Journey With the Comet

by Dana Wayne Haley

  They had just turned onto the Stream Road, heading toward the Haleys’, when suddenly Leona yelled.

  “Papa, stop!”

  Murdock yanked back on the reins and yelled “Whoa!” causing Prince to stop dead in his tracks.

  “What is it, Leona?”

  “There’s something in the ditch, over there.”

  Mrs. Jensen immediately jumped out of the wagon and ran to the ditch.

  “It’s my daughter’s hair!” she screamed.

  When Murdock saw Jill’s blond hair lying in a pile on the ground he knew he had to remain calm and help comfort Mrs. Jensen.

  “It had to be those boys, Mary. They threatened to cut off Leona’s hair and they would’ve if she hadn’t run away from them.”

  “But where’s Jill?” Mary asked. “It’s been well over two hours since she left.”

  “Let’s search this area,” Murdock responded. “Maybe she’s scared and hiding in the woods.”

  They searched for more than 5 minutes, periodically calling Jill’s name, but found no sign of her. Murdock then put his hunting skills to good use and carefully searched the area where the hair was found to see if he could find any tracks. He found no sign of tracks in the sun-dried earth, but noticed what looked like a recently broken twig lying on the Stream Road, just a few feet down from where he was. He walked a bit further and noticed a small footprint in a muddy area near the side of the road. It was pointing in the direction of the Kenduskeag Stream.

  “Over here, Mary!” he yelled. “Does this footprint look familiar?”

  After seeing it she said: “That’s Jill’s. If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times on my floors during muddy season.”

  A little further down the road Leona spotted the locket she gave Jill. The chain was broken and she suspected that her friend had ripped it off and dropped it on the ground as a clue.

  “Hop on the wagon and hold on for dear life,” Murdock said, “we’re headed to the stream.”

  And then he took off, driving Prince as fast as he dared on the treacherous road.

  —4—

  It took only ten minutes to reach the stream. Not knowing which way to turn, Murdock decided to head for the Black Bear Bridge at full speed.

  “If we don’t find Jill we’ll backtrack and search more careful next time,” he told Mary. She nodded in agreement.

  They saw no sign of Jill on the way to the bridge, but as they were approaching it they saw some movement up ahead.

  “Those are the boys I was telling you about, Papa!” Leona said when she saw four boys running away from the bridge.

  By the time the wagon neared the bridge the four boys had disappeared into the woods. A second later they heard a girl’s scream, followed by a loud splash.

  “Where did that come from?” Murdock asked.

  “It sounded like it was from over there by the bridge,” Leona said.

  “Giddy-yup!” Murdock yelled.

  Prince raced ahead, and he pulled on the reins to steer the wagon sharply to the left onto the bridge. He took the turn so fast that the rear of the wagon slid around and bounced off the right side of the bridge. Leona grabbed Mary as she was about to fall off. Then, midway over, Murdock noticed a piece of light blue cloth and a rope hanging off the left side of the wooden rail.

  “That looks like a piece of Jill’s dress,” Mrs. Jensen cried out.

  “Stay here,” Murdock said as he pulled back on the reins and applied the brake, bringing the wagon to an abrupt halt.

  He jumped off the wagon, running as fast as he could to the side of the bridge. Despite Murdock’s order neither Leona nor Mrs. Jensen had any intention of staying put, and they jumped off the wagon too. Murdock reached the rail first and leaned over, looking down at the water.

  “Oh my God!” he said.

  Then Leona saw Mrs. Jensen bend over the rail and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Jill! Jill! My baby! My precious baby!”

  Mary fainted into Murdock’s arms just as Leona got to the rail. She looked down toward the water and saw Jill lying on her back, three feet under the water. Her friend’s eyes were wide open and they were staring directly at Leona, and she let out an agonizing scream.

  “Leona, take care of Mrs. Jensen!” Murdock told his distraught daughter.

  He then ran to the end of the bridge, scurried down the riverbank and jumped into the river, swimming as hard as he could to Jill. Pulling her from the water and into his arms, he waded to the bank and laid the limp girl on her back. He immediately began giving Jill mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Leona left Mary lying on the bridge, still unconscious, and ran to her father’s side. She stood frozen, unable to take her eyes from her friend’s seemingly lifeless face.

  “Quick, help me, Leona!” Murdock yelled.

  He had his daughter press gently on Jill’s chest while he continued resuscitation, hoping to bring life back into the teenage girl’s body. Suddenly, she spit out water and started breathing. Leona was visibly relieved.

  “Are you okay, Jill?” she asked.

  “It hurts!” was all Jill could say.

  “You look after her, Leona,” Murdock said. “She’s bumped her head and I need to fetch some bandages from the wagon. I’ll be right back.”

  —5—

  As her father rushed to the wagon, Leona placed Jill’s bloody head on her lap.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Jill,” she said.

  But she was wrong; suddenly her friend stopped breathing.

  “Papa! Papa! Jill’s not breathing!”

  Murdock hurried back to the riverbank. After trying once again to get the little girl to breathe, he slowly lifted his head and spoke.

  “It’s too late, Leona. She’s gone.”

  “No! It can’t be, Papa! Jill can’t be gone. She can’t be.”

  After a second, reality hit Leona and she began to scream in agony over the loss of her friend.

  “Why, Papa? Why?”

  Then she fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Jill, embracing her in a hug with her cheek touching her friend’s. Mrs. Jensen had just come to when she heard Murdock’s pronouncement, followed by Leona’s scream.

  “Oh, my baby! My baby!” she cried.

  Mary let out a blood-curdling scream when she saw her daughter’s lifeless body in Leona’s arms. She rushed to Jill, fell to her knees, and took her daughter into her arms. Murdock tried to comfort her, but it was useless to try. Then he saw Leona’s face becoming pale and he left the sobbing mother to comfort her, barely containing his own emotions at the sight of his heartbroken daughter. He helped Leona up from the ground and held the sobbing girl in his arms until she calmed down.

  “Leona, help Mrs. Jensen to the wagon,” he ordered. “She needs to be consoled. I’ll bring Jill.”

  —6—

  The mind-numbing ride to the Haley home was as long and as dreary as Leona had ever experienced, or ever wanted to experience again. Seeing Mrs. Jensen cradling Jill’s lifeless body in her arms was almost more than she could bear.

  “What’s wrong, Murdy?” Margaret asked when the wagon arrived and she saw Leona and Mary riding in the back, crying.

  “Something terrible: Jill’s dead,” Murdock said.

  “Oh, my God! What happened?”

  “It was Jake and his gang. I’ll fill you in later. You and Leona help Mary into the house. I’ll carry Jill in.”

  When they got inside, Margaret called to her daughter: “Arlene, we need you to run down to Aunt Mae’s and call Sheriff Crowley. Tell him that Jill Jensen has been killed. And after you call the sheriff, call Dr. Gifford and let him know we need some sedatives for Mary, and Leona too. Tell him what happened. He’ll need to look at Jill.”

  Dr. Gifford arrived forty-five minutes later and prescribed sedative
s for Leona and Mrs. Jensen.

  “There’s enough for three nights, Margaret. That should be plenty, but let me know if they need more.”

  “I will, Dr. Gifford. Thanks for your help.”

  Just then, the sheriff walked through the door.

  “I’m glad you’re still here, Doc. I’ll need to know the exact cause of death. Can you perform an autopsy on Jill as soon as possible?”

  “Sure sheriff, I’ll get right on it. Preliminarily I’d have to say it looks like the cause was a blow to the head, but I need to get her body to Bangor to be sure. If you want to come with me I should have the answer for you in a couple of hours.”

  “Then let’s be on our way,” the sheriff said. “Mr. Haley, I’ll be back later to get a full statement from you. Then I’ll pick up Jake and his friends for some questioning.”

  “I’ll be here, Sheriff,” Murdock said.

  —7—

  Mike was the first of the boys to be interviewed by Sheriff Tyler and he told the sheriff that they never intended to harm Jill.

  “Jake did,” he said, “but the rest of us only wanted to scare her, so we convinced Jake to just tie her to the bridge instead, so she couldn’t escape without some help. Anyway, we laid her on the rail and tied her to it. We thought that sooner or later someone would find her and free her.”

  “Why were you carrying rope in the first place, Mike?” the sheriff asked.

  “We weren’t, but I remembered seeing some old rope in Mr. Tyler’s dump; it was hidden just inside the woods near the bridge. I didn’t want Jill to get hurt and I thought the rope would hold her until someone came along. I planned to sneak back in an hour or so to let her go, in case no one came along by then. I guess Jake didn’t tie very good knots. Jill must’ah struggled enough to loosen them and then lost her balance and rolled off the bridge’s rail.

  “I’m so sorry, Sheriff. We never meant to hurt her; except for Jake. But eventually he backed down, saying she wasn’t his type anyway.”

  “You may not have wanted to hurt the girl, but you did,” the angry sheriff said. “She hit her head on the bridge’s cement foundation when she fell into the water. What you four boys did amounts to kidnapping and manslaughter, and you’re gonna have to pay for it. You and the others might get off with a slap on the wrist, if what you say is true, but Jake’s gonna get the book thrown at him, and he’s going to jail for a very long time if I have anything to say about it.”

  Chapter 50

  Jill’s Dream Comes True

  When Leona got out of bed on the morning following Jill’s funeral, she walked into the living room and saw Mrs. Jensen rocking in Margaret’s chair, staring out the window toward her home on the hill.

  “How are you feeling today, Mrs. Jensen?” she asked.

  Mary slowly turned toward Leona, as if to say something, but words would not flow from her mouth, only tears from her eyes. Leona understood how she felt and said no more. Mrs. Jensen stayed with the Haleys for almost a week before she was able to return to her own home, and even then the Haleys saw to it that she was not left alone. For the next two weeks they took care of her as best they could. Every day Margaret and Leona walked to Mary’s house, often bringing fresh milk, eggs, homemade bread, fruits, vegetables, and other foods with them. They cooked meals for Mary and helped clean her house to make things easier for the grieving woman. After two weeks, however, Mrs. Jensen realized that she could no longer bear living alone in her lonely house, so she decided to move to Bucksport to live with an older sister. The day she was leaving, Leona walked up to Mrs. Jensen to say goodbye and to give her something.

  “Here, Mrs. Jensen, this was Jill’s.”

  “But, Leona, that’s the friendship locket you gave her. Thank you for offering it to me, but you should keep it. Jill would want it that way.”

  “Are you sure, Mrs. Jensen?”

  “I’m more than sure, dear. I have enough memories of Jill to last me a lifetime, and I’ll have Frisky with me too. Jill loved that cat more than life itself, almost as much as she loved me; and she loved you just as much, Leona.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Jensen,” she said, and then the somber teenager quickly walked away before the woman could see the tears coming into her eyes, the locket grasped tightly in her hand.

  For almost a month after Jill’s death Leona suffered deep depression over the loss of her best friend, and from the overwhelming grief that she knew Mrs. Jensen was suffering. Nothing that her parents said could alleviate the pain she felt inside. Her pain and depression would likely have continued unabated the rest of the summer had it not been for a marvelous revelation she received in a dream.

  —1—

  Leona’s dream began as the previous ones had. She was riding on her magical comet and, after scanning the Earth to visit more places she had only read about, Leona came back once again to Glenburn. This time, instead of lingering on her own home, her attention was drawn to the green-and-white house in the distance: Jill’s now empty home. When she started to feel sad, something in Leona’s sub-conscience directed her gaze to a house in another part of Maine. There she saw Mrs. Jensen sitting at a breakfast table, talking and laughing with a woman who was about her age, maybe a little older.

  “It’s nice to see you laughing again, Mary.”

  “Thanks, sis. It’s hard to believe that I can still laugh after what happened to my baby. In fact, sometimes I feel guilty about laughing, or when I have moments where I’m not thinking about Jill and actually catch myself feeling happy. It makes me sad to think that I could actually enjoy myself for even a second with my daughter gone.”

  “That’s only natural, little sister. I experienced the same thing when my husband died, and I’m sure you did too.”

  “Come to think of it, you’re right,” Mary said. “I forgot all about that. I guess losing a loved one is the most difficult thing in life to deal with.”

  “There’s no doubt, Mary. It took me over two years to start to feel normal again after Henry’s death. How long did it take you to get over Albert’s?”

  “Two years sounds about right. Fortunately, I had Jill to help me get through it. And thank God I have you this time.”

  After listening to the conversation between the two women, Leona realized that Mrs. Jensen would be all right after all. But the teenager still could not get Jill off her mind, so in an attempt to find something to cheer herself up she returned her attention to the comet. The first thing she did was look toward the Jensen’s house, or where it was supposed to be. It wasn’t there, so she started to turn away. But a voice inside told her to look again, and when she did she saw a beautiful mist where the house should be. Then the mist faded and the tip of Jill’s house appeared over the tops of the trees. When Leona realized that Jill was no longer there, she felt more depressed than ever.

  “What’s the matter, Leona? You look so sad.”

  “Grandma! It’s so good to see you again,” she said to Eunice, who was standing near her path. “I’m sorry I’m not more cheerful, but I lost my best friend this summer.”

  “Well, Leona, maybe I can help cheer you up. Turn around and look over there.”

  Eunice was pointing over her granddaughter’s right shoulder, and when Leona turned in that direction she saw a skinny young girl with long blonde hair walking toward her on the comet. She was coming out of the back woods; and, as she got closer, Leona saw that it was Jill.

  “Jill! Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”

  “I was on my way here. It takes a while you know,” Jill answered in a mellow, calming tone. “Besides, I needed to visit someone first.”

  Leona realized that she had never heard her friend speak that serenely before. It had always seemed to her that Jill was either agitated or excited about something. Then Leona noticed a small kitten in Jill’s arms and realized that it was Frisky. She had not noticed it at f
irst, until Jill was only ten feet away, and suddenly she realized why: The kitten was almost transparent, with a slight yellowish glow emanating from its body.

  “Jill! What’s wrong with Frisky?” she asked.

  “Nothing, Leona, he’s perfectly healthy.”

  Leona did not understand, but there were many things she did not understand about this magical place. She just decided to accept things as they were and enjoy the marvel of it all with her friend.

  “Why don’t you two go play for a while, and when you come back I’ll have some milk and cookies waiting for you,” Eunice said.

  “Okay, Grandma. Let’s go, Jill.”

  The two girls ran toward the shade of an old maple tree where Eunice had a Cribbage board all set up.

  “Now we can finally play our Cribbage game,” Jill said as she and Leona sat down.

  Before they began playing, Leona took the locket Hans gave her from around her neck and gave it to Jill. After finishing the game of Cribbage the girls frolicked in the fields, went for a refreshing swim in the comet’s crystal clear Kenduskeag Stream, and talked for what seemed like hours before they took Eunice up on her offer.

  “Leona told me your cookies were heaven, Mrs. Carver,” Jill said, “but I never dreamed they would be this heavenly. They sure are tasty.”

  “Well, thank you, dear. I do my best.”

  Leona awoke from the dream, no longer feeling sad for Mrs. Jensen or for herself. Thanks to her dream, only one of many she would experience involving her magical comet ride, she knew that Jill was okay and that soon Mrs. Jensen would be too. Of course, Leona also knew that Mrs. Jensen would never be as happy as she was when her daughter was alive, but she would find the strength to live on, and someday Jill and her mother would be reunited. Knowing that made Leona feel much better. And, just as comforting to Leona, the pain that she suffered in the weeks after Jill’s death was gone. It was replaced by a sense of peace within her. She still missed Jill, but she knew that her best friend was happy, riding through the heavens on Haley’s Comet, playing with Frisky, and enjoying both the wonders of the heavens and the Earth.