A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  “Tin,” Blue Mary mused. “That’s what I’ve been smelling for a few weeks now. Definitely tin.”

  Stoner hoped the woman wasn’t having a brain tumor-related olfactory hallucination.

  No, she recalled, brain tumors make you hallucinate the odor of burning rags.

  She wondered how she happened to know that.

  Edith Kesselbaum. She’d told her, one day in therapy, back when Stoner was a teenager and had run away from home to live with Aunt Hermione. She’d had headaches. Terrible headaches, for about two weeks. They’d terrified her. She was convinced something horrible was happening to her, something neurological and irreversible that would leave her mindless and drooling. Finally she got up the nerve to tell Edith.

  “Nonsense,” Edith had said, and explained about the oily rags. “Your headaches, Stoner, are caused by repressed hostility. Go back to Hermione’s, call your mother, and tell her to go fuck herself. That should take care of any headaches.”

  Well, she hadn’t quite had the nerve to do that, but just thinking about it had cured the headaches.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Sanctified Man sat close by the fire and read the Word by candlelight, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to ease the strain in his eyes. He sometimes missed the reading glasses he used to wear. But that was before he realized that using them was a slap in God’s face, a criticism of the way He had created His servant. So he had sacrificed the glasses to God’s Greater Glory, and offered up his discomfort as a prayer.

  Over the howling wind and clatter of sleet on the window, he heard a timid knock. The damnable woman again. “Come,” he grunted.

  The door opened a crack. His gray, mousey wife peeked in.

  “Well?” he snarled. “What is it now?”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s turned so cold. I thought you might like…”

  She hesitated.

  “What? What?” he snapped.

  She seemed to shrink before his very eyes. “A warm drink? A blanket?”

  “Did I ask for warm drinks? Did I request blankets?”

  “I only thought…”

  Her timidity sickened him. “You thought,” he mocked. “You thought? Is it a miracle? Are you thinking?”

  His wife looked at the floor.

  He gestured her forward. The way she sidled up to the fire, greedily but cautiously, her pale skin touched with bluish goose bumps, pleased him. She was cold. He could let her stay here, in the only room he allowed her to keep heated, or banish her back into the cold upstairs. She knew it, too. As far as she was concerned, he was God.

  God in Heaven, God on Earth. God appointing a series of lesser Gods. A Pyramid of Gods, each level having dominion over the levels beneath.

  For a moment he wondered what his place was in the pyramid. Then he laughed. God had given him The Word. God wouldn’t give the Word to the ones on the bottom. He would only give the Word to the ones who understood its truth.

  He wondered if there were many others like him, chosen. He hoped not.

  He remembered when the Word had come to him.

  Winter, it had been. A long, chilly weekend in San Francisco. The ship he was crewing on had been at sea for months—the Silk Clipper out of Canton. His throat was dry for the taste of liquor. His bones cried out for rest. The smell of opium in the misty air clawed his mind with desire.

  He had dug deep into his pockets and came up with a few pathetic coins, barely enough for a meal and a one-night room. For an instant he thought he’d been robbed. Then he remembered the damn ship’s captain with his supercilious smile, handing him a quarter of the wages he was due, holding back the rest, telling him he wasn’t worth even that, wasn’t worth what an eighth of a man was worth. Calling him shiftless, calling him a drunk, calling him...

  Even now, the poisonous words stung in his chest.

  He had gone directly from the ship to the nearest saloon. Within an hour, his wages were gone, the thirst unsatisfied, like rats in his belly. He begged the barkeep for more, then threatened, drew his knife. One of his own shipmates—his own shipmate!—had tossed him from the bar like a sack of garbage. He had cursed them all and stumbled away, cold and alone and miserable. Drawing the opium-tainted fog deep into his lungs as if he could satisfy his hunger that way. It only made it worse.

  The night grew deeper, the fog thicker, the cold unbearable.

  He had failed again, just like the old man back in Ohio said he would. The old man. His own father. His FATHER who threw him out, calling him names...

  ... They were always calling him names. God, when would they stop calling him names?

  The horse had thrown him. It deserved to die. Why couldn’t his father see that?

  All the things he had done—the animals he had killed, strangling the small ones with his bare hands, the big ones clubbed or stabbed—why couldn’t they see it wasn’t his fault? The animals had offended him. Every one of them. The dogs that ran at him, sniffing and jumping. The cats that watched him through their evil green and yellow eyes. The cow that had kicked him when he tried to milk her. And the horse.

  He wished the horse were here now, so he could punish it again.

  Failed. Couldn’t even do a rat’s job on a rat’s ship.

  In the light of a street lamp he saw a familiar figure. Stocky, bandy-legged, swaggering…

  He caught his breath.

  It wasn’t possible.

  His father. Here. Alone. Drunk.

  His father, lurching along the street like a common seaman.

  Pressing close to the sides of buildings, he followed.

  The man stepped into the darkness between the gaslights.

  He thought he’d lost him.

  No, there he was again. In the next light.

  He followed him for a while. Dark—lost, light—found, dark— lost, light—found.

  Slowly, he crept closer, an idea coalescing out of the mist in his mind.

  Dark—light, dark—light.

  The man stepped once more into darkness.

  Now!

  His hands were around his father’s throat. The old man tried to turn, but he clung to him like a grasshopper to a sprig of fresh spring wheat.

  The old man clawed at his hands.

  Years of brooding hatred gave him strength. He held on.

  Like dancers they whirled and spun, now in darkness, now in light. Locked together, father and son, knowing when the dance was done only one of them would be alive.

  He didn’t plan on it being the old man.

  His father was growing weaker. He could feel it. There was a sound like drowning.

  His hands tightened.

  Tiny bones cracked beneath his fingers.

  The old man fell, was silent.

  He waited. Reached out. Touched the body.

  It was already cooling.

  Safe now. Safe to drag him forward, into the light, and spit his victory into the old man’s face.

  He tugged.

  The body was heavier in death. His arms shook with fatigue.

  Inch by inch, they moved forward until he could see…

  There was something wrong with his father’s face. The features were different, the eyes tilted at an angle, the lips thinner…

  It wasn’t his father.

  He stood there for a moment, gulping air, stunned. Not his father?

  It had to be his father.

  But…

  As if a hand had reached down and brushed the confusion from his mind, he understood.

  It was his father, all right.

  But his father had changed his face.

  His father was a devil. A vampire.

  His father had called him those names to destroy his soul. His father was... AFRAID!

  Afraid of HIM!

  His father knew what he himself had been too young to know.

  He was one of God’s chosen!

  Christ’s Avenger!

  The Sanctified Man began to laugh. H
is laughter filled the alleyways and poured out over the water. Flew between the creaking ships that rode at anchor in San Francisco Bay.

  Christ’s Avenger!

  Shhh! They’ll hear you! The stupid ones, with their sheep-like brains and their hollow eyes. They’ll hear you, and come and find you. Throw you into their stinking jail. Call you murderer...

  ... more names…

  try to hang you.

  He chuckled, clamped his hand across his mouth to stop the sound.

  Hang me. Hang me?

  The laugh tickled his throat.

  In the distance he heard footsteps.

  Running.

  Coming toward him.

  Moving quickly, he went through the Demon’s pockets.

  Money!

  More money than the rat-brained ship’s captain had stolen from him.

  More money than he had ever before held in his own hands.

  So it was true. The money—a sign from God that it was true.

  The Sanctified Man faded into the darkness. God led him down alleys, led him to the door of the Garden of Forgetfulness.

  He gave the skinny man his money. The skinny man gave him the pipe.

  He sucked at it as an infant sucks its mother’s breast.

  Toward dawn, God gave him the Word.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It must have been the dropping of the wind that awakened her. The silence was deep, like an indrawn breath.

  She listened for the wolves, but it was quiet on the roof.

  In the room below, Blue Mary snored lightly in her bed.

  Daylight filtered through the windows, gray as the light from a television screen glimpsed from the street.

  Moving carefully, she slipped from her bed and came down the ladder. The fire had died sometime during the night. The air, the ladder’s rungs were like ice.

  She crossed the room, hopping from braided rug to braided rug, avoiding the hard, cold floor. There were a few small embers left in the stove. Touching a splinter of wood to a glowing coal, she blew until a flame appeared, then added twigs and sticks, and finally logs.

  No paper, no matches. Not bad. A few more days and I’ll be as comfortable in the 19th Century as if I’d been born here.

  Now, there was a chilling thought.

  She froze, realizing…

  ...She had begun to accept it. To believe she had stepped out of her own time into this one.

  It gave her the willies. And excited her.

  Colorado. 1871.

  She wished she’d taken more of an interest in history. She didn’t even know who was President.

  What was it Edith Kesselbaum had told her they always looked for in Mental Hospitals?

  “Oriented as to time, place, and person.” The Sanity Triad.

  Well, she might have a hard time passing that one at the moment.

  She glanced through the kitchen window. Everywhere she looked, snow lay deep and thick. If rolling hills had served as landmarks before—and they hadn’t, really, not in any truly helpful way— they were useless now. The snow had drifted, reshaping the landscape, making hills where yesterday there had been valleys, ravines of yesterday’s hills. And, from the looks of the sky, the storm wasn’t over. The calm that had wakened her wasn’t the blizzard’s ending at all, merely a lull in the fury.

  Even as she watched it, the wind came up again. It pushed hard, round snow pellets across the drifts, leaving behind little trails like the trails of crabs in the sand when a wave goes back to sea. New snow began to fall, drawing a curtain across the horizon.

  “Good morning,” said Blue Mary behind her. “If it is morning.”

  “It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?”

  “These storms,” said Blue Mary with a little sigh. “The light seems to come from everywhere at once. And there’s no dawn or dusk. One minute it’s day, the next it’s black as pitch.”

  Stoner shuddered. “Looks as if I’m stuck here no matter how I feel about it.”

  “I’m afraid so, dear.” Blue Mary patted her shoulder sympathetically. “I just wish you wouldn’t take it so hard. You really could enjoy it, you know.”

  Enjoy it? Enjoy being lifted out of her life and routines and plopped down in the middle of another life? “Nobody,” she said, “is this hard up for adventure.”

  Blue Mary shrugged on her coat and reached for her boots. “I think we’d better visit the out house while there’s still a chance. From the looks of it, things are going to get worse.”

  “My sentiments exactly.” She pulled on her vest and wrapped a blanket around her. “I don’t suppose you have snowplows out here.”

  “I’m afraid not.” Blue Mary pulled open the door and plunged into the drifted snow. Stoner followed. “But you’ll find we can get around, in our own primitive way. Sleds, you know.”

  Stoner floundered in a waist-deep drift and struggled to her feet. “You mean horses can get through this stuff?”

  Blue Mary glanced back at her. “Goodness sake, Stoner. Can you find something to worry about in everything?”

  “Just about.”

  They reached the back of the house. Blue Mary brushed the snow from a bench and climbed up onto it, shading her eyes with her hand as she peered toward the rapidly-disappearing horizon. “That looks like a thread of smoke from Billy’s chimney. I hope everything’s all right.”

  Stoner climbed up beside her to look. “I thought he lived in town, at Dot’s.”

  “Dorothy wouldn’t have minded.” Mary squinted against the white-silver glare. “But Billy’s stubborn. Rather like you. Wants to be independent, don’t you know?”

  She couldn’t see a cabin. Not even a shack. Not even the suggestion of a dwelling under the snow. “Where does he live?”

  Blue Mary pointed. “Over there.”

  She looked, realized the carved-out room in the creek bank lay over there. “In that hole?”

  “The dugout. Yes. It’s not all that unusual. Many folks who come out here start out with a dugout, then move up to a soddy. The people who made that particular one were washed away three—maybe four years ago.”

  Stoner looked at her. “That child lives in a hole in a riverbank where people were washed away?” Her voice rose. “What’s wrong with people around here?”

  Blue Mary touched her arm. “Now, Stoner, you have to understand, it’s just how things are.”

  “I do not have to understand,” Stoner said angrily. “And as far as ‘how things are’ goes, that is...is unacceptable.”

  “Stoner...”

  Stoner brushed her off. “Unacceptable.” She pulled her blanket tight around her and plunged into the snow.

  “Where are you going, dear?”

  “To get Billy. The poor kid’s probably half frozen and scared to death.”

  “Don’t be silly. Billy can take care of...”

  “I don’t care if he can take care of himself. It isn’t right.” She turned to look back. The sudden motion threw her off balance. She fell flailing in the snow. “I don’t care if he’s been on his own for the past fifteen years.” She thrashed about, trying to get up, spewing billows of snow into the air. “That kid has had a rough life, and it’s high time someone made it their business.”

  Blue Mary trotted over to her, seeming to drift across the snow, and held out her hand. “It’s a fine sentiment, Stoner, and certainly no more than I’d expect of you.” She hauled her to her feet. “But, if you don’t mind a suggestion...”

  Stoner brushed at the snow in her hair and eyelashes. “What?”

  “If you must go over there, at least wear the snowshoes.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The storm had taken it upon itself to do some genuinely serious, sincere snowing and blowing.

  By the time she had gone two hundred yards, she realized she was probably deranged. At the very least an idiot.

  Sometimes the wind blew at her back, pushing her forward at a pace that was much too fast for balance and control. Then it whipped a
round to the front and threw sleet in her eyes. Between times it punched her from the left, then the right, then both at once, and went back to sleet-throwing and back-pushing.

  She trudged on, keeping her eyes on the horizon—or what had been the horizon until recently. Every once in a while she glanced behind, to be sure her snowshoe tracks were going on in a straight line.

  As far as she could tell, from the four or five prints she could see before the wind whisked them away, she was still headed toward Billy’s.

  This is easy, she told herself. Remember what Aunt Hermione taught you about going out-of-body. Send your mind to your destination and follow where it tugs you.

  Of course, it would help if she had ever actually managed to do it.

  She tried to visualize the dugout, clearly and in detail. Aunt Hermione was definite on that point—the more concretely you can visualize what you’re looking for, the better your chances of finding it.

  The most she’d ever achieved was a feeling of drifting to one side.

  Aunt Hermione had been pretty excited about that. Had said she had real talent.

  Right.

  Well, look, you’re not trying to go out-of-body now. Just to Billy’s.

  Certainly you can visualize Billy.

  She tried, but what came to her most clearly wasn’t his face, or even his clothes or voice or gestures, but the way it had felt to hold him, back there in town.

  It made her stomach feel warm and tingly.

  Great. Out on the prairie, probably going to get lost and freeze to death, and all you can think of is titillation.

  She tried to make her thoughts wide and flat, to pick up some pull in some direction.

  The wind decided to direct a lengthy attack on her face.

  “Listen,” she said aloud, “I’m trying to do a little good here, so if it’s not too much trouble, how about you give me a break?”

  The storm paid absolutely no attention to her. Just went on blowing snow into her eyes.

  She realized she was taking the weather personally, and that it wasn’t such a mentally healthy thing to do.

  Cold. Cold like she hadn’t felt before.

  She was used to New England cold. New England cold was damp and nasty and felt kind of gray. It came on slowly, starting with a few chilly fogs in early November—the advance party, creeping into your bones and setting up camp. Then the Thanksgiving time-out, seeming warm because the troops had been moving in a degree at a time. A truce over Christmas—just so there wouldn’t be any danger of snow, so there wouldn’t be a Christmas-card look to things. Then, finally, when everyone’s resistance was low and this year’s flu fad had become well established, the full January Invasion.