The Traveler

Chapter 1

I was driving to work the first time it happened.

It was a chilly April morning in Madison, Wisconsin, the sun peering over the rooftops in my neighborhood.

I was running a little late, but not much more than usual.

A sports podcast played in the background, although I wasn’t really listening.

I was just driving. One more day, one more morning, like any other.

I had a headache. It had pulsed behind my eyes since I’d gotten up, but it was getting steadily worse.

Then, for less than a single heartbeat, the world

slipped

and my car disappeared.

For a fraction of a moment, I was still moving forward, a little over the posted twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, in a sitting position, one arm up, fingers of my right hand curled in a circle where the steering wheel had been.

Knees bent; one foot extended to feather a gas pedal that was no longer there.

Then I fell, gravity pulling my poised position apart.

My feet hit the pavement first, then my rear end, then my knees as I cartwheeled forward.

I tumbled across the rough asphalt, arms and legs flailing, my buttoned-up Oxford shirt and khaki pants tearing like paper.

I didn’t even have time to cry out. One moment I was in my car, the next I was rolling across the roadway.

I flung my arms up to cover my head as I curled in a ball.

The ground hammered into my back, my sides, my thighs, my knees, my shoulders.

I tumbled a dozen yards before I came to a stop, my cheek pressed against the road.

The double yellow center line extended away from me, bright against the rough pattern of the asphalt.

Before me was the rust-etched underside of a parked car.

I couldn’t breathe, and I felt panic rise before a clear thought made it through the muddle in my head and I forced myself to breathe in.

Cold air flooded into empty lungs. I coughed, sucked more air in, and groaned. “What—”

A horn blared, tires screeched, and a black truck—there hadn’t been anyone behind me—swerved around my outstretched feet before roaring past. The driver shouted something at me as he went by, but I didn’t catch the words.

I jerked up and crab-walked backward until my wrists hit the curb.

I pulled myself onto the concrete sidewalk, moving on adrenaline, and fell to my back.

I stared at drifting clouds in the bright morning sky.

The wind had drawn them into a broad wing shape, framed by trees and powerlines on either side of the street.

I raised trembling hands, my heart hammering in my chest. The heels of my palms were bloody patches dotted with rocks and bits of asphalt.

Everything hurt. Blood trickled down my calves from my knees.

“What the hell?” I croaked.

I heard the scrape of someone’s shoes on the concrete to my left. I turned my head and felt a spike of pain as the muscles in my neck seized up. Two young girls wearing identical backpacks stared wide-eyed down at me. They turned, looked at one another, then pelted down the sidewalk away from me.

“Mom! Mom!” one of them screamed.

I opened my mouth to call out and ask them what they’d seen, if they knew where my car was, but my phone started buzzing in my pants pocket.

I fumbled with shaking hands and pulled it out.

The screen was cracked in three new places.

I held it against the backdrop of the sky and squinted.

I had dozens of missed texts and several voicemails.

I checked the texts, my thumb going to them by reflex.

The first was from my officemate, Andy. “Dude. You coming in today or what?”

I could only frown at the phone and shake my head, the concrete rough beneath my hair. I swiped to the next. This was from my supervisor, Melissa. “Scott. It had better be an emergency. You can’t just not show up for work. You have to call in.”

I flipped through the rest, all variations on the same theme.

I shifted to the voicemails. All were from Amy, my wife.

I listened to the first while reading the automatically generated transcript, the little bubble moving across the screen to mark the passage of time as she spoke.

“Scott, where are you?” Amy asked. “The police called me. They said you hit a parked car, and you left the Honda there, with the keys still in it and the engine running? Jesus, Scott. I mean, what did you do, just—just walk away or something? Call me when you get this. This is so bizarre.”

The next one was from her, too.

“Scott. I had to leave school and drive to Winslet to deal with the police. The Honda’s a wreck.

It cost two hundred dollars to get it towed, and I had to give our insurance information to that lady whose car you hit.

Her parked car you hit. I called your office, and your boss said you didn’t show up for work. Where are you?”

Amy again. “Scott? Just—just give me a call, okay? I’m not mad, I just want to know what happened, and if you’re okay. Call me.”

The last one was from her, too, and she sounded like she’d been crying. “Scott. Jesus. It’s half past nine at night. Where are you? Lyle’s beside himself. I’m—I’m worried. Call me. Or come home.”

I pulled myself up until I sat on the curb. I gazed at my torn pants and dirty, bloody shirt. I held the phone up again. The time read 7:52 AM, which was fine. The smaller letters beneath those read Tuesday, April 14. That was not fine.

It was April 13. It was Monday, April 13. I knew it. I knew it was April 13. But those little glowing white letters, plastered over the photo of Amy and my son, Lyle, hugging in front of a carousel, said otherwise.

“What the hell?” I said again. I glanced around, but apart from the occasional passing car and an elderly woman walking a dog a couple blocks down, there was no one around. I thumbed through the contacts and speed-dialed my wife’s phone. She picked up on the first ring.

“Scott?”

“Amy, I—”

“Scott, what the hell? Where have you been?” Her voice rose several octaves in the few seconds it took her to rush through the words.

“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on, one second I’m driving to work, the next I’m—”

“Where are you?”

I rubbed my head and frowned as I pulled a sharp pebble from the skin above my eyebrow. “I’m on Winslet. I don’t know, midway down?”

“I’m coming to get you. Stay there.”

“Aren’t you at work?”

“I took the day off. Lyle, he—Jesus, Scott.” She paused. “Where have you been?”

“Amy, honestly, I was driving and then the car, it was gone…”

“The car was gone? What does that mean?”

“Exactly like it sounds. One second, I’m driving, then I’m…”

“Then you were what, Scott?”

“Just—just come get me.”

I heard her breathing. In the background, I heard my son’s voice asking if she was talking to Dad. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, honey. I love—” She hung up before I could get the words out.

I sighed and slipped the phone into my pocket and, stifling a groan, began the slow process of picking myself off the sidewalk.

I managed to stand without doing any more damage to my skin or my clothes.

I tried to brush off my pants and shirt without letting my fingers touch the raw scrapes.

“Hey, you okay, mister?”

I turned and winced as the muscles in my neck protested. A teenage boy had pulled up on a bike. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder. His jaw worked as he chewed gum.

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Shit, dude, you don’t look all right.” He blew a bubble of gum, popped it, and kept chewing. “In fact, you look like shit. You need an ambulance or something?”

“No, I’m fine. My wife’s coming to pick me up.”

He cocked his head. “This neighborhood gets weirder every day.”

I rubbed at the muscles in my neck. They were knots of rope, tightening under my fingers. “Why do you say that?”

The teenager jerked a thumb down the road.

“Yesterday, I seen this car, right around here, nobody in the driver’s seat, just cruisin’ down the road.

I watched it go maybe a half a block before—” He raised his hands, made one into a fist, and slammed it into the palm of the other. “Wham, you know? Hits this parked car.”

“Yesterday, huh?”

“Yeah, right around this time, too.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, I gotta get to school. You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m all right.”

“Okay. You keep tellin’ yourself that, man. Maybe it’ll come true.” He rode away before I could think of a reply.

I stood there, picking rocks out of my skin, until Amy rolled up in the minivan. She stepped out of the driver’s side. My son was in the back seat, his nose pressed against the window. The thick lenses of his glasses made his eyes look tiny and far away. His mouth was open.

“God, Scott.” Amy came around the front of the minivan. Her dark eyes, identical to Lyle’s, were bloodshot. She’d tied her hair in a bun behind her head, and she wore sweatpants and one of my T-shirts.

“Um, hey,” I said, and felt stupid. “How are you?”

She stopped a pace before me and looked me up and down. I could tell from her expression how terrible I must look. “What … what happened?”

I raised my arms a little, thinking to hug her.

Fresh pain pulsed from the scrapes at the movement, cloth sliding across torn skin, and I winced.

Something in the set of her shoulders made me stop and lower my hands.

She didn’t want me to hug her, not at that moment.

“I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. One second, I was driving to work, the next, the car’s gone, and I’m rolling down the street. ”

She bit her lip, furrows creasing her forehead. “Did you get thrown out of the car or something?”

“I—Can we just go home? Please?”