Night of the Living Rerun

by Arthur Byron Cover

  “I don’t call that ‘cosmic.’ It’s more like Cosmopolitan.”

  “I wonder what she wants.”

  “Now that’s the suspicious Giles I know,” said Buffy, already walking away.

  He frowned as he watched her go. I’m not just suspicious of women, he thought defensively, I’m suspicious of everyone!

  With a sharp intake of breath he realized that he was even suspicious of his dreams. Although it behooved a Watcher to be paranoid, he couldn’t help wondering if he was going too far.

  But when he returned to Rick and Lora in the hall, they’d been having an intense discussion that ceased the instant he walked in. “Well, Lora, this is certainly a pleasant surprise, but you didn’t come all the way to Sunnydale from wherever it is you’re living now—”

  “Carmel,” she put in helpfully.

  “—just to look me up,” Giles continued.

  “I should hope not,” said Rick slyly.

  “The teacher’s lounge is that way,” said Giles. “We’ll probably have more privacy there.”

  On the way, he and Lora tried to catch up with one another. Twice Lora mentioned her surprise that he had not been married, not even once, during the last two decades. Rick remarked that he’d been married and divorced enough times for all three of them.

  “You must be rich,” said Giles.

  “Not anymore,” said Rick.

  Inside the lounge, Giles led his guests to a corner furnished with pieces purchased from the Salvation Army. “So really, people, why are you here?”

  Rick and Lora suddenly became quite serious. “A ghost named Sarah Dinsdale suggested we come see you,” said Rick.

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time she turned on to her block, Buffy felt pretty good inside, thanks in part to her plan to take a nap as soon as she made it home in the hopes of learning about the fate of Samantha Kane.

  Suddenly her good feeling evaporated. What was that huge van with the satellite dish on top doing across the street from her house?

  On both sides of the van was painted a large, garish logo: a column of frogs falling from a clear blue sky. Buffy recognized it as the hallmark of the syndicated show dealing with paranormal phenomena called Charles Fort’s Peculiar Planet. It aired on Channel 13, appropriately enough, every week-night at 11 P.M. The subject matter ranged from giant ants in the Amazon to the ghosts of aliens on the space shuttle. Buffy usually watched it for laughs, but she wasn’t laughing now.

  Especially when the show’s top reporter, Eric Frank, got out of the passenger side and, microphone in hand, headed toward her front door!

  * * *

  “Sarah Dinsdale, eh? Never heard of her.” Giles sipped his cup of coffee. Today the coffee machine in the teachers’ lounge was producing an especially bitter product, and he fought to maintain a neutral expression lest the Churches think he was uncomfortable with the subject matter. He had played dumb for a while, a skill he’d picked up through necessity while dealing with the education bureaucracy on both sides of the Atlantic.

  “Funny,” said Rick, with a smile. “She seems to have heard of you.” He sipped his coffee and immediately stopped smiling.

  “I don’t see how,” Giles replied casually.

  “Oh please, Giles,” said Lora impatiently. “You were always interested in the occult. It’s all you ever talked about.”

  “I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else,” said Giles indignantly. “I’m interested in books and movies and art.”

  “Humph! You never had time to see any movies unless they starred Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing,” said Lora.

  “Do I detect a trace of resentment?” chuckled Rick.

  “Sweetums,” Lora cooed. Nevertheless she continued the attack on Giles. “The only books you ever read had to do with paranormal subjects such as spontaneous combustion and psychic detectives—and the art, good grief, the art! It was all primitive stuff and usually had been handled by witch doctors first.”

  “Ever do any research on UFOs?” Giles asked in all innocence.

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Lora. “The ghost of Sarah Dinsdale sent us to see you. And that’s why we’re here.”

  Giles sighed. He’d forgotten how stubborn Lora could be when she felt like it. But that was part of the problem. Over the years, he’d forgotten almost everything about her, but now that she was in his presence again, memories and emotions were resurfacing like salmon jumping up a waterfall.

  “All right,” said Giles. “What does this Sarah Dinsdale want with me?”

  “I’m glad you asked!” said Rick briskly, his eyes darting this way and that. He lowered his voice. “Is this place bugged?”

  “I should certainly hope not!” said Giles, hoping he was right.

  “Good. What I am about to tell you, most people would find somewhat extravagant—perhaps unbelievable. But I assure you, every word is true.”

  “Or close to it,” added Lora.

  “Lora and I used to look forward to our weekly séances, when we’d sit in our darkened den to call forth the spirits of the dead.”

  “There were no portents the night Sarah came—subjective or otherwise—that the upcoming séance would contain a few unpleasant surprises,” said Lora.

  “No sudden flashes of lightning in a clear sky,” said Rick. “No white owls in the trees, not even an old-fashioned chill up the spine. I had my hopes, too. Cleopatra had intimated she’d be back for a return engagement, and lately we’d snared a few ladies-in-waiting from the court of King Louis XVI of France.”

  “Those weren’t ladies,” said Lora. “I myself was hoping Nijinsky, the great ballet dancer, would drop in again, though in a mood less neurotic than before.”

  “You just like what you see in his eyes,” said Rick jealously.

  “You just like Cleopatra’s—” Lora began, before Giles interrupted and reminded them of the story they were supposed to be telling. “Of course,” said Lora. “You can imagine our surprise when, having done this hundreds of times before, the séance conjured up all sorts of atmospheric effects, such as flickering candlelight, creeping fog and a stench so repulsive I won’t begin to describe it to you.”

  “I have no problem doing that,” said Rick. “It smelled like a thousand dead skunks piled on top of one another, lying on a bed of liver and castor oil. We couldn’t have failed to notice it if we’d tried.”

  “I got ill,” said Lora.

  “Big time,” said Rick, deliberately. “Luckily, I’d taken an antacid before dinner—for my ulcer, you know. When the ghost of Sarah Dinsdale appeared above us, we couldn’t have been less in the mood for occult explorations. But there she was, nonetheless.”

  “She was the scariest ghost I’ve ever seen,” said Lora. “Most ghosts are pretty alienated from reality to begin with—they say purgatory gets on a specter’s nerves—but this one was frightening, paranoid and utterly confident in her spectral dignity. You never knew how she’d respond to any one of your questions.”

  “She blamed the smell on us, too,” said Rick resentfully. “Said we weren’t conjuring her up correctly. I took umbrage at that.”

  “It wasn’t long before she began asking us questions,” said Lora. “And she insisted on answers! Threatened to go back if we didn’t talk. Well, you never let a specter go away if you could help it. It just isn’t done in polite society.”

  “Of course,” said Giles. “What did she want to know?”

  “Where you were,” said Lora. “How you were faring on this mortal coil. Things of that nature.”

  “I had never heard of you, of course,” said Rick.

  “What did she say, exactly?” asked Giles impatiently.

  Lora answered, “She said you had a good head on your shoulders. But then she implied you’d lost it before and that you might again if you weren’t careful.”

  “This is all very interesting,” he said guardedly, “but how seriously am I supposed to take this warning? Especially s
ince I never heard of the ghost before and have no idea what she could possibly be talking about.”

  “This is not the first time we’ve heard a dire warning or received a vague, almost nonsensical clue that’s required action on our part,” said Rick. “In the past, we’ve solved murders long set aside by the authorities. We’ve also added significantly to our stock portfolio by taking advantage of what spirits have told us about the immediate future. It all depends on the situation.”

  “We don’t know exactly what Dinsdale was talking about,” said Lora, “so we don’t really know what we might have to do. But when the clutch comes, we’ll be there for you.”

  “Yes. Well, ah, thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” said Giles. “I may seem a little awkward occasionally, but I think I can take care of myself.”

  “So long as you don’t have to fight any teenage girls,” said Rick with a smirk.

  “Buffy is not just a teenage girl, she’s—” Giles caught himself; he’d almost let his pride cause him to spill the beans. “She’s a black belt, a gifted brawler in the most profound sense of the word.”

  “She can’t guard you as well as we can,” said Rick.

  “I’ve no doubt whatsoever, but I feel pretty safe,” said Giles, which was definitely untrue, but he had to maintain a facade of not taking them seriously. “Besides, there are times when—ahem—a man must do what a man must do, and I’d rather be by myself when I do them.”

  “We’re still going to be close by,” insisted Rick. “We’re very good at this bodyguard thing. We’ve had lots of practice.”

  “Ever lose any of your charges?’ Giles asked.

  “We don’t talk about that,” said Lora tensely. “There were extenuating circumstances. How were we to know there’d be a killer shark in that lake?”

  “Our failures have been few and far between,” Rick said. “Barely worth mentioning, in fact.”

  “Well, I feel safer already,” said Giles. He sipped his lousy coffee, barely noticing the taste. He suppressed the sudden urge to excuse himself and go home for a nice, long nap.

  * * *

  “Sorry I left you for a baseball game,” said a still-woozy Xander as Willow walked him home. “I just wanted to be a manly man.”

  “And baseball is the way to prove your manliness?” asked Willow, clearly confused at his logic.

  “Yeah. You know what it’s like to be one of the few who can actually remember all the strange doings in Sunnydale, to know you’ve performed some pretty brave—”

  “Or foolhardy,” interjected Willow.

  “—actions, and to want everyone to know about everything: the doings and the actions. But you can’t, so you’d settle for just being a normal person who can do normal things like playing baseball—”

  “Or having a girlfriend,” said Willow, leading him on although she knew in advance it wouldn’t do any good.

  “You want a girlfriend?” Xander asked, surprised.

  “Never mind. Tell me about your strange dream.”

  Xander cleared his throat. “Well, to begin with, it seemed so real. I feel like I can recall every detail. But that wasn’t the strangest part.”

  “Go on.”

  “Remember Giles’s dream that took place in the seventeenth-century Massachusettes Bay Colony? Mine appeared to happen at roughly the same time. But even that wasn’t the strangest part.”

  “Xander, get to the point.”

  “It’s embarrassing. I dreamed I was a girl. Or rather, a woman. A full-grown adult woman.”

  “I always knew you had a feminine side,” said Willow, smiling.

  “I didn’t!” Xander exclaimed.

  “Boys rarely do. Perhaps you should tell me exactly what happened.”

  They sat down on a bus stop bench and he began talking. At first he was reluctant, but as he got going, he couldn’t help himself. Besides, if he couldn’t trust Willow with the dream then who could he trust?

  At first the dream was like all dreams—a series of mixed-up images, half-profound, half-absurd. All the images resonated with the power of real life, only they had little to do with the experiences of a teenage boy growing up in sunny Southern California. They had more to do with the experience of growing up a young girl in seventeenth-century New England.

  The images included reading the Bible at home, feeding the farm animals, growing the vegetables and going to church. Apparently the young girl went to church quite frequently, as did practically everyone else in the vicinity. Only she didn’t like it.

  This is where the images took on a different character. Before, everything was bathed in light. Now the dream settings became rather dark—more pleasant, ocasionally, but always dark. During these parts of the dream, the young woman felt much more free, as if she was finally in control of her life after a long period of imprisonment. Xander tried not to exert his will or even his thoughts. He just let the dream unfold.

  The images included several of walking through a forest of exquisite, pristine greenery teeming with everything from huge colonies of insects to squirrels, skunks and hedgehogs. The bears and wildcats, Xander somehow knew, had been pushed out of the vicinity by the Puritans some time ago, though of course a few always ventured into the farmlands hunting for sheep and goat.

  The young woman walked through fields of purple wildflowers. She harvested wild mushrooms and dug up mandrake roots in the forest. She searched for stones and metals by the streams. She slew frogs and mummified them, and then she went into caves and slew bats. Those were mummified, too, according to ritual with the muttering of spells and chants.

  The young woman traveled to these places during both day and night, but she especially enjoyed those nights when she was alone. It was then that she danced beneath the moon, communing with nature on a level so primitive and barbaric it horrified Xander.

  Finally the dream returned again and again to those times the young woman spent at church, concentrating on the appearance—but never the words, apparently—of the charismatic young preacher, John Goodman. She saw in him potential that she saw in no other man, the potential to be a worthy life-partner in marriage.

  Of course, they were apt to disagree over what type of marriage ceremony might be appropriate.

  By now the bond between Xander and his dream alter ego was so strong Xander didn’t know where he ended and she began. Conversations, memories, books read—it all blended together. Xander was becoming a new person. In a new time.

  Xander knew exactly when and where he was: in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. His name in the dream was Sarah Dinsdale, and she was most definitely a witch. Up until a certain point she had avoided being victimized by the hysteria—which was ironic, because while she was fairly convinced most of those accused were innocent, she herself was guilty, guilty, guilty.

  It was a situation that Sarah must have felt inevitable, because she was strangely calm when the church scenes faded out and the courtroom sequence faded in. She stood in chains in the square pen the courtroom reserved for the accused; a large orange “W” was sewn on her dress.

  The stern, robed Judge Danforth regarded her severely. Nine angry men sat in the jury box. Sheriff Corwin stood in the back of the courtroom. Cotton Mather, the famed scholar and witch hunter from Boston, stood at the prosecutor’s table asking questions of a pale, nervous John Goodman, who sat fidgeting in the witness chair.

  The first question Mather directed at Goodman was, “And when did you first hear the unholy call of this Sarah Dinsdale?” His words echoed in Xander’s mind like reverb at a rock concert.

  Sarah Dinsdale suddenly shouted, “I object, your honor! That question is prejudicial and implies I have already been found guilty!”

  The people in the court were shocked—she had dared to speak without the permission of the court! Sheriff Corwin grumbled something about Sarah being mighty darn guilty in his opinion.

  Judge Danforth glared down sternly at Sarah Dinsdale. “Nothing would please me more if you were
found to be innocent of those crimes of which you stand accused,” he said, his tone belying his words. “But do not forget you are forbidden to speak, woman. You would do well to be silent, lest the crime of casting a spell on a member of the court is added to your long list of crimes.”

  “What do you mean by ‘prejudicial’?” Mather inquired, idly scratching beneath his wig.

  Judge Danforth seemed satisfied with Sarah’s silence. He gestured for Goodman to break his. Goodman cleared his throat, apparently with some difficulty because he took quite a while doing it. Meanwhile, Mather folded his arms and drew himself to his full height. He had been waiting for this moment for some time and was impatient with Goodman’s delay.

  Finally Judge Danforth cleared his throat. Loudly. He and Goodman looked one another in the eye, and suddenly Goodman knew what to do.

  He spoke. “It was during winter,” he began softly, “and I was thinking of the pagan holiday then being observed by those citizens of the Old World, the very ones who persecuted we Puritans for not practicing religion properly. I happened to be walking by the modest home of Goodwoman Dinsdale. And I confess, I did think about her of my own free will.”

  “And what exactly,” asked Mather, “did you think about her?”

  “I thought it odd that such a pleasant young woman, so lovely and so hard-working, so obviously capable of running a household, was unwed. And at her age too.”

  “One might say the same about you, sir Goodman,” said Mather easily. A few women in the courtroom giggled, but Judge Danforth’s stern look quickly put a stop to that.

  Goodman blushed, and this pleased Sarah Dinsdale, although at the moment things did not look promising between them. “In any case, passing by Miss Dinsdale’s house, I perceived the distinct odor of mincemeat pie.”

  The audience gasped. It was forbidden to bake mincemeat pie in the winter, because in Europe the baking of mincemeat pie was a major part of celebrating Christmas, which Puritans believed was a pagan holiday.