I reach the top, and the sound comes softer, hauntingly desolate. I swallow and follow it until I reach an open door. Moonlight floods the small room. A child’s room, yet I’ve stayed in this house often enough to know it’s William’s. His childhood bed chamber, which he inexplicably insists on retaining.
The sound comes again, but there is no sign of anyone within. The noise seems to emanate from the vicinity of the bed. Could someone be prostrate and injured on the floor behind it? I grip the poker tighter and take two steps before my ears follow the noise instead to the box at the end of William’s bed. A storage chest.
Am I hearing a trapped child?
One hand still wielding the poker, I heave up the heavy lid of the box to see a calico kitten trapped within and yowling piteously.
“Who put you in there?” I whisper, and I’m about to throw the lid completely open when—
The box disappears. One second I’m gripping the half-open lid, staring at a kitten, and the next the lid disappears, leaving me staggering. I stumble forward and catch myself on the foot of the bed.
I push up sharply, shaking my head as I hold the foot of . . .
The foot of a bed that is not William’s.
A Twist of Fate: Chapter 2
The bed is but an empty steel frame, listing to one side, in a room that stinks of disuse. The moon shines through a curtainless window.
I look around. It structurally the same room, yet entirely different in its furnishings. There’s a narrow bed-frame and an odd white-painted chest of drawers. A vanity sits to one side, its top scattered with jars.
I walk to the vanity and lift a dusty red bottle. It looks like red glass, but the material is like nothing I’ve seen before, lightweight and covered with glossy printed paper. Big letters proclaim “Sun In,” and the picture . . . Is that a photograph of a young woman?
I turn the bottle into the light and nearly drop it. The photograph depicts a naked woman. I blink and stare. No, she’s not entirely unclothed, but she might as well be, dressed only in scraps of blue fabric over her breasts and nether regions. She’s at a beach, holding some sort of ball-like sphere, and I can only stare in horror and fascination.
I gingerly set down the bottle and pick up a tiny tube made of the same strange material. It bears the words Dr Pepper. Some kind of remedy, then? I open the cap to find a waxy sweet smelling stick. A third container is white with a bright pink lid. The glossy paper is covered in lips and hearts and the typeface screams “Teen Spirit” and says it is something called deodorant.. A deodorizer? I have heard of such a thing . . . to cover the scent of manure. As for “teen spirit,” I know what spirits are—alcohol or ghosts—but whatever is a teen?
Clearly I am sleeping. I only dreamed that I awoke and rode to Thorne Manor. I’ve never been an imaginative sort—my sister is the writer—but some latent talent has arisen in this fantastical dream.
I set down the “deodorant” and walk from the room. It does look like Thorne Manor. Pictures line the hallway, but it’s too dim to me to see them, and I don’t pause to look closer. Downstairs, a clock strikes the hour, and it is unmistakably the same clock.
I reach the front door, and that too is the same, or so it seems until metal glints, and I notice an odd locking contraption above the knob. When I turn the handle, a metal bolt slides back. The door knob itself has also changed, but after a few tries, it opens with a click.
I pull the heavy wood door to look out at a front lawn so wild and overgrown it would give Mr. Shaw heart failure. I walk down steps to a laneway that now runs to the stables instead of longer circling past the house.
There’s no sign of my horse, but by now, I don’t expect to see him. This is clearly a dream, and I am exploring it out of curiosity. When I wake, it’ll be a delightful story to tell August.
Should I share it? What if he wonders why I am dreaming of Thorne Manor? My heart thuds. Is this how it will be forever now? I cannot even share my dreams with my husband for fear he’ll read something untoward in them?
No, we will overcome this obstacle. It may take time, but he will see he has no cause for jealousy.
I cross the lawn to find a wider road than I remember. At the foot of the hill, High Thornesbury glows with a eerie light, a dome of it cast over the village.
Entranced, I hike my skirts and make my way down the hill. It is not a short walk. Not an interesting one either. Everything seems exactly as I recall until I round a corner to find a metal signpost. It seems to be warning of a sharp curve, which makes me laugh. Any fool can see the curve. It’s not as if a horse will come careening around and miss the turn entirely.
A sheep bleats in the distance, and a cow answers, and I smile. That, at least, has not changed. Nor the brambles along the roadside, already thick with red berries that will turn black and sweet in another month. The air smells of heather, as it always does in the moors. There’s something else, an acrid scent I don’t recognize, but the heather is stronger, along with the less pleasant odor of sheep droppings.
I’m nearly to the bottom of the hill when thunder rumbles. I peer up, but the might sky is clear, moon and stars shining bright. The sound grows closer and becomes like the growl of some wild beast. I stagger backward as lights appear from nowhere, two blindingly bright orbs bearing down on me faster than a horse at full canter.
It is, of course, my imagination. A new fancy from my dream. After that initial moment of terror, I fix my feet in place, determined to see what my mind has conjured. I am curious. Yes, an odd reaction to a creature barreling toward me, growling and shrieking as it rounds the corner. But I want to see it. I want a tale to tell August and a tale to tell my sister Mercy, one that might inspire a fresh tale from her pen.
At the last moment, my resolve cracks. This creature—a low-slung carriage-sized shadow—is charging me at demonic speed, its eyes blinding my own, and a tiny voice whispers “What if it is not a dream?” I throw myself to the side, diving through a tangle of hedge and bramble as the beast screams to a stop.
Through the thorny vines I watch as the beast sprouts wings that disgorge men. The one closer to me is dressed in blue trousers that fit as tight as riding breeches. Over his chest he wears a shirt without collar or sleeves or buttons or cravat. He looks like a vagrant, unshaven with wild and uncut hair.
“What?” His shadowy companion throws up his arms. “Are we stopping for hallucinations now?”
“I saw a girl in the road. A blonde in a blue dress.”
The other man snickers. “Like the one who shot you down tonight? Had one too many pints, and now you’re seeing her everywhere?”
“That was a purple dress. This one was blue. A long, old-fashioned dress.”
His companion gasps. “Oh my God, you saw her!”
“Saw who?”
“The ghost of the moors.” The shadowy figure waves his hands. “Whooo! She’s coming to get you!” The figure starts climbing back into the beast. “Get back in the bloody car or I’m leaving you by the roadside.”
The other man returns, and the beast roars off. I watch it go . . . and then I run.
About the Author
Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Rockton thriller series and standalone thrillers beginning with Wherever She Goes. Past works include the Otherworld urban fantasy series, the Cainsville gothic mystery series, the Nadia Stafford thriller trilogy, the Darkest Powers & Darkness Rising teen paranormal series and the Age of Legends teen fantasy series. Armstrong lives in Ontario, Canada with her family.
Visit her online:
www.KelleyArmstrong.com
[email protected]
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A Stitch in Time Page 31
