Ignoring the endless mounds of bat droppings, he continued along the passageway. As he neared the end of the corridor, he began to feel a dull throb in each of his temples. A dull throb that turned into an acute burst of pain as he entered a large chamber, this one housing a dark pool of still water.
Draygan is near.
Shining the flashlight across the chamber, Gideon discovered the skeletal remains of half a dozen men, all of whom still held their weapons—repeating rifles, muskets, and a bow and arrow in the case of one skeleton—in an eternal death grip.
Had they, like him, come to slay the beast?
Gideon had no time to ponder the question, suddenly hearing an ominous rumble that emanated from a corridor on the far side of the chamber. Beneath his booted feet, the ground began to vibrate as dust motes and other loose debris fell from the limestone ceiling. Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, Gideon unholstered his Colt pistol. Despite the unbearable pain in his head, he held his weapon steady as he aimed it at the passageway opposite.
Just then, Draygan entered the chamber.
Its red eyes gleaming, the beast came to a shuddering halt as it took Gideon’s measure. A mammoth, winged chimera, it stood nearly ten feet in height with a leathery, gray hide. An abomination if ever there was, it looked as though it had been conceived in the fiery pits of hell.
“I am Gideon MacAllister… and I have come to kill you,” he announced, wincing from the burst of pain that ricocheted from one temple to the other.
His announcement made little impression on Draygan, and the beast stared at him with eyes that eerily glowed in the dim light cast by the flashlight. In that chilling moment, he realized that his nemesis was a mythical creature whose very existence disproved the laws of science and defied the dictates of enlightened reason.
Able to hear Draygan’s sonorous voice inside his head, Gideon flinched as he listened to the oft-spoken words, “Evil will descend upon the land of the Greenbrier. The red man cometh. Those in high places will perish in the flames of hell. So sayeth the Beast.”
“Damn you and your nonsensical utterances,” Gideon hissed between clenched teeth. Bracing his legs, he leveled his weapon and took aim, intending to fire a silver bullet straight into the dragon’s heart.
In the next instant, Gideon pulled the trigger, horrified to hear an impotent click echoing off the walls of the stone sanctuary, the bullet having jammed in the chamber.
Cursing under his breath, Gideon flung the useless revolver aside before he unsheathed his cavalry saber. If this was how it was to end, so be it. He’d looked death in the face innumerable times on countless battlefields. As on those brutal occasions, he was filled with an insatiable bloodlust. An unholy desire to kill or be killed.
Draygan, staring at him with a preternatural awareness, suddenly extended his wings as he lumbered forward. Acting purely on instinct, Gideon raised his saber and swung it toward the beast’s neck, intending to decapitate his enemy.
Draygan is only a reflection of you. What you do unto Draygan, you do unto yourself.
As though he’d just plucked those words from the ether, Mother Maebelle’s cryptic warning from several weeks prior came to Gideon in a flash.
Not giving himself time to think, Gideon suddenly pivoted on his heel, purposefully striking a large boulder just to the right of Draygan. The sword blade snapped in two, orange sparks flying through the air. No sooner did the broken blade hit the pitted floor of the chamber than Gideon was blindsided with an excruciating burst of pain. No different than if he’d been shot in the head point-blank.
But that pain in no way compared to the agony he suffered when Draygan opened his mouth and struck him with a fiery burst, the red-hot flame hitting Gideon in the center of his chest. A scalding blast, it lifted him off his feet and sent him hurling through the air.
As he slipped into what he feared would be an eternal sleep, Gideon yearned to tell Jessica how much he loved her. Forever and a day.
That was Gideon’s last thought before his world turned dark, the beast having won the bout.
* * *
“Come back to me, Gideon… come back to me,” Jessica murmured anxiously as she stepped onto the back stoop.
On most days, she took an unabashed delight in the awesome view, but today she only saw the bare, leafless trees that dotted the desolate landscape. Like so many stark effigies.
Gideon had been gone all night. Unable to sleep, Jessica had tossed and turned as she’d listened for him to walk through the front door. Several hours before dawn, she’d finally fallen asleep, only to wake up with the sunrise and discover that five inches of snow had fallen. Old Man Winter had arrived with a bone-chilling abruptness.
What if Gideon left the house without a coat? He could be stranded somewhere, suffering from frostbite or hypothermia.
Beset with fearful thoughts, Jessica once again scanned the horizon, hoping to see a speck of movement on the snow-covered hills. With the exception of the four black ravens that circled overhead, it was as though that part of the world had come to a complete standstill. Frozen in time.
Having waited as long as she could, Jessica removed her Smartphone from the back pocket of her cargo pants. Although it was early to be calling someone, especially on a Saturday morning, this was an emergency situation.
“I’m sorry that I woke you,” she apologetically blurted when a noticeably sleepy voice answered the phone.
“What’s the matter?” Darlene Malone demanded, suddenly sounding exceptionally alert.
“It’s Gideon… He’s been gone all night, and I’m worried to death about him.”
“The two of you had a little tiff, huh?”
“Calling you is like phoning The Psychic Hotline,” Jessica muttered. “Although there was nothing ‘little’ about it. In fact, we had a humdinger of an argument. After which, Gideon stormed out of the house, saddled Blaze, and took off for God knows where.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, honey. But if it’s any consolation, the makeup sex will probably be incredible.” The other woman laughed, the hearty sound temporarily lifting Jessica’s spirits. “How about I call J.W. and send him out to search for Gideon?”
“And how about I thank you from the bottom of my heart?” Jessica gushed. “While I’m not altogether certain, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Gideon may have ridden out to Hell’s Hole.”
There was a noticeable pause on the other end of the line.
“You don’t think he went looking for Draygan’s lair, do you?” Darlene said at last.
“Maybe… I’m not sure. A few weeks ago, he expressed an interest in finding Draygan, but—” Jessica stopped in mid-stream, too overwrought to continue. If there really was a dragon out there, Gideon could be in an enormous amount of danger.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Darlene said in a soothing tone of voice. “We’re gonna find him.”
“Please make it sooner rather than later.” Again, Jessica scanned the horizon, hoping to see an approaching horse and rider.
“Gideon will come riding down that mountain soon enough,” Darlene stated matter-of-factly, having correctly intuited the direction of Jessica’s gaze. “So I suggest you go inside, put on a pot of coffee, then get busy knitting some baby booties.”
“First of all, I don’t know how to knit. And secondly, how the heck did you know I was standing outside?”
“How do I know anything?” came the enigmatic reply. “And by my count, you’ve got eight months to learn how to knit one, purl two.”
“On that note, I’m hanging up,” Jessica grumbled, not in the mood to make coffee, let alone teach herself how to knit. “And Darlene… thank you. You’re a true friend.”
Relieved that J.W. would search for Gideon, Jessica hit the disconnect button and slipped the phone into her back pocket. Then, forcing herself to put one snow boot in front of the other, she headed for the carriage house. Fretting over Gideon’s absence wouldn’t bring him home any sooner so she d
ecided to tend to the morning chores—feeding the birds, shoveling the snow off the back steps, forking some hay into Blaze’s shed—anything to occupy her time and alleviate her troubled thoughts.
Opening the set of double doors on the front of the carriage house, Jessica stepped inside. Propped in the far corner were the snow shovel and a large bag of rock salt. After loading both items into a wheelbarrow, she trudged back through the snow toward the back stoop. There she ripped open the bag of rock salt, picked up the shovel, and began to clear the snow from the top step.
Several minutes later, she was halfway through shoveling a path between the stoop and the carriage house when she heard a vehicle pull into the front driveway.
Hallelujah! That must be J.W. dropping off Gideon.
“I’m back here,” she called out, anxiously smoothing a hand over her cable-knit sweater and readjusting her wool cap.
Hearing a footfall, she turned around with a welcoming smile on her face—a smile that instantly fell flat.
Oh, God. Jessica’s stomach queasily lurched at finding herself face to face with her estranged husband, Richard Bragg.
“Richard… Wh-what are you d-doing here?” she stammered.
His thin lips twisted into a nasty sneer. “I would think that’s obvious. I’ve come to claim what’s mine.”
Chapter 28
Sarah slowly approached him. With an almost funerary air hovering about her person, she raised an ornately carved picture case. Gideon immediately recognized the hinged frame—it was the same one that contained the daguerreotype they’d sat for on their wedding day. He’d had the case specially crafted and delivered all the way from Richmond.
Gazing directly at him, Sarah unlatched the case and held the two opened halves in front of her chest. But this case did not contain their wedding portrait. Instead, it contained a curious pictogram of an upright triangle encircled by an Ouroboros, a dragon biting its own tail.
“Your end is your beginning,” Sarah whispered as she raised the case and offered it to him. “As is mine. But only if you return to me. This is the day, the only day, that you can ever relive. For this is the day of atonement.”
Gideon took the proffered case. The seconds silently slipped past as he tried to decipher the meaning of the pictogram, certain that it contained a hidden message of great import.
“Please tell me what it means,” he pleaded, his gaze riveted by the upright triangle contained within the Ouroboros.
“The answer lies within your own heart.”
Startled, Gideon glanced up, taken aback to see that it was Jessica Reardon who now stood before him. He craned his neck from side to side… but Sarah was nowhere in sight.
And then he remembered—Sarah and Jessica were one and the same.
Gideon shook his head, still baffled by the pictogram’s cryptic symbols. “The only thing contained within my heart is my undying love for you.”
“Then act on that love, Gideon. Let love be your guide.”
“I will. Just as soon as I find the beast known as Draygan. I have taken a vow to slay the—”
Jessica placed a hand over his mouth, silencing him. “Draygan is the conduit, the portal between worlds. Only a chosen few are given the chance to live again. I beg you not to squander Draygan‘s gift.”
“Ha! A fine gift I’ve been given, when the beast bedevils me at every turn,” Gideon scoffed, angered that she would come to the creature’s defense. “I will slay the dragon; after which, we shall live ever more in love’s light.”
“Do that and we will once again live in death’s shadow,” Jessica replied.
Her pronouncement filled Gideon with a dark foreboding. He’d lived in death’s shadow once before—when Sarah died—and he did not think he could withstand such torment a second time.
“Then tell me what I must do to safeguard our love,” he entreated, willing to do whatever was necessary to keep their love alive.
“All you have to do is come back to me, Gideon… simply come back to me,” Jessica murmured before she turned and walked away.
“Please don’t go,” he implored, lunging forward to grab hold of her arm.
But he was too late. She had already vanished into thin air.
* * *
Gideon awoke with a start, gasping for air.
To his surprise, he found himself reposed beneath a sturdy pine tree, covered in a thick mantle of newly fallen snow. He peered at the tree that hovered above him, the branches drooping with the weight of their wintry burden. A few seconds later, as he roused himself from what had been a deep, enchanted sleep, a light breeze rattled the sturdy pine and sent a limb’s worth of snowflakes wafting to earth, dusting his face.
Baffled as to what he was doing there, Gideon lurched to his feet. He surveyed his surroundings with his hands on his hips, noting that the snow-clad hillside was as still and quiet as a grave.
Which was precisely where he thought he’d find himself on this snowy morn, certain that he’d met his demise. Certain that he had joined those other lost souls whose skeletal remains littered Draygan’s lair. While he could not recall in any great detail his encounter with Draygan—as most soldiers cannot recall the minutiae of a battle just fought—he did have a clear recollection of the beast exhaling a fiery blast, inflicting a wound of excruciating pain. At the time, it’d felt like the dragon had ripped his still-beating heart from his chest.
Curiously enough, this morning he suffered no pain whatsoever.
If the near-deadly encounter in the cave really did occur, how had he come to be sleeping beneath a pine tree that was situated at least a mile away from Hell’s Hole? Even more puzzling, his horse Blaze was tethered to a nearby branch.
As he turned full circle to get his bearings, Gideon noticed his cavalry saber sticking upright in the snow not far from where he stood. Frowning, he stomped over to retrieve it.
“How can this be?” he murmured as he grasped the hilt and pulled the saber out of the ground.
Raising the completely intact weapon, he closely examined it. The sword shone as though newly forged, yet he distinctly remembered the blade breaking in two when he’d swung it against the stone wall of the cave.
Had it been nothing more than a dream?
Bewildered, Gideon slid the saber into the scabbard belted around his waist. That was when he noticed that the front of his uniform tunic was scorched with a black circle.
So it did happen. He did enter the cave, and he did meet Draygan in mortal combat. Moreover, he’d survived to tell the tale. But to what end?
Anxious to return home to Highland House so that he could sort through the curious conundrum, Gideon untied his horse’s reins from the pine tree. As he did so, he noticed a strange marking incised into the bark of the tree trunk—an upright triangle encircled by a dragon biting its own tail. An Ouroboros, the same symbol that he’d been shown in his dream. The same symbol that he’d also seen in the vision given to him by Mother Maebelle four weeks ago.
“Who went to the trouble of carving this where I’d be sure to see it?” he wondered aloud as he fingered the marking. Unless he was greatly mistaken, an upright triangle was the alchemical symbol for fire.
Those in high places will perish in the flames of hell.
As Gideon pondered the meaning of the carved symbol, he suddenly wondered if there was a connection between the pictogram and the unintelligible message that Draygan continually tried to communicate to him. Was it possible that “high places” was a veiled reference to Highland House? Or more specifically, a reference to Sarah’s tragic death in the fire that had occurred at Highland House one hundred and fifty-one years ago to the day?
That it was the anniversary of her death took Gideon by surprise. In his dream, Sarah had told him that this was the day—indeed, the only day—that he could ever relive.
But how could anyone relive a day that had come and gone fifteen decades ago?
And what did the Ouroboros have to do with Sarah’s death? He
knew the ancient symbol of a dragon biting its tail represented eternity and—
—the repeating nature of life, he realized with a start.
In that instant, it suddenly dawned on him that both the pictogram and Draygan’s cryptic message could be a dire warning that another fire would occur at Highland House. Except this time, it would be Jessica, not Sarah, who would meet a fiery death at the hands of the “red man.”
“No,” he croaked, assailed with a deep, visceral pain. Tears stinging his eyes, Gideon feared that he might be too late. He’d been gone all night—plenty of time for disaster to have struck.
Estimating that he was a good thirty-minute ride from the house, Gideon hefted himself into the saddle, chastising himself for having left Highland House in the first place. All he wanted, all he’d ever wanted, was to spend his life with the woman he loved. And had loved for so many lifetimes. Forever and a day.
But this time he would not take forever in vain. If God would only grant him a second chance, this time, he would put love above all else.
* * *
Still in a state of shock, Jessica stared at her estranged husband. As she did, she took note of the perfectly pressed chinos, Maine duck boots, white button-down shirt, and walnut-brown barn jacket. Not a red hair out of place.
Lips turned down at one corner, Richard, in turn, gave Jessica a perfunctory appraisal, his gaze traveling the length of her body before resettling on her face. “You’ve changed. And for the worse, I see.”
Although Jessica would never admit it, the snide remark hurt. But then, Richard had always been skillfully adept at emotionally hitting below the belt.
“Wh-what are you d-doing here?” she stammered. All of her old hang-ups, all of her old fears, were instantly resurrected. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Are you deaf?” he sneered. “I told you already… I’ve come to claim what’s mine.”
Our Time Is Now Page 26