by Bryan Davis
After laying the wallet on his chest, I returned to Clara and set the items on the desk. “If you have to leave, hide the shotgun and shells in the ladies’ room downstairs so we’ll know where to find them when we get back.”
Clara grabbed a rolling shotgun shell and stood it upright. “If we have to leave, you might have a hard time getting back.”
“Maybe not,” Daryl said. “Daryl Red might be able to get you home.”
“And what if she has to hide, too?” I asked.
“Stop being a worrywart. I found the security codes for all the doors. In fact, I can change them from here if I want to. Daryl Red can change the codes there, too, so we can frustrate the bad guys for quite a while.”
“Are you taking the mirrors?” Clara Blue asked.
“Just one of them.” I picked it up and tucked it under my arm. “Better odds to keep one of them safe.” I led Kelly and Francesca to the center of the room. “Ready with the lights?”
Clara Blue walked to the wall and flipped the switch. “Here we go.”
The trumpet fixtures on the perimeter wall flashed on, sending white beams toward the ceiling. When they bounced from the apex, they forked into dozens of semitranslucent shafts that reshaped into brilliant vertical bars around us and melted our surroundings.
The forest scene materialized at all sides. Racing clouds seemed to put on the brakes and slow to a normal speed. Instead of plummeting, leaves floated to the ground in meandering spirals, blown off their erratic paths by gusts of wind.
In the distance, a bank of dark clouds spread a blanket across the sun and cast a deep shadow over us. Lightning flashed. The cloud-to-ground strike sent a rumbling boom across the forest and tremors through the ground. Large raindrops pelted the leafy floor, making a crackling sound. A fresh breeze blew through my hair, cool and invigorating as it kicked up a swirl of dead leaves at my feet. They flew in a cyclonic waltz, blocking the surrounding freshness in a dreary blanket of decay.
I peered through the flurry. I had seen this place before, the mirror’s very first apparition back in my bedroom.
A sudden gust blew the leafy whirlwind away, clearing our view. Nearby, a tri-fold mirror, twice my height and three times as wide as my arm span, stood upright, supported by four-by-four wooden posts embedded in the ground.
I pointed at the mirror. “Let’s check it out.”
We shuffled through dead leaves, the previous autumn’s carpet that spring had not yet swept away, and stared at the seemingly impossible, but now familiar, reflection, an aerial view of the telescope room. Clara and Daryl Blue waved at us from the computer desk.
I returned the wave. “Interfinity must have erected this here as their transportation dock for Earth Yellow.”
“Amazing.” Kelly touched one of the panels. “I guess they thought of everything.”
I held out a palm to catch the spattering rain. “But we didn’t think to bring an umbrella.”
Francesca pointed toward the horizon. “Look!”
As the leaves kicked up again, I bent to follow her line of sight. A dark funnel spun down from the approaching cloud bank. “A tornado!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“It’s coming toward us!” Kelly swiveled her head from side to side, the violin case still in hand. “Which way to the road?”
I spotted a narrow strip of ground with fewer leaves than the surrounding area, maybe a trail. “Both of you follow me.” Holding the Quattro mirror, I dashed along the path.
As wind whistled through the trees, leaves and twigs rained along with nickel-sized water droplets. “Are you with me?” I called back to Kelly and Francesca.
“Right behind you!” Kelly shouted.
Francesca called, “And I’m right behind her!”
I leaped over protruding roots and fallen trees. “We have to find a low area, a ditch or a rainwater trench.”
“I’m looking.” Kelly’s hoarse voice battled the chaotic noise. “But it’s all flat.”
I caught sight of the tornado again, an enormous black funnel of spinning fury. It churned through the forest like a wild monster, uprooting trees and spewing them into the sky. The deafening rumble drowned out nearly every other sound.
I stopped and spun. Kelly and Francesca caught up and stopped with me, both breathless.
“Give me the violin,” I said.
Kelly extended the case. Without a word, I gave her the mirror, took the case, and popped the latches. She held the mirror where I could see the swirling demon behind us. As the tornado screamed closer, I jerked the violin to my chin and sawed the bow across the strings, playing a wild rendition of Be Still My Soul.
The monstrous funnel drew closer. In the mirror, its black twisting wall slung dirt and debris everywhere. The wind blew a vicious slap that knocked Francesca and Kelly to the ground. Kelly struggled to her knees and held the mirror in place, clutched in both hands.
With my back to the cyclone, dozens of rocks and sharp wood fragments slammed into me, my body a shield for the two girls. Then, the reflection changed to a dim forest road with a van parked near a tree. “I need a flash of light!”
In the mirror, the girl in red appeared, like a ghost floating near the van. She folded her hands and looked skyward, her lips moving. Then she vanished.
As if in response, lightning blasted from the sky, knifing into a nearby tree and slicing off a huge limb over our heads. The tornado lurched forward. Kelly clenched her eyes shut. I bent over, waiting to be crushed or swept away.
Then everything fell quiet.
I straightened and scanned the area. My violin case lay open on a paved road. A commercial van sat near the shoulder, void of a driver. Lettering emblazoned the side panel, but dizziness made the words unreadable. The girl in red was nowhere around.
My arms and legs shaking, I set the violin in the case and looked at Kelly. Still holding the mirror, she looked back at me with her mouth hanging open. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Just scared half to death.” She pushed a hand under Francesca’s arm and lifted her to her feet.
“Thanks.” Francesca brushed off her clothes. “That was a close one.”
My vision settling, I shut the violin case and latched it. “I saw the girl in red again, but she — ”
A new voice interrupted. “Okay, now I’ve seen everything.”
I pivoted. “What?”
A young man leaned against the van, watching us with his arms folded over his long-sleeved T-shirt. “Like I said. Now I’ve seen everything.” He pushed away from the van revealing the lettering on the side — Stoneman Enterprises.
I blinked. “Gunther?”
“In the flesh. I stayed out of sight until I recognized you.” Carrying a tire iron, Gunther frowned as he walked toward us, a set of keys jangling from a ring on his jeans belt loop. Although his hair was shorter, his face hadn’t changed.
“Well, it’s great to see you — ”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it is.” His voice sharpened to a menacing tone. “For a couple of kidnappers, you sure have a lot of divine help … or is it demonic help?”
“Kidnappers?” I backed away, spreading my arms in front of Kelly and Francesca. “What are you talking about?”
“You still have her.” Gunther stopped and pointed the tire iron at Francesca. “Now I can finally clear my name.”
“Clear your name?”
“I didn’t want to believe you kidnapped Francesca. I thought maybe someone else took all three of you.”
“We didn’t kidnap her. We’re trying to get her home.”
Gunther gave me a sarcastic smirk. “It’s taken you almost a year to decide to do that? A little slow, aren’t you?”
“Cool it a second,” I said, holding up my hands. “Just tell us what’s happened since we’ve been gone, and I’ll explain everything.”
“All right … if it’ll humor you.” Gunther kept a firm grip on his tire iron, but his tone softened. “That day I dropped you of
f, I noticed a guy drive in as I was leaving, so I went back to check it out. When I saw him sneaking toward the house with a gun, I took this tire iron and chased him. I got there just as he shot the lady of the house, Mrs. Romano.”
Francesca winced but said nothing.
“I clobbered him,” Gunther continued, “but he was a tough nut to crack. He fought back and got away, but I didn’t chase him, ’cause I wanted to stay and help. You two were gone, kind of vanished into thin air. I called the police, and when they showed up, they asked me where Francesca was. I had no idea a girl even lived there, so I just told them everything I knew.
“They didn’t believe me at first, and when they couldn’t find her, they put me in jail for two days. When they developed the film in the camera Mrs. Romano had with her, they saw the three of you. But here’s the really weird part. In one picture, there was a big mirror behind you, and it showed the guy with the gun behind Mrs. Romano, but there wasn’t any mirror in the room.
“Anyway, they decided to keep me locked up for a while, because it also showed me getting ready to bash the guy’s head, proving I was there with you. Since they didn’t have any evidence that I actually kidnapped her, and since I obviously didn’t have time to dispose of three bodies, they finally let me go. No charges, but rumors kept me out of the job market.”
He inhaled, as if ready to finish. “Fingerprints at the scene didn’t match anything on file, and they showed the photo to thousands of people and put it on TV, but they came up empty.”
I nodded toward Kelly and Francesca. “That’s because we went to another world, kind of like an alternate universe. We were gone only a little while, and time moves faster here than it does there.”
Gunther dropped the tire iron. “Another world?”
“Look,” I said, spreading out my arms, “I know it sounds crazy, but I told you the truth before, and you believed me, and I’m telling the truth now. Didn’t we just appear out of nowhere? Where do you think we came from?”
“You got me there.” He picked up the tire iron again and leaned closer to Francesca. “Tell me, did these two kidnap you? You can tell the truth. I’ll protect you.”
“Kidnapped me?” She huffed a short laugh. “Of course not. They rescued me.”
“You mean their whole crazy story is true?”
She nodded. “Every word.”
“All right, then.” Gunther exhaled heavily, shaking his head. “I guess I’ll have to believe the impossible again.” He extended a hand toward me. “Welcome back.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks for showing up. We need a ride.”
“Where are we?” Kelly asked. “And why are you here?”
“We’re near the Iowa and Illinois border. I had just finished a class at school, and this professor-looking type came up to me in the hall. He showed me a photo of Francesca and asked if I knew her or the two of you. I wasn’t sure I could trust him, so I said something like, ‘What’s it to you?’
“He told me your names. He also knew about me being in the house when it all went down, and he wanted me to help him find the three of you, something about saving your lives. He said he needed someone Nathan could trust, but this guy was sure you wouldn’t trust him. So he couldn’t do it himself.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
Gunther made circles with his hands and set them over his eyes. “He wore owl glasses, and he’s short with kind of a round head.”
I looked at Kelly. “Sounds like Dr. Simon. Must be his counterpart in this world.”
“He didn’t tell me his name,” Gunther continued. “He said that if I wanted to be of service, I should drive to a safe place and wait for you there.”
“What safe place?”
“I asked the same question. He said it didn’t matter where I went as long as I was there within a certain time frame that he wrote down.”
I lifted my brow. “So he knew when the three of us would arrive?”
“Well, not exactly. It was a two-hour window.”
“How long did you have to wait?”
Gunther glanced at his wristwatch. “Only twenty minutes. I brought my textbooks to study, so it wasn’t a problem. When I went to jail, I got fired from my delivery job, so I decided to concentrate on school. Figured it was about time I graduated.”
“What about the tornado?” Kelly asked. “Didn’t it affect you?”
“The radio said it was a hundred miles to the northeast. Just caught a little thunderstorm on my way over here.”
“We were right in its path,” I said. “It nearly blew us to kingdom come.” I looked at Kelly. With her hair frizzed out and her clothes ruffled, I realized that I probably looked just as mangled. I brushed through my hair, knocking out a shower of leaves, twigs, and dirt. Kelly and Francesca took my cue and finger-brushed their hair.
One question lingered. How could we possibly show up in a place that Gunther just pulled out of a hat and at exactly the time we were about to get blown away by a tornado? If we could find Simon, whatever color he was, he’d have a lot of questions to answer.
Gunther looked around as if worried about someone watching. “This other-world stuff is too deep for me. I’m just your driver, so if you want a ride somewhere, let’s get going.”
We piled into the van, Kelly and Francesca in the front seat and me in the rear cargo area. I leaned forward, bracing myself on Kelly’s headrest. “Think we should check out your house?”
Kelly shook her head. “Too risky. That’s the first place they’d look for us. And, besides, we don’t know how much time’s left before we have to get back for the funeral.”
“True.” I glanced at my wristwatch, but, of course, it couldn’t possibly keep track of time on Earth Red. “I wish we had a cosmic clock.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and looked at the screen. No signal, of course. “Gunther, can you take us to a telephone? I want to make a call.”
“Sure thing. There’s a Texaco station and a McDonald’s a few miles up the road. You hungry?”
“Famished.” I withdrew my wallet and showed Gunther a twenty-dollar bill. “They probably won’t take these new-style twenties, will they?”
Gunther took the bill and narrowed his eyes. “Are you into counterfeiting now?”
“Never mind.” I retrieved the bill and pushed my wallet back into place. “I have some older fives and ones. The cashier probably won’t look at the dates.”
After eating lunch and using the restroom, Gunther, Kelly, and Francesca returned to the van while I used a pay phone at the gas station to call Nikolai. When I hung up, I motioned for Kelly.
She hopped out. While she jogged toward me, I adjusted my watch to match the time on the station’s outdoor clock.
“What’s the news?” she asked as she came to a stop.
“I talked to Francesca’s violin teacher. On our world, he and his wife raised her after her mother died. I asked him if he would take Francesca in. He got super excited. He even started crying. Of course he’ll take her.”
“That’s great news.” Kelly looked back at the van. “By the way, Francesca’s been crying ever since you went to the phone booth. Her mother’s death finally sank in. It hit her like a ton of bricks.”
I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “Just let her cry as long as she wants. I know how she feels.”
“How long did you cry when your parents died?”
“I don’t know.” As a slight tremble crossed my lips, I firmed my chin to quell it. “I’m not sure I’ve stopped yet.”
“Sorry.” She averted her eyes. “Stupid question.”
“No, it wasn’t. I’ve been holding it all in.” I took a deep breath. I had to change the subject. “Anyway, Nikolai lives in Iowa City, but he insisted on meeting us at a place in Davenport in an hour to save time. We’d better get going.”
As we walked to the van, she nodded toward the highway. “Davenport is right across the river. Gunther said we’re near the border, so it shouldn’t be far at
all.”
“That’ll help.” When I opened the van door, Gunther was sitting alone in the front, reaching over the seat and caressing Francesca’s head as she lay on a mat in the back. Curled in a fetal position and heaving an occasional spasm, she clutched a stuffed rabbit in her arms.
“The rabbit is Mr. Bunn,” Gunther said. “My little sister left him with me months ago. Francesca climbed back there and laid down with him, saying something about not being too old for cuddling with a bunny.”
As my own tears threatened to flow, I clenched my eyes shut. “Thanks, Gunther.”
Kelly slid in first, and I followed. “I found a place for Francesca to live,” I said.
“You did?” Gunther’s brow arched up, but his tone seemed less than joyful. “Where?”
“Her violin teacher in Iowa City. He and his wife are childless, so they’re looking forward to doing whatever they can to help. He said he’d meet us in Davenport in the Galvin Fine Arts Center at St. Ambrose University.”
“I know where that is.” Gunther started the van and shifted the gear. “Fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops.”
“Better take it easy, though. If anything happens and we’re caught with a supposedly kidnapped girl, we’ll never see the light of day, especially you. If you want, we could drop you off somewhere, then take her to Nikolai, and pick you up later.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He pressed the accelerator. “Francesca lost her mother. I’d do anything for her.”
While traveling just under the speed limit on Interstate 88 westbound, I told Gunther the entire story as quickly as possible, relating every detail I could remember.
I finished with the disarming of the shotgun-wielding murderer and our transport to the future location of Interfinity Labs, which happened to lie right in the path of the tornado. “So, now we have to try to get Francesca’s life back in order. She has to eventually meet Solomon Shepherd and marry him on the twentieth of December in nineteen eighty-six.”
Gunther glanced at his rearview mirror. “So do we tell all this stuff to her violin teacher? What was his name? Nikolai?”