by Joanna Bell
A thousand years. Something about that specific phrase focused my attention. When I brought our bowls of frozen yoghurt back to the table and sat down, I remembered where I'd heard that phrase recently – it had come out of my own mouth that very afternoon, during my conversation with Professor Foxwell.
"What is it?" Ashley asked, noticing the look on my face.
"Uh," I replied. "Nothing. Nothing, sweetie."
But it wasn't nothing. It was one hell of a coincidence. And even as I thought about it, about the strangeness of finding the piece of the brooch, the one that apparently had soil from a thousand years ago stuck to it, in almost exactly the same spot that the man – who Ashley had just suggested was a Viking – had appeared, I was smiling to myself. It was even more absurd an idea than aliens.
But that night, when Ashley was in bed and I was settled down in front of the laptop, I didn't go straight to the TCO website to check on what JimmyOcean AKA Katie Wallis had been posting. No, I went to the Wikipedia entry for Vikings, still amused by Ashley's suggestion that the man in the woods might have been one.
And on that Wikipedia page, right at the top, I read that Vikings were Norse seafarers from northern Europe who raided and traded throughout the rest of Europe in the "late 8th to the late 11th centuries." I re-read the sentence again. Late 8th to late 11th century. That was almost exactly the time period Professor Foxwell had said the soil on the brooch was from.
I sat back on the sofa, shaking my head. But then I clicked over to TCO and found that post from JimmyOcean, the one in the thread about there being a possible portal to another world on the Renner property:
"You might be surprised. :)"
"No," I said out loud, getting to my feet and setting the laptop down on the coffee table. "Nope, Sophie. That's enough internet for tonight."
I busied myself in the kitchen, wiping down the countertops and then preparing Ashley's lunch for the next day. After that I tried, unsuccessfully, to find something to watch on TV. And even as I occupied myself with everything that wasn't related to the totally and unequivocally insane idea that had already begun to take form, I couldn't quite put the pieces of the puzzle entirely out of my mind. A strange man in the woods with a huge sword and dressed in furs – a man who seemed to be shocked by the sight of a car. A piece of Anglo-Saxon jewelry not just over a thousand years old but with thousand year old soil embedded in it. Two missing girls, both of whom had returned before going missing a second time, almost as if it had been a choice. Internet speculation about portals to other worlds.
No. It couldn't be. Jerry Sawchuk was right, I was getting too involved. Way too involved.
I knew what I was going to do. I was going to go see that counselor, and then I was going to back to work. I would call to make the appointment the next day.
Eight
Sophie
That same night, I woke up at just past 3 a.m., torn out of a nightmare of tumbling through darkness, disoriented, not knowing which way was up or down. And as I sat panting and sweaty in my bed, waiting for the feeling of the bad dream to dissipate, I remembered where I knew that feeling from. That day in the woods on the Renner property, the strange fainting episode, the sudden darkness and the awful sensation of having the breath sucked out of my lungs.
But unlike earlier in the evening, when I'd been able to smile and laugh at silly ideas, it was different in the dark, the way things so often are. I was alone, with only the sound of my rapid heartbeat pounding in my ears and – for the first time – real fear regarding my own state of mind.
I had to stop it. I had to stop speculating and thinking about impossible things.
So that's what I did. I went to the counselor and made regular weekly appointments, as Jerry Sawchuk instructed, for the next couple of months. I stopped going to the TCO online forum and reading JimmyOcean's posts. When Professor Foxwell called in early May to tell me the third test on the broken piece of brooch had again confirmed initial carbon dating results I thanked him and went back to the case I was working on at the time, one involving the theft of some very expensive equipment from a chemical manufacturer in River Falls.
I did not allow myself to think about the man in furs in the woods anymore, or the broken piece of jewelry, or the odd fainting episodes in the woods. I did not allow myself to think about coincidences. I couldn't afford to do any of those things. I had a small child, a mortgage and a job I needed to keep if I wanted to take care of the child and the mortgage. I did not have room in my life to lose myself in far-fetched theories about missing girls.
So I settled back into work and the daily routines of my life. Jerry Sawchuk seemed to soften a little when I quickly managed to not only pin the chemical factory robbery on a local man and a couple of his unsavory friends, but recover the stolen equipment before it could be sold on, too. Ashley continued to do well in school – and to eat her broccoli with very little fuss – and I was able to spend quite a bit of time with my mother, and Maria.
And then, on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon at the counselor's office, the counselor himself, a soft-spoken and slightly rumpled looking man named Kevin who I neither liked nor disliked, dropped a bomb in my lap.
We were talking about the Renner and Wallis cases towards the end of our stipulated hour, and Kevin mentioned casually that an acquaintance of his was Paige Renner's childhood therapist.
The fact that Page Renner had had a therapist as a child came as no surprise, although I hadn't seen the records the FBI had been able to recover. I knew all about the Renner girl's past, her mother's death, her ongoing therapy as a child. When I'd suggested we try to track down some of those therapists Jerry had shut me down, stating that it wouldn't help us find Paige and besides, the FBI was already looking into it. And that had been the end of that.
Until Kevin the therapist brought it up out of the blue one day.
"Did you?" I asked, unable to stop myself and, by then, confident that whatever mental or emotional wobbles I may have had in the past with regards to the Renner and Wallis cases were truly behind me.
"Yeah," he replied. "Sounds like that girl was always a little...touched."
I didn't like that word 'touched.' I didn't like it used when speaking of small child who had lost her mother. But I wanted to hear more so I didn't call him out.
"Really? Why do you say that?" I continued, making sure to keep my tone of voice light.
Kevin leaned forward across his desk, eyebrows raised. "I probably shouldn't say anything about this."
He was right about that – not that I was going to stop him.
"But my friend – Dr. Hansen – said she had a whole alternate world in her head, not just your usual childhood imaginary friends but a whole world. Apparently she used to talk about it more than she did her real life."
"Oh?"
"He says it was so believable he sometimes wondered if the kid was telling the truth – if there really was a magic tree in her yard that took her back to the olden days."
An image flashed through my mind. My own hand, pale and cold in the winter air, against the large tree in the woods on the Renner property.
"What?" I asked, swallowing hard as I almost stumbled over my words. "Um, what was that? A magic tree?"
Kevin steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and nodded in a way I knew he imagined to be sagely. "Yes. As I said, apparently the girl believed a tree in her backyard was taking her to this other world. Dr. Hansen said she had friends there, that she would talk about the games they played and the adventures they had for hours. Apparently all she had to do to get there was touch this tree, and then everything would go black and –"
"I'm sorry," I croaked, my mouth suddenly parched. "I have to, um – I just remembered I have to pick up my daughter from, uh – from school. For – for an appointment."
My therapist stood up, confused, and began to say something about it being summer vacation – but I didn't listen. I grabbed my bag and raced out the door. And then I walke
d, confused and unsteady, out of the building and across the parking lot to my car. Once ensconced inside, with the air conditioning on, I took a few deep breaths and tried to talk myself through it.
It's a coincidence. A series of coincidences. There's no portal to another world because portals to other worlds don't exist.
But as hard as I tried, the one thing I couldn't shake was duty. My duty as a police officer. I didn't believe in portals to other worlds, obviously, but what I did believe in was my duty to tug on any and all strings that presented themselves in the Renner and Wallis cases – even if those strings seemed crazy. Besides, surely there was some rational explanation for men with swords and ancient jewelry and fainting spells. And whatever that rational explanation was, it very possibly had something to do with Paige and Emma.
I had to follow up. I had to go back to the Renner property. I considered calling Marla Leigh at the FBI, nervous as I was, but in the end I put my phone down on the passenger seat without hitting the call button. What was Marla, kind and encouraging though she was, going to tell me that I didn't already know? No, it was something I could handle on my own. And it would have to be on my own, because there was no way I was going to Jerry Sawchuk with my ideas. Things at work were going well, but no one had forgotten the incident with the man I shot and then allowed to escape.
So I called my mom and asked her if she could pick Ashley up from daycare that night, and then I drove out to the Renner acreage and circled it a couple of times in my car to make sure there weren't any reporters – or other cops – lurking around.
It was a beautiful summer's day, hot but not too hot, and the ground was no longer wet with the melt of spring. I wasn't in uniform, but I'd stopped by the office on the way and picked up my gun anyway. We were permitted to take our service weapons home, so it wasn't like I was breaking any rules.
The Renner house was, now that summer was in full swing, starting to look unkempt. The hedge that ran the length of the driveway on one side was becoming unruly and tendrils of ivy were starting to creep across the windows and into cracks in the stucco. It had been less than a year and already nature was reasserting itself. I slipped past the house and down through the backyard, and then into the woods themselves.
The brook was almost dry, its surface dark, only broken by tiny little skimming insects. It felt peaceful to be in the trees, not scary or foreboding. Birds chirped and dappled sunlight made patterns on my bare arms.
First, I followed the paths that had been cut into the earth by the feet of a hundred reporters and law enforcement officials. But even as I did that, the tree I remembered falling against stood out somehow, in the corner of my eye. Kevin the counselor's words echoed in my head:
Apparently the girl believed a tree in her backyard was taking her to this other world.
There were a lot of trees around, but that one in particular seemed to draw me. Eventually, I stepped off the path and made my way towards it. I reached out when I got close enough, and then drew my hand back at the last second, chuckling nervously to myself.
It's just a tree, dummy. Get this over with. Confirm it's not a magical portal to unicorn land and then get on with your life and your job.
I reached out again. At the very last second, just before I expected to feel the rough bark against my fingertips, a strange rustling sound filled my ears. It was quiet, almost imperceptible, but it made me spin around all the same, expecting to see a dog or a kid behind me, brushing up against the undergrowth. There was no one there. No dogs, no kids. My mind was playing tricks on me, scaring me.
Once again, I reached out. That time, before I could snatch my hand back again, all I could do was gasp as I seemed to fall suddenly into dark space, somewhere with no gravity or light. I tried breath but no air would go in – or come out – of my lungs.
And then, just as I was about to start genuinely panicking, the light returned, the feeling of the ground underneath my feet returned. The sweetness of being able to breathe returned. I lifted my head and looked around as my heart pounded in my chest.
I was in the woods. That's what I said to myself.
You're in the woods, Sophie. Calm down. You're still in the woods. It's OK. It's fine. You must have fainted again.
But I was not in the same woods. I scanned my surroundings further. No, I was definitely not in the same place as I had been ten seconds ago. The woods around me were darker, the undergrowth much thicker, the air smelling faintly of wood-smoke, which it definitely did not in River Falls in the middle of summer.
I splayed my hands out in front of me and studied them to see how badly they were shaking. Just a little. Not too bad.
The question of where I was got pushed to the side, because it was unanswerable. As did the question of how I'd gotten to this other place. What mattered was I was there. And that meant maybe Paige Renner and Emma Wallis were there, too. If I could find the missing girls, there was no telling how my life would change. There was no telling what kind of work I could get, how much money someone would be willing to pay for my story. I could pay off my mortgage, buy my mom a new car, put some money aside for Ashley's education. Also, I could show Jerry Sawchuk that I wasn't some silly little girl playing at being a cop. I was a cop. And a damn sight better one than he was.
I took a step forward, half-expecting to fall into the weightless darkness again – but there was no such thing, just the earth under my feet. A small path snaked its way through the bushes a few feet away, and I began to follow it, keeping my eyes and ears wide open. But I couldn't hear anything of note – no voices, not much of anything, actually. Not even any traffic in the distance. No distant airplanes inscribing their fluffy white trails across the blue sky. Where was I?
Keep going. Stay focused.
I kept going. I stayed focused. The path soon came out of the trees and led into what looked like an overgrown field area. In the middle of it, lumpy tussocks of grass broke the otherwise flat landscape and I went to investigate. Straw. Lumps of rotting straw, tied or woven tightly together and in some places showing what I thought might be scorch marks. There was a piece of something that appeared to be woven from thin saplings, also badly damaged and almost buried under the debris. I had no idea what any of it was – it wasn't dumped garbage, there were no moldy old refrigerators or plastic bags. I stood up and looked around, seeing nothing but more woods on all sides. And then the breeze died down just enough for me to hear something else – something I was pretty sure I couldn't possibly be hearing.
A quiet roar, a rushing sound. Was that - ? No, it couldn't be. River Falls was nowhere near the sea. Certainly not close enough to hear it.
But you're not in River Falls anymore.
The voice in my head was right. I was not in River Falls anymore. That was as far as I was prepared to go at that point, thinking maybe I could conjure up some kind of explanation for not being in River Falls. But surely I was still... close to it?
I turned and began to walk in the direction the sound seemed to be coming from. Another, different path led me back into the woods and I stopped before entering them to pull out a roll of pink trail-marking tape that I'd grabbed out of the supply room at the office. I ripped a short length off it and tied it around the end of a tree branch, in a place that would be easy to spot from any direction. And then I kept going.
The roaring sound got louder in my ears until it became impossible to think it was anything else except the sea. And even as my mind refused to accept that I could be hearing the sea less than a 15 minute walk from the Renner property, the trees suddenly thinned out and there it was.
The water was a deep marine blue, waves rolling in and crashing onto a small, sandy bay. The breeze off the water was fresh, salty, unmistakable. I couldn't be standing in front of the ocean. And yet there I was. Nothing about the scene was dreamlike, none of my five senses were in disagreement. I was where I seemed to be.
Tentatively, I took a step forward, and then another, until I was standing above the
high tide line on the beach itself. Once again I looked around, trying to spot something – anything – that would reveal my location. And once again, there was nothing. No boats on the water, no people on the beach, no dogs or kids or parking areas.
I walked slowly down to the water's edge and dipped my fingers into the cold water as the afternoon sun beat down on my back. Maybe I'd passed out again? I'd heard stories of people who passed out, often only for a minute or two, and then woke up with stories of hours-long adventures, other places, astonished at how real it had all seemed.
Was I unconscious, flat out on my back in the woods on the Renner acreage? I jogged back up to the edge of the woods and tied another piece of pink tape to a tree branch. And then, because I had to do something other than stand still, paralyzed with my own befuddlement, I began to walk up the coastline, parallel to the water. There was a lushness about the landscape that felt unfamiliar. Wildflowers I didn't recognize crowded amongst the grasses and bees flitted back and forth between flowers like girls between boys at a high school dance. I thought to myself that someone must have hives nearby.
Eventually I came to a short, rocky headland, which I began to walk out on before suddenly spotting movement out of the corner of my eye and dropping low.
Children. Two children. No, three. Surprisingly small children, too – definitely younger than Ashley. They were playing about twenty feet in front of me and they were filthy. I had never seen such filthy kids. I stayed where I was, angry that some neglectful asshole had left 3 little ones, much too young to be on their own and dressed in dirty rags, alone so close to the water. Sooner or later, someone was going to come looking for them, and when they did, I was going to arrest their abusive asses for – wait. I wasn't going to arrest anyone. I had a gun, but I wasn't in uniform, I didn't have cuffs, and I was all alone. What was I going to do – drag one, maybe two fully grown adults and three kids back through the woods to my car and then drive them into the station where Jerry could interrogate me about what the hell I'd been doing back on the Renner property?