the timeskip.”
“Lovely.”
“Isn’t it?” She went back to the painting. “What color’s that sign Duffy has over his shop on McKennitt?” she asked.
I closed my eyes, trying to picture it, but all I could see was the face of last night’s ghost, wet with rain.
It didn’t rain again for a couple of weeks. They were good weeks. Sam and I spent the evenings and weekends together. We went out a few times, twice with Jilly, once with a couple of Sam’s friends. Jilly and Sam got along just as well as I’d thought they would—and why shouldn’t they? They were both special people. I should know.
The morning it did rain it was Sam’s day off from Gypsy’s. The previous night was the first I’d stayed over all night. The first we made love. Waking up in the morning with her warm beside me was everything I thought it would be. She was sleepyeyed and smiling, more than willing to nestle deep under the comforter while I saw about getting some coffee together.
When the rain started, we took our mugs into the living room and watched the street in front of the Hamill estate. A woman came by walking one of those fat white bull terriers that look like they’re more pig than dog. The terrier didn’t seem to mind the rain but the woman at the other end of the leash was less than pleased. She alternated between frowning at the clouds and tugging him along. About five minutes after the pair had rounded the corner, our ghost showed up, just winking into existence out of nowhere. Or out of a slip in time. One of Jilly’s timeskips.
We watched him go through his routine. When he reached the streetlight and vanished again, Sam leaned her head against my shoulder. We were cozied up together in one of the big comfy chairs, feet on the windowsill.
“We should do something for him,” she said.
“Remember what Jilly said,” I reminded her.
Sam nodded. “But I don’t think that he’s out to hurt anybody. It’s not like he’s calling out to us or anything. He’s just there, going through the same moves, time after time. The next time it rains ...”
“What’re we going to do?”
Sam shrugged. “Talk to him, maybe?”
I didn’t see how that could cause any harm. Truth to tell, I was feeling sorry for the poor bugger myself.
“Why not?” I said.
About then Sam’s hands got busy and I quickly lost interest in the ghost. I started to get up, but Sam held me down in the chair. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Well, I thought the bed would be more .
“We’ve never done it in a chair before.”
“There’s a lot of places we haven’t done it yet,” I said.
Those deep blue eyes of hers, about five inches from my own, just about swallowed me.
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” she said.
It’s funny how you remember things like that later.
The next time it rained, Jilly was with us. The three of us were walking home from Your Second Home, a sleazy bar on the other side of Foxville where the band of a friend of Sam’s was playing. None of us looked quite right for the bar when we walked in. Sam was still the perennial California beach girl, all blonde and curves in a pair of tight jeans and a white Tshirt, with a faded jeanjacket overtop. Jilly and I looked like the scruffs we were.
The bar was a place for serious drinking during the day, serving mostly unemployed bluecollar workers spending their welfare checks on a few hours of forgetfulness. By the time the band started around nine, though, the clientele underwent a drastic transformation. Scattered here and there through the crowd was the odd individual who still dressed for volume—all the colors turned up loud—but mostly we were outnumbered thirtyto-one by spikehaired punks in their black leathers and blue jeans.
It was like being on the inside of a bruise.
The band was called the Wang Boys and ended up being pretty good—especially on their original numbers—if a bit loud. My ears were ringing when we finally left the place sometime after midnight. We were having a good time on the walk home. Jilly was in rare form, halfdancing on the street around us, singing the band’s closing number, making up the words, turning the piece into a punk gospel number.
She kept bouncing around in front of us, skipping backwards as she tried to get us to sing along.
The rain started as a thin drizzle as were making our way through Crowsea’s narrow streets. Sam’s fingers tightened on my arm and Jilly stopped fooling around as we stepped into Henratty Lane, the rain coming down in earnest now. The ghost was just turning in the far end of the lane.
“Geordie,” Sam said, her fingers tightening more.
I nodded. We brushed by Jilly and stepped up our pace, aiming to connect with the ghost before he made his turn and started back towards Stanton Street.
“This is not a good idea,” Jilly warned us, hurrying to catch up. But by then it was too late.
We were right in front of the ghost. I could tell he didn’t see Sam or me and I wanted to get out of his way before he walked right through us—I didn’t relish the thought of having a ghost or a timeskip or whatever he was going through me. But Sam wouldn’t move. She put out her hand, and as her fingers brushed the wet tweed of his jacket, everything changed.
The sense of vertigo was strong. Henratty Lane blurred. I had the feeling of time flipping by like the pages of a calendar in an old movie, except each page was a year, not a day. The sounds of the city around us—sounds we weren’t normally aware of—were noticeable by their sudden absence. The ghost jumped at Sam’s touch. There was a bewildered look in his eyes and he backed away. That sensation of vertigo and blurring returned until Sam caught him by the arm and everything settled down again. Quiet, except for the rain and a faroff voice that seemed to be calling my name.
“Don’t be frightened,” Sam said, keeping her grip on the ghost’s arm. “We want to help you.”
“You should not be here,” he replied. His voice was stiff and a little formal. “You were only a dream—nothing more. Dreams are to be savoured and remembered, not walking the streets.”
Underlying their voices I could still hear the faint sound of my own name being called. I tried to ignore it, concentrating on the ghost and our surroundings. The lane was clearer than I remembered it—no trash littered against the walls, no graffiti scrawled across the bricks. It seemed darker, too. It was almost possible to believe that we’d been pulled back into the past by the touch of the ghost.
I started to get nervous then, remembering what Jilly had told us. Into the past. What if we
Sam and the ghost were still talking but I could hardly hear what they were saying. I was thinking of Jilly. We’d brushed by her to reach the ghost, but she’d been right behind us. Yet when I looked back, there was no one there. I remembered that sound of my name, calling faintly across some great distance.
I listened now, but heard only a vague unrecognizable sound. It took me long moments to realize that it was a dog barking.
I turned to Sam, tried to concentrate on what she was saying to the ghost. She was starting to pull away from him, but now it was his hand that held her arm. As I reached forward to pull her loose, the barking suddenly grew in volume—not one dog’s voice, but those of hundreds, echoing across the years that separated us from our own time. Each year caught and sent on its own dog’s voice, the sound building into a cacophonous chorus of yelps and barks and howls.
The ghost gave Sam’s arm a sharp tug and I lost my grip on her, stumbling as the vertigo hit me again. I fell through the sound of all those barking dogs, through the blurring years, until I dropped to my knees on the wet cobblestones, my hands reaching for Sam. But Sam wasn’t there.
“Geordie?”
It was Jilly, kneeling by my side, hand on my shoulder. She took my chin and turned my face to hers, but I pulled free.
“Sam!” I cried.
A gust of wind drove rain into my face, blinding me, but not before I saw that the lane was truly empty except for Jilly and me. Jilly, who’d mimicked the barking of dogs to draw us back through time.
But only I’d returned. Sam and the ghost were both gone.
