by Ann Charles
I opened my eyes, staring out the windshield at the front of Aunt Zoe’s house, the only place I really felt safe. “There’s a ‘but’ in there, though. What happened?”
“The executioner apparently died while in the other plane,” he said quietly.
Did that mean her body was stuck over there, or was this just a mind thing? I didn’t get all of this “realm” and “plane” crapola.
“How did she die?” I asked.
“Well, the problem with dying in another plane is that the person in the current timeline really doesn’t have a way of knowing the cause of death. The author wrote that the executioner didn’t return. It was assumed that she must have died.”
I thought about that for a bit. Was she alone when she died? Did she realize she would leave her loved ones with questions and worries? With no closure? “What did she fix?”
“It turned out that fixing that problem changed the present for the worse.”
I heard Prudence’s voice in my head saying, Time can be a tricky devil. “Worse how?”
He hesitated. “Would it do any good to tell you the point I’m making is that messing around with timekeepers can result in death? We need to be careful if we go back to Ms. Wolff’s apartment. There may be some doors in there that might be better left closed.”
I sat up and frowned at him in the darkness. “Doc, what was the event the executioner was trying to stop from happening by going to the other plane?”
Even in the thick shadows, I could see the tension lining his face. “During a battle to save her family, her husband was kidnapped and murdered. His body was left outside of her door.” He sighed. “In pieces.”
Oh, God! My chest tightened with a bolt of fear, making breathing hard. I forced myself to take several slow, deep breaths until the restricted feeling eased.
“How did the executioner going to the other plane make the present situation worse?”
He took my hand, squeezing it. “Don’t you think her dying was bad enough?”
“I don’t know. That depends. Why do I have the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me? Some part of the tale you’re leaving out?”
“The timekeeper warned her of the potential dangers,” he continued, not answering me. “If we’re going to try to go back and figure out what happened to Ms. Wolff, we need to consider—”
“How was it worse, Doc?” I interrupted. What in the hell was he leaving out? “I’m not going to drop this, so you might as well answer me.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. Her husband lived.”
“So, he lived but she died?”
“Yes.” He used his sleeve to clear a circle of fog from his window, peering out into the darkness.
That was sad, but the way Doc was acting made it clear there was more. “What else?” I pressed.
He looked at me, shadows adding hard edges to his frown. “Three of their four children were kidnapped.”
“Oh no!” I covered my mouth, afraid of where this was heading.
“They were returned the next day.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “In a basket. More pieces.” He took my hand in both of his. “Violet, we have to be very careful dabbling with timelines.”
Chapter Seventeen
Thursday, December 6th
A pounding noise woke me in the early morning darkness.
I sat up on the couch where I’d fallen asleep to Rooster Cogburn, letting John Wayne soothe my anxieties about the monsters roaming the outside world, lying in wait for me.
I rubbed my eyes. The television was hissing, the screen filled with ants running around in the snow. At least that was what Addy always called it. I frowned at the screen. That was weird. What happened to the Old West channel? The cable must have gone out.
Someone was pounding on the front door, making me jump. Who would be knocking on the door this early? Doc? Harvey? Reid? Had one of them forgotten something after the card game?
I stumbled toward the door in my bare feet, my slippers nowhere to be found. Huh. I tied my sweater tighter around me. I could swear I was wearing my slippers around the house last night before I settled in on the couch.
Moonlight blared through the half circle of glass at the top of the door, painting the foyer floor with half of a glowing wagon wheel. I hit the porch light and pulled the curtain aside, trying to see who had come calling so late.
The porch was empty.
I unlocked the door. It creaked open, the hinges complaining more than usual. A dusting of snow covered the porch. Through the screen door, I admired what looked like tiny, sparkling ice diamonds in the snow. The air smelled so fresh it burned the back of my throat.
A cloud covered the moon. The wind kicked up, rattling the bare branches of Aunt Zoe’s big cottonwood tree out front. Cold air seeped in, curling around my bare feet.
“Hello?” I called into the shadowy night.
The wind whistled in answer.
Odd. I could have sworn I’d heard someone knock. I started to shut the door, but the sound of paper flapping stopped me.
What was that?
There was something sitting on the sidewalk at the base of the porch steps. I pressed my nose against the glass-top section of the storm door again, squinting out into the darkness. It looked like a wicker laundry basket. The kind with a lid on the top, like one of those big baskets that Marion hid inside of at the Cairo market in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I needed a flashlight to be certain. I checked my sweater pocket for my cell phone, but it must have fallen out while I was asleep.
Bracing myself for the cold, I pushed open the screen door and tiptoed out onto the porch. I searched the yard, seeing nobody. There weren’t even footprints in the snow. What the hell? Did the stork leave me another baby? I sure as hell hoped not. Raising two kids was turning me into an old lady well before my time.
I tiptoed down the porch steps, the snow freezing my feet. As I hit the last step, the wind kicked up, blowing my hair in front of my face. I pushed it aside, frowning down at the waist-high basket. The lid had a sprinkling of snow covering it like it had been sitting there for a while. A piece of paper fluttered against the wicker handle in the wind, making the flapping sound I’d heard earlier.
I caught the paper, tearing it free of the rope tying it to the basket. In the glow of the porch light, I read a word that still made me cringe: Scharfrichter. The thick dark ink had dripped, running down from the S and the f and the t.
Wadding up the paper, I stuffed it in my pocket. This game of sending me anonymous gifts needed to end. I crossed my arms, shivering as I stared down at the basket. What in the world had my mysterious Secret Santa sent me this time? The basket was big enough to hold a machine gun.
The snow and wind stopped all of a sudden, the silence growing cotton-thick in the dark world.
I grabbed the handle and lifted the lid as the moon peeked out from behind a cloud.
A whiff of rotting meat made me gasp. I gagged and slammed the lid back down before I could see what was inside.
What the hell?
The basket wobbled back and forth on the sidewalk and then toppled over, landing on its side in the snowy yard. The impact knocked the lid off, and a hand tumbled out onto the moonlit snow.
A small hand with child-sized fingers reaching up into the air.
I cried out, taking several steps back and tripped on the porch step. I came down hard on my ass, jarring my teeth.
As I sat staring at the hand, a strong wind came up suddenly, whistling past. It caught the basket and rocked it back and forth on the lawn in front of me.
A head tumbled out.
“Oh, my God!” I covered my mouth.
The moonlight grew stronger. I stared at the thing, my mind trying to make sense of the horror. Silvery blond hair whipped back and forth around the head. I caught a glimpse of wide sightless eyes and a face I knew too well.
Addy!
I screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
“Violet!” a man’s voice shouted in the darkness.
I kept screaming, shaking so hard my neck felt like it would snap at any moment.
“Dammit, Parker! Wake up!”
Silence!
I opened my eyes. Cooper’s furrowed face filled my vision.
“Cooper?” I whispered. My throat felt raw. So did my heart.
“You had another nightmare.” He let go of my shoulders and stepped back.
I looked around, taking in Aunt Zoe’s living room, the couch, the old quilt, the black and white western on the television, the blinking Christmas lights in the windows. Only a nightmare.
“Fuck,” I breathed, covering my face. My cheeks were wet with tears. I fell back onto the couch, my whole body quaking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No.”
“You want some coffee? Or do you want to go back to sleep?”
I lowered my hands, drying my tears on Aunt Zoe’s quilt. “There’s no way I’m going back to sleep.”
With a single nod, he walked away, his footfalls heading into the kitchen. I lay there, trying to chase the shocking image of my baby girl’s head from my brain. This sort of shit was exactly why I didn’t want to read that damned book. One story about an executioner dying and my asshole brain turned it into my kid being torn apart and left at my door.
By the time Cooper returned a few minutes later, I was sitting up, staring blankly at big Chuck Connors and his handy rifle as he played the part of Lucas McCain in The Rifleman. Maybe if I had a rifle like Lucas’s, I would sleep better at night. Or I could just borrow Harvey’s old shotgun, not that bullets would really keep my predators at bay.
“Here,” Cooper said, holding out a mug for me to take. Steam rose from it.
“What is it? Hemlock?” I sniffed it, smelling vanilla and something else, maybe chai.
“Not quite. Zoe’s bottle of poison was empty.”
Hold the phone! Had Cooper made a joke? Was this another nightmare? I breathed in more steam, trying to soothe my throat, which still felt scratchy from screaming. “An empty poison bottle makes me worry about Reid.”
His cheek twitched as if a smile were trying to push to the surface on one side. “It’s some sort of tea. I didn’t read the box. Move your feet.” After I scooted aside, he dropped onto the other end of the couch.
“What are you doing?” I asked, frowning at him. The light from the television flickered over his face. From the side, his profile looked even more like granite than usual, rough hewn and cracked.
“What I agreed to do,” he answered.
“What does that mean?”
He stared at the TV. “I lost at poker tonight.”
“I heard.” Unsure of what that had to do with his sitting on the couch with me, I sipped from my tea. The chai taste was subtle, the vanilla more of a smell than flavor.
“Your boyfriend and my uncle offered to give me back some of my money in return for a promise.”
“Did you pinkie swear with them?”
His smile breached the surface this time, but only for a second or two. “Shut up, Parker.”
“You really need to get better poker karma. What did you promise?”
“That I’d babysit you if you had another nightmare.”
I sighed, feeling loved by two of my favorite boys. “That was sweet of them.”
“Real sweet. They’re both big suckers.” He joked again.
Dang, he was in rare form tonight. I pinched my arm, making sure this wasn’t a dream. “You’re the one who lost at cards,” I reminded him.
“That makes me a loser, not a sucker.”
We sat there for a short while, watching The Rifleman together.
When a commercial came on, I looked over at him. “You can go back to bed, Cooper.” I pointed at the television. “I have big, strong Chuck Connors and his fancy rifle to keep me safe.”
He didn’t budge, just rubbed his neck and watched the TV. “McCain’s rifle isn’t fancy, Parker. It’s a modified Winchester model 1892. He has it rigged to fire when the lever is closed after a round has been chambered. This allows him to rapid fire without having to depress the trigger. It’s a badass rifle. If McCain heard you call it fancy, he’d fill you full of lead.”
I scoffed, setting my tea on the end table next to me. “Lucas McCain is a gentleman, Cooper. He’d never shoot a lady. If he heard me call his gun fancy, he’d just give me one of those handsome grins and ask me over to make supper for him and his boy.”
“Maybe, but then he’d taste your crappy cooking and figure you for a villain out to poison him. He’d drag you back to town and have Marshal Torrance throw you in jail.” He looked over at me with a shit-eating grin. “Right where you belong.”
“You’re a butthead.” I took one of the couch pillows and threw it at him.
He caught it, laughing, and tossed it back. “And you’re a pain in the ass.”
The show started up again, snagging our attention.
I sipped at my tea, my muscles relaxing. The clarity of my nightmare lost most of its sharpness.
During the next commercial break, Cooper glanced my way. “What was it about this time?”
“What was what about?”
“The nightmare.”
I finished the last swallow of tea and set the cup on the stand. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked instead of answering.
He was wearing the same outfit as last night—sweatpants with bare feet and a bare chest. I, on the other hand, had my thick sweater wrapped around my flannel pajamas and a thick pair of socks. My slippers were on the floor below.
“A little,” he admitted.
“Get under the quilt.”
He frowned. “You’re using it.”
“It’s a king-sized quilt, Cooper. I only need it for my legs and feet.”
He hesitated.
“I promise I don’t have cooties. Just use the other end.”
He still resisted but I kicked the quilt his way. After he was mostly covered, I focused back on the TV. Some loud spokesman was trying to sell me a shower seat. As soon as I felt like I could talk without getting choked up, I told him about the nightmare.
When I finished, he blew out a breath. “Jesus, Parker. That’s some fucked-up shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And this stemmed from what?”
I told him then about my family book and what Doc had told me, the story of the executioner and her family’s tragedy.
He leaned his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Damn. Here I thought cops had cornered the market on night terrors. You could write horror stories for a living.”
“I’d rather stick to real estate.”
“Have you thought about seeking counseling for these nightmares?”
I guffawed. “And tell a shrink what? That I’m an executioner and need help dealing with the mental side effects that come from facing off with monsters for a living?”
“You can’t keep going like this. It’s going to make you even more of a nut job than you are normally.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Funny guy. You’re on a roll tonight.” Curling my legs tighter against me, I turned back to the television. “The nightmares had backed down again until this last week. Something is spurring them, and I need to figure out what before I have to start sleeping in the basement with Elvis to keep from waking everyone up.”
“You’ll make that chicken’s heart pop with your shrieking.”
“Maybe if we solve Ms. Wolff’s murd—”
He snorted. “At the rate things are going, that’s a big if.”
“Well, I can hope, can’t I?”
“I suppose.”
“Otherwise, I don’t know what to do.”
He shifted, angling more into the corner of the couch. “You could try sleeping pills.”
“What if I get stuck in a nightmare because of them and can’t wake up?”
He shook his
head. “Jesus.”
He’d already said that.
Another episode of The Rifleman started up, the rifle blasts comforting. I smiled. I must be hanging around Harvey too much if gun noises were working as a lullaby.
We watched the show, sinking into a comfortable silence again. I glanced over when the show came to an end. Cooper’s head was tipped to the side, his eyes closed. I could see the blanket rising and falling over his chest in regular intervals.
I drew my phone from my sweater pocket and checked the time. Good, I had a few hours left until it was time to get up. Setting the alarm, I placed it on the end table. After turning the TV volume down, I settled into my corner of the couch. My eyes grew heavy after a while, and then darkness fell upon me again.
* * *
I didn’t have any more bad dreams the rest of the morning at home, but I did run into a nightmare at work.
Rex Conner was sitting on the corner of my desk when I walked through Calamity Jane’s back door. I skidded to a stop at the sight of my piece-of-shit ex in his swanky, tan wool overcoat and posh leather shoes. His blond hair looked freshly trimmed and styled, like he was ready for one of Jerry’s billboard ads minus the stupid pencil in his mouth.
What kind of fresh version of Hell was this?
Since Jerry was leaning back in his chair, shooting the breeze with the son of a bitch, I had to pretend I didn’t want to bash Rex’s teeth in as I passed.
Hey! That gave me an idea for my debt to Prudence.
Then again, I might want to keep Rex’s tooth for my own trophy case. I could take it out once in a while, polish it, and smile at the memory of how I’d acquired it.
I started to pull out my desk drawer when a thought made me pause. Trophies! Was that how Prudence’s tooth fetish had started? Had she taken one from a longtime enemy? A hard-earned prize for the victor? A memento to remind her how fiercely she’d fought for her life and come out the winner? If that were the case, it was no wonder she’d been pissed that I’d taken her box of teeth. Those teeth were all she had to remind her of a profession about which she was still pompously proud, of a livelihood that had not only ended her life, but her family’s, too.
That wasn’t saying her need for trophy teeth hadn’t gotten out of hand. But to give her some credit, if I had to rattle around an old house in Lead for over a century with nothing but time to think about what had been, I might wander just this side of the Deranged state line myself.