by J M Fraser
She turned the page.
“Stand with me to peek through beads in doorway strung,
we see
a vagrant sitting so.
This man isn’t real. His dreaming self has come.
He died
three centuries ago.
“When this mortal sleeps his spirit walks the earth,
but time
is twisted inside out.
This one often roams outside the span of birth
and death
beyond his waking route.
“Fortune-teller thinks a beggar sits with her.
She strokes
the coarseness of his hand,
feeling his lifeline, his pulse steadfast and sure.
It beats
illusion of the man.”
Rebecca stopped reading.
More clues to process? “So, we’re talking time travel, right?”
“Or dreams,” she said. “They can be one and the same.”
“In which universe?”
She clapped the book shut. “Exactly! We pass through the walls of time and space whenever we sleep. In one dream, you might get lost in the Amazon. In another, maybe you’ll visit your early childhood again. Everyone leaves the here and now.”
Rebecca spoke with enough bright-eyed sincerity to convince him. On the other hand, if their hips kept touching, she could probably get him to believe in the tooth fairy.
“That was a simple lesson in metaphysics,” she said. “I haven’t revealed a thing about myself.” She sprang off the couch, twirled like a red-haired dream ballerina, finished with a flourish, and bowed. “Ask me about my world, not about me, and I’ll answer if I can.”
“Do you know a farmer near your cabin?”
“Maybe not.”
“Where did you go after you left me?”
She twirled away.
“Where did the cider and cheese come from?”
“I conjured them!” Rebecca reached the mantel and traced her fingertips in a circle where the clock used to sit. For a moment it returned. Then it jumped back to the coffee table.
The overload of weirdness created a physical effect on Brian, like the tingly, metallic taste from touching his tongue to a battery. “Did you make the cabin, too?”
“My home is real.”
“How about the shifting bluff I saw near it?”
Rebecca settled next to him on the couch again. “The wind blows dunes around.”
“Right. Even when they’re anchored down with prairie grass?”
“Let’s talk about something else.” She swung an arm in front of her, and a card fluttered in its wake, dipping, curving, then veering off course. It landed in his lap.
The card Sharon left with her phone number that night on the porch.
“Do you have another girl in your life, Brian?”
He flinched. This must have been what she meant by a jealous heart. “No, it isn’t anything like that. Sharon’s just a friend.”
“No one else has taken a special interest in you?” Pale green eyes bored into his. Not angry eyes. Or jealous ones. Worried eyes. Scared even.
But who had he met that Rebecca would possibly know?
Oh.
“Do creepy stalkers count? Sharon’s roommate, Abigail has been—”
Poof. Brian was all alone on the couch.
He blinked. Looked down. As if what—she slid underneath to hide?
Gone.
“Come along, Simon.” Her voice almost shot him through the ceiling. “Brian has some research to do, and I need to handle a holy terror.”
“Wait! What—”
The cat darted out of the bedroom, leapt toward where Rebecca had been sitting, and vanished.
“I’ll cherish the gift, Brian.”
The clock on the coffee table was gone.
He tried to get up, wobbled, sat back down.
Chapter 16
Brian took a quick visual sweep of the condo from the couch—stained hot-chocolate mugs on the coffee table, a clump of cat fur on April’s new area rug, an empty space on the mantel where the pendulum clock belonged. A Club Intrigue admission ticket still poked from the pocket of his shirt.
All genuine.
Real.
Rebecca even left a fragrance behind—a scent of pine lingering like leftover smoke, but in a good way. The aroma brought her cabin right into the room.
So he didn’t fall asleep and dream the whole insane adventure. Or if he did, the universe upgraded to 2.2 anyway—the version including witches—bringing a whole different screen layout for him to navigate. He had to get used to it.
He opened a fist. Found the ribbon from Rebecca’s book. No point even questioning how it got there.
His fingers tingled. A burst of amazing ideas flashed through his mind. Books he’d write, calculus problems he now knew how to solve, and dreams he might step out of. Like from one dimension to the next. Weird and ridiculous but possible.
Then his palm burned. Hot.
He flung the ribbon to the floor. Flexed his hand. Fine now.
The ideas shattered into a million fragments before he could hang on to the slightest bit of wisdom. Back to his old clueless self.
This had happened twice before. Once at the cabin when he first pulled the book from Rebecca’s kitchen cabinet and touched the ribbon. Later, here in the condo, on the night a poem wrote itself on his computer.
He poked at the ribbon with his shoe.
Nothing happened.
He bent and touched it.
Nope.
He held his breath and grabbed it.
Brian has research to do. Rebecca’s parting words.
But no mad rush of ideas.
He let the ribbon go. Counted to ten. Grabbed it again. Squeezed tight. Nothing.
Reality check. Did he believe in witches? Maybe. After all that had happened, he was definitely coming around. Magic ribbons? Not so much.
But should he believe in watching and listening for clues about what exactly was going on? Not a bad concept.
So here goes: Brian has research to do. Since Rebecca’s comment was completely out of context to the situation, it could only be a clue, right?
Sooooo, research what? Witches? Teleportation? Abandonment?
Her vanishing act stung. If he’d struck a nerve by mentioning Abigail, why didn’t Rebecca hang around and compare notes with him? Why skip out of his life again?
The whole evening didn’t make sense, all the way back to the point she stepped onto a stage and…
recited a poem about witches with a specific reference to the year 1692.
He rushed to his computer and searched that year on the Internet. Numerous links to articles and stories covering the Salem witch trials popped up. He dove into the Wikipedia version of the darkest episode in colonial history.
In the spring of 1692, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams and her nine-year-old cousin, Betty Parris, turned into exorcist fodder. They contorted their bodies in weird positions, bleated like farm animals, burst into fits of rage, shrieked in pain. Nobody ever figured out what caused their possession or why it spread like a virus to other girls in Salem.
Although the Puritans were supposed to be better-educated and more tolerant than the typical colonists, they embarked on the witch hunt to end all witch hunts. When the dust cleared, nearly two dozen of their own had been killed, mostly by hanging. A black-and-white sketch showed a bunch of them strung up in a row on Gallows Hill, where anyone could have stood to watch. And what, order maize popcorn?
Brian closed the page.
Sixteen ninety-two Salem. Hangings. Like Rebecca did to herself on stage.
Good theory: Rebecca wanted to be like a modern-day Poe, writing dark verses to send chills down spines.
Bad theory: She and Abigail weren’t witches at all. They were the ghosts of two girls hanged in colonial Salem.
No way. He couldn’t even begin to process that idea without melting his heart
into water. He and Rebecca clicked. Boyfriend and girlfriend. A walk through the hills, a night in a cabin, dream visits, a reunion, kisses. She had to be real.
He stared at the search menu forever before swallowing and reopening the Wikipedia page. He looked for a Rebecca reference. Couldn’t find one. Read about the girl named Abigail again. She was a player—kind of a weird coincidence with that name and all—but she wasn’t a hanging victim.
He scanned some other articles. No Rebecca on the victim lists. Couldn’t have been. Spirits don’t have substance. They don’t touch. Or kiss. Or leave things behind when they leave.
He turned to the window and stared into darkness almost as black as the fog he’d seen behind the club.
If they weren’t ghosts, and Rebecca was a good witch and Abigail a bad one, or something else altogether, what did the poem mean?
Brian’s phone went off with a deafening guitar riff. He dropped the mouse. Nearly fell off his chair. The ringtone needed to be lowered by about a thousand decibels.
He glanced at caller ID—Sharon—and he answered.
“Brian.” Something was off with her tone. “Please ask your witch never to step foot in these dorms again.”
Sharon always had a smile in her voice. Not this time. How to even respond? Was she talking about Rebecca? Had to be. Rebecca had gone after Abigail, Sharon’s roommate. But what went down? “Um—”
No point in saying anything more. Sharon had already ended the call.
“I’m back, Brian.” Rebecca’s voice came at him from the kitchen doorway.
He leapt off the chair. Spun around.
“That didn’t go well at all.” She stood with arms lowered, water dripping from her hair.
Chapter 17
“I went to the dorms and found Abigail with your friend Sharon, but she blinked away.” These were the first words Rebecca had spoken in at least five minutes. She’d been sitting across the kitchen table from Brian in endless brooding silence, toweling her hair into a frizzy mess.
During the long wait, Brian distracted himself by watching squiggly raindrops race down the window beside her. He hadn’t asked a single question. Not with angry death rays threatening to shoot out of Rebecca’s eyes at any moment. But now she’d calmed and broken the silence. Maybe he could get some answers. “What do you mean, blinked away?”
Rebecca picked a cherry out of a bowl on the table. She closed her fist around it. Then opened her hand. Empty.
Cool trick. This illusion thing was great.
Oh. “You mean Abigail disappeared? As in poof?”
“Yes.” Rebecca tossed her towel aside. “Do you have a brush?”
He got one, brought it back. “So Abigail’s a witch, huh?”
“No, she’s an imp. And they’re supposed to be harmless.” But the worry lines across Rebecca’s forehead spoke volumes. She ran the brush through her hair, caught a snag, tried again. “Ow.”
Brian had a dozen questions she probably wouldn’t answer. What’s an imp? How does somebody blink away? And so on. But his best bet was to keep quiet and let her talk. “Can I help with that?” He took the brush.
“My hair is hopeless.” Still, she shifted her chair sideways so she’d have her back to him, and she swept her hair over her shoulders, where he could get at it. Best of all, her frown curled into something almost resembling a smile.
What guy had experience brushing a girl’s hair? He had nothing but instinct to go on. Why hadn’t he offered a mug of hot chocolate to make her happy? An ice-cream cone from the freezer? A cold slice of pizza from the fridge?
He scooted his chair behind hers and went to work. Right away, he found a snag, held her hair tight near the scalp, closed his eyes, and eased the brush through. Slowly. But with purpose. The snag untangled.
Yay.
“We were outside the dorm room in the hallway. All three of us,” Rebecca said. “Then two of us, after Abigail poofed away. I told Sharon I’m Rebecca, your girlfriend, and Abigail is nobody’s friend. Sharon didn’t hear any of that. She was too busy wringing her hands over the poofing incident.”
Yeah. Who wouldn’t be? He worked on another snag.
“Then I started burning some marks into their door.”
“You what?”
“Ow! Be careful, Brian.”
“Sorry.” The pizza idea would have been so much better than combing a girl’s hair during this crazy story.
“Sharon called my marks a curse.”
“Burn marks kinda sound that way.”
“Witches shouldn’t curse people, Brian. Except in storybooks. I simply left a warning for Abigail to stay away.”
“Got it. Burn marks in the door? Yeah, that would definitely make a good warning.”
“And that’s when Sharon doused me with a pitcher of water.” Rebecca shifted around to eyeball him. “Why did you befriend such a mean girl?”
Brian wilted under the weight of her wounded gaze. Jealousy might have been part of that look, but not the largest share. “You’re mad because you think my friendship with Sharon led to Abigail barging into our lives?”
Rebecca turned her attention to a loose thread poking from the sleeve of her dress, twisting it left, right, up, down. “I suppose that imp would have schemed her way in one way or the other.”
“Yeah. You already knew her. Didn’t Abigail hang the noose from that oak tree by your cabin?”
No answer.
“I had a run-in with her in Wyoming that day,” he said.
Twist, twist, twist. The thread popped free. “Maybe she’s gone for good now.” Rebecca put her hand over his and eased the brush along the length of her hair. “I like your touch, Brian.”
And he loved hers. Questions could wait. Except one. “Why do you keep vanishing?”
She snatched her hand away. “This last time, I went calling on your friend, hoping to get rid of a pest. Besides, I did come back.”
Yeah, but each disappearance sucked the oxygen out of the world. Advance notice would have helped. Mutual planning. “How long can you stay?”
Rebecca turned to the window without answering. The rain had changed to sleet, pinging against the pane in windblown bursts.
He worked the brush through her hair, back in waiting mode again.
“Brian, do you know the machine that plays songs when you feed money into it?” Rebecca’s tone was softer. Her shoulders had relaxed. “You’re the song I drop a coin for, but the music stops when the needle reaches the end of the grooves. Even worse, I only have so many coins.”
He almost didn’t ask the obvious question for fear of the answer. “And then what?”
She swung around, grabbed his hands. “My poems are bursting with clues! After you solve all the riddles, the song will play and play.”
Rebecca’s touch had the same dizzying effect as always, but he fought past it. He needed concrete answers before she vanished again. “Why not just come out and tell me everything without all the guessing?”
“I’ve told you. According to the Witches Code, I can only share information through riddles, illusions, and dreams.”
“And you have to follow this code, because…?”
“That’s what pure witches do.” With lips pressed tight and eyes set on high gleam, Rebecca couldn’t have looked more dedicated to her cause, whatever it was exactly. She was a girl on a mission.
What mission, he didn’t know. He was supposed to guess. From clues. In poetry. “Suppose I don’t solve your riddles.”
“Open the window and I’ll show you how to cast your worries away.”
“No way. With my luck the wind would just blow them back in my face.”
They shared a laugh. The world brightened. Rebecca leaned toward him like a co-conspirator. “Your mother is nice.”
Wow. Talk about coming out of left field. “Say that again?”
“I called on her, Brian. A girl can’t just go visiting a mother’s son without permission, you know.”
“Acc
ording to your code?”
She nodded. Grinned. “You’re catching on!”
“So you spent one of your few jukebox coins to visit my mom?”
“I went at night. Dream visits are free.”
Brian’s stomach roiled. “Did she kick your butt? My mom isn’t the type who’d want somebody busting into her head.”
Rebecca took up the brush and finished her hair. “I don’t go into people’s heads. I go where they go, to the common area everyone visits in their dreams. It’s an exact replica of the waking world.”
“Uh-huh.” With all the other ridiculous cracks in the universe, who was he to question this one? “And she kicked your butt, right?”
“A little.”
“She’s touchy.”
Rebecca yawned. She stood. “It’s late.”
“Don’t go.”
She cocked her head sideways like a startled bird.
Was she surprised at how needy he sounded? Disappointed? He stretched for a strong rebound. “Why not stay over? Here’s the thing, though. My room has only one bed, and my Aunt April’s room is…hers. So let’s flip a coin to see who gets the couch.”
As he fumbled in his pocket for a quarter, Rebecca’s grin couldn’t have stretched any wider.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“Brian, do you honestly believe a witch has ever been bested in a game of chance?”
* * *
Brian woke up, fell back asleep, drifted in and out. Couches didn’t make the best beds.
Rebecca grabbed his wrist. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Is it morning already?”
“Shh, keep sleeping, Brian. I’m visiting your dreams.”
He stood in the weeds behind Club Intrigue, watching Abigail interact with a thick black bank of fog. She plunged her arm into it, pulled out, stepped back. The darkness bulged after her, expanding in size.
Rebecca gasped.
“What’s going on?” he said.
She grabbed his wrist. “So you can see the void!”
“Is that what it is?”
“Nobody else seems to know about it. I’ve asked.”
“Did you ask Abigail?”
“No,” she said. “Let’s get away from here.”
The scene swirled with dizzying speed. Bright flashes of color bombarded him. Wham! He landed on his feet in some kid’s bedroom.