Almost Sixteen Years Later

"S he made me hike," Eliza said to her mother. "Far."

"It was eight miles," Lydia explained and reached for a potato chip from the bowl that Eliza's mother had put out. "And the waterfall was beautiful; you have to admit that,"

"That's great, honey," her mother said but sounded far away.

"The hike?" Eliza asked.

"Yes, that," her mom said. "Honey, I have something I need you to do." She looked over at Eliza, but her eyes were still unfocused.

Eliza wasn't sure she'd seen her mother's eyes really focused since before her father had been murdered right in front of them.

"Okay. What?"

"Can I help?" Lydia asked.

"Um… Yes, that would be great. There are some boxes of your father's that I need to move into storage now that I'm downsizing this house."

When they'd moved, leaving their own town behind, her mother had gotten them a three-bedroom home, but now that she was getting a little older and the only one living here, the house was too big for her, so she would be moving into a one-bedroom house a few miles from here.

"You don't want them in the house with you?"

"There won't be space," her mother replied. "And I have a storage unit all rented. I signed a year-long contract. That'll give me time to get settled and see if I do want to take anything out of storage. After that, I'm going to donate or trash things, so go through all those boxes and take whatever you want before you move them."

"What's even in there?" Lydia asked.

"Some of his clothes. There are knickknacks and his collectibles, too. He never met something he couldn't collect." The woman laughed. "Baseball cards, coins, stamps; you name it. He collected it all. He even had a bottle cap collection going for a while."

"Why did he stop?" Lydia asked and leaned over the counter to grab another chip.

"He was murdered," Eliza's mother replied matter-of-factly and looked at Lydia as if she'd been stupid to ask .

"Mom!"

"It's okay. My fault," Lydia said and rubbed Eliza's back. "Can I help carry anything?"

"Yes. Whatever Eliza might need help with, if you don't mind."

"Today?" Eliza asked her mother.

"Please," her mom said. "I'm paying for the unit already, and I have to be out of this house within the next two weeks. I have a close date with the couple buying the house."

"Wow. Okay. I didn't realize it was that soon," Eliza replied.

"I have my car. More room," Lydia suggested. "We can load stuff in it today, take it over, and come back for the rest if it all doesn't fit."

"Yeah, sure," Eliza said absentmindedly.

"Good. I'm going to go lie down. The boxes are labeled in the basement," her mother stated and left them alone in the kitchen.

The three of them were supposed to have lunch together, but her mother hadn't gotten that far. She'd put out a bowl of chips and had planned to make sandwiches, but she'd only been able to handle chips. The bread was still in the bag, and the ingredients for the sandwiches were still in the fridge. Eliza wondered, not for the first time, if she'd ever get her mother back, the woman she'd known before that horrible night. It had been so many years, though, and her mom still seemed to be in shock. She hadn't ever been able to go back to work full-time, so she'd worked for various companies part-time over the years since the murder and had used the money Eliza's dad had left her to live off primarily and to put Eliza through college. Eliza wasn't sure how her father had had so much money. His parents hadn't been wealthy, and he'd had a government job that probably hadn't paid much, but Eliza had never asked, and her mother had never volunteered the information. They hadn't been super rich, but Eliza also hadn't been deprived of anything growing up, either. Well, she'd wanted a mother who could be present in her life again, but monetarily, she'd had what she needed.

"Are you okay with this?" Lydia asked.

"Not really. But I don't have much of a choice. She couldn't even lift the sliced turkey out of the fridge. I doubt she can lift these boxes."

"Has she talked to anyone since that last therapist?"

"No, but they have her on the numbing drugs," Eliza reminded. "And while I hated them, I think she likes it that way. They make her not have to feel the sadness."

"Yeah, but she's not really feeling anything . "

"The alternative is feeling the loss of her husband, and I think that's too much for her."

"But she has a daughter, El. She has you , and I've watched her not be there for you since we met. She couldn't even show up to take pictures of you for the prom when we went together. And I know it's not because she cares that you're gay. She barely made it to your graduation and didn't have a party for you like everyone else's parents did."

"That was only a few years after it happened," Eliza defended.

"What's her excuse now?" Lydia asked.

"Hey, I know it makes you mad sometimes. Trust me, it makes me mad, too. I actually knew who she was before he was killed, so it's worse for me. I think about what kind of mom I had before he died, and it hurts that she can't be that for me anymore, but there's nothing I can do about it if she just wants to be numb."

"Not all of those drugs are that bad. You told me that."

"Yes, but the ones she's on are , and I think she prefers it that way."

When they arrived in the basement, Eliza looked around the room, which was larger than most basements in the area but unfinished and made of concrete walls and a matching floor with more than a few cracks in it now. The boxes were lining the back wall, so she nodded for them to head that way.

"I hate that you had to go through all that and that, in some ways, you still are," Lydia shared.

"Me too. Really, though, I just miss him. He was the best dad. For her, I think it's harder. They were high school sweethearts, kind of like you and me."

"Only they worked out," Lydia pointed out.

Eliza stopped walking then and said, "Yeah, that." She swallowed before she continued, "She knew him at thirteen years old, and they were each other's only."

"Has she been with anyone serious since? I don't think we've ever talked about that."

"I don't think she's been on a single date, unless she just didn't tell me about it; not even after I moved out for school. I also can't imagine her dating in this state, and she's been in this state since that night."

"Where do you want to start?" Lydia asked as they took in the rows of stuff along the back wall, stacked two to three boxes high.

"All of them have to go, so wherever. "

"Do you want to go through them here or there?"

"There. Do you mind helping me get them there and then maybe giving me a few minutes to look through them? I think I might want to be alone when I do that."

"No problem. I could go pick us up some lunch, since we didn't eat here, and meet you back at the storage facility after we drop these off."

"You're the best," Eliza said, meaning it.

At the storage facility, which looked almost abandoned, they unlocked the garage-style door, and Lydia helped Eliza unload the boxes they'd been able to bring in Lydia's SUV. Placing them inside the space, they made sure to leave Eliza enough room to open each one and review the contents before deciding how to stack them against the walls. There were still more boxes left at the house, but only three or four smaller ones that Eliza would be able to bring in her car on another day, so they'd made some good progress for her mother just by bringing these here for her.

When Lydia said goodbye to go get them lunch, Eliza knew that she'd take her time. Lydia would probably go to their favorite pizza place, which was always busy this time of day, and she'd stand in line by herself to place their usual order. Then, she'd have to wait until they made it. That gave Eliza at least an hour to an hour and a half when she added in the drive to and from the restaurant.

The storage unit had a concrete floor, so it wasn't the most comfortable material to sit down on, and it was cold both inside and out, but she would need to sit down to go through everything. To keep out at least some of the cold, she decided to close the door most of the way, leaving just a few inches for the sunlight to add to the one exposed light bulb in the space. Then, Eliza finally sat down and opened one of the boxes.

The first one took her back instantly, and she now knew why it had been so heavy. It contained her father's coin and stamp collections. Most of the coins in there weren't of any real value. Her father hadn't ever planned on making money on them; he just liked finding them places. He'd buy a two-dollar penny here and a fifty-dollar nickel there. Sometimes, he'd also pick up a coin off the ground, and even though it wouldn't be worth more than its denomination, he'd just say something like, ‘You never know,' and tuck it into his pocket.

Eliza didn't have the energy to go through the whole collection right now, so she closed the box and left it where it was, needing Lydia to help lift it onto the one provided shelf in the room. She knew her father wouldn't want his collections to rot on the floor like they had been in her mother's basement all these years, and she supposed she could go through it one day when she had more time and decide what to do with everything inside.

The next box was somewhat strange. On the outside, it was just a standard cardboard box, but inside it, there was another one, a silver metal box with a clasp that kept it closed. There was also a small, slightly rusted padlock on it, kind of like what a preteen girl might have on a diary, only a bit bigger. Eliza set aside this metal box the size of a large shoebox to see if she could locate the keys that probably came with the padlock, but the only other items inside the cardboard box were some old papers, likely old bills that had either been paid or no longer mattered, and those were wrapped in only rubber bands and were now faded from the years of sitting in the open basement air. No key to unlock the padlock.

Eliza picked the silver thing up and felt it's weight in her hands. If papers like the ones inside the cardboard box were also inside this metal container, they were heavy piles of paper, which made no sense to her. She wondered what her father would've needed to hide from her mother because they'd always seemed like they'd had a great relationship to her. Of course, Eliza had barely been a teen when her father had died. She'd still been at that age when her parents were superheroes and could do no wrong. Even though that had already started to fade around the time when he'd died, it hadn't yet gone away entirely, and thus, Eliza was stuck in a perpetual state of thinking of her father as Superman and that the world lost a superhero that night. Deciding to give the padlock a tug before she moved on, she was surprised that the rust on it was so severe that the lock broke at that point, and she was able to remove it.

"How old are you?" she asked the box.

The metal was dented in several spots, and there were scuff marks all over it as if it had been tossed around and dropped a few times over the years before it had ended up hidden among her father's stuff, protected well enough by piles of rubber-banded papers as if those were the bubble wrap insulating this metal container from the things that might damage it. With it unlocked now, though, Eliza could solve the mystery by just opening the thing, so she unclasped it and lifted the lid. It creaked as it opened, and she set it on the floor, looking down inside it .

The box contained a strange-looking object that also seemed to be made of metal. A cord or something was sticking out of one side of it, and it resembled a small, more robust boomerang. It looked like it had been welded together, but not very well, and she only knew that because her father had shown her how to use a soldering iron when she was twelve and they'd worked on a model of a battleship together. Glue was fine, but he'd never met a ship model that he couldn't solder. Eliza hadn't been able to hold the implements herself because he'd said that she hadn't been trained yet, but she'd watched him, and it was way better than what she was looking at here. An untrained hand had made an attempt on whatever this thing was.

Eliza lifted the item out of the box, and it was heavier than she'd anticipated. She supposed she thought it would be hollow, but it felt like it had something inside it, giving it that weight. Beneath the item in the box, there was something else that she could now see. It was a piece of paper, and it was yellowed with age and folded over, so she couldn't see if there was anything on it. Noticing that this boomerang-like item appeared to have a button on it, she didn't dare to press it just yet and set the object down before she picked up that piece of paper, pulling it apart for possibly the first time in sixteen years. It was a note that looked like it had been typed on a typewriter, not a computer.

To Whom It May Concern,

If you're reading this, it means you've found the device. I can't tell you too much, but I need to warn you: the things you'll see, you weren't meant to see. There was a tragedy, and energy was absorbed. This is confusing to you, I'm sure, but people died making this thing. Some people were brought back to life. One of them put the device inside this box and gave it to his son to keep it safe. Destroying the device was too risky, but keeping it safe and away from the government was paramount. Its original intent was something altogether different than what it does, and it hasn't been explained by any conventional science. There was a team of people who were tasked with creating something. They were successful, but it was also very dangerous, so they protected each other. One night, something happened, and a woman died. Something about her death transformed the device. We can only assume it was the energy. Everything runs on energy, you know? We tested the device, but it no longer worked as intended. It did something else. If you're reading this note, you're now in possession of something that you cannot allow to get into the government's hands or anyone else's. It's likely you're related to the man we brought back. That man is me. I wasn't supposed to have a family. I should have died, but the team brought me back. I came back, and I got married. I had two kids. My wife died young. So did my first son. I told my second son about the device and asked him to keep it safe. That's as much as I can tell you without bringing you in all the way and risking your life. This should be enough to make you not want to learn anymore, but if no one has taught you about this because they died young, too, that should be a good enough warning to leave this alone. Lock it away and pretend it doesn't exist. Bury it far from your family and forget the location, if you must. This note is confusing, but I don't have time to type it again. I changed my name, but I know they've found me. It's only a matter of time. I wish you luck.

The note wasn't signed, and it felt to Eliza like it had been written by someone in some kind of psychotic break with reality. They'd said they had been brought back to life. She shook her head at that because that wasn't possible. The note also mentioned a woman dying, the government, and danger. This was written by someone who was really going through it, she decided. Then, Eliza's brow furrowed when she thought about something else. A coincidence, no doubt, but her father had been a second son. His older brother, her uncle, had died as a kid. There had been an accident, and he hadn't made it. Another coincidence, to be sure. Eliza had never met her grandmother because she'd died in that same accident. Her father had been there but had been fine. All of that had to be a coincidence, right?

While this old note was definitely intriguing, it wasn't worth her time today, trying to solve some strange mystery, when it was probably written by someone who hadn't been all there, so she folded the paper back up exactly how she'd found it and put it back in the box, deciding to tell Lydia about this weird thing her dad had later. When she picked up the device to place it back where it belonged next, her hand must have slipped because it felt like it had landed on that button. Eliza looked around the room, but the room was no longer there. She was outside. It was freezing cold. She was staring at a man holding a knife to her father's chest.

"Oh, my God!" she yelped at the sight and covered her mouth with her hand immediately.

Then, she looked down at her own body. She was still herself. She was also dressed the same way as she was in the storage room. In all of her previous nightmares or visions of that night, she'd always been a teenager, wearing only socks and a short-sleeved T-shirt. When she looked up just in time to see her father get stabbed, she heard something. Quickly, she turned to the sound, and she could see her teenage self outside the cabin, witnessing her father being murdered. No nightmare had ever been like this or felt this real.

"No," she cried out as she watched her dad get killed all over again.

And it dawned on her. She'd been helpless as a kid, but not anymore; she was an adult now. She took a deep breath and ran toward the man then, trying to stop him this time, but she just went right through him, ending up on the other side as her father fell to the ground. Eliza looked down and watched it all happen. She wanted to close her eyes, to run away, but she didn't. She couldn't because her father's lips were moving. He was saying something.

"She doesn't know anything," he let out so softly that she almost didn't hear it. "Leave her alone. Neither of them knows."

Eliza covered her mouth again as the man above her father stabbed him once more.

"Tell me where it is," the man demanded.

"You'll never find it," her father replied. "It's safe. No one will use it again."

"It's mine! It belongs to me ."

"It belonged to the team," her father stated as blood spurted from his mouth. "To the government. Not to you."

"It was supposed to be for me! It's not yours to hide."

"Promise me you'll leave them alone. They don't know a thing."

"You'd say anything to save them," the man argued.

"I would, but they don't know. Why… would I… tell them… something… that would get them… killed?"

"Daddy," she said to herself.

Her younger self had run back into the cabin already, so this didn't make any sense to her. Teenage Eliza hadn't seen this that night. She hadn't heard her father exchanging words with this man. How would she even know this? Was she making it up? Was this a delusion? If so, why did it feel so real?

"I will find it," the man stated.

"It wasn't meant to exist. You need to… let it… go."

Her father's eyes closed, and Eliza's filled with tears as she stood there, trying to think, trying to process what was happening and how to get out of this nightmare. Then, her father's killer stood and turned to her. She took a step back, believing he could see her and would kill her next in this vision, but he just looked right through her as if she wasn't there. It was then that Eliza really got a good look at him, the man who had murdered her father, and she realized that she recognized him. She knew who he was.

"Oh, my God!"