The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon

to say—so many questions he needed to ask—that he could not think of a single one.
    â€œSorry about the mess,” Nina said. She took a small handkerchief from her pocket and started wiping the windshield, smudging the blood more than mopping it up. “Oh, dear.”
    â€œI’m going mad,” Scott said, but he did not believe that. It wasn’t what he could see; it was what he couldsmell and taste: blood. Eyes could deceive, but nose and mouth were truer.
    â€œAh, madness. I’ve been mad a few times. Once, when they were building St. Etienne, I lived in a hole in the ground for almost a decade. Those building the chapel brought me fruit and live chickens, and they’d stand back and watch me slaughter the birds and eat them raw. I was an entertainment for them, and I played up to it. Enjoyed it. I asked them to build me into the floor of the place, but they declined. And things got nasty. See, I wanted to see how long I could live, trapped in a hole underground.”
    â€œThat would have been awful.”
    â€œYes. And therein lay my madness of the time.”
    â€œHow did it get nasty?”
    Nina glanced at Scott, then away again. “We fought. They called me a demon. I ran, and I haven’t returned to France since.”
    â€œWhen was this?”
    â€œTen seventy-five. Give or take a couple of years.”
    â€œA thousand years ago.”
    Nina gave her slight smile and nodded.
    This is the madness of
my
time
, Scott thought.
This is
my
insanity. Yet I know there’s truth here. It’s impossible that this can be true; yet it is. The world has changed.
My
world has changed, and I think it changed thirty years ago when Papa died. Perhaps even before . . . Perhaps when I was born and my parents took me home and he first saw me, I was already existing somewhere different from everyone else
.
    â€œWe need to get this blood cleaned up,” Nina said.
    â€œYes. Right.”
    â€œDo you have Mr. Wolf’s number?”
    â€œWhat?”
Wolf? What now? What is she going to tell me now?
    â€œHaven’t you seen
Pulp Fiction
?”
    Scott nodded and remembered. There was a woman in his car who had been alive more than a thousand years ago talking about
Pulp Fiction
.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “All right. This is happening. You just killed yourself and now you’re better, and this is happening.”
    â€œTechnically no, because I can’t die. But close enough.”
    Scott glared at the woman. “Fine. But my wife. I need her back. And I have no idea where to start or how this will end, and you’ve appeared to offer your help. So if I accept everything you’re telling me—if I accept without question the things you tell and show me—please say what we have to do next.”
    Nina nodded, apparently satisfied. “Next, you have to let me see your letter from Papa.”
    â€œHow do you know I called him that?”
    She smiled. “He liked everyone to call him that, didn’t he?”
    â€œYou knew him?”
    â€œDon’t tell me that surprises you.”
    Scott thought about it. And no, it did not surprise him one bit.
    At the next service station Nina remained in the car while he went to buy some tissues. He handed herPapa’s note as he left, and glancing back he saw the shadow of her head bent low as she read.
    I wonder what she’ll get from what he said,
Scott thought.
I wonder what she’ll think
.
    He was not fond of service stations. They were temporary places inhabited by people he would never see again, and he did not like the idea of that. He passed a man whose story he would never know, a woman whose name he would never utter, and before today these places had made him feel so insignificant. Now, he felt only distant. He saw the eyes of people living such narrow lives, and while in a way he was jealous of their ignorance, still he wondered what they could really ever achieve.
    Did