by D. L. Koontz
Colette! Libby didn’t want the heartache or drama of telling her.
But what would happen when she disappeared? People went missing all the time, most by tragic circumstances, others by choice. Her situation was somewhere between the two. Unlike those others, she would disappear into thin air. Thin air. As in, untraceable. She must admit, as an investigator, some odd and perhaps perverted part of her was almost bewitched by that prospect. In her experience, no matter how well they hid or how clean their break, suspects’ pasts always had a way of coming forth to trip them up. Hers would be one of the few complete disappearances.
But how would she explain that? As quickly as the question surfaced, the answer dawned: She won’t have to explain. She will be gone. To another time.
Or, she could die. When she saw Andrew’s shoulders slump, she realized she had voiced the thought.
“No, Libby.” He embraced her again and murmured her name in the way he might say fascinating or beautiful and really mean it. “We will not let that happen.”
“But you can’t stop it.” She pulled free as a chasm of dread opened inside her again. “There was so much I wanted to do. Have a family. Children. I’ve never even been married, and I—”
“Then marry me. Now.”
Libby looked away. “Andrew, don’t. This isn’t the time.”
“This is the best time.” He pulled her chin back so their gazes met. “This is the only time we might have.”
“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. It’s very gallant—”
“This has nothing to do with chivalry. The practical side of this is that it is best to stick with the truth. The truth is you might go back in time. If that is the case, then no matter what timeframe you go to, women had fewer opportunities. You will have more options if you can say you are married. If it is true, then you will not cringe as you say it. Besides, I am coming after you as soon as I can. Hopefully, three months. September equinox. I want to know you will be there for me. As my wife.”
He remained silent for a moment before taking her hand and kissing it. A tinge of hurt bathed his eyes. “You are everything to me. Beautiful, vibrant, intelligent, exciting. We can both pretend this did not happen. The truth is, we have not known each other very long. I have always been doubtful of immediate attraction and I tell myself over and over that infatuation is not real love...but we both know that is not the case here. We can tell ourselves anything we want, but we cannot make what happened go away. No matter where in time we live, we will remember this. Maybe it happened quickly because we are making up for lost time.”
“Lost time? What do you mean?”
His eyebrows moved quickly up, down. “Time we are losing together. Time we will lose had this not happened.” He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I love you so much, Libby, I will find you. Somewhere. Somehow. I will not give up until I can be with you. Say you will marry me.”
His gaze seemed to reach through her toward a time when they would be together. She wanted that assurance, if even for a moment. Or, the two days they had left. Could she commit to ‘until death do us part’? Yes, given that it might be only two days. She could do that. Besides, wouldn’t that mean he’d try harder to find her, wherever and whenever she landed?
Then again, would he help her if she said no to his proposal?
He was right. It didn’t matter what mystery had joined them or how long they would have. All that mattered was this time and that they should share it together. She couldn’t change the facts, so she let her heart take over. It wanted to secure some sort of fulfillment before it risked ending its beats. She nodded, forced a smile. “Yes.”
He surged to his feet and scooped her from her chair into his arms as if she weighed no more than the mug he’d been holding a moment before. With a hearty exclamation, he spun her around and kissed her. She inhaled the smell of him, his presence and his fervor, trying to fix this moment in her memory before he set her back down. She wished she could match his zeal.
Around her, people stared and laughed. She ignored them. They didn’t matter. In a few days they would cease to exist in her world.
They left the café, walking in silence, holding on to each other.
The courthouse was unadorned, the justice of the peace stoic, and the ceremony brief, pragmatic, and made up of “I do’s,” and signatures. Afterward, they headed to his townhouse where they spent the night together as husband and wife, in a cocoon of peace and a temporary suspension of all things real.
Chapter Seven
1769
Nathan woke to find Andreii gone, and darkness so complete, he thought he’d gone blind. Pain scorched through his core and spread to his limbs. He shivered, thought about trying to move, but darkness consumed him again.
Daylight. He’d lost track of time.
Twice he thought he heard a noise, first tromping in the distant woods; later, children laughing beyond the ridge, but he was too weak to call out.
Exhausted, he closed his eyes.
“Laddie. Kin ye ’ear me?”
The voice sounded like it was a hundred miles away. Nathan felt a damp rag on his face. He opened his eyes. An old man, bearded and crusted with layers of dirt and dust, stared back.
A searing pain radiated from Nathan’s stomach and he realized he was shaking. Fever.
“Laddie, you been hurt somethin’ fierce. Iffin’ you can stand the pain, I’ll try to get that bullet out fer ye.”
Dazed, Nathan visualized himself responding in the affirmative, but wondered if he’d spoken at all. Darkness claimed him.
Nathan heard the sounds of a crackling fire. Smelled some kind of wild game cooking. “Water,” he rasped and tried to lift his arms to remove whatever cloth was making him so warm. He opened his eyes to the darkness of night.
Sounds came from his right, before the face of the bearded man appeared inches in front of him. The man pulled something away and Nathan felt cooler.
“Doona move much, laddie. You got a bad fever. Done me best to get that bullet out, but...” He made a worrisome sound with his teeth and lips, and didn’t bother finishing the sentence.
Despite the old-timer’s advice, Nathan tried to lift his head. The man pulled a ruffsack closer and laid his arm under Nathan’s shoulders to help him ease to a semi-sitting position. Nathan noticed bandages on his own left hand and lower torso. The man secured Nathan against the sack then held a leather pouch of water to his lips, waiting patiently as Nathan drained it dry. The man patted him, then moved about a yard away, to the fire.
“Me name’s Duncan.” He scrunched his face and coughed. “Duncan Brodie. And who might ye be?”
Nathan studied the man. The firelight flickered between shadow and light. Nathan’s vision was blurred, but he could make out a head of shoulder-length hair that matched the red and gray in the man’s scraggly beard. Duncan was far too skinny, and he had a long crooked nose and spidery stretches of wrinkles that testified to too much misfortune and too many years in the sun.
“Nathan.” He swallowed and tried again. “Nathan McKenzie.”
“McKenzie? Aye, Scottish like me, err ye? Highlands, no doubt, as tall and strappin’ as ye are.”
“So I’m told.” Nathan’s voice was hoarse. “Th-thank you for...” He cut off when a sharp pain streaked through him.
“Pffshhh, t’weren’t no trouble. Now, lad, ye just rest. I doona want ye to get worse. That’s gotta’ hurt somethin’ powerful.”
Nathan thought he saw Duncan wink as the old man continued. “I got shot once meself. ’Course it was by a young lass that accidentally shot me in the arse.” He laughed a deep, guttural belly laugh that shook his whole frame, but it quickly turned to coughing. When he could speak again, he said, “She took the bullet out, so I had to marry ’er. I dinna ken what else to do.”
Duncan laughed again. “Cora was ’er name.” He poked at the fire with a stick. “She’s been gone fourteen years now. So, I finally sold me place and came ’er
e. Make me living just movin’ around, huntin’. Tradin’ furs is good business in these parts ’cause folks’re too busy tryin’ to homestead.”
“What...what day...?” Nathan needed to know how long it had been since he’d been shot. His family must be panicked.
Duncan shrugged. “Don’t know what day o’ the week, but I count the moons.” Another cough racked his body. “Today makes it twenty September.”
Ten days! He’d been left for dead for ten days now. But how? How could he have survived that long?
As though Duncan read the confusion on Nathan’s face, he explained, “Ye been with me seven o’ them moons.”
Seven. This man had been doctoring him for seven days. In his dazed state, Nathan wondered if Duncan was some kind of magical wood nymph or angel in disguise. But, he decided, those spirits wouldn’t cough the way this man did. It sounded menacing, as though years of illness had piled up in his lungs.
“Ye gotta wife? Bairns?”
Nathan started to shake his head, but it caused pain, so he said: “Neither.”
“No? I pegged ye a homesteader.”
“Always busy with something else,” Nathan said. His voice was hoarse and he spoke slowly, taking breaths often. It was painful, but somehow a review of his life felt appropriate, even necessary right now. “I...spent several years with the Lenapes and Shawnees.” He swallowed. “Then, the Mohawks.”
“A captive?”
Nathan’s mind swirled with an involved answer, but limited it to “yes.”
“But you made it back.”
“My body did, yes.”
Duncan frowned at the response, but kept his gaze on the fire.
After a few moments to steady his breathing, Nathan continued. “Since then...four years...been trying to help my family. On our farm. Hoped to build my own one day.”
Duncan chuckled, but not with humor. He coughed. “Aye, this land will age a man quickly. Me, I had a son but he’s gone too. The fever.” Typhoid. He looked in the sky as though contemplating. “Guess I’ll be joining ’em afore long.”
Nathan didn’t know what to say. The old-timer sounded tough, but that cough.... With a grimace, he wondered which of them would die first.
“When I was stitchin’ ye,” Duncan said, “I saw them marks on yer body. Those from them Indians?”
Nathan had been forced to run a gauntlet. Then ritually cleansed and adopted by a Mohawk family. To survive he had to practice tribal ways and constantly prove himself to stay alive. But that was all too much to explain. “Yes.”
They sat in silence for a while. Duncan offered Nathan some meat, but it was too painful to chew, so the old-timer pulled a kettle from the fire and spoon-fed him strings of meat floating in hot broth.
“Laddie,” Duncan said in a voice pitched low with concern and a palpable trace of warning, “ye ain’t gonna’ live much longer on broth...and ye’re bleedin’ stronger. I ain’t gonna lie to ye. It doona look good.”
When he got no response, Duncan continued, speaking in an apologetic tone. “If ye’d let me, I’d like to take ye to the magic water. Natives say it has healing power. Just a mile over two ridges. Headed there meself.” He coughed again. “Problem is, I kin’t carry ye. I’ll have to pull ye on a travois, hitched there to me sweet Daisy.”
Nathan tracked where the man pointed to an old, shaggy mule. The firelight was strong enough he could see the animal gorging on tall grass. He looked back at Duncan, guilt washing over him. He was keeping this old man from his destination. From Nathan’s time with the natives, he’d learned they had ways of tackling illnesses and injuries that others would scoff at. Yet, he’d seen some of those efforts work. He couldn’t imagine what powers mere water might have. But if he said no, the old-timer might deprive himself of going.
“Much obliged,” Nathan murmured and closed his eyes.
Before Nathan opened his eyes, he felt his body being jounced and the sun warming his skin. He lifted his eyelids to find himself angled, strapped to a makeshift pallet of branches and hides, and being pulled, he deduced, by Daisy. The bouncing and relentless jerk-drag rhythm intensified his pain.
From atop Daisy, Duncan’s soft warbling of a Gaelic ballad reached Nathan’s ears.
He closed his eyes and thought of home.
Nathan heard a familiar female voice, soft and melodious like an angel humming.
Did he hear that right? No, how could that be? He opened his eyes. Mist hugged the ground, wrapping the world in cool silvery silence, and the clouds above him were gray like chunks of spent coal. Rain dropped on him. That’s the humming he’d heard, the steady patter of rain. The chill of the wind found the dampness of his body. He shivered.
But, why did he think he heard the words, “Find me?”
It was the fever. That’s all it was. It was killing him.
He woke bathed in sweat, and on the ground. The giant pines above him leaned into the wind, bringing the fragrance of evergreen. The sun was full, but the air brought that briskness that reminded him of autumn’s arrival.
His thoughts wandered like an agitated leaf caught on a breeze, maneuvered this way and that, guided only by the frenzy of his mind. His white mother and father. His Indian family. His precious Elisa. Duncan.
Duncan! Where was the old man?
With his right elbow, he inched himself up, looked around.
There, not even ten feet away the old man lay on his back. A few yards from him, a spring gushed forth from a crevice in the rocks.
Nathan crawled to the old man, fighting against the pain. He didn’t need to touch Duncan to know he was dead. The deeply etched wrinkles around his eyes were now frozen in place. The stillness of the man hushed the elements around him as though weeping for his soul and questioning the loss of the man Nathan had known only as kind and generous. Had the universe stolen his life before he could make it to his magical water? Or, had the old man chosen death, opting to join Cora and his son?
Nathan wept a tear for this loss, then another because he could not bury his new friend. Stronger and more certain than any strength Nathan could muster to lay Duncan to rest, was the truth that now unveiled itself: he, too, was moments from death.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, desiring to hear his own last sounds of life. He was tired. Defeated. The damage to his body, unbearable. He wanted to remove himself from the pain and tumult of his life, and go to a place where there was no agony, no uncertainties. He would go, and be with God...and her.
But the wind whispered louder than his breathing, whistling poignant tales spun by Indians around campfires of ancestors and creatures of the night that used the spring to cleanse and renew.
Burning with fever, he stared at the water. It looked seductive, cool, welcoming. A pleasant way to die. To honor Duncan, Nathan would make it to the spring.
He crawled. Rested. Crawled some more, leaving a trail of blood. His heart hammered. His vision dulled.
At the spring’s edge, exhausted and anguished, he whispered a prayer for forgiveness and rolled, sideways, into the water.
He was sure his heart stopped beating as the water enveloped him. He felt nothing. Heard nothing. Saw nothing.
His pain subsided, and he opened himself to death.
Chapter Eight
2016
Other than a brief conversation about the process she would undergo in the water, Libby and Andrew passed most of the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Bedford in silence. She closed her eyes several times and prayed for the courage to face whatever lie ahead.
They approached the town after dusk that Monday night and Andrew began to talk about the town in a hurried pace as though channeling his anxiety into a productive effort. Bedford sits about a hundred miles southwest of Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, and at least 105 miles east of Pittsburgh. Population, 3,000. Settled, 1751. For years it served as an important frontier military post thanks to the British Army, which erected Fort Bedford, named for the Duke of Bedford in England
. The British used the fort to drive away the Indians and the French, the latter to ensure the new continent would be British-controlled. Other nods to notoriety included the nearby Blue Knob ski resort, and the historical claim that the town headquartered George Washington and his force of 13,000 while putting down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
Much as Libby appreciated Andrew discussing the origins of the town, given that she relished history, her thoughts were fixated on the grim task of ‘taking the water.’ If she didn’t die straightaway, she was either going to leave Bedford with Andrew that night, or experience it at a far different time in history, so what did she care about the town as it stood now? She was glad it was dark so she couldn’t establish a before picture of the area in her head.
Still, from the house and pole lights that dotted different elevations of the mountainous landscape, and then streetlights in the sloped town itself, Libby could tell Bedford was small, quiet, and tucked strategically into its landscape.
As they crossed an overpass on Route 30 called the Narrows Bridge, which spanned a deep gorge, Andrew said the town was located beside the Raystown branch of the Juniata River, which flowed into the Susquehanna River. After a few miles through the rim of the town, they turned off Route 30 onto Richard Street and headed south, passing varied-sized and styled houses, a few businesses, and a golf course edged with a roadside billboard announcing it as the “Bedford Elks Country Club.” Within a minute, they turned onto Sweet Root Road.
After another bend in the road, they drove for about a quarter-mile with shades of darkness flanking them on both sides. Andrew pulled the car to the side of the empty road and turned it off. The night was moon-drenched, warm, still, and smelled of earth and pine. As they climbed from the car, Libby inhaled a deep, shaky breath, hoping her panic would subside.