Jumper. Steven Gould

      The first was that Dad had really given it to me that last time, inducing brain damage or other trauma to the point where I was dreaming the whole mess. Maybe even my mugging was just a detail added by my subconscious to correlate with the “real” injuries. I could be lying in the St. Mary’s Hospital intensive care unit back in Stanville, a little screen going beep, beep, beep over my still form. I doubted this, though. Even in my most terrifying nightmares I’ve had an awareness of the dream state. The stench of the garbage from the alleyway seemed too real.

      The second possibility was that I’d done most of the things I remembered and most of the bad things that had happened to me had. My mind just warped reality in dealing with the results, giving to me the more palatable alternative of escape by a singular paranormal ability. This seemed more likely. Each time I’d “jumped” there was a feeling of unreality, of disorientation. This could be my shift into an irrational psychosis, an adjustment to a nasty reality. On the other hand, it could be the result of every sense reeling as the environment surrounding me changed completely. Hell—the very nature of the jump could be disorienting.

      It was this third possibility that I distrusted the most. The one that meant I might finally be someone special. Not special in the sense of special education, not special in the sense of being a problem child, but unique, with a talent that, if anybody else had it, they hid. A talent for teleportation.

      There, I’d thought the word. Teleportation.

      “Teleportation.”

      Aloud it vibrated in the room, a word of terrible import, alien to normal concepts of reality, brought into existence only under special circumstances, in the framework of fiction, film, and video.

      And if I was teleporting, then how? Why me? What was it about me that made me able to teleport? And could anybody else? Is that what happened to Mom? Did she just teleport away from us?

      Suddenly my stomach went hollow and I began breathing rapidly. Jesus Christ! What if Dad can teleport?

      Suddenly the rooms seemed unsafe and I pictured him appearing before me, the belt in his hand, anywhere, anytime.

      Get a grip. I’d never seen him do anything like that. Instead, I’d seen him stumble down the street a half mile to the Country Corner, to buy beer when he’d run out, hardly able to walk or talk. If he could teleport, surely he’d have used it then.

      I sat on the narrow bed and dressed myself, putting on my most comfortable clothes, With extreme care, I combed my hair, checking the result in the tiny mirror on the wall. The bump, still large and aching, looked like a barber’s mistake. There was some slight seepage of blood, but it wasn’t really visible through the hair.

      I wanted some aspirin and I wanted to know if I was crazy. I stood up and thought about the medicine cabinet in our house. It was funny that I still thought about it as our house, I wonder what my dad would say about that?

      I didn’t know what time it was, other than after midnight. I wondered if Dad was asleep, awake, or even home. I compromised and thought, instead, of the large oak tree in the corner of the backyard. It was another place I used to read. It was also a place I used to go when Mom and Dad fought, where I couldn’t hear the words, even though the volume and anger still carried that far.

      I jumped and my eyes opened on a yard that needed mowing. I’ll bet that pisses him off. I tried picturing him behind the mower, but I just couldn’t. I’d done the lawn since I was eleven. He used to sit on the back porch with a beer in his hand and point out the spots I missed.

      The house was dark. I moved carefully along until I could see the driveway. His car wasn’t there. I pictured the bathroom and jumped again.

      The light was out. I flipped the switch and took a bottle of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. It was half full. I took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some gauze pads as well.

      I jumped to the kitchen then, because I was hungry and to see if I still could. He’d bought groceries since the night I’d left for New York. I made myself two ham-and-cheese sandwiches and put them and the stuff from the bathroom in a paper bag I took from the pantry. Then I carefully cleaned up, trying to make it no more clean or messy than I’d found it. I drank two glasses of milk, then washed the glass and put it back in the cabinet.

      There was the sound of tires in the driveway, that old sound of dread and tension. I picked up the bag and jumped back to the backyard. I didn’t turn off the light, because he would have seen it through the window. I hoped he’d think he’d left it on himself, but I doubted it. He used to scream at me enough for leaving the lights on.

      I watched the lights go on down the length of the house—front hall, living room, back hallway. The light in his bedroom went on, then off again. Then the light in my room went on and I saw him silhouetted in the window, a dark outline through the curtains. The light went out then and he walked back to the kitchen. He checked the back door to see if it was locked. I could see his face through the window, puzzled. He started to open the door and I ducked around the trunk of the oak.

      “Davy?” he called out, barely raising his voice above conversational level. “Are you out there?”

      I remained perfectly still.

      I heard his feet scrape on the back porch and then the door shut again. I peered around the trunk and saw him through the kitchen window, taking a beer from the refrigerator. I sighed and jumped to the Stanville Library.

      There was a couch with a coffee table in Periodicals that was away from the windows and had one of the lights they left on above it. That’s where I ate my sandwiches, feet propped up, chewing and staring off into the dark corners. When I was done eating I washed three ibuprofen down at the water fountain, then used the bathroom.

      It was a relief not having to worry about someone crashing through the door. I soaked a few gauze pads with hydrogen peroxide and dabbed at the cut on the back of my head. It stung more than the time before and the pad came away with fresh blood. I winced, but cleaned it as best I could. I didn’t want to end up in a hospital with an infection.

      I bagged the ibuprofen, gauze, and peroxide, then flushed the used gauze down the toilet. I jumped, then, back to my hotel room in Brooklyn.

      My head hurt and I was tired, but sleep was the last thing in the world on my mind.

      It was time to see what I could do.

       THREE

      In Washington Square Park I appeared before a bench that I’d sat upon two days previously. There was a man lying on it, shaking from the cold. He had newspapers tucked around his legs and his fists knotted in the collar of a dirty suit jacket, pulling it close around his neck. He opened his eyes, saw me, and screamed.

      I blinked and took a step away from the bench. He sat up, grabbing for his newspapers before they blew away in the light breeze. He stared at me, wild-eyed, still shivering.

      I jumped back to the hotel room in Brooklyn and took the blanket from the bed, then jumped back to the park.

      He screamed again when I appeared, shrinking back onto the bench. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” He repeated it over and over again.

      Moving slowly, I put the blanket on the other end of his bench, then walked away down the walk to MacDougal Street. When I’d walked fifty feet or so, I looked back at the bench. He’d picked up the blanket and wrapped it around himself, but he wasn’t lying down yet. I wondered if someone was going to steal it from him before morning.

      As I neared the street, two men, dark figures silhouetted by the streetlights, blocked my path.

      I looked over my shoulder so I wouldn’t be taken by surprise again.

      “Give us your wallet and your watch.” There was the gleam of a knife in the streetlight; the other man hefted a length of something heavy and hard.

      “Too