“I don’t have an answer for you.” Malcolm spoke from behind me, his chest rumbling with the words; instinctively, his arms tightened their grip. “We don’t know how much time we’ve left together.”
The words had no sooner cleared his lips when something crashed against the floor directly above us, rattling the walls. Cole was on his feet and halfway up the stairs before I’d bolted from Malcolm’s lap; he grabbed his rifle as he leaped to his feet. Frantic and disoriented, I imbibed information in disjointed bursts – Monty crying, Patricia screaming, men shouting – then a gunshot, followed immediately by another. A round pierced the bedroom floor upstairs and splintered the ceiling above the woodstove. Malcolm latched a forearm around my waist and hauled me backward with the force of a tornado.
“Stay down!” he ordered, grabbing the dining table and throwing it on its side, creating a measure of cover. He dragged it against the wall and positioned above it, aiming his rifle at the staircase. I crouched behind his bent legs, shielding my head, stunned at how quickly we’d again become vulnerable. There was a pulse of silence, the absence of sound almost louder than the gunshots.
“Carter! Don’t shoot!” Cole hollered seconds later from the top of the steps. “Fallon was here, right in Yancy’s room, but they both disappeared. Jesus fucking Christ! I almost didn’t believe my own eyes.”
Malcolm lowered his rifle. “We’re coming up!”
“Derrick disappeared?” Breathless and tense, I clattered up the steps ahead of Malcolm. Cole stood in the hallway with feet widespread and his rifle at the ready, angled so his body blocked the door to Patricia’s bedroom. She hovered near the bed holding Monty up over her shoulder, patting his back. She was white with fear and I hurried to her side, gathering both of them in a hug while Malcolm and Cole investigated the room in which Derrick had been resting only minutes ago.
“Fallon was here,” Patricia whispered, shivering in her nightgown, her honey-colored hair loose over her shoulders; she appeared no more than about fifteen years old, like a little girl playing house. Much too young for the burdens of marriage and motherhood, and probably exactly the way I’d looked after Millie Jo was born. But I’d handled those responsibilities and so would Patricia – or, so I told myself. She continued, “I woke to a crash and heard Derrick yelp. I fear…” She looked quickly to Cole. “Did Fallon kill him?”
“I don’t rightly know. I saw them grappling and then they just…vanished.” A man who had faced plenty of danger in his time, Cole still shuddered at the remembrance. “Right before my damn eyes!”
“Who fired?” Malcolm asked, indicating the jagged hole in the wooden planks of the floor.
“Derrick, I think,” Cole said, with a note of approval. “He acted quick for someone without a lick of experience.”
“It stands to reason that it was Derrick who shot at Fallon,” I added, thinking of Ruthie’s explanations. “Fallon has this thing, I don’t know, like a defense mechanism. When his life is threatened he disappears to another place or time.” My thoughts raced. “Let’s assume Fallon was just out in Montana and they fought back this time and repelled him…”
“And he appeared here,” Malcolm concluded. “And then Derrick fired on him and he disappeared again. But why would Derrick vanish?”
“I don’t know about Derrick. But maybe Fallon’s losing control.” I prayed it was true. “He knows we’re on to him and maybe that messes with his ability.” My heart lurched as I suddenly considered another angle – what if Derrick had returned home to 2014, leaving me behind in 1882?
Malcolm, watching me, saw fear overtake my face. With no words he asked, What is it?
But another voice filled my head before I could respond, inundating my consciousness, commanding my full attention. Urgent with fear, crying my name over and over. I stepped away from Patricia and the baby, pressing hard against my forehead.
Ruthie, I hear you!
Where are you?!
“Camille?” Patricia’s high, questioning voice retreated a thousand miles in the space of a heartbeat.
Malcolm was no more than ten steps away, an impassable distance. Sounds fled but my vision did not – not yet – and I saw him racing for me in a slow-motion reel; I reached for him, I tried to speak his name. This could not be our last moment together.
“Camille!”
Not yet – oh God, please, not yet –
But I was already gone.
Time elapsed.
At least, I assumed it elapsed; I’d been a prisoner in the blank, echoing space for minutes, hours, days, months, centuries…I had no real idea. The passage, or non-passage, in this place reminded me of humid summer days in Landon when clouds knitted themselves together so densely the sky shone blinding-white from dawn to dusk, keeping the sun’s hourly angles hidden from view, allowing no sense of time flowing from one minute to the next. Sinister in a passive way, the clouds impervious and expressionless; for all I knew, time had stuttered to a full stop. The fog surrounding me inspired madness and I huddled in a crouch, ashamed at what seemed like giving up but too terrified to continue moving forward.
I cried out to everyone I thought may have a hope of hearing me – Marshall, Camille, Axton, Aunt Jilly, my mother.
Nothing. Not a flicker, not a breath of response. The fog swirled around my huddled form, utterly devoid of empathy.
Am I dead?
Is this hell?
One thought tortured me, replaying across my mind without letup – Marshall flying
