Spirit of the Ruins

by Jenny Lykins

  “Admit it!” Ty jerked him to his feet by his shirtfront, then knocked him down again.

  Stephen and Hennessey’s cohorts all came out of their stunned shock at the same time.

  “Tylar, what are you doing?”

  “McCall, stop it!”

  “Get him off Evan!”

  Several pairs of hands grabbed Ty by the arms, shirt, waistband, and pulled him off Hennessey. They held him back while two others lifted the murdering bastard to his feet.

  “Admit it, scumbag! You killed me!”

  “Tylar, listen to yourself!” Stephen’s face appeared in front of Ty. “You’re not dead! He can’t have killed you!”

  Ty forced himself to stop struggling against the hands that held him. When they loosened their grip, he shrugged them off. Lowering his head, he glared at Stephen, then moved to send that look to Hennessey.

  “You killed Tylar McCall at Pittsburg Landing.” He walked around Stephen, jerking his arm back when someone took it.

  “Tylar, listen to what you’re saying!”

  Ty held up a hand but never took his gaze from Hennessey. The man stared at him in defiance, his eyes glancing every now and then toward the fire.

  “You were on horseback, fighting near the Hornet’s Nest. He rode up behind you, and you turned and shot him point blank in the stomach.” The truth flashed in the piece of scum’s eyes. Had anyone else seen it? “Did you follow him, to make sure you’d finished the job, in case he didn’t die before he could talk?” Hennessey shook his head. “But you put yourself between me…Damn!…him and that Yankee’s sword. That part I can’t figure out.” He turned to Stephen. “McCall rode to Bloody Pond and fell off his horse. You pulled him from the water and tried to revive him. You tried to stop the blood. But it was too late. He died while you worked on him.”

  Ty stopped then, staring at Stephen, and he saw the rest of the drama unfold in his mind. He saw himself leave that mangled, bloody body, saw himself watch as Hennessey rode up…

  “You fell getting off your horse when you arrived at the pond,” – he swung back to Hennessey – “because you didn’t wait for the horse to stop running. You encouraged Stephen to bury him quickly, so he wouldn’t end up in a mass grave.” Ty saw it all. “Under a linden tree, thirty yards north of the pond.”

  Stephen stared at Hennessey, his head cocking to one side in question.

  Hennessey shook his head and took a step back.

  “I thought he was a Yankee! I fired too fast, yes, but it was in the heat of the battle!” He glanced at the men around him. “Stephen, you were there, you know what chaos it was. All of you have been in battles!” He looked back at Ty. “I followed him, yes, to try and help. That Yankee was about to take his head off.” He shook his head, plowed both hands through his sandy blond hair, his glassy gaze fixed on the burning house.

  “Why didn’t you admit it to someone—”

  “Would it have brought him back?” Hennessey screamed, swinging back to Ty. “What purpose would it have served except to cause speculation? Everyone knew how I felt about Callen. How I felt when she married that…that overseer’s son.” He used the word like a curse. “I didn’t mean to kill him!”

  Ty stared at the house, barely noticed by the others…except for Hennessey…for all its raging flames.

  “And then I showed up. Same name. Same looks. But how could it be? Had you buried me too quickly? Had I still been alive? Crawled out of a shallow grave to spend five years recovering and planning my revenge?”

  Hennessey’s gaze dropped to Ty’s stomach, where, if he tried, Ty could still feel the searing burn of the bullet in his gut.

  “Let me put your mind at ease, Hennessey.” Ty plucked at the buttons of his smoke-stained shirt, then slowly, defiantly, pulled apart the edges to reveal an abdomen free of the scars that such a wound would have left behind.

  Hennessey paled.

  “But how—”

  “You couldn’t take a chance on me talking. And to make matters worse, I took Callen away from you. Again.”

  Ty didn’t think it possible, but the sorry excuse for a man paled even more.

  “But tell me,” Ty continued. “When you came to Windsor this morning…the first time…did it ever occur to you that I would survive, but Callen and Connor would die in the fire?”

  Stephen made a strangled noise while Hennessey’s gaze jerked again to the burning house. He turned then, searching the faces and failing to find the ones he hoped to see.

  “Nooo!” He fell to his knees, his face buried in his hands. “Nooo!” He looked up, his eyes wet with tears. “I didn’t mean for them to die! I didn’t mean for anyone to die! I was going to knock you out, then put you on a ship to the Orient.” He fell back into the grass, sobbing. “She would have married me then, if you had left her. And you and all your damned secrets would be gone! But when I saw it was Stephen I hit…”

  He looked up at Stephen, who gave him a hard, unyielding glare. One by one, Hennessey’s friends, who’d stood behind him, stepped to Stephen’s side.

  “Well, then,” Ty said with a rush of satisfaction as potent as a drug, his chest heaving, fighting to pull in a calming breath of air, “isn’t it lucky that Connor and Callen didn’t die?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The fire burned on for hours after Hennessey’s former friends took him to be placed in the jail in Natchez. They might have forgiven him for an accidental killing during the heat of a battle, but not his cowardice for planning to kidnap Ty or running from a burning house.

  Stephen and Ty, Jacob and Magnolia, could do nothing more than watch the house burn, like watching a sacrificial fire to the god of secrets. As more neighbors arrived to help put out the flames, Stephen turned them away with his thanks. The house had been doomed from the moment he had hit the floor, unconscious.

  The four of them were numb with shock, but as the fire finally started to die, the icy hand of reality shook them all out of their stupor.

  Magnolia fixed coffee and a cold breakfast in her cabin, and they ate it on benches in the side garden, keeping watch for any sign of the dying fire spreading to the nearby heat-seared foliage.

  “I want to know, McCall,” Stephen said, his eyes focusing on the cup of coffee in his hand, “where my sister and my nephew are. And I want to know now.”

  Ty took a deep breath and looked at the smoldering skeleton of the house, a victim of too many kept secrets. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then rubbed the knots out of the back of his neck.

  “All right, Windsor,” he said. “I’ll tell you, but you’re never going to believe me.”

  He told them all then. Told them the truth. How he’d found the secret panel and entered into the house. How Callen had found him in the kitchen and mistaken him for her dead husband. Stephen listened at first, then he jumped up and called Ty insane when Ty said that he’d entered the column base in the twenty-first century; entered the freestanding pillar at the ruins of the mansion, only to step out into the nineteenth century cellar.

  Jacob and Magnolia glanced at each other, then studied Ty. They knew something. For some reason, they believed him.

  “Let him finish, Mistah Stephen,” Magnolia said in a no-nonsense voice. Stephen gaped at her, then turned back to Ty with a sarcastic bow and a sweeping gesture of his hand to continue.

  Ty let out a long, slow breath, then told how he’d left for Callen’s sake, how he’d returned just to check on her, coming across the wedding, knowing they belonged together. He told how he’d taken her to his time and how they’d come back to get Connor, bringing his brother, Daniel. How, when he’d tried to escape the fire with Stephen, the portal had been closed.

  And he told about the sudden flash of memory of Shiloh.

  By the time he fell silent, Stephen paced, rolling his eyes, his hands behind his back.

  “So, I am to believe that you are from nearly a hundred and fifty years in the future, and when you discovered the fire, you sent my sist
er, my nephew, and your brother scampering off into another century to safety?”

  Ty glared at him through narrowed eyes.

  “Yes, you cocky son of a bitch! And I’d be with them now if I hadn’t gone back to save your worthless ass!” Stephen hesitated at that, and Ty went on. “Why do you think I took you to the basement of a burning house when we could have just as easily escaped out the back door?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Stephen said, flinging his hands wide. “Perhaps because you are insane?”

  “You ungrateful jerk!” Ty lunged at him but Jacob jumped between them.

  “Mistah Stephen, sit down.” Jacob held Ty back. “Sit down afore I whups you myself.”

  Stephen sneered, glaring at Ty, but when he pulled his gaze to Jacob, he turned and flopped onto a bench.

  “You ain’t gonna believe it, Mistah Stephen,” Jacob said, “’cause you sees things as black and white. But they’s more in this world you cain’t understand than that what you can. Ain’t no explanation. Yet. Mebbe someday, but right now it just be. Now, I ain’t never done what this boy say he done, but I can tell you right now, I seen too much, and done too much in my years that you nor nobody else can explain. You keeps you an open mind, son. You hear? You keeps you an open mind.”

  *******

  Callen refused to leave the base of the pillar. Why didn’t he come? What had gone wrong? Had he found Stephen too late? Had he found him, only to die beside him?

  No!

  When Connor started to fuss, Daniel offered to take him into town to pick up food for all of them. Callen rubbed her throbbing temples and nodded, too exhausted to think straight.

  “He has never ridden in a car before, Daniel,” she warned.

  “I’ll take it easy.”

  She lifted her head. “How will you pay for it?”

  Dan pulled a leather wallet from his back pocket and checked inside.

  “I’ve got about twenty bucks, and if all else fails,” – he held up one of those little cards like Ty had – “I can plasticize.”

  She nodded her head, her thoughts too muddy to even wonder what that meant.

  “Callen, listen.” Daniel shoved the wallet back into his pocket, then raked his fingers through his hair, just like his brother. “I don’t like leaving you here alone—”

  “I won’t leave,” she insisted.

  “I know. I know. But this time is full of psychos. They find a woman alone in a secluded area like this…”

  He didn’t have to finish. She nodded.

  “Just promise me that you’ll stay back here where the car is, out of sight. The trees will hide you when we’re gone, and you can still see the panel on the base. Someone would have to be looking to find you here.”

  She nodded. “I’ll stay out of sight.”

  “Okay.” He pulled a thing Ty had called a cell phone out of his pocket, pressed his thumbs against it several times, then studied the front of it for a few seconds. “We’ll probably be gone at least two hours, by the time I find my way to the nearest town and get food. I think I should feed Connor as soon as I get there, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “He’s already hungry. He won’t be very patient about waiting.”

  “Okay, then. The sooner the better.” He put Connor in the backseat with that strap across him, which brought a whine of protest to their ears. “Relax, my man,” Daniel said. “This is going to be an adventure. Trust me?”

  Connor eyed him skeptically, but the whining stopped. Minutes later the car rolled from its hiding place and out to the drive.

  Callen kept her word about staying hidden. More things than she cared to admit frightened the daylights out of her in this world, and a woman alone in any time period seemed to be fair game for some types of men. But how strange it felt, leaning against the tree, trying to stay out of sight on the very land where she’d grown up. This had been her home.

  She had plenty of time now to stare at the haunting, towering columns. She’d barely had a chance to even glance at them when she’d arrived before, and when they’d returned to get Connor. She shook her head. Had that only been two days ago?

  She leaned her head back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. Two days. In those two days she’d married her soul mate, found her son, discovered that one brother had been dead for two years, and the other might as well have been. And now her new husband was back there, perhaps forever, because he’d gone back to save the life of that brother.

  One tiny tear dampened the outer corner of her eye before trailing down her cheek. He couldn’t be gone. She’d lost so much, then gained it all back and more. But please, God, don’t let her lose Ty again.

  *******

  Ty prowled the grounds of Windsor, the smoking hulk of the house always in his view. He’d had to get away from Stephen for a while, before he killed him. He’d left Magnolia and Jacob trying to convince Callen’s brother that Ty had not left his family to burn in the house. Ty had walked away with one parting comment to his brother-in-law: “Do you honestly think I’d leave any one of them in there to die just to save your sorry ass?”

  That one sentence seemed to turn the light of possibility on in Stephen’s eyes, more than anything else any of them said.

  As soon as the fire had died and the heat had abated enough for Ty to get close, he had tried again to go through the column. A rafter, however, and several charred pieces of wood had fallen, blocking the cellar side of the base. He would have to wait until the blackened ruins cooled before he could get in there and move the mess blocking his way.

  Neighbors arrived with food and clothing. Ty heard queries about Callen and her whereabouts. He didn’t know what Stephen told them, and he didn’t care. He stayed away from the visitors, well out of sight, praying for rain to come and douse the last of the glowing embers so he could get back to the business of finding his way home.

  Magnolia appeared with a plate of lunch a neighbor must have brought. He stared at the cold fried chicken, some kind of tiny potatoes, stewed apples, and a huge chunk of cornbread.

  The sight of food made his stomach turn. But he’d seen enough of this time to know that the small offering had been a huge sacrifice for some family.

  “Thank you, Magnolia.” He took the plate and forced himself to take a bite of the chicken. It tasted like sawdust in his mouth. “Delicious.”

  “I believes you, Mistah Tylar.” Ty looked up at her. She wasn’t talking about food. “An’ I’ll do whatever I can to help you get back to them younguns.”

  He finally managed to swallow the bite of chicken.

  “Thank you, Magnolia. That means a lot to me,” he said, surprised to find how much her words really did put his mind at ease.

  She left him alone then as he forced down the rest of the meal, only to seek him out again several hours later carrying another plate of food with the evening’s supper.

  “I done aired out the overseer’s house,” she said. Twilight had smudged the horizon a violet-gray. “You at least gots you a place to sleep.”

  He stopped his roaming long enough to sit down with the dinner she’d brought. Judas Priest, he never wanted another bite of food in his life.

  “Problem is, Mistah Stephen be sleepin’ in that house, too. Do I needs to have Jacob sleep there with you, so you boys won’t kill each other?”

  Ty forced a piece of catfish between his teeth and stifled a shudder.

  “No promises, Magnolia.”

  She chuckled. “You a good man, whoever you are. I can tell.”

  He smiled and nodded, trying his best to down the fish, but it refused to budge.

  “I leave you be now. Don’t you go messin’ ’round in them ashes lest you got one of us to help.”

  He nodded again, then spat out the nauseating bite of fish the instant she walked out of sight.

  He stood, nervous energy not leaving him in peace until he gave in to the restlessness and roamed the grounds again.

  He paced off the area
where the car would have been parked, then followed the path he and Callen had walked after he’d drawn her picture. He found the comfortable knee of the live oak root and sat on it. His thoughts bounced from one thing to another; their trip back to Memphis with Callen doing the white-knuckle thing; the first moment he’d laid eyes on her in the rays of the setting sun; the picture in his mind of her waiting outside that column for him to step through. Waiting and waiting.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. A killer headache pounded there as if a baseball training camp had used his head for batting practice.

  Where were they now? Had Dan talked Callen into leaving? Had he gotten them food? Did he have enough money on him?

  The yellow dying sun sank behind a thin layer of clouds, creating the effect that it was submerged in water, all ripply and muted with its light bleeding into the clouds. He let his head fall back against the trunk and watched the sky deepen from gold to pink to orange before the gray of twilight swallowed the colors. One by one, stars winked at him, filling the sky in no time, like silver glitter across a black ceiling.

  How many of those stars had died out by his time? Just one more wink and, poof, they were gone? And how many new ones had been born that Callen might be seeing for the first time?

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. This train of thought would get him nowhere.

  Damn, he hoped Dan managed to get them a room somewhere.

  *******

  “You sure you don’t want to sleep in the car?” Daniel squatted down beside her and handed her a cup of tea in some flimsy container. “The mosquitoes will eat you alive.”

  She thanked him for the tea and shook her head.

  “I couldn’t sleep, even if I tried,” she said, then forced a laugh. “I would have thought any civilization this advanced would have figured out how to kill the mosquitoes.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Nah. We can’t seem to get the little things right. We can put a telescope in space that can see the dawn of time, but the store I used to work for couldn’t find a plastic produce bag people could get open. They can build computers that can do just about anything, but they can’t build a vending machine that won’t eat your money. They can fix a little guy like Connor’s feet, but they can’t make the glue on an envelope taste good.”