Maybe she was telling him a white lie. Simply trying to cheer him up. But Lehman got the sense that she was dealing with him honestly. And he couldn’t help what happened next. Tears began to flow across his cheeks. Of all the things he’d ever hoped to hear, that was the one that meant the most to him.
He could have let emotion take him over, but he wiped his eyes and stiffened his resolve. This wasn’t what he’d come here for.
“I need to find out what’s been going on today,” he asked the apparition, once he’d cleared his throat.
The smile above him faltered, then transformed into a gentle frown.
“I’m not entirely sure myself.”
“But how can that be? You see everything, don’t you?”
The Little Girl’s tone remained mild and placid.
“I can see what’s going on, naturally. But the plain fact is, I don’t know why it’s happening.”
Willets took that in with a sense of dull frustration.
“When I reached into your room before, I sensed a second little girl.”
“Yes, that might be part of it,” came the response. “I came across her last night, and we are linked at the moment.”
“How?”
“She’s a telepath. There has to be some adept blood back in her family’s past, although they’re certainly not adepts now. Her name is Violet. She’s a very poor little girl, extremely scared and angry.”
At which point, Willets noticed something odd.
“You don’t mean poor as in ‘unfortunate,’ do you?” he asked. “You mean poor as in ‘poverty.’”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Now, Raine’s Landing had plenty of inhabitants you wouldn’t really call well off. Ordinary working types, who struggled to meet house payments and cover all their bills. But as for actual poverty, there was none of that in this place, not that Lehman knew about. This was a responsible community that looked out for its people.
“So where exactly does this Violet come from?”
“East Meadow,” the lips answered slowly. “Back in the Victorian Age.”
Which struck Willets like a thunderclap. Of anything that might have come out of that bright blue mouth, this was the very last he’d been expecting. She might as well have told him that the other little girl had come from the Jurassic Period.
“Good God, she’s reaching out to you through time? How in heaven’s name is she doing that?”
“Again, I’m not quite certain. She is holding a small object. It’s too bright for me to look at, but I’m sure that it is magic.”
Willets felt bewilderment.
“She owns an artifact, and she’s still poor?”
“I don’t think it belonged to her originally.”
Well, at least that made some sense. A street urchin from those times would lift anything that hadn’t been nailed down. But …
“How’s an artifact causing all of this? These holes and creatures, and these disappearances?”
“I’m not sure that I understand any of it,” the Little Girl told him, her tone remaining so calm that it started to irritate him slightly. “One thing appears to have nothing to do with the other. I am deeply puzzled.”
Lehman’s gray head whirled again. He tried to sort the information through, but couldn’t get a handle on it.
“These events began as soon as she contacted you? Have I at least got that right?”
“You have.”
“Then make her let you go,” he suggested.
The bright blue lips above him tightened up uncomfortably.
“I’ve already tried, sir. And I can’t. The artifact she’s holding is extremely strong.”
Goddamn, Willets thought.
“Too strong even for you? But what’s she doing?”
“Violet is just standing there. I think she’s in an alley. And it looks like she is stuck, the same way I am. She’s not moving.”
The Girl paused, her voice becoming slightly mournful.
“Neither of us can break the link. So someone else will have to do it.”
And the doctor was still thinking up a bucketload of other questions, when the brilliant white landscape faded, and the snow-covered backyard returned. Whether he’d been dismissed or this was a natural process, he had absolutely no way of knowing. But Ross Devries was standing right in front of him, and peering curiously at his face.
So the doctor blinked, letting the fellow know that he was back. Shrugged his shoulders several times, until his frame unstiffened.
And then started to explain what he had learned.
“I don’t believe this,” I said, when he’d finished. “This Violet whosis … she comes from more than a hundred years back in the past?”
The doc stamped his feet against the cold. “Apparently so.”
“And we need to stop her making this connection?”
Willets nodded.
“You don’t happen to know of anyone who owns a time machine?” I asked.
My companion pushed his lower lip out glumly.
“Then how exactly are we going to do that?” I pressed him.
Then an idea came to me. And I had been this route before.
“We can at least take a proper look at what’s been going on,” I pointed out.
And at first, Willets looked mystified. But then, he saw what I was proposing. His eyes took on a troubled gleam, and he started trying to back off.
“Oh no,” he gulped. “You must be kidding. If you seriously think I’m going to have dealings with that nut job again –“
But I’d already grabbed him by the upper arm, and was propelling him toward the street.
CHAPTER TEN
“Mom?”
Benjy Spalding – seven years old – stood with both his palms against his home’s living room window, his small face almost pressed against the glass. It misted up in front of him, the dampness refracting light. He rubbed it clean with his sleeve, then called out again.
“Mom? Come look!”
Jordan Spalding, who’d been in the back room writing out her final Christmas cards, came bustling through.
“Oh, Benjy. I only just cleaned that window, and you’re messing up the glass again. What is it?”
His face slackened, his mouth trembling slightly.
Then he managed to blurt out, “Mr. Partington!”
Who was their neighbor three doors down. And currently had his work cut out, because the whole rest of his family – his wife and four children – were down with the flu. Jordan had seen him bustling back and forth the past couple of days, running errands to the pharmacy and stores.
“What about Mr. Partington?”
“He’s gone!”
“What are you talking about? Gone where?”
She moved up beside her son, wondering what in heaven’s name he was getting so excited and upset about.
“He disappeared,” Benjy insisted. “He was driving home, I saw his car. And then a hole opened up in the road, a big purple one, and he fell into it.”
Which was the unlikeliest story she had ever heard. All small kids had inflated imaginations, but there were times when Benjy looked like he was going for first prize in the subject. She didn’t really mind that. It was good he had an active mind. But what he’d described was nonsense, and he had to know it.
“Why should any hole be purple?”
“It was.”
Jordan stared out in the same direction he kept looking at.
Lea Street – in the Northridge district – was like any other quiet suburban avenue at this time of the year. Snow lay heavily across the sidewalk and the pavement, and the roofs and the front yards. There were a few rows of footprints in it, some of them belonging to dogs. A few tire tracks where people had forced their way out earlier this morning. But a light breeze had sprung up recently. The upper layer of the white was shifting, and the tracks were being covered up.
This was a bay window, so she moved over to the side of it and peer
ed at Jerry Partington’s front drive. There were deep imprints along it too, and Jerry’s silver-gray Volvo was gone.
Maybe he’d been heading home, but then remembered he’d forgotten something and had been forced to turn around. It happened to her all the time.
“No!” Benjy insisted. “That’s not what happened!”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me, young man.”
She was still of the opinion he was playing some kind of game, hoping to rope her in on some wild fantasy he had concocted. But when she looked back at him, she saw that her son was practically in tears. Surprise gripped her, but then gave way to sympathy. Jordan went down on her knees, wiping at his damp eyes and mussing his hair in an attempt to cheer him up.
“Benjy boy? What’s gotten into you?”
“I saw it! Mr. Partington fell down a hole!”
“And where is that hole now?” she asked him, trying to inject a bit of common sense into the situation.
“It disappeared.”
She was tempted to point out how convenient that was, but held herself in check and asked, “And it did that how long ago?”
“I don’t know. Less than a minute.”
“Things like that can’t happen, Benjy,” she assured him.
But then she reminded herself which town she was living in. The vast number of things that shouldn’t happen, which had happened in the past.
When you lived in a place like Raine’s Landing, you kept yourself in a state of denial ninety percent of the time. You simply got on with your daily business, trying to convince yourself that everything was perfectly okay. And on those occasions when something really bad came out, you dealt with it as best you could and then moved on.
How else was anyone supposed to live … in constant fear and apprehension? You would go insane that way. But really bad stuff did come along from time to time. If she had to admit it, more and more frequently these days. Why, a mere couple of months ago, she and her whole family had been virtually refugees, living on a bench on Union Square, besieged by hominids.
Things had calmed down a great deal since then. And after that experience, it took an awful lot to spook her badly. But if she was going to approach this sensibly, she really ought to check out what her son believed that he had seen.
Damn and blast it. She hated the cold. And she was still in her bathrobe and slippers. But she got her overcoat and pulled it on, and then exchanged her house shoes for a pair of fleece-lined, zip-up boots.
Benjy followed her to the front door nervously, ducking back behind her every time he thought he heard a noise. Man, but he was genuinely scared. She opened up, shivering as a blast of freezing air came sucking in.
“Where exactly did it happen?”
Benjy pointed. “There.”
“Right in front of our house?”
“Yup.”
Jordan felt a sigh trying to force its way out, but she held it in.
She practically slipped over, the first step she took. Steadied herself, one hand against the jamb, then grimaced and continued. Her footing was still unsteady. She teetered along, the icy breeze making the bare parts of her legs prickle and burn. If this was a game, if she’d been made the victim of some silly, childish prank …
She tried looking around at Benjy, to gauge his expression. But she practically went down again, when she tried that. And so she forgot that, and waddled as far as the sidewalk, horribly aware that she was walking like a duck.
There was nothing. Just the fading footprints she’d seen from her living room. A few dead leaves went skirling by, practically jet-black by this time of the year. She could hear a snow plough working several blocks away, but could not see it.
But she noticed something else and stiffened, then went on a few more paces, stepping gingerly off the curb.
There was a brand-new set of tire tracks that the fine snow hadn’t had the time to cover yet. They were so fresh that you could make out every detail of their tread. They looked as if they’d only been made a couple of minutes back. And they were headed for the Partington house.
But they drew level with her front yard, and stopped.
There was no slightest evidence that the vehicle that had made them had turned back around or veered away. The tracks simply … gave out.
She peered around, and couldn’t see Jerry’s Volvo anywhere. So how did that make any sense?
“Robbie!”
Ellen Kutch put sunflower seeds and flaked maize on the bird table in her backyard, and then added some high protein pellets that she’d bought at a local pet store. She had already broken the ice on the birdbath and added some hot water to keep it unfrozen for a while.
“Robbie?”
She pursed her lips and let out a high-pitched whistle, her way of telling her feathered little friend there was a meal here waiting for him. Ellen worked at an accountancy firm off Union Square, and had been promoted several times in as many years, doing so well for herself that – single and barely thirty – she had recently bought a medium-sized two-story house at the foot of Sycamore Hill.
And it wasn’t merely the classy location she enjoyed. She’d only ever lived in apartments before, and loved the space and freedom that was now at her disposal. In particular, she adored her new backyard – which was extensive – and the small creatures that visited her here. It was the main reason she’d chosen this particular property.
There was a flash of crimson in the corner of her eye, a swift flurry of wings. And a red-breasted robin – its lower stomach startling white and its feathers ruffled out against the chilly clime – alighted on a nearby bush and stared at her. It cocked its head expectantly.
“There you are!” Ellen grinned. “I’ll bet you’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Robbie gave his wings a twitch. How could anything that couldn’t move its face be so expressive?
“Come on then,” she gestured. “Lunch.”
The bird hesitated and then darted forward, gripping the edge of the table and scooping up the pellets right in front of her, practically within arm’s reach. Robins were the tamest birds she’d ever known.
“You found yourself a lady friend yet, Robbie?” Ellen asked him.
She certainly hoped so. Because she’d read up on the subject. And if he had, then there’d be fledgling robins – tiny things with dappled tummies – visiting her garden in the spring.
The bird gobbled down a few seeds, hopped across to the birdbath and took several sips, then flew away.
Ellen didn’t feel compelled to hurry back inside. She was perfectly warm in the fake fur coat that she was wearing, fake fur hat with earflaps and her thick suede boots. And she was genuinely taking pleasure in the soft tranquility of this crisp, blissful day. A section of the clouds had parted and the sun had come half out again. It looked like a big, bright penny, and she turned her face toward it.
But she still had work to do – she had some spreadsheets to look over. Her company had let her work from home, these last couple of days before the break. And she was finally heading back indoors, when she heard another sound behind her.
It wasn’t a fluttering this time, so it couldn’t be a bird.
It was a mild but insistent humming. And there were no bugs at this time of the year. So Ellen turned.
Dots had shown up on the air. Glowing purple ones, each of them moving. In fact, they were moving very fast, spiraling and darting round each other so she couldn’t tell how many of the things there were.
Twenty at least. Ellen’s brow creased. Even if some insects had survived, these were too large to be fireflies, and entirely the wrong color. So what were they?
The nape of her neck prickled. Instinct told her to hold back. But anything this small couldn’t hurt her, surely? She extended a hand in their direction.
Several of the tiny creatures noticed that. They hovered closer. And then one of them came skimming across.
And went right through her palm, coming out the other side and shooting
away to rejoin the others.
Ellen yelped with fright, drawing her hand back and examining it quickly. There was no blood. And there appeared to be no hole. The creature hadn’t injured her in any way. But how had it gone through without that happening?
The intrusion had hurt a little, all the same. There was a sharp stinging sensation lingering in her nerves.
Another purple dot darted across, going through her shoulder this time, with an even more painful result. Her upper arm started going numb. And she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to stand around for any more of this.
Ellen began floundering to the kitchen door. But the humming sounds did not recede behind her. They were growing louder. The purple dots were following her.
And they could move a great deal faster than she was able, even when she broke into a slithering, ungainly run.
One went through the top part of her ear, making her shriek again. Another one went through her thigh. She wailed and gripped at it, still hurrying away. The thicker the part of her body that the creatures flew through, then the worse it seemed to hurt. Ellen tried to focus on the back door, but her eyes were getting blurred with tears.
She reached it, at last. Yanked it open, went on through and slammed it shut behind her. And was almost to the hallway when she stopped and turned around again.
The humming that the creatures were emitting was still growing louder. She had not managed to shut them out.
The things were drifting through the back door and the walls, and coming right into her brand-new house.
Hey, had the boiler gone out?
Fred Washburne had been dozing in his favorite armchair, dreaming about those happy decades when his wife, Julie, had still been around. He woke up smiling gently, remembering her fondly, and then noticed how cold the room had gotten. And it had been warm before. Good Lord, had something broken down?
He tipped his head, but couldn’t hear the rumble that the heating made. And if anything had gone wrong, he was sure that he could fix it. Fred might be old and white-haired, but he was still stout physically and with a perfectly good mind. A little slower than he once had been, and he tended to get stiff these days. But those inconvenient facts did not do much to stop him
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