by Fall, Carly
There was a beat of silence as she looked over at the crowd and tried to appear casual. She heard sirens and assumed they were coming for her.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come back to me, Margaret. You are my lifetime love.”
She cleared her throat as the words sunk in. Yes, she was definitely losing her grip on sanity. Lifetime love? Oh, please. As far as she was concerned, there was no such thing. Her own marriage had proved that people changed and fell out of love. Besides that, her father had loved her mother so much he’d left his family for another woman when Maggie was nine. She still felt the sting of remembering him walking out the door. She could count five people off the top of her head who were divorced. Lifetime love? It didn’t exist.
“And finally, after over a century, you stand here before me, as beautiful as the day I first laid eyes on you. Your hair is a little shorter, but everything else is the same, Margaret. You take my breath away.”
The deep baritone voice caressed her in the dimly lit tunnel, causing goose bumps on her skin. She slowly turned her head to look at him, certain she wouldn’t see anything. But there he stood, his gaze full of heat and longing. He looked as normal and as real as anyone else standing just a few feet away.
She studied him closely. A pulse beat at his throat. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moved up and down, and his chest rose and fell with each breath. How could no one else see him? She glanced over at Bill, waiting for him to burst out laughing and tell her it was part of the tour, that she was having a joke played on her.
“They’re coming for you, you know,” Joseph said.
Maggie wondered if he meant the guys in the white coats who were going to haul her off to the mental institution.
“The rescue trucks will be here soon.”
She couldn’t muster any words.
“I’m so happy to see you, Margaret, my beautiful wife,” he whispered.
He wasn’t real, and she certainly wasn’t his wife. This whole situation was just nuts. “But you don’t exist,” she whispered.
“Yes. Yes, I do, Margaret. I am very real.” Desperation laced his words, as if it was crucial that she believed what he was saying.
“I don’t understand. I don’t . . . understand any of this,” she said under her breath.
He knitted his brow, obviously frustrated.
“Miss? We have the ambulance waiting for you outside,” Bill said, approaching her. “Can I help you get on the train?”
“No, I’m fine,” Maggie said. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
Bill smiled, his old, blue eyes glittering under her miner’s headlight. “Sorry, but you have to go. It’s company policy.”
Maggie sighed and shivered. Maybe she did need a hospital. After all, she was having conversations with a man who didn’t exist. A man who made her heart beat quickly, who said he loved her.
As she walked toward the train, Joseph said, “Go to where we first met, Margaret. Go up Brewery Gulch. Your residence was one of the small rooms on the left. Perhaps it will jog your memories.”
Maggie sat down on the train with the other tourists, and the conductor rang the bell. She looked over her shoulder as they slowly passed through the tunnel. Joseph was still leaning against the wall where she had left him, his arms crossed over his chest. He gave her a small nod and a wave. She stared until she could only see the light of his headlamp as it faded into darkness. Turning toward the opening of the mine, she covered her eyes and squinted from the sunlight until they adjusted.
The train came to a stop, and the paramedics approached.
She answered their questions absent-mindedly, and the owner of the tour company insisted on loading her onto the ambulance. She assumed they were trying to cover their butts and decided not to fight it. No, she’d go along with this charade to move it along at a quicker pace. Sometimes it was easier to go with the flow than put up a fight.
As the ambulance drove her the short distance to the hospital, her mind churned. Was she nuts? Was she losing her mind? Or could it be possible that what Joseph said was true? What if she was talking to a ghost from the past? What if she had been married to him in another life?
“How are you feeling, ma’am?” the paramedic asked.
Disoriented. Confused. Scared. Excited. Completely freaked-out. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Good. They’ll just check you out make sure you didn’t hit your head too hard, and then if all looks okay, they’ll let you go.”
She nodded, hoping everything did indeed look fine. After all, she had to take a trip up Brewery Gulch.
Chapter 5
After being released from the hospital, Maggie rushed back to her hotel room, showered, and scoured the Internet for information on Brewery Gulch.
In 1880, Bisbee officially became a town with the establishment of the post office. Those beer-guzzling German-Swiss immigrants founded the first breweries on Brewery Avenue, which became known as Brewery Gulch.
With a combination of miners, ranch hands, and beer, there was also a need for brothels. It sounded like things got pretty crazy around Bisbee back in the day.
Armed with the information, Maggie went down to the office and asked for directions to Brewery Gulch. She was surprised when the receptionist told her to take a flight of stairs down to the main street and turn right up the hill.
As she walked up the hill to the Gulch, the feeling of unease intensified, and she again wanted to run away. But something kept her trekking up the street.
She knew when she reached the area Joseph had told her about. Her head spun, and she fully expected to see her heart burst out of her chest and land on the street. She stared up at a small, purple building with five doors, each leading into an incredibly tiny space.
Her world began shake, and she was afraid she was going to faint again, but this time in the middle of the street. She staggered to the side of the road and grabbed the three-foot cement wall below the purple building, noting the metal rings embedded in it. Closing her eyes, she prayed for the dizziness to stop.
It did, and when she opened her eyes, she gasped.
It was as if she had been transported back in time.
Dusk had set, with just a little sunlight still peeking over the mountain. A large, brown horse stood tied to the metal ring, the faint smell of smoke, garbage, and cooking meat wafting through the breeze. Men walked up the now-dirt street, most of them grimy and carrying miner helmets. They talked and laughed among themselves as they filed into their preferred bars. Some headed straight for the purple building that was now just untreated wood. A few of the doors opened upon their arrival, and the men disappeared inside.
Maggie stepped out to the middle of the street and noted a group of men coming at her. She tried to step out of the way but got tangled up trying to dodge them. To her surprise, they walked right through her. It was as if she had become . . . a ghost.
She scrambled back to the wall and watched in awe at everything going on around her. It was as if she had been transported back into a living, breathing history book, the very books she had immersed herself in for many, many years.
As the sun quickly set, candlelight flickered in the windows of the buildings, and men lit fires in fireplaces and in large containers in the middle of the street. People milled about, and the bar patrons got louder and louder. Maggie stood transfixed, unable to take her eyes off it all, a cauldron of fear, curiosity, and excitement her companions.
A man stumbled out of one of the bars and came over to the horse she was standing next to. She could smell the beer on his breath and strong body odor. He mumbled to himself as he struggled to untie the mare and took a few attempts to get on her back, but he eventually succeeded and disappeared toward town.
It seemed as though time warped, and suddenly, the Gulch came alive, its pulse beating wildly. Men staggered out of the bars, some heading up the hillside stairs to their homes, while others made their way further up Brewery Gulch toward the red-light
district. She remembered reading about the many houses of prostitution.
Despite everything going on around her, she kept gazing up at the small building, her heart pounding and her palms sweaty. For some reason, watching the comings and goings of the men out the little doors was terribly important to her.
Her breath caught as the second door from the left opened, and she saw a younger version of herself step out wearing a long blue-cotton dress that showcased her curves. She looked to be about sixteen or seventeen. Her large brown eyes flitted around, taking in everything, but she never met anyone’s gaze. It was as if no one would notice her if she didn’t make eye contact.
She had high cheekbones and a small mole on the side of her face in the exact same place she had one now. Her ample breasts were barely contained in the snuggly fit dress, and her waist was cinched tight, accentuating the flair of her hips. Her dark brown hair hung in soft waves down to the middle of her back, and she continued to avoid all eye contact with the passing men. Other doors in the small building opened, and women stepped out in curve-hugging dresses or lacey undergarments. Some drank out of liquor bottles, while others, like herself, seemed uncertain of what would come next.
One by one, the scantily clad women found men interested in what they had to offer, and they disappeared in their small spaces. All that was left was young Maggie and two other women.
Oh no.
Was she a prostitute?
She closed her eyes. What exactly was going on here? Everything around her seemed so real, so authentic. It was jarring and fascinating, yet it was almost as if she belonged here.
What an odd thought.
As if a magnet pulled her gaze, she looked over to one of the bars. Joseph emerged and stood on the steps. Unlike the other miners, he had cleaned up a bit and looked like a jewel in a garbage pit. His hair was slicked back, and his hands were only slightly tinged with dirt. His face was scrubbed clean, and although he held a glass filled with amber liquid in his hand, he seemed dead-on sober as he surveyed the street below him.
As he looked around, his eye trained on something, and Maggie followed his gaze. It had landed square on the younger version of Maggie, who stood in front of the small door in her blue dress.
Maggie felt bile rise in her throat as he moved across the busy street, his eyes never leaving her. As he approached, Maggie moved up the street so she could hear what words—if any—were exchanged between the two.
“Good evening, miss,” he said, giving her a slight bow.
“Good evening.” Her voice sounded so shy and she seemed so unsure of herself.
“I’d like to purchase your company for the evening,” he said.
Oh, God . . . she was a prostitute. She listened as the Maggie from the past quoted her service fees.
“Very well,” he said, reaching into his pocket and counting the money into her hand. “If I may say so, you are a very pretty lady. What’s your name?”
The Maggie from the past smiled shyly. “Margaret,” she said and turned for the door.
Maggie slid down the cement wall to her haunches.
What was this? She looked around and everything seemed so real. Was this really her in a past life? Was she witnessing something real, or was this connected to the hallucinations from the cave? It all seemed so familiar to her, like she belonged in this time. She wanted to cry and scream. She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands, wishing she’d never left home. Would she even be able to go back to the present, or was she stuck here in the past?
“That was the first time you and I met, Margaret,” a deep voice said from beside her. The warmth of the voice soothed her, and she slowly stood and met Joseph’s gaze.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ve been giving that some thought, and I can certainly understand why you would feel that way. However, that’s not the truth of the matter. I should have been a bit more tactful when approaching you in the mine. I should have realized that meeting me would be upsetting for you. I was just so . . . excited that you’d finally come back.”
Maggie looked around again and shook her head, uncertain of what to say.
“You were the prettiest thing I ever laid eyes on,” Joseph said, gazing up at the small door.
“I was a whore,” Maggie said, her cheeks burning with shame and embarrassment. “Nothing but a vessel for you to get your rocks off.”
There was a beat of silence, and she looked up at him again.
“I’m not certain what ‘get your rocks off’ means, Margaret,” he said quietly. “However, I’d like to finish telling you about our first night together.”
Maggie shook her head. “I don’t want to hear about it. You needed sex, you paid for it, and I gave it to you. That about sums it up, right?”
“On the contrary,” Joseph said, looking offended. “We did not make love.”
Maggie stared at the ground, trying to figure it all out. If her assessment was correct and she was a prostitute, he had just entered her place of business. If they didn’t have sex, what had happened? Maybe a little oral sex? Or . . . forget it. She couldn’t even think about it.
Suddenly, a fight in a bar spilled out to the street in front of them, and two men rolled around with fists flying, but very few connecting. Her pulse quickened, but Joseph ignored it as if it was something he’d seen a thousand times.
“Like I said, you were the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, and you looked a little out of place dressed in your gown with your shy smile. You weren’t like the other scantily clad whores, guzzling on their bottles. You were a lady. I felt there was something special about you, and I reckoned I needed to find out if I was right.”
Maggie gazed up at him again, and his half-grin melted her heart. She had to be going crazy, right? Here she was, feeling as though she was witnessing history, this amazing man as her guide. “Okay, so what did we do?”
He smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the light from the fire. “We had tea, Margaret. I bought out all your time for the night, and we sat in your little room and drank tea. Peppermint, as I recall.”
She couldn’t help but smile, and she wondered how she had fallen into prostitution.
As if he read her mind, Joseph said, “You hailed from an area outside of New York City. Your father was a poor farmer, and he . . . uh . . . he sold you to traffickers. You were forced into the profession. That night I saw you for the first time, you had just been brought in from another house in Texas. Thankfully, you hadn’t spent much time there.”
Joseph’s face grew angry and troubled as he watched the chaos around him. Anger flowed through her as well. How could a father do that to his daughter? Had she been a troublemaker? Had she slighted the family in some way? What was it with her and her . . . fathers? She wasn’t certain of her sanity at this point, but she wondered why the Maggie from the past also had a less that stellar father. She had read that selling a child to traffickers happened in the 1800s, but it wasn’t practiced very often. Then she had to remind herself that this whole setting before her was probably some type of dream. As she gazed around at the drunken debauchery, she thought about mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and dual personalities. Maybe she had suddenly come down with one of those—or perhaps all three.
“I hope your father has spent his days since his death burning in hell, Margaret,” Joseph said through clenched teeth, not meeting her gaze.
If this were all real, it touched her that he cared so deeply, and she laid her hand on his forearm, only to see it move right through his flesh. It was strange; he looked real—flesh and blood—as if she would be able to feel the warmth of his skin and the bones and brawny muscle underneath.
Neither said anything—only stared at where the contact should have been.
At that point, she decided she definitely needed psychiatric help.
Two men staggered out of the bar across the street, yelling at each other. One pulled a gun from
his waistband and pulled the trigger. His aim was off, and he missed the other man. He raised his gun again toward his intended target and was tackled from behind by another man. A whisper of fear went through Maggie as she watched the melee with abject fascination. A real life gunfight was happening right before her eyes! She supposed she should be more fearful, but the men walking up the street earlier had moved right through her. It was as if she were a ghost in this time period.
“Why don’t I see you back to where you’re staying, Margaret,” Joseph said in a low, calm voice as another gunshot rang through the air. “Let’s go back to the present. You don’t need to witness any of this.”
Chapter 6
The world started to spin again, and Maggie found herself in the exact same spot on the street that she had been standing with Joseph. Thankfully, the street was empty, and no one had witnessed her clutching the cement wall.
There wasn’t a fight or gunshots. She glanced up at the small building with the doors, and there weren’t any prostitutes—namely her—standing in the doorways. Just a cute, little purple building. The smell of smoke, cooking meat, and beer was gone. How was this happening?
Everything was as it had been, with the exception of Joseph. He still stood next to her.
“Are you okay, Margaret?” he asked.
She nodded hesitantly. Did drifting from one century to another and back again constitute someone being okay? She didn’t think so, but if this apparition seemed all right with it, then she would try to be as well. “Yes, thank you.”
“Let’s go back to your hotel. Where are you staying?”
As she took him in, a feeling of trust came over her. In this whole adventure between reality and illusion, Joseph was the common denominator—the cohesiveness that seemed to keep everything together. If she was going to be bouncing around between centuries, she wanted him as her tour guide.
Then again, maybe he was the cause of all this craziness. Could he be slipping her drugs somehow? She tried to remember any contact between them and couldn’t. But really, who knew?