by J. Y. Harris
CHAPTER ONE
“How did I let you talk me into this?” Kristen muttered as she made her way across the paved parking lot. She wasn’t used to wearing such cumbersome clothes; even in late autumn they were hot and uncomfortable. “It’s Saturday morning. I should be at home--asleep.”
“For one thing,” her brother Brad replied, adjusting his messenger bag on his shoulder, “this, including the essay, is an automatic credit toward our community service requirement for graduation. Something which you should take seriously, considering your study habits and GPA. Someone from the Service Committee is going to be watching to be sure you’re actively taking part and not just sitting around like a lump in period costume.”
His tone implied that that was exactly what he suspected Kristen would be doing.
Kris grunted. “Why didn’t I just volunteer to sort canned goods at the food bank? In the afternoon?”
“I’ve got two words to answer that one,” Brad answered. “Eric Tyson. Once I told you he was going to be here, you practically begged to come along.”
She paused, automatically smoothing the long, heavy layers of skirts around her. Ahh… Eric Tyson. Yep, he was a pretty good incentive. If she absolutely had to be out early on a chilly Saturday morning, dressed like a teenaged Betsy Ross in an eighteenth-century-style dress, Eric was a good reason to do it.
But, no need to actually concede the point to her brother.
“Hmmph,” she said. “I still can’t figure out why the two of you are friends. I mean, after all, he’s cool.”
Brad didn’t rise to the bait. “Oh, come on. Eric and I have known each other since third grade.”
She gave an unladylike snort. “But you were never particularly good friends.”
“So? Now we’re in the same Physics class. And English.”
They had left the pavement of the parking lot behind and followed a well-travelled path into the wooded area. A Parks and Recreation department sign at the edge of the parking lot marked it as the way to the “Revolutionary War Site - Battle of White Marsh.” As they walked down the uneven dirt trail, Kristen was glad she had thought to wear her sturdy Pumas under the heavy colonial-style skirt, instead of her canvas Keds.
“But he’s captain of the baseball team,” she said, going back to their conversation about Eric.
“Yeah, I’m aware of that, since I’m on the team too.”
“Please. You play outfield.”
“So what? This isn’t T-ball, when the kids who don’t pay attention are put in right field because nobody ever hits the ball there.”
“If you say so.”
“Come on, Carlos Beltran is an outfielder, and Ichiro Suzuki—I know you’ve heard of him. Plus, you know that guy whose poster on my wall that you like to look at, Hunter Pence? Outfielder.”
Kristen waved her hand in submission. “Okay, whatever. So you and Eric are on the same team, in some classes together, best friends and all that. That doesn’t tell me why a cool guy like him is doing this particular activity.”
“Um, maybe because he’s interested in history? He’s the one who brought up this Revolutionary War battle re-enactment in class, and got it included in the community service list. I think he mentioned that his family lived here back then. Anyway, how often can you see Eric Tyson in buckskin breeches, carrying a musket and powderhorn?”
Kristen was silent for a moment as she contemplated the image. “You’re right, who am I to question motive?”
“Speaking of motive, I just think it’ll be cool to see how those guys fought battles back then. You know: no radar, no automatic weapons, no stealth bombers.”
“No running water, no cell phones, no electricity.” Kris adjusted the bodice of her dress for the fifteenth time. The bodice was square-cut, as close to colonial style as she could find in the wardrobe closet of the school’s drama department. The dress itself was dark blue, long-sleeved, with a white underskirt attached. Luckily, the length was just about right, so that she wasn’t tripping over the skirt, and long enough so that her Puma Easy Riders stayed mostly hidden. However, for someone who was more comfortable in jeans, and in fact hadn’t worn a dress—of any length—since she’d attended her cousin’s wedding, two years ago, this faux-colonial monstrosity was driving her nuts.
Well, at least she didn’t have to wear the “mob cap” that the drama teacher had recommended. For one thing, it was butt-ugly. For the second thing, if Kristen’s memory served, those caps were only worn indoors, while doing household chores, and not outside. Thirdly, she didn’t want to have that moldy old cap covering her hair. Kristen Everheart knew she was no beauty—‘cute,’ maybe, yes, but ‘beautiful,’ not so much—but one thing she was proud of was her hair. It was a rich chestnut brown, long and a little wavy, with auburn highlights that shone in the sun.
No way she was going to cover it with that mob cap.
“What’s in the backpack?” Brad asked, nodding toward the burden on her shoulder. “I know what I’ve got in my messenger bag, since I tend to actually think ahead and prepare for things, but what do you have? Don’t tell me you actually brought school work with you?”
Kristen snorted. “Yeah, right! This is stuff I had when I slept over at Abby’s last weekend—magazines, PSP, stuff like that to pass the time. I just grabbed it on my way out in case we have to hang around and do nothing for a while.” With luck, she had a spare sweatshirt and jeans in there as well, so that she could get out of this revolutionary-era get-up as soon as possible when they were done.
She almost ran into Brad as she realized he had stopped in his tracks. And thank heaven he wasn’t wearing one of those ridiculous tricorn hats; otherwise, she’d have gotten one right in the eye.
“Wait a minute,” he said just as she was about to make a smart remark. “I’ve lost my bearings. Did we get off the trail?”
“I don’t see how. We’ve been on it a thousand times, and it’s a wide, well-worn—hmmm. Well, apparently it’s not as worn as it used to be. Where did it go? And what’s with this fog? That came in quickly.”
“I know,” Brad replied. “This is weird. I just can’t tell which way to go to the battle site.”
“Let’s backtrack to the parking lot and start again,” Kristen suggested, hitching up her backpack to turn around.
“Won’t work,” her brother said. “The path is no clearer behind us than it is in front of us. Or in any other direction.”
“That can’t be. We couldn’t have wandered that far off the trail; one of us would’ve noticed.”
“Yeah, you’d think. But wait.” Brad fished in his messenger bag. The bag was olive green, sort of the color of military fatigues; it wasn’t the best match with his rustic-looking outfit, which was mainly brown and blue, but otherwise the canvas bag could almost pass as a colonial-era item.
He continued. “One of the many advantages to having a smart phone—which I paid for myself, by the way, and didn’t have to pester mom and dad to buy for me—but one of the advantages of it is having GPS capability. I’ll just check the map to see where we are and where we’re going.”
Good thinking, Kristen thought, although she didn’t say it out loud. No need to give her brainy brother more of a swelled head than he already had.
“All right, here we go, and…. Okay, that’s odd. It’s not working. I can’t get a GPS fix.”
“Try calling Eric and see where he is. Maybe he’s having the same trouble we are.”
Brad found Eric’s number and hit ‘dial.’ “Nothing. It’s not connecting. In fact, I’m not getting any service here.”
Kristen checked her own phone. “Yeah, me either—no bars. Maybe the fog is interfering somehow?”
“I don’t see how. There’s a cell tower just across from the park entrance. I used my phone when I was here skateboarding a few weeks ago, and it was really overcast that day, so I don’t think a little fog should interfere.”
; “Well, I’m not sure I’d call this a ‘little fog.’ This isn’t like any fog I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, me either. In any case, we can’t just stand here all day until this super-fog burns off. We should probably pick a direction and make our way as best we can.”
“Good idea. Eventually we’ll have to run into something we recognize. So, pick a direction.” Kristen had to admit—to herself, at least—that she was a little spooked. The fog was really disorienting. She didn’t care at the moment about tweaking her nerd-boy older brother or getting the best of him; there was plenty of time for that once they were at the re-enactment site. Right now she just wanted to be somewhere familiar, with other people.
And out of this blasted cloud of nothingness.
“Alright,” Brad said. “Let’s continue in the direction we were originally heading. Or as close as we can determine, anyway.”
He and Kristen grabbed their bags and made their way forward.
They must have really gotten off the trail, Kris thought. There was a path, but it was nothing like the wide, well-trod park trail that they’d been on previously. This one was barely noticeable, just a small track in the undergrowth. She didn’t remember seeing any trails in the park that looked like this one. At least, no official trails.
And still the fog. Brad was lucky he could see a foot in front of him.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he said, as if he’d heard her thoughts, “and if we’re going anywhere close to the right direction, we should be coming up on the kids’ playground just up ahead. Then the re-enactment site is a little past that.”
“I remember that playground. It had those cool little digging toys, like a back-hoe and an excavator. Remember? I used to sit on one of those and pretend I’d built the whole playground and cleared the trees out in that triangle shape.”
“Triangle shape?”
“Yeah, don’t you remember? The playground was sort of a triangle. The slides were at one corner, the swings in another, and that climbing place—the jungle gym, or whatever—was in the other corner.”
“That’s right, I remember now. And the ‘climbing place,’ as you call it, was a pirate ship. And I was an awesome pirate, climbing and swooping all over that thing. Aha!” Brad said. “I think we’re coming up on the playground now. The fog is lifting, at any rate.”
It was true; Kris could see farther into the woods now than she could have a few minutes ago. And there was a clearing up ahead. Thank god!
“Oh, no. What the--?”
Kristen followed her bother out of the woods as the last of the fog cleared. “You’re kidding!”
It was a clearing, all right, but definitely not the playground. Instead, the clearing offered nothing but overgrown grass and weeds.
“Crap!” Brad said. “We couldn’t have been so far off course that we missed it entirely. I wish I had a park map; I don’t even remember there being a clearing like this with nothing in it.”
“Me either. And listen… shouldn’t we be able to hear something? Traffic from the highway, or something?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but—” Brad looked all around. “Uh-oh….”
“Uh-oh, what? What’s uh-oh? Don’t try to spook me; I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not trying to spook you. But, for real, look around the clearing. What do you notice?”
“What do I notice? I notice a clearing, surrounded by a bunch of trees. And filled with weeds and small brush. And probably some rabbits or other critters skittering around that I really don’t want to know about.” Kris pretended to ignore the tall grass nearby that was moving as something passed by; she looked at her brother instead. “Why? What am I supposed to see?”
Brad pointed. “Can’t you just ‘see’ some slides over in that corner, and some swings over there, and an awesome pirate ship you can climb on over there?”
Kris looked around. “What? Are you trying to tell me…? What are you trying to tell me?”
“This is a triangle. See the three angles? Just like the playground.”
“So?”
“So, where’s the playground? And what happened to the trail? We both know we didn’t get off that trail.”
“Brad, what are you trying to say, that we’re in some sort of alternate reality in which the park isn’t the park?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on. But the trail that disappeared, and that fog, and now this….”
“Come on, you’re nuts. We just got lost, that’s all. It’s not like we stumbled into The Land Before Time.”
“Well, we stumbled into something.”
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when dinosaurs step out of the woods. Now let’s keep going. I don’t like just standing here in the middle of nowhere. Especially with who-knows-what crawling around in this tall grass.”
Her brother grunted. “You’re just as spooked as I am, and you know it.”
“So? I’m not gonna get unspooked just by standing here.”
“I know, I know. Let’s see—”
He was interrupted by a shout, which came from somewhere in the trees on the far side of the triangle.
“Well, hallelujah,” Kris said. “That sounded human enough. With luck, that’s our group of re-enactors and this whole thing—” she gestured to indicate the triangular clearing— “is just some bizarre coincidence. Let’s go.”
They set off again through the overgrown clearing, Kristen’s dress dragging through the high weeds. Brad at least was wearing eighteenth-century-style breeches which weren’t as bulky or heavy as her dress. The drama department’s costume closet had been a little more generous to guys than it was to girls; there had been a good supply of below-the-knee pants—oops, make that breeches—from which to choose. Coats, too. Brad was wearing a dull, dark cranberry coat with matching vest. Underneath he wore a shapeless, white long-sleeved shirt that was so long, he practically had to tuck it into his pant-legs. Add to that the white calf-covering stockings and some black shoes, and he was geared up pretty convincingly.
As the two teens entered the woods on the far side of the triangle, the sound of voices became louder. They also could smell wood-smoke, and hear the sound of activity and an occasional burst of laughter. Finally, when they were about thirty yards into the woods, Brad and Kris could see where the sounds and voices were coming from. They stopped to survey the scene.
The trees ended not far ahead, and beyond that was a large flat field. On the near side of the field were some Revolution-era canvas tents and two campfires. Men milled around, some sitting around the fire drinking from tin cups, others cleaning weapons. In short, it looked like every Revolutionary War campground re-enactment that Brad or Kristen Everheart had ever seen.
Running along the camp was a road—well, a track, really, not much more than about four or five feet wide—that lead into the woods off to the side.
“Finally,” she said. “I need to sit down. And maybe there’s better cell reception here than there was back there in the woods.”
She started to head toward the encampment, but Brad grabbed her arm.
“Wait. Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Kris shook off her brother’s hand. “Look, it’s early on a Saturday morning, and we just got lost in woods we’ve been traipsing through our whole lives. And now we found civilization—well, so to speak. What could be wrong?”
“But I don’t think that is civilization.”
Kristen gave an exasperated sigh. “Again: what are you talking about?”
He gestured to the scene ahead. “What is wrong with that picture?”
“What? Nothing!”
“I don’t recognize any of those guys, do you?”
Kristen looked through the trees at the men. “Well, no. They’re probably just re-enactors from town.”
“Most of whom we know. Where’s Mr. Elliott from the hardware store? Or that
guy, Hamilton, who works at the library? And you know Leonard Sidlow would be there, front and center.”
Kristen looked again. Brad was right—she didn’t recognize any of those men, not from town and not from other re-enactments she’d seen. Even Loony Leonard Sidlow, Nerd Supreme at White Marsh High School. He would definitely be there.
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “could they be re-enactors from some other town? Maybe our guys are camped somewhere else.”
“Possible, but I doubt it. Look at them: they look tired, disheveled, unshaven. I mean, I know re-enactors grow beards or let their hair get long sometimes, in order to look historically accurate, but…” Brad shook his head. “These guys don’t look like they just quit shaving for the past week for this event. Hey, look, speak of the devil.”
He pointed to where one soldier was sitting on a large rock, and another one used a pair of large, ancient-looking scissors to trim the man’s hair.
“Wow,” Kristen said, “that guy must be desperate for a haircut. Somehow I don’t think the dude with the scissors works at the Yankee Clipper for his day job.”
Brad apparently wasn’t listening. “Look at their uniforms,” he muttered. “Look how old and dirty and mismatched they are.”
“Yeah, that’s not unusual, right? It’s supposed to be seventeen-seventy-seven. The Continental Army didn’t have a single standard uniform, especially this early in the war. You know that. You know more about this stuff than I do.”
“You’re right, I do,” he said, “but look at them. What kind of re-enactor would let his uniform get all dirty and torn like that? Serious re-enactors either pay good money for their uniform, or make it themselves. And I know these uniforms are supposed to look worn and distressed, but a good re-enactor would never let his uniform look like these do.”
Kris shifted uneasily where she stood, not liking what she was hearing. “So, what are you saying? That these are some sort of uber-re-enactors who don’t believe in showering or folding their clothes?”
Brad took a breath. “No…. I don’t think these are re-enactors—at all.”