Sketching a bow, he handed her his jacket. “And I have the honor of speaking to …?”
Her name tumbled off her lips. “Gwen …” She stared at the wet garment hanging in her hands. Why in God’s name did I take his jacket?
Walking back to his bag, he slung it over his shoulder. “Well, it’s been a pleasure. Tell the old man I was here.” He plucked the jacket from her hands, shaking it with an amused grin as water drops hit her legs. “Thanks.” He was past her before she realized he was moving.
“Hey!” Why are you so wet? Racing after him, she took care not to slip on the trail of water left in his wake. “What are you doing …?” She stared at the empty hallway in front of her. There was no sign of the mysterious guest. His wet shoeprints ended in the middle of the floor.
With wide eyes, she glanced around the hallway. “Hello? Mr. …?” She didn’t even know his name.
A gentle touch on her shoulder and Gwen shrieked. Spinning, she saw Alistair standing in front of her, hands raised in supplication.
“Oh, Alistair. I’m sorry, you scared me.” She gestured to the hallway. “I was looking for … I just met … Well, I don’t know who.”
His gray eyes focused on the wet footprints. Alistair nodded, his lips quirking into his familiar almost smile. “Oh, I see.” Without another word, he left the Archives.
Gwen trailed after him. She bit her cheek to keep herself from talking, in case she interrupted him. An explanation had to be coming. But Alistair remained silent as he tidied his organized desk.
Her impatience got the better of her. As usual. “Alistair, who was that?”
“You mean who was behind the closed door that you couldn’t help but open?”
Once again, a flush colored her cheeks.
He continued speaking. “Unless, perhaps, I left it open earlier. Funny, I thought I closed it.” He shrugged, his eyes glinting with humor. “Old age, you know, it does get the best of us.”
Gwen twisted her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry, Alistair. I heard a crash. I was … curious.”
“No harm, of course. Back to work, shall we?”
Nodding, Gwen moved back to her office. She supposed the mystery man would have to remain a mystery. Alistair’s voice stopped her.
“Oh, and Gwen?” His focus was still on the papers in front of him. “Next time you run into Rafe, remind him that my name is ‘Alistair’ and not ‘old man.’” He looked up. “Now, I was wondering if you had a chance to read over those files I gave you earlier.”
The files she was planning to read over after lunch. “I’m about to do that right now.” She rushed into her office, springs squeaking as she threw herself into the chair. In her hurry, she didn’t stop to wonder how Alistair knew Rafe had referred to him as the “old man.”
The water lapped at the sides of the boat, flickering like diamonds in the gentle breeze. Closing her eyes, Gwen trailed one hand through the cool water. In the distant trees, a bird sang. The trilling tune and the warmth of the sun lulled her into a peaceful doze.
And then, she wasn’t alone. Her eyes snapped open. A dark-haired boy sat across from her.
“You shouldn’t be here.” He glared at his surroundings, as if they offended him. “I shouldn’t be here.”
She shivered as a cloud passed over the sun. “What?”
“Why don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?” The boat rocked in the water, the waves foaming on the now churning water. “I don’t understand.”
He made a scoffing noise at odds with his little boy face. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
The boat lurched, and Gwen gripped the edges, the rough wood biting into her palms. Her heart was pounding in her ears, a drumbeat signaling the approach of something terrible.
“What don’t I remember?”
The boat lurched again. Panic soured the back of her throat as Gwen watched the little boy jerk to the side of the bench. He made no move to steady himself.
“Be careful. I don’t want you to fall in the water.”
The boy continued to watch her, his green eyes never blinking.
This time the boat jumped and slammed back down with an echoing thud, bitter water sloshing over the edges. Something was ramming into the boat. The idea chilled her more than the icy liquid soaking her shoes.
With one hand still gripping the edge of the boat, she reached for the boy. “Please, take my hand.”
His lips turned up in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Good-bye.”
“Wait!”
Before she could get the word out, something exploded from the lake and wrapped itself around the boy, dragging him into the water.
Screaming a name she wouldn’t remember, Gwen rushed over to the side of the boat. A storm brewed in the darkening sky above her, icy wind ripping at her hair with harsh fingers.
“Please …” She wasn’t sure who she was begging or what she was begging for.
And then the boy was back, spluttering in the water, dark hair plastered to his face. His eyes were wide, and through chattering teeth, he cried out her name. “Gwendolyn!”
Without a thought, she dove into the water. The shock of it took her breath away. But, with strong strokes, she moved towards the boy. She would save him. She needed to save him.
She had almost reached him when his eyes widened and he was pulled under for the second time. Diving again, she searched for some sign of the boy. A flash of white. Her lungs burned, begging her for air. Still, she swam deeper. When her hand tightened around his arm, the flare of triumph overshadowed the pain in her chest.
Kicking her legs, she fought to bring them both to the surface. Yet he was weighed down, too heavy to pull to the surface. The water was dark, almost black, but the thing wrapped around the boy was darker. It was a void, an absence of color or presence. As if someone had cut out the space around the boy and filled it with nothing.
Her lungs were shrieking at her. The blackness filled her with such terror that she battled the desire to take huge gasps of air so she could scream. Instead, she fought the darkness, struggling to pull them upwards even though pain ripped through her shoulders.
Then the weight gave, and they shot to the surface. Gwen’s tears mixed with the water streaming down her face. The boy floated unmoving next to her, eyes closed in his ghostly white face.
“Are you all right?” She shook him once, then harder when he didn’t stir. “Wake up!” Something slithered around her legs, and she shook the boy again. Terror made her voice sharp. “Wake up! We need—” Her words were cut off as she was pulled under, only to surface a second later, choking and gasping. She struggled to keep her grip on the boy when she was pulled down again and again. Always released as soon as her head went underwater. Something was down there. And like a cat with a mouse, it was toying with her.
Her legs kicked, trying to catch the unknown thing circling around them. She couldn’t see it; she couldn’t touch it; she could only feel it. The air was so heavy with its presence she could hardly breathe. Her body tensed with anticipation, waiting for the moment she knew would come.
With one last desperate sob, she glanced down at the little boy. His eyes were still closed, his face calm despite the terror freezing her blood. “Please.” Little more than a whisper, her words were barely audible over the howling of the wind. “Please, I need you to wake up.”
He didn’t.
Then the thing was no longer satisfied with playing. With a grip colder than the freezing water, it pulled her under. Too fast for her to keep her grip on the boy. And he was gone. Lost. She fought and struggled, kicked and clawed. Nothing stopped her descent. She plunged deeper and deeper until she couldn’t remember what the light was, until all was dark and her body begged for air.
And there was no more air to fight, to struggle. Her arms floated uselessly above her as she was pulled farther downward. Until the rushing blood in her head drowned out all other sound so there was just her heartbeat and the dark
ness—and her guilt. As her eyes fluttered closed, her last thought was of the boy. She hadn’t saved him. She hadn’t been strong enough. She had failed.
When her lungs gave out, she took a choking gasp of water and …
CHAPTER THREE
SHE WOKE CLAWING AT her throat, gasping for air. Shadowy words and images shifted in her mind like dust in an abandoned room. Crouched in the front hallway, her body was shivering and freezing cold. Her pajamas stuck to her damp skin, and water dripped from her hair and collected on the floor. Shuddering, she stared with unseeing eyes down at her feet. A trail of water ran down her back, raising goose bumps in its wake.
Her throat burned, and the taste of the cold lake water was still bitter on her tongue. With the staggering steps of a sleepwalker, she stumbled into her bedroom. Pressing the palms of her hands against her eyelids, she made a sound that was part whimper, part desperate laugh. The normalcy of her small bedroom mocked her, closing around her until all she wanted to do was scream.
Since the night of her interview, the dreams had plagued her, interrupting her sleep and making her feel like she was losing her mind. And now she was sleepwalking again? Another shiver racked her frame.
The red numbers on her alarm clock glared in the dark of her room, admonishing her for being up at that time of the morning.
But she would have no luck falling back to sleep. After the nightmares, she never did. Soundless, her feet whispered over the carpeted floors as she moved to the small bathroom. A flick of her wrist and the shower started, the spray hitting the tiled walls with a comforting hiss of sound. She peeled off her pajamas. They landed on the floor with a wet splat. It’s only sweat. It was just a dream.
Stepping under the hot water, she let the heat chase away the chill. Gwen wished the lingering fear was as easy to escape.
She had vague memories of sleepwalking as a child. She had been such a serious little thing—definitely not the gregarious party favor her parents wanted, a sweet and cute little girl to show off to guests. She had been convinced something was wrong with her for a very long time.
The water continued to stream hot. They hadn’t been a happy family, but it was still her family—the only one she had—until her parents announced they were getting a divorce. It had been Christmas Eve. At six, a few words destroyed any belief she ever had in fairytales or happily ever after. Her parents forgot about her as soon as the crushing words were spoken, more interested in continuing the fight raging between them. So she retreated back to her room, numb except for the guilt eating at her belly. Merry Christmas to me.
She could still remember the sick guilt, her childlike certainty that it was all her fault. As an adult, she knew she had been wrong. Her family hadn’t fallen apart because of anything she had done, although that didn’t help her younger self. The sleepwalking started not long after that Christmas. For the next ten years, she was passed between two individuals who should have never been parents. The sleepwalking hadn’t been constant. Yet when she was stressed, more often than not, she would wake up somewhere other than her small cramped bedroom.
The pipes of her shower clunked and groaned, and the heat started to falter. With a shake of her head, she rushed to finish. Nightmares were one thing, an icy spray of water first thing in the morning? A different type of horror altogether. Her thoughts stayed on her task, and she managed to escape the shower before it became a freezing torture chamber. As she moved around her apartment to get dressed, her thoughts returned to the sleepwalking.
Once she had moved in with her aunt Maggie, the sleepwalking stopped. Her father died when Gwen was sixteen, and her mother decided she wasn’t interested in a teenage daughter. It was the final heartbreak to be thrown away by her surviving parent. But living with Maggie was the best thing to ever happen to her. Maggie divorced Gwen’s uncle when Gwen was a small child, so there was no real family obligation. Maggie still wanted her. It took a little time for trust to develop. But, through her aunt, Gwen found the stability and love she needed.
And the sleepwalking stopped. Until now. She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, her eyelash curler frozen in front of her eye. Whatever was causing her dreams, she needed to figure it out. At least she hadn’t left her apartment. Yet. When she was eight, she had walked all the way to the neighborhood park while sleeping, waking up in the morning curled under the playground slide. Her mother never even noticed she was gone.
She sighed and put her makeup away. The dreams themselves offered little insight into what was causing the sleepwalking. The images from the most recent one flashed in her mind as she moved to the kitchen. Thank God for coffee makers. The smell of fresh coffee teased her nose, and her spirits started to lift.
With her hands curled around a steaming cup of coffee, the terror of the dream faded and logic started to prevail. This current dream made the most sense out of all of them. The little boy? He was a predominate figure in her dreams, and she wasn’t sure what he represented. But the lake? The drowning? She took a sip.
The simplest explanation would be her run-in with Rafe. The fact she hadn’t ask Alistair one question about what happened seemed ridiculous. Part of it was due to her embarrassment for going into the Archives without permission. More like curiosity humiliated the cat.
Embarrassment may have prevented her from questioning the strange encounter when it happened. But it was no longer a problem as she had struggled to fall asleep. As soon as her head hit the pillow, questions sprung up in her mind like weeds.
Perhaps the most mind-boggling: What was a grown man doing soaking wet and half-naked in the basement hallway? Her cheeks felt warm, and she blamed it on the steam from the coffee. She had tried to think of a reasonable explanation. And had failed.
It hadn’t been long before her imagination had run away with her. Maybe a pipe had burst a leak? Or maybe there was a hidden pool? She had imagined going to Alistair with her questions. If it’s not too much of a bother, Alistair, could you explain the presence of the half-naked gentleman roaming the halls? Lost on his way back from water polo practice, perhaps? She had laughed, amused despite herself. And in the growing light of morning, she laughed again. That would have gone over swimmingly.
When she had finally fallen asleep, she had been amused more than anything. Sure, she couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse to explain whatever Rafe was doing. It didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Her nightmare must have latched on to her confusion over what happened. It had taken something innocent and twisted it into something terrifying.
She frowned. Explanations or no, she wasn’t any closer to understanding why she was having the nightmares in the first place—and she needed a decent night’s sleep. Even though caffeine buzzed through her veins, she was exhausted. The nightmares and sleepwalking needed to stop. Soon. Weren’t people always saying yoga and meditation were supposed to relax and calm a person? There were a few yoga DVDs lying around her apartment.
Gwen grimaced. She was about as flexible as a steel rod. She didn’t know why she had bought the DVDs in the first place—another New Year’s resolution ending in great success. Flexibility aside, yoga was as good a plan as any. And at least in her apartment, no one could laugh when she couldn’t touch her toes—let alone when she tried to do a downward facing dog. Whatever that was.
The dark circles under Gwen’s eyes were a testament that the yoga hadn’t stopped the nightmares, although it had solved the sleepwalking problem. Hopefully permanently. A small victory there and a worry off her mind; she didn’t have to fear waking up somewhere dressed in her pajamas. Still, she had taken to wearing something a little less revealing than her normal tank top and boy shorts. Just in case.
She held a pen in her hand, tapping out a quick and annoyed beat on her desk. The terror was one thing, but the inability to explain what was happening was infuriating. How did she stop her nightmares when she had no clue what was triggering them in the first place?
Exhaling, she picked up her novel with e
xaggerated care. Her dreams may be out of her control, but she wouldn’t let them affect how she behaved while awake. As she lost herself in the story, her fingers eventually relaxed their white-knuckled grip on the pen.
When she checked the clock on the wall, the sight of Rafe made her stomach flip. The pen went sailing by Rafe’s face, missing his nose by an inch.
He raised his hands up in defense. “That isn’t a very nice way to say hello.”
Promising herself she would stay collected, she set her book down. Arching an eyebrow in his direction, her voice was arctic. “Good afternoon, Mister …?”
He ignored her question and started to roam around the office, poking through the personal items she had brought in. Why is he so tall? His presence was overwhelming.
“At least we remembered our umbrella this time.” She tried for an arch tone, but had a sneaking suspicion it sounded more like teasing. Or worse, flirting.
He flashed a broad grin in her direction. “Something like that.” He flipped through the novel that she hadn’t seen him grab. Settling on the edge of her desk, he frowned in mock seriousness. “Miss Conway, we have a problem.”
His proximity was unnerving. She fought the urge to fidget. “Oh?”
“My dear friend, Alistair,” he stressed the name, “let slip your real name. Or should we say he was disorganized enough to leave your employee records on his desk. Tsk, tsk.”
Alistair was perhaps the most organized person Gwen had ever met. The thought that Rafe had been rifling around in his files to dig up information on her was maddening. She ignored the tiny flutter of something that might have been flattery.
“Alistair isn’t here. So if you could make an appointment—” She hated that she sounded like the arrogant receptionist she met before her interview.
He spoke right over her. “My dear Gwendolyn, you’re not being very polite, are you?”
She ground her teeth. “It’s Gwen.”
Mirrored Time (A Time Archivist Novel Book 1) Page 2
