Chapter 3

“Okay, so...” She took a deep breath. “Not only am I not in Huntington anymore—” She swept her hand at the unfamiliar surroundings. “—but I’m somehow in 1963.” She need only observe all the vintage cars to confirm that assertion. “How did I get here?”

Maggie shook her head. “You said you had just gotten off your bus?”

Camilla glanced up at Gary, blinking slowly back at her, his face ashen. “I live on Wiltshire Boulevard, but I was heading for my friend Jessica’s house, so I got off at Upland Road. Not that you’d know where they are,” she muttered, confused. “Two girls were walking twenty feet ahead of me when I spotted this wireless remote in the gutter.” She watched Maggie and Gary exchange a questioning look.

“You don’t know what a remote control is, do you?”

Both shook their heads, though Gary asked: “You mean, for a TV?”

“It’s for a car, but basically the same thing, yeah.” She laughed at their puzzled expressions. “A lot has changed since 1963, guys. Anyway, I reached down and touched this remote—” She glanced over her shoulder into the Amazon, as Gary called it. “—and I got zapped into your little clearing in 1963, completely naked.” She flinched at the look of discomfort on Gary’s face. She imagined that naked teens were an anomaly in 1963. An extreme anomaly.

“You know, I didn’t even think to look for it when I woke up.” She glanced over her shoulder again, twisting on the bench for a better look into the wild jumble below. She wondered if somehow that remote was responsible for her being here in 1963 Marshall, hundreds of miles, and nearly six decades from home.

“Want to go back and look for it?” Gary asked.

Camilla explosively shuddered. “Not on your life! Maybe later. Maybe when...” She cleared her throat. “Maybe later.”

Gary checked his watch. “We better get going, girls. It’s four-thirty already, and it’ll be dark before you know it.” Both he and Maggie cast uneasy looks down into the wildly jumbled basin beyond the fence.

Camilla had noticed how quickly daylight had faded in the last few minutes, leaving them in spooky twilight. If this was truly Marshall, New Hampshire, then she was pretty sure that sunset occurred significantly earlier than it did in West Virginia. She accepted Maggie’s hand and stood up.

“It really is Tuesday?” she asked, patting her non-existent back pocket again. “It was Tuesday, in 2019.”

Gary cracked a grin. “This is the craziest conversation I’ve had in five years. Yeah, it’s Tuesday, Camilla. Yow-za, my lass!”

Holding Camilla’s hand tightly in hers, Maggie crossed the small picnic area and followed the sidewalk to the intersection of East Palmer and West Hillside, stopping to let the returning South Street Bakery truck turn right to go down the hill. The driver nodded politely in thanks, eyeing Camilla with a squint as he drove past. Camilla got the impression he wondered who the outsider was with the two local kids, rather than why she wore only a shirt and sneakers.

Gary flanked her on the right as they crossed to West Hillside. “I live a block down,” he said, gesturing to the left. “On Merrick Road. We can go in the basement door, you know, to avoid attention?”

Camilla grinned at Maggie’s snort of amusement. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.

Gary shrugged. “Just me and my mom and Dad. I drowned everyone else that came along. I hate those snot-nosed little buggers. Always crying out for attention, you know?”

Camilla couldn’t help but laugh. “Not in the Winnipesaukee, I hope.”

Gary didn’t miss a beat. “The toilet on the second floor worked fine.” He pushed his tape-mended glasses up his nose and ignored Maggie’s eyeroll and huff of disgust. “You an only child too?”

Camilla thought of the times she’d wished for a little brother or sister growing up. Now, and not quite clear on the reason, she was glad that she didn’t. “Just me and my mom and Dad, too,” she echoed. “Maggie?”

Maggie grimaced. “I wouldn’t wish that misery on anyone. Not just because of my dad—” She grimaced again. “—but because of Marshall, in general. It’s not a nice place to grow up.”

Camilla was beginning to sense that. “This Dennis and Bill you talked about...?”

“Dennis Kaminski and Bill Denbrough,” Maggie clarified.

Camilla blinked in surprise at Bill’s last name. “Are they part of the Misfits?” she asked, wondering distractedly: Denbrough?

Gary jumped in: “Along with Ben Crowder, Stuart Green, and Anthony Brown, yeah. You know we doan take jus’ any misfit into our ranks, missy girl. Ya hassa be a misfit of da firs’ order: certified and credentialed, they is. Tain’t dat right, Miss Scarlet?”

Maggie groaned theatrically. “You are so frigging hopeless, Kensington! Camilla must think we are the embodiment of misfit’s, letting you in.” She glanced at Camilla, shaking her head in disgust. “Camilla wouldn’t be seen with the likes of us in 2019, I bet. I wouldn’t be seen with the likes of us in 2019.” She raised her eyebrows. “What’s it like, anyway, where you’re from?”

Embarrassed, Camilla objected: “I don’t think you’re misfits.” No girl half as pretty as Maggie would ever be seen as a misfit in 2019. Gary was borderline, she had to admit that; especially with the tape-mended, black-framed glasses. But then again, so was she. “How does Bill spell his last name? Do you know?”

The question took both teens by surprise. Enough so that Gary missed a step and Maggie had to sidestep quickly to keep from stumbling into him.

Gary blinked at her. “What?”

“Does he spell his last name D-E-N-B-R-O-U-G-H?” she questioned anxiously. The dislocation which had left her reeling since awakening in the clearing was now compounded by a growing sense of foreboding. Everything about Marshall’s topography: the wild Amazon basin beyond East Palmer Street, the clearing with the hidden fort, the long steep hill down into the business district, the immense white, round water tower in the park to her right; all had combined to trigger a powerful incidence of Déjà vu. She had never been in Marshall before, had never ventured farther north than Albany with her parents; yet Marshall seemed hauntingly familiar, as though she’d passed through in a fugue state once, half-asleep, observing the passing landscape through half-lidded eyes. The town had a dreamlike quality quite apart from the impossibility of being there in the first place.

“Yeah,” Gary confirmed cautiously, glancing at Maggie. “Why? Do you think you know him?”

She knew a William Denbrough, all right. And considering the insanity of this afternoon’s events, it was not beyond reason to imagine that her Bill Denbrough, and the boy who lived in 1963 Marshall were one and the same person. Forty-seven years her senior he might be, her 1st cousin, once removed, but Bill was the same age as Maggie and Gary right now. Her age: sixteen.

“Was his father’s name Zack?” she asked tremulously.

Gary’s forehead furrowed. He looked to Maggie for help, and Maggie nodded slowly.

“You do know him, then?”

Camilla shook her head and continued up the sidewalk toward Merrick Road, arms tightly crossed over her chest, shivering in the deepening gloom. The streetlamps ahead--what few illuminated the slightly seedy, lower-middle-class neighborhood--switched on as though in response to her sudden onset of chattering teeth. Maggie and Gary caught up, flanking her either side.

“What will your parents say,” Camilla asked through clenched teeth. “You bringing home a strange girl?”

Hands stuffed in his pockets, Gary replied confidently: “They’re used to me and my friends hanging out in the basement. As long as we’re quiet, they won’t even know you’re there, Camilla.”

She glanced at him askance but said nothing. To Maggie, she said: “I can’t understand why I’m here. Why would the remote—if it was the remote—send me to 1963, Marshall? That seems so totally arbitrary to me. Why not Denver, Colorado, or Billings, Montana? Not that I ever want to visit either of those places,” she muttered grumpily. “And why fifty-six years to the day? What significance does November the 12th, 1963 have, or for that matter, November the 12th, 2019? Is the fifty-six years important?” She laughed. “You know, my parents aren’t even born yet! My grandparents probably haven’t even met. I could—” She clamped her teeth together to keep from giving voice to that fate-tempting train of thought.

Gary chuckled, completing the thought for her: “‘fraid you’d run across them by accident, somehow here in Marshall, and prevent your own birth?”

Maggie leaned around Camilla and swatted his arm. “That’s not funny, A-hole! Are you trying to jinx her?”

Gary snorted in response. “That could only work if—” He cut off his words, wincing, and threw Camilla a quick sideways glance.

“Only work, if I really was a time traveler, right?”

Gary hunched his shoulders and shrugged. “I’m not calling you a liar, Camilla. We really don’t know what happened to you, is all. We only—”

“Have my word for it that I’m from 2019,” she said tightly.

He shrugged again. “It sounds kinda nuts; you got to admit that. How do we know you weren’t drugged and dumped here in Marshall, that you don’t have amnesia, or something?”

Maggie came to her defense. “Amnesiacs forget their lives, dummy, not make up entirely new ones. And Camilla doesn’t strike me as out of her head on dope, or high on weed, or hallucinating or something. She seems perfectly normal to me.” She laughed, embarrassed. “As normal as a girl who appears out of nowhere with no clothes on, can be.”

Camilla huffed in Gary’s direction. “I’m not drunk, either. Smell any alcohol on my breath?”

Gary cracked a grin. “Vodka doesn’t smell. You coulda polished off a fifth of vodka before you popped up in our little clearing this afternoon. How would we know? Let me see you walk a straight line!” He eyed her theatrically as Camilla paced off ten perfectly aligned heel-to-toe steps.

“Did I pass?” she asked sarcastically.

Having reached Merrick Road, Gary indicated to the left with his head, and said, “This way.”

Catching up, Maggie said: “Personally, I believe something really bizarre happened to you this afternoon, Camilla. Whether it was time travel?” She shrugged, grinning apologetically. “Can you tell us something that you couldn’t possibly know, otherwise?”

Considering the question, Camilla realized the answer was yes, but she didn’t want them thinking her a total flake. Besides, how could she prove something was gonna happen ten days in advance? Who’d believe something like that, anyway?

You’d think I was lying, she thought, even if you didn’t come right out and say it. You wouldn’t believe another word outta my mouth, she thought grimly. And then the full impact of the realization slammed her like a runaway freight train. She understood, or thought she understood, everything.

Staggered and horrified, she said without thinking: “Without my cell phone, I couldn’t tell you what happened last week, other than I got a C- on a pop quiz in Trig.” She had stumbled to a halt and forced her feet moving forward again.

“They have telephones now that you carry in your back pocket: Cell phones. I could Google you with it and know everything about you in a second. Who you married, the name of your kids—” She grinned woodenly at Gary, who grinned, blinking at Maggie. “What year you got divorced and married your childhood sweetheart...”

Despite his disbelief in her situation, Gary reddened at the implication. Maggie rolled her eyes. “Dream on, boy!” She cocked her head, inquiring: “Google?”

Camilla laughed harshly, trying, and unable to swallow. “I have no effing idea. I can’t live without it, though. Your grandkids won’t be able to, either.”

Gary had turned and now walked awkwardly backwards ahead of her. “Cell phone? Like cells in your body, cells?”

Fighting to keep panic at bay, Camilla shook her head and pointed at a radio antenna in the distance to the east. “Like one of those, only cell towers receive radio signals as well as send them. They act as links between your phone, and Verizon Wireless, or another wireless carrier like AT&T, or T-Mobile.”

Ignoring the perplexed expression on both their faces, she wondered distractedly if her cell phone was still in the back pocket of her cords. Had someone found it, already? Had Mom discovered her missing when she got home and started calling her iPhone in annoyance, and then with growing anxiety as 5 o’clock came and went? Would someone hear it buzzing on the ground? She routinely kept it on vibrate during the day--well, all the time, she admitted; how long before Mom activated her Find my iPhone app and tracked it down on Upland Road? Would she call Dad, or panic and call the police right away? She staggered to a halt again.

“Camilla...?”

Tears overflowed her lower eyelids and ran down her cheeks. Her nose burned and she wiped it shakily with the back of her hand, a whimper escaping her throat. She couldn’t be in 1963 for that reason—she just couldn’t be! And what if she couldn’t get back? What if she never saw her mom and dad and her friends again? “No,” she cried. “Come on! This is just bullshit!”

Knowing it wasn’t any discussion of cell towers that had made her new acquaintance burst into tears, Maggie took Camilla by the biceps as she had down on the path, and said: “It can wait, okay? Whatever has you so upset right now, let it go until we get out of the dark and into Gary’s basement. You don’t have to face it right now. You don’t have to face it alone, either. We’re here for you, whatever it is, right, Gary?”

Gary needed no stern look from Maggie to agree. “Absolutely! We’ll get the whole gang over here, if necessary. You wanted to see Bill, anyway, right?”

Camilla nodded dumbly. This was so effing insane, she thought. “Do either of you have a map of Marshall?” she blurted.

Startled, cutting his eyes away and squinting, Gary thought it over for a moment, and then uncertainly shook his head.

“I’m not sure either,” Maggie slowly agreed. “But I don’t think so. What do you want a map of Marshall for, anyway?”

Camilla glanced down at Maggie’s hands on her biceps. “It would be better if I could see a map, before I go making a fool of myself,” she muttered. A bigger fool than I already am, she amended mentally. “Can you call Bill when we get there? See if he has a map he can bring over?”

“If anyone has a map of Marshall, it would be Bill, anyway,” she said brightly. Then she grimaced, glancing at Gary, who nodded agreement. “Come on, let’s go before you freeze to death. We are so lucky it was warm today, and the wind never kicked up. I can’t imagine wearing just that thin shirt. You must be freezing your butt off, Camilla.”

In fact, Camilla’s entire body was broken out in gooseflesh. She shivered convulsively; arms locked over her chest. Flanked by Gary and Maggie on opposite sides, she began walking again.

Gary’s house was midway down the short block, across the street. Like the other homes on Merrick Road, the old brick Colonial was separated from its neighbors by waist high chain-link fencing, with a gate at the sidewalk for admittance. Several houses on Camilla’s street in Huntington had the same kind of ancient chain-link fencing, though only to separate properties, not along the frontage as the houses on Merrick did. The un-oiled gate squeaked loudly as Gary opened and held it back for her and Maggie to enter the yard. It was now almost completely dark.

“The basement door?” Maggie questioned softly.

Gary scanned the windows on the lower level for signs of activity, any indication that Mom or Dad had heard the gate open and close, and then motioned them forward. The front yard, small as it was, contained two large oak trees, one either side of the walk. Plump evergreens bordered the front of the house, cut low below the small windows, but allowed to grow six feet or more at the corners. Fenced flower beds surrounded the two trees and ran alongside the sides of the house. As they turned the corner, Camilla could just make out a black railing in the darkness ahead: it appeared to enclose a short flight of stairs descending to the basement door. Her neighbor’s the Martin’s had a similar arrangement on the side of their house.

Mr. Kensington—or possibly Gary—had recently painted the door a glossy black. Nine glass panes were inset into the upper half of the door, individually installed into the lattice framework. The lower right-hand pane had a three-inch long crack running diagonally across the bottom. This is right out of the 60s, she thought distractedly.

The basement was finished, the walls of the family room a light-yellow knotty pine board. Six inch square linoleum tiles in a dark checkerboard pattern covered the floor. A trio of oval area rugs and worn, old-fashioned rustic furniture gave the room warmth. A built-in stone fireplace with a cast-iron grate loaded with logs looking ready to light and flood the room with physical warmth, dominated one wall. A dozen framed photos adorned the hand-made pine mantle above the fireplace. A bulky RCA console TV with a pair of rabbit ears atop the case stood in the corner, positioned for easy viewing from the couch and the overstuffed chair beside it. Four doors opened off the family room: one led upstairs to the main floor; the others, all closed, presumably were a bathroom, a basement bedroom or storeroom, and a utility room.

“Is that you, Gary?” Mom called from upstairs as Gary shut the door behind them. He held a warning finger to his lips.

“Me and Maggie, yeah! Bill’s coming over in a little while, maybe some of the other guys, too. I’m not sure yet.”

From the top of the stairs, Mom asked: “Maggie, are you staying for dinner, sweetie?”

Maggie called back: “If you feed me, you’ll have to feed all of us, right?”

Mrs. Kensington laughed appreciatively. “I don’t have that many place settings, dear. Is everyone coming over?”

“Don’t know,” Gary answered uncertainly, observing Camilla’s wince. “If they do, I’ll tell them to eat before they leave.”

“Good idea,” Mom said. “We can afford to feed Maggie, though. You two get up right here now and get something to eat.”

Turning to Camilla with a frown, Gary said: “I’ll sneak you down something when we come back. If anyone comes down, hide in there. It’s the utility room, but I don’t expect anyone to come down here but me or Maggie. We won’t be long,” he whispered, before yelling up the stairs: “I gotta make a phone call first to Bill. Then we’ll be up, Mom.”

“I’m setting the table now. Make it snappy, young man.”

Grinning, he rolled his eyes.

A black Bakelite telephone that Camilla imagined would fetch a pretty penny in 2019 perched atop an end table between the huge, high-backed couch and the old stuffed chair beside it. A delicate lace doily sat beneath the telephone. A tubby ceramic lamp with a cylindrical, fabric lamp shade sat beside the phone atop its own lace doily. Camilla had seen vintage 50s era phones, of course, but had never seen one that would call out via the built-in rotary dial built in the face. She gawked as Gary hurried over and picked up the handset.

“Don’t they have house phones in 2019?” Maggie asked.

Startled, Camilla admitted, “Yeah, but nothing like that.” She described—badly--the sleek handset and base Mom had on her bedside table, and the ancient landline with its square push buttons on the kitchen wall.

“Big Bill, it’s me, dude! Get your skinny butt over here as soon as you can, okay? I got someone here dyin’ to meet you.” He grinned impishly at Camilla. “I’m not saying who, fool; just double time it over, because sometimes, you know, you snooze, you lose. This person has a history of not sticking’ around, too. Might not be present in the present much longer, you get my drift, baby?”

Beside her, Maggie sighed and muttered: “You flippin’ Bozo.” Gary’s grin only widened at her exasperation, and though embarrassed, Camilla responded with a grin of her own, though of lower wattage. She’d been further shaken by Gary’s use of ‘Big Bill’.

“Remember the map,” Maggie reminded him.

“Uh, map, yeah.” While he described the need to Bill, without explaining why, Camilla rubbed her temples; she had such a stress headache coming on. She hated being practically naked in a strange boy’s basement, was anxious over it (and everything else) to the point of nausea again. Thank God she hadn’t inherited her mom’s irritable bowel syndrome; though her intestines felt dangerously waterlogged, and she hoped that one of the doors was a bathroom. Otherwise, Mr. and Mrs. Kensington might learn of her presence a lot sooner than expected.

Gary cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. “Do we want anyone else besides Bill? Yes, or no?”

Camilla frantically shook her head. The less people that knew of her existence here, the better. She could deal with only so much in her fragile mental state.

Maggie allowed: “Maybe Ben, later. We’ll see what Bill says first.”

Gary un-cupped the handset. “Come alone, and the faster, the better, dude.” His features tightened as Bill asked a question that Camilla could almost put words to. He shook his head, wincing. “Nothing to do with that, no. This is somehow ... even weirder.” He glanced at Camilla, and away. “Science-fictiony weird, dude. You’ll see when you get here, Big Bill.” He hung up, laughing harshly. Camilla didn’t think he was conscious of rubbing his jaw, nor the grimace that continued to distort his features.

“This is as messed up as five years ago, man.” He headed for the stairs, moving stiff-legged. “Let’s go, Mags.”

“Are you okay?” Maggie questioned, troubled at his sudden change in composure.

He laughed again, eyes flicking to, and away from Camilla. “I can’t answer that, and neither can you.” Reaching the doorway, he halted and smiled grimly at Camilla. “This isn’t your fault, kiddo. You got no idea what we went through back in 1958--” He shook his head defiantly at Maggie. “—so you got no idea how messed up it was, you popping up in the Amazon today. Right there where we—” He shuddered violently, took a deep breath and grabbed the doorframe so hard that Camilla heard the protest of deformed wood.

“Gary...?”

“Let’s go!” he insisted, hurrying up the steps out of sight. Maggie gazed after him, flummoxed. Camilla gave her a hug of assurance.

“It’s okay. I’ll hide in the back if anyone comes down.” She nodded at the door Gary had indicated. “I should probably hide, anyway, just in case.” She gasped as heavy footfalls sounded again on the stairs, casting a panicked glance around, ready to dive behind the tall couch. Maggie grabbed her arm, whispering it was okay as Gary reappeared in the doorway.

Finger to his lips, he crossed to where they stood and whispered hoarsely: “Your shirt, Maggie!” Both girls blinked, startled, Camilla throwing a wide-eyed glance down at her shirtfront while Maggie smacked her forehead in chagrin.

“How could I be so stupid!” She laughed, visualizing, Camilla imagined, the horrifying scene upstairs when Mrs. Kensington excoriated her over wearing her coat at table.

“I have wash in the back room,” Gary said hurriedly. “Mom’ll make me take it upstairs later on so—” He cocked an ear at the scrape of chair legs across a bare wooden floor upstairs. “—so pick out something to wear while we eat. I promise nothing in it will give you reverse-cooties.” He snorted at Maggie’s revolted mock-gag. “They’re clean!” To Camilla, he added: “I can’t do anything about shoes, but you should find socks in the basket. She can’t help it if her brain is as small as her feet.” He nimbly ducked the 60s version of a dope-slap from Maggie.