VIRTUAL SEASONS EPISODES

Theorizing that one could time-travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap.  Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator…and vanished.

 

He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own.  Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brainwave transmissions with Al, the Project Observer, who appeared in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear.

 

As evil and neutral forces alike do their best to stop Dr. Beckett’s journey, his children, Dr. Samantha Josephine Fulton and Stephen Beckett, continuously strive to retrieve their time-lost father and bring him home permanently.  Despite returning home several times over the last decade, Dr. Beckett has remained lost in the time stream…his final fate no longer certain.

 

Trapped in the past and driven by an unknown force, Dr. Beckett struggles to accept his destiny as he continues to find himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong with the hopes that his next leap…will be the final leap home.

PROLOGUE

The silence was deafening. Sam was used to having noise surround him whenever he leapt into someone new. Cars honking people screaming (usually at him) or the general sounds of life but here, he heard nothing. The cold night air whipped past his face and he opened his eyes with trepidation to face the situation he now found himself in… if only he could figure out what exactly that was. For once there wasn’t anybody around to tell him anything or to interact with. The surrounding area didn’t give anything away either as the leaper was faced with a barren, featureless wasteland for a new environment.

Sam looked around carefully in case something was about to spring out at him from nowhere, which it usually did at the very start of a leap. Nothing happened though or appeared to be about to happen, which put Sam more on his guard. In fact the whole landscape seemed to be straight out of a Western movie and all that was needed was a tumbleweed to come rolling gently across the horizon to complete it.

Sam realized he was standing in the middle of a desert and by the side of what looked like a road, a strip of worn ground, which cut right through. He stepped back, thinking that a car could speed by at any moment, and felt the sand crumble away below his left foot as if it had been caught in a hole. His limb stayed in the same position, stuck on something, while the rest of his body was propelled backwards. Using his hands as support, he tried to stop himself from falling but as they touched down on the surface he felt them sink into another set of holes. Sam felt a slight pang in his stomach as he landed with a thud onto his back, the sand and dust rising above and covering him; it stung his eyes and began to se into his clothes and hair.

Looking up at the stars, he closed his eyes briefly again and thought how peaceful and tranquil it felt and not, for once, to be flung into the middle of a dangerous situation at the very point when his senses were at their weakest. As Sam lay, he moved his hands around lazily and thought about the rather odd shapes of the holes. Reading them, almost like Braille, he was reminded of some photographs that he had seen a long time ago of supposed UFO landing sites. Opening his eyes sharply and lifting the hat he seemed to be wearing from his view, he immediately sat up and started to look around, as a bright light started to speed across the sky making its way towards him at an alarming rate.

“Oh Boy!” he muttered to himself in a mixture of disbelief, anticipation and fear.

PART ONE

October 26, 1985

Sam’s eyes followed the lights as they shot straight over his head and off into the distance. The object was only a common airplane, probably on its way to deliver its many passengers an escape from the cold fall weather. He breathed a sigh of relief, stood up and brushed the dirt and dust away from his clothes. Another set of lights beamed over the horizon but as they came closer Sam distinguished two main rays from the several smaller ones that surrounded the object. The leaper stayed dead still until he verified the source, which wasn’t easy in the pitch-black surroundings, the speed at which it was traveling didn’t make it any easier. Venturing slowly forward, his foot still hurting slightly, he tried to get a better look. The object hurtled towards him and the force of its speed threw him back onto the sand. It was just a car though, an ordinary car, a 1973 Pontiac Firebird to be exact, he recalled via his razor sharp memory.

‘Am I back in the Seventies?’ he asked himself. So far it was the only clue he had as to his current where–and when–about, but he was used to scouring the most minute and obscure details in his search for his new identity, time period and purpose. Sometimes he might be as little as a few years into the future; a decade back or it could even be a century or more as his escapades had taught him.

Scrabbling about on the ground Sam found a set of clothes, spread in a haphazard fashion, a brown coat, a white T-shirt and a pair of black trousers. Searching through the pockets he found a couple of nickels and a driver’s license in the name of Leonard Feldman. Sam mouthed the name a couple of times, set the clothes back down and started touching his body to check if the clothes were his.

A silly move on his part, he later thought, as he would’ve instantly noticed if he had leapt in naked, (it had happened before), especially with the cold wind whipping around him. Indeed, he seemed to be wearing a suit, black, with a matching skinny tie and a white shirt. He put the license in one of the pockets in case he needed it; Leonard may be his new ID or even be his reason for being here. As the weather turned colder, he pulled the ends of his belt together, tied them into a quick knot and realized that the coat he was wearing appeared to be identical to the one lying on the ground, a brown Macintosh, a similarly colored hat that also adorned his head.

“Wanna borrow my cigar, Sam? You know you’d make a great ‘Colombo’ dressed like that.” Sam jumped out of his skin at the sight, and sound, of his friend Al Calavicci appearing out of thin air.

“Just, er, one more thing ma’am. I’m a time traveler from the 21^st Century, ha ha,” Al continued with his Peter Falk impersonation and waggled his large cigar in the air.

“Al, where on earth am I?” Sam asked in a harsh whisper.

“Why are you whispering, Sam? We’re in the middle of the Nevada Desert there’s nobody around here for miles and miles,” came the straight reply. Al was perhaps the brightest thing in the desert at the moment wearing a bright red suit, black shirt and glittery gold tie. The colored cubes of his handlink to Ziggy started to whir into action prompting the hologram to punch questions into the keyboard while taking a long drag on his cigar.

“The Nevada Desert? What am I doing in the middle of a desert and in what I assume to be the middle of the night, no less!” exclaimed Sam.

“It’s only half past eight local time and we are currently working on your mission… oh but I can tell you that your name is…”

“…Leonard Feldman,” Sam finished his friend’s sentence instantly.

“Leonard Feldman,” repeated Al, “but most people call you Lennie. The date is October 26, 1985 and although you’re in the desert right now, you normally live in Madison Lake which is about five miles thataway,” he pointed to the east with his cigar. “Lived there all your life, all thirty years of it, ooh and in fact you just had your thirtieth birthday a couple of weeks ago.”

“So what am I doing here, I mean, what’s Leonard doing here? What happened to this guy in October ’85 that made him come all the way out here?” Sam asked, gesturing his hand towards Al whose handlink started to whine and be. He started to shake it and furiously typed into it muttering brief obscenities towards it and every electronic device under the sun. Meanwhile, Sam had started to look back at the strange shapes in the sand and began pacing backwards in an attempt to see the full pattern.

“Ziggy doesn’t seem to have any data on that at the moment but I’ll keep running the scenario’s through. Sam, what are you doing?” Al asked unsteadily.

Al seemed unsure about something the handlink was telling him, a small tic Sam briefly picked up on, but Sam was too interested in the shapes to challenge the holographic image about that feeling.  He would know soon enough.

Al meanwhile observed his friend staring at the ground and walking backwards from the spot he had previously occupied.

“There’s something wrong here, Al. I found a pile of Leonard’s clothes; at least I think they were his from the driver’s license in one of the pockets, in the middle of this strange sand formation. Now do you remember, back in the Eighties there were hundreds of these things all over the country? I think this must be one of them,” he explained quickly. Al could tell from the tone of his voice and the sparkle in his eyes that Sam was very excited by his discovery.

“If I can get back enough I might just be able to see… Al? Al?” Sam’s voice sounded more distant to the hologram the further back he reached. “Oh great!” he sighed as once more he was talking to thin air and for real this time.

“Hey Sam, you should see the view from up here.”

Sam could hear his friend’s voice but couldn’t see his image as he twisted his head in all directions.

“Up here!”

Sam looked straight up and saw the hologram hovering several feet above the landscape and looking directly over the sand formations. The sight of Al floating still startled him slightly even though he had seen his friend’s image do many bizarre things over the years.

“What’s it like?” Sam shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth.

“There are three large circles all joined with like a zig-zaggy line running through them. Kinda reminds me of an old girlfriend I had in the navy. Julia… or Emma… I think…”  

“I knew it! Three interlinked circles in a triangle pattern. One was discovered in 1984 in Phoenix, I think. There may have been another in Ohio,” Sam explained with more childish glee.  “Remember when I leapt into Matt… Matt something, you remember the UFO hunter?”

“Matt? Oh Max, Max Stoddard.”

“Right. Right, well, maybe this is a sort of follow up. A further chance to prove the existence of extra terrestrials!” Sam continued, rushing back to the spot and re-examining the holes.

“That would certainly tally with Leonard. Less of a Colombo more of a Fox Mulder I suppose,” Al chuckled. “He was, well is, a paranormal investigator. Ghosts, ghouls, little green men, all very creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky,” Al explained.

“How’s he adjusting to the Waiting Room?” asked Sam.

“Nervous, scared, the usual. He’s spouting all this flying saucer garbage. Thinks he’s going to be beamed onto the bridge of the Enterprise any minute,” Al laughed briefly. “He keeps asking me whether he’ll be back in time for his flight though.  Says that he must make his flight.”

“Flight? What flight? You still haven’t told me what happens to me – to Leonard – yet,” Sam asked insistently.

“Nothing apparently, well that is to say we’re not sure. Ziggy’s having a few problems at the moment,” he replied apologetically.

“When aren’t you experiencing problems with Ziggy? We had crop fields back on the farm that had less bugs than that computer!” Sam complained

The handlink whirred and buzzed violently like a mechanical hissy fit.

“Oh she didn’t like that, Sam.”

“What’s the matter this time?” the leaper asked exasperated.

“She can’t find any data on Leonard Feldman after October 26th, the guy just disappeared straight into thin air and Sam please don’t tell me…”

“That’s it!” Sam’s face suddenly lit up.

“That you’re thinking what I think your thinking about,” Al warned.

“It’s all here, it all fits!” Sam started to pace up and down again. “Tell Ziggy to cross-reference this date and site with UFO sightings, abductions and disappearances from the mid Eighties.”

“That’s gonna take a little time, I mean we’re still waiting on your future now,” Al replied uncertainly. “All we know is that Leonard Feldman was born on October 10, 1955; worked at, uh, ‘Fulford Hardware’ in Madison Lake since he was eighteen until… until about a year ago when he set himself up as a paranormal investigator. It obviously didn’t pay as much as he had hoped; he had less money in his account when he disappeared than Gooshie would bring on a night out.”

“What are the odds that he was abducted?” Sam asked quietly.

“Right now? About twenty-five percent but we’ll know more soon when Ziggy kicks in with the info. In fact I better return and run some more checks so hold tight and don’t talk to any strange little green men,” Al smiled punching the handlink once more, conjuring the door to the Imaging Chamber and his route back to the future. Al sidestepped backward into the bright light, bid farewell and disappeared.

Sam was left feeling that he hardly knew anything more, or substantial, after Al’s brief visit than before it.    

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Every leap he kept thinking up more ideas for modifications to Ziggy, things he could do to make his ‘job’ easier and berating himself for not thinking of them in the first place. It wasn’t his fault that the first field-test suddenly turned into the full practical. Sam’s mind buzzed with millions of ideas per minute, it always had done from an early age, and it excited him. His latest thoughts, as always, were on his present situation as he searched his memory for related incidents, possible translations of the symbols on the ground, whether he might be abducted at any moment and the possibility of examining a live alien being.

It was the hum of an engine that distracted him from his thoughts. A silent purr gradually growing larger and louder as the seconds flew by threw his mind into a mixture of emotions; he was excited and scared at the same time. Switching his gaze to the sky he searched for some kind of craft but the atmosphere held nothing new. The only source of light seemed to be moving slowly along the same path as the Pontiac. Just another car he thought at first but the shadows told him it was something much bigger and stronger. 

         Another plane roared overhead diverting Sam’s attention back up to the sky, making his heart beat a little faster and disorientating him slightly. He gasped a sigh of relief but the bright lights still shone, lighting up the whole area. Cupping his hand over his eyes he looked over to the dirt road again.

An old, battered pick-up truck had come to a stop, beaming its bright lights and belching out steam. The vehicle owned the air and knew it. The driver was a mystery to Sam, a bulky figure sat nonchalantly behind the wheel, chewing, his face covered partially by a baseball cap of some kind. The truck, of undetermined color due to the darkness, seemed to be waiting for someone and since Sam was seemingly the only human around in that area he assumed the ride must be for him.

PART TWO

The pick-up truck stood waiting for Sam, a mechanical behemoth emitting all kinds of toxic gases into the atmosphere, and it made him sick. Gingerly he approached the door, not knowing whom he might find inside; a half-opened window beckoned him further. The figure inside was covered by darkness, Sam saw him in silhouette only, as he sat behind a large steering wheel obviously waiting patiently for his passenger.

“H-Hello,” Sam said nervously.

“You gettin’ in, Lennie? I don’t intend wastin’ all my gas away waitin’ in this one spot!” said the driver suddenly. He spoke quite breezily, which put Sam at his ease a little as he gripped the door handle. As he spoke the driver emerged from the shadows, cocked his cap in Sam’s direction, and generally looked to be harmless. He was a white male aged in his early thirties, one of Leonard’s friends presumably keeping an appointment with him, dressed in a blue meshed cap, white shirt and dark blue body warmer as far as Sam could see.

“Uh, yeah, guess so” Sam replied, running around to the opposite side of the truck, opening the door nervously and taking the passenger seat.

“I got your case from the office, all in the back, mine too. That big picture thing you done sure looks good, very authentic,” he grinned and indicated towards the sand formation.    

“I did that?” he asked. “Why?”

“You been out here too long, man? Got too much sun today. All part of your big plan remember?” the man started up the engine.

“My big plan? Yeah, I think I remember now. Just tell me what it was again, just so I know, y’know, that you’ve got it straight I mean,” replied Sam as the truck pulled forward. Pleased with his response, he awaited for the reaction and also, now they were moving, took the time to look around the vehicle for any other nuggets of information he may be able to glean on the driver, himself, their destination or any other aspect of their lives.

There was little clutter in the truck to tell him anything. An assortment of neatly packed bags and suitcases, around six in all, piled up on the back seat, and various tools littering the floor. The driver probably had cleaned the vehicle before coming to pick up Leonard in the desert.

“Lennie we’ve been over the plan ten times nearly, I can remember this stuff y’know. What’s a matter don’t you trust me now?” replied the driver sternly. He sounded a little hurt by this so Sam was reluctant to persist with his questioning, indeed his natural impulse was to stay quiet but his many leaps had taught him to fight it.

“Well, I guess the sun has been getting to me a little today,” chuckled Sam. “I’m beginning to forget things. Sunstroke, I think -- must need some water.” He made a mental note of the road signs they passed on the way in case he needed to know where he came from.

“Y’know perhaps it’s all that radiation, yeah, I was reading a magazine about the rays of the sun making people forget stuff,” the man said with enthusiasm. Sam admired what he was saying, his initial impression of his traveling companion being not favorable.

“Or it’s the Government taking stuff from our brains or, or replacing it with what they want us to know, what they want us to believe,” he gained more enthusiasm as he continued speaking.

Sam just let out a slight moan; he had been stuck listening to many crackpots and conspiracy theorists before, many of them working for MIT. “I really don’t think the Government has those kind of powers,” Sam replied.

“Sure they do, I was readin’ about it. Must be true if it’s in print, why would they lie to us? Papers are here to tell us the truth. It’s the Government that wants to hide things from us, they have to get their scoop, or whatever they call it, from somewhere in the first place,” he continued.

“Yeah, guess so,” Sam smiled gingerly, knowing that any argument to the contrary wasn’t worth entering into with a man so set in his beliefs, something that Sam begrudgingly respected.           

“I put it in the glove box if you wanna read,” he offered outstretching a hand and patting the small compartment in front of Sam. “Break up the long journey.”

The leaper hadn’t noticed it before and leaned forward to open it to see if it contained any more secrets or clues he could use.

“I think I even saw a piece in there about a time travel program some crackpot scientist is trying to start out near New Mexico. I know how you like your time travel stuff,” the driver said in a matter-of-fact way, which startled his passenger a little.

“Really? Where did you hear that?” Sam asked quietly, fascinated.

“Page forty-two. Some guy wants to start jumpin’ back and fourth in time. Must be true ‘Conspiracy Monthly’ printed it. Have you heard it before then?” he asked.

“I may have,” Sam was unsure. “I really don’t think that anyone is trying to start a time travel program out in New Mexico.” Sam laughed it off and dove into the glove box, sliding back the clicker, and unfolding the tray. “At least not for another decade,” he noted to himself quietly.

Sam took out the magazine ‘Conspiracy Monthly: All you need to know about what they don’t want you to know’ dated October 1985, out of the tray. The publication was rolled up and looked as if it was at least five years old instead of barely a month. It looked creased, extremely thumbed through and carried on the front a picture of former President John F. Kennedy, in black and white, under the headline ‘Was JFK assassinated by aliens: Lee Harvey Oswald believed to be a Venusian’. Sam read it aloud in disbelief.

“Yeah, I don’t believe a word of that crap,” replied the driver.

“I agree, too far fetched.  No, I think it was them things on the moon, they’re closer so it makes more sense. Oswald was a moon person,” he rambled.

“I really, really don’t think that’s true and I should know!” Sam stressed to the man, pointing to himself.

“Why should you know?” his companion asked.

“Well I was… I mean I met him. Last week in that diner in Somerville,” Sam didn’t know where he was pulling these ideas or places from, probably pieces of his mind welded to Leonard’s, but he was desperately trying to cover up his mistake and his companion seemed to be convinced. “Yeah, he was this old guy, gray hair and all wrinkles, but I’d swear it was him, swear my name to it,” Sam continued.

The driver chuckled. “Y’know I’m glad I have you to discuss these sorta things with. I’d go nuts otherwise. Elaine doesn’t like me talkin’ about it.  Says it all scares her.”

“Elaine. That your… girlfriend?” Sam guessed looking at the driver’s hand and seeing no evidence of a wedding ring.

“Wife, well separated, c’mon Lennie you know that. We’re still not talking though--she moved into her sister’s last week.”

Sam stopped flicking through the magazine. “And you’re just leaving like that, deserting her to come with me?”

“Your brain must be pretty well fried, man, because you’re the one that convinced me to do it. New start and all that leave the past behind--you said,” he sounded a mixture of bitterness and enthusiasm. The man sounded like he regretted the decision, but knew it was right because Leonard had told him it was. This left Sam wondering how his–Leonard’s–relationship was with this man.

“I, uh, must’ve forgotten about that. Thinking about it though I’m not sure I had the right idea with that. How is she?” Sam asked.

“Not talkin’ to me so I don’t see why I should talk to her,” he replied indignantly.

Sam groaned inside, if it was his mission to re-unite this warring couple then he was going to have his work cut out on this leap. “What I mean is, do you regret it?” he asked.

“Nope, who needs all that nagging when there’s a feast of Hawaiian beauties just waiting for us,” he smiled at Sam.                 

“Why indeed,” Sam smiled not wanting to continue the argument. If it were his mission, Al would turn up soon enough and tell him anyway. Who knows perhaps this man’s dream woman was waiting for them in Hawaii--that, which Sam deduced, must be their destination. His mind started to join the dots figuring that Leonard must be fleeing the country to escape his creditors and perhaps the driver was doing it to break away from his estranged wife.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam was left pondering these many questions as he tidied the magazine back into the box, not wanting to read on further. Suddenly, he spied two slim books nestling amongst the other clutter. Taking them out he realized they were two passports and would probably hold the secrets to both the driver’s identity and possibly more on Leonard. Flicking through the first, one he saw it contained no stamps of any kind and looked completely new. Turning to the picture, he viewed a shifty looking dark haired man with brown eyes. His gelled hair swept across his forehead and he had a cold, almost smug, look about him, which briefly reminded Sam of a mechanic he worked with back at the Project in its early days. The mechanic was a jovial man who taught Sam several things about how to turn his ideas into a physical reality although Sam did feel slightly embarrassed that he couldn’t remember his name at that moment. The picture looked clear and fairly new but the name he didn’t recognize, it certainly wasn’t the mechanic.  It was one Leonaka Pelimana.

“Who’s Leonaka… Pelimana?” Sam asked slowly. Suddenly, he caught a view of himself in the mirror, an almost exact physical replica of the photograph. Leonaka Pelimana and Leonard Feldman were one and the same. The birth date and details were more or less the same; no sense changing them too much, as it would arouse suspicions. Pelimana sounded very Hawaiian so Leonard obviously intended a very long stay.

“That’s right, ain’t it? The name you wanted? Better be ‘cause I ain’t changin’ it now,” added the driver. “Uncle Jimmy did a fine job, didn’t he?”

“This is forged?”

“Not enough time to go through the proper channels did we?”

“No, guess not,” Sam rescinded and turned to the next passport. The book was older but didn’t carry much more evidence of foreign travel than the last one. Two stamps told of vacations to Spain and Great Britain, both nearly ten years old. Turning the pages he finally put a name to the face of his driver – Ronald Fulford. Suddenly he remembered Al mentioning Leonard working at a store named ‘Fulford Hardware’ so perhaps this man was his boss as well as a friend.

“…And you’re Ronald Fulford?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the man chuckled. “Didn’t see any point changin’ my name. I ain’t hidin’ from nobody and hey--what happened to good ol’ ‘Ronnie’? You make me sound all important now.”

“What about your wife?”

“When she’s ready, she can call me,” Ronnie replied harshly.  

“A call will cost a lot more to Hawaii. Does she even know about our little trip?” Sam asked.

“You said I shouldn’t tell her, leave her be for a while,” he complained.

“Perhaps I’ve been giving you some bad advice recently,” Sam replied humbly.

“New start,” said Ronnie rather angrily. “We can put Elaine behind us and open a bar like we wanted.”

“Yeah, yeah new start,” muttered Sam. His view switched to the wing mirror once more, stared into the eyes of his host and wondered what sort of man he was as his life unfolded in front of the leaper. Leonard seemed to bully his friend a bit and may even have faked his own abduction. As he looked longer Sam even considered his face to be a little rat-like. Smoke also seemed to be swirling around his neck but neither himself nor Ronnie were smoking. Turning his head around sharply, Sam came face to face with Al who was perching casually on a suitcase in the back.

“E.T phoned home yet, Sam?” he grinned. “Strangest spacecraft I’ve ever seen,” he noted, looking around the truck.

“You didn’t seriously think I was going to be abducted did you?” Sam whispered harshly over his shoulder.

“No, no, of course not. You didn’t either, did you? With all the lights and the…”

“No, I didn’t!” Sam snapped. To avoid arousing his driver’s suspicions, and to stop him changing course for the local funny farm, Sam poked his head between the seats and pulled one of the suitcases forward. He hoped it was one of Leonard’s as he started rifling through it, throwing aside various pieces of clothing that looked like it hadn’t seen an iron for at least a year.

“What are you doin’ back there?” Ronnie shouted across to him.

“Yeah, what are you doing, Sam? You’re staring right into my…” began Al.

“Just looking for my address book, musta had it in here somewhere,” Sam shouted back. “I’m doing this so we can talk!” he hissed at Al.

“Well, would you mind looking at somewhere a little less… y’know… personal?” the hologram stressed.

“As if you haven’t noticed I don’t have many other places to look! My head is wedged between two seats, I feel like I’m in a headlock and at least you can move!” he whispered harshly.

“Ok, ok,” Al shuffled onto the other suitcase, a battered brown one, on the other side of the truck.

“Do you have any new information for me?” Sam asked, choking out the words as he felt the seats brutally squeezing the two sides of his neck together.

“Did you, uh, ever get a creepy feeling when you were alone back at the project? I mean like there was someone else with you?” Al asked.

“Yeah, normally it was you, Gooshie or one of a thousand others. Why?” Sam looked puzzled.

“No, I meant did you ever feel like a--a cold wind was whistling through,” he continued.

“What’s this leading to, Al?”

“I’ve been speaking to Leonard some more and he reckons we may have a ghost at the Project.”

“And you believe that!” Sam said in disgust.

“Well, he can be very convincing. Sam, you should hear him. It is in the middle of a desert though. Somebody must’ve died there sometime. Some of the guys are worried about it. ”

“Do you have anything else for me apart from the fact that the staff of one of the most advanced research laboratories in the world are being scared witless by spooky stories like a bunch of scouts on a camping trip!?” Sam asked sarcastically.

“You don’t have to say it like that, Sam. Why are you so cranky anyway?”

“My neck is starting to close in on itself, now have you got something for me or not?” Sam asked.

“Oh yeah, sorry, I knew there was something. You didn’t take anything from those clothes we found back in the desert did you?” Al indicated backwards using the cigar that he was constantly chewing on.

“I don’t think so, uh, oh yeah, Leonard’s drivers license, why?” Sam enquired.

“Did you put it back because I’m guessing no,” Al said, as Sam looked sheepish as he felt the tiny card weighing heavy in his pocket. “That card,” Al continued, “was how the local boys in blue first identified Leonard’s belongings… so you changed history!”

“So he wasn’t identified at all?”

“Oh yeah, but now the poor guy’s parents had to be brought in to do the ID,” Al explained further with a frown and a brief look at Sam.

Sam could still be amazed at how some of the smaller things he did would affect larger areas of history, for better and for worse.  ‘The butterfly effect’ it was called; the theory being that a butterfly flapping its wings could eventually, over time, be responsible for causing a tidal wave. Whenever thinking about it all Sam was reminded of a Ray Bradbury story about time travelers, such as himself, embarking on a dinosaur hunt in the Stone Age and ending up changing the result of a future Presidential election simply by stepping on a tiny insect. The ramifications of those small actions frequently scared him, especially on his early leaps. If he told somebody the wrong thing or did something the wrong way then he could return to a totalitarian ‘1984’ style future. Then again he only seemed to touch the lives of the masses, rarely anyone wielding true power, but then even Hitler was a poor struggling painter once upon a time.

“Sam, hello, yoohoo!” Al waved his hand across the leaper’s eyes to snap him out of his thoughts. “Not a time for the Rip Van Winkles’,” he smiled.

“Sorry, so did you find out what happened to Leonard?”

“In a way. Now since history was shake, rattle and rolling at the initial search Ziggy came up with nada, but now thanks to some research and Sergeant Peters…”

“Who’s Sergeant Peters?” Sam asked moving his head slightly; an ache was beginning to develop.

“A secretary in the Pentagon, we couldn’t get half the data we need without Joanne.”

“Joanne? Peters is a woman?” said Sam shooting a knowing look at Al.

“Well fifty percent of people are, Sam,” he raised his eyebrows and gave a quick smirk.

“Al, you haven’t….” Sam sounded concerned.

“No, I haven’t! I’m surprised you even think that!” the hologram grumbled. “Me and her mother go way back, same long smooth legs, full pouty lips and…”

“Al! Feldman!” Sam interrupted still whispering harshly.

“Oh yeah, it turns out that the Leonard Feldman abduction is one of the most well-known and most investigated cases of all time. All kinds of Mulder and Scully’s have been on this guy’s trail and nobody’s come up with a single bean but here you are putting as many miles as possible between you and the ‘abduction’ site which has become something of a beacon to all the UFO nuts out there back in our time.”

“One of the most famous cases of all time and Ziggy missed it! That’s just great,” moaned Sam. So we still don’t know what happens to me, to Leonard, past tonight.”

“No, we don’t, nobody ever did. Look on the bright side. At least you’re not gonna be partying with the moon people anytime soon and you can still change things…”

“I can’t change things! Why can’t I just go back before the Police identify the clothes or, or just say ‘hey it’s all been a big joke, folks’ think of his parents,” replied Sam.

“What’s that you sayin’?” asked Ronnie. “You ain’t havin’ other thoughts now are you, Len?”

“No, no I’m just… trying to remember where I put my sneakers,” Sam turned around and maneuvered his head over the seats briefly.

“You haven’t worn sneakers for years,” Ronnie replied, puzzled.

“Decided to start again, might be easier on the sand than my shoes. Just thinkin’ out loud to myself. Think I left them at my parent’s place,” Sam replied. Ronnie seemed satisfied with the answer. “Why can’t I?” he turned back and hissed at Al.    

“This thing sets off a whole chain of events. For example the Government opens a whole new file on alien abductions bringing fourth hundreds of new witnesses, which of course, leads to a greater understanding, yada yada. So anyway you have to keep the whole thing alive but unfortunately we still have no data on exactly where this guy ended up,” Al explained.

“Try Leonaka Pelimana,” Sam suggested.

“Leonaka Peliwhato?”

“Leonaka Pelimana, there’s a passport in that glove-box with his name and my, Leonard’s, picture inside it and we’re headed for Hawaii.”

“Ok, Leonaka Pelimana. Resident of Hawaii since… October ’85, looks like we found our alien planet, huh? The birth dates check out too. Pelimana runs ‘Venkmans Verona’ a hot bar and eatery in Honolulu. Some guys get all the luck!” Al replied.

Sam seemed surprised by the information. He expected Leonard to be living off the streets for the rest of his life and forever regretting his decision. “So he turns out okay? Doesn’t need any help?”

“Not a dime. Very successful joint he runs with Ronald Reagan. What!?” Al slapped his handlink. “No, it’s Fulford, Ronald Fulford.” 

“That’s the guy driving, he’s Leonard’s best friend. Separated too, does he get back together with his wife?” Sam asked.

“Na-da but the lucky dog makes his way through several Hawaiian honeys over the years, builds up quite a reputation too. Wouldn’t think it to look at him would you?” came the reply.

“What are the odds that I’m here to re-unite him with his wife?” Sam asked.

“Sixty percent.”

“That’s over fifty, right, that must be it!” Sam sounded enthusiastic.

“Well, until we know any more I guess you’d better stick with it, Sam,” Al replied sounding rather unsure of himself. 

“Achh, my neck’s sore,” Sam complained trying to move his head from the chairs.

 “Hey, I’ve just got it, who you remind me of all twisted like that,” Al said with enthusiasm.

“Go on,” Sam sighed.

“Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’, remember? When he hacks down the door and sticks his head through, heh, ‘Here’s Johnny!” Al laughed.

“I don’t remember.”

“You should do, it might come back to you next leap, we’ll see. Sad year for cinema--’85. The great Orson Welles passed away, our local movie house showed nearly all his flicks over a couple of weekends, me and Beth had a great time we…” 

Ronnie turned his head around; Sam felt his heart slow a little when he noticed his driver’s eyes switch off the road for a minute.

“Just came to me, I got a message for you,” he said.

“Message?” Sam and Al said in unison, the latter postponing his return to the Project to hear.

“Meant to say earlier but it damn slipped my mind. When I went into your office to get all the thing you wanted that answer machine contraption was bleepin’ away.”

“Eyes on the road!” Sam screamed as they started to veer off the well-worn track.

“Nothin’ out here for miles and miles, you know that Len. What’s gotten into you? Anyways I think it’s a case of yours, Linda Adams? Name soundin’ any ding-dongs?”

“Linda Adams?” queried Sam.

Al replied with a couple of grunts and began punching the new details into his handlink.

“Let’s see Linda Adams, yeah there was a Linda Adams living in this area about this time. Living in Olverston, hey that’s only three miles from here, west,” he pointed at the window with his cigar. “There’s also a daughter, Shelley, and Linda… dies in two weeks time,” he said on a sober note.

Sam finally removed his numb neck from between the seats and waited for some feeling to come back before he turned it. 

“Yeah, Linda she was a case of mine, now I think about it, she had a… a ghost problem.”  Sam picked a ghost from one of several supernatural phenomena that he could recall. At that moment, the same aliens that had supposedly taken Leonard Feldman could have, alternatively, abducted Linda or she could even have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.  “Can we stop at Olverston before the airport?” he asked.

“Stop? Olverston’s over three miles back the other way. We’re not going to make it to the plane on time,” Ronnie protested. 

“We’ll just have to get the next one,” Sam replied instantly. “This is something I have to do.” 

“Okay, as long as we still make it I don’t care,” Ronnie sighed stopping the truck dead in its tracks with a screech and a smell of burnt rubber. Both passengers slipped forward slightly, Sam felt a rumble in his stomach and concluded that Leonard must have had a hamburger or some other kind of greasy food for lunch.

“Mmmph, has this guy ever read a Highway Code?” muttered Al sarcastically from the back.

Ronnie moved the gear stick into reverse, drove round a half circle, whipping up the dust, and sped off back down the makeshift road. “Where are we goin’ when we get to Olverston?” he asked.

“Uh, Linda’s house, I told you where it is, right?” Sam asked hopefully.

“Course not, how would I know, I never come with you on these cases. Wish I did but Elaine would…” he complained.

“Elaine would go nuts, yeah I know,” Sam relented. He sensed a note of regret in Ronnie’s voice like he would rather have been out playing Ghostbusters with Leonard rather than running his store.

“So we have no idea where we’re headed?” Ronnie asked.

“Just give me a minute,” added Sam looking to his friend in the back seat.

“Number five Maple Street,” Al said triumphantly. “You’ll spot it easily. There’s this whole street detached from the rest of the town, there was a big fire in 1980 that burnt down some trees and a few houses. Some idiot left the stove on I bet! Seems the Government never got round to rebuilding the rest of the street,” he looked back at the handlink. “Oh, until 1991.”

“Number five Maple Street,” Sam told the driver immediately.

“Ok, Mister Memory,” he grinned. “And without even checking your address book.”

“Leaving all that behind now aren’t we,” Sam smiled.

“Yeah! Vacation! Woo-hoo!” shouted Ronnie, pounding the large steering wheel with his fists. Sam flinched slightly and nearly made a grab for it.

“Sam, I’m going back to do some more research on this. I’ll meet you at Linda’s when Ziggy comes up with something. Aloha,” Al said but when Sam looked back to answer he was already gone.

Ronnie later chastised him for criticizing his driving skills but the leaper felt strongly motivated as they sped back towards Olverston. At last he had a mission for this leap and although he didn’t know the finer details of it yet, he felt confident about it. Another finished leap would also mean he was that little bit closer to getting home.

PART THREE

“Guess you’re gonna need all your spook huntin’ gear,” said Ronnie as the truck raced past the town entry sign.

‘Olverston’ was printed in black block capital letters across a dust covered white background under a slim green outline. Additionally the rusty metal marker also read ‘Population 2,000 – In America we Trust’ or at least it would if an aspiring graffiti artist and rock fan had not sprayed out ‘America’ and replaced it with ‘Guns ‘n’ Roses’ using red paint.

“Ah, yeah, guess so. Can’t go busting ghosts without that,” Sam replied.

“Didn’t have any space for it,” came the immediate reply.

“Oh, ok,” said Sam a little relieved that he didn’t have to deal with somebody else’s, usually dangerous, homemade equipment.

Ronnie began chuckling silently to himself but couldn’t contain it. “Don’t worry, man, it’s all in the back every little doo-hickey you ever came up with. I knew you wouldn’t wanna leave without it. I bet even when we’re over there, layin’ in that tropical paradise, palm trees, sunshine and all that, you’ll still be poking those things around tryin’ to find ghouls or spacecrafts or somethin’ equally weird but this time I’m gonna be joinin’ you,” he grinned.

Sam wanted to push Ronnie into patching up his marriage, but seeing the childish glee in his eyes at his sudden freedom he felt guilty and didn’t want to puncture his enthusiasm.  “I’m sure it will be a valuable learning experience for both of us,” he smiled back.

Linda Adams’ house was one story high and located virtually in the middle of nowhere. It was as if a person had gotten themselves lost in the desert one day and had decided to build a house right where they stood. The bright lights of Olverston could be seen in the distance not too far away as to completely cut Linda off, but enough to make her weekly shop something of a trek. The only vehicle currently parked in the driveway was Ronnie Fulford’s pick-up truck. Linda never drove, David, her husband, did though, and insisted that she leave it all to him which put her in a difficult position when he left her. The house – or shack as some passer-bys called it – was falling into disrepair as well with many slates missing from the roof, rotting wooden window frames and broken brickwork. A few solitary flowers and yellowing patches of grass made up what could laughingly be called the garden.

As he dismounted the truck Sam stood, hands on hips, staring at the crumbling building and wondered how Linda could afford to compensate a so-called ‘ghostbuster’ like Leonard Feldman and yet didn’t seem to be able to pay for her home repairs. The charred rubble from the fire could also be seen closer up; even Linda’s walls were a little singed. Sam hoped the inside of the place was a little better, if not for her then for the sake of her child. A large gray bag clunked down by his feet, knocking him from his thoughts, and Ronnie stood beside him.

“Can’t believe any spook would dare haunt this dump,” Ronnie noted. “So what do we start with? Laser gun, spook slime meter thingy?” he asked.

“First of all ‘we’ aren’t starting anything,” Sam pressed three shiny quarters, from Leonard’s own pocket, into Ronnie’s hand. “You are going to back down that road, about half a block, to the payphone and call your wife. Call Elaine now and make a positive attempt to get your marriage back on track!”

“I really dunno, Len,” Ronnie cocked his head to one side.

“Do you even know why you broke up? Why you’re trying to escape with me?” asked Sam. “I can’t be that great company and, hell, I’m only doing it to avoid debts,” Sam continued.

“We just been fightin’ more since I took over the store I guess. Hasn’t been easy since dad died and then you left me to do all this,” Ronnie replied soberly.

“You’ve been struggling since I left?”

“Big time, man,” Ronnie said slowly. “Dad knew how to sort out everything, bills, reorders and all that legal stuff. Then you took over it all. Last week I ordered one hundred paintbrushes instead of ten, zero in the wrong place.”

“Did you tell Elaine about all this? Tell her how you felt before we left?” Sam asked tenderly.

“I was, you remember, but you said it was better to put some distance between us, that would solve things, you said. Don’t you think that anymore?” Ronnie replied stumbling over his own words.

Sam became annoyed that the man didn’t seem to be able to think for himself or, if he did, he needed the approval of his friend first. “I have been doing some thinking, I guess,” he said. “Call her, tell her all of what you just told me and if she’s still angry, then sure a nice vacation in the sun and some time apart will do everyone some good, uhh, but I don’t want you to miss out on this chance to make it better.”

“You’ll come and get me if you make a spook appear won’t you?” replied Ronnie, the look in his eyes told Sam he was grateful for his words and that he still wanted to love his wife.

“Sure, wouldn’t be a party without you,” Sam smiled.

“Oh hey, and if you do, save me some of that ecto-slime gloop, worked damn fine on my rosebushes last time,” he grinned before he started to run back down the road. Sam turned and looked at the house and felt a small shiver run down his back as he prepared to enter.               

Stretching his arm Sam picked the bag up by its thick leathery handle, but it felt so heavy under his grip that he needed both hands to hold onto it making him wonder whether Leonard’s ghost fighting technique was simply to throw bricks at them. The container was obviously some kind of sports bag, the faded logo on the side told him that. Butterflies started circling inside his stomach and the bag hit the side of his legs hard in its sway as he approached the wooden door and knocked heavily.

A tall Caucasian woman with bug eyes and long, stringy brown hair opened it looking very nervous. Her eyes shifted around from left to right like mini searchlights but she seemed to be more relaxed when she saw it was Sam standing in the threshold.

“I called you this morning, where’ve you been?” she demanded with a slight southern accent and staring him straight in the eyes.

“My apologies… er, Linda is it? My assistant didn’t give me the message until late and then I was stuck in traffic…” Sam lied hoping she wouldn’t enquire any further.

“Just get in and do you settin’ up or whatever,” Linda grumbled in reply ushering Sam inside. A full-length mirror hung on the wall at the back of the house and confronted him with the complete figure of Leonard Feldman. The man was thinner than Sam had imagined him, haggard looking but healthy. Sam also considered his clothes; the long brown trench coat and Fedora hat, making him look more like Sam Spade than Sam Beckett. As the leaper looked past his image he realized that Linda hadn’t come back inside with him and that there were a few wisps of smoke drifting past her. She had lit a cigarette and was casually leaning against the open door taking in the nicotine and looking less tense with every drag.

“Do you really think you should be doing that?” asked Sam.

“My house,” Linda replied sharply.

“I meant with a small child in the area who could wander in at any moment. Don’t you owe it to her to let her grow up in a smoke-free environment?” he continued.

“Wouldn’t do it if she was in the room would I? That’s why I’m crouching out here like a dog gnawing a bone. Anyhow Shelley’s up in her room playing with her toy ponies. I only do this when she’s not about, I’m no bad mommy like those whores you read about in the papers,” she snapped back.

“I never said that you were but just look at the other side. Cancer is spreading at an alarming rate, and you could get a lung infection, or a chest infection. Did you know that by the year 2000…?”

“Just unpack your doo-hickey’s and get ghostbustin’. I ain’t paying for no health warnings,” she replied.

“What’s the problem exactly?” Sam asked hoping he wouldn’t have to know too much about it. Linda took another drag and blew the excess smoke into the night.

“Since you last came it’s just been noises and bursts of wind blowin’ in and out at inappropriate times, gives me the willies,” she explained.

“Have you looked? Have you made sure there isn’t a reasonable explanation for this like some kind of vermin, rats maybe?” he asked.

“Rats are opening and closing my doors! Well, I don’t believe that for a moment. Now, I told you that before, but you said it were definitely spooks! You aren’t tryin’ to pull something?” she looked at him, straight in the eyes again, and her voice started getting louder.

“No, no, I just like to make sure that I haven’t… been called out under false pretences and that my skills are badly needed, this equipment doesn’t come cheap.”

‘Attack was the best form of defense,’ he had once been told, ‘And it certainly seemed to be working,’ he thought as he gave the bag a little pat. He didn’t like being so indignant, and neither did Linda from the look on her face, but he’d rather be than left trying to get out of his own verbal mess.

“Ok, you made your point, but believe me if I had any ideas it was rats then you’d find me perchin’ upon the highest table in this place. Couple of Casper’s I can handle, but rats just give me the willies!” she said with a glimmer of a smile perhaps feeling safer now that Sam was here.   

A small girl ran straight past Sam. She had short blonde curly hair, wore a white vest top with black pants and reminded him a little of an actress he had seen in a sitcom once although he had no recollection of the name of either. He assumed it must be Shelley the way she headed straight for the door and into Linda’s arms.

“Mommy, Mommy!” she screamed.

“What’s up, baby?” asked Linda in a more tender voice than Sam had heard in the last ten minutes and a few decibels lower, too. She quickly grabbed a small, empty tin can from a nearby wooden shelf and stubbed her half-smoked cigarette into it so hard that it seemed she was trying to drill through the bottom.

“There was a noise and it was loud and I’m very scared,” Shelley babbled while clutching the end of her mother’s nearly threadbare sweater.

“It’s gonna be ok now, baby, we’re gonna be alright. Mr. Feldman’s here to take care of all that weird stuff,” she cooed softly.

Sam looked around the room. It was quite cozy, a fire burning in the center of the room, a moth eaten brown sofa with a matching chair and various pictures of landscapes hanging on the walls. A television set also played to itself in the background, another of those overblown 1980’s soap operas that Sam had hated so much, all shoulder pads, large pieces of jewelry, oil wells and family feuds. He never completely understood it especially as he had such an idyllic home-life himself. 

“Would you get started!?” Linda snapped over at Sam making him lose his train of thought.

“Oh… yeah, get started," he said sheepishly and wondered which direction to head off in.

“Down the hall and look up. There’s a trap door, if you remember, that’s where we reckon most of the mojo’s comin’ out of,” Linda replied as if anticipating his thoughts and yet she said it with her eyes still fixed on her daughter and with only a brief glance up.

Sam skulked off in the direction he was pointed in and hoped that Al would pop up out of nowhere soon and explain it all away. He wanted to stay with Linda but felt that he had been sent to deal with something that Leonard didn’t the first time around and since he had already skipped the country at this time then it was obvious that he never received the message.

“Where’s Mr. Feldman?” asked Shelley.

“Right there, honey, going up into the attic to sort out our little problem,” smiled Linda.

“That’s not Mr. Feldman!” Shelley replied simply.

“Of course it is, silly, look he’s tall, sorta rat lookin’ and has short black hair--sure it’s him. Remember, you said he looked like that bad man from that movie we saw,” Linda replied.

“Mommy, you’re not listening,” Shelley tugged at her mother’s sweater again. “That man isn’t Mr. Feldman, he’s older and his hair is light brown.”

“Do you mean gray, baby?”

“And he has this glow around him, pretty glow,” she finished.

“Strange glow? Aww, that’s probably his flashlight, baby.”

“He’s an angel!” Shelley proclaimed.

“Oh trust me, he’s no angel!” retorted Linda. “In fact, he could be the devil incarnate with the rates he charges,” she added to herself.

“You don’t believe me! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!” Shelley screamed and ran off in Sam’s direction. Linda tried to follow but noticed smoke rising from her cigarette tin and immediately rushed to pour cold water into it. Running the tap she couldn’t help but admire her daughter’s pluckiness and comparing it to her own mother’s gripes about her at that age. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A watercolor painting of the sun setting over the Everglades in Miami hung on the wall in the hallway, a reminder of Linda’s honeymoon with David. Most reminders of their union were burnt out in the back garden a week after he left, but somehow she just couldn’t throw the picture onto the fire. It took her back to a time when she was truly happy and she smiled every time she stared into it and remembered the sweet old guy that painted it for them. If she stared into the picture now she wouldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary, but anybody with the right genetic make-up would have seen the head of Al Calavicci appear. Al’s whole body emerged through the wall and immediately he started to punch the buttons on the handlink to bring fourth the glut of information he had to tell Sam. Casually, he called out to his friend who shouted a quick answer from the direction of the attic. “What are you doing up there, Sam?” Al asked.

“Wasting my time!” Sam replied grumpily.

“Oh, more hunting for ghoulie ghouls,” Al smiled.

“Do you have any new information for me?” Sam asked wearily. He was shining a small torch over every inch of the attic space and so far he found nothing of importance, not that he thought he would. Hearing no reply, he cried out his friend’s name a further two times but still no answer came. Sam rested the torch on the top of his bag, switched it off and crawled over to the open hatch. Poking his head through he saw Al engaged in a conversation with Shelley.

Al had been startled when the tiny blonde ran straight through him, even more when she stopped and started asking questions. Children under four, animals, and even the insane could see his image as well as Sam.

“Who are you?” Shelley asked with a mixture of fear and excitement.

“I’m… uh,” Al stuttered.

“He’s with me, he’s my partner,” Sam answered for him.

“Who are you?” she turned to Sam.

“Leonard Feldman, you remember me right?”

“You’re not Mister Feldman, you’re different,” Shelley’s questions kept on coming and neither Sam nor Al knew the right way to answer them.

“I just… uh… changed a few things, new haircut, stuff like that,” said Sam. Shelley looked like she was buying it but then turned her gaze towards Al, the brightly dressed stranger she had become captivated by.

“Me?” he pointed to himself. “Why, I’m Mr. Feldman’s partner, Mr. Calavicci, but you can call me Al. I help out on all his cases.”

“But I can see through you. Are you a ghost?” she asked.

“Yeah… uh… I was killed in a hit and run three years ago but I came back to help my partner here solve my murder and since then I’ve kinda stuck around,” explained Al.

“So you help out?” she replied.

“Yeah, can’t find out who’s haunting who without a man on the inside,” Sam replied.

“Are you haunting us, sir?” she asked politely of Al.

“No, but I’m gonna make double sure we find out just what’s going on,” smiled Al.

Linda ran up behind them and scooped her daughter up into her arms. “Now, don’t go runnin’ off like that, baby. I’m sure Mr. Feldman has got many important things to do,” she said shooting Sam a mean glance that told him to get back on with his job.

“Bye Mister Feldman, bye Mister Calanavicci!” Shelley waved as her mother carried her off to the front room.

“Calanavicci, huh,” snorted Al with a little laugh. “That’s cute. I remember Trudie saying the same thing or there abouts, ain’t that a kick in the teeth? This shopkeeper, tiny sweet store in Queens, made the best humbugs anywhere, once asked her what her name was. ‘Miss Trudie Calanavicci’ she replied,” Al smiled with nostalgia.

Sam disappeared back up into the attic; Al appeared beside him in a number of seconds and made him jump out of his skin a little.

“Hey, so you do believe in ghosts!” Al said triumphantly.

 “Just startled that’s all, do you have anything new for me?”

“Bucket loads. It seems you’re on the right track after all. It seems the spooky noises and bumps in the night drove Linda a little Whacko-Jacko. The police reports say she tore apart the house looking for whatever it was making them and when she couldn’t find it she…”

“…found another way to stop it, for good,” completed Sam soberly. “What about Shelley? You’ve seen how they are together, Al. How could Linda do something like that? What did Shelley think of it? Is she all right?”

“Shelley is sent to her Aunt, uh, Susan for a weekend and when she returned she finds the house virtually totaled and her mother taking the big sleep under a ton of bricks and bad plastering. Poor little mite sank into a depression in her teenage years while living with the aunt. These days she works a low paid job in a local factory, probably that one we passed on the way here. Also has a couple of kids by some nozzle she hooked up with in high school.”

“That bright little girl? We can’t let that happen, any idea what happened here?” asked Sam scrabbling around in the bag for anything of use. Amongst the collection of gadgets and gizmos he found some odd pieces of wiring and a microphone, unusual for the type of equipment Leonard was using, Sam thought. Al was looking around the small room, full of cardboard boxes and other bric-a-brac. “Do you remember Troian Claridge?” Sam said suddenly, turning to look at his partner.

“Boy, do I! Those long luscious legs, bright little eyes and kahunas that wouldn’t…”

“Al!”

“I’m surprised you do though. Guess some of the holes in that swiss-cheesed noggin of yours are finally being filled, huh? What’s she got to do with this anyway?” he asked.

“Remember her brother Julian planted those devices all over their estate?” Sam asked, Al noticed a theory forming from the twinkle in his eye.

“Jimmy, it was Jimmy the brother, Julian was the husband and… oh I see where you’re going with this. Good thinking, Sam,” the hologram smiled.

“Leonard would have had the opportunity to set up some kind of device in the house when he was here before, designed to keep playing and keep him in business. I guess he forgot to disconnect it before the disappearing act.”  

“Nice idea and I don’t wanna play Sipowicz but where’s the evidence?”

“Right, Linda said the noises came from the attic so it has to be somewhere in here or in the air ducts,” Sam started looking into every crevice of the room, shining his torch into each corner searching for something that he had no idea about what it was or even what it looked like. He viewed the room for anything that might be connected or associated with it such as pieces of wire, strips of cable or other mechanical parts. Sam spied one such article running along the floor, a long black cable, which he followed with his torchlight, leading him to a pile of cardboard boxes nestling in the corner of the room. They were the tidiest pile in a room so somebody was obviously trying to hide something.

Other boxes had old clothes spilling out, broken toys strewn everywhere and pieces of burnt unrecognizable objects thrust into a corner. He had already looked through the large sports bag for some kind of notebook or plan that Leonard may have left behind but found nothing. Sam was beginning to dislike his host the more he found out about him.

Then, he found it.  The device itself was hardly complex. A large tape recorder was wired up to a couple of speakers that were placed strategically in different spots that more or less covered the whole house. The recorder had a random switch attached to the side, which Sam thought was odd for the technology of 1985 and it also looked unsafe. A couple of small fans also appeared to be hooked up to the apparatus, Sam wasn’t sure how exactly, but they seemed to be linked to the air conditioning system too. They could be switched on using the random switch too must’ve been what was blowing open the doors at inappropriate moments.

“Whoa, funny looking gizmo,” exclaimed Al. “This is it? This created the whole enchilada?”

“Let’s find out,” Sam replied as he turned off the random and clicked the large switch marked ‘Play’ on the top of the device. A gust of wind blew open the two of the doors on the landing, not unlike a bomb blast ripping through the house; a ghostly moan also rang out. The duo also heard some commotion downstairs, Linda trying to comfort her daughter as the screams infected their home once more.

“Switch it off, Sam!” yelled Al with his fingers stuck in his ears. Sam pressed the nearby ‘Stop’ button, a blue piece of plastic with a square on the top.

“I think we just found our ghost,” Sam smiled triumphantly. Sam thought the best thing to do was to take the device with him to save it somehow being set of again and so stuffed it into his bag any way it would go. It weighed heavily on his shoulder as he descended the attic by the thick wooden ladder with a broad grin on his face. The same grin often accompanied his face whenever he completed an exam or worked out something extremely complex. It also appeared when he realized he had completed his task and would be about to leap yet again.

Linda seemed angry with him for scaring the life out of her and Shelley; Sam only calmed her down by adding that it was the apparition’s last gasp. He thought it wise not to mention that they had been the victims of a hoax in case they pointed the finger back at him. A refusal to take any money for his actions also helped to smooth things over and plus he felt it wouldn’t be right particularly as Leonard had apparently already swindled her once already using a dangerous con trick, which could have robbed her of her life.

As he walked through the door Sam took in a de breath of fresh night air and felt extremely elated with his actions. Ronnie was nowhere to be seen, so he assumed that he must still be on the phone to his wife. Even if it wasn’t the exact reason why he was back in the eighties, Sam was pleased to have reunited the two lovers or at the very least got them talking to each other again.

“Preparing for lift-off?” Al said appearing next to him.

“Yeah, I guess, how’s the ‘ghostbuster’?” Sam asked.

“Not too taken with him I see,” his friend replied.

“There’s nothing to like about the guy, Al. He’s a con-man and, if I wasn’t here, a killer too. He bullies his so-called best friend into taking him on this trip, convincing him his marriage isn’t worth fighting for, a trip to escape his creditors and God knows who else. Oh and let’s also add faking your own death, or abduction at least, into the bargain. He made those circles in the desert himself!”

“Y’know he’s not that bad, I’ve been doing some one-to-one’s with him in the Waiting Room.”

“The ghost still at large in the Project is it? Maybe a werewolf this time? Or was he simply trying to sell you insurance or real estate?” Sam questioned bitterly.

“No, but you may be right on the first one. I’ve been hearing those noises again recently but, uh, that might be for another time. I do know he cares for Ronnie though. In fact, he said he was going to convince him to phone Elaine and invite her out to Hawaii. Kind of like a second honeymoon to make up for being such a jerk-off,” Al revealed.

“And you believed him! After everything that’s happened to me tonight!” Sam replied in disbelief.

“I’ve spoken to the guy remember. Hey, you know how he got into all this ghost hunting garbage? Leonard said he watched ‘Ghostbutsers’!”

“Ghostbusters? I think I remember that. There were so many scientific inaccuracies in that film…”

“Yeah, Leonard and Ronnie saw that film at least ten times over, took with him and so started up his own business. He used to work with Ronnie, but he left and they’ve both been in the financial doo-dah ever since. The doo-hickey and the abduction were just last desperate throws of the dice by a desperate man.”

“Well, they can start playing the game all over again because I’m through with it!” Sam emphasized.

“Now where’s that good mood gone,” Al added.

“It’ll be back once I leap out of here. Is there any news on that? I should be gone by now. Is everything ok?”

“Yeah, it should be…” Al punched the question into his handlink but didn’t like the answer it gave back. “Uh-oh.”

“I changed history, didn’t I?” Sam continued sternly.

“Oh yeah, you changed history but Linda still dies…”

Sam hung his head

“But now it’s like a million times worse. Now Shelley bites the bullet too,” Al ended slowly.

PART FOUR

“Al, if I changed history why do they both now die?” Sam asked sternly, perplexed by the new information.

“I don’t know the timelines have shifted all over the place. Something else must’ve happened in the house. It might take Ziggy a few minutes to sort…” he slapped the handlink.

“How do they die?”

“Same way as before, Linda tears apart the house except this time she needs Shelley around for some reason? She never sends her away,” Al replied.

“Try the Police reports or files made by any other investigators she might have hooked up with after Leonard disappeared.”

“Good thinking, Sam. It shouldn’t take too long…”

“Lennie!”

Sam looked around to see Ronnie Fulford marching back towards him with a smile on his face.  “Hey buddy, you catch your spook?” he asked.

“Yeah, I took care of it, sorta,” Sam muttered. “Did you talk to Elaine?” he added, already knowing the answer.

“Hell yeah! I said some stuff, she said some stuff, so I’m going round there after I leave you at the airport,” he smiled.

“You’re still running me to the airport?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I?” he replied.

“But you’re not coming with me?” Sam asked.

“No, man I gotta new chance at this. Perhaps running away wasn’t the right thing,” Ronnie admitted.

“Yeah, yeah I guess your right. You know you can come on over for, like a, second honeymoon once I get my bar set up,” Sam smiled, patting the man on his shoulder.

“Really got that idea stuck in your head bad haven’t you? That’s a great idea though, we can be your first customers,” Ronnie said still grinning. Al still stood a few feet away from them on a patch of gravel. A sequence correlated onto the screen of the hand-link, his eyes widened briefly and he beckoned Sam back to his side to hear the news.

“Sam, quick!” he shouted.

“Uh, hey, you still wanna help me catch a ghost?” Sam asked Ronnie.

“You betcha!”

“Ok, just give me a few seconds, I’ve just gotta… ya know…,” he replied walking straight past Al down the side of the small house and around the back. Al punched the handlink and appeared next to him.

“Sam, you aren’t really going to… you know?” he asked grimly.

“No, I’m not and did you check those reports as I asked?” the leaper asked.

“Yup, after you disappeared Linda called in a Warren Foster from Lonsdale, a real paranormal investigator more professional than Leonard.  Anyway this guy kept notes and extensive records of all his cases. Linda calls him in November to take another look around after trying to phone you again. When he failed to find the source, she went loco and you know the rest.”

“Did you find anything at all in Foster’s records that could help us?” Sam asked pacing up and down.

“Uh, yeah but you’re not going to like it,” Al said uncertainly.

“Tell me!” Sam replied.

“Shelley gave a description of the ghost to this guy and… well… it’s me, Sam,” Al admitted waiting for a reaction.

“You? But how?” Sam stuttered.

“Description reads: middle aged man… middle aged, hah! Red suit, gold tie, smoking a cigar. It’s me.”

“Al, you’re the ghost! This is great, really this is, I think it would have turned out better if we had just left it alone for one time,” Sam complained clutching his forehead.

“Leonard never turned up in the original history. He was halfway to Waikiki by now! This is just a minor hiccup,” Al retorted.

“Minor hiccup! Minor. We have to fix this!” Sam paced around the area trying to think.

“I suppose we’ll have to… Sam why are you staring at me like that?” Al asked noting Sam’s indecisive face. The leaper waved his hand through his holographic friend; something he had rarely done since his first leap.

“Have Ziggy position you inside the Adams front room in around fifteen minutes,” he said precisely.

“What’s going on, Sam. You’ve still got that look,” Al said nervously.

Sam smiled.  “I’m going to perform an exorcism.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ronnie had always wanted to join Leonard on one of his ghost hunts. He envied his friend’s ability to be able to up and change his situation on a whim whilst he always felt a loyalty to his dad to run the hardware store with him side by side as a dutiful son. Even now when the old man had been six feet under for the best part of two years, Ronnie still felt a duty to him and also to Elaine as a provider. Flying to Hawaii to live seemed an easy way out and the bravest thing he had ever done. His father would never have approved though, nor his methods of setting up ‘Under Refurbishment’ notices and whiting the windows out of his store, another of Leonard’s ideas.

        The first thing he decided to do in the morning would be to take them down and, after tidying the place, re-open for business. With Elaine by his side he felt he could do it again and more confidently than before plus earlier Leonard had promised to give him a half-share in his new business venture to help keep him afloat. This was one promise he hoped his friend would honor. Now came his last Hurrah before he had to go back to all that and to him it would be recreating some of his favorite films; he could be a ghostbuster, an alien hunter or anything he wanted to be. Ronnie felt a tingle run down his spine as his friend emerged from around the corner and would soon be able to indulge him in his fantasy.

“Ready when you are,” Ronnie smiled.

“Let’s get to it!” Sam said determinedly marching past him and over towards the front door. Linda opened it immediately and looked very surprised to see Sam back. As she did he thought he saw the glimmer of another smile, perhaps even relief, in her face but any trace soon shriveled up.

“What do you want now? Not more money, told you I can’t pay for another week!” she said harshly.

“No, I just noticed something…” he began, hearing Shelley’s cry out to her mother.

“It’s ok, baby, just Mr. Feldman back again,” Linda cried back inside. She shut the door as close as she could without closing it completely, took a cigarette from her pocket and proceeded to light it up closely to Sam’s face. The resulting smoke caused him to cough a little.

“Well, what is it? And I thank you not to cough in front of my child, want her to catch a cold? Haven’t seen another of them flying saucers have you?” she asked continually reeling off questions.

“I did see a flying saucer!” he said confidently. “It was a perfect equilateral triangle, three by five feet with seven bright blue lights scattered over the surface…” Sam stopped himself in mid sentence realizing he had no idea what he was talking about or about telling Linda he saw a UFO. He realized it must be residue from Leonard although he had a perfect picture of the object in question in his mind; it was so serene and beautiful.

“Anyhow, back to why I’m here, as I got outside your house my, uh, spook-o-meter started vibrating wildly,” Sam was making it up as he spoke. He pulled a technical looking device with a meter on the front out of his bag hoping it would back up his story. It had been sitting in there all night and so far hadn’t even flickered. “I think you may have another problem.”

“Will this cost me more?” Linda eyed him suspiciously.

“Not a dime, call it a freebie, little mistake I seem to have made. If I can’t clean up after myself then who will?” He smiled.

“Better come back in then,” Linda sighed.

“Thank you, ma’am. You won’t regret it. Ronnie!” Sam called out to his friend and walked back through the door he had only left ten minutes hence. Ronnie bounded behind him like a puppy and Linda quickly stubbed her cigarette out under her foot and prepared to watch. Ronnie set the bag down onto one of the sofa chairs and awaited instruction. Sam grabbed the ‘spook-o-meter’ device from inside and randomly waved it around room.

“Oh yeah, definitely high levels of, uh, activity still here in this room. I’ll need to perform an exorcism,” he replied.

“What, in here? In front of my child!” Linda screamed, clutching Shelley to her body once more.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Adams, she won’t come to any harm but it’s important she stays because I believe she will be able to see the spirit clearer than anybody else in this room. Children have a purity of heart and this will enable her to view the manifestation when it appears and guide me to it,” Sam explained.

“As long as we aren’t in any danger. I’ve seen films y’know about when these things appear and take hold of people, like in that ‘Exorcist’ movie about ten years back. I’m not havin’ my little girl end up a mangy, cussin’ little monster!” she warned.

“Have no fears, ma’am, she’s in no harm,” Sam pronounced with a smile and gazed into Shelley's frightened eyes.

“Hand me my summoning device,” Sam asked Ronnie loudly and hoping that Leonard had something matching that vague description in his kit bag. His partner looked through the container and brought out a long stick with some light bulbs inside and a black grip stuck on as a handle.

“Is this it?” Sam whispered.

“How would I know? You never went through all this gear with me!” replied Ronnie in a harsh whisper back. “Thought this was your home-made light saber?” 

“It will have to do,” Sam grumbled through gritted teeth. He switched the device on and nearly blinded the room with the bright white glow.

“Spirit, I command you! Show yourself!” he cried waving the stick around the room and narrowly avoiding smashing some of Linda’s ornaments in the process. When nothing happened he switched the device off and tried to explain to the assembled group who all looked a little disappointed especially Ronnie.

“That’s, uh, hopefully created a gateway between ours and the netherworld so pretty soon we should see some results…”

“Baloney!” complained Linda “It’s just a load o’ hokum! You just want to squeeze more money out of me!”

“I explained this isn’t costing you anything now just has some patience and…”

As Sam tried to explain, he noticed Al entering the room and inadvertently waved the stick through his partner’s head. Shelley giggled with delight and clapped her hands together. 

“Where have you been!” hissed Sam in a low voice.

“Well, I wanted to make a good entrance,” Al smiled back. He stood amid a blinding light coming from the Imaging Chamber door. Two Project technicians could be seen holding an arc light behind him. An all white suit adorned his body with a matching shirt and tie, a combination that Sam found almost as blinding as Leonard’s DIY light saber.

“Al… Al… Al!” Shelley smiled and ran towards the hologram only to be restrained by her mother.

“The spirit must be with us,” Sam replied pretending he didn’t notice the brightness right in front of him and conjuring words from a combination of movies and TV shows about ghosts he had seen previously.

“What’s he look like, honey?” cooed Linda.

“He’s all white, mommy, with gray hair,” she smiled.

Al frowned slightly at the suggestion that he was getting older.

“Does he have like a beer gut or, or, a scar runnin’ down his left cheek?” Linda asked.

“No mommy.”

“Can’t be your Uncle Larry then. Troublesome mite always said he’d come back to haunt me, wouldn’t be surprised if it were his spook.”

“He’s got a white glow surrounding him and he’s smiling,” Shelley continued.

“Good Lord, then it must be the Angel Gabriel himself or maybe Saint Peter!” Linda declared with a glint in her eye. “A messenger from the Lord himself, Mr. Feldman. I don’t want you to continue with this heinous act. God himself is clearly blessing this house!”

Sam, in the brief time he had known her, had not seen Linda this happy and wasn’t sure whether to fully ‘exorcise’ Al or to let them believe that their house was blessed.

“Let us not forget that the devil can take many forms. He can lead us astray with false images,” replied Sam. “Do not forget the damage this thing has done to your property. He’s a poltergeist and they may take forms pleasing to the eye. Why this may even be Lucifer himself!”

“Gee thanks, Sam,” Al grumbled sarcastically.

“Saints preserve, you’re right, I never thought about it like that,” replied Linda.

“Would an angel really terrorize you and your kin in this way? No ma’am, he would not! I say we banish him back to Hades!” Sam declared.

Linda screamed in agreement.

“I had an ex-girlfriend who ended our relationship in much the same way,” noted Al.

“No! Not Al! Not Al!” screamed Shelley, burying her face in her mother’s sweater again.

“It’s ok, sweet pea he’s just a bad old wolf done up in she’s clothing. Look away whilst Mr. Feldman does his job,” Linda tried to comfort her sobbing daughter.

“Man, I see him,” said Ronnie suddenly. Sam wasn’t sure whether he was faking it or whether he could genuinely see Al. It might be like seeing a Magic Eye picture but then again he may be tuned into the same frequency too.

“Hand me my cross and, uh, holy water!” Sam asked Ronnie. His friend then searched the bag and threw him a bottle of water.

“Only thing I could find, no crosses though,” added Ronnie.

Linda ran over to the wall, removed a large wooden crucifix and threw it into Sam’s arms. He fumbled the catch a little, the thick wood weighed down on his arms, but he thrust it aloft with the strength and stance of a preacher.  He held the cross with two hands wrapped around the bottom and tried to remember anything about exorcisms from the depths of his mind: upbringing, popular culture and past leaps included. Indeed, he recalled being a priest, or some kind of religious figure, at least once.

“Sprit, I command you, leave this house,” he shook the cross. Al looked a little confused.

Next, Sam unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a sniff – Vodka – Lennie must’ve needed a quick nip occasionally on a job. Nevertheless, he sprinkled some over and through Al’s head and began chanting again. “I cast you out! I cast you out!” Sam screamed in a very uncertain way. Ronnie and Linda weren’t too sure what they were looking at while Shelley had started to edge away from her mother and look once more towards Al.

“Go, shoo!” Sam whispered to his friend.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Uhhh, I am slain!” Al clutched his chest and started to stumble about the room. “Max Von Sydow did it better though,” the hologram winked and fell back through the Imaging Chamber door.

A large burst of light flew out from behind him unlike anything Sam had seen before. He even caught a brief glimpse of a technician’s hand moving the large arc light from behind.

Shelley looked on in bemusement at first and then rushed over to the spot where Al had been and simply stared. 

“Is he gone, sweet pea? Is it over?” her mother asked tenderly.

“Al?” said Shelley quietly with a crestfallen look on her face.

PART FIVE

Sam walked steadily towards the truck with the sports bag slung over his shoulder once more and thought about the night’s events. Linda had just put Shelley to bed after her experience and she was now speaking to Ronnie about a possible job in the hardware store. She had recognized him as the owner after using the store a number of times last year.

Sam was happy to see them talking; it also took the attention away from him, now that the leap was more or less completed. Waiting to leap was a pain he had become all too familiar with especially as he was never one hundred percent sure he had completed his mission. There always seemed to be something extra for him to do. The door to the truck opened with a loud squeak and he let out a sigh of relief as he heaved the bag onto the back seat.

Hearing the clunk of the Imaging Chamber door open once more, Sam turned around to see Al limp out with a couple of cuts on one cheek. Also, he seemed to be clutching his shoulder and rubbing it slightly.

“What happened to you?” Sam asked.

“I sort of fell through the door. It wasn’t my fault. I got Willie; you remember him that snot nosed teen tech nozzle? Anyway Willie was gonna pull me through but he let go just as I came back and it was just a mess, Sam! A mess!” Al replied.

“You should have that shoulder looked at, Al.”

“I will do, Beth’s waiting for me at home in her nurses outfit,” he smirked back with a raised eyebrow and twinkle in his eye.

“So, why aren’t you home now?” Sam asked.

“Why aren’t I? That’s a good question, Sam… oh you mean why haven’t you leaped yet. Sorry, must have some concussion,” Al chuckled slightly and checked his handlink. “No reason, I guess we just need to let the, uh, timelines un-spaghetti themselves and you should be out of here in no time.”

“So what happens to everyone now?” Sam asked glancing back at the house.

“Well, you know about Lennie the Hawaiian hooch seller. It says here he even goes on to start a UFO spotter society in Honolulu. Can’t keep a good nut down, I suppose,” Al chuckled. “He even works a few ‘exorcisms’ on the side. Looks like you gave him the idea.”

“More scams!” Sam grumbled.

“Nope, all genuine cases, well as genuine as you can get anyway, he still makes quite a few bucks at it, too. Now Ronnie, he stays here and makes good with the missus, they have a couple kids, and the store runs into profit for the first time in a decade but that’s mainly due to Linda, plus Lennie making good on his promise.”

“Linda? How?” Sam asked further.

“Yeah, he offers her a job and she studies for a business degree by correspondence and even finds a workplace romance,” Al raised his eyebrow in a suggestive way again.

“Not Ronnie!” Sam looked crestfallen. He wondered whether he had ruined Ronnie’s marriage again by pairing him with Linda.

“Nope, the guy who delivers the paint to the hardware store, a guy named Hardy. He certainly shows her what colour to paint her bedroom ceiling if you know what I mean.”

“Al!”

“Anything would be better than that terrible neon green colour in there. I couldn’t stand those awful bright shades they had in the eighties, yuckko!”

“You went into her room!” Sam exclaimed.

“I took a look around, research purposes. Project Observer remember?” Al smiled.

“What happens to Shelley?”

“She turns out ok. All the money her mom was earning sent her to college. She’s studying for a media degree right now.”

“That’s great, Al,” Sam smiled. He felt quite relieved that the ‘exorcism’ hadn’t scarred the girl for life, as had been his earlier fear when he first left.

“Happy to be off at last, Hawaii’s awaiting!” Ronnie smiled, bursting out of the house.

“Yeah, guess so, all that sun, sea and sand. I love a vacation, y’know, with nothing to do but lie in the sun,” Sam added.

“Well, now you can, at least for a while anyways,” added Ronnie.

“Oh, somehow, I don’t think I’ll get much time to myself,” replied Sam with a smile.

“If it helps we don’t have to come out straight away…”

“No, don’t worry I’ll be up and running in no time.”

“You sound so optimistic, guess some things never change, but I’ll be lucky if I’ll have two dimes to rub together between now and Christmas,” added Ronnie.

“I’ve got a feeling you’ll be ok,” said Sam, looking him in the eyes.

“More of your seeing into the future?” Ronnie asked.

“Guess so,” Sam replied.

“Tell me all about it on the way to the airport,” Ronnie said climbing aboard the truck.

“Try and stop me,” added Sam with a smile. He opened the door and prepared to do so when a weird feeling came over him--one he had felt too many times before.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” Sam said with world-weariness about him. A blue light encompassed his whole body and electricity buzzed through every fibre as he leaped.

EPILOGUE

        “Go low!” a voice had shouted loudly into his ear. Sam jerked back in his seat as the voice was followed by a loud burst of static, causing him to wince. With his ears ringing, he found himself behind the steering wheel of a vehicle that was traveling awfully fast, too fast for his liking. The road was curving sharply to the left as he clutched the steering wheel, all the while holding his breath. When the road straightened out he glanced upwards at the rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of a red and white car quickly closing in on him.

‘What the hell,’ he thought to himself as he tried to make sense of what was transpiring. Sam noticed that he was wearing a helmet with a thick black visor. Might have he been able to clearly see, Sam would have noticed the red and white colored car quickly closing in on him, and within a moment riding his bumper. The car lightly bumped into his, causing the rear of Sam’s car to sway. Sam yelled as he fought to regain control of the car.

        “Go low, Frank!”

        Sam furrowed his brow just as the car gave him another light bump. Sam glanced at the mirror and saw the car starting to move downwards towards the left and then began to pass him.

        “Damn it, Frank, watch him!”

        Without giving it a second thought Sam up shifted, causing the gears to grind. He then jerked the wheel to the left. The car shot downward and clipped the car behind him, causing both to spin wildly out of control as he clung to the wheel for dear life.

        “Oooooooohhhh boooooooyyyy!”