by Dale Mayer
“Okay let’s go back to the beginning and start again. I don’t think we were ever introduced,” Hunter said easily. He reached out a hand. “Hi, I’m Hunter. Nice to meet you.”
She stared at his hand, then hesitantly shook it. “Hi. I’m …” And she stopped. A confused look came into her eyes. She turned to stare at Sebastian. “I’m …”
Hunter leaned forward, refusing to let her hand go. “Yes?”
She gave a quick head shake. “I’m Lacey,” she said firmly.
Hunter smiled. “Hi, Lacey. For whatever reason, you’ve always connected to Pompeii and another person who’s lived here, haven’t you?”
“Yes and no. I only heard about Linnea a few days ago.”
Sebastian leaned forward, watching her face. “Is this a past life?”
She started to pull her hand away, but Hunter held it firm. Sebastian didn’t know what Hunter was doing but could see the energy zip down his arm and across to hers, with little firings at her hand, as if she were struggling against the energy.
Finally Hunter released her hand. “It’s not a past life though, is it?”
Lacey made a tiny shake of her head; then she cried out in sudden pain. As if somebody cut a cord inside her. She collapsed forward, pitching into their arms.
Chapter 12
Lacey woke up flat on the ground, surrounded by the crew. Her gaze wandered from one to the other. “What happened?” Her voice was leaden and hard to use.
“You collapsed.” Chana crouched beside her. “You let out a weird shriek and just fell forward.”
Lacey stared at her, trying to remember what had happened. Her gaze drifted up to each crew member’s face before landing on Sebastian’s.
“I can’t say I feel too good,” she said, rubbing her head. “Did I fall on my head?”
“No,” Sebastian said gently. He bent down and helped her into a sitting position. “How is the head when you’re sitting?”
“Is there any water?” she whispered.
He reached for the water bottle he kept strapped on his belt, opening it up.
She drank greedily. When her thirst was finally quenched, she whispered, “Is it possible to go back to the apartment and lie down?”
“That’s exactly what I’d order you to do.” Sebastian helped her to her feet. “I’ll take you back there now.” He looked at everybody else. “She’s fine. Maybe it was the heat.”
The others looked at each other doubtfully and shrugged.
“Just another one of those weird things that’s been happening since we got back this time,” Tom said.
As she and Sebastian walked through the gates, back out to the main part of town, Sebastian said to her, “What happened?”
“I don’t know what.” Fatigue threaded through her voice. “But something on that site changed. Was anybody else there?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” he said. “It’s been open to the public, of course, so there could have been any number of strangers. But nobody from my team was there.”
She nodded slowly. “Somebody was definitely there,” she whispered. “I could feel it.”
“When?” he asked gently.
“Just before I pitched into your and Hunter’s arms,” she said. “Linnea was also back too.”
“And how long have you known about this?”
She stumbled just then. He steadied her and held her close until she got her footing again. “Since I started the drawings. So I stopped sketching, thinking that kept them away from me. And I didn’t want to tell anybody because, of course, it sounds like I’m off my rocker.”
“Except to me.”
“Yes,” she said, “but, since we were already causing enough talk, I didn’t want to add to it.”
“Understood. Now you want to explain to me what you were talking about?”
“As near as I can figure it, there’s a spirit whose name is Linnea. She was alive during the Pompeii time of the volcanic eruption. I can see a picture of her in my mind. I don’t know how real she is. She overlaps with the documentary I saw so long ago. I was just a child then, but I think something from that documentary is what fascinated me about this place, that era. Or maybe I connected to Linnea through the drawings and seeing all those buildings nobody else could see. I don’t know.” With a wave of her hand she tried to dismiss that part of the conversation. “But I was trying to be calm and quiet, and I asked why she was contacting me. And she said she needs help.”
“Help in what way?”
“She couldn’t say. But she said evil has returned.”
Sebastian stiffened.
She nodded. “I asked her, ‘What evil? How was the evil coming? Where was the evil from?’ But I couldn’t get any more answers from her. She kept disappearing at that point.”
“Did she appear afterward?”
“No,” she said, “and this is why I can’t guarantee it isn’t my imagination. It’s like she spoke in my head. I only saw her when my eyes were closed, which is in direct contrast to all the buildings I can see. I’m wondering if that car accident shook something loose in my brain,” she said in disgust. “Because I’m definitely different.”
“Chana said so too.”
Lacey stopped momentarily. “She did?” At his nod, she groaned. “This trip was supposed to be a dream-come-true. Only it’s completely changed my life and not in a good way.”
“Some trips are like that,” he said, a poor attempt at humor. “I think Hunter and Chana were speaking together when you pitched forward.”
She shot him a look of disbelief.
“You weren’t out for very long. Hunter disappeared then because, well, that’s what Hunter does.”
Sure enough, as they walked around to the corner of the building where the apartment entrance was, they found Hunter leaning against the doorway. His gaze was on her face, checking to see how she was doing.
She gave him a wan smile. “Maybe don’t talk to her again, huh?”
A smile flickered across his face. “Well, maybe not without more warning,” he said. “It’s a little hard to get answers if people don’t talk.”
“Sure, but both of us were talking in our head,” she said. Then she froze. “God, that sounds so weird.”
“Particularly when you use the pronoun our,” Sebastian said. “That’s curious.”
“I don’t know about curious,” she said as they headed for the apartment, “but it’s definitely a weird experience. I can’t get very much information from her. I don’t know who she is outside of her name or anything about what this evil is she’s talking about.”
At her apartment, Sebastian unlocked the door and let her inside. She gratefully collapsed on the couch. “I wouldn’t be averse to a cup of coffee, if one of you wants to put on a pot.”
Sebastian obediently walked over and made a pot of coffee, whereas Hunter sat on the couch beside her, his gaze intense. “What can you tell me about her?”
“She was young. But then they were all young back in that era, if old age was considered to be forty-seven,” she said with a half-smile. “I’d guess she’s fifteen, sixteen, maybe seventeen. I did understand she was part of a family with multiple siblings. And something about one sister being a prisoner.” She tried to fill Hunter in on all she knew as she didn’t know if he had a full picture of what was going on. “At the time I didn’t realize I was really talking to her,” she explained. “Only the last few days have I opened up the communication channel by simply asking her who she is and what she wants.”
“And what kind of evil is she talking about?”
“She couldn’t say, or she didn’t answer when I tried to get her to define what the evil was. Back then it could have been anything from an illness to a crazy man to bad weather, I suppose.”
Hunter nodded in understanding. “But it would be helpful if we got a little more information on her.”
Lacey closed her eyes, leaned her head back and mentally called out, Linnea, are you there? There was
a tiny rumble in her head. “She’s here,” Lacey said aloud. “But she’s not explaining or saying much.”
“Ask her how you can help,” Sebastian said as he stood in the doorway of the kitchen.
Without looking at him, she relayed the request. No answer.
“Is there anybody else you’ve been able to communicate with?” Hunter asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m in contact with her.”
“Sometimes these connections come and go. Maybe she was calling out, looking for somebody.”
“But she doesn’t seem to be calling out right now. She’s not even responding.”
“I might have scared her,” Hunter said.
“Yeah, that’s Hunter,” Sebastian said as he sat down. “One scary dude.”
She glanced from Sebastian to Hunter. “How come nobody else saw you there, when I passed out?”
“How do you know they didn’t see me?”
She gave him a half smile. “Because I’m not a fool. For whatever reason, you seem to go almost into stealth mode, and nobody sees you.”
He nodded. “That’s a good description. Stealth mode. I like it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s very freaky.”
“A woman who draws 3-D diagrams from thousands of years ago? Well, that’s also freaky,” he said.
She thought about it and then grinned. “Yeah, it’s pretty special, isn’t it?” She glanced over at Sebastian. “Did you show Hunter the other sketches I did?”
“No idea at this point, but I’d like to see them again.” He stood. “I’ll get them from my apartment.” He returned a few minutes later. She sat, zoned out, Hunter comfortably at her side, when Sebastian walked back in again with several sketchbooks. He handed the first one to Hunter.
He went through them and whistled. “Oh, wow. Even the ones I’ve seen before have incredible impact the second time around. You’re quite the artist.”
“No, I’m not,” she said cheerfully. “I used to do some stuff when I was a kid, but I never carried on with any of it.”
Hunter just nodded and flipped through the images. And then Sebastian handed him the other sketchbook. Hunter opened it to the page with the masks.
Her gaze was drawn to it like a moth to the fire. And her heart seized in her chest. She leaned closer so she could take a really good look at what she’d done. “I don’t remember doing this at all,” she whispered.
Hunter nodded, his fingers tracing Sebastian’s features. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I’d really like to know what was in your mind when you did this. There’s something almost familiar about these masks.”
She stared at the sketch of Sebastian and then at Hunter, both of them strong, capable, proud men. Neither fighting their masks, both wearing them with pride. “I don’t understand what the masks are all about,” she whispered.
“That’s okay. We never do right at the beginning,” Hunter said. “It’s amazing how much we can go through in life and not understand, and then, all of a sudden, something happens, and it’s like doors open.”
“So the door that opened was me arriving here?” she asked curiously. “Or was it the accident? I hit my head on the cement as I went down but I don’t think I hit it that badly.”
“Chances are it was both of those and likely much more,” Hunter said. “We’re like onions. We peel away layers. If you were meant to come to Pompeii, you listened and finally got here. That would have released a layer because the intuition tries so hard to get us to do what we’re supposed to do. And, when we ignore it, it’s frustrating. It has to start over again. When we don’t ignore it, when we do listen, it’s like a layer peels back.”
“So landing here was already one layer of my resistance taken away?”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” he said. “And, when you went to the actual site and connected with that same joy, that same sense of pride and exuberance of being here, chances are another layer fell away. When you got hit that night and landed on the ground, knocking yourself senseless, I would say that a third layer drifted away.”
“And so, with those three layers, whatever this is has thinned enough to be able to see things?”
“It’s like that layer of density between now and then,” Hunter said softly. “It thins and warps and changes. It softens. It gets hard again. Everybody thinks time is static, but it’s not. It’s dynamic. Physicists know this, but the common people can’t interpret that properly in any way that they can deal with on a day-to-day basis, so they ignore it.”
“And, in this case, for whatever reason, it thinned enough that I could connect with Linnea?”
“She probably connected with you first. Could she be the one who helped you with these drawings?”
“I don’t think so,” Lacey said. “I see those myself. I see those buildings, even see them in my camera.” She turned to look back at him. “Nobody else can see those buildings like I do.”
Sebastian nodded. “Nobody I’ve showed them to has been able to.” He motioned to the camera she hugged in her lap. “Maybe show Hunter.”
Eagerly she sat up and flicked through her photos. She had left the ones of the buildings on the camera, even though she had cleaned off all the others. When she got to the first one, she held it out for him. “What do you see?”
He looked at the picture and shrugged. “Hills, mountains, rocks, a few partial walls.”
She nodded. “And the next one?”
He had the same answer to them all. He glanced up at Sebastian. “Is that what you see?”
“Yes,” Sebastian said. “But not her.”
Hunter looked at her. “Tell me what you see.”
She motioned with her index finger where the buildings were and what she could see of them and how they were connected.
He grabbed her hand. “Now show me again.”
She watched his face change. All of a sudden, it appeared he could see what she saw.
He stared into the viewfinder of the camera, mesmerized. “Oh, wow.”
Sebastian joined them. “What? I can’t see anything,” he complained.
“By touching her,” Hunter said, “I’m accessing her energy. All that she knows and sees is flowing through me. And right now, I can see these buildings like she sees them.” With his other hand, he flicked back to the photos of her first sketches, bringing up the ones with the virtual buildings she’d drawn. “It looks just like that,” he said in amazement. He flicked back through the next pictures, still holding her hand. “This is amazing.”
“Right. And that’s why I don’t know what to do with this. Because, before now, this has never happened to me.”
“How do you know?”
She stared at him. “Well, I guess I don’t know obviously. But I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
He released her hand, letting Sebastian have a try.
But it didn’t work for Sebastian. Disappointed, he dropped her hand and said, “You know what an archaeologist would do to see everything you see right now when it comes to the dig?”
She smiled sadly. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, but it was obvious he was disappointed, more than disappointed, and quite devastated that Hunter could see, and he couldn’t. As if somebody had said, Hey, there’s another way for you to do this, only to find out you’re the only one that, once again, can’t do it.
And then Hunter asked the question that just blew her away.
He studied her face, leaned forward so he could look her directly in the eye and asked, “What’s your relationship with death?”
*
What a great question, Sebastian thought. Obviously it was right on target too because Lacey looked completely poleaxed. He watched as the tears came to the corner of her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. And he knew this would be about her mother.
She struggled to answer Hunter. “What do you mean?”
That was typical. Deflect a questio
n with another question, so it gave her time to answer. But, at this point, she had Hunter’s sympathy, Sebastian thought. Any discussion about her mother had to be painful.
“Has somebody close to you died? Did you watch them die over a long time? Did you have any involvement in their passing?”
At that last part she stared at him. “Are you asking if I murdered anybody?”
Hunter shook his head and patted her hand. “No, no, no. I know you’re not the kind to kill anybody.” And then he froze and said, “Well, you are, but it would be a mercy killing in your case.”
Her bottom lip trembled.
“I meant,” Hunter said, “if you had any experience with someone dying.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. My mother. She was very sick. She had breast cancer, stage four. They couldn’t do anything, though they tried. It was awful, right to the end. She passed away six months ago.”
He settled back into the couch and studied her. “How did you handle it?”
Bewildered, she said, “I handled it the way I handle everything. I tried to make the best of it, to make every day special. I tried to let her know she was loved. I tried to do anything I could to make her days easier.”
Hunter nodded thoughtfully. “Did you sit up with her through her last night?”
She stared at him, her eyes round as saucers. “How did you know?”
He gave her a small smile. “Did you not say on her deathbed that you wished you could join her? That you wished you could be with her? And that you would find a way to see her on the other side, wherever she ends up?”
Sebastian could see her saying exactly that and so much more. But then so many people would.
“Yes, to a certain extent,” she whispered, tears in her eyes yet again. “But she never got over the loss of my father. I know she was really leaving me to go to him.”
“So maybe you felt a bit of anger as well as a sense of betrayal, like she chose to be with him over you?”