Chapter 8

 

I stopped my work at the cemetery. I handed in all my notes and maps to the curator and started taking a different route home to avoid the sight of the black iron fence and staggered stones of Glenwood Park Cemetery.

However, after several attempts to quit, I still found myself occupying my usual seat at the December board meeting for the Merrill Homestead’s foundation.

The familiar office seemed alien with board members situated around the long table in the middle of the room. The only true acquaintance was Faith. The rest were from Omaha or Lincoln. I only saw them at board meetings and never conversed with them about anything beyond monthly financial reports.

Everyone sat polite and proper in business casual slacks and jackets. I stared down at the last purple streaks tipping the tendrils of my hair that fell down on my white button down top. I always thought about cutting the colorful ends off, but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to.

Board members were going back and forth as to what to do when the remaining grant money had been spent. Funds were running out and conversation to save the site was becoming stressed and often redundant. One of the options coming up again and again was to sell the park to a for-profit business and disband the board. The talk was depressing, and being a junior board member brought in to coordinate reenactments we weren't having, I had little say in anything.

As debating continued, I tried to make the room feel like it had in the past. I looked for some glimpse of the familiar to make me feel better, or at least make me feel something.

It's really art, you know?

I stared across the table at the spot where I had sat a few months earlier and talked to Josh over his sketches of the feed and seed store.

There was energy like people actually lived there.

I looked around. People had lived in the cabin. And people were sitting around an office arguing over finances in order to save that cabin. But they were losing. And we still had no idea what the people who lived in the cabin were really like, or what they really did.

You never know. Anything could happen.

I shook my head, blocked everything out and leaned back in my chair. I remained that way until the board meeting adjourned. After some hurried goodbyes I went out to my car. I turned on the engine and pretended to be talking into my cell phone while my car warmed up until all my fellow board members had left.

I just wanted to be alone.

I shoved my cell phone into the pocket of my long winter coat and turned the key back, listening to the engine slow and stop. The silence settled around me for a few moments. It was cold, but the overcast sky and still air made it tolerably so. I got out of my car. I looked at it for a few moments. The same boxy, black late-80’s Taurus it had always been.

I trudged down the white rock parking lot, along the chain link fence that guarded the perimeter of the grounds. After I had gone nearly to the end, swallowed in darkness from all directions, I stopped. Inside, I could see the vague outline of the family of structures within the compound.

I gripped the frosty fence, but I could not feel it.

Everything was just the same. The fence felt the same as the air around me. The air on my face, the air in my lungs, the darkness, the clouds in the sky – it was all the same.

I wanted to feel. I wanted to be compelled to cry or scream. I wanted to throw rocks or kick the fence. But all my emotions were lost in a dark, distant well, held in by thick, gravid stones.

For the briefest moment I almost felt surprised as I looked over my shoulder to see nothing. Josh had succeeded in startling me all those times he snuck up on me, but I found it was far less natural to find him not there. I didn't even feel disappointment for that.

I turned away and went back to my car. Getting in, I quickly turned the key, but nothing happened. I tried again. Once again, nothing.

Seeing as I was not in any way mechanically inclined, the situation would normally elicit a string of obscenities instead of investigation. Doing neither, I grabbed for my cell phone and dialed home.

Silence.

I looked down at the screen, which lit up my front seat like the cockpit of an airplane with an eerie green glow. No service.

This was strange, but home was less than four blocks away. I decided to walk.

Once I got on the sidewalk that would lead me home, I focused my mind on my steady pace, until each footstep fell in perfect time and my mind drifted into oblivion, thinking about everything and nothing at the same time.

I was jerked, literally, from my thoughts as my left foot abruptly went backward as the rest of me tumbled forward. I reached out my hands to catch myself, but most of the impact was absorbed by my right knee as it hit concrete, hard.

It hurt. I cursed.

Instinctively, I reached out to the side for something to lean on and my stomach dropped as freezing metal bit my hand and I realized where I was.

Of all places for me to slip on the ice in the middle of the night, it had to be at the gate of Glenwood Park Cemetery.

I removed my hand from the fence and held my throbbing knee.

That's when I noticed tears on my face, and even more, that I could feel them. The stone well containing my emotions had collapsed. I kneeled there for a long while.

When I finally looked up, I was startled to see a figure walking on the sidewalk toward me. I buried my face in the sleeve of my coat to wipe away any tears that had not frozen. I reached over to the fence with my other hand to get up, but my fingers groped at cold air. I looked over. The fence was gone along with the cemetery stones.

I could feel, all right. Panic spread throughout my body.

The sidewalk was gone. The street was gone. The light poles were gone.

I found myself in a wide expanse of dead, yellow grass beneath a clear, starred sky.

It was then, with a mixture of fascination and absolute terror, that I realized the experience of time shifting was not limited to Mt. Zion Church.

Looking around I saw that the figure I had spotted on the newly vanished sidewalk was still approaching me, and had come within speaking distance.

It was a young man. He was short – probably only slightly taller than I was. He wore trousers, boots and an oversized sack coat. He had a rounded face and long, dark blonde hair beneath a wide brimmed hat. Slung over his shoulder was a canvas bag with a tin cup strapped to it. He stopped in front of me.

"Are you all right, Miss?"

"I… Yes. I... I fell. But, I'm all right."

I looked down. I hoped my long black wool winter coat looked semi-period authentic in the darkness. I didn’t want to answer any more questions than I had too.

He lent me his arm and helped me to my feet. "Thanks," I managed to whisper, but I was too focused on his face to say much else. His hardened features were softened with a look of genuine concern.

"Whereabouts you going?"

My mind went into overdrive. I had to be going somewhere.

"I'm going... to a cabin. Not too far from here. That way." I indicated. "That's where... I... I'm staying there."

"Well, I was just heading in that very same direction. I could escort you if you like." He swayed nervously. "So you don't... fall again."

"I'd like that. Thank you." He offered his arm. I took it. "My name's Sophie."

"Oh!" said the young man. "Where're my introducing manners? It's nice to meet you, Sophie. I'm James."

I smiled. I knew.

"Hello, James."