Darkest Designs

by Dale Mayer

  “Riss.”

  “I’m going to presume hard sounds like Ks aren’t easy for her.”

  Storey giggled. “And what’s her problem with E?”

  The mist started to dissipate. A wave of relief washed through him. Maybe something would go right for a change.

  The sun twinkled brightly overhead and green trees surrounded them.

  Tammy’s eye shone as she looked around with the mist almost gone.

  Eric said, “Looks like she recognizes the area. “You can almost see the look in her eyes, saying food is around the corner.”

  At that Storey laughed again. “And she’s welcome to it. I have never met anyone with an appetite like hers.”

  “Good thing she doesn’t know about the rest of the cheese in my bag,” he said smugly.

  “Let’s hang on to it. We might need your supplies for later.” Storey headed off in the direction of her home.

  Tammy followed, her hand securely held in Eric’s.

  Eric gave a last glance into the bushes around them and followed.

  What would they find this time?

  Storey tilted her face to the sun. What day was it? The sun appeared to be high in the sky. If it was a weekday, then she might be lucky enough to find the house empty. If it was a weekend, then one…or both…of her parents could be there. And she so didn’t want to meet them. Not in this time. Her mother, if things were back to normal…yes. She wanted to hug her tight and tell her how much she loved her.

  But if it was the crazy life where she went to a private religious school and her father, who she hadn’t seen in a decade, was home and still married to her mother, no way. Like how weird…and wrong…was that?

  She admitted to being ambivalent on many of the issues, but she really didn’t want to live the other Storey’s life. That one did her schoolwork and never picked up an art pencil. This Storey would die under those conditions. Her art was her outlet. Her path to freedom from the world around her. She had to be able to draw.

  And she would, no matter what. If what Eric had said was true about her room being full of art books she didn’t recognize, then maybe the other Storey had already learned she needed to draw.

  Maybe there was crossover, or bleeding from one Storey to the other. Time had twisted, but what else had twisted with it?

  She reached the end of the trees and stopped. Her home stood in front of her. Its familiar clapboard siding stirred pangs of homesickness inside. She desperately wanted to see her mother. The real one. Not the other one. Storey sighed. How did life get so confused?

  Tammy tugged on her hand. Storey looked down at her trusting face, wondering at the child’s sympathetic look. There was no way Tammy could really understand what bothered Storey at this time. But Tammy was offering what comfort she could.

  And Storey was happy to accept it.

  She smiled down at Tammy. “Let’s go.”

  Tammy’s smile kicked up a notch. They approached from the side. Storey led the way to the back kitchen door. She cautiously walked up the few stairs to the porch and tried the door. Locked. Damn. She left Tammy in Eric’s care then slipped around the side of the house to the garage. There she crept inside, relieved to find it empty. She crossed over to the inside door and found it locked too.

  Rolling her eyes at fate, she whispered out loud, “You’d think there had been a series of break-ins where people raided the refrigerator or something.”

  Her mother had always kept a spare key under the freezer. She walked over to find the old chest freezer locked. But the spare key was still in the same old place. Gleefully, she picked up the key and unlocked the house door. She walked in cautiously. She couldn’t be sure no one was home. At first glance the place seemed empty and that made her relax – slightly. Walking through the kitchen she unlocked the back door and let Eric and Tammy in. “Go on upstairs.”

  “What are you going to do?” Eric asked, already ushering Tammy ahead of him toward the stairs.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Look for food of course. What else?” She turned to the fridge. After all the times they’d raided this thing she wouldn’t be surprised to find a lock on it. Not this time though. She studied the contents and realized there wasn’t much that was grab and go. The kind of food she could offer without cooking it first. She did find a couple of oranges. In the pantry was a box of cookies and a box of snack crackers. She took both of those.

  The problem was, Tammy could be expecting a mess of other food. She searched back in the fridge, but there was no meat that she could take up. She rummaged through the other cupboards and found an unopened package of beef jerky. Then she hit the motherload – a large box of Halloween mini-sized chocolate bars.

  Perfect. Tammy wasn’t going to argue with those. Not once she tried them.

  She made a swift circle through the downstairs, recognizing the furniture as being the same from her last visit. On the mantle, a family photo. With all three of them together. That meant her father was still in this life. With that confirmation, she ran up the stairs to her room. At the door, she stopped. Took a deep breath and kicked it lightly. Eric opened it immediately. His eyes lit up at her armload.

  “Here let me help.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll just dump it all on the bed.” She did just that. Tammy came running and jumped up beside the pile. Her chunky fingers immediately reached for the closest item. Storey snatched the orange back just before she bit into the rind. She tossed it to Eric. “This has to be peeled or cut into quarters.”

  She kept a wary eye on Tammy’s face. Her mouth in a shocked O, then it crumpled. “Oh shit.” Storey opened the box of snack crackers and pulled out several for her. She took the first one and popped it into her mouth. Tammy took several and shoved them into hers.

  “Well, that much hasn’t changed at least.” Storey backed up several steps and turned to Eric. He was turning the orange over and over in his hands. She sighed. “Here give me that. I’ll peel it.” And she did, quickly and efficiently. Within minutes she split it into two halves and handed over both to the two people staring at her like she was going to be their next meal.

  Eric bit into his half and his eyes grew rounder. He chewed, then bit again. “It’s good!”

  Tammy, after seeing Eric, shoved as much of the orange into her mouth as she could. Storey peeled the second orange. Then showing the two of them, broke it into sections and popped one section into her mouth and chewed it. Then popped a second one in. She split the rest into pieces for both the others. They followed her example and ate it slowly.

  Storey left the two working their way through the food and went to the bathroom. She groaned at the picture in the mirror. Instead of things getting better, she was starting to look haggard. In-between obviously hadn’t done anything good for her. She knew that when she closed her eyes to sleep, she was more than likely to have horrible nightmares of being caught In-between. Forever.

  That type of fear would stay with her for a long time.

  As would the ‘what ifs’ that kept going through her mind. What if Eric hadn’t come for her? What if she hadn’t found the Broken One in the Louers’ dimension? What if she couldn’t fix her own dimension…and things never went back the way they were supposed to be?

  We can fix it. But we need time…and trust.

  Thank you. Hot tears filled her eyes. She closed them, willing them not to fall. She needed to stay strong. Her stylus was right. They could fix this. She’d fixed so much that surely this was the last big one to handle.

  She just needed to get it right. She was no longer alone with this burden. Surely it would be easier with the Broken One to help. She smiled. Grabbing a washcloth, she scrubbed her hands and face.

  And noticed the honor marks. Intricate golden scrolls across her collarbone and down her arm. Surely there were more now than before. So faint as to not be noticed on first glance, but now that she could see them… She rinsed her washcloth and stroked warm water over them. They warmed to the to
uch. She smiled.

  They looked good. Great in fact. Mysterious and yet subtle.

  She liked them.

  Good. We are glad.

  She took an extra few minutes, grabbed a brush and tugged the knots out of her hair. Refreshed, she headed back to the others.

  She was hungry. A bite first, then she needed to get to work.

  She wanted her life back.

  ***

  “Um, Storey, I appreciate the food. Honest. But I thought the plan was to turn around and send Tammy back. Immediately.” He studied the strip of dark brown hard stuff. Odd. But he was game. He hadn’t had anything from her yet that wasn’t good. He really hoped to keep the cheese to take back to his dimension. That stuff was addictive.

  She looked at him in surprise. Then grabbed a few crackers and stuffed them her mouth. He studied her for a long moment. “You don’t want to send her back right away, do you?” A wave of bright pink washed up her face. He settled back. He understood, but they couldn’t allow her affection for Tammy get in the way of what they needed to do.

  With a telltale sigh, Storey dropped her gaze to Tammy’s face and sighed. “She’s special.”

  “Yes, she is.” He waited.

  Storey glanced over at him sheepishly. “It’s just for a little while. How long are we here for? A half hour? An hour maybe. Then we have to go back anyway. I really want to fix my home before anything else goes wrong. And remember what the styluses, or was it Paxton, said? I can’t remember who. Anyway, they said increased traffic between dimensions wasn’t good because it creates a tunnel of energy that makes it easier for us to cross – but also for those that we don’t want to cross.”

  He remembered that conversation and what she said was true, but she’d just pulled that out of her head as an excuse. In a gentle, but firm tone, he said. “Maybe figure out how to communicate with her using the stylus or telepathy and leave it at that. The visits can’t continue. We don’t want them coming to our dimensions and you really don’t want them over here. That was the whole point of creating their new home. Remember?”

  She nodded. “I know. It would be great to stay in touch with her, though.”

  “Yes. It would.” He waited a moment. “But let’s not forget her father, the group that kidnapped her or the lessons of my people. The Louers are a warring group. I’m not going to make a blanket statement and say they can’t be trusted…but…”

  Her knowing smile set him back. “You can’t even begin to say anything like that. Paxton is a mainstay in your world. He’s a pillar of the community. And he’s a Louer.”

  “He might not know it either,” Eric quickly defended his mentor. He wanted to ask him about that little bit of hidden history, but didn’t want to do it at a distance. In person Eric would have a better chance of seeing the truth on his mentor’s face.

  He brooded on the consequences of the council finding out. Would it matter after all this time? Or could the reaction be even worse with the recent battle between the Torans and the Louers?

  Was there any way to make peace with them all?

  Having been raised with the shadowy specter of the Louers all his life, he hadn’t noticed that threat on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level he had. His people were a simple folk. His gaze landed on Tammy. Like she was. She didn’t deserve to be part of an ongoing war. Her people needed help to re-establish a new, better life in their new dimension. What was the chance he could help them do that?

  Except Tammy’s people were perceived as the enemy. Eric might want to see things workable between them. But he was pretty sure that other than Tammy, every other Louer would want to see him…dead.

  Storey watch the emotions flit across Eric’s face. Normally it was hard to read what was going on inside in his head. But all this talk of Louers gave her a good inkling. Finding out about Paxton’s history had to be a shock.

  They needed to get moving on fixing her world. His world had been fixed – mostly. The Louers had a new world; they might need help to settle it, but they might also refuse to have anything to do with them. Then there was her mess of a world.

  She opened her closet door and stared. There had to be dozens of sketchbooks on the shelves inside. She’d never had this many in her life. Not only that, she didn’t think that this Storey drew.

  “Stylus, why?”

  The world is trying to reassert itself – to heal from the time twist. In your case, the Storey who lives here is feeling repressed. And having found a whole new hobby, she’s driven to reassert that part of her personality. Your mother and father are also having some personal issues in this world as their personalities try to reassert themselves as well. In real time, they were divorced, so being together now is not easy. They are struggling with their relationship.

  Storey took a shaky breath. “I really messed up, didn’t I?”

  Yes. That is one outlook.

  She winced. “Thanks,” she murmured. She reached into the closet and pulled out the largest of the sketchbooks. She sat on the floor beside Eric and leaned back against the bed. She flipped to through the pages. “The book is brand new.”

  “Does that surprise you?” Eric asked around a mouthful of food.

  Storey shrugged. “I guess. I never had money for lots of sketchbooks. I’d have one, use it, then buy another one when I needed to.”

  “You never mention your currency or trade system here.” He looked down at the beef jerky in his hand then back at her. “In fact, I know you call it money, but did you buy this food? All the times we’ve stocked up, did you need to leave some of this money behind?”

  She stared at him in disbelief. Then laughed. And laughed. She twisted to see him better. “Now is a hell of a time to ask that question.”

  He flushed. He mumbled, “Yeah, I know. In my defense, we’ve been a little busy.” Then he took another bite.

  She grinned. “As it’s my house, my mother’s food, then no, I don’t feel that we need to leave money to pay for what we’ve taken. The times where it wasn’t my house, it would have been nice to have left money for them. But,” she cocked a brow at him. “I didn’t and don’t have any.”

  His gaze widened. “Really? Why not?”

  How to explain work and money. She had to think about it. She hadn’t exactly seen any type of currency in his world either. Or a barter system for that matter. Maybe they didn’t have the same system. “Well, I have a little, but not much.” Her mother had given her money to go to the mall before this mess all started. And boy, did that seem like months ago. Then there was her almost empty bank account. “Do you have money?”

  “Sure. We all do.” He nodded. “We each get the same amount every month.”

  That stopped her. Wasn’t that what the communist countries did here? Or some of them. Doctors and waitresses received the same or close to the same amount of money. Odd. And hardly fair. Then she wondered. “So you received the same amount of money as Paxton?

  He nodded.

  Weird. “And what about your father?”

  He frowned. “I assume so.”

  She wouldn’t. “I think you should look into that.”

  “Why would he have more than any of us?”

  “What does the amount do for you?” She asked curiously. “Can you buy special things? Do extra things?”

  He shrugged. “Somewhat. But we all have what we need. He does get different food and drink. His clothes cost more. So he probably needs more.”

  She had to bite her tongue. From her world she knew the extent people would go to for more of what they wanted. Greed was a powerful motivator. Maybe it was different in Eric’s world, but she doubted it. Considering what his father already felt fully justified in doing to her, well, giving himself a larger portion of the pie would be nothing.

  And then there was his size. He was way fatter than the others of the council that she’d seen. Maybe he had a thyroid problem or other health issue, but those hardly explained the triple chins. He ate more than he ne
eded to and she suspected a richer quality food than the others too.

  “You don’t have much crime in your world, do you?” They must have some, because they had dungeons, but she’d not been aware of any kind of personal danger from the others there. Funny, she hadn’t considered it. The only Toran she’d feared at all was Eric’s father.

  “No. There have been a few criminals over the years, but not many.”

  She nodded. Maybe their monetary system worked then. She refocused on the problem at hand. She’d have time to study up on the Torans’ way of life later. When her mother was back to normal.

  “Stylus, what do I need to do?”

  We need you to think about the last time you saw your mother. The way your world was then. It will take some time to bend time back properly and allow that dimension to return to the way it was. You need to make sure you don’t stop the process once it starts. This will be our only chance to fix this. Once we start, we must finish.