Back into the Past Again

Digging up the past is a dangerous activity, as it can unveil things you’d prefer never to find out. These thoughts came to my mind while standing in my own garden with a shovel in my hand and looking at a body that had already started decomposing after being buried in the ground where I have been walking every single day.

“Who doesn’t have skeletons in their closet?”

“Exactly, in the closet, and not in the garden, and not real once. Oh, my God. I am losing my mind…”

“Angela, please. You need to believe me. It’s not how it looks.” My husband was trying to calm me after I confronted him with the evidence I had found. I have been feeling a change in him since our marriage, but I could never have imagined the reason for it to be so macabre.

“I want to. I really do. So, please, help me understand the situation. Or better don’t. I don’t think that there is anything that could justify such a crime… But I wanna know… I want to know whose bones I have dug up, and why there are any at all !”

“It’s my own body.”

“What?”

“It is true. It’s me buried there.” A deathly silence hung in the air. I needed a couple of seconds to process the information and to come to the most logical conclusion- my husband was mad. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t feeling secure by his side. He was always my home, my shelter, but at that moment, the fear that the man I trusted the most could hurt someone and, moreover, could lie about that for so long was scratching my heart with its sharp claws.

“I love you, honey. I love you more than anyone in this world. And you know that. But you need help. I am calling the police. I am really sorry that I have to do that, but this secret is too big for me to carry.”

“I know how it sounds. But, please, give me just one chance. I’ll prove that I am telling the truth.”

“Well, I am listening. But if at any moment I feel that you are trying to make a fool out of me, I am calling the police.”

“Okay, sure. Do you remember Thanksgiving Day two years ago? You had a show the day before and had to stay there due to a delay. You were going to drive back home on the morning of the holiday. But when you woke up, there was an awful downpour.”

“Yes, I remember that day. You decided to surprise me and drove all that way to the town. I was so happy that we celebrated our first Thanksgiving after marriage together.”

“Exactly. I am really sorry I didn’t realize at first how important it was for you to be together that day.”

“That isn’t important now. You came anyway, so why are you bringing it in now?”

“The truth is that I didn’t come. When we woke up to that flood, I told you to stay in the town and not to risk it. But you were too determined, and when the shower didn’t stop until the evening, you decided to drive back despite the weather and not tell me so that I wouldn’t panic. However, soon after that, I received a call from your number…”

“But I don’t remember any of that happening.”

“Just wait a little, I’ll get to it. So, I answered the phone and was surprised to hear a man’s voice on the other end of it. It was hard to make out the words because of the sound of the thunder and rain, but when I finally managed to hear what he was telling me, terror ran down my spine. I can still remember that nasty feeling that I was trying to push away, denying reality. I left our home and drove to the place of the incident. It was a dark and stormy night. I was driving as fast as I could, but my car kept skidding on the wet road, and the visibility was minimal. Finally, I saw the lights of several cars in the distance. Those were the lights of your car, an ambulance, and the car of the man who called me from your phone…” My husband took a moment before moving on. His strange story made absolutely no sense, but since I could almost feel how hard it was for him to tell me all of that, I decided to let him finish.

“Later, the police told me that you lost control of the car and skidded on the wet floor, crashing straight into a tree on the side of the road. The man who called me was driving by and, seeing what had happened, first called the ambulance and the police, then found your phone, and called me as well. Unfortunately, because of the bad weather, the help came too late and you were already … “

Tomas closed his eyes, not able to finish his narrative. But I could not support him, even though I saw how much in pain he was. None of his words had any connection to reality. I remember the day he was talking about perfectly, yet none of those tragic events ever happened. At that moment, I was more than ever sure that my husband needed a specialist’s help. So, while he was rubbing his eyes with his hands, trying to clear his mind, I quietly moved towards the phone in the living room and started tapping ‘911’. But when I heard the dial tone, the phone was pulled out of my hands. I saw fierce eyes staring at me. At that moment, a terrifying question came to my mind, ‘Is he going to kill me?’. Probably Tom saw the horror in my eyes because his gaze softened immediately, his shoulders slumped as if he lost the strength to keep them straight, and he handed the phone back to me.

“I am sorry that I frightened you. I should have thought better about what you are feeling now. I know that you do not believe any of my words. I would not have believed any of them as well. But I did all of that to be by your side. We were gifted two more years together, and I am grateful for that.” I could recognize my beloved husband in that broken man in front of me. That’s why, despite all the fear and disbelief, I decided to try to understand him for the last time.

“If all that you told me is true, then how am I still alive? And how on earth did you manage to kill yourself and whatever for? Can you even imagine how many questions I have? And the fact that the questions already seem so crazy that I am afraid even to hear the answers is driving me mad. I am afraid. I really am. And not only because I have just found a dead body in my garden, but because I don’t want to lose you, the man I have loved for my whole life.” His eyes were full of pain, but I also noticed a slight hint of hope in them.

“Well… I hoped I’d never have to remember that day again, but, probably, this secret is too big to be hidden in the closet.” He tried to joke, but I was too emotional to appreciate it, so after a brief pause, he returned to his story.

“So, as I said, in my reality, you died 2 years ago on that stormy night. I was so devastated that I wanted to follow you, but then I heard that one of the scientists I have been working with had made a breakthrough in creating a time-traveling machine. Of course, it didn’t mean the machine would be created any sooner, but I decided to give it a try. We worked together on the project for five years until one day, we were able to make a stone disappear. It vanished just in front of us, but it was still hard to prove that it had indeed traveled in time, not in space or into other universes. We needed a real human to pass that test, but since it was poorly investigated and too risky, we couldn’t find anyone to be our guinea pig. So I decided to take the risk. In any case, I stayed alive only to find you again, no matter where or when. Crossing the time barrier was a very painful experiment; it felt like my body was shattered into thousands of pieces and gathered together. The next thing I remember is that I appear at our house, the smell of turkey and pumpkin fills the living room, and the logs in the fireplace crackle. I ran immediately to the calendar in the kitchen- it said November 27, 2024. I couldn’t believe my happiness. I wasn’t going to waste my time; I wanted to drive to you immediately, but I heard a noise on our staircase. I went into the living room, hoping to see you, but it was him. One of the main questions we had while working on time-traveling was whether we would be replacing ourselves in the other time or if there would be two of us. Obviously, the answer was found. My own face, but a little younger, was looking at me with wonder. At that moment, I realized that there was a place for only one of us in this reality. So I did what I had to…-”

“-Wait a minute. You wanna say that you killed my Tomas and took his place?”

“What? No. You don’t understand, we are the same person. Just from a different time.”

“And you killed yourself! How could you do that? You, you… You are a monster… Oh my God…”

“Calm down, Angela. Just breathe, there is nothing to panic about. I am here, alive. And so are you. I had to do that to save you, so that we could be together again.”

“Exactly, you just wanted to bring back your life. If you cared about me, you would have warned your past self about what had happened and told him to come to me. But what you did was selfish. You killed the man I knew, the man I loved, and replaced him with this cruel and egoistic version.”

“Why are you so unbearable? Why is it always so hard to explain anything to you?” The voice of the man standing in front of me grew rougher. “I hoped that after the first mistake, I hid the body so that you would never find it. But you destroyed everything again.” He shouted out the last words.

“What do you mean by ‘again’ ?” Realization hit me even stronger than his hand with a sharp object a moment later. Lying there on the ground and feeling how life was leaving my body, I was only begging destiny to save my husband the next time this man travels back to that day on Thanksgiving eve.