by Bess McBride
They reached the Lakefront Lane and turned left. The second house on the road was Dr. Cook’s home, and Luke was pleased to see lights still on in the house.
He kept an eye on Emily to see that she followed as he stepped through the gate and reached the porch. She trailed him, her eyes wide.
“This is gorgeous!” she said. “It looks almost new! But that’s not possible, is it? Well, I guess it could be a reproduction. They’re doing great things with architecture these days.”
Luke said nothing. He had no earthly idea what to say. He thought the doctor’s house was some years old, but well maintained.
He knocked on the door and found it opened almost instantly. Mrs. Cook, a beautiful woman with reddish-brown hair known for her forward thinking, opened the door. She looked first at him, then ran her eyes up and down Emily’s person in what he considered to be a rather discourteous manner. He immediately sought to champion his charge.
“Mrs. Cook, good evening,” he hurried to say. “This poor unfortunate woman has lost her way. I wondered if we might see Dr. Cook this evening. It is most urgent, or I would not have troubled him so late.”
Mrs. Cook looked at him, her lips spreading in a smile, as if she recognized Emily. Dr. Cook came up behind her, on the point of slipping into his jacket. His wife looked over her shoulder at him.
“Mr. Damon doesn’t know?”
“No, my dear, but I suspect we shall bring him into the fold. Welcome to Kaskade, my dear,” he said to Emily. “It is the summer solstice.”
Chapter Three
Emily stared at the handsome couple inside the doorway. The woman, Mrs. Cook, wore a beautiful high-collared ivory white blouse and a shimmering taffeta chocolate skirt that trailed the floor. Her auburn hair was piled into an elegant bun at the crown of her head. The man, tall, dark and handsome, exuded an old-world charm, as did her schoolteacher escort. It was almost easy to believe she had traveled through some sort of time warp.
“It is the summer solstice,” Dr. Cook had said.
“So this is how it works,” Mrs. Cook said.
“Come in, come in,” the doctor said, holding the door wide.
Emily looked up to see Luke staring at the couple as if he’d never seen them either.
“What’s going on, Luke? Are we at the right place?”
He blinked and looked at her, seemingly giving himself a shake before responding. She noted under the porch light that he was as tall and trim as the lantern had reflected. His caramel tweed suit matched the color of his well-groomed hair. Long sideburns framed an angular clean-shaven face notable for thick eyebrows over coffee-colored eyes. He was certainly a handsome teacher.
“Yes, of course,” Luke said hastily. “Good evening, Dr. Cook. As I was saying to Mrs. Cook, Emily has lost her way. Could we speak discreetly?”
“Of course. Come in,” the doctor said again.
Luke extended his hand to usher Emily in before him. She took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold into a beautifully restored Victorian home. The woodwork in the large foyer gleamed with fresh polish. A bowl of colorful fresh flowers centered a round table in the center of the foyer. Several blue upholstered chairs rested against the base of the stairs.
“Come into the parlor,” Mrs. Cook said.
They followed the doctor’s wife into a room done in lovely antiques of various woods, lamps and paintings. A forest-green velvet sofa presided over a lovely matching Oriental carpet. Elegant beige-and-white wallpaper in a lacy pattern covered most of the walls. An electric chandelier lit the room.
“Dear, would you shut the door to your office?” Mrs. Cook asked. The doctor moved forward to shut a door to an adjoining room.
“I was actually hoping that the doctor could examine Emily,” Luke said. “She fainted near the base of the school and awakened somewhat disoriented. She may have hit her head.”
Luke looked down at her as if to get her concurrence, and Emily shrugged and nodded.
“Sure, I guess that could have happened. I did faint, that’s for sure.”
“Come. Have a seat, Emily,” Mrs. Cook said. “Call me Leigh.” She sat down on the sofa and indicated Emily should sit beside her.
Emily thought it strange that she should be the one “handling” her instead of the doctor, but she felt an odd connection to Leigh. Her warm smile felt genuinely empathetic and welcoming.
“Leigh,” Emily repeated obediently. “This is a lovely house. Did you do the restoration yourselves? I mean...you did restore it, right? And these antiques! You must be quite the antique hound.”
Emily was aware that Luke stared at her, but she ignored him for the moment. Maybe the good doctor would check him out as well since he seemed almost as confused as she was.
Leigh opened her mouth to speak but hesitated. She looked at her husband, still standing by the office door he had closed, and she shrugged.
“You have more experience with this than me, Jeremiah,” she said to him.
Emily rushed in.
“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t know anything about antiques. I just thought they were in wonderful condition, that’s all.”
“Would you like some tea or coffee, Emily?” Dr. Cook asked. “Mr. Damon?”
Luke looked at Emily, who shrugged again.
“I would,” she responded. “Tea sounds nice.”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Luke said.
“Good. I will just step out and ask our housekeeper to make some.”
Emily noted that Leigh’s eyes widened when her husband left the room, and she had the feeling that she should reassure their hostess she wasn’t psychotically violent.
“I’m probably okay,” she said to Leigh. “I’m a little confused, but I’m pretty harmless.”
Leigh’s lips curved, and she chuckled.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re fine. It’s just—” She scanned the doorway again. “I’m going to have to wait for Jeremiah to come back. He really should explain this, not me. I can fill in, but I’m not expert.”
“I do not understand, Mrs. Cook,” Luke said. “Explain what? The doctor has not yet examined Emily. Perhaps I did not explain thoroughly, but I found her unconscious—”
“Oh, you explained enough,” Leigh interrupted. “We can imagine.” She looked up. “Oh good! Jeremiah is back.”
Her husband entered, but rather than take Emily to his examining room, he sat down in a chair near his wife.
“Jeremiah, we shouldn’t keep them wondering any longer,” Leigh said. “I leave it to you.”
“Thank you, dear,” he said rather dryly.
His smile of tender affection told Emily that they were very much in love.
“I must say that I am very confused, Dr. Cook,” Luke began.
“Yes, I am certain that you are, Mr. Damon,” the doctor said. “I have never been in a position to inform someone of our time about Kaskade’s peculiarities, so this is my first time as well.”
“I beg your pardon?” Luke asked.
Emily watched spellbound in what was fast becoming a growing mystery in which she apparently played a central role. An encouraging nod from Leigh felt familiar, and she returned her attention to the two men.
“Mr. Damon,” Dr. Cook began.
“Please call me Luke.”
“I am happy to do so, and you in turn must call us Jeremiah and Leigh.”
“Emily Alexander!” she offered, raising a hand, as if in grade school.
“That is settled then. We are all on a first-name basis,” Jeremiah said. “Luke, Emily, I beg you to listen without interruption. I shall attempt to answer your questions when I have finished. Kaskade has a rather peculiar history of stealing people from the future. Few people in Kaskade know of its propensity.”
At that moment, a plump older woman arrived in the doorway with a silver tea service that she set down on a well-polished oval coffee table.
“Emily, this is our housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson, this is our newes
t arrival, Miss Emily Alexander. Is it Miss?” Jeremiah looked at his wife, then to Emily.
“Sure, I’m still a miss,” Emily said, thankful in the knowledge that she had not yet married Carl.
“Very well,” Jeremiah said with a broad smile, again exchanging an odd look with his wife. “Luke, are you acquainted with Mrs. Jackson?”
Luke stood up. “No, I have not yet had the pleasure,” he said. “Luke Damon. I’m the head schoolteacher.”
Emily was not surprised to see the housekeeper in historical clothing. Everyone else was. A long white apron covered an ankle-length gray gingham dress. Her long gray hair was tied up in a bun.
Mrs. Jackson looked at her and smiled widely.
“Welcome to Kaskade, Miss Alexander. It is nice to meet you at last, Mr. Damon. I have heard wonderful things about you.”
“Thank you,” Luke said, his cheeks bronzing.
“Thank you,” Emily echoed. She turned back to stare at Jeremiah while Mrs. Jackson poured out the tea.
“We’ll just wait until the tea is poured,” Leigh said. “Mrs. Jackson is no stranger to Kaskade’s mysterious ways, but it’s best if Jeremiah has your full attention when he explains what has happened.”
Emily searched the faces in the room. The doctor, his wife and the housekeeper wore expressions of sympathetic kindness. Luke, like Emily, looked increasingly confused, if not a bit alarmed.
Mrs. Jackson finished handing out cups and saucers before leaving the room.
“A lovely lady,” Luke said.
“Yes, she is,” Jeremiah said. “She has been with my family a long time.”
“What did you mean when you said that ‘Kaskade has a rather peculiar history of stealing people from the future?’ Of course you did not mean that in the literal sense, but what exactly did you mean?”
Emily nodded approvingly as Luke asked the question uppermost on her mind.
“Yes, I was stumped by that comment too!” she said.
Jeremiah took a sip of tea before responding.
“Emily, you may be more receptive to what I am about to say than Luke may be.”
“I beg your pardon?” Luke said. “Why would you assume that?”
Jeremiah looked to Leigh, as if for help.
“Emily, you are from the twenty-first century,” Leigh said point-blank. “You touched some solid surface in the debris of old Kaskade, and you ended up here.”
Emily’s hand shook, and she set her cup and saucer down.
“Yes and yes, but what do you mean...here? Where is here?”
“This is 1909. I don’t know any other way to say it. You’ve traveled back in time. It’s the summer solstice, and for the last nine years...that we know of...Kaskade has been snatching people from the future. I came here last year from the twenty-first century too.”
Luke’s teacup and saucer clattered as he set them down on the table. He rose hastily, as if he was going to stalk out of the room, but he stopped, turned and faced them.
Emily, in a state of surreal confusion, watched him as he rubbed his chin with one hand before raising it, as if to orate. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He stared at the faces in the room before dropping his hands to his hips to stare down at the floor. Emily returned her attention to Jeremiah and Leigh, both of them watching her, watching Luke with continued expressions of sympathy.
“Are you okay, Emily?” Leigh asked. “Do you understand what I said?”
Emily nodded mutely. “I think so.”
“You seem to be taking it well,” Leigh said. “Better than I did.”
“I’m not going to lie. I don’t feel well at the moment. Still, I can’t say that I’m completely surprised. I saw the school where there wasn’t one. The asphalted highway vanished. And Luke here just doesn’t seem like a modern kind of guy. Neither do you, Jeremiah, no offense.”
“None taken,” Jeremiah said with a tolerant smile. “Luke was not one of the few people who knew of Kaskade’s peculiarities, so he is understandably in a bit of shock.”
“Shock?” Luke finally said in a hoarse voice. “Yes, I am. I find it difficult to believe you are suggesting that time travel is possible. If I may ask, what year did you come from, Leigh?”
“2018,” she replied calmly. “How about you, Emily? What year did you come from?”
“2019. Does it go in order?”
“No, Kaskade chooses at random, but it does choose a person every year on the summer solstice,” Leigh said.
“And you’re stuck here?” Emily asked.
Leigh’s cheeks turned bright red, and she looked at her husband. Emily gasped as she realized what she had just said.
“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! You’re not stuck here. Obviously, you want to be here. You’re married! I’m so sorry, you guys!”
Leigh shook her head. “I probably said worse, and most of it to Jeremiah when I first arrived, so... But I gotta admit, it does sound harsh hearing it.”
“I’m so sorry!” Emily repeated.
“There is no need to apologize, Emily,” Jeremiah said. “We do understand. We truly do. You must know that this state of affairs will not last forever. You are free to return to your own time next year on the summer solstice.”
“Oh! Ohhhhh...” Emily said. “A year. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. How am I going to live here for a year?”
“All of our newcomers ask the same questions,” Jeremiah said. “We take care of you. Please do not worry about your welfare in our time. I understand that you may have left loved ones behind, responsibilities, employment. We do understand the loss you may suffer for your...adventure into the past.”
“Adventure?” Luke repeated, his voice raspy. “I am utterly stunned at the news you imparted, yet you sit there as if nothing extraordinary has occurred. Time travel indeed! Can we travel forward in time?”
Jeremiah shook his head.
“Not to my knowledge. Only those who have come to our time may return to their own, and frankly we are not sure that they actually do return to their own time. We have never spoken to one of our guests again after they left.”
“What?” Emily asked on a gasp. “You don’t know where they go?”
Jeremiah shook his head.
“No, I am sorry. We did have one young man who hoped to return, but he has not come back yet. That was several years ago.”
“So if I wait out the year and go back, we don’t know where I’ll end up? What if I’m in some kind of time-warp thing?”
Leigh looked at Jeremiah, and he tilted his head in sympathy as he shook his head.
“I have no proof one way or the other,” he said.
Self-consciously aware that the other three people watched her, Emily picked up her tea with a shaking hand and stared into it. She needed time to think, time to absorb the shock and work through the surrealism of the moment. She needed to think about Carl and how he would react to her disappearance. Though she had intentionally run from Seattle, from him, she hadn’t quite meant to go so far.
Luke spoke, and Emily set her thoughts aside for a moment to listen.
“Who else in Kaskade comes from the future?”
Jeremiah looked at Leigh before speaking.
“While I think it better for those people to tell you themselves, you are one of us now, one of the select few who knows Kaskade’s truth, so I see no harm in telling you as long as you are discreet. I believe you to be such. One such is Mrs. Katherine Ludlow, the minister’s wife, who came to us from the twenty-first century.”
“Katherine?” Luke gasped. “No! I am well acquainted with John and Katherine. Is John a time traveler as well?”
“No, only Katherine.”
Luke rubbed his chin again, then moved slowly toward his chair and reseated himself, although it would have been more descriptive to say that he dropped into the chair on weak legs.
“She has helped out at the school on occasion. I had no idea.”
“As I menti
oned, few people do,” Jeremiah said.
“Why is that? Why is this phenomenon kept secret?” Luke asked. He glanced at Emily, who wondered if she were actually in a dream after all or unconscious with a concussion.
“I am certain you can imagine how difficult life would become for our visitors if this oddity were to become public knowledge. Scientists, physicians, perhaps even the government would descend upon us—upon them—to study the phenomenon of time travel.”
“Why Kaskade?” Luke pressed.
Emily watched and listened. She wasn’t even sure what to ask.
Jeremiah shook his head. “We do not know. There is no book of instructions. You will think me foolishly romantic, but I think that Kaskade is trying to survive its upcoming demise and wishes to infuse new blood to stay alive.”
Emily reared her head at Jeremiah’s theatrical words. But it was Luke who managed to echo her thoughts.
“That is certainly very dramatic! Stay alive? Towns do not die. People die...or they move away. Why do you believe that Kaskade will suffer a ‘demise,’ as you put it?”
Leigh spoke. “Because it’s gone in my time, in Emily’s time. Kaskade dies out in the 1920s and is burned to the ground to make way for a power reservoir that will never be built. You’re right. People move away. They do. When there’s no more timber to fell, no more work for the woodcutters and the timber mills, people will move away to find employment. I agree with Jeremiah. At first I couldn’t believe anything so irrational as a town trying to survive, but I believe it now. That’s the only reason Kaskade could be snagging people from the future.”
“It’s true that Kaskade is gone,” Emily said. “I met someone who told me the same story about the reservoir. But you said almost everyone went back to the future. If that were even true—and this all still sounds kind of outlandish—Kaskade seems to be losing its battle to keep people.”
Jeremiah sighed heavily. “Yes, that is true. I do not see how the future can be altered. The timber industry will fail, and a lake as small as Kaskade Lake cannot provide a living for the entire town. But it is Kaskade who takes people, not I. I cannot know why or how the town chooses its newcomers, only that it seemingly does.”
Luke shook his head, whether to clear the cobwebs or scoff in disbelief, Emily couldn’t tell.