The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3)

by John A. Heldt

  Grace pondered Pete's words. He was right. It was cold, very cold, and Helena was several miles away. Grace wasn't prepared to walk back to town – or even to Gold Mine Road – but she wasn't sure that mattered now.

  She believed there was a time portal inside Colter Mine and knew she had to either stop Joel from entering it or follow him through it. Returning to Seattle alone was no longer an option.

  "You run along, Pete. I'll be OK," Grace said.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't do that. I won't leave you here by yourself."

  Grace put a hand on Pete's shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  "But I won't be alone."

  "What do you mean?" Pete asked. "There's no one else out here."

  "There will be soon," Grace said. "I promise."

  "I don't understand."

  "Then let me explain. Do you remember the college kid you brought here last spring? The one who gave you only four bucks?"

  "Yeah," Pete said. "Of course."

  "Well," Grace said as she smiled satisfactorily. "I'm meeting him."

  CHAPTER 6: GRACE

  Grace needed only another minute to convince Pete that he would not be leaving her to the wolves, hypothermia, or a fate that might land him in a police station the next day. She left him with the clear impression that Joel Smith was more than just an acquaintance and that the mine was merely a departure point for bigger and better things.

  When Pete drove the DeSoto through the lot and headed back down the mountain, Grace grabbed her small suitcase, walked toward the entrance of the mine, and sat on a boulder. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was eight forty-five, and returned her attention to the lot.

  Despite the cold temperature and a brisk wind, Grace felt fairly warm. She had dressed for the occasion and prepared for a long wait. But no sooner than she tucked her hands into the pockets of her long coat, the doubts set in.

  What if Joel didn't show? What if he had already come and gone? What if he'd had second thoughts and was on his way back to Seattle? What was she prepared to do then? Grace pulled his letter from a pocket and reread a relevant line.

  "On December 8, I entered the same mine and returned to my time."

  She had the date right, all right. But did she have the hour? The sun had been up less than sixty minutes. Was it possible that Joel had already passed this way? Of course, it was possible. He had been in a hurry to return to his time. He would not have sat on this boulder and waited for her or anyone else. He would have entered the mine without a second thought.

  Grace looked at the black hole that defaced the mountain and again questioned the wisdom of this journey. Abandoned mines were inherently dangerous places. She had read on the plane that Montana had literally thousands of mines and that many had been boarded up precisely because they posed serious risks to anyone brave enough – or stupid enough – to enter them.

  No boards, however, covered the entrance to Colter Mine, and no signs warned curious explorers against seeking answers within. The adit – or passage into the mine – appeared dark and dusty but otherwise no less inviting than Aunt Edith's attic or an alley in downtown Seattle.

  Grace got up from the boulder and paced back and forth for ten minutes as she weighed possible actions and consequences. There was a downside, of course, to waiting too long. If Joel had already passed through the portal, she would have only hours, maybe minutes, to do the same and have a chance to see him again.

  Joel had presumably left Seattle Saturday morning and arrived in Montana Saturday night. Grace could not imagine him loitering in a Helena hotel or eating a late breakfast, not after spending all day Sunday doing nothing. She could imagine him traveling to the mine with the rising sun and entering it at the first opportunity. He knew what he was doing. She did not.

  Grace glanced at the mine entrance. Did she dare enter the tunnel without Joel? Did she dare wait another minute? She checked the time. Nine o'clock. The sun was higher now and brighter. Water rolling down icicles on nearby trees began to drop to the forest floor. The day was coming to life. It was a sign, she thought. It was time to get moving.

  Deciding that there was no harm in stepping inside the mine and escaping the bite of the wind, Grace returned to the boulder and picked up her suitcase. It contained clothes, cash, documents, photographs, and the Christmas card she had given to Joel.

  She felt sad and empty when she thought about the January ski trip she'd had to cancel, but she vowed that her present to Joel would be a gift delayed and not a gift denied. She would deliver the goods, even if it meant delivering them in the twenty-first century.

  Grace took one last look at the lot and the road. No taxi worked its way toward her. Nothing worked its way toward her. No matter. Even if Joel had come and gone, she would find him. If he passed through later in the day, she would find him just the same. Of that she was sure. But before she could find him, she had to enter the mysterious hole in this unfamiliar place.

  Grace walked toward the adit, pulled a flashlight from a pocket of her coat, and pushed the switch. A bright beam shot forward. Thank God for batteries, she thought.

  When she reached the entrance, Grace said a silent prayer. She asked for guidance and a happy outcome. On a day when so many Americans were preparing for unhappy outcomes, she hoped to find something a bit more positive and hoped to find it fast. She needed to get her show on the road and find the answers to questions she had only begun to ask.

  Grace pointed the light toward the darkness and sighed. It was time, she thought. It was time. Gathering her courage and her bag of belongings, she bravely stepped forward into the void. She entered Colter Mine on a cold December morning and left her world behind.

  CHAPTER 7: GRACE

  The mine worked its magic quickly. It sent Grace to a different time in less than a minute, though not the time she had anticipated. As the woman in the blue gingham dress and wool coat moved slowly through the narrow passage, she drifted not to 2000 but – mentally, at least – to 1937. That was the year seventeen-year-old Grace Vandenberg and three fearless friends had explored a cave near Nanking, China, in search of treasure.

  Grace smiled as she recalled the last summer of her idyllic youth. More tomboy than princess, she had rarely passed up an opportunity to have boy-like fun, whether exploring caves and jungles, throwing mud balls along the Yangtze, or playing tag in the village. She liked to test her mettle and push her limits and saw an opportunity to do both in Colter Mine.

  The similarities between the cave in China and the mine in Montana were easy to spot. Both had trash, bats, and rats – visible reminders of past and present occupation. Each was deep and dark. Visitors to both places needed flashlights or lanterns to find their way around.

  The differences were no less obvious. The cave was a natural wonder filled with stalagmites, stalactites, and subterranean streams. The mine was a man-made wonder filled with reinforced wooden beams, steel rails, and ghosts of an industrial past.

  Grace looked for signs that a cowboy had passed this way but found nothing to suggest he had. As she plunged deeper into the tunnel, she saw fewer cigarette butts and beer bottles and more bats and rats. She doubted that more than a handful of people had explored the farthest reaches of this mine since men had extracted its gold more than forty years earlier.

  The dust in the adit was thick and made breathing and seeing difficult. A hundred yards into her jaunt, Grace pined for the clean air and bright daylight she had left behind. Even with a powerful flashlight, she found it impossible to see very far. So she proceeded slowly.

  When she reached a spot under a beam that was visibly free of rodents and rubbish, Grace stopped for a moment to rest and collect her thoughts. She wondered how much farther she would have to travel before finding some answers, if not the actual object of her affection.

  Grace looked at the lens of her flashlight and saw it was covered with dust. She wiped the lens with her coat sleeve and then, on a whim, turned the light off. Fo
r nearly thirty seconds, she could not even see her hands.

  When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, Grace glanced back at the mine's entrance. What she saw surprised her. She saw an opening that looked more like a dot than a doorway and nothing like the spacious gateway she had accessed just minutes earlier.

  Then Grace peered ahead and saw something she had not seen before: a soft blue light that flickered in the distance. She sighed and smiled as she considered the significance of the sight. She had found more than just another source of light. She had found the glowing room.

  Grace turned on the flashlight and stepped forward, hopelessly drawn to a geologic wonder that had heretofore existed only in a letter. Within a matter of seconds, the mysterious display was visible even through the light-reflecting dust. Filled with growing excitement, Grace picked up the pace and moved as quickly as she could in her saddle shoes.

  When she reached her destination, she turned to face the room and stood in awe. Blue phosphorescent light filled a chamber about the size of a large house trailer.

  Grace peered through the doorway to the attraction beyond but found no conventional source of illumination. The dazzling light seemed to emanate directly from sheer walls that looked like they had been cut from the earth with precision instruments.

  Grace ducked to avoid a low-hanging beam and entered the room. Once inside, she lowered her suitcase to the ground and took stock of the place. It was even more impressive close up.

  Mesmerized by the flickering blue light, she walked toward a wall and pressed a hand to its surface. The wall was cool to the touch and as smooth as glass. No wonder Joel had been drawn to this place. It was amazing.

  Grace knew a chamber such as this would be the talk of any academic conference. But was it a portal to the future? She stepped toward the back of the room to search for clues but stopped in her tracks when she heard a rattling sound she had heard only in movies.

  When Grace heard the sound again, she glanced at a far corner of the room and saw something slither on the ground. Whatever it was – and she had a pretty good idea – it was big. The creature stopped, lifted its head, and slithered toward Grace. When it rattled again, she screamed.

  "Bad snake!" Grace said. "Bad snake!"

  Grace stared at the creature with wide eyes. It was a snake all right – big, brown, and no doubt full of enough venom to put her down with a single bite. Even so, Grace did not race for the exit. She instead stood her ground and shook a finger at her inhospitable host.

  "You're a very bad snake. You scared me," Grace said. "You stay right there."

  The reptile did as instructed. Perhaps impressed by trespasser's resolve or charmed by her beauty, it advanced no farther. It formed a coil and stuck out its tongue.

  Grace took a moment to catch her breath but did not take her eyes off the beast. She knew from similar encounters with snakes in the Philippines that you never turned your back on something that could slither faster than you could run. She sighed with relief as the serpent slid out of its coil and retreated toward the far wall.

  Grace didn't wait for the unpredictable reptile to hand her its business card. When she was sure it would stay put, at least for a while, she stepped backward and raised her arms. She kept them raised until she felt the low-hanging beam and decided it was finally safe to look down, grab her suitcase, and leave.

  She quickly reentered the main tunnel, where darkness, dust, and beady-eyed creatures awaited. Grace didn't care. Even darkness, dust, and beady-eyed creatures beat venomous snakes with needle-like fangs.

  Grace gave the glowing room a final look and proceeded toward the mine's entrance. She wasn't sure she had fulfilled her obligations to the operators of this geologic funhouse, but she suspected she had done all she could do for now.

  Grace saw no new doorways or chambers or magic levers or wall-mounted instructions. She saw only the usual sights in an unusual place that she was all too happy to leave.

  Having seen the worst that the mine had to offer, Grace moved confidently through the dark, dangerous space. She no longer cared about bats that hung inches above her head or rats that scurried between the rails. She would be free of them in minutes.

  As Grace drew closer to the entrance, however, she became more anxious than confident. Something had changed in her absence and that change posed a potential problem. Thick boards now covered what had been an unobstructed opening.

  The barrier was not the only change. When Grace reached the entrance, she peered through a gap between the boards and saw leaves on trees, weeds where a rusted Ford had once stood, and buildings that had aged decades in minutes. One leaned like the Tower of Pisa.

  The sky too looked different. The sun loomed higher above the horizon and the air it heated was noticeably warmer and drier. If Grace had any doubts that she had arrived in another time, if not another place, they were gone – long gone.

  Grace inspected the obstruction and looked for an easy way out but didn't see one. What she saw was a slit on one side that barely accommodated her suitcase.

  She knew she could never pass between the boards and the beam wearing her coat and feared she would not be able to pass wearing her dress. As it turned out, she needed only to shed the former. She pushed her coat and her suitcase through the narrow opening, turned to her side, and shimmied through the gap like a limbo dancer. Petite frames had their advantages.

  Grace collected the coat and the suitcase and checked the time. It was nine forty-five – at least nine forty-five on December 8, 1941. What time it was in this world was anyone's guess.

  Grace assumed she had emerged in the year 2000. She hoped she had emerged in 2000. The idea that she might be stuck in another year was too unsettling to contemplate.

  The time traveler did not have the answer. She did not have any answers. She knew only that she had to keep moving until she found a person who could provide all the answers she needed.

  CHAPTER 8: GRACE

  Grace needed thirty minutes to descend a road that Pete needed ten to climb, but she did not mind the walk. The exercise felt nice on what she guessed was a late spring day. The breathtaking mountain scenery also allowed her to take her mind off something that was obvious the minute she had emerged from the mine: she had crossed a line and there was no going back.

  As she approached the end of the narrow access road, Grace noticed that the flora and fauna weren't the only things that had changed. So had the visible signs of human development. A massive log mansion sat a stone's throw from the intersection with Gold Mine Road, an intersection that had been conspicuously free of buildings on the drive to the mine.

  Grace walked across the road to a long empty driveway and finally to the steps of the two-story residence. A life-sized black bear, carved from a log, greeted her with beady eyes and menacing paws as she approached the door and rang the bell.

  The visitor pressed the doorbell twice, but each time the gesture was greeted by silence. She knocked on the door, with a similar result. Grace stepped out onto a large, well-manicured front lawn and lifted her eyes. Music streamed faintly out an open second-floor window. She pressed the doorbell again. The third time was not a charm.

  Sensing that someone was home or at least on the property, Grace walked around the mansion and then investigated three smaller structures that flanked the residence. She found a tool shed with an open door, a greenhouse full of flowers, and what looked like the world's largest doghouse – but no people.

  Grace cautiously approached the freshly painted dog hotel, which featured two paned windows, a shingled roof, and a welcome mat that read: KILLER. The occupant, a golden retriever, killed the living daylights out of a large leather bone but little else. When Grace summoned the pooch, he rushed forward and licked her on the face. A guard dog he wasn't.

  Grace gave Killer a killer belly rub and then resumed her tour of the premises. She considered leaving a note for the dog's owners but quickly dismissed the idea. She didn't have a pen and didn't kno
w what leaving a note would accomplish. She needed direct human contact and needed it soon. Helena was a long walk away.

  When she reached the south side of the mansion from the spacious backyard, she looked into the distance and saw a small red vehicle race up Gold Mine Road. It slowed as it passed the house and finally came to a stop at the intersection with the access road.

  Grace watched with interest from a hundred yards out as the car sat in the intersection for nearly a minute. She saw two occupants but could not tell whether they were young or old, male or female, or even residents of the area. Not that it mattered. They were her ride into town. She raced toward the vehicle with an arm in the air.

  When Grace reached the end of the driveway, she waved and shouted, and appeared to gain the attention of one of the vehicle's occupants. The passenger briefly looked her way. The driver, however, kept his eyes forward. He turned onto the access road and proceeded slowly up the hill. A moment later, the red car disappeared behind a cluster of trees.

  Grace dropped her arm, sighed, and walked dejectedly back to the house. When she reached the front door, she sat beside her suitcase and coat on the top step and pondered her next move. She wanted to believe that she had several options, but she knew, as a practical matter, that she had only two. She could stay put or hit the road.

  Grace found the first option appealing. By curling up to the door, she could get needed rest. She was tired, both physically and mentally, and wanted a respite. She had not slept well at the airport and desired rest even more than she desired food. By sitting on the front porch, she could also keep an eye on the intersection. If Joel came walking down the mountain, she could be in his arms before he had a chance to apologize.