The Secret of the Huckleberry Bushes
“Who are you? What do you want?” Willow asked again, shaking her head as if trying to clear it. “Where’s my mother?”
Lilah stared at her wordlessly, completely at a loss. She had expected to find clues – an earring, a note, a scrap of clothing – but not this. This was the last thing she expected to find.
“I’m—” she swallowed. I’m what? I’m that baby who killed your cat – you know, the daughter you just abandoned? Never mind that I’m older than you, it’s a time bubble thing. Oh, and by the way, you’re actually dead. She clutched her chest tightly, trying to find the right words amid the torrent of nonsense churning through her mind.
Willow was rubbing her head as she gaped at her, waiting for a response.
Say something, Lilah – anything! She could disappear at any moment!
That jolted Lilah back to the moment. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, the words came out faster than her brain could piece them together. “I saw something strange when I was driving by, and I wanted to see if you needed help.”
“No, no, no…” Her young mother was craning her neck around anxiously, as though someone might jump out of the woods at any moment. “We have to hide,” she whispered, grabbing Lilah’s sleeve. She dragged her behind the thicket of huckleberry bushes, holding a finger to her lips as she crouched to the ground. “Cover your flashlight – there’s a man out there.”
“A man?” Lilah blinked, then did what she was told. “What man? Who is he?”
“I don’t know!” Willow whispered frantically. “My mother and I pulled over to help this hitchhiker – when we stopped to talk to her, she told us to run.” Her chest was heaving, and her entire body trembled as she spoke. “Then a man opened the car door and before I knew what was happening, he dragged my mother into the forest. I tried to chase after them; I was running and running in the darkness, trying to follow their voices. They were standing right over there!” She pointed at something past the edge of the time bubble, then rubbed her temples with both hands. “Everything feels so foggy now, like I fell asleep. But that can’t be…”
Lilah’s heart was racing. This is the answer to what happened that night. It wasn’t because of anything that I had done, it was… she swallowed. Someone worse.
“What happened next?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“The man and my mother, they just… disappeared. And then you showed up. And now everything is quiet…” Fear suddenly replaced the confusion and disorientation that had been clouding her expression until that point. “Oh, God – what if he did something to her? What if she’s hurt…? Mom!” she yelled suddenly. “Mama!!”
Lilah had to hold back the tears threatening to spill over her cheeks. She felt as though she was going to be sick. As she clutched her stomach, Willow began to flicker, like she might disappear at any moment.
Keep it together, Lilah. She took a deep, steadying breath, trying to calm herself. It took great concentration to hold time steady, and she wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer if she lost focus.
“Mama!” Willow yelled again, rising to her feet. “Mama, are you alright? Please, answer me!” She turned to Lilah frantically. “Please! You have to help me find her!”
What the hell am I doing? I can’t fix this, Lilah thought to herself, hugging her chest tighter. I can’t go back in time and save her. I can only take snapshots. What good am I? What good is any of this?
“Mama!” Willow was hysterical now, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Mama, where are you?”
Marie’s voice echoed in Lilah’s mind. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but there’s a reason for your gift. Her adoptive mother had uttered those words beneath the maple tree just last month, but it seemed like ages ago. Lilah shook her head vigorously, trying to clear the smell of sulfur from her nose. Maybe there’s still a way to fix this.
She took another deep breath, then straightened her shoulders. “I’ll help you find your mother, Willow, I promise. Just… please try and calm down, okay? I’m gonna need you to tell me everything you can about what happened tonight. Can you do that?”
Willow stared at her as she wiped her face with the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt. “You said my name again. I don’t understand… how do you know who I am?”
Lilah faltered for a moment, then pulled the rattle from her pocket. “This… belonged to your daughter, right?”
Willow stared at the rattle with wide, frightened eyes. She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. Her chin was trembling as she sifted through her back pocket, now empty.
“You were on your way home from dropping her off at the fire station… weren’t you?”
“How do you know that?” Willow whispered. “Did the shaman send you? Were you following us?”
Lilah’s stomach clenched at the mere mention of Mike Hastings. “No,” she muttered faintly, shaking her head. “I know that because… because that baby—” She swallowed. “Well, that baby was me.” She clicked the flashlight on again, shining the light on her face.
Willow’s eyes shone white all the way around her irises. “What?”
“My name is Lilah. I’m your daughter, sixteen years from – well, from now.”
“What – what is this?” Willow rasped, looking around wildly. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Are you trying to punish me?”
“I never meant to frighten you,” Lilah said, taking a step towards the girl. “And I’m so sorry for what happened to your cat. I… I would never hurt anything on purpose. I swear. I just can’t always control—”
“You know about the cat,” Willow whispered, clamping a hand over her mouth. “How do you know about the cat?”
A muffled noise made Lilah look over her shoulder. Two blurry figures were standing right outside of the bubble. And judging by the color of their jackets, Lilah knew exactly who they were.
“I just need you to trust me.” Lilah took another step forward, turning her attention back to Willow. “I’m so sorry for causing you any pain, for making you feel like you had to give me away in order to protect yourself. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
She was still holding the flashlight between them, illuminating both of their faces. Something in Willow’s expression changed as she took Lilah in just then. “You have a freckle right above your lip,” she said softly, her fingers hovering over Lilah’s mouth. “And eyes… just like my baby.”
Another noise erupted from the edge of the temporal dome, this time catching Willow’s attention.
“What was that?” She choked back a sob. “Is he back?”
Lilah took a shaky breath. “That man is gone. He can’t hurt you, not now.”
“Gone?” The girl’s eyes somehow grew even wider. “How do you know? Did you see him?”
“I’ll explain everything I know, I promise. I just need you to tell me one more thing first.”
Willow stared at the figures outside of the bubble, the frown between her eyebrows deepening. When she looked at Lilah again, she pressed her lips into a determined line. “What do you need to know?”
“I need you to tell me everything about that man that you possibly can.”
“Why?” Willow whispered, understanding beginning to creep into her eyes.
The tears that Lilah had been holding back for so long finally won. “Because that man… hurt you. And sixteen years from now, no one knows what happened to you.”
Willow’s shoulders slumped and a crushed, dejected look swept across her face. “I’m dead,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question.
Lilah nodded.
“I’m dead. But… how?” Her frightened eyes met Lilah’s. “How are you here? How are we talking? Are you dead too?”
“No, I’m not. I have epilepsy. And my seizures – they alter time. It used to be out of my control. But I’m learning how to control it – both the epilepsy and the time bending thing.”
Understanding shone behind Willow’s green eyes. “That’s why everything would rot. That’s why you made me look like an old woman last night… Why Pebbles…” she swallowed, not wanting to finish that sentence. “So that means you can go backwards too? That’s how we’re talking?”
“Yes.”
“But… if I’m dead, where’s my mother?”
Lilah shook her head slowly. “I can’t say for certain, but… she never made it back home, either.”
“So, that means… You’re trying to figure out who killed us.”
Lilah’s voice was so soft, she could barely hear it. “Yes.”
Willow licked her lips. Her green eyes were staring at something far away. After a long moment, she finally spoke, her voice soft and steady. “The girl was wearing a red rain jacket. Jeans with holes in them. Sandals… in the winter. She’s Hispanic, I think, from her accent.” She shook her head slightly, as though she was trying to clear an unpleasant image from her mind. “And the man… he…” she took a shaky breath. “He has a mustache and short blond hair. Maybe forty years old. He’s wearing coveralls that are splattered with paint. It was hard to see in the dark, but it might have been yellow paint. His boots too – they’re covered in it. And he had a big bandage over his left eyebrow.”
A loud yelp made both her and Lilah turn their heads, just in time to see a very young-looking Stanley Quinn burst into the clearing, carrying a crying baby in his arms. A pair of oversized glasses dangled from one of the baby’s ears.
“Lilah!” Stanley shouted, panting and gasping for breath. He hovered near the edge of the distortion, looking back and forth between Lilah and the temporal curtain as though he expected the abominable snowman himself to burst through it at any time.
“That’s the man who took me in and raised me,” Lilah smiled. “He’s been a good father. But if he’s here, it means I have to go.”
Willow pressed her knuckles to quivering lips. “But I’m scared to go back. I don’t want to die. I don’t want that man to hurt me. Please, let me stay with you. It’ll be like we’re sisters!”
Lilah tried to muster up her best reassuring smile. “When we stop talking, time will return to normal, and sixteen years will have already passed. It’s already done. You won’t have to relive it again.”
“Really?” Willow asked. “You promise?”
“Yes. You’ll be safe. Safe and sound in the next life.” She had no idea how she knew that, but she could feel the truth in her own words, as clearly as she could feel time beginning to slip away from her grasp. It was time for Willow to go.
“I can’t believe I’m… I’m…” Willow’s voice trailed off in a quiver before she set her small mouth back into a determined expression. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Lilah,” she said, grief hanging over every word. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Lilah nodded. “I hope you can forgive me too.”
“Lilah!” Stanley shouted again, slowing to a cautious walk as he approached the two women. He was still clutching a flashlight and a fussing baby swathed in oversized clothes.
“Thank you for taking care of my daughter when I couldn’t,” Willow said, turning to face him.
“Um,” Stanley replied.
“Don’t let them forget me, okay?” she whispered to Lilah. “Tell everyone what happened.”
“I will,” Lilah answered, leaning forward to wrap her in one final hug. “I promise.”
With one last wistful smile at her daughter, Willow was gone.
Stanley stood in front of Lilah with his mouth hanging open. Before he realized what was happening, he was holding a fully-grown Jace in both of his arms like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold. With a startled yelp, Stanley dropped the young man to the ground; the latter landed with an undignified thump.
“Ow! What the hell just happened?” Jace winced, rubbing his backside. “Lilah, are you okay? Is the moose gone?”
As he clambered to his feet, all three of them looked over to see a very large, rather disinterested moose loping away in the darkness.
Stanley turned back to gape at Lilah. “That girl – was that…?”
She nodded.
“Does that mean…?”
Lilah turned to glance over her shoulder, unwilling to gaze for too long at the place where her mother’s bones were buried. But she knew she was there, deep beneath the snow-covered thicket of huckleberry bushes. As she knelt to tuck the rattle underneath the snarls of branches and dried berries, a feeling of grief washed over her; but in that grief, there was comfort as well. Willow would not be forgotten. That dusty file in Sheriff Reid’s drawer of cold cases would be opening again soon. And this time, when it finally closed, it would be closed for good.