Death, and the Girl He Loves

The right thing had ended up being prison and making my parents promise never to tell me about him. He thought it would be best. He didn’t want his only granddaughter to know the horrors of what he’d done. But I’d found out about him anyway, rather accidentally, actually, when I first found out I could go into pictures. I’d hunted him down, looking for answers, and visited him in prison. And we’d done this very thing. We’d touched hands through the glass. And he showed me everything.

It was a memory I didn’t want to relive. When I hesitated, he said, “Pix, history is different. You changed everything.”

I swallowed hard and with great effort put my hand on his.

It didn’t take long. Images flashed in my mind instantly until he led me to the place he wanted me to see. We were in a field. A wheat field. And a teenaged boy was working on a tractor. I recognized the red hair and kind eyes as being those of my grandfather Mac. It was him as a kid. I looked on in fascination as a girl walked up to him. Me. I walked up to him.

I was wearing the same clothes I’d worn yesterday, during the war. I was filthy. My hair hung in tangles about my face. Dirt smudged my cheeks and forehead, and my clothes were ripped in several places.

Mac looked up from his work, wrench in hand, and stared.

“Mac,” I said, praying he’d listen.

Yes, I’d prayed. I remembered my overwhelming sense of fear that he would run or refuse to listen after I’d struggled so hard to get there. To get to him.

Realization of what happened catapulted me back to the present. I gasped and reeled as my surroundings blurred and shifted into my old room. Lowering my hand, I took a moment to absorb the new memories bombarding me; then I gazed at Mac, stunned to my toes.

“I did it,” I whispered. “I went into the picture Glitch had in his hand. It was of you.”

Mac smiled and nodded, and Mom wrapped an arm around me.

“Your mother took that picture when you weren’t looking,” I continued. “She’d been given a new camera for her birthday, and you were her first subject. Her very first picture.”

Mac’s brows shot up. “You saw all that?” he asked.

“Yes, but—” I blinked and thought back. “—but I didn’t get a good look at her. She was behind the camera. I couldn’t get past it. Wait a minute.” I beamed at him as a new realization emerged. “You saw me. Most people can’t see me when I go into pictures.”

“I’m not most people.”

A soft, bewildered laugh escaped me. “You certainly aren’t. You saw me. Just like Jared does when I go into that other picture.”

“I did see you. And let me tell you, you scared the shit out of me at first.”

I laughed again, only this time in nervousness. Granddad would clobber me if I used that word in his presence. Apparently he wouldn’t do the same to Grandpa Mac. Thank goodness. I was fairly certain Mac could take him. “You’re like a prophet, too. You have abilities, but you’re male.”

He nodded. “It’s true. Most of the males in the line have some small amount of extrasensory perception, but we are nothing compared to the women in our family. Our feminine counterparts are gifted beyond measure.”

Grandma sat on a box in front of me. “You changed everything,” she said reassuringly. “You changed the future. You stopped the war.”

“But how?” I asked, still not quite understanding.

“You told me everything that day,” Mac said. Then he held up his hand again. “Want to see?”

I filled my lungs, put my hand on his again, and dived back into the past. It took me a while to convince Mac of who I was, but he’d grown up knowing about the prophecies and the texts. He knew about the possibility of a female being born in his lifetime. Of the impending war. So what I told him wasn’t so foreign he couldn’t comprehend. Couldn’t believe. But it did take a while.

I told him everything. I didn’t know how much time I had, but we walked through the wheat field as the sun set and I told him all about his wife, how he would meet her, how he would fall in love. Then I told him everything after that. I told him the bad stuff. Everything I could think of before I ran out of time and was killed in the war.

After our long talk, we looked back. Mac’s mother was still aiming the camera. The sun was still hanging in the same position, even though it seemed like hours later. Time had not passed.

He looked at me like one would something they loved. “These are the end times,” he said. “And we have the power to change the world.”

I nodded. “Please, Mac, please save your wife. My parents. If you do nothing else, please save them. Tell my dad not to go to the ruins that day.”

This time my surroundings melted more slowly. I didn’t want to leave. My grandfather as a teen boy was so handsome and strong and I trusted him implicitly. I’d placed the fate of the world in his hands.

After I reemerged back into the present, I questioned him with a quirk of my brow. “How did you stop it all?” I asked him in awe. I’d told him what was going to happen, but he would still have to stop it all. How?

“I followed your directions,” he said, grinning. “I ran home and wrote everything down as fast as I could. Dates. Names. Events. Then, when the time came, I warned people what was about to happen. I stopped your friend Cameron’s mother from going on a bike ride that you said would end in tragedy.”