Backward Glass (17 page)

T
w
o

Truth and wisdom deeply walled.

Lilly was the fastest-thinking of all of us. “What was wrong?” she said to Mrs. Hollerith. “I’m going to her now. Tell me. Ten years ago—what was wrong? Why was the delivery so hard?”

Mrs. Hollerith’s hand went to her mouth. “It can’t—you can’t blame—I didn’t know.”

Lilly stepped down from the dresser and toward the woman. “Tell me,” she said. “What was wrong? I can go and help her, but only if you tell me.”

“B-breech,” the woman stammered. “Early. That and—and—”

And with that, she fainted dead away. Lilly caught her, easing her fall.

“Kenny, what’s going on?” said Curtis. He was looking at the man in Wald’s grip, and for once, the crazy man’s eyes were off me as he returned the stare. “Is this the bad man?” said Curtis.

“Curtis, maybe you should—”

“Rose told me,” said Curtis. He was almost hypnotized, unable to take his eyes of the filthy, unshaven face. The wild man had stopped struggling against Wald. He let out a whimper under his gag. “Prince Harming. She said all the mirror children had to watch for him. Like a curse. Is that it? Is that why it hurt to touch him?” He looked at Wald. “Does it hurt you to touch him?”

“Nay, lad,” said Wald. Despite holding up his prey steadily in one hand, he spoke as calmly as if we were all sitting under a tree on a shady hill. “These deepnesses are past our wits. Leave off for now.” He pointed with his chin to where Lilly was placing a pillow under Mrs. Hollerith’s head. “Look to who needs thee, and we must through the glass.”

Lilly spoke up in support. “Come help her, Curtis. Here, she’s just fainted. You’re going to sit with her and stroke her arm. When she wakes up, you’ll tell her we’re gone and you don’t know what happened. It’s okay.”

“It’s you, isn’t it?” said Curtis. “Lillian.”

“Yes. A long time since I saw you, Curtis.” There were tears in her eyes. “You look good. Can you be strong for—for your mother now?”

His lips set in a determined line. “I’ll take care of her. I will, Lillian.”

“I believe you,” said Lillian with a smile. Then she turned to Wald. “Maybe you should leave that man up in 1947,” she said. “We’re going to help a girl give birth. If he gets free … ”

Wald shook his head. “He is too deep a danger to let loose. I’ll curb him better this time. My culpis, Kenny. I didna mean for that.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Then let’s go,” said Lilly. “Breech means the baby is coming out backward. It’s dangerous for Mother and child. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Wald went first this time after I opened the mirror. He dragged the crazy man after him. Lilly and I gave him a moment to get down off the dresser in 1917 and followed.

The first thing we heard was a cry of pain from Rose.

Wald had thrown his captive to the floor and, with a warning foot on the man’s stomach, was lifting Rose in a blood-stained gown onto her bed.

Seeing the blood, Lilly immediately took charge. “I’m sure you’ve seen some births,” Lilly said to Wald, “so you’re going to have to help me.”

Within a few minutes, Wald had tied Prince Harming, now docile, but still shooting fiery glares at me, to a chair downstairs, and set me to watching him from a distance.

“That’s good,” said Lilly to me. “You might have orchestrated this, but the birth of a baby is no place for a boy. Call John if that man so much as blinks the wrong way.”

She didn’t talk to me much after that, just busied herself with trying to save Rose’s life.

I spent the next few hours listening to Rose’s groans and sobs, and to Lilly’s directions to both Wald and Rose. All the while, I never took my eyes off the prisoner. He eventually dozed, though he’d wake up now and then to glare at me.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” I said at one point. “And I’m not going to.”

I don’t know why I felt it necessary to justify myself. He looked even crazier than he had two months ago when he shot me. His hair was matted and dirty, his sunken cheeks covered in a scrubby beard, and his skin burned by sun and wind.

“You’ve got it wrong,” I said. “I never killed anyone. You’re the one all the kids tell stories about. You smashed kids’ heads in. There was some kid you brain-damaged. You sent them into comas. Not me. You.”

He looked away, as though my words held no interest. Or maybe he just didn’t understand. When his eyes locked on mine, it was like there was fogged glass between us, like his madness kept him isolated from the world.

“Is your name Beckett?” I said, wanting something to take me away from the groans upstairs and my own cluttered thoughts.

His eyes narrowed, then he shook his head. Saying no? In disgust? I couldn’t tell. He grunted, champed his jaws on the wide gag John Wald had put in his mouth, then looked at me questioningly. I had been thinking of removing it anyway. It seemed cruel to keep it in, and what harm was there to let him speak?

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take it off. But no tricks. You don’t know what I can do with that mirror. I know all the rules now. If I want to, I can toss you into a million years ago, and forget you existed.”

His reaction to my ridiculous lie was strange. His eyes widened and his brows contracted as though in surprise and a kind of deep sadness all at once, then he lapsed back into dull hatred.

Swallowing my fear, I stepped forward. His hands and feet were still bound together, and the rope that tied him to the chair hadn’t moved. The gag was disgusting. I couldn’t even tell what sort of garment the stained, spit-soaked rag had once been part of.

He snapped at my fingers when I removed it, but I think it was more instinct than intention. I dropped the gag and retreated to my chair.

I was halfway through asking him his name, when he interrupted me, almost spitting out his words. “Kill yourself. Now.”

The boldness of the command took me aback momentarily. “Why—why should I do that?”

His lip curled in disgust. “Said you were my friend. Wanted all to work out for everyone. This is the way. Kill yourself.” He shook his head. “You won’t, will you? Even if I could show you it’s the only way.” I opened my mouth to reply, but he cut me off. “Go on, tell me you can’t. Tell me what happened has already happened, even if it’s still to come. Go on.” He spat beside himself. “I thought you were some kind of hero. Now I’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

At that, he lapsed into a silence of hours, most of which he spent staring fire at me.

Eventually, Wald came down and said that he and I should make a meal.

“Kill him,” the madman said to Wald, jerking his head to indicate me.

“Speak’st thou now?” said Wald. “Better silence. More to speak is more to lang regret.”

With the sparse food available, we muddled through a kitchen that was futuristic to Wald and antique to me, and managed to make oatmeal topped with sugar. Wald insisted on feeding his captive, and I was allowed up to see Rose while she sipped the sugar water that was all Lilly would allow.

She was pale and soaked with sweat, but gave me a weak half smile as I sat beside her. “Are you sure it isn’t tonight I die?”

I nodded. “I’m sure. If that’s any help.”

“It isn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “It’s not you that should be sorry. It’s that Clive Beckett.” She stopped for a moment, gasped in pain, then waited a moment as some wave in her subsided. “Dying and leaving me to this. Well. It’s not so long, and I’ll be with him.”

“Don’t think like that,” I said. “You’re going to have Curtis, soon. He’ll live.”

A keening snarl rose up from the wild man below.

Rose ignored it and reached a trembling, sweaty hand to grasp mine. “Funny, isn’t it?” she said. Another wave of pain rolled through her, this one longer and more intense. “All this year, I’ve been hearing about all of you in the future. The stories about Peggy’s love affair with Anthony—” Another pause for pain. “Kenny and Luka. About Kenny and his friends and their adventures, Kenny trapped in the past. I knew you before you came. About you and Luka and what happened between you.” She gave a short gasp, then clenched her teeth together, breathing in short, sharp hisses. Lilly soon hurried me back downstairs.

Lilly took occasional cigarette breaks over the next few hours, and on one of those I asked her why we didn’t find a hospital or a doctor. “We can’t move her,” she said. “She’s had bleeding, and the labor has started. As to bringing someone here, how would we explain ourselves? A madman tied up on one floor, a seventeenth-century blacksmith assisting a nurse from the future on the next.” She shook her head sadly. “Terrible as it is, I think we’re her best hope. I didn’t do training in obstetrics. I was a war nurse. But I’ve had your note for ten years. I knew I would do this. I’ve been preparing, and I have thirty more years of medical science than whatever country doctor we could find. Anyway, in 1917, nobody reserves the best treatment for unwed mothers. They’ll spare the baby if it comes to it, at the cost of the mother’s life.”

More waiting, more cries. Some sleep. Then I woke in
a convulsion of panic when I heard a scream of terror and
a crash of cutlery and broken glass.

Standing not five feet from me in the doorway of the little house was Mrs. Hollerith, ten years younger than I’d seen her last, holding a tipped tray and staring at a bloody-handed John Wald halfway down the stairs.

Three

Head will hurt. Death’s a cert.

“What … ” said Mrs. Hollerith. “What—what—”

“Oh, what do you think?” said Lilly, descending the stairs. “Your daughter’s giving birth, you fool. Your daughter, whom you knew fine well was pregnant, is having her baby a month too soon.”

Francine Hollerith’s mouth opened and closed.

“What was your plan?” said Lilly. She reached Mrs. Hollerith and dropped her voice to a furious whisper. “Did you want her to die in childbirth so your problem would go away? If that’s the case, you were doing a fine job. With luck, I’ll save her. Is that a problem?”

Mrs. Hollerith’s face settled into an expression I don’t have a name for. Something like a cold acceptance of the new way things were. “Fine,” she said. “And who are all of—”

She was interrupted with a scream. Prince Harming
must have fallen asleep some time after I did, but he was awake again. “Kill him!” he screamed to Francine Hollerith. “Kill him! Help me and kill him. He’s going to kill my wife. Everything from him’s a lie. Let me loose and I’ll do it.”

Mrs. Hollerith stepped back and held her tray like a shield.

I spread my hands. “I’m not going to kill anyone. I just came here to help.”

Wald leaped down the last few stairs, picked up Prince Harming’s discarded gag, and struggled it back into his mouth over the madman’s screamed protests.

Mrs. Hollerith looked from one of us to another. “Well, let me see my daughter,” she said at last, and strode to the stairs, pushing past Lilly as she went up. Then she turned for a last word. “And get this madman out of here.”

Behind his gag, Prince Harming gave a heartbroken wail.

“Why is he getting worse now?” I said. “I thought he had started to calm down.”

“Sees it coming,” said Wald. “Whate’er this thing, he feels its shadow.” He took Prince Harming by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “List me now, witling. Thou wishest to stave some doom, is’t so?”

The madman cocked his head to one side, then nodded.

“Well and good,” said Wald. He turned to me. “I said we’d riddle this one in time. Mayhaps ’tis now.” He met Prince Harming’s wild gaze again, hands still grasping the straining shoulders. “Now list again. I will not let ye kill young Kennit, hear? If there is some doom to stave, we might yet aid thee.” He spoke slowly, as though to a child. “We must have words, na? Peace and words. I’ll loose the clout that stops thy voice. Speak thy bit.”

With that, he took the gag away again, and Prince Harming took a deep breath before speaking. “Not kill then,” he said. “Tie him up. Tie and hold him here.”

Wald shook his head. “No talk of that. Kennit’s a friend. Talk of what thou wouldst prevent.”

Prince Harming gave a small snarl and spoke through clenched teeth. “Listen. Murderer. No friend. Said he was. Pushed her and she’s dead and wouldn’t let me follow. Pretends to be friend. Tie him or stop him or you kill her like it was your own hands. Said he was a friend!”

His words grew faster, more furious, and with a reluctant shrug, Wald replaced his gag.

“He names thee killer,” he said, turning to me. “I know it is not so. Why thinks he that?”

“That’s not the question,” said Mrs. Hollerith coming down the stairs. “The question is why have you brought a lunatic into a birthing house?”

Wald and I looked at each other. “We were … rushed,” I said. “He’s dangerous. We couldn’t let him run loose.”

She shook her head. “Well, it won’t do. D’you hear me? I won’t have my daughter upset by that. Get him out.” Wald, looking as sheepish as I probably did, opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t let him. “I’m serious. She’s sleeping now, poor thing, though it’s a miracle she can in this madhouse. Go upstairs, and fetch that dresser down. I don’t know where you come from inside that thing, but I want you to take this screaming idiot back into it.” She smiled thinly at the shock on our faces. “Oh, you thought I didn’t know, did you? Well, a mother’s not so stupid as you might think.”

Prince Harming’s cries had acquired a mournful sound, like a locked-up puppy, but she never looked at him as she spoke.

“But I want to help,” I said. “I came all this way to help.”

“And you have,” said Lilly from the top of the stairs. “You brought me.” She walked down wearily and addressed herself to Mrs. Hollerith. “She wouldn’t have survived. You’d have found her dead.” Rose’s mother absorbed this in silence. Even Prince Harming quieted at Lilly’s appearance. “I think she’s right, though, John. I think you and Kenny have to get him out of here.”

But the baby, I wanted to say. The baby in the wall.

Was I wrong about everything? Rose said the baby was Curtis. Curtis was alive.

I looked at Wald. “Where do we take him?”

He rubbed his bearded face. “It clackers my wits.” He counted on his fingers. “Curtis, nay. Lilly, nay. Peggy, nay—a watch will be set now her vanishment is noted. Anthony?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s not even in his house anymore, and I’m not dumping this man on—it just wouldn’t work.”

“Past that, the water,” he said. “If indeed the glass is still a’drowned.”

“I think it is,” I said. “But maybe I’ve figured out how to get it out. Something Curtis said about submarines got me thinking. Maybe we can get him up to Rick and Jimmy’s time.” I turned to Mrs. Hollerith. “Can you get—I don’t know—a small chest? And—a broom handle?” I tapped my forehead with my hand as I thought it out. “And a couple of two-by-fours and some nails? And something airtight that’ll float.”

She looked at me like I was as mad as our prisoner. “A wineskin?”

“That should do. If you can get that and give us some time, I think I can get us out of here.”

She sighed, shook her head, and left.

It didn’t take long to explain my idea to Wald and Lilly. As soon as Wald understood, he clapped me on the back. “’Twill out and up, then Kennit. ’Twill out and up.”

Lilly shook her head. “He’s right. That should work. Why didn’t we think of that ten years ago?”

I grinned. “I just did.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and smiled warmly. “I suppose you did.”

It took Mrs. Hollerith some time to gather what we wanted, but when she had it, we set to work. Wald double-checked our prisoner’s bonds and then dragged him out to the front yard of the carriage house. For a guy born hundreds of years ago, John Wald had no problem using modern tools—if what they had in 1917 could be called modern. He sawed two lengths of wood, broke the head off the broom, and started nailing everything together according to my instructions. By noon, we had something even better than I had conceived. Light enough for me to carry, and when it was folded up, small enough to fit through the mir
ror. I shouldn’t make it sound more impressive than it was, a chest with a broom handle sticking straight up from its lid. At the top of the broom handle were a pair of two-by-twos that could either scissor together, or open out into a large X hovering over the chest. It was like a helicopter made by a five-year-old. When we scissored the arms together, I could use them to pick it up and carry it awkwardly under my arm. The chest held three air-filled wineskins.

We completed it just after noon. Wald looked at the thing speculatively, tugged, banged, and rocked it to make sure it was sound. “It isn’t much nor muckle, lad. A storm will shake it asplinter.”

I shrugged and grinned. “Let’s hope for good weather in 1967 then.”

He nodded and glanced toward the carriage house where we could still hear Rose’s cries. Twice in the last couple of hours we had seen her hard-hearted mother come out to lean against the wall and cry.

Now I had to think about Rick. I needed his help. How could I get a message to someone who wouldn’t be born for more than twenty years?

“What did you mean by the ‘stony world’?” I said to Wald. “You told me there’s a way to float above the stony world. What did you mean?”

Wald frowned and spread his hands. “‘Tis like they beasties we oft see on the creek, water-skimmers you call ’em. For them, so light, even the water is part of the stony world, what they without the mirrors are sunk into. The mirror makes us skimmers, above happenstance and accident. We can’t change the course of the river, but we can see where it’s going and pick with careful legs where now to step. We can use what we know.”

What did I know that would help? I knew Rick’s name. I knew he was going to find out about the mirror in the madman’s diary, and that he’d actually believe what he read.

I knew his address.

When Mrs. Hollerith came out next, I asked her if she could give me an envelope, and I wrote a quick note:

Dear Rick,

The mirror is in the lake. He must have taken the shortest route from the junk house to get there, right over the Bluffs. On September 2 at 6:00 PM, the mirror will float up to the surface. You’ll probably have to swim to get it.

Sincerely,
Kenny

While I was puzzling out how to arrange delivery, Lilly took a break from her patient and came out to join us in the sunlit yard.

I studied her face, so different and yet so much the same. “Did I really never see you again?”

She shook her head. “Things started moving fast, Kenny. That Peg did her homework. Came through with sure-fire investments to make money right away. My parents thought us batty, but she brought newspapers from a week in the future and we waited while they came true. Within two months, father had sold the farm and invested everything. They moved into the city, sent us off to nursing school.”

“Where’s Peggy now?”

Her smile grew sad. “I don’t know. Funny, isn’t it? The friends you make in youth—we think we’ll know them forever. I was stationed in England, Peggy in France. She found a fellow from back home, as I understand. We lost touch.” Mrs. Hollerith poked her head out of the hayloft window to request some help. Lilly stood up and stubbed out her cigarette. She nodded to the contraption Wald and I had built. “Look, Kenny, I know you don’t want to leave, but that man’s an unexploded bomb. The battle-axe is right about that. You’ve brought me here. Maybe your part is done.”

“’Tis truth, lad,” said Wald. “’Twere my culpis first in bringing him. Let’s foot it up the years.”

There’s not a single day that’s gone by since then that I didn’t wish I could have argued with them, but it was two adults against a kid. They weren’t asking. They were waiting for me to do what they said.

“Okay,” I said emptily. “Let’s get going.”

I was able to say a brief, guilty goodbye to Rose. I
wasn’t even certain if she knew I was going.

We brought the mirror down to the first floor, just as Mrs. Hollerith wanted.

Wald loosened Prince Harming’s bonds and gave first his hands and then his feet a few minutes of freedom to restore his circulation, then tied him up again, this time with some rope between his feet so he could hobble.

I pushed through first and left the contraption in the Silverlands while I checked 1927. No one was visible, so I motioned for Wald. The next two decades were similarly empty, though there were reminders in 1947 that time was pressing on. The carriage house was a wreck, furniture scattered all around. Even the dresser containing the mirror had been moved, and I had to shift some stacked chairs before I could get out. Then there was the newspaper. Someone had left a bunch of them on a table that they had set in the middle of the floor with several chairs placed around it as though for a meeting.

On the front page was a picture of Peggy Garroway, and the headline “Local Girl Missing: Manse Valley Haunted House Claims Latest Victim?”

Wald came struggling through the mirror with his prisoner. I folded the newspaper up and stuck it in my bag.

The coal cellar in 1957 was empty except for a note on the bottom step: “Hobo boy, are you okay? Just wondering.”

Wald stood a moment, frowning as I read the note. “Time to test thy craft, Ken.”

I stuck my hand into the mirror to open it for Wald, and then said, “Can you go in ahead? I have to say goodbye here. I won’t take long.”

He smiled warmly. “Aye, lad. I’ve had a heaping share a’ those farewells. Foot it fleet.”

I said I’d be as fast as I could, and looked at my watch. They should all be home. As soon as Wald was in the mirror with Prince Harming, I wormed up the coal chute. I figured I’d just say a quick thanks. I wasn’t sure what to do about the mirror. On one hand, I knew it had to end up back in the carriage house by the nineteen sixties so Rick could discover it. But maybe I was supposed to make that happen. I could give Brian the address and ask him to deliver it, but surely that hadn’t happened. After all, when my dad bought the house in 1976, it wasn’t like he had been there before.

If it hadn’t been for the raised voices at the Maxwells’ front door, I would have had no warning that anything was wrong.

“Look, we know you’re hiding him,” said a man’s voice. “If not, why don’t you let us in?”

“Why would I let you in?” said Brian, keeping his voice low. “Who are you anyway?”

“This is the Maxwell residence, isn’t it?” said the man. “Come on, kid, let me see if he’s there.”

“Look,” said Brian, “my mother’s just up the stairs, and she don’t want weirdos hanging about.”

“If you’re threatening me with your mother,” said the man, “then why are you speaking soft so she won’t hear? Kid, if I decide I’m coming in there to look for that boy, you’re not exactly going to stop me. You think a teenage kid is going to hold back a guy who survived the Dieppe Raid?”

“Now I know you’re full of it. You’re, what, thirty? Dieppe was fifteen years ago, reject. You weren’t there.”

A woman’s voice spoke up—“Now, dear … ”—but she wasn’t enough to stop the scuffle I heard next.

I peeked around the corner. The younger Prince Harming had my father in an armlock, his cheek pressed hard against the wall. “Was I there now?” he said. “Fifteen years to you, maybe; for me it was five.”

“Let him go, darling,” said the woman.

“And then what? Let’s just take him inside—stop fighting, kid, unless you want a broken arm—and find Kenny. We can’t keep pussyfooting around. I want to know. I think he hid things from you back then. Why is he running from us? I think he even knows who the crazy man is.”