Kevin listened without interrupting. When I was finished, he took the edge of the towel and wiped a little of the mud from my leg. “This stuff had to come from somewhere,” he said.
“You don’t believe me?”
He stared at the mud for a moment, then faced me. “You know how long you were gone?”
“A few minutes. Not long.”
“A few seconds. There were no more than ten or fifteen seconds between the time you went and the time you called my name.”
“Oh, no …” I shook my head slowly. “All that couldn’t have happened in just seconds.”
He said nothing.
“But it was real! I was there!” I caught myself, took a deep breath, and slowed down. “All right. If you told me a story like this, I probably wouldn’t believe it either, but like you said, this mud came from somewhere.”
“Yes.”
“Look, what did you see? What do you think happened?”
He frowned a little, shook his head. “You vanished.” He seemed to have to force the words out. “You were here until my hand was just a couple of inches from you. Then, suddenly, you were gone. I couldn’t believe it. I just stood there. Then you were back again and on the other side of the room.”
“Do you believe it yet?”
He shrugged. “It happened. I saw it. You vanished and you reappeared. Facts.”
“I reappeared wet, muddy, and scared to death.”
“Yes.”
“And I know what I saw, and what I did—my facts. They’re no crazier than yours.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I’m not sure it matters what we think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well … it happened once. What if it happens again?”
“No. No, I don’t think …”
“You don’t know!” I was starting to shake again. “Whatever it was, I’ve had enough of it! It almost killed me!”
“Take it easy,” he said. “Whatever happens, it’s not going to do you any good to panic yourself again.”
I moved uncomfortably, looked around. “I feel like it could happen again—like it could happen anytime. I don’t feel secure here.”
“You’re just scaring yourself.”
“No!” I turned to glare at him, and he looked so worried I turned away again. I wondered bitterly whether he was worried about my vanishing again or worried about my sanity. I still didn’t think he believed my story. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I hope you are. Maybe I’m just like a victim of robbery or rape or something—a victim who survives, but who doesn’t feel safe any more.” I shrugged. “I don’t have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don’t feel safe any more.”
He made his voice very gentle. “If it happens again, and if it’s real, the boy’s father will know he owes you thanks. He won’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what could happen.” I stood up unsteadily. “Hell, I don’t blame you for humoring me.” I paused to give him a chance to deny it, but he didn’t. “I’m beginning to feel as though I’m humoring myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. As real as the whole episode was, as real as I know it was, it’s beginning to recede from me somehow. It’s becoming like something I saw on television or read about—like something I got second hand.”
“Or like a … a dream?”
I looked down at him. “You mean a hallucination.”
“All right.”
“No! I know what I’m doing. I can see. I’m pulling away from it because it scares me so. But it was real.”
“Let yourself pull away from it.” He got up and took the muddy towel from me. “That sounds like the best thing you can do, whether it was real or not. Let go of it.”
The Fire
1
I tried.
I showered, washed away the mud and the brackish water, put on clean clothes, combed my hair …
“That’s a lot better,” said Kevin when he saw me.
But it wasn’t.
Rufus and his parents had still not quite settled back and become the “dream” Kevin wanted them to be. They stayed with me, shadowy and threatening. They made their own limbo and held me in it. I had been afraid that the dizziness might come back while I was in the shower, afraid that I would fall and crack my skull against the tile or that I would go back to that river, wherever it was, and find myself standing naked among strangers. Or would I appear somewhere else naked and totally vulnerable?
I washed very quickly.
Then I went back to the books in the living room, but Kevin had almost finished shelving them.
“Forget about any more unpacking today,” he told me. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“Go?”
“Yes, where would you like to eat? Someplace nice for your birthday.”
“Here.”
“But …”
“Here, really. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Why not?”
I took a deep breath. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s go tomorrow.” Somehow, tomorrow would be better. I would have a night’s sleep between me and whatever had happened. And if nothing else happened, I would be able to relax a little.
“It would be good for you to get out of here for a while,” he said.
“No.”
“Listen …”
“No!” Nothing was going to get me out of the house that night if I could help it.
Kevin looked at me for a moment—I probably looked as scared as I was—then he went to the phone and called out for chicken and shrimp.
But staying home did no good. When the food had arrived, when we were eating and I was calmer, the kitchen began to blur around me.
Again the light seemed to dim and I felt the sick dizziness. I pushed back from the table, but didn’t try to get up. I couldn’t have gotten up.
“Dana?”
I didn’t answer.
“Is it happening again?”
“I think so.” I sat very still, trying not to fall off my chair. The floor seemed farther away than it should have. I reached out for the table to steady myself, but before I could touch it, it was gone. And the distant floor seemed to darken and change. The linoleum tile became wood, partially carpeted. And the chair beneath me vanished.
2
When my dizziness cleared away, I found myself sitting on a small bed sheltered by a kind of abbreviated dark green canopy. Beside me was a little wooden stand containing a battered old pocket knife, several marbles, and a lighted candle in a metal holder. Before me was a red-haired boy. Rufus?
The boy had his back to me and hadn’t noticed me yet. He held a stick of wood in one hand and the end of the stick was charred and smoking. Its fire had apparently been transferred to the draperies at the window. Now the boy stood watching as the flames ate their way up the heavy cloth.
For a moment, I watched too. Then I woke up, pushed the boy aside, caught the unburned upper part of the draperies and pulled them down. As they fell, they smothered some of the flames within themselves, and they exposed a half-open window. I picked them up quickly and threw them out the window.
The boy looked at me, then ran to the window and looked out. I looked out too, hoping I hadn’t thrown the burning cloth onto a porch roof or too near a wall. There was a fireplace in the room; I saw it now, too late. I could have safely thrown the draperies into it and let them burn.
It was dark outside. The sun had not set at home when I was snatched away, but here it was dark. I could see the draperies a story below, burning, lighting the night only enough for us to see that they were on the ground and some distance from the nearest wall. My hasty act had done no harm. I could go home knowing that I had averted trouble for the second time.
I waited to go home.
My first trip had ended as soon as the boy was safe—had ended just in time to keep me safe. Now, though, as I waited, I realized that I wasn’t going to be that lucky again.
I didn’t feel dizzy. The room remained unblurred, undeniably real. I looked around, not knowing what to do. The fear that had followed me from home flared now. What would happen to me if I didn’t go back automatically this time? What if I was stranded here—wherever here was? I had no money, no idea how to get home.
I stared out into the darkness fighting to calm myself. It was not calming, though, that there were no city lights out there. No lights at all. But still, I was in no immediate danger. And wherever I was, there was a child with me—and a child might answer my questions more readily than an adult.
I looked at him. He looked back, curious and unafraid. He was not Rufus. I could see that now. He had the same red hair and slight build, but he was taller, clearly three or four years older. Old enough, I thought, to know better than to play with fire. If he hadn’t set fire to his draperies, I might still be at home.
I stepped over to him, took the stick from his hand, and threw it into the fireplace. “Someone should use one like that on you,” I said, “before you burn the house down.”
I regretted the words the moment they were out. I needed this boy’s help. But still, who knew what trouble he had gotten me into!
The boy stumbled back from me, alarmed. “You lay a hand on me, and I’ll tell my daddy!” His accent was unmistakably southern, and before I could shut out the thought, I began wondering whether I might be somewhere in the South. Somewhere two or three thousand miles from home.
If I was in the South, the two- or three-hour time difference would explain the darkness outside. But wherever I was, the last thing I wanted to do was meet this boy’s father. The man could have me jailed for breaking into his house—or he could shoot me for breaking in. There was something specific for me to worry about. No doubt the boy could tell me about other things.
And he would. If I was going to be stranded here, I had to find out all I could while I could. As dangerous as it could be for me to stay where I was, in the house of a man who might shoot me, it seemed even more dangerous for me to go wandering into the night totally ignorant. The boy and I would keep our voices down, and we would talk.
“Don’t you worry about your father,” I told him softly. “You’ll have plenty to say to him when he sees those burned draperies.”
The boy seemed to deflate. His shoulders sagged and he turned to stare into the fireplace. “Who are you anyway?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
So he didn’t know either—not that I had really expected him to. But he did seem surprisingly at ease with me—much calmer than I would have been at his age about the sudden appearance of a stranger in my bedroom. I wouldn’t even have still been in the bedroom. If he had been as timid a child as I was, he would probably have gotten me killed.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Rufus.”
For a moment, I just stared at him. “Rufus?”
“Yeah. What’s the matter?”
I wished I knew what was the matter—what was going on! “I’m all right,” I said. “Look … Rufus, look at me. Have you ever seen me before?”
“No.”
That was the right answer, the reasonable answer. I tried to make myself accept it in spite of his name, his too-familiar face. But the child I had pulled from the river could so easily have grown into this child—in three or four years.
“Can you remember a time when you nearly drowned?” I asked, feeling foolish.
He frowned, looked at me more carefully.
“You were younger,” I said. “About five years old, maybe. Do you remember?”
“The river?” The words came out low and tentative as though he didn’t quite believe them himself.
“You do remember then. It was you.”
“Drowning … I remember that. And you …?”
“I’m not sure you ever got a look at me. And I guess it must have been a long time ago … for you.”
“No, I remember you now. I saw you.”
I said nothing. I didn’t quite believe him. I wondered whether he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear—though there was no reason for him to lie. He was clearly not afraid of me.
“That’s why it seemed like I knew you,” he said. “I couldn’t remember — maybe because of the way I saw you. I told Mama, and she said I couldn’t have really seen you that way.”
“What way?”
“Well … with my eyes closed.”
“With your—” I stopped. The boy wasn’t lying; he was dreaming.
“It’s true!” he insisted loudly. Then he caught himself, whispered, “That’s the way I saw you just as I stepped in the hole.”
“Hole?”
“In the river. I was walking in the water and there was a hole. I fell, and then I couldn’t find the bottom any more. I saw you inside a room. I could see part of the room, and there were books all around—more than in Daddy’s library. You were wearing pants like a man—the way you are now. I thought you were a man.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“But this time you just look like a woman wearing pants.”
I sighed. “All right, never mind that. As long as you recognize me as the one who pulled you out of the river …”
“Did you? I thought you must have been the one.”
I stopped, confused. “I thought you remembered.”
“I remember seeing you. It was like I stopped drowning for a while and saw you, and then started to drown again. After that Mama was there, and Daddy.”
“And Daddy’s gun,” I said bitterly. “Your father almost shot me.”
“He thought you were a man too—and that you were trying to hurt Mama and me. Mama says she was telling him not to shoot you, and then you were gone.”
“Yes.” I had probably vanished before the woman’s eyes. What had she thought of that?
“I asked her where you went,” said Rufus, “and she got mad and said she didn’t know. I asked her again later, and she hit me. And she never hits me.”
I waited, expecting him to ask me the same question, but he said no more. Only his eyes questioned. I hunted through my own thoughts for a way to answer him.
“Where do you think I went, Rufe?”
He sighed, said disappointedly, “You’re not going to tell me either.”
“Yes I am—as best I can. But answer me first. Tell me where you think I went.”
He seemed to have to decide whether to do that or not. “Back to the room,” he said finally. “The room with the books.”
“Is that a guess, or did you see me again?”
“I didn’t see you. Am I right? Did you go back there?”
“Yes. Back home to scare my husband almost as much as I must have scared your parents.”