Chapter
19
“It burns! Rafe! Ethan! Help!”
Rafe jerked awake, his gun already in hand. Save Seth. Someone was hurting Seth.
“I want to go home. No, no! Put it out. Stop. It burns!” A terrible scream ripped Rafe the rest of the way out of sleep and he remembered. Seth was home.
In the bright moonlight, Rafe saw Seth, tossing and turning in his sleep. Ethan was sitting up on the other side of him and had a gun drawn, too.
“Seth’s having a nightmare.” Rafe spoke loudly, hoping to pull Seth out of his dreams.
Rafe was on his knees. He reached for Seth, and Seth punched him in the mouth. Not ready for that, Rafe fell over backward.
“Seth! Wake up!” Ethan ducked a fist, jumped back, and turned to Rafe.
“Seth!” Rafe eased forward. “Let’s each grab an arm.”
The cabin door slammed open and drew Rafe’s attention. Julia stood with a rifle in her hands.
“He’s having a nightmare, Jules. Put the gun down.” Rafe looked at Ethan. “Ready?”
Seth shouted again. “It burns. Stop. Help me, Rafe. Help!”
“Seth!” Ethan yelled. “Wake up!”
“It’s like he’s trapped in the dream.” Rafe was sick to think that all these years later, his little brother still had nightmares about the fire. “Remember his nightmares after the accident?”
“But they stopped,” Ethan said through clenched teeth. “Why was he hiding in that cave? Why are the nightmares back?”
Seth screamed again, a perfect echo of the noise he’d made that day when he was on fire.
“Let’s grab hold so he can’t hurt himself or us. Then we’ll wake him up somehow.”
Cold water hit all three of them in the face.
“Hey!” Rafe turned to see his fiery little woman standing with a basin in her hands. Empty. Now.
“What’s going on?” Seth sputtered. But he’d escaped from the prison of sleep.
“Julia, why’d you do that? Now we’re all soaking wet.” Ethan drew an arm across his face, but his shirt was just as wet as his hair, so he kept dripping.
“I want to go home.” Seth sat up and stared at Julia with wide, wild eyes.
“I want you to go home too, Seth. Believe me. You woke Maggie up with your shouting. Her crying woke Audra and the baby. Now I’ve got a night’s work ahead getting everyone settled again.” Julia jammed one fist on her hip.
“You have a nightgown on,” Seth said. “You’re pretty.”
Looking down, Julia gasped in dismay, wheeled, and ran back into the cabin. She slammed the door so hard, Rafe watched to see if it would just come flying straight off the hinges to land on the three men.
It held, so Rafe turned back to Seth and shoved him hard enough that he landed flat on his back. “Don’t talk about Julia’s nightgown.”
“Izzat you, Rafe?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“And Ethan? Am I home?”
Rafe looked at the door of that rickety cabin. “Close, kid. You’re mighty close to home.”
“Can we go on home now?”
“It’s night.” Ethan used his blanket to mop his face and hair, then reached for his saddlebag, pulled a dry shirt out, and changed. “We’ll head for home in the morning.”
“Well, then why’d you wake me up?”
“You were having a nightmare.” Rafe forgot his dripping hair and looked at Seth.
Seth stared into the distance and finally spoke. “They’re crazy, twisted up. Some of ’em stay with me while I’m awake.”
“Do you have a lot of them?” Ethan clapped him on the shoulder, then offered him a dry shirt. While Seth changed, Rafe saw the scars and exchanged a long look with Ethan. How could Seth not have nightmares? Rafe shook his head and dried himself off. There were more pants, too. Enough for everyone. Most of the clothes he owned were over here—not that he owned all that many.
As he buttoned his shirt, Seth said, “Just since the war. No, before that. I was having them even before Andersonville.”
“You were in Andersonville?” Rafe sat down on Seth’s right while Ethan sat on his left. Rafe threw more kindling on the low fire crackling in front of them. They were lucky Julia had missed it with her water. “No wonder you’re so thin. I heard about the living skeletons who came out of that place.”
“No food. Lots of men died.” Seth shrugged. “Yeah, I had lots of nightmares there. But they started . . . I’ve had them all my life.”
“Not all your life.” Ethan’s hand rested on Seth’s back. On his scars. “Just since the cave accident. They started after we took you home. For months after that, you’d yell in your sleep. Always on fire.” Ethan stopped speaking, as if he didn’t trust his voice not to break.
Rafe could understand that. He picked up the story. “We’d have a terrible time waking you up.”
The door jerked open and Julia came out, properly dressed, with Maggie sitting up, rubbing her eyes.
“Sorry about that.” Seth sidled behind Rafe. Which meant Seth had picked up on the fact that Julia was not happy with him. That didn’t make Seth a mind reader.
Stopping so she faced all three brothers, she said, “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?”
Seth moved a little, so Rafe wasn’t completely protecting him. Rafe sure hoped that wasn’t a mistake. Though having the baby in her arms might slow Julia down a little if she decided to attack.
Then Maggie squealed and reached for Ethan. Ethan took her. She giggled and kicked her feet.
Still, Julia didn’t launch herself at Seth. “I’ve had a nightmare or two in my life. I know it’s not your fault that you woke everybody up. I’m sorry I was so rude.”
Seth now moved so he was right beside Rafe. Rafe wondered if Julia wasn’t luring him in like a baited trap. He braced himself to save Seth.
“You really scared me in the cavern.” Julia studied Seth in the moonlight, frowning. “I know you’ve been through something awful, but I’m afraid you might be . . . be . . .”
“Loco?” Seth asked.
Julia shrugged. It was the first time she’d hesitated instead of just hitting Seth with both barrels. Rafe found that encouraging.
“The thing is, I understand that you need your brothers to help you. I understand you’ve been through war. I’ve heard of Andersonville and it would be hard for anyone to survive that.”
“Terrible place. I was so hungry. So much death.”
“I’m sorry you went through that, Seth,” Julia said quietly. “I’ve seen pictures of the starving men.”
“Terrible. Ugly. Filthy. I have nightmares about that place more than the cavern, or maybe they’re all mixed together. There’s always fire.” Seth was sounding rational.
Rafe wondered if they oughta change the subject.
“I had to remember how to eat afterward. It was like my throat’d close up. And if I ate too much, I’d lose it from my belly. Callie helped me get my strength up.” Seth slid both hands into his hair. “And I started for home.”
He looked at Rafe. “What month is it?”
“It’s June.”
“I started for home right after Lee surrendered.”
“Who’s Callie?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know anyone named Callie.” Seth looked into the fire with narrow eyes.
“You just said ‘Callie helped me get my strength up.’ ” Julia threw another stick on the fire, and Seth stared into the flames and didn’t answer.
“Seth,” Ethan said, shifting Maggie into his left arm so he could put his right along Seth’s shoulder, “that was a year and two months ago. The war’s been over for more than a year.”
Seth turned to look at Ethan, his brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
Ethan nodded.
“So how come it took me so long to get home?”
Ethan shook his head. “Maybe it didn’t take that long. Maybe you got as far as the cave and stayed there for a while.”
“And where’s my horse? The one I got from the Union army when I was ready to leave?”
“And you said they gave you a rifle?” Ethan patted Maggie’s tummy.
“My friend might have it.” A smile quirked Seth’s lips as he looked at the little girl. “I should go back and get him out, too.”
“Is there really someone else in there, Seth?” Julia asked. “We didn’t see any sign of another man. There was only one bedroll. There was no sign of horses anywhere in the caldera or the vents.”
“Caldera?” Seth scrubbed his face with both hands. “What’s that?”
“We want to know about your friend, Seth.” Rafe tried to get his brother to make sense. This was the closest he’d come since they’d found him. “And how’d you know about that exit into that mountain valley where we were today?”
Seth looked from Rafe to Julia and back to the fire, as if it were calling to him. “I’ve always known about that back door, I reckon . . . or no, not always. I found it after the accident. But I was still a kid when I found it. I knew almost every inch of that cave before I took off to enlist in the war.”
“You know your way around in that cavern?” Julia asked.
She was interested in Seth all of a sudden. Rafe wished he’d never mentioned the cave. He also wished he could gag his little brother.
“Better’n I know my own face.” Seth’s shoulders lifted as if he felt strong and confident on this one subject.
“I haven’t gotten to the ends of it yet.” Julia had a new best friend. “I found some fish fossils and I’d—”
“Can we just leave that for now?” Rafe cut her off. “I think we need to figure out about Seth’s friend down there. Was it one of your imaginary friends, Seth? Why didn’t your friend have a bedroll?”
“He did.”
“But there was only one,” Julia said.
“Yeah, that was his. I didn’t have a blanket. I didn’t have anything much but the food he’d give me. My horse, though. Where’d he go?”
Seth turned to look to the west, the direction of the valley and the cave entrance. Rafe clamped his hand on Seth’s wrist. “Don’t even think about leaving us to go back in that cave.”
“I won’t.” Seth looked back at Rafe and smiled. “I don’t want to live in the cave anymore. I want to go home.”
“Tomorrow we’ll go home, Seth.” Ethan hugged Seth a bit tighter. With Maggie in one arm and Seth in the other, Ethan was pretty busy.
“No.” Julia snatched Maggie away from Ethan as if to punish him. “I want Seth to show me around in that cave.”
“What about his friend?” Rafe didn’t like Julia being in charge. She was too single-minded about that blasted cave. “That might be who scared you and left you stranded in there. It’s still not safe in there. And the floors are still thin as—”
“I don’t think there is a friend.” Julia gave Seth a smile that looked as untrustworthy as Confederate currency. “And if Seth has been all over, then he’ll take us places he knows he’s walked on before.”
“Which doesn’t mean the floors might not crack and collapse,” Rafe said.
Seth whimpered and leaned closer to Ethan. Rafe really needed to get him home. Far from the cavern. Far from the danger of him running back in and disappearing.
“We can explore the cavern tomorrow.” Julia’s phony smile was even perkier. “I’ll make sure Audra is settled comfortably. She can tend the baby for a few hours. Ethan can watch Maggie. Rafe, Seth, and I can go explore. Seth can show me all the rooms he’s found, and I’ll keep a detailed map as we walk. That way I can find it again.”
Seth looked more cheerful. “Will the cave take me home?”
“We’re not going down there.” Rafe decided it was time to put a stop to this conversation for good. “We’re not risking Seth getting lost down there, and we’re not leaving Ethan here to tend a new mother and two babies. And that’s final.”