Jules Hinton's Strange Trip: Chapter 13 by JCH and Kas

         The guns and ammunition went into her backpack.  He emptied the rest of her things out.  He kept the suit on that they had given him for the dinner.  If anyone saw him, he'd make up some lame excuse.  He’d tell them he was going out for a stroll to soothe his head.  Maybe out by that lake at the back of the property.  And then he'd go through the woods to the other side, though he’d keep that part to himself.
         The back door was unlocked.  No one about.  He strolled as casually as he could in a dinner suit and jacket with a slightly worn backpack slung over one shoulder, cutting through the wooden gate that closed off the back yard of the cabana.
         "Hello, young man," an elderly gentleman said, leaning up against the fence further down and smoking a cigarette.  An English accent.  Didn’t look like a mobster or an actor just out of rehab.
         "Hi," he breathed, stepping toward the man with a friendly nod.  The man had a sly look in his eyes.
         "The wife doesn't like the smoke," the man said, gesturing with the hand that held the cigar.  He was dressed for the dinner, too.  Jules tried to give a knowing chuckle that didn't sound as heartfelt as he had intended.  He passed the man, heading for the paved path out to the golf course.
         "Not going to eat with us?" the man called out.
         Great.  Couldn't the man tell that he wasn't interested in a conversation?  Jules half-turned, shaking his head,and rubbed his temples.  "Nope.  Think I’m going to try to walk off this headache.  Maybe take a swim if my trunks are dry," he said, patting the backpack.
         The man nodded, puffing another cloud of smoke.  Jules walked along the fences until he could finally turn out of the man's sight.  He had fifteen minutes, maybe a half hour until someone said something.  The man would tell his wife.  Nikki or Gerald would ask someone at the dinner about what might be keeping Jules.  He had to move quickly.  When he thought no one was looking, he cut through the tall hedge surrounding the golf course and ran.
 
         His sides were aching.  It didn't help that the weight of the guns in Nikki's backpack had been thumping against his back the whole time.  He decided to take one of the guns out of the backpack and keep it on him.  As far as he could tell, no one had seen him other than the English man.  The lake looked peaceful.  A tall wire fence snaked off far to his right through the woods.  Just like Nikki had said.  The lights had come on all over the property as they always did at night.  Jules had a feeling that there were probably motion sensors out here too.  Gerald would have something more than lights to tell him if anyone was trying to enter--or perhaps leave--the grounds.  He could imagine that somewhere in a small room there was someone watching him on a television monitor.  But he hadn’t seen any video cameras.  Which didn’t surprise him.  They wouldn't be out in the open.
         The fence didn't look electric.  Yet when he touched it he knew in an instant with a breathless scream that he had been wrong.  The pain lasted only a moment.  And then it was gone.  The pain and the fence.  Nothing there but bushes and trees.  And the lake off behind him to the left.  The lights had gone out all over the property.  No sounds except for the frogs and crickets down in the weeds at the water's edge.
         He turned his hands over slowly, seeing goosebumps fading from his arms.  His mind, his thoughts, seemed to want to bend away from this.  And that way led to madness.  He shook himself, tears streaming down his face.  Emotion with no source.  His knees gave way and he was down on the grass, gripping it by the handfuls.  Weeds.  Not the manicured golf course that it had once been.  Now only bushes and weeds.  If he had had anything on his stomach, he was sure he would have let go off it by now.
         In the twilight he could see that there was more tree cover now.  Why hadn't he taken advantage of that when he had run so crazily across the greens?  The thought was crushed and gone.  Because there had not been any trees there before.  He sat there, staring, not blinking, all around him with absolutely no thought in his head.  He could not see the shapes of the cabana roofs in the twilight of the coming night.  Because they were not there.  His arm tingled.  Electric shock?  From a fence that was no longer there?
         How long he sat there laughing in the darkness he could not guess.  But it was truly dark when he forced himself to crawl up out of the wet grass and stumble back toward the main house.  Nikki would have long known something was up, that he was gone.  Though he had no doubt that she knew he couldn’t go anywhere.  She was involved in this.  The more he thought about it, the more he knew it was true.  There were too many lies.  But he didn’t know how she fit into the equation.  And he didn’t care to find out.  Not now.
 
         It might have been a nice place to live.  During the civil war.  The Johnson home, if that's what it was, stood in a crumbled ruin.  Boarded up windows stared down at him.  All overgrown.  All grass.  Crumbling and rotting wood.  No sign of concrete.  The house looked much the same in many ways.  Only smaller.  Without the extensions and obvious improvements.
         Jules hoped that if he had electrocuted himself, that if he was in a coma somewhere in a hospital, another hospital...  He couldn't finish the thought.  He didn't know what he hoped.  To wake up in his room back in Virginia would be a nice start.  To forget about everything--The Face, what had happened to Dan and Sara... Nikki.  Because this felt real.  This was real.  Each breath.  Each wince from his side from sprinting across the golf course earlier.
         There was an old stone well off near the house that wasn't supposed to be there.  And a huge barn--or rather the skeleton of a barn--still stood.  He swayed even as he stood staring at it.  Staring.  Disbelieving what he knew to be true.  He had to get out of here, had to leave this as far behind as he could.  Had to get a handle on things.  He had to keep some form of sanity.

         And then he heard something behind him in the brush.  He grabbed his gun and spun around wildly.  He couldn’t see anyone--or anything--in the darkness.  He never felt more vulnerable.  How had it gotten dark so fast?  He looked back toward  the main house.  He still could not see any lights.  More movement behind him.  He swung around again with the gun still pointed straight ahead.  Nikki walked into sight.
         “Jules, thank God.  I was...”
         “Don’t say it.  Don’t tell me you were worried about me.”  He had the gun pointed at her.  “That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?  That you were so worried about me.  How many times have I heard that?”  His voice came out shaken, in stuttering spurts.  It was like he was somehow trying to ignore what he was seeing, trying to overlay the familiar over the impossible.  He knew immediately by the blank look on Nikki's face that she could tell he was close to hysteria.
         “Jules, I know you have a lot of questions.  I know you’re confused.  I can help you with that.”  She was holding her hands up so he could see them, could see that she wasn’t holding anything.  And was talking in as soothing of a voice as she could.  “You remember what we were talking about earlier, don’t you?”  She was talking slowly to him, like he was a child.  Or someone who was not in control of his actions.
         “Oh, I remember.  I remember very well.  You were trying to convince me that I was crazy, that I needed help.  That is what you’re talking about, right?”
         “Jules, put the gun down.  Let’s talk.”
         “I don’t want to talk.  But I do want to go back to the house."  His right eye seemed to twitch at that and he glanced quickly away from the crumbled shell of the building nearby.  As if it might change back to the way it was!  "I’m going to get one of Gerry’s cars and get out of here.  You and he can do whatever it is that the two of you do together.  I don’t give a fuck as long as I’m a long way from here.”
         “You can’t go back to Gerald’s.  Look around you, Jules.  The house is gone.”
         “The house is right there,” Jules shouted, pointing in the direction of where it should have been, where it once was, without looking that way.
         “Look at it, Jules.  Does it look like it did this afternoon?  Can’t you see that you need help?  Like I told you before, I’m not going anywhere.  You just have to trust me.”
         “Trust you?!  You want me to trust you?!  I told you about the man with my face.  I told you that I had seen him, that I had fought with him back in Texas.  But you told me I was wrong.  That he was just one of Rollie’s goons.  But I saw him, Nikki.  I saw him today on TV.  I saw me.  Jules Verne Hinton.”
         “What are you talking about?  Who did you see on television?”  She tried to inch closer to him, tried to reach out to him, but he thrust the gun closer to her face.
         “I saw him, Nikki, the man with my face!  He’s been a bad, bad boy even before he shot those National Guardsmen.  Funny thing is, he’s got my name as well as my face.”
         Nikki let out a heavy breath.  Jules could see the tension flow out of her.  Finally, he thought, maybe she’d start telling the truth.  “I should have told you the start,” she said, brushing her hair back with both hands.  “But the truth is so far-fetched that I didn’t think you would believe me.  You wouldn’t have believed me.  Why don’t you put that gun down?  It would put me more at ease.  You can trust me.”
         “Really?  Is that so?  Maybe you should let me be the judge of that.”
         “Jules, I’ll tell you the truth, but we shouldn’t be out here.  We’re not safe here anymore.  Let’s get to the nearest town.  There, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.  Maybe there’ll be a Griddle House.  You never know.”  She forced a smile.
         “I think you’ll tell me everything right here, right now.”
         There was another movement in the woods.  They both heard it.  Nikki instinctively grabbed Jules' arm.  And then they saw a deer dart across in front of them.
         “That scared me,” she said, still clinging to Jules.
         He had turned cold in that instant, sure for a split second that he might have to use the gun on someone.  But the thought passed.  She was much closer to him now.  He stared down into her eyes, searching for the tenderness that he had seen there in the past few days.  He had to blink, unsure that was what he saw now, that he had even seen it then.
         He looked at her for a long moment.  “Let go.”
         “What?”
         “Let go of my arm.  Let’s go to that clearing up ahead.  You can tell me everything up there.  If you think we’ll be safe.  Or is The Face going to meet us there?  Maybe the three of us can get together and do the town.”
         She led the way to the clearing and sat down on an old stump near a dirt road that led to the house.  He sat across from her on a branch that looked like it had fallen recently.  He still held the gun, though he wasn’t holding it on her.  The moon was shining much brighter this way.  Plus, there was a street light shining through the trees about fifty feet away.
         “Like I said, I should have told you the truth from the start.  But I didn’t.  But before I do tell you, I need you to tell me that you’re going to hear me out.  What I've got to say isn’t like anything you’ve ever heard before.”
         He motioned with the hand that held the gun for her to get on with the story.
         “He’s crazy.  Not only crazy, he's insane, ruthless.  And neither one of us are safe while he’s around.  I didn’t know that at first though.  When we first met, I don’t know.  There was something about him, the way he carried himself.  Like someone, a rebel, out of a movie or something, as stupid as that sounds to me now.  I guess I was younger then.  Not as world-weary.”
         “Cut to the chase, Nikki.”
         “I am, Jules,” she said, obviously becoming more irritated with him.  “We hadn’t known each other long when he told me that he had been in jail.  Said it was for stealing a car or something.  Nothing major, you know.  Just a mistake he had made when he was deep in debt.  But he said he had a way to make all the money he needed.  Nobody would ever know.  Nobody would ever get hurt.  He said he had discovered something no one had thought of.”
         “What?  Putting on a Richard Nixon mask and robbing a bank?”
         “Not exactly,” she said.  She breathed deeply, and rubbed the side of her face.  “He said he had found a way to...”  She stopped in mid-sentence.
         “Nikki...”
         Her eyes met his.  Gone was any of the tenderness he thought he had ever seen.  “Fine.  I’ll just tell you.  He said he had found a way to get to another dimension.  A different reality, he called it.”
         Jules laughed out loud.  “Oh, that’s good, Nikki.  That’s real sweet.  I may have been dumb enough to believe that story about Rollie “Fingers” or whatever.  But this is outrageous.  Other dimensions?  It might make a good TV show, Nick, but that’s all it is.  Just part of someone’s over-active imagination.”
         “How do you know?”
         “How do I know?  What do you mean how do I know?  Nikki, this is reality,” he proclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air.  “There is only one reality.  And this is it.”
         “O.K.  Then tell me something.  Where is Private Plantations?  Where is Gerald and all of his guests?  Where is Rapheal and the cabanas?  Did you see the golf course while we were out there?  Look around you, Jules.  You must know that this is the same place we’ve been for the last few days.  Same place; different reality.  Think about it.  It actually makes a certain amount of sense.”
         “No, it doesn’t.  It doesn’t make any sense at all.”  He looked back at the house.  “We must be on the next property over or something.”
         “Let me ask you something.  Do you believe in things you can’t see?”
         “Like what?  Wind?  God?  Or were you about to ask me if I had ever personally seen a million dollars?  No, I haven’t.  But I know it exists.  This isn’t the same thing at all.”
         "I saw some of the books you were carrying around.  A book on the JFK assassination.  There’s no hard evidence that there was a conspiracy, right?  If there was one, then everyone would know without a doubt that the CIA or the Mafia or Castro or whoever it was killed Kennedy.  But you believe there was a conspiracy, don’t you?  And what was that book about alien abductions?  You do believe that we're not alone in the Universe, don’t you?  Because there is not enough evidence to fully proof that we are alone.  Am I right?”
         “I also had a book about Superman, but I know he’s not real.  But The Face was real, is real.”
         “Yeah, he is.  He’s from a different reality.  The same one I come from.”
         Jules glared at her, dumbfounded.  “Well, that makes perfect sense,” Jules said, with a heavy dose of sarcasm.  “I guess you’ve come down here to save mankind from its destructive ways.”  He closed his eyes to rub the bridge of his nose.  When he reopened them, Nikki was gone.  He looked all around him.  They had been sitting across from each other in an open space.  No one was quick enough to make that distance in that short period of time.  She was just gone.
         “I’m over here, Jules.”
         He turned toward the sound of her voice and thought he had caught a glimpse of her.  But she wasn’t there.  No blur of movement, just suddenly gone.  He jumped to his feet, dropping the gun to the ground.  And then she was on the opposite end of the opening.  Just standing there.  Looking at him.
         “Do you believe me now?” she was asking.
         That was when he fainted.

         She was shaking him when he came to a few minutes later.  “Jules, are you all right?”
         He looked up at her, into her eyes, tried to gauge how she was looking at him.  How it differed from the other times he had looked into them.  Tried to remember how he had felt earlier that day at the lake.  He had told her he loved her.  Had surprised them both with the sudden admission.  But it had been the truth.  It had been what he felt.
         He sat up, looking around him.  Same world, same reality, he thought, stopping himself from saying it.  He looked at her again.  “What’s going on, Nikki?”
         “Do you believe me now?”
         “This is insane.”  He jumped to his feet.  “Stuff like this just doesn’t happen.  There’s a natural order to the universe, a certain way things are, the way they’ve always been.  And you don’t fuck with that.  This is fucking crazy.”  He started pacing.
         “That’s probably what they told Colombus.  And maybe they said the same thing when people first started talking about space travel.  But now, space travel is a fact of life.  NASA sent the pathfinder Mars and after a few days of pictures, people started complaining about the reports taking up too much time from Jerry Springer and the afternoon soaps.”
         “This is not the same thing and you know it.”  He tried to calm his breathing.  “I need to sit down.”
         “Good.  Sit down.”  She sat beside him, putting her arms around him.
         And then it hit him.  He jerked around to her.  “I can do it too.  What do you call it?  Getting back to these different realities?”
         “There's just two of them, two different worlds.  I prefer switching.  He calls it flipping.”
         “I can switch, can’t I?  Christ, what am I saying?”  He began pacing again.  “I can’t even switch hit.  Ah, shit, this is crazy.”  He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at her.  “But it does make sense.  When I was in the woods outside Smithee...  Wait!  Where am I now?  Or when?  Ah, fuck.  Wait!  Wait!  The night I was camping out in the desert.  It was him, wasn’t it?  But you wouldn’t know about that.  Or would you?  What’s going on here, Nikki?”
         “He’s been keeping track of you for a while now.  He can switch, but not good.  I don’t understand all of it.  Something about you being in this world.  That's why I call it switching.  At first, it was like when he switched over to this world, he somehow made you switch the other way.  Sometimes it's hard for him to do it, or it doesn't go the way he wants it to.  But now, it looks like he's figured out how to switch over without it affecting you.  He’s getting better at it, but with you around...”
         “But you don’t have that trouble.”
         “No, I don’t.  We came to the conclusion that it’s because I don’t have a double in this world.  And that’s why you’re in danger.  He’s wanting to replace you, Jules.”
         “What?  Replace me?”
         “You saw the news report.  He’s a wanted man in his world.  He killed two National Guardsmen.  They’re not going to forget that.  I don’t want to scare you, but you’re in more danger now than ever.”
         “And what about you?  I’m guessing he’s the one that kidnapped you when I was in jail.  And I know he was the one at the rest stop in Smithee.  But the men in the train, who were they?”
         “I don’t know.  I guess they were working with him.  Or... maybe, I don't know.  I know in my world he has switched to escape the police.  Maybe someone in the government knows about it.  Maybe they're CIA or something.  But I wouldn't put it past him to have hired them."
         “No, they saved me from him.  And then they drugged me.  They drugged me... just like... just like you drugged me.  Ah, shit Nikki."  He grabbed her with both hands, his grip tight around her arms.  "The fountain drink from that convenience store, the one where the man told us about the twisters.  You drugged me.  Why?”  Her eyes widened.
         “Jules, you’re hurting me.”  His knuckles were white on her arms.
         “Answer the damn question, Nikki!  Why did you drug me?  And don’t lie.  I'll know if you're lying.”  He relented his grip slightly, but was still glaring at her.
         “I did drug you.  But I did it for your own good.  I was afraid that when he switched, you would too.  I did it for both of us.  If he switched and replaced you, then he could have done something to me.  Or if you started switching without being able to control it, you could have gotten yourself killed by accident.  Like I told you, he’s crazy.  I’m very scared of him.  But also, if you switched and didn’t know it, well, I didn’t know how you’d react.”
         “I’d probably think I was losing my mind, something you seemed to want me to do for some reason.”
         “Listen to me, Jules.  We can stand out here and talk about this all night.  But he is out there somewhere looking for us.  I think we need to get to the nearest town as fast as we can.  We can talk about this later.”
         “Why can’t we just switch back?  If this is real, this different reality or whatever you call it, then we can just switch back to the reality where Gerald is.  You remember Gerald, don’t you?  The man that supposedly saved you from Rollie.”
         “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.  Some of the guests saw the news report that you did.  They’re convinced the cops would have come and busted the place down if they thought you were him.  Which is what they would have thought.  Even Gerald was ready for us to leave when he found out.”
         “Who is Gerald anyway?  If he didn’t save you from Rollie “Fingers” Patterson, then who is to you?”
         “Just a friend.  Part of what I told you about my past is true.  There was a Nikki Cauthen in this world.  And she did get killed young when she was in New York.  That’s why my murder was in the files in the police station.  As far as they’re concerned, she doesn’t exist anymore.”
         “Do you realize how this sounds, Nikki?”
         “Of course I realize how it sounds.  But it’s the truth.  Think about it, Jules.  Everything I’ve told you tonight makes perfect sense.  Everything.  And what I told you at the lake in the other reality, I meant that too. I said I loved you.  You said it too.”  She tried to put her arms around him, but he wouldn’t let her.
         “Maybe it was just one of your lies.”
         She looked down at the ground.  “I deserve that, I guess.  But I’m still here, aren’t I?  I don’t have to be.  I can go back to my world.  I could go as far away from here as I could.  But I haven’t.  And I’m not going to.  But there’s something else we haven’t talked about.”
         It hit him immediately as she said it.  “Oh, God.  My family.  He wants to get rid of me.  And how is the best way to do that?  To get to my family.  That’s what he’s going to do, isn’t it?  And Gerald’s men won’t watch them anymore, if they ever were, will they?”
         “No, they won’t.  And if he’ll kill those Guardsmen...”  She didn’t have to finish the thought.  “We’ll be walking right into his trap, you know.”
         “I know.  But there’s no other choice.  And you’re coming with me.  After this, I can’t guarantee anything.  I might not even want to look you in the eye anymore.  But I’m afraid I can’t trust you enough to let you go.  You might lead him right to me.”
         “I can’t believe you’d say that after what he’s done to me.  He tried to kill me more than once.  I shouldn’t even be going back to Virginia with you, but I am.  I am because I want to do this for you.”  She looked like she was about to cry.  Jules thought she was probably just doing it to make him to feel something, to make him feel bad in some way.  And it worked.  But he wasn’t about to let it show.
         “Then let’s go.  We’ve got a lot of walking to do.”  He turned and began walking toward the road.  The gun was back in his holster where he could get to it if he needed to.  Christ.  If he needed to.
         What a pair they would make.  A man and a woman stepping out of the woods, both dressed for a formal dinner, a backpack slung over his arm and a crumbling Civil War era mansion behind them through the trees.  It was almost like science fiction.

         At least now he understood why his credit cards had not been working regularly.  They were sitting in a Walk-A-Mart, eating breakfast, having purchased another set of clothes for the trip back to Virginia.  It felt better to get out of the dinner suit.  Jules was sure they had only gotten a ride into the town because Nikki had been wearing that dress, the one with the low neck line.  It was a peculiar sensation, having people stare at him, trying not to think it had anything to do with having seen him on TV as a wanted man.  Of course, that was in another reality.  It was still hard to believe.  Like something out of one of Irelands' fantasy novels.
         His attention had drifted again.  Nikki had been telling him that they should be a little safer now, that there was a slim chance that Jules--she had winced she called him that--that the other Jules wouldn't do anything drastic enough in this world to draw attention to himself.  That came as somewhat of a relief.  How could he ever prove himself innocent if someone that was in essence himself committed a crime in his own world?  Jules had pointed out that they should not try to second guess what this man would or would not do.
         It still felt like a thick daydream.  He was listening to her quiet words about this strange thing that the three of them seemed to share, the ability to jump between two slightly different versions of the same dimension.  It was ludicrous, but he found himself nodding from time to time when she made a point that seemed reasonable.  The shock.  Like thinking that he could have had cancer.  But now, where were the headaches?  Were they all a part of the switching?  It had been a while since he had gotten physically ill with one.
         Nikki grimaced when he voiced the suggestion.  "You don't know what it was like for me watching you in so much pain and not being able to tell you why.  I hated to have to let you go on thinking that you might have a tumor or something.  I hated it.  But there's more you need to know."
         Jules was staring past her again, watching the small crowd of people at the nearby return desk.  Standing in line.  A man in a blue work shirt returning a car battery, watching expectantly over the shoulder of the cashier as she looked up the pro-rate charge.  Behind him there was an older woman clutching a plastic bag tightly to her side, obviously uncomfortable about standing as close as she was to the man in front of her, but not about to budge an inch for the young black man standing behind her.
         He pushed away the little voice in his head that was screaming, "Switch!  Flip!  You can do it!  You know you want to!  Flip!"
         Nikki had said something that brought him back.
         "While he was trying to force you to flip over into my world, I don't know, but it looks like for you it triggered whatever it is in our brains..."  She shook if off.  "Whatever it is that lets us do this.  But he knew what it was doing to you.  That was part of his plan.  He wanted to make you sick.  Mentally and physically.  All of the time he called you 'easy prey' makes me sick!"
         That face was automatically in his mind.  The Face.  Back in Smithee on the street.  He could see the cold light shining in the man's eyes as he recalled the encounter.
         She was watching the memory and emotion play itself across his face.  Jules thought immediately that he would have to be one thousand times more careful now than he had been with her in the past.  And with himself.  He would have to put everything on hold.  All that mattered to him now was protecting his family.  He would have to think of himself last.  Let her think what she wanted to.  Funny that a major reason that he had set out on the road trip to find some sort of direction or purpose in his life.
         "I'm sorry, Jules..."
         He made an abrupt, cutting gesture with his hand that stopped her.
         "I told you that I didn't want to hear that Nikki.  Just tell me something that I need to know, something that I can use.  Okay?  For all I know he's on a plane right now headed for Bishopville.  And here I am wasting time talking to you about nothing."
         She was shaking her head, still unsure about saying anything after his last comment.  "He won't do that," she said finally. "Not a plane.  He'll go by car."
         "That great!  I can get a jump on him then and get my family out of town before he gets there!  I am sure there's an airport nearby..."
         "No, Jules, you don't understand.  It's not that simple.  Think about it.  Even though he knows more about switching than you or I, he still won't take the chance that something might happen.  That he might switch over in his sleep--or if it were an accident--he won't take the chance that there might not be a plane there in the other world."
         Jules tried not to let the shock slide across his face.  She had said there were slight differences between her world and his, but that seemed so obvious to him now that he could not believe that he had not thought of it himself.  It only made things harder.
         "So, what if I flip over and there's something there in the same spot, in the other world?  Like a tree or something?"
         "I wouldn't worry about that.  It's like you get shifted.  I don't know.  I've never had a problem.  But now that you've mentioned it, it gives me the chills just thinking about it.  I never really thought about it."
         Obviously she doesn't know everything, he thought, sipping his iced tea through the straw.  An overweight white woman in a cheap shirt was watching him, staring right at him.  He nodded to her slightly, but her expression didn't change.  She was just sitting there eating a hamburger.  Looking at him like some kind of strange animal that walked into her little backwoods town.  Jules felt that way sometimes.  He imagined walking up to her, bowing dramatically, and vanishing right in front of her.  Would she even notice?  She continued to stare through him.  And for the briefest of moments, he wondered if he was even there.  Maybe there was a reason she didn't seem to see him.  He shook the thought off as Nikki began speaking again.
         "I do know that we can't sit around in one place for too long." Nikki said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.  "That's how he found me.  That's how he found you."
         Jules raised an eyebrow, finally glancing away from the fat woman's stare.
         "It's something else about us, the three of us.  I don't know if you can feel it.  But after a while it's like we pull at each other, or something.  Maybe pull isn't the right word to use.  But I do know when we got mixed up back in Texas, I could feel that you weren't far away.  I think it has something to do with what we share."  She stopped speaking for a moment and Jules wondered if she would change the tense of that last word.  She didn't and continued the line of thought.
     "If it is some part of our brain or something.  But he told me it's much stronger with your other self.  At least that's the way it is with him.  I don't know.  By the time I understood what was happening to me wasn't a mental breakdown, my other self in this world was already gone.  But that's how he first found you in Texas.  He couldn't lay a finger on exactly where.  He just kept saying that if you would stop for a while, he'd have you.  Can you feel him?"
         Jules shook his head.  He felt nothing.  Maybe it was the mental shock of the whole experience, but he didn't feel any different than he had any other day.  What had changed about him?  Had anything changed at all?  Or had the Face caused what was already there just to come out in him?
         "I feel tired, Nikki.  That's what I feel.  That's all I feel.  Nothing new.  No strange impressions of people from other worlds.  Just tired.  But I know I can't stop either.  I have to get back home, before he does.  And I just thought about something.  I think I'll give Tim a call and tell him to get out of the house and take everyone with him.  I know that he'll trust my judgment, even if I can't explain why.  But if the other Jules is as ruthless as he appears to be, he's got to guess that I would do that, right?"
         Nikki was nodding, her eyes shifting back and forth as she thought about it.  Or maybe it was his imagination, his feelings about her coming though in his perception of her.
         "But he's got to know that even if I managed to get my family away from my home, I'll still be going there to look for him.  He knows that I will have to try to stop him.  Now that you and I are together.  Really together."
         They finished eating and decided to look for a car rental nearby.  He had to think about what he would say to Tim and his step-father.  How he could get them to leave.  Maybe to stay with his mom at the University?  The fat woman was staring through him still as he rose from his seat.  All the while the little voice in his head was whispering, "Flip! Switch!  That'll wake the woman up!"

         The grey-white light of early dawn was brightening the sky and on the horizon the molten glow of the sun was peeking painfully into the corner of his eyesight.  He scratched his face and rubbed at the corners of his eyes.  Rain had made most of the evening all but unbearable.  That coupled with a vast silence that had stretched through the rental car for hours.  It came and went.  But Jules had driven all night through the rain and on into the next morning without a word.  Nikki had been in the back seat the whole time.  She had finally forced him to let her take over driving so that he could sleep.  In the passenger seat.  And then it only came in snatches.
         Driving on through the rain, his thoughts had been a jumble of anger and outrage, at what she had done to him, at what the Face had done and might still do to both of them.  And underlying all of that in the cold pit of his stomach--fear.
         Nikki turned in her sleep next to him, and he could see her face.  He tried not to look to closely at her.  And certainly not while she slept.  Her face appeared too innocent then.  But he knew otherwise.  She could be a thousand times more manipulative and deceiving, it seemed, then he had ever imagined.  And to think that he had thought that he might... love her.  That was a pit of mixed anger and misery that he did not want to look into at the moment.
         He had called Tim that day after getting the rental.  Of course they had all been worried about him.  No mention whatsoever of the National Guardsmen incident.  Not that he thought there would be.  But it was still hard to accept that that had really happened in the other world--in Nikki's world.
         "Tim, you need to listen to me real good."  He looked around him to make sure no one was there.  Nikki was sitting in the car at the gas pumps trying on a pair of sunglasses Jules had bought inside the store.  The sun had started bothering his eyes again.  "I may have gotten myself involved in something."
         "Like what?  The girl?  I knew she was nothing but bad news."
         "Tim, listen to me.  You and your dad need to get out of Bishopville.  The people that want to do me harm might not be above using the two of you to get to me.  Tell your dad to go to the University and get Mom.  The three of you need to get away from there as soon as possible."
         "What are you talking about, Jules?  This doesn't make any sense."
         "I know it doesn't make sense, Tim.  But you trust me, don't you?"
         "Of course I do," Tim said.  "But you've been under a lot of stress lately.  I noticed that even before you left on your trip."
         Jules felt his anger rising.  It was all too much.  And he knew there was no way he could ever tell Tim the entire story.  "Dammitt, Tim, you're not listening to me!  I said you need to get out of the house.  You need to get out of Bishopville.  Why would I lie to you?"
         "I didn't say you were lying..."
         Jules took a deep breath.  Maybe he shouldn't have called.  But there was no other way.  He had to tell them.  Had to warn them that they were in danger even if they thought he was crazy.  He decided to try again.  "I know I've been acting strange lately, but you have to trust me on this one."
         There was a long silence on the other end of the line.  "I trust you, Jules.  Where do you think we should go?"
         "I don't know and I don't want to know.  Tell Mom's brother, you remember the one, don't you?  But don't say it!  You need to go under the assumption that this phone call has other listeners.  Don't tell anyone else where you're going, not even your girlfriends.  Don't even tell anyone you're leaving.  There is one more thing you need to know."  He had no idea how he was going to say this.
         "What's that?" Tim asked.
         "You have to keep your eyes open.  If they want to get to you, it may not make sense how they do it.  But you'll know.  You'll know when something isn't right.  Trust your instincts.  And know that I would never hurt you, your father or my mother.  Or lie to any of you."
         "Jules, are you talking in code?  Maybe you have been out on the road too long."
         He took a deep breath.  This wasn't going like he wanted it to.  "Yeah, maybe.  Or maybe I've just been living with you too long."  He tried to laugh, like it was a joke.  But it was far from a joke.  "You will remember what I said?  And the three of you will leave town, won't you?"
         "Of course, Jules.  If you think it's best.  I've got a few days off anyway..."
         "I know it's best."  He looked at Nikki again in the car.  She was looking right at him, looking at him the way she did when they first met.  "Give my love to Mom."
         "I will.  You should call her."
         "I know."  He hung the phone up and walked back to the car.  In five minutes, they were well down the road, speeding toward Virginia.  What he would find there was something Jules did not know.
 
         He spent much of his time knitting together bits and clues of his life from the past few weeks or so on the road as best he could, trying to make sense of something so unreal.  He found himself checking the rearview mirror far too often.  He knew his nerves would get the better of him if he didn't watch out.  But he could not go on the supposition that The Face would head directly back to Bishopville to lie in wait for them.  He could be anywhere.  Literally, now that he knew the truth of the matter.  And so could his thugs.  But this time Jules knew he would be ready for them.
         On second thought, thinking like that would probably get him killed.  If The Face had had years to learn this ability, then he would probably know how to exploit it.  What that meant wasn't entirely clear to Jules.  If that meant was being able to switch over at will, then Jules wasn't sure that he could do that if he tried all day long.  He didn't know what to do or how it worked.  He was going to have to trust Nikki enough to let her try to show him or teach him how to make it work.  But there were other things too, it seemed.  Nikki had made that comment that the other Jules had been trying to force him to flip over to the other world.  Apparently the attempts had initially made Jules physically ill.  And that Nikki had been... forced to give The Face that information.  Did the man know how to hurt him then?  His headaches had all but gone, but he wasn't willing to forget that they might come all too soon if the other man got close to him, either in his own world or the other one.
         A little after noon, Jules turned off of the highway and drove out into the country.  Nikki woke up when they stopped at a gas station to fill up and get some hot-dogs.  Jules grabbed a couple of Gatorades--no more fountain drinks, he chuckled to himself--and then made the request.
         "I want you to show me how to switch over.  Tell me how you do it when you want to.  I'm going to need to learn how to do it.  I probably needed to understand yesterday or last week or last month, but better sooner or later."  Nikki was in a better mood now.  Almost the old Nikki.  She almost grinned at him had he not been dead serious.  There was still something between them that seemed broken in some way.  He was not sure if they would be able to fix it, whatever it was.  Or if he even wanted to.  But the way she looked...
         "Let's find an out of the way place.  We can pretend we're on a picnic," she said, looking at the road map.  But there was a pause at the mention of a picnic, an intake of breath that they both picked up on, something that made them both wince, even as they pretended not to notice the remark.  But he knew she was thinking of the picnic from a few days before just as he was.
         "We don't want to be seen and we don't want you doing this around a highway or any other place there might be cars or something that could get in the way.  You don't want to suddenly find yourself out in the middle of a highway in my world."
         They found a field, bordered on its sides by trees, and virtually abandoned.  Jules tucked one of the guns into the back of his jeans, leaving another one carefully wrapped up in a shirt under the drivers seat.  They carried their food and drinks out to the edge of the field where Nikki told him to sit down.  He watched as she pulled her sweater up over her head, catching his eye when she was done.  He hadn't been thinking.  It was hard not to see her that way anymore.  She put her sweater down on the ground and untucked her t-shirt from her jeans.  She was alternating between looking around the field and back at him.
         "I've thought about doing this for a while, Jules.  I just never knew if it would come down to this.  I wanted to tell you everything before.  It really is a wonderful thing when you think about it."
         "Well, I'm ready.  I guess you want me to concentrate or something, right?"  He tried to suppress a chuckle.  He looked up at the sky.  When would it change?  Would it change?
         "Be right back," she said and was suddenly gone.  No gust of wind.  No puff of smoke.  Many long minutes passed.  He could not contain himself and had to stand and then peer off across the field with a hand shielding his eyes.  Where was she?  Would she suddenly appear, startling him again?  No matter what she said, what if she tried to flip over right where he was standing.  It made his skin crawl, just thinking about it.
         "Miss me?" she said, suddenly just there about ten feet away and walking up to him.
         "Where did you go?  Uhm, yeah, how about why did you go?  Or how?" he said, correcting himself.  She was grinning now.  She really did have beautiful eyes.
         "I wanted to scout it out.  Just to be sure there wasn't a house in this same spot on my world.  I'd hate for you to pop up in some young girl's bedroom on the other world and get yourself shot by her father.  But there's nothing there but another field.  Looks like the one in that world has been used more recently, but still no one was around that I could see.  Are you ready?"
 Jules shifted his feet and looked back at her.  He adjusted the rubber band holding his ponytail together and nodded.
         "Listen, if it works," she said, putting her hand on his arm, "don't stop there, but try to flip right back.  Or keep trying a couple of times.  But look for my sweater on the ground if you get confused and don't see me.  I'll try to switch over with you the first few times until you get the hang of it.  But the sweater is in this world, your world.  And so is the car and our things, of course.  We can take little things like clothes and backpacks with us, but the car isn't going anywhere.  Which means if you flip into my world and can't switch back, we're going to be stuck without the car.  And I did enough walking back in Louisiana.  Okay?"
         "Okay.  I'm ready.  Tell me what I should do."
         She rubbed his arm, looking up into his eyes, and then frowned.  "I'm thinking," she said.  "It's not like I've ever had to teach anyone how to do it before.  You and he are the only others that I know about who can do it."
         Jules took a step away from her and closed his eyes, trying to make it happen.  He concentrated very hard on wanting to go to the other world.  He could hear her describing the way that the field looked in there.  But nothing happened.  So he thought about the way the clouds looked in the sky above him.  Still nothing.  Then he tried to imagine what it might be like suddenly appear in the other world, in a field similar to this one, but different somehow.  She sighed.
         "Sorry, Nikki, I'm just not getting anything.  Should I think of a waterfall or something?  Come to think of it, maybe it would help if you don't stand so close to me."  He couldn't see her, but could feel her, could smell her.  She moved back a few feet.  Either she would be grinning or frowning.  He wasn't sure which.  He forced his mind back to the business at hand.  No strange sensations out there in his mind.  No sense of a headache at all.
         "I guess each time I did it in the past," he began, feeling the sun on his face, but keeping his eyes closed, "either I was in some kind of danger or it just happened by accident.  But I don't think I'm ready to have you start shooting a gun at me just to try to trigger it..."  Snickering.  Jules opened his eyes.  "Didn't you say that he was trying to force me to switch over somehow using his own ability?"
         Nikki was frowning now.  "That's different.  I think it's only because you and he are the same person, but existing in two different worlds.  Anyway, I don't think it'll work."
         "Why?  Because you've never tried it?" he said, folding his arms and looking at her.
         "I've never thought about it.  Hmm, okay, let's give it a try," she said, her expression changing dramatically.  She stared at him with a strange intensity.  Nothing happened.  But she continued her concentration.  Abruptly, she vanished.  Just blinked out of existence.  Jules sucked in a breath.  He looked around in wonder.  The sweater was still on the ground.  Looks like she'd switched herself over by accident, he thought.  He let out the breath and sat down to finish his sandwich.  She'd be back eventually.
         "Oh well, so much for that idea", she said, blinking back into his vision off to the left a few seconds later.  She sat down heavily on her sweater and took a sip from her Gatorade.  "Well, let's not give up, okay?"
         "Oh," he said.  "I don't intend to give up.  I'll keep trying until I get it right.  Even if I do have to go playing on the highway just to make it happen.  Anyway, that can't always work.  Remember, I was stabbed in the arm and I didn't flip then.  And you got that black eye and those bruises."  She nodded, glancing at his arm as if she could see the healing wound through his shirt.

         An hour later, they were back on the road.  "That sense you said he has..."
         "Right, the sense he has of where you are."
         "Yeah, that's the one.  You also said that you can sense us as well.  I'm guessing you aren't sensing him right now.  You would tell me if you were, wouldn't you?"
         "Of course I would.  That man is a danger to both of us.  I would tell you right when I got one.  I don't know.  Maybe the connection isn't there anymore or something."
         "There's never been a connection between me and... Jules.  But you said he can sense me.  I don't understand it."
         "There's a strong connection between the two of you, probably stronger than between you and I," she said.  "It's not like you're twins or anything.  But you're both Jules Verne Hinton.  That's the only connection there has to be between you two.  But that's enough of one, don't you think?"
         "But you also said you felt like I was close by when all that happened in Texas."
         "I did.  But I think it was more of an emotional connection we shared."  She caught herself.  "Share.  Like I said before, I don't know as much about switching as he does.  But I do think you should try to work some on him.  I don't know how you'd do that.  But I would surely like to know where he is so we can avoid him."
         "You don't think he'll go to Virginia?"
         "I don't know," she admitted.  "We talked about second guessing him.  But I don't see how we can not second guess him.  He's smart.  That'll work for him.  But he's also ruthless.  And ruthlessness usually seems to equate to a certain amount of cockiness.  I'm hoping that will cause him to slip up somehow.  And that it will work for us."
         "But you didn't answer my question.  Do you think he'll go to Virginia?  One thing I've been thinking is that we shouldn't wait for him to act first.  If he's chasing us, maybe we should turn the tables on him.  Pursue the pursuer, in other words."
         "I don't know, Jules.  Maybe that's what he wants us to do.  And to answer your question, I don't think it matters what he'll do.  What we need to do is to get to Virginia and get to your family before he has a chance to.  We've got a jump on him in that we're coming from Louisiana and he's coming from Texas."
         "But if he can sense where I am, then he knows we're closer to Virginia than he is," Jules said.  "Right?  And if he's closer to us than he is to Virginia, it would make more sense from his point of view to come to us directly than to go to Virginia.  And if that's true, then we shouldn't be leading him right to my family.  We should probably be going west."
         "But what if he decides to go to Virginia anyway?  Which is probably what he would do if he thought we were going somewhere else.  This is why we shouldn't second guess him.  Because now we're starting to second guess ourselves.  And we're not leading him to your family.  He already knows about them.  He's known that for a long time.  Like I said, he's a smart man.  He knows what he's doing.  And we need to remember that."
         Jules thought about it for a long time.  What she said made sense.  But he also knew he could not take everything she said on face value.  There was something in him that was warning him away from her.  Just to leave her at some gas station somewhere.  But he couldn't do that.  Not yet.  For a number of different reasons.
         "Yeah, I guess you're right."
 

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