By Ed Staskus

   Oliver didn’t like time traveling. He didn’t mind the travel part but didn’t like the time part. It took forever to push the time machine out of the garage, pull off and fold up the heavy waterproof cover, lube the gearbox, check the oil, and gas it up. It was bad on gas on top of everything else. He had to push hundreds of buttons and levers and switches to get it ready to blast off. Then there was the count down. Unlike NASA space ships, which took off after a ten count, the time machine required a one thousand count, counting backwards.

   God forbid he lose count, which happened once, and he had to go all the way back to the beginning. When he did he forgot when and where he was going, fumbled around with his memory, and finally gave up the project when his bedtime drew near. Since then he hadn’t gone time traveling. But the Jim Stubbs mash-up was too big to ignore. It was time to suit up again.

   The time machine was both simple and complex. When it was time to go Oliver fastened his seat belt, dialed up the target date, sometime in the past or the future, and pushed a big red button that said “GO.” He watched and waited while time rewound or fast forwarded. It never took long to get to the target time and place unless it was many centuries away. When he got there he sprayed the time machine with invisibility spray and marked the coordinates with a sextant. The worst thing that could happen would be to not be able to find it again.

   It would have been easier to use a cell phone with GPS, but his mother wouldn’t let him or his sister Emma, who was his right-hand man, have one even though he was already eight years old and his sister was ten years old. Their mother was conservative and believed in family values. All the things the family had, like their cars and computers, were new as could be. The woman of the house, however, stayed in her believe-you-me ways when it came to beliefs.

   “Mom,” Emma asked, “why do we have to take old stuff for granted?”

   “First of all, it’s not old stuff, and second, you’re too young to understand.”

   “I will never be old enough to understand,” Emma groused.

   Her mother ordered Emma to go to her room. She pulled out her cell phone. It was almost as big as an iPad. “You go to your room for an hour, young lady,” she said. “I’m timing it.”

   In her room Emma flopped on her back on her bed. She raised an arm and pointed at a corner. “And in this corner, still undefeated, my mom and her long-held beliefs,” she said but not so loud that her mother could hear her.

   Oliver and Emma were the Monster Hunters of Lake County. They lived in Perry, about 30 miles east of Cleveland, Ohio along the south shore of Lake Erie. He was the best monster hunter in the county, if not the whole state, even though he was the youngest. He had a sixth sense about it. Most of the others didn’t have any sense about them. Most of them were booski’s who were forever getting lost in the weeds.

   He landed his time machine in Boston near William Mumler’s Photography Studio. The spirit photographer was a big hit in his part of the world, especially since he had been arrested for fraud in New York City a year before. He took pictures of people, photographs that included, when they were developed, images of their deceased loved ones. Not everybody believed in the pictures. P. T Barnum, circus man and self-appointed expert on suckers, testified at the trial that it was all hokum. 

   “It’s all a sham,” he said. But the jury couldn’t make up its mind. It became a mistrial. William Mumler went back to Bean Town a free man.

   William Mumler charged a dollar for a portrait. He charged ten dollars for a portrait when it included a spirit. When Emma did the math later ten dollars came out to more than two hundred dollars in today’s money. When she asked her mother if capitalism was a family value, she had to spend another hour in her room and pay her mother a dollar for bothering her.

   “We believe in family values in this family, do you understand me, young lady?”

   “Yes, mom,” Emma said and crept away.

   William Mumler displayed a photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln. He took it in 1870. It astonished everybody. A translucent image of Abraham Lincoln, her husband, was in the picture sitting beside her on the sofa. The picture was taken five years after Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. “He looks so alive,” everybody said. Nobody thought it was a trick. Only the photographer knew it was a trick. He didn’t tell anybody, least of all himself.

   “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” Honest Abe had once said. He spent most of his days when the 21^st century rolled around rolling over in his grave. Years of day-to-day lies on Fox News, Twitter, and Facebook had worn him out. “If I ever come back I am coming back as Dishonest Abe and fight fire with fire, especially with that Donald the Borgia.”

   The spirit photographer had sent an SOS about Jim Stubbs by telegraph to every ghostbuster he knew or had ever heard about. Oliver wasn’t exactly a ghostbuster and was living a century and a half later, but he somehow got wind of the SOS. He didn’t know how to reply since telegraphs were long gone but he wanted to help, even though the time machine was a pain in the butt. Landing it in the Back Bay had been a struggle. It was 1871 when Oliver appeared out of the blue in Boston.

   “The Jim Stubbs photograph I made is a phony, but Jim Stubbs, even though he is no longer real, has become real again,” William Mumler’s telegraph read. “He has come back and won’t leave. He is scaring the life out of everybody. Please come and help.”

   Oliver walked into the photographer’s lobby like a duck out of water. A police officer on the beat looked him over. The boy looked queer to him. The police officer was an older man and  carried a standard issue six-foot pole painted blue and white. It was what he used to protect himself. He had a rattle to call for help in case things got out of hand. Boston was bustling with the high and low. Landfills and annexations of neighboring villages had grown the city from one square mile to forty square miles. Shoe and textile factories were around every corner. Maritime commerce out of the ports sailed worldwide. Everybody was taking in boarders in the North End and on Fort Hill as immigrants poured into the city.

   William Mumler had gotten many offers of help, but none from a boy who walked, talked, and dressed like he was from a different world. “Who are you,” he asked, scratching his beard. He would have scratched his head except he was nearly bald.

   “My name is Oliver,” Oliver said. “I’m a monster hunter, although I go after spirits and creatures, too.”

   “What do you do when you find them?”

   “I tell them to go away.”

  “What if they refuse to go.”

   “I have my own way of getting results.”

   “You’re not from Boston, are you?”

   “No.”

   “Do you mind if I take your picture?”

   “No, I don’t mind.”

   The first photographic portrait studio ever in the United States opened in Boston. Oliver sat for his picture. He had to sit still for five minutes for the taking of it, which was on a glass plate. The photographer took it into a back room to develop. When he came back he was scratching his beard again.

   “I don’t know what happened, but everything is in the picture except you.”

   He tried again. When he came back again he showed Oliver the second photograph. The background was in the picture. The chair Oliver had sat in was there. What wasn’t there was Oliver.

   “Are you a spirit of some kind?”

   “No, but I came here in a time machine from 2023. Maybe that’s why the camera can’t see me.”

   “The year 2023 in the future?”

   “Yes.”

   Oliver could tell the spirit photographer had a million questions. He wasn’t ready and willing to answer a million questions. “What is your Jim Stubbs problem, exactly?” he asked.

   “My problem, young man from the future, is that I resurrected Jim Stubbs, and now the villain won’t go back to where he belongs.”

Next: Searching for Jim Stubbs.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

A New Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Cross Walk“

“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.