Children of Infinity Read online

  They entered the living room that rang with the presence of Ben’s parents. The covers his mother had made for the furniture. The color television that was his father’s pride—because he kept it in working order.

  Their picture was on the table. Their twentieth anniversary.

  The boy ran to the picture and hugged it to his chest, tears starting in his eyes again. “It’s Mother and Father! They’re alive! How did they get in there?” He tore at the frame and its picture.

  Ben grasped the picture from the hands of the whitefaced boy. He realized the boy had thought for a moment that the picture was alive. He didn’t understand what a photograph was. Ben drew the boy onto his knee as he replaced the picture. The boy whimpered in terror.

  “So, they look like your own father and mother, do they? You must have had some wonderful parents. Tell me who you are. What is your name?”

  “I am called David of Westgate. My father was Richard of Westgate and my mother was Mary.”

  Ben tensed. The same names as his own parents’. Richard and Mary. Only the last name was Lambert, not Westgate.

  “When were you born?” Ben asked.

  “I do not know the date. But I was born in the year of Our Lord nine seventy-five.”

  “Nineteen seventy-five? You’re older than that.”

  “Nine seventy-five. Why did you say nineteen—?” A look of horror crossed the boy’s face. “Oh, we are not that far—”

  Ben rocked the troubled boy back and forth in his arms. The child’s fantasies and his obvious belief in them spoke of a very sick mind, so far from reality. Where in the world had the boy come from? He must have run away or escaped from some institution.

  “Let’s get a hot bath and some clean pajamas and something to eat. You look starved. We’ll have to find clothes, too.”

  In the bathroom David was bewildered. He was frightened, as if the shiny fixtures were instruments of torture. The boy seemed never to have seen a modern bathroom before. So, he must have come from some remote rural area. Even so, his attitude seemed unbelievable.

  Ben ran the water. David stared as it poured from the tap. Ben tried to undress the boy and was met with frantic resistance. Finally, Ben took off his own clothes and stepped in the tub. He beckoned David to follow, and the boy finally climbed in with him.

  Ben knew his mother had preserved some of his own clothes from years before as keepsakes, and he was able to find pajamas, shirts, and some underclothes that fit. Shoes would have to be bought.

  In the kitchen, Ben stirred up some canned soup, bread, and milk. David wolfed the food as if it had been a week since he had eaten.

  Afterward, Ben led the boy to the spare bedroom. David touched the soft bed and smooth covers with awe as if he had never seen such bedding. Ben supposed he hadn’t. “Climb in, fella,” Ben said. “After you’ve had a snooze we’ll talk and have supper. Maybe go out for a ride around town to see if we can find where you come from.”

  “Westgate,” said David. “It’s near Folkstone. Duke Harold has a summer palace near. Our father hunted with him many summers.”

  He looked and spoke like a child out of some fairy tale.

  “Have a good nap,” Ben said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Ben closed the door and returned to the living room. The loneliness of the house struck him now with full, crushing force. Here in this same room he had romped with his father when he was the age of David Westgate. His father had lain on his back and read the Sunday funnies to him when Ben was five. On the kitchen table, which he could see through the door, he had put his first model airplanes and rockets together while his mother cooked up good-smelling things at the counter and on the stove.

  It was all over. Those days would never come again. Future days would be empty. He walked through the house, touching all the old familiar things he would soon give up forever. In his parents’ bedroom the bed was neatly made, just as they had left it when they last slept there. He opened the dresser drawers and touched his father’s shirts and socks. His mother’s scented underthings. He opened their closets. His father’s suits hung like marching men. He buried his face in his mothers blouses and dresses and sobbed.

  Back in the living room he got out the photo albums of their precious vacation days. The trip to Banff and Jasper when he was twelve. To the Northwest when he was ten. To the deserts of the Southwest when he was fourteen. The last one was Guaymas. Here was the picture of his father with the hundred-and-ten pounder he had caught the first day.

  The sun dropped low and left the room in semidarkness. Ben felt he would like it that way forever. Dark. Silent. Nothing moving.

  The doorbell rang with startling suddenness. He glanced outside and saw a police car at the curb. Hadn’t they investigated the accident enough? Couldn’t they let him alone?

  He opened the door to Sergeant Haslam, who had been most helpful during the investigation.

  “Sorry to bother you again, Ben,” said the sergeant. “But this has just been released, and I thought you’d like to have it.”

  Ben looked down at the object in the sergeant’s hand. His father’s attaché case. “I had forgotten it,” he said. “I remember now my father was greatly concerned about its being stolen two months ago.”

  “We told him a week before the accident that we had recovered it, and he came down to identify it. He was extremely worried and anxious to get it back, but we just couldn’t release it until now. I’m sorry—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for bringing it over.”

  “Sure,” Sergeant Haslam said. “I just wish it had been different for you. I guess you’ll be going to stay with some of your folks?”

  “Probably. Thanks again, Sergeant.”

  He returned to the living room and turned on the lamp. The case was one he and his mother had given his father for Christmas a couple of years ago. His father had used it every day in his law work. When it was stolen he had been greatly perturbed, but he had never mentioned what material was lost with it.

  Ben found the case completely full of manuscripts and papers. It was so full it appeared unlikely that the thief had taken anything. To Ben the documents looked more like historical material than anything else. But that was understandable. His father had been an amateur scholar of ancient history and archaeology. The material seemed in line with that interest. Ben hoped eagerly that the case of documents might give him new understanding of this part of his father’s life.

  He closed the case as a small figure appeared in the hall entrance. David Westgate, groggy with sleep and bewildered, moved toward him.

  “Hello, there!” Ben exclaimed. “You sure did sack out. Fell better?”

  “I’m hungry,” said David.

  “Some thick steaks are what a couple of hungry men need for supper. Let’s get you into some clothes and then eat.”

  He dressed David in some of his own boyhood clothes and prepared the steaks. He heated a frozen mince pie his mother had baked a week ago. He invited David to sit beside him and told him to go ahead and eat.

  The boy picked up the steak in both hands and began gnawing furiously. Astonished, Ben realized he had no idea what the knife and fork by his plate were for. A tingling chill crept down his back. Maybe this was the way they ate in the tenth century in Westgate, near Folkstone, wherever that was.

  Ben smiled wanly. “You like that?”

  “It’s very good!” The boy continued to eat like a hungry animal. He wiped his face vigorously on his shirttail.

  Afterward, Ben took him into the living room and turned on some of his father’s favorite records. His father liked chamber music, and now the soft, intricate melodies filled the room. David nodded his head in time to the music, as if it were very familiar.

  “You like that?” Ben asked.

  “Father often played the flute around the fire after supper, you remember. It was the wooden one he made himself.”

  Ben experienced a mild start. It was true; his father had played a f
lute for his own amusement and that of his friends. He could have played in the symphony if he had chosen.

  Ben opened the photo album and turned the pages slowly. David jabbed a stubby finger at the pictures. “That’s our mother. That’s our father. They wear such odd clothes here, but I know who they are. They can’t hide from me, ever.”

  “Why should they hide from you?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what they’re doing,” said David. “Didn’t you know? You thought they were dead. They’re not. They’ve just gone away. I’m going to find them someday.”

  Ben sighed. “That’s what Reverend Golding says. They’ve just gone away. Maybe it’s true, David. I don’t know. But wherever they’ve gone, we can’t follow them. Not just yet, anyway.”

  “I can. I’ve followed them this far. I’ll find them someday.”

  “What do you mean? How far have you followed them?”

  “What year of Our Lord is this?”

  “Nineteen seventy-nine.”

  David Westgate breathed a long sigh, as if wearied by far journeys. “Nineteen seventy-nine,” he said. From nine seventy-five, that’s a thousand years, isn’t it? Yes, I’ve followed them a thousand years. I’ll follow them another thousand if I must.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Ben gently. “You can’t follow someone a thousand years. How old are you?”

  “How do I know how old I am? Am I a thousand years old? I don’t know. I was twelve when they first left me.”

  “How did they leave you?”

  “Some soldiers got drunk and tore up our village one night. They stabbed Mother and Father with their swords in their bed. I hid under my bed until they were gone.”

  “Then your mother and father died.”

  “No. It wasn’t really them, you see. They knew this was going to happen and they had already left. What they left behind wasn’t really them.”

  Ben’s heart ached for the waif beside him. David’s eyes stared brightly as if seeing some vision that no one else could see. The fantasy of his mind was literally taking place before his eyes.

  Ben had read much about modern psychiatry, but he wondered how the twisted mixture of fantasy and minute reality could ever be straightened out in little David Westgate’s mind. The mystery remained, however, as to where in the world the boy had come from, appearing out of nowhere in the cemetery. Surely he had a family somewhere that would be missing him by now.

  There came to Ben’s mind stories he’d read in the papers from time to time about lost and abandoned children. It was entirely possible that David was one of those. He might have been living in the city’s streets for months or even years. Literally living off garbage and sleeping in the streets and in abandoned cars. His clothes looked as if that had happened. The burlap tunic was something he could have made from old gunnysacks.

  The fantasies rooted in his mind could easily have resulted from his hardships, his longing for parents that forever escaped him, flavored by medieval stories he might have read in some public library or in a book found on a scrap pile. Then, somehow, he had made his way to the cemetery, and the sight of the burial had inflamed his mind with the conviction that this was happening to the parents he had never had.

  “You think I’m lying,” said David Westgate quietly.

  “Of course not,” Ben protested. “I’m sure it’s all very real to you.”

  “I’ll find them,” said David doggedly. His eyes stared fixedly ahead. “You’ve got to help me. Maybe I can even take you with me. I don’t know if I can, but I’ll ask them when I see them.”

  “Sure,” said Ben. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “But for now it’s sacktime for the night. You’ve had a rough day. We’ll talk some more about what you’re going to do tomorrow.”

  “Sack—oh, you mean sleep. I’m not sleepy.”

  “You will be when you hit the pillow. Let’s go.”

  When David was settled, Ben returned to the living room and sat in the darkness. He didn’t feel like sleeping, either. His own problems, his own loneliness seemed almost insignificant beside those of the lone waif he had found. The authorities would take him away soon, of course, and Ben wondered just what would finally become of David Westgate. Would anyone care enough to try to straighten out the fantasies and distortions of the boy’s mind? He had latched on to Ben now and called him brother. What further trauma would result if Ben continued to deny that relationship?

  Ben thought of his own schooling. It seemed meaningless, but he knew he had to finish. That’s what his father would have expected. He had to get an education, find a profession, make a living. All to what end? He didn’t know. It was part of survival. But was that worthwhile? He was afraid to look too closely at his answer to that question.

  But David. David Westgate put a new light on everything. Ben felt an irrational obligation toward the child, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about it.

  Leaving the room, he caught a glimpse of his father’s attaché case on the table. He had meant to go through that tonight. He felt an urgency to study those papers, as if they might hold the key to unknown areas of his father’s life. But it would have to wait. Suddenly the exhaustion of the day was closing over him like a black cloak. He checked the doors and went to his own bedroom.

  Somewhere in the night he heard a sound. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it woke him. He glanced at the clock. Two A.M. The sound was gone now, but he got up to take a look through the house. He opened his door and stepped into the hall. At the far end was a flickering of light. For a moment he panicked at the thought of fire in the house. Then he recognized it as the reflection of flames in the fireplace. But there had been no fire—

  He raced to the end of the hall and into the living room. There, crouched before the fireplace, with the screen drawn back, David Westgate was feeding papers into a burning pile in the grate.

  Beside him was the open attaché case that had belonged to Ben’s father.

  Ben leaped forward and flung the boy aside. With his bare hands he scooped the papers from the grate to the hearth and beat out the fire that ate at them. But even as he beat at them he felt them crumble to ash. Almost nothing remained unburned. The attaché case was empty.

  Ben turned on David Westgate. The boy huddled white-faced and silent by an end table near a chair. A cut on the side of his head bled slowly. He had struck the table leg as Ben thrust him aside. For a moment Ben didn’t care. Fury raged in him that these precious remnants of his father’s life had been destroyed by the psychotic boy.

  His anger continued to burn as he glared at David. “Why—why? Why did you have to burn these things?” he demanded. At the same time he knew he would get no sane answer from this child so lost in a world of fantasy, who dreamed he was born a thousand years ago and was Ben’s brother.

  “They told me to,” the boy whimpered. “They came to me and told me to get the papers and burn them.”

  “They? Who—who told you to burn them?” Ben could not keep from demanding an answer even though he knew it would be insane.

  “They. You know. Our mother and father. They came to me in the night. It was like a dream, but I know it was real. They told me to get up and burn the papers in the case. They told me where the matches were and how to light them.”

  The matches were hidden in a drawer in the kitchen. Somehow, David had found them. But it was all of no importance now. Ben’s anger faded and was replaced by a great weariness and grief.

  “All right. So you burned the papers as they told you to. Now you can go to bed again. Let’s fix that cut on your head.”

  He led the boy into the bathroom and washed the cut with alcohol. The cut was small. It would need nothing further. Ben applied a Band-Aid to protect it.

  “Let’s go to bed and finish the night,” he said.

  David allowed himself to be led back to his room. “They said it was very important,” he insisted. “They said it would cause many disruptions if those papers were all
owed to remain in this time. They would change the probability factors in a very negative way.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it,” said Ben. His mind wasn’t functioning well, but he wondered vaguely about the words of David’s vocabulary. He must have spent much time in the public library.

  One thing Ben was very sure of: He couldn’t allow the boy to stay in the house another night. He might come up with the illusion that they had directed him to burn the whole house down—or murder Ben in his sleep.

  He decided to sit in the living room the rest of the night. His bedroom had no lock, and he didn’t dare trust sleep with David Westgate free to roam the house. His anger was still deep within him, but he couldn’t help wondering what would happen to the poor little kid.

  He turned on a lamp and bent over the hearth of the fireplace again to see if any scraps of paper had survived the flames. He poked carefully, yet there was nothing but ashes in the grate. He picked among the scraps on the hearth. There was a single piece of charred white. Just one scrap of paper that remained partially unburned in the center.

  Unable to keep his heart from pounding, Ben knew he was placing irrational hopes in this one scrap that was all that remained of this fragment of his father’s life. To him its value had grown out of all proportion.

  He held it under the lamp. It bore his father’s handwriting. There was no question of it. The fragment was a list in the center of a sheet of bond paper. It looked as if all the list were there; only the margins were burned away. It was a list of numbered names and dates.

  1. Diana

  November 17, 586

  2. Brede

  July 10, 728

  3. David

  August 8, 975

  4. Melissa

  April 9, 1148

  5. Jerrold

  January 15, 1308

  6. Anders

  December 14, 1520

  7. John Angerbaur

  May 16, 1717

  8. Anne Johnson

  September 9, 1856