Shifting Shadows

by Sally Berneathy

  It did. She jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “He’s being supportive and kind,” she said defensively. “He’s been good to me since the accident.”

  “Meaning he wasn’t good to you before the accident?”

  She threw up her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t remember, damn it! But if he wasn’t, he’s trying to make amends.”

  “For what?”

  Analise considered Dylan’s question. Phillip had implied he regretted treating her like a possession, but there was something more. It was right there in the corner of her vision, always just out of reach. “I wish I knew,” she murmured, speaking more to herself than to Dylan.

  “You wish you knew what?” he demanded, his gaze boring into her.

  “I just told you I can’t remember. You can keep asking me all night, and I still won’t be able to remember.”

  An owl hooted eerily into the silence. Something small rustled in the dead leaves winter had left against her porch, and then all was silent again.

  “I know,” Dylan said. His voice was soft, different, that strange-familiar voice again. The apparition of a memory teased at her then vanished before she could capture it.

  “Who are you?” She didn’t know she’d spoken the words aloud until he answered her.

  He looked away, no longer meeting her eyes. “I’m your neighbor.”

  She considered his answer. If he were nothing more than her neighbor, he would have thought the question unnecessary, ridiculous. By his simplistic response, he told her that he had no intention of addressing her real question...and that he knew a real question existed.

  “What happened to your brother and your father?” she asked, swallowing back her reluctance to bring up something she knew was painful to him. But it was the only personal part of himself he’d given her.

  His gaze returned to her, full of hurt and anger, but he said nothing.

  She cringed, regretting that she’d tried to invade his private pain. “It’s getting cold. I think I’ll go inside,” she whispered, backing away, ready to leave, to spare him further agony from her prying.

  “I’ll be over in the morning to go to the library with you.”

  He turned and walked away, climbed the steps to his porch then went inside, the blackness of the house engulfing him.

  She remained outside for a few minutes, staring at the empty space he’d left. She’d hurt him by reminding him of his losses.

  Finally she went inside, closing the door behind her. Again the staircase loomed before her. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, unable to stop herself from wondering if Dylan’s repressed anger had exploded against her, had sent her tumbling down the stairs.

  No, that wasn’t possible. He’d been too kind, taking care of her, teaching her to drive, going with her to the cemetery, agreeing to take her to the library tomorrow. Yet that could be interpreted another way. He never let her out of his sight, was obsessed with the question of her recovery of her memories.

  Nevertheless she had to admit that she looked forward to being with him tomorrow...to his strength that would carry her through the rough spots she might find at the library, to sitting in the car with him, her body only inches away from his, to feeling the gentle touch of his big hands.

  She darted upstairs, trying vainly to get away from him, away from her inexplicable, perhaps even dangerous, feelings for him.

  *~*~*

  The sun shone outside the next day, but that light didn’t penetrate to the old, musty basement of the library. Analise was intensely grateful that Dylan had come with her. The place was creepy. She wouldn’t have wanted to be there alone.

  “I’m sure glad they put these old papers on microfilm,” Dylan said, taking down a tray and setting it on the long wooden table beside a viewer. He seemed completely relaxed today with no trace of last night’s distress. “Otherwise, I’m sure we’d never have been allowed to touch the sacred relics.” The ancient librarian had made them sign away their lives before permitting them entrance to the storage area.

  Analise laughed nervously. The sound seemed to disappear as soon as it left her mouth, absorbed by the multitude of volumes stacked on shelves all about them.

  “Here’s the right year.” He handed her a film. “Let’s have a look at it.” His fingers touched hers briefly, casually, accidentally...wonderfully.

  Before he could draw back, she clutched his hand and looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m not sure why you’re doing this, but I want you to know how grateful I am.” She smiled weakly. “This could get tough.”

  A multitude of emotions—guilt, anger, concern—played briefly across his features before he got them under control, back to being carefully shuttered. “I’m glad I could help,” he mumbled then moved away, going back to search through more files.

  She turned to the viewer, concentrating on the task immediately before her.

  She found the first mention of Shawn Fitzpatrick in the Holbert Weekly News two months before Elizabeth’s death.

  Our town has a new and interesting visitor. Shawn Fitzpatrick, a radical labor leader from Chicago, has been going about, harassing the good people of our town. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who immigrated to the shores of our great land from Ireland, is now betraying the country that took him in by preaching seditious Socialism.

  Blake Holbert, son of the founder of our town, has had several of our citizens who work at his factory complain that Fitzpatrick is interfering with their jobs, trying to get them to organize in a labor union, to bite the generous hand that feeds them. When contacted by this paper, Mr. Holbert said, “My workers are paid a decent wage for a decent job. I treat them like my own family, and they’re happy. If they aren’t happy, they know they’re free to leave and find employment somewhere else.”

  Analise sat back, her jaw clenched. Like his own family. If he treated his workers like he treated his wife, they needed someone like Shawn.

  “What did you find?” Dylan asked.

  “This man was a monster,” she said, indicating the viewer. “Read that. He owned the town. The newspaper would have printed whatever he wanted. So he comes out with a thinly veiled threat to fire anyone who listens to Shawn.”

  Dylan looked at her strangely then leaned over to read the story, his body touching hers, warming hers. The adrenaline surged through her—adrenaline from thinking about the injustices in the old news story, from Dylan’s nearness, from some indefinable connection that flowed around them.

  She had to make a concerted effort to break that link, to scoot her chair a few inches away and give him better access to the viewer.

  “The bastard,” Dylan growled then stood abruptly, backing away from the viewer. “But that’s pretty much the way it was in those days. Laborers were treated badly, paid poorly, and union organizers weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”

  Shawn certainly hadn’t been welcomed, Analise thought as she went back to searching through the papers. Fights broke out at the factory. Shawn was thrown into jail then released. The articles became more hostile.

  As Analise read the words, she could recall—or deduce from the stories, she told herself—how the atmosphere around town changed. The laborers became angry rather than depressed. They began to hope, to demand their rights.

  And then without warning, she saw it, the words jumping into her field of vision.

  Elizabeth Holbert Missing, Husband Fears Drowning. As she read the headline, Analise felt again the sensation of cold suffocation. Drowning. Elizabeth had drowned. That would explain her lifelong fear of water, a fear so great she couldn’t swim, couldn’t even stand to bathe in a tub. Water pressing against her sent her into a panic.

  “Analise? Are you all right?”

  She realized she had slumped in her chair, was gasping for air. “Yes,” she said, the word coming out barely a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m fine. I found the story about my—about Elizabeth’s death.”

  Dylan moved closer, placed his
hands around her neck and massaged her tense muscles. “Relax,” he said. “It’s only a newspaper story. Take a deep breath.”

  His fingers were gentle as they caressed her skin. They felt exquisite, and she wanted to close her eyes, ignore all the crazy things going on around her, shut out the newspaper clipping about Elizabeth’s death, relax as Dylan urged, escape into the pleasurable sensations he created.

  But she couldn’t. Somehow his touch seemed a part of the old stories, something she couldn’t fully own until—

  She couldn’t finish that thought. She only knew she had to continue reading.

  Reluctantly, eagerly, she dove back into the past.

  Prominent citizen Blake Holbert reported today that his wife, the former Elizabeth Dupard, is missing. He last saw her when they went to bed last night, but found her gone when he awoke this morning.

  Bloodhounds were brought in from Jonas Horton’s farm to track Mrs. Holbert. Her trail ended less than a mile away at the bank of the Missouri River.

  “Elizabeth has been troubled of late by nightmares and sleepwalking,” Holbert said. “I fear the worst.”

  Analise sat back in her chair. “I wasn’t sleepwalking,” she whispered. “I was running away from him.”

  In her mind’s eye Analise could see Elizabeth dressing in the dark, feel her holding her breath for fear Blake would wake and catch her. Elizabeth’s ribs still ached, and her eye was still discolored from her last infraction though she wasn’t even sure what she’d done wrong.

  When her trembling fingers dropped her brush on the dresser with a loud clatter, she almost sobbed, knew for certain she’d been caught.

  But he lay still.

  Even when she closed the front door behind her and ran into the darkness, her heart still raced with fear. She felt as if she were running through water, so slow did her progress seem. Finally, in the distance, she could see the gleam of moonlight on the river and dared to hope that she might make it.

  The scene winked out, and Analise saw nothing but the dusty library basement. The black curtain that had recently become so much a part of her settled between her and the rest of Elizabeth’s life.

  “Analise? Are you still with me?” Dylan laid a hand on her shoulder. “Move over and let me read this.”

  She blinked, swallowed hard. She was again having trouble distinguishing between herself and Elizabeth.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “I need to know the rest.”

  She scanned the next edition of the paper and found it—a report that Elizabeth’s drowned body had been discovered several miles downriver from Holbert.

  In vain she searched her memory for details of that drowning, but her mind seemed to shy away from the incident. Perhaps, she thought, it was simply too horrifying to remember one’s own death. All she knew for certain was that she had been running away from her husband and had died.

  And that gave credence to Lottie’s assertion that she had been reincarnated to reconcile with her husband, to make it right this time.

  “Come on,” Dylan ordered, crashing into her thoughts. “You’re as white as a ghost. You need to get out of here for a while.”

  Dylan had watched Analise become totally immersed in the sepulchral atmosphere of the old library. The place gave him the willies. When he’d read the story about Shawn Fitzpatrick, the man from Elizabeth’s journal, for a moment he’d imagined he could feel the man’s agony and determination. If it affected him so strongly, what must it be doing to Analise’s mental state when she was much more susceptible than he? He shouldn’t have let things go this far, but she’d seemed to need to find the end of Elizabeth’s life in order to get back to her own...and he needed her to get back.

  “Analise? Let’s go,” he urged when she didn’t move.

  She looked at him, nodded and came without protest. He led her outside and ushered her into his car.

  “Where are we going?” She finally spoke as he pulled into the street and turned in the opposite direction from which they’d come.

  “I don’t know. To get a cup of coffee, something to eat...something to keep you from passing out. What did the article say? What’s upset you so badly?”

  “That I—that Elizabeth drowned in the Missouri River. She was running away from Blake, but something went wrong. I’ve got to get down to the river.”

  Elizabeth had been running away from her husband when she died. Analise had left her husband and survived, but she had been left with a lump on her head and bruises all over her body. The parallels were close enough to make him feel weird.

  He pulled up in front of a local restaurant. “We’re not going anywhere until you get something to eat,” he said firmly. She hadn’t regained any color. Even away from the gloomy library, her fair skin was frighteningly pale. Her eyes shone with a fevered green fire, and her breath came too quickly.

  “I can’t eat right now. I have to get to the river. I have to go to the same spot.” She spoke rapidly, her hands darting up and down, fluttering. She met his gaze, refusing to back down. He compressed his lips, equally obstinate. She needed to eat then go home to bed, not on a wild goose chase around the city.

  “Be reasonable. You’ll never be able to find the place where Elizabeth fell in.”

  “Yes, I will. I can find Blake’s house. It may take me a little while. Things are so different now. But I’ll find it, and then it’ll be simple. I remember every inch of ground between there and the river.”

  “Analise, listen to yourself.” He clutched her arms, held her steady. “You’re talking like you were Elizabeth. You’re not. She’s been dead for a hundred years. And even if her ghost came back, she couldn’t find where she fell in. The Missouri River changes course regularly. It’s not the same as it was in Elizabeth’s time.”

  If his words made any impression on her, he couldn’t see it.

  “I have to try.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “What more can you possibly find out about Elizabeth by locating the place of her death?”

  “I need to remember exactly what happened and then maybe I can avoid that same fate.”

  For a brief moment she looked frightened. He sucked in a deep breath, drew back, almost released her. Did she remember everything after all? Had he accepted her amnesia story too easily?

  His fingers clutched her arms more tightly. “You can’t remember Elizabeth’s life because you didn’t live it.” His voice was grating. He forced himself to loosen his grip, to relax. Was he trying to convince her or himself? He was no longer sure what he believed or what he was going to do with her.

  “I have to understand Elizabeth before I can know what’s going on with Analise...with me. I know there’s a connection.”

  “All right,” he agreed, throwing up his hands in surrender. “We’ll go to the river.” She was going, with or without him. He had no doubt about that. At least he could be there with her.

  “We need to go to Blake’s house. That’s where we have to start.”

  “And you know where Blake’s house is?”

  She blinked a couple of times, her eyes losing some of their feverish glitter as she seemed to return to a semblance of reality. “I can find it. Maybe I went there looking for antiques or something. I know where it is.” She looked about her. “Sort of. I need to find a landmark. Where’s the courthouse?”

  “The old one?”

  She smiled sadly. “Yes, it would be the old one now.”

  He didn’t miss the meaning behind her words. In Elizabeth’s time the courthouse would have been new. She had returned to her fantasy. He had no idea where this was leading, but he knew he had to stay with her for a lot of reasons, some of which he didn’t come close to understanding. Beyond the chance that she might remember everything at any time, and even beyond his crazy desire to be with her, he couldn’t shake the peculiar feeling that he had to be there because he was somehow a part of it all.

  He drove her to the old courthouse and followed her directions from there. A
fter half an hour of going mostly in circles, she leaned back with a sigh. “It’s all changed so much. Nothing looks familiar.”

  “Analise, the town hasn’t changed since your accident,” Dylan said firmly. He turned at the next street, heading home. She’d only been dreaming after all. She had no knowledge of Elizabeth’s world. He’d known that. Yet he felt an odd pang of disappointment.

  She drew a weary hand across her forehead. “I know. I’m mixing things up again.”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her.

  They passed a small church with a bell steeple, and she sat upright abruptly. “There!” she exclaimed.

  Dylan slammed on the brakes. “That’s not a house. That’s a church.”

  “I know! And I could see that steeple from Blake’s second floor balcony. None of these other houses were here. There was a clear view. Blake’s house is right through there.” She indicated a diagonal path.

  The feverish look was back in her eyes, and their green color darkened, seemed more forest than ocean. Without further protest or even thought, he turned down the nearest street, went right at the next and made a zigzag path in the direction she’d indicated.

  “There it is,” she exclaimed, and he came to a stop in front of a very old, rundown house.

  A hand-painted sign on the sagging front porch advertised Rooms for Rent. The house was different, Analise realized, scarcely recognizable, but it still sent a chill through her. In that house a young girl’s dreams had died a cruel, violent death.

  How fitting and just, she thought, that the people who live in that house now rent rooms, come and go and only use it. Nobody loves it enough to take care of it. There’s too much hate trapped inside.

  She opened the car door and stepped out, crossed the yard between the houses. The woods and fields were gone, replaced by more houses and streets, but she had only to continue in a straight line. She circled around the chain link fence behind Blake’s house, crossed to the next block, skirted the houses, ignored a barking dog, moved onward past the invasion of civilization to undeveloped land.