both of them raised their hands in unison. As their disbelieving hands slowly touched each other, a loud crack was instantly heard. A very bright light erupted, Durwood was dragged forward, and so was the stranger—merging. Durwood began to scream but instantly halted and spun around himself in shock when he realized there was no one else there now. Just him? He had obviously hit his head harder than he instantly thought in the crash. He was seeing things.

    Durwood closed his eyes and exhaled. He had to see this through or the trip to the outskirts had been in vain.

    He removed his thin leather glove and knocked twice on the wooden door.

The old man who opened it shortly after seemed startled by the conspicuous look of the man in his doorway. Durwood acknowledged, looking in the mirror behind the old man, that his own appearance was as horrifically weathered as he had imagined it to be. His usually slickly combed hair was purely white from snow and had been

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blown into a mess. Blood continued to run from his left brow. The highly expensive trench coat he wore, sewn to his measures, had been turned all woolen by the melting snow, and consequently an odd scent of sheep hung around him, betraying the fabric’s origin. This sleazy appearance was quite the opposite of his usual one.

“Yes?” the old man hesitantly said, ready to smack the door, as if Durwood posed a threat, a potential mugger or the like.

    “Good evening, Mr. Erlington. I’m Durwood. We spoke to each other on the phone yesterday, remember?”

    “Oh, yes. It is indeed you, then. Come on in,” the old man replied. He opened the door widely and made a gesture to welcome Durwood inside.

    Durwood entered and threw his overcoat, scarf, and gloves in the corner of the living room. It seemed too warm inside at first, having only just adapted his body to the cold climate outside.

    “You’re not quite what I had in mind for a guy from the big city,” Erlington said with a curious tone to his voice.

    “Pardon my scruffy look. I crashed my car just now, so I had to walk by foot, uphill, in this heavenly weather. Forgive me if I am not quite myself,” Durwood replied slightly sarcastically. Old fool. How dared he mock him like that after all he had done to get to this appointment on time?

    Mr. Erlington nodded somewhat understandingly. “Are you alright? You need any help?”

    “No. I’m alright," Durwood lied. "Let’s just get this over with. I’ll head for the inn in town afterwards and have them call someone to tow the car.”

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    Mr. Erlington nodded. “I’ll fix you a nice warm cup of tea and then we can discuss the issue about the deed for the mill and all, if you insist.”

    Durwood sat down in an armchair. It wasn’t long before Mr. Erlington came back with two cups of tea and a bundle of documents. “This is all of my late cousin’s papers. I was the sole kindred, so I guess that leaves me the rightful owner of the windmill now, right?”

    Durwood was too busy flipping through the papers, looking for one in particular, to register the question or respond. “Aha! Perfect. Here it is,” Durwood said, almost febrile. “The deed which claims the estate of Professor Rohr.” He grabbed his overcoat from the floor and pulled out an envelope from its interior pocket, then gave the paper therein to Mr. Erlington. “If you would be so kind to sign this for me. It acknowledges that the mill is no longer the heirloom of your family.”

    “Yes, I do remember that you said something about this on the phone, but I don’t quite understand.”

    “Then let me explain: Your cousin, Winston Rohr, had a tremendous debt. Expenses that this deed should be sufficient to cover. So, unfortunately for you, you will have to decline his legacy.”

    For a moment, there was complete silence in the room apart from the crackling fireplace.

    “May I remind you of the fact,” Durwood continued, “that your cousin’s death is only hypothetical. They never found a body, now did they, Mr. Erlington? Nor anything

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suggesting that he is dead. He just… vanished. It’s been a year now. This means that the mill, hypothetically speaking, still belongs to your cousin, which negates your right to have first priority on the property. No one from the family has formally filed for having him declared dead, either. I am terribly sorry.”

    Mr. Erlington sighed, seeming to have realized that any further discussion of this matter would be in vain. “Very well. I’m afraid of that old mill anyway, to be honest. If you seize it, I will at least avoid having to go back up there. I haven’t been up there too much since he vanished—few have. I’ll sign your contract if that clears my cousin of his debt. But I can tell you one thing for sure: My cousin is gone from this world! His ghost and merry singing still haunt the windmill where he conducted all his experiments. Always singing, he was.”

    Durwood took a sip of his tea with a slightly shaking hand, still perplexed by his own supernatural visions outside the house. “Ha! I’m afraid I don’t believe in fairytales, Mr. Erlington. Don’t you worry, we’ll find someone interested in buying the mill for sure. I’ll take a look at it tomorrow, and then we’ll see. What was your cousin working on again?”

    “Sad story. His small daughter died of tuberculosis many years ago. My cousin tried desperately to make machinery to contact her and bring her back from the other side. He told me that at one of his last international science conventions, he had saved the life of a mysterious traveler, who in return had imparted him with odd wisdom and schematics on how to do this.”

    Durwood scoffed and concealed a mocking laugh. “You are talking about... the afterlife, eh? Interesting. I guess we don't share your superstition in the big city.”   

    Durwood rose from the chair, put on his coat, and gathered the signed documents

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from Mr. Erlington along with the key to the mill. Another scalp to add for his law firm.     

    “Thanks for the tea. I better get going now.”

    So, within minutes, Durwood left Mr. Erlington’s house with a satisfied smirk on his face and the deed in his pocket. He was not sure if the inheritance rant he had fired at Mr. Erlington checked out legally, but it had worked.

    The stormy weather had retreated into a silent, cool breeze. Durwood hurried down the road again, back toward the town circle, where he knew the inn lay nearby. As he walked, something he hadn’t seen before for the falling snow caught his attention: The old windmill. There it stood, menacing, on a lonely snowy crest of land on the other side of a dam. His curiosity got the best of him, and he considered paying it a visit before he went off to bed.

   Durwood approached the brink of a wooden bridge with big, rusty hinges that led over the dam. The water underneath shone like hammered silver in the pale light of the moon, too lively to have been tamed by the frost yet. He put his hand in his pocket and put a firm grip on the 9mm revolver he always carried. Old man Erlington’s ghost story about his cousin popped up from the back of his mind, and all of a sudden he wasn’t certain whether it was the murmuring of the wind in the trees he could hear or the missing professor’s faint elusive singing coming straight from the mill. Durwood focused his gaze. Very strange: Eerie lights seemed to emerge from the windows of the mill as well. Or was it just the reflection of the moon somehow?

   Durwood felt increasingly uneasy. He could have sworn he had been at this

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particular place before and it sent shivers down his spine. Déjà vu. He couldn't trust his own senses today. Not after that weird hallucination he had seen earlier in front of Mr. Erlington's house of himself. Durwood retreated a few steps in awe, backing away from the bridge again, as he agreed with himself that it would probably be better to just come back tomorrow, when the mill was lit by a more friendly light and where he would be properly rested with a functioning mind.

    He hastily walked back into the center of the small village to the inn he had pre-booked. This inn was the extension of a pub but luckily only two people appeared to sit in the bar, so noise would hardly be an issue for his sleep.

    The interior of the inn was as fragile-looking and old as everything else in the village. Caught in the past. Even the butterflies on the wall behind the reception desk were frozen in time—caught behind glass in golden frames.

    A young man in a tweed blazer with a grim expression emerged behind the desk: The owner of the inn. Durwood presented himself and told about his car accident and asked to have it reported and towed. The owner nodded with a skeptical look. Durwood proceeded to request check in and a key for his pre-booked room.

Now the owner sighed. "Check in? You must have hit your head in your accident. You checked in just an hour ago and left the key here with me. Don't you remember? You stood right there and told me about your business with the mill you were to visit tomorrow and about the meeting with Mr. Erlington you headed out for tonight. I am surprised as to why you have been driving outside the town then. I sure hope you are not drunk. Count your blessings that this is a place of great integrity. Here’s your key… again."

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     The inn owner slid a key across the front desk.

   Durwood widened his eyes. “We spoke on the phone when I booked the room. That’s probably when I told you those things. You mix things up. I’ve only just arrived.”

    The key told him the room was 209, so that was where he proceeded. Inside this small room upstairs, he felt even more confounded than he had in the reception. There lay his small overnight bag on the bed and his car keys on the night table. Had he lost his mind? Had he been to the inn before he went for Mr. Erlington and then simply forgotten about it?

    Durwood threw himself onto the bed, completely exhausted. He would leave first thing in the morning—after having seen whether the mill was in a proper condition or not.

    It had been a day unlike any other. The strange Doppelgänger? Just a trauma-induced vision, he told himself repeatedly. Durwood turned in his bed, looking up into the ceiling, and wondered about his car accident. How could he have fallen asleep driving on that steep road? He blamed himself for the accident and tried to reexperience the whole situation within his head.

    Then a disturbing thought hit him: The car had spun halfway around when he had turned the wheel and gone into the mountainside. But when he walked away from it, toward the village, he still recalled looking back at its front. Wouldn’t this imply him having walked in the direction from which he had driven? With this confusion filling his head, Durwood fell into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of snowy mountains and abandoned mills.

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A tapping woke him the following morning. A pigeon sat outside his window, outlined by the gray sky behind it.

    Durwood got up and focused on his schedule for the day, having chosen to temporarily  stop overthinking the previous night’s enigmatic events. He went downstairs for a quick bite in the tavern and got hold of a flashlight before wandering off to the mill estate.

    The weather outside felt even colder today. His breath appeared before him as a mist. However, the old mill did not look quite as daunting in daylight, which created a small element of comfort. Many people even stood outside on the streets, shoveling snow away from the entrances to their houses.

    When Durwood arrived at the dam, he smiled at the thought of not having dared to take a closer look at the mill the previous night. He crossed the familiar bridge and was soon just a few feet away from the property.

    He needed to check out its foundation from the inside. Confirming no apparent rot or construction faults would be splendid and conclude his mission in the village.

    To his relief, no weird singing came from the windmill today, but he still wouldn’t have been surprised if it was occupied by some deranged squatter. His eagerness had suppressed his fear, and he could no longer wait to see what the mill could possibly be hiding.

    Durwood unlocked the door, lit his flashlight, and entered with a gentle push. The light beam from his flashlight was accentuated by the immense fog of dust from within the dark interior of the mill.

    Durwood stepped inside the former haven of Professor Rohr and took a good look

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around. Old newspapers, sketches, and papers still lay everywhere. In the middle of the room stood a tall stool, next to a table filled with machinery. Nothing seemed too suspicious in there at all.

    He went through his check list, happily seeing that the construction was as good as he had hoped. He was just about to exit the mill when he heard faint singing again like the night before. It sounded like a distorted voice. An echo, almost as if it were coming from a radio with bad reception. He turned on his heels and drew his gun, pointing it into the dark.

    “Who’s there?” he cried.

    He searched the room with his flashlight, but there was no one to be seen. He listened carefully to the voice to specify its source. It sounded very distant but very close at the same time. As he walked into the center of the room, the voice became louder and louder. He walked around feeling that he was as close to its point of origin as possible. Every time he passed a certain point in the room, the voice would evolve into a high-pitched static noise. A gut feeling told him that this was the center of it.  Durwood found this very strange.

    After a few minutes, he could no longer hear the singing voice at all, no matter where he went in the room. There must have been some logical explanation to this, he thought to himself. A hidden, faulty radio that had turned on by itself?

    Puzzled, he walked over to the table where a large, cube-shaped machine stood, among other things. It had a huge lever on its side and diodes, cogwheels, and buttons covering its front. From the top, three strange antennas rose, and a liquid-filled sphere was mounted in the middle of it. It looked like some sort of expensive

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cappuccino machine, but Durwood was somehow certain that it had a strange connection to the singing voice.

    Someone, most likely the professor, had written notes on a piece of paper that lay in front of the machine. One paragraph was encircled: ‘18 hours! First test awaits.’

    Durwood couldn’t help himself—he gently pulled the lever on the side. The machine hummed weakly, and suddenly the small, liquid-filled sphere, held by the device, started to rotate around its own axis, faster and faster. Its liquid contents turned translucent. Bolts of blue lightning erupted between the three antennas, and the sphere was suddenly surrounded by an illuminated aura of strange, multicolored light. Durwood had never seen anything like it—something he could only compare to images he’d seen of the Northern Lights.

    The strange substance even bent the light beam from his flashlight into a warped angle when he aimed at it. The aura was so beautiful, he felt compelled to run his hand through it. The moment he stuck his hand inside, though, he was zapped with a bolt of lightning flying sideways from the three antennas. A powerful jolt went through his hand. Durwood screamed in agony. Dark smoke erupted from the machine as it began shaking violently before eventually turning off with a loud clap. Everything died out. The bulb inside Durwood’s flashlight blew with a glassy crack.      He now stood in a pitch-black silence with his one hand completely incapacitated by excruciating pain. Durwood fumbled inside the dark mill and narrowly managed to find the exit and tumble out into the broad daylight and snow.

    He’d had enough of this stupid village—he had to leave right away.

    Running back down the hill and across the bridge, fueled by his fear, he headed

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straight for the inn where the deed was. The chairman wouldn’t be happy if something had gone awry and Durwood returned without it. He cursed in anger and looked at his scorched hand, trying to rid himself of the odd paralysis without any luck. He felt electric, almost intoxicated, but most of all nauseous. His right shoulder and leg began feeling painfully incapacitated too. It was spreading. He dragged himself along in a slouching manner. What had that infernal machine done to him? Uncertain of his own health, he managed to drag himself to the side of the snowy road where the parking lot of the inn was located. He needed fresh air.

    Durwood sat down in the snow and tried to stop his own hyperventilation. His car was busted far away, and he needed a vehicle to get out of here right away. He had to find a phone somewhere, call a cab, and then be on his way. He barely pulled himself together and dragged himself farther across the parking lot, toward the inn.

He forgot all about his sudden illness when he was met by a most peculiar sight—his beloved black Chevrolet stood parked in the front row. It certainly was his car. It was miraculously intact in spite of the accident, and even though it didn’t have one scratch nor any broken windows, he knew it had to be his. He could recognize the bumper sticker on its back and the license plate. How could this be? If his car stood here without any scratch, then what had he crashed sideways into the mountainside?

    He remembered having left from his house in his own Chevrolet and that he had been listening to Bill Haley and His Comets, with ‘Rock Around the Clock’ on the radio on the highway. It somehow felt eons ago. But then his memory contradicted itself: He had driven in a much smaller vehicle when he finally reached the outskirts and crashed, definitely not the Chevrolet. He even remembered that he hadn’t known

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whose car it was, when he had left this crashed car.

    Durwood was scared to death, uncertain whether he needed to be taken to a doctor or a looney bin. Something was wrong, very wrong. Screw the deed in the inn, he was getting out of here! He fought his way to the Chevrolet, barely capable of walking, constantly shifting his bodyweight to avoid falling down. What was happening to him?

Stop pretending you don’t know it, a voice of reason said inside his head. The déjà vu you’ve had. The machine...

    “No! Rubbish!” he shouted in response to his own thoughts. He continued to inspect the car in front of him. It really was his Chevrolet. This was too strange. He didn’t have time to think. He just needed to get out of here. Fast. Before the pain would consume him.

    He could not find the car keys in his jacket pocket. They were at the night table in his room. His vision spun around. Durwood fell to his knees in the snow and cried.

    Suddenly, the inn owner stepped in front of him. “Can I help you, sir? What are you doing here?” he asked.

    “I need my car keys. This is my car. Fetch them from my room. Now! I’m in a hurry,” Durwood replied, panting, with feverish sweat running down his face.

    “I think I’ve just about had enough of you. Coming here and claiming this town’s mill property. Acting all weird. Crashing your car. Now saying that this here is your car? You really are drunk. Get up, get your own damn things yourself and get out of our town,” the dizzying double-vision of the inn owner in front of Durwood said.

    Durwood felt like he was burning alive. “I am not leaving

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until you fetch my things, you imbecile!”

    The man’s face turned to stone. “That language is uncalled for! Get up!”

    The inn owner grabbed Durwood’s collar and dragged him to his feet. The immeasurable amount of pain within made it too much to handle, and Durwood snapped. He grabbed the revolver from his pocket, reluctantly stood up, and shot the inn owner in the throat at point blank range.

    The man looked utterly surprised as his blood splattered Durwood’s face. He gurgled and coughed a little before finally falling to the ground. The smoke rising from Durwood’s gun mixed in the air with the steam that rose from the ground where the man’s warm blood was slowly melting the snow.

    Durwood stood shocked with one arm to his forehead, but he couldn’t care any less. The pain inside him was all he had room to feel. In fact, he almost just wanted to inflict that equal amount of pain on everyone else now who stood in his way of getting away. He somehow knew that he was going to die if he didn’t—he could inherently feel it.

    Noon was drawing ever nearer, his watch told him, and he gathered his remaining strength to search the pockets of the inn owner. Durwood found what he had hoped for: Car keys! Car keys to a Morris it appeared. He looked around and found a green Morris parked close to the inn. Dragging himself over there, Durwood successfully concluded it was the right car for the keys. He got inside the small green car of the gargling man in the snow. The soul-crushing pain Durwood hadn’t believed could get any worse had indeed gotten a whole lot worse now. He backed the car out of the

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parking lot with a screech and drove off.

    He raced through the town circle and along the crooked roads until he was out of the village. A mysterious, weak current pulsated within him. He felt his time was running out. As he drove down the mountain road, he could see the car he had crashed into the mountainside in the distance. He stamped the speeder to the floor, anxious to find out what the wreck looked like of the car he had driven.

    When Durwood reached it, he screamed in terror. It was a small green Morris car like the one he was driving right now. Not a similar one, but the exact same car. His worst fears had been confirmed.

    “Help!,” he cried, feeling that he had no longer control over the car. Almost every limb in his body was completely paralyzed now. The car was moving extremely fast, heading off the road.

    Durwood sobbed as the revelation appeared to him. A revelation of what would come to pass. He looked at the clock on the car’s panel. It was 'eighteen hours' ago that he had crashed the car. How foolish of him to have forgotten the details of his conversation with Mr. Erlington, and the note next to the machine. A bitter mistake it was. He should never have touched the machine. The professor from the windmill hadn’t set out to create a machine to pull his dead daughter back from the afterlife. The ‘other side’ he had been trying to bring her back from was the past.

    The professor had succeeded in making a time machine. A severely glitchy and infernal time machine. Before losing consciousness, Durwood saw a bright light before him, and a sudden intense heat bloomed within. It felt like being born. His hand lit up from the inside, displaying all his veins and bones. Then it moved up his

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arm, until he felt light emit from his eyes and his mouth. The colors around him inverted. Light became dark. The light that had entered his eyes for the past eighteen hours was sucked back out again. The scar on his brow reversed and healed itself. His brain and memories reversed and rewound. Durwood turned the wheel trying to drive off the cliff to end it all. However, Durwood and the car evaporated into a bright white light, never again to be seen by any mortal man, encapsulated in a perpetual circle of similar events for all eternity. Forever lost to the winds of time.

The mortally wounded inn owner was found in the snow and later his crashed car on the mountain road. However, investigators were confused that despite the car having just been stolen, it appeared as if it had been crashed the day before, judging by the sheer amount of snow on it, and from travelers to and from the city having seen that wreck already. There was no sign of Durwood whatsoever.

    The case was closed when the investigators realized that the traces they followed only led them into walking in circles. Despite the police seemed puzzled, the inhabitants of the village, and old Mr. Erlington, knew that Durwood had shared the same mysterious fate as Professor Rohr. Now he was just a ghost. Whenever someone drove on the rocky mountain road and paid close attention, they would swear they could hear the distant echo of ghostly wheels screeching and a car meeting its doom, over and over and over again.

THE END/BEGINNING

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