The Time Seekers (The Soul Seekers Book 2) (12 page)

His fingers moved to my blouse collar, then my neck. Electricity sizzled under his touch. “Last night I, well, I said some things about you being my dream girl and all. And, well . . .” his voice trailed off. “And then I was real mean to you.” He checked to see if anyone was around. “Tell me about this mind reading stuff you mentioned. You ever think you can sense stuff? Or, like maybe you can guess things before they happen?”

I nodded, and he seemed relieved.

He let out a quiet laugh. “Jesus. I ain’t never talked to nobody about this stuff before—except my sister.” A long stream of air escaped his nose, and the next thing I knew, he had left me to go lean against the store entrance.

I watched him slide a hand inside his jacket pocket to produce the chocolate bar he’d stolen, now half-melted. He opened the wrapper with careful fingers and pulled it up to his lips for a bite. Remembering I was still around, he broke away to offer me a nibble. “Want some?”

“No, thanks.”

He shrugged and proceeded to eat the entire thing. He even licked the wrapper clean, his fingers too. “They think I’m crazy.”

“Who does?” I asked. A sort of tenderness filled me. He looked like a fugitive, this young William. Like a wounded animal. I moved into the entrance to join him, relieved to share the small bit of shade the awning provided.

“The whole goddamned town, that’s who. But I ain’t asked for none of this, and I don’t need their approval.” His pupils narrowed into hard pinpoints. “If I could just get myself a decent job, then I’d make enough to get out of here. My sister, too.”

We stood in silence for a long moment. He finally made a move to take off his leather jacket and, arms extended, slipped it from his shoulders with a shot of fine appraisal cast my way. “You sure got the curves.”

“Thanks,” I replied, unsure if I should take it as a compliment or not. All this time I’d thought William had liked me skinny, but now I could see he preferred a real silhouette. His eyes were lit up like firecrackers—enough to make me blush.

Flinging his jacket over a shoulder, he closed the space between us. “Dammit, but I’d sure like to have a go with you,” he said. His voice was soft and cunning. “But I told you, I’m gettin’ out of here. You got that, honey?”

I nodded, careful not to say anything to scare him off.

“Hey now, where’s my manners? Uh, why don’t you tell me your name—so I can call you something proper?”

Strange having to tell your husband your name. “Emma,” I said, ducking when he yanked playfully on one of my earlobes. “I told you last night.”

“Well, Emma, you can call me Billy like everyone else, or William. Whatever suits you. You
sure
do suit me. Hey, where you from, Emma?”

I would make up something grand, because he was naïve and maybe it would make him trust me—see me as someone he could confide in. “New York,” I said at last, happy to receive an expression of awe.

“New York,” he repeated. “That’s a big place, right? They got a lot of writers up there? Why, a fella like me’d get lost, probably. I bet you’ve met a lot big people in New York. Important folks.”

“Sure.” I’d never been, but Jesse had wanted to go because it was the city where anything could happen and no one ever slept. All those plans of being a famous rock star and me tagging along. I would have done it, too, if I hadn’t met William. But I did meet William, and I’d loved him more than Jesse. Enough to say no to New York and kill all his dreams.

“So what are you doing here in Springvale, then? I mean, why the heck would someone like you want to come here?”

“I’m here on important business.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” I said, keenly aware of what little space remained between us.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Life and death.”

“In Springvale?” His eyes were soft now. I felt like a mouse ready to be pounced on, but I had no desire to run. I wanted to stay right here.

“You think someone like me could make it in New York?”

“Of course.”

He hesitated and made a move to touch my cheek. Hot breath swept around my face. “Maybe I’ll go someday then, if there’s girls like you.” His lips barely brushed mine. I thought of all the times we’d made love. All those beautiful nights and mornings spent wrapped inside his arms. I searched his eyes.
Kiss me, William, or Billy—whoever you are, kiss me. Maybe you’ll remember, maybe you won’t, but please, kiss me again.

“Stop that!” he growled, backing away. “You’re some kind of witch, putting thoughts in my head like that! Trying to win me over? So you can get something, only I don’t understand what it is. Well, no way. You ain’t gettin’
no
piece of me.” His fists balled up, and it looked like he might hit something. He grabbed me by the shoulders and gave a hard shake, lips snarled in anger. “I almost fell for it!”

I stammered, wishing I hadn’t spoken to him again. It hurt worse this time than the others.

He let go and backed away. “Stay away, you hear? Quit gettin’ in my head, making me think things so that I—” He kicked at the brick wall. “Maybe I am crazy like they all say—but you’re the craziest one of all!” He gave me one last angry glance and then shot off down the sidewalk.

I heard the fading pattern of his boot heels on concrete, and then a car drove past, and somewhere far off in the distance, a church bell clanged the hour. A hot breeze rushed into the alcove; it picked up the spent candy wrapper and dropped it on my toes. I reached down before another breeze could take it away. The phantom smell of chocolate permeated the wrapper, though the candy had long been devoured. For a long time, I held it to my nose and breathed in the heavy, sweet scent. Cellophane crinkled like a lifeless skin inside the palm of my hand.

I crushed it into a ball.

¤ ¤ ¤

While brushing my hair, she told me stories—stories of all the places she’d go, and what she’d do once Springvale was a mere speck on the horizon. She’d dreamed of it for years, been planning, and now her time to leave was almost near. I was an angel, she said. An angel sent from heaven. I would help her leave, and this was all meant to be.

Her fingers were nimble, pulling and twisting, and I was transported into my upstairs bedroom in Colorado Springs with a window facing out to Pikes Peak.

Afterwards, I stood in the vanity mirror and stared at two tightly woven braids; reminiscent of the kind she’d given me every night before bed when I was her little girl, sans my favorite rainbow barrettes. Tears sprang to my eyes.
Oh Mother, Mother. Where did it all go wrong? Why did you let his death ruin everything?

I lifted a tapered end and tickled my cheek with it, then turned to her. She jumped off the bed. “Oh, please don’t scowl like that. Have you made up your mind yet? You’ll help me get out of here, won’t you?”

This wasn’t why I’d come. I’d done it for William, for the baby, for me. Not her.

The vanity mirror was studded with pictures of movie stars and faraway places. She’d pulled them from magazines and added little captions:
My honeymoon spot. Wish you were here. Get your kicks . . .

What would it hurt to help? She’d find her way out on her own—time had proven this—but not without severing her relationship with Gran. If I stepped in, the blame would be on me, and I’d be long gone before that happened. They’d still love each other, and years from now that love would remain. Maybe it’d even save Gran’s life. Maybe, like William had tried so hard to explain to me in the library, this was a file of its own—the Grandmother Carrie and Pauline file—and I could affect it the way I wanted to. And I wanted to.

Very badly.

I turned and once again felt a pang of shock at how smooth and unlined my mother’s face was. She held her breath, waiting for me to say something. So I gave her what she wanted. “Your mother’s not going to like this,” I let out, thinking of my conversation with Gran and how upset she’d be. But it was fate I was helping more than anything else. She couldn’t see it now, but it would help, in slow increments of days and months and years.

A pair of arms clamped around me in sudden happiness. “Oh, you won’t regret it! I promise.”

“Shh!”

From downstairs came the sound of Jack Benny on the TV, and Grandpa Jack laughing. It reverberated through the open bedroom door. Pauline rushed over to close it, and came back with a hand over her mouth.

“I don’t think they heard,” she whispered.

“So, what was that secret you were going to tell on me—the one you mentioned earlier?” I sat on the cot. A loud chorus of rusty springs told me I was pushing the weight limit.

“Oh, just that you’re married. Or used to be. There’s a dent on your finger where a ring was. I don’t miss things like that.”

“Oh.” I held my hand up to see. There wasn’t much of a dent. I’d only been wearing the ring for a few months.

She gave my arm a nudge. “So, what’s it like? How long have you been married? What’s it like kissing someone and belonging to them completely and totally?”

Falling on the cot, and then wishing I hadn’t because my head hit a spring and it felt like I’d been pierced, I thought about William. But mostly it was the cot I thought about. A concrete block would be more comfortable. “It’s fun. It’s a pain.” I propped up on one elbow. “Men want you to do all the work—dishes, laundry, scrub the toilets. They don’t say they do, but they do.”

For months William passed by a sink full of dirty dishes, and never said a word. But I could read his face, and I knew what his little brow scrunches meant. Here I’d talked about us being equal, him being married to a feminist, but in the end I’d still been the one to do the dishes.

“But you adore him, right?” Pauline asked, joining me on what little room there was left on the cot. Her expression filled with romantic ideals of marriage and love, love and marriage. Like the Frank Sinatra song.

“Sure, I
adore
him.”

I adored him so much I wanted to rip my hair out. All this work of trying to make him remember me. Us. Everything we had back in Penn Peak. I longed for our bed back at home with the teardrop quilt Grandmother Carrie had sent for a Christmas present. We’d had many a good nights underneath that quilt.

And on top.

“Marriage is work,” I said, grabbing a pillow and shoving it under my head to avoid the uncoiled spring. “But it’s also beautiful—too beautiful for words. When you love someone like that, it makes the rest of the world bearable. All you want is to be with that person until the end, and beyond.”

Mother pulled her legs close to her chest. “Well? Where is this fella of yours? Why’d you let him get away, ’cause he sounds
real
gone.”

I stared at the bedroom ceiling.

“I didn’t let him get away. We’re just not currently together.” I thought of Max and his warnings of me losing myself in William’s world. How right he’d turned out to be. A vision of us talking after the art show entered my head, but I pushed it away. All those swirling flakes and him driving off in his cruddy Volkswagen. Then I thought of how he hadn’t answered his phone when I’d tried to call. I should have tried again, but I’d been too occupied with my own life, and forgotten about his. “Max, my friend—a good friend—he said marriage wouldn’t work with people my age. He’d tried it—but he wasn’t right about everything.” Actually, he had been. I could have tried harder, could have forgotten about Jesse. But I hadn’t, and all the things Max predicted destroying me, the predictions I’d ignored, had come true. “And now . . .” A tear rolled to my temple, and I quickly reached to swipe it away. If Max were here, I’d ask him what to do, and he’d tell me with no bullshit to hide the truth. He was a straight-shooter.

The pillow had gotten hot again, so I turned it over.

“If I’d thought marriage would be so much work, maybe I would have waited a little longer.” I thought of the first night Will and I had spent inside our house in Penn Peak. It was early fall, and a chill had set in. No furniture, no bed, only us. He’d lit a fire and we’d spent the entire night in an empty living room watching the embers die.
You aren’t sorry, are you, Emma?
he kept asking, and I repeated over and over that I’d never be sorry. There couldn’t be anything more beautiful on earth than being married to him. The way his face lit up, amber flickers against his cheekbones and neck and chest, made me believe everything would be all right for us.
I’m so happy, Emma.

But he wasn’t happy. Not enough to want to stay in my time. When we returned, would the fear of losing him haunt me every day? There’d be a baby in just a matter of months. There wasn’t time to make him love me
enough
.

The pillow was hot again. “It’s miserable in here.”

She’d held on to my every word, waiting for me to say something about marriage which wasn’t all doom and sadness.

But I had run out of things to say.

The bedsprings cried out with a quick explosion of movement. “Well, I’ll never ask you
about marriage again. You make it sound terrible.”

She turned out the light and moved to sit at the vanity, brushing her hair with a hundred careful strokes. I counted them. She hummed the theme to
Moulin Rouge
and
Three Coins in a Fountain
, and I could have sworn I was only eight years old. Later, we lay in the dark—both of us unable to sleep. Through the open window, crickets chirped, and a distant train rattled through town. Someone coming. Someone going.

Chapter 11

A warm breeze caressed my neck and blew my hair away from my shoulders. I leaned against a boulder, high on a bluff shadowing the Ohio Valley. Far down below, a river rushed by, and I could hear its crystal stream bubbling and swooshing through limestone walls. I’d come to figure things out, or maybe what I really wanted was to clear my head and not think at all. The night had gone by, and still no sleep. I was exhausted, depressed, and longed for a bed that wasn’t like a pincushion.

“How do I make him remember?” I asked no one, and the wind carried my voice into the valley with little echoes. “He won’t let me come close enough, but I have to help him somehow.” I ran a hand through a pile of tangled hair which needed a good washing. “William, you stupid clod. Why didn’t you write a note to yourself and stick it in your jeans pocket? A kind of inventory, so you wouldn’t forget? But maybe you wanted to.”

I chastised myself for thinking such things. My attitude had grown dangerously morose as of late, and I kept telling myself it was the fatigue, or maybe hormones.

A noise came from below, and I leaned over to see a large hawk land in a roughly constructed nest along the bluffs. A baby’s head poked out, and a great commotion followed. The hawk flew off, and the baby eventually quieted down.

“At the very least, how could you forget your wife and your child? I just don’t understand.”

I wasn’t going to cry again. No way. This was only a problem, and problems could be fixed. I’d figure this out if it killed me. Or drove me half-crazy.

Once more, I considered sending myself back to Penn Peak without William. If he was right, and Marcus was intent on invading our lives there, then what did it matter? Either way, we were bound for a confrontation. If I traveled home, I could prepare myself for his coming. I’d be much better suited in my own environment. With some rest, I could build my intuition back to the way it was before. And I could face Marcus on my own terms and send him off forever.

But what about the baby?

I ran a hand along my abdomen. It had grown slightly, and was tight and firm under my fingers. This baby was growing fast, but it wasn’t prepared for Marcus. It needed more than my watered-down abilities. William had always been the stronger of the two of us. I’d relied on him too much. And now . . .

When I met him in the library, the summer of seventy-nine, he’d been slowly fading into nothing. The Seekers’ cult had done that to him. If I hadn’t come along, he’d be gone now, like a wisp of nothing. His powers were strong, but he had doomed himself to a certain fate.

Truth was, Jesse saved both of us, or I would have been a wisp, too.

“Oh, Jesse. Why did everything have to go so wrong?”

I heard a noise again and froze. The hawk hadn’t returned, and there was a distinct tapping sound below. It had a rhythm, like steel on stone. Then I heard a voice. The voice turned into a few more voices, then the wind picked up so much I couldn’t hear a thing at all.

I pushed off the boulder and stood near the bluff’s edge. The valley dropped straight down. It seemed impossible William and I had scaled those very walls with our bare hands the night of the eclipse. Funny how love makes you invincible. And then we’d found Jesse’s car.

And the sacrifice he’d made.

The wind died, and I heard tapping again. It made the hair on the back of my neck prickle and rise. “They’re building the caves, right now.”

The small breakfast I’d scarfed down in the morning lurched to my throat. I ran to the boulder and heaved. Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t go home. If I did, the William I’d escaped Springvale with when I was eighteen—the one I married, gave myself to, adored, the one whose child I carried—would suffer the same fate as before. Over and over the Seekers would find a way to steal him. I couldn’t let it happen. Somewhere in the now reckless and defiant boy was a William I knew and loved, and I couldn’t leave until I found him.

I’d made a vow to love and honor William until death did us part. And I’d meant it. Every word.

¤ ¤ ¤

No cars on the tracks, nobody on the platform. It was noon, and the station should be bustling with activity, but nothing. A hollowness clung to the walls, and the ‘hunch’ which had eaten away at my gut only a day before no longer existed. It told me the bag was gone, and I didn’t need to go inside to inquire again. Fate was playing its little trick on me, like hide and seek. But I needed the briefcase. If I could show it to William—open it up and plop all his things right in front of him—he’d remember.

It was quiet everywhere in town. I told myself it was the heat—worse even than the day before. Shop owners kept their doors open to catch any bit of breeze. I saw them cooling themselves with makeshift fans. I waved, but they didn’t wave back.

I played my own game of hide and seek to show fate I hadn’t given up yet. At each storefront, I stopped and gave the place a mental scan. Seven shops and nothing. No briefcase.

Behind me, a woman pushed a carriage over the sidewalk. I turned to give her a smile and peek at the baby. Her eyes drifted to my middle, my empty ring finger, and then back up. She didn’t stop to talk or say hello. She smiled at her baby and walked on.

Sadness filled me. I wanted to be like her, a happy mother. But I had to hide. And my own little baby was hungry again, and I’d have to stop and eat. Gran tried to keep me well-fed; she’d taken to dumping extra portions of food on my plate, but I was a sieve. Everything I ate digested so fast. When I wasn’t thinking about William and the briefcase, I was thinking about food. Food, food. Cold food, hot food.

Unfortunately, my little bump was turning into a big bump. Soon it’d be its own entity. I camouflaged myself with belts and shirts, but this could only last so long. The problem was, it felt like I’d been hiding the pregnancy since the very first day I’d found out. Weren’t women supposed to glow and show off their robust figures? I dreamed of the day when I could wear tight clothing and not care anymore. I’d flaunt my belly to the world, really put it out there.
I’m pregnant, deal with it.

My feet hurt, and my ankles were swollen—another side effect of being with child. Producing a loud sigh, I sat down on a bench outside the drugstore and removed both shoes so I could rub circles into the flesh of my heels. It felt so good. There was even a cool breeze.

A scuffle came from an alleyway. I heard angry voices.

“Talk to us, dummy. Or can you talk?”

Someone laughed.

I knew those voices. They were horrible and sent both anger and fear into my heart. Fast, I shoved both feet into the sneakers and flew off the bench. I headed to the alleyway entrance and checked out the scene. A group of young men stood in a circle. Each had on a set of dirty overalls—so dirty that straight bleach wouldn’t wash them. It was black dirt, thick and smudgy. Their arms, revealed by rolled up shirtsleeves, were caked with the stuff. The young men all sported greasy hair, with faces blackened unrecognizably.

A tall figure stood in the middle—at least six-foot-seven. With blue jeans and long, dark shiny hair, I knew instantly who it was: Paul. The other men shoved at him, smacked him with their fists. They said cruel things, and they meant every disgusting word they said. Paul stood there doing nothing. Like one of his beautiful statue creations, he stood frozen in place with a locked smile and a faraway expression in his eye.

“Stupid Indian,” they kept saying. “Talk so we can hear that dumb voice of yours.”

Someone shoved at him. Then I saw the tallest boy reach into his back loop for a hand pick. He reared back, aiming to kill.

“Paul!” I choked out, cutting into the throng.

The boys fell apart. They turned to me, panting, with eyes like rabid dogs. I recognized a few. Fear twisted into my gut. Their eyes weren’t the strange, hollow gray I remembered. Theirs were blue, hazel, golden brown, bright emerald green. And they weren’t wearing the suits, or the stern, hideous glasses from the cult. But I knew who they were as sure as I knew myself, and I could sense their hatred.

“
Paul,
” I repeated, grabbing hold of his arm and yanking hard, but he wouldn’t budge. He kept up his act of being somewhere else. A few of the boys snorted at me as I continued to pull at an arm dense with muscles and bone. I met only the rigor mortis of pride.

“He’s a real dummy, lady, don’t you get that? We’re teaching him a lesson, so go on and get out of here.”

“Well, I think you’ve taught him enough for one day.” I had to control myself. I couldn’t let them hear the anger.

I glared at the speaker, a sweaty, puss-pimpled boy with ragged hair and half-twisted smile. Alistair. A sick hollowness entered my chest and sunk downward. I yanked hard on Paul’s forearm, and he finally succumbed.

A hurricane whirled inside my chest, suffocating me.

We walked in slow shuffles through the alleyway. I kept whispering it was okay, I only wanted to help. I’d buy him an ice cream, a soda, but we had to get out of there. Paul never spoke.

I could sense their eyes on my back, worse than the sun. They burned, they were cancerous, poison. Paul waited outside the drugstore while I headed in to buy what I’d promised: a vanilla ice cream cone and a cold bottle of Coca-Cola. He ate slowly, very slowly, and when he finished, he put the bottle down, ready to walk away without any recognition of me at all.

“Paul,” I cried out. “You don’t remember me, but I know you. You’re a kind, loving, intelligent person, much more intelligent than those boys.”

He turned and saw my tears, then said with a voice too beautiful to hide, “I do remember you, Yellow Bird. I saw you in my dream.”

Paul extended a tanned finger to scoop a saltwater tear away from my upper cheek.

“Why didn’t you fight them, Paul? You just—stood there and let them hurt you. I don’t understand.”

The tear wavered and shook like a tiny Jell-O mold on the tip of his finger. The way he held it up, the sunlight came through and turned it into a prism. “Why fight? I would win. No contest. Those men fight my brown skin and think my silence is weakness.” He smiled down at me. “But my one finger, and your tear,
much
stronger.”