Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel (30 page)

“I can’t let it go.
Who is it
?” Her tone was hard, demanding.

“Mr. Josephs,” Mitch said quietly. “Mr. Tupelo Josephs.”

Kat’s face turned a shade lighter. “When I first ran into the three men, Tupelo Josephs stood up to them. He tried to make them leave me alone. And now he’s dead.”

“Kat, everything is turning upside down. I’m not capable of rational thought any more.”

“Well, I am. The wheels all started turning with my … my rape.”

“Not all the wheels. Mr. Josephs was an old man, Kat. Old people die every day because of natural causes. Who’s to say that’s not what happened to him?”

“That’s not the case this time. His death is my fault.”

“Stop saying that. Let’s examine this logically. You
can’t
be responsible for every new name that pops up on the list. For example, what about this last name, Louis Smith? Are you going to claim responsibility for him too?”

“He’s one of the— He’s the fat one.”

Mitch slapped his forehead. “Of course. I ran into that jackass at Bubba’s.” The realization suddenly hit home, Kat’s interaction theory was right on the button. “I guess you’re not the only one with connections, Kat, seems I’ve got two of my own, Taxi and Louis Smith.”

“You skipped Kathleen Templeton.”

“It ain’t gonna happen.”

“April 7 is going to be a lousy Palm Sunday for the Rayson family.”

Mitch studied the list one more time. “Kat, did you notice the time of death and the addresses?” He sat on the end of her chair.

“Which ones?” She leaned forward.

“The last five,” he ran his finger down the names.

Devore, MaximilianN

Gordon, LamarN

Rayson, Lettie RuthN

Templeton, KathleenN

Smith, Louis

“See, Kat, they’re all the same. The address is 119 Webster and the time is 9:45 P.M.,” he said.

“Lord in heaven, Mitch, we’re all gonna die in the Freedom Methodist Church on Palm Sunday.”

Mitch took Kat in his arms, rocking her like a small child. “You’re reading an out of date document, partner. We’re going to make five changes in that timeline.”

She pulled away. “How about cutting it down to four?” she asked, her eyes hardening into crystallized honey. “Louis Smith can eat shit and die for all I care.”

“As you wish, m’lady.”

=TWENTY-TWO=

Lettie Ruth locked
the front door, officially closing the clinic for the day. So many changes had taken place in just a few days. She couldn’t remember the last time she or Timothy had locked the doors at the end of the work day. Before Kat came along, they may have had a little trouble with the local boys, but nothing that would have called for bolting the door shut.

Nervous, without knowing why, she peeked out the window. The street was quiet, folks all inside getting ready for their suppers. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arm, then hurried out to the kitchen.

In between the afternoon patients she’d managed to fit in a little kitchen duty. After all her huffing and puffing yesterday about cooking, she’d put together a fine supper of honey cured ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, and biscuits. And to make it up to Timothy, two pecan pies.

She took the ham out of the oven and slipped the pies onto the cooking rack. She double checked the oven’s temperature gauge, then gave it a good hard tap with her finger. The cranky old stove overheated lately and she didn’t want them to burn.

The oversized kitchen table made it difficult to move around the room, so she removed the extra leaf. Dreama and Taxi had begged off, claiming they were too tired to eat. Lettie chuckled. They might be too tired to eat, she thought, but they ain’t too tired for much else.

She counted out five place settings. Once she got everybody rounded up, they could sit down for supper. Alvin and Timothy were napping upstairs, trying to make up for their sleepless nights guarding the church. Her house guests were still out back. She glanced out the kitchen window.

Kat and Mitch were sharing one chair, their heads bent close together over a piece of paper. She never knew two people to do so much serious talking. It would be nice to see one of them smile ever now and then.

She pushed open the screen and called, “Supper’s ready, y’all get washed.” Not waiting for a response she shut the door and started for the second floor, time to wake her sleeping beauties.

Lettie Ruth could hear Alvin’s snoring before she got half way up the stairs. She found him sprawled flat on his back on the bed in the first hospital room. The ceiling fan made slow lazy circles over his head. The outside shutters kept most of the late afternoon sun out of the room, but his face was sweat beaded and his damp undershirt clung to his skin.

He looked so tired she hesitated to wake him. It wouldn’t be any trouble to stick a plate in the oven and let him sleep on. She’d turned away to tiptoe out when he spoke.

“Hey, Sister. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, honey,” she said, facing him. “I came to wake you for supper.”

He sat up and sniffed the air. “Something sure smells good. You make a pecan pie?”

“I made two. Thought I better try and make up for the mean way I’ve been treating Timothy lately.”

Rayson laughed. “Shoot, he didn’t pay you no mind.”

“Even so, I should try to be nicer to him.” She swatted his foot. “Now, get yourself together and come on down. I gotta go wake Timothy. He’d never forgive me if I let him sleep through a meal.”

“Miss Kat and Mitch still here?”

Lettie Ruth stopped half way to the door, puzzled by his question. “You expecting them to be going off somewheres?”

Rayson shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m expecting. It’s a strange feeling I got about those two.”

The knot she’d carried around in her stomach since yesterday’s confrontation in the cornfield with the three men cinched up another notch. She called it her worry knot, and it had a good record of letting her know when things were about to go wrong.

“What kind of feeling?” she asked.

“If I tell you about my feeling, well … you’ll be thinking I’m crazy.”

“I’m your sister, Alvin, and I already know you’re plum crazy. So go ahead.”

“You know all those folks we been talking to about the ghosts? And that tingling feeling up and down our necks?”

“Yes.”

“I get the same feeling from Miss Kat and Mitch.”

“Those were old folk’s stories, Alvin. Probably not one real ghost in the whole lot.”

“Maybe yes and maybe no. You ever get a strange sense about something or someone?”

Lettie Ruth thought of her nervousness downstairs when she locked the door. Now she felt a bad time coming on and her worry knot tightened. “I reckon most everyone has from time to time.”

He watched the fan blades circle for several seconds. “Like I said, I got a feeling. And that feeling is telling me Miss Kat and Mitch ain’t supposed to be here. Like they don’t belong.”

“Maybe you sense that because they’re from another town. And don’t forget, Mitch is a Yankee boy.”

“It’s more than coming from another town or being a Yankee, Lettie Ruth. It’s like…” He paused, scratching his head. “You remember that book by H.G. Wells,
The Time Machine
?”

“I remember you reading it.”

“In the book, the main character—The Time-traveler—didn’t belong in the places he visited. His clothes were all wrong. The way he talked. Everything about him just didn’t fit in.”

Lettie Ruth laughed. “Are you telling me you believe Kat and Mitch traveled here in a time machine?”

“Of course not. But something about them isn’t right.”

“Like what?”

“Mitch’s shoes.”

“What’s wrong with his shoes?”

“Take a look for yourself, then you tell me.”

* * *

As soon as he heard Lettie Ruth’s footsteps descending the stairs, Alvin fished around under the bed until his hand landed on the slick nylon fabric. He pulled the navy blue backpack free, but left it lying on the floor. Poking around in somebody’s property, without them knowing, seemed a bit sinful. But then, sometimes you couldn’t avoid crossing the road. He needed answers and those answers were zipped up tight inside this bag.

When one of the men had brought it to the church Monday night, Alvin’s intentions were honorable. He’d only looked inside to learn the owner’s name. But what he’d found was a whole lot more than a name.

He wiped the sweat beads off his forehead and took a deep breath, before pulling the photograph out of the small inside pocket. No matter how many times he looked at it, he still couldn’t control his shaking hands or the churning in his stomach.

Alvin slowly unfolded the wrinkled photo. The three people, captured forever on the glossy paper, caused his heart to hammer. Father, Mother, and Daughter. He turned it over, in a childish hand someone had written:

“My family, May 14, 1983. Pop: Alvin Paul Rayson. Momma: Dolores June Rayson.

And me: Kathleen “Kat” Ruth Rayson.”

“Why are you here, daughter?” Alvin whispered. “Why have you come back in time?”

* * *

Lettie Ruth dropped her napkin and bent over to pick it up. Mitch’s shoes were no more than ten inches from her face. She stared hard, trying to see what got Alvin so worked up.

Mitch wore scuffed white leather shoes, with little blue check marks on the sides and heels. But nothing about them made her think they’d come out of a time machine. Or did they? She took a second look. They seemed a bit unusual, all that leather, but then Lettie didn’t shop for men. For all she knew this was the kind of play shoes all the men in his town wore.

She grabbed the paper napkin and began to back out from underneath the table when Mitch shifted his feet. She caught a glimpse of the bottom of one shoe. The sole, carved in fancy patterns, had writing on it.

MACEYVILLE, AL. P.D.

IT’S A NEW MILLENNIUM—1/1/2000

At first the words didn’t register, the meaning jumbled in her head. Then she understood.

Alvin’s head poked under the table and Lettie Ruth put her finger to her lips and pointed up. They withdrew, their eyes locked across the table.

The conversation swirled around her as she pieced together the scraps of information. What other new things could she discover if she looked? Go slow, she warned herself, don’t fancy up the facts. Stick to what you know.

What
did
she know about them? Kat, found naked in a cotton field, didn’t have any clothes to examine. Other than the rape, nobody knew anything but her name. And not even the whole thing. What kind of a name was Kat? Sounded like a dang pet.