Time Thief

So wait a second.  You're telling me that if I swim out to the middle of the pond and then dive under the water, I'll see a rock formation.

Yes.

And if I swim down to the rock formation and touch one of the stones and then swim back up to the surface, I'll be in another dimension.

Yes.

You're full of shit.

What does that mean?

What do you mean, "What does that mean?"?  It means you're full of shit. You're a liar.

I'm not.  It's true.

How do you know?

Because I did it.

When?

This morning.  Just before I met you.

So shouldn't you be somewhere else?

I am somewhere else.  I'm here.

No shit, Sherlock.  So you're saying you're not from here?

No.  You've been calling me "fucking weird" all day.  Why do you think that is?

You are fucking weird.  And you're full of shit.

I'm not.

Ok, where are you from?  Mars?

No, I'm not an alien.  I just arrived from a different time zone.  2218.

So you expect me to believe that this pond still exists two hunnert and forty somethin' years from now?  And that you went swimming and ended up here?

No.  There wasn't a pond.  Just the rocks.  When I went into the rocks, I became dizzy and fainted.  When I came to, I was in water. Then I stumbled into your camp and you told me it was 1972.

You're shittin' me.

I'm not.  If you don't believe me, try it.  

I'm not tryin' it.

Why not?  What have you got to lose?  Do you want to go back to jail?

No, I don't want to go back to jail, but I sure as shit don't want to go to 2218 either.  Not that I would because you're full of shit, but even if you weren't, I wouldn't want to go.

Chicken.

I'm not.

Yes you are.  You're afraid

Listen, asshole, I'm about to beat you into next week and I won't need any pond stones to do it, so shut your trap.

Come on.  Try it.  I'll go with you.

I'm not go.....did you hear that?

The barking?  Yes.  I heard it.

Shit, they're using the dogs.  Shit shit shit.

You like this word, "shit".

It's just a fucking word.  Jesus, you're so fucking weird.  Let's go.

Where are we going?

Swimming.

Writing Practice

"Hi, Brenn?"

"Yes, this is Brenn."

"Hi, Dear, it's Ann over at Lincoln El?  Just checking in on Janie. Is she sick today?"

"What? She's not in school?"

"No, she never arrived. Lynn Johnson was by-she said Janie never showed at her place, either.  You might have a message from her. She said she left one.  You were  expecting her to be in school, then?"

"Yes.  Let me call you back. Something must have happened.  Please call me if she comes in late?"

"I will.  Let us know what you find out."

"Thanks, Ann, good-bye".

Brenn hung up her end and hit the auto dial for Bryce's cell phone.  One of them  must be sick, but it didn't make sense that he hadn't called,  unless his phone had died.

The phone rang and rang, then went to voice mail.  "Bryce?  It's Mom? Are you o.k?  Is Janie alright?  Call me."

Bryce stared at his phone.  He didn't want his mom to worry, but he couldn't pick up the call. He had no idea what to say, first of all.  "Hi Mom, Gran stopped by and told us not to go to school today." wasn't going to fly.  He'd have to lie.  She thought Janie's issues were because of Dad dying. They all went to a therapist once a week to talk about how they were feeling....as if saying, "My Dad died and I'm sad.", using different adjectives every week would make things better.  Whatever.  He knew his Mom was doing the best she could.  She  wouldn't give them permission to stay home if she knew the truth,  but he couldn't take Janie to school and leave her there alone.  Also, if Janie was right, then they needed to get Mom home.  A text was the obvious solution.

Brenn's phone beeped, signalling a new message.  Bryce.  Thank God.

"Hi Mom, Janie doesn't feel well.  I gave her 2 tsp of children's Tylenol and she's sleeping.  Can you come home?"

"Did you take her temp?  Is she throwing up?  I will be home as soon as I can.  XO  Mom."

Brenn called back Ann at Lincoln and left a message that Janie wouldn't be coming in after all, thanking her for the follow-up.  Then she called Lynn Johnson to let her know that all was well and to apologize. She'd have to speak to Bryce about communicating better when these things happened.  He was mature for his age, and so responsible that it was easy to forget sometimes that he was still a child.  After the calls were made, she reached for her purse and dug out her keys. She was headed out the office door when the lights went out.  Strange, she thought.  The weatherman had predicted a sunny day.  Was it storming out? A few seconds later the school generator kicked on.  She locked up, and walked down the corridor to the principal's office.  When she got there, she was surprised to find that no one was around.  She  was headed to the teacher's lounge to see if anyone was there when something on the front door security monitor caught her eye. The principal, his secretary, Joan, and the school's janitor, Mike, were all gathered at the door. The janitor seemed agitated about something happening outside. Brenn headed down to the first floor to see what all  the commotion was about.

"Hey guys,  what happened to the lights?  Everything ok?"

Pete, the principal, turned towards her. "Depends on how you define ok.  You ever see anything like this?" He gestured  towards the window. Outside, hundreds of insects could be seen in the playground area.  The ground was  covered with them. None seemed to be moving.

"It's the attack of the locusts", Mike joked.  "Must be all the rain from this summer, but that don't explain how they all got here so fast.  They weren't here an hour ago."

"Ewwww",  Brenn said.  "Global warming doing its thing,  I guess.  Can't say I'm sad to see a bunch of insects bite  the dust but what a mess!  Not to change the subject, but I have to leave.  Janie's sick.  Bryce is home  with her. I'll give you a call as soon as I have it all sorted out."

Pete's phone rang, and he answered, holding up one finger in the universal "wait a second" sign.  "Pete Bishop here..."

"Hi  Jenny...Yes, we have it here, too.....don't let anyone outside? What's going on?....Ok, I'll let everyone know.  Thanks for the call.. We'll wait to hear from you."

Pete tucked his phone back into the breast pocket of his suit jacket.   "That was the superintendent's office.  There have been some problems....the mayor wants everyone to stay put until they figure out what to do. The county has declared a state of emergency.  Brenn, can you call your kids and tell them to stay inside for now?  I'm sure it will be resolved in no time."

"What?" Brenn asked.  "What do you mean, 'problems'?"

"I mean that they've got guys in hasmat suits outside  testing the air because they aren't sure it's safe to breathe.  Stories are out on the AP that a number of areas are experiencing issues similar to ours. People are showing up at the hospital in droves with some kind of flu.  Until they've ruled out natural disaster or terrorism, they want everyone to stay inside.

"Oh my God. I can't  stay here. My  kids are home alone!  No offense, but the mayor can take a flying leap. I'm going home."

She made it about twenty feet from the door before she started to feel nauseous.  She clasped her hands over her ears, attempting to shut out the vibrations, and sank to her knees as her legs began to give out underneath her. Pete and Mike were suddenly by her side.  They each grabbed an arm and pulled her, stumbling, back into the building.

"Holy Fuck!" yelled Mike. "Sorry! Brenn, are you ok?"  Mike was leaning over at the waist, one  hand against the wall and the other on his knee.  "What the hell was that?"

Brenn was sitting on floor, leaning over with her head between her legs trying get control of the  nausea.  "I'll be ok, just give me a sec"

After a few minutes, Pete heaved himself up off the floor.

"Ok, then, it looks like we  have a situation here.  We  need to get the word out to all the classrooms, but without causing a panic.   We'll have to go door to door.  Anyone that needs to call home and check  on their families can use  their cells or call from the office. Brenn, after you get in touch with your kids, can you go to the teacher's lounge?  Mike, you go to gym.  All  kids and teachers should go back to their classrooms. Make sure all the windows in the school are closed.  Close the shades over the windows, for now.  Most importantly, nobody leaves.  Joan, the phone is probably going to start ringing off the hook shortly. The message should  be consistent.  The school has been secured, everyone is safe and inside,  parents should not come to the school to pick up their children until the all  clear has been given by the mayor's  office. Got it?"

"Got it,  Pete", said Joan. "You coming with me,  Brenn?"

"I'll be there in a minute.  I'm just going to give the kids a quick call."

"Bryce?   It's Mom.  How's Janie?  How are you?"

"We're  okay, Mom, Gra..."

"Listen, I can't come home right now, honey.  I'm at the Falls school.  The electricity is out, and something seems to have happened in the neighborhood.  We've been told to stay inside.  I'm  sure it's nothing serious. As soon  as I get the go ahead, I'll be home, okay?  Can you handle it until then?"

"Mom, it's okay, that's what I'm trying to tell  you. Grandpa's here."

Writing Practice

He checked the space where he had twice come across the she-cub, traversing a half mile around the area, until he was satisfied he was alone and would be able to move about freely. The cub had complicated his scouting trips.  He knew she was of the pack but was not yet sure who she was  He did not know if she was able to call to him from the other plane, or whether their meetings had been accidental.  The cub was a mystery he would deal with later.  Later tonight he would be expected to report on any findings in his area. He needed  to know what the perimeter was holding back, and how dangerous it was.  The other scouts in the pack would report on their lands.

He stopped, thirty feet from the wood line, and sat back on his haunches.  He growled low in his throat, a warning to anything close by.  For awhile, nothing happened.  He was early. He lay down low in the cool grass and waited for something to disturb the stillness.

He felt it first.  Its energy came seeping from between the trees but did not cross the line onto the reservation. Instead, it pooled in one area and then spread out horizontally before moving up above the tree line, as though it were smoke hitting a glass wall and traveling in all directions, looking for an outlet.  He could not see it well, but there was a visible ripple in the air periodically that indicated its presence.  He didn't need to see it to know it was there, however.  His skin was crawling with the feel of it.  He backed up a bit, slowly, and slowed his breath to avoid the chemical scent in the air. There was a vibration in the ground now, a thrumming, steadily growing in intensity.   He and the cub had felt it the other night, as well, but they had been further back-at least 50 yards more than he was tonight.

He sensed movement in the woods.  Three deer suddenly  broke into the clearing, moving fast, as though being chased. As they hit the line that separated Indian land from the rest of the great state of Maine, they slowed, as though the air had become suddenly thicker and harder to move through. They appeared to be pushing against it,  unaware, as they should have been, of a predator  close by.  The  buck among them attempted to use his antlers to pierce the invisible shield keeping them back.  He backed  off, lowered his head, and charged.  He slowed, although clearly he was straining to move forward, and was pushed back as though something much bigger had caught him by  the antlers and force-walked him backwards..  He shook his head,  backed up, and tried again with the same result.  He hesitated,  then turned left and ran along the tree line, the does following him.  A black bear was next, throwing itself against the barrier repeatedly, before following the path of the deer.  He now could see hundreds of smaller animals doing the same thing.  In the sky, birds came swooping in with the same result.  It was as though a rubberized net was catching them gently, absorbing their motion, and forcing them back to the forest.

The wolf followed after the bear, keeping on his side of the tree line.  On the other side, the animals seemed unaware of him. Was it because they could not see him, or because, in their panic, they didn't notice him? He hoped there might be a place, an opening, where they could slip through. The reservation should have been open to them, as it always had been.  The charms were not meant to keep out wildlife.  If they were being prevented from crossing the line, he suspected they were somehow infected by whatever was being kept out. In that case, any life on his side of the barrier would be safe but, he wondered, would they be able to cross the perimeter to the other side, where they might be endangered?  He briefly thought of testing the border himself.  He decided against the risk.  If something happened and he couldn't get home, he wouldn't be able to warn the others.  He would come back, on his own plane, and  explore during the day to see what, if any, damage had been wrought.   He tracked the bear for several miles before losing the scent. The deer were also gone.  They had either all moved back into the woods or something had happened to them.

He stopped to rest for a moment, keeping a wary eye toward the woods.  He needed to warn his pack, and then he needed to find his daughter.  If he had to drag her kicking and screaming, she was coming home. Frankly, he never gave a thought to the old legends.  They were the stories he had been raised on-a part of a heritage he took for granted, never questioning their truth or origin. He no longer felt he had the luxury of indifference. He rose and trotted in the direction he had come, crossing into the fog and becoming part of it, just as the sun started its ascent on the day.

Bryce slowed his walk to match Janie's pace. He  was on the verge of being late to school again, but he couldn't bring himself to rush her, knowing that she hadn't been sleeping well for the past several nights.  On the other hand, he couldn't be late too many more times before the school spoke to his Mom about his tardiness.  If that happened, he knew, they would revert back to their old schedule of getting up an hour earlier every day in order to ride into school with his Mom, a nurse for the Franklin County school system . He had convinced his Mom last August that he was old enough now, and responsible enough, to get himself to school, dropping Janie off first with Mrs. Johnson, who would put Janie on the elementary bus with her own girls., and then walking the half mile to the middle school with the other kids in the neighborhood.  Here it was, only late September, and he was already in danger of letting her down.

"Bryce, look"  Janie said,  pointing at something in the grass to the right of the sidewalk.  "What is that?"

"It's a grasshopper, Janie." Bryce said, stepping off the sidewalk to get a closer look. As he stepped into the grass he felt a crunch  underfoot and lifted his foot quickly, looking down to see what it was he had stepped on.  It was another grasshopper, several in fact. The grass was littered with them.  Why were they only in the grass?  Bryce stepped quickly back to the sidewalk and turned to stop Janie from following him.  He needn't have worried.  She was standing  stiffly in the middle of the sidewalk looking intently at something.  She nodded her head,  turned  to Bryce,  and  muttered something that sounded to Bryce like the Abenacki word for "back" before collapsing on the sidewalk.

"Janie!  Janie, can you hear me?  Janie?  Come on, Shorty, wake up!"  Bryce  smoothed her bangs from her face and patted her cheeks.  Her skin was pale but he could tell she was breathing.  He didn't think he would be able to carry her far and he didn't want to drag her into the grass with all the dead insects.   Reaching around  in his back pack, he found his water bottle and dragged it out. He took off his sweatshirt and wet the sleeve with the cold water, then rung it out, and pressed it lightly against Janie's forehead.  It was working. She was coming to. She opened her eyes, groggy at first. She looked up at Bryce, her eyes filling with tears.

"We have to go home. We have to get away before they get here. Gran said.  She said we have to go right now."

Writing Practice

The old wolf snarled and  bared his teeth, staring out at something in the dark behind the tree line. Behind him a small cub quivered, staying silent.  The cub was afraid and thankful for the presence of the elder. She had found herself alone here many times, waiting for something she could sense but could never see.  .

Janie's eyes flew open as she sucked in a mouthful of air. She checked her surroundings in the soft glow of her nightlight.  The dream was coming more and more often. The only thing that had changed since the first dream was the presence of the older wolf in the field with her.  He had materialized out of the fog in the last two dreams, shielding her with his massive body, and staring down the evil in the woods. Did this mean she wasn't alone in the frightening world she sometimes occupied?  Did it mean the bad thing was getting closer?

She slipped out of bed and  padded down the hall to her brother's  room. Bryce was 12, almost five years older, and so smart the school let him skip a grade.  She had told him about the dream after a couple of months of trying to soothe herself, unsuccessfully, back to sleep.  He had listened closely, asking questions, and helping her clarify what she saw and felt during the dream. She climbed into his big bed.  He rolled over and opened his eyes.  "Hey...Again?  That's three times this week"

"The big wolf was there, too."

"Was it the same one-with the white markings?"

"Uh huh.  He stood in front of me again. He knows something is there, too.  Then he came over and poked me with his nose, like he wanted to play.  Then I woke up."

"Do you remember anything else that was different? The  field, the weather, the light...anything at all?  Was there anything in the field that wasn't there the last time?"

"No.  I thought about it right after I woke up, just like you told me, but there wasn't anything."

"Good job, Shorty.  You can stay here.  I'll be your big brother wolf.  Grrrrrrrr.  I'll keep the bad dreams  away from you."

Janie nodded, her serious brown eyes glowing in the room's dim light.  "Okay. 'Night."  She turned on her side and curled into a little ball, nestling into her brother.

Bryce lay awake for a long time after.  He was worried about Janie.  Should he tell Mom?  He doubted she would do anything.  She insisted that Janie was a normal little girl.  He knew Janie was different than most seven-year-old girls. It wasn't just the nightmares.  She knew things she shouldn't know, like who was calling on the phone, and that Mr. Lucien's dog was going to get hit by a red truck a week before it happened. She said things that she didn't remember saying later. In her sleep, she sometimes spoke an Abenaki dialect she had never been taught.  Bryce recognized some  of the words and phrasing from visits to his Grandparent's home when he was younger.  He had been seven or eight.. Janie would have been too young to absorb the language, right?  Maybe a word here or there, but she wouldn't be fluent.  They hadn't been back to the old house since Gran died. Grandpa had moved out after and they didn't see him now. He  wished, for the thousandth time, that his Gran or his Dad were here.  Dad, with his background in science, would take a scholarly approach to helping Janie, and Gran would wrap Janie in a big hug and make her feel safe.

He knew he was an inadequate substitute, but he would do his best to care for his sister.  Dad would have expected nothing less from him.   As he ran through the details of her dream once again,  he felt a shiver of unease go through him.  He had witnessed Janie's strange ways enough to know that if she was having the same dream repeatedly, it meant something bad was going to happen.  But what? And more importantly, when?