The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  Faye let go of his hands and started to leave.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “When I come back, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Faye fumed as she walked out the house to the dock. The sooner they were rid of Hartwell, the better. She didn’t care at all that he was a bootlegger, but he knew too much about her real relationship with Carrick, and she hadn’t come ninety-four years back in time just to let some Southern-dandy daddy’s boy hurt the man she loved.

  Hartwell had his back to her at the end of the pier where he’d tied off his boat. She wanted to walk right up behind him and kick him into the water.

  “I found your money, Mr. Hartwell,” she called out to him. “Come and get it. Then get the hell out of here for good.”

  Hartwell stood up and turned around. Though it was his boat, it was not Hartwell.

  The man standing before her was tall and broad shouldered. He wore a light gray suit, a gray fedora with a black silk band. Everything about him looked imposing, from the too-jaunty tilt of his hat to the smile on his lips made sinister by his thin, impeccably groomed mustache. She didn’t know him, but instantly she feared him.

  “Now, now, Millie, my dear. Is that any way to greet your husband?”

  21

  Faye started to scream for Carrick, but Marshall took one step forward and slapped his hand over her mouth and grabbed her by the back of her hair.

  “If you scream, I’ll snap your pretty neck, sweetheart,” he said. “You understand?”

  Faye slowly nodded.

  “Good girl. I’m glad I don’t have to kill someone else today. It gets messy.”

  He dropped his hand from her mouth, though he still gripped her roughly by the back of her hair.

  “Someone else?” Faye asked.

  “Where do you think I got the boat?” He laughed and dragged her toward the end of the pier.

  “You killed Hartwell?” Faye was horrified. She couldn’t stand the man, but she’d never wished death on him.

  “I killed my wife’s kidnapper.”

  “Kidnapper? I wasn’t—”

  “Of course you’ve been kidnapped. After all, no woman in her right mind would run away from a loving husband who dotes on her the way I dote on you.” Marshall pulled her into the boat and pushed her down onto the floor.

  “You’re a wife beater and a rapist,” Faye said. “And you should be in jail for the rest of your life.”

  “A rapist? A man can’t rape his own wife,” Marshall said as he wrapped ropes around her ankles. “As for beating you, well, I’m half tempted to beat you to death, but I’ve been waiting on that baby two years. I’d hate have to start over with a new wife.”

  “Baby? What baby?”

  “Our baby, Millie, my love. That’s how I found you. Your friend Mr. Hartwell was digging around your bedroom for some damn reason and found your note. Glad to know you changed your mind about drowning yourself.”

  Marshall pulled a folded sheet of stationery from his pocket, and Faye snatched it from his hand, opened it and read it as Marshall started the engine and steered the boat away from the pier, from the lighthouse, from everything she loved.

  Dear Carrick,

  I don’t know if you’ll ever find this letter. I don’t know if I want you to, but for the sake of my conscience I must write it. I thought I could be free of Marshall. I thought I could start a new life, and I knew if anyone could help me, it would be you. Marshall always said you were the best of men. It is the rare thing my husband and I have ever agreed on. You are indeed the best of men, but even you can’t save me now. Today was my seventh morning at the lighthouse, and the third morning I woke up ill. No longer can I deny the truth to myself. I am carrying his child. I cannot stay with you and bring scandal to your good name, and I cannot return to my husband. There is only one place left for me and it is not in this world.

  Please do not blame yourself for my death. I dreamt last night that I was reborn into another life where you were my husband and the child I carried was yours, but it was only a dream. Perhaps in another life. Perhaps in another time...

  Forgive me, Carrick. Pray for me. I cannot be your Faith any longer, but in my heart you will always remain... My hero.

  Millie

  Faye gasped reading the letter, gasped and then wept. So that was why Faith had thrown herself into the ocean wearing a heavy coat although it was a summer night. She was pregnant with her abusive husband’s child and was determined to drown herself. And if Faith/Millie was pregnant, then...

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “About damn time, too,” Marshall said, scoffing. They were speeding away from the lighthouse so fast the wind ripped the note from her shaking hand. “Apparently your friend Mr. Hartwell had been in Boston recently, heard about my wife’s disappearance and put two and two together when he found your note. He sent me a telegram. I came right down and met him, and he made me a deal. For ten thousand dollars, he’d tell me where my wife was, and then he would conveniently forget to tell the whole wide world how my pregnant wife was giving up the goods to a Carolina lighthouse keeper. I gave your friend his ten thousand dollars and a bullet to the brain for his trouble. I took the money back. I let him keep the bullet. Would you like one, too?” He patted his pocket, where Faye saw the telltale bulge of a pistol. “I have five more.”

  Faye was going to be sick. She could hardly breathe, hardly speak.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “I won’t kill you until after the baby’s born. Now I just have to figure out what to do about Carrick.”

  “I’ll do anything you want, go anywhere with you. Just don’t hurt Carrick.”

  He slapped her across the face, quick and hard. Faye gasped. She’d never been struck by anyone before.

  “Don’t you ever tell me what to do. I’ll break that dumb mick’s neck if I want. Jesus Christ, Millie Anne, do you have a single brain cell in your head? You really gave up everything I have for him?”

  “Carrick would cut off his own arm before he raised his hand to me, or any woman.”

  “Well, I did my fair share of slumming while I was in the service. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised my wife wanted to do a little slumming herself. He’s handsome enough. I’ll still have him arrested and horsewhipped, but really, I can’t blame either of you.”

  “You’re a piece of shit,” Faye said.

  Marshall smiled.

  “I just added another ten minutes to his whipping.”

  A popping sound exploded around them.

  “What the hell?” Marshall said. Faye looked past him and saw Carrick standing on the pier with his shotgun aimed directly at Marshall. “Goddamn it, I wanted him to rot in prison. I suppose I’ll have to kill him instead.”

  Marshall pulled his pistol out of his pocket. Faye instinctively lunged for the gun as it went off.

  It was poorly planned on her part, but it did the trick. Splinters flew at Carrick’s feet. His eyes grew wide, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he raised the shotgun in the boat’s direction again.

  Marshall muttered to himself and pulled Faye close to him, using her as a shield. He raised the pistol over her shoulder and steadied his aim—

  Not again. Faye would not lose the man she loved again. She would die first. She would die now if she had to. Anything to save Carrick. Anything.

  Faye wriggled free of Marshall’s grip and dived off the side of the boat.

  Once in the water, Faye kicked the rope off her ankles. Her wrists, however, were bound tighter. She surfaced, and heard Marshall screaming. At her? Faye kicked hard and tried to swim away from him as fast as possible.

  Swimming in the open water was harder than she’d ever dreamed. With her hands tied she couldn’t do much more than tread water. Insane with fury, Marshall shot wildly in her direction.

  Better he shoot at her than at Carrick. If she could only survive a few seconds more, then maybe it would be all right. Even now Faye felt the water churning around her
like a pot on high heat starting to boil. It was happening again as she sensed it would. Time was coming for her. Better for her to live without him in 2015 than for him to die in 1921.

  If she lived long enough to see 2015 again, that was...

  Another shot hit the water near her head. She ducked under the water and when she resurfaced she saw Carrick dive off the pier. He was coming for her, but would he make it in time? Faye kicked harder, dived under the surface again and mermaid swam for as long as she could to escape the choppy waves and Marshall’s bullets.

  When she came up for air, a wave lifted her high and dropped her back into the water face-first. These waves seemed determined to kill her, and she couldn’t use her hands to fight back. She paddled backward with her feet, hoping she was heading toward the pier, toward Carrick. Another wave lifted and dropped her, knocking the breath from her lungs and the fight from her body. It wasn’t happening fast enough. She was still in 1921. It didn’t matter anymore if Marshall shot her before she made it back to 2015. She would die from the waves before either could happen. The water pulled her down to her death, and as it took her, she gave her final thoughts to Carrick.

  Carrick... I love you. I love you, and not because you look like my Will but because you look like my Carrick. If I can find a way back to you again, I will live in your light the rest of my life.

  Carrick or Will or God must have heard her prayer, because just as Faye started to let go and give up, someone pulled her to the surface and into the light of day again. She howled, gulping air into her burning lungs. Hands yanked the rope free from her wrists. That same someone put her arm over two strong shoulders and paddled them toward the beach.

  As she caught her breath, her vision slowly returned to her. She looked at her rescuer with confusion. Who was this man? He looked vaguely like a young Gregory Peck and he swam like a dolphin.

  A young Gregory Peck?

  “Pat?”

  22

  Pat, if it was him, didn’t answer. Instead, he kept pushing them closer to the beach, cutting through the water with his powerful arms, a young man’s arms. When they made it to within a couple hundred yards of the shore, Faye swam on her own until her feet touched the bottom and she could trudge through the water to the beach. Coughing and sputtering, Faye fell onto the ground, so grateful to be alive she’d almost forgotten about Marshall.

  “Get up,” Pat said. “We have to move. Right now.”

  Faye sat up and saw that a new storm was brewing. The sky turned purple as a bruise. The waves rose higher and higher, clawing up the beach with each crashing breaker. Pat took her by the arm and dragged her to the tree line. Faye clung to the trunk of a young oak out of harm’s way. Out on the water Hartwell’s boat pitched about like a plastic toy ship in a child’s bathwater.

  It seemed Marshall was attempting to run the boat aground on the beach. With the water so wild, there was no other way to escape the storm. Yet no matter what he did, he couldn’t break free of the ocean’s unrelenting grip. The wind whipped across the water, turning the surface white and foamy. Faye watched in silent horror as one wave flipped Marshall’s boat on its side and the next wave capsized it completely. Water rushed over the hull. Wood crunched and splintered. And over the wind she heard a scream.

  Instinctively, she started toward the water, but Pat stopped her with his hand on her arm.

  “Stay here,” he shouted. “I’ll go.”

  He ran off without another word. Pat raced to the beach, stripping out of his shirt before diving into the ocean. How was Pat here? And why? And was it him? She knew it was. They had the same bright but pale blue eyes. The same distinct nose. The same voice. But all the signs of age were gone in this young man—no gray hair, no crow’s-feet, no lines around the mouth, no loose skin at the neck. He had a young man’s body, too—sleek and long and lean and terribly strong as he cut through the water with deceptive ease. Soon he was out so far Faye couldn’t see him. All that she could see were the remains of the small motorboat bobbing in the water.

  Waiting was hell. Faye could hardly catch her breath, and tears rolled down her face, hot against her cold skin. She shook and shivered in the rain and wind. She ached for Carrick’s arms around her, for the warmth of his body and the safety of his love.

  Had Carrick noticed they’d come ashore this far down the beach yet? Had Dolly? Had they called for help? Could they call for help or had the storm snapped the one phone line between the lighthouse and town? Faye couldn’t wait anymore. She ran down to the beach and narrowed her eyes at the motorboat sinking fast. She searched for any signs of life, even Marshall’s, but saw none.

  The storm was subsiding now, blowing out as quickly as it had blown in. Two hundred yards or so out, she saw a man’s face. He came in closer to shore. Thank God, it was Pat. He stood up when he reached shallow waters and walked tiredly toward her.

  He shook his head before collapsing onto the sand.

  “Gone,” Pat said between rasping breaths. “Trapped...under the boat. Couldn’t get him out. He’s dead.”

  “You sure?”

  Pat nodded.

  Faye sank down into the sand next to him, relieved and yet ashamed of her relief.

  “Him or you,” Pat said, still panting hard.

  “What do you mean, him or me?”

  “It’s why I came back.” Pat rolled forward and grabbed his shirt off the beach. He yanked it on. “I couldn’t sleep after you left. Bad feeling, like I had sand in my mind and it was shifting. I kept trying to remember how Faith Morgan died and I couldn’t. The image kept changing. I got up and went to the lighthouse and saw the plaque on the side. You were still dead. Faith Morgan was still dead. But you didn’t die June 10. You died June 17.”

  “That’s today,” Faye said.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. I waded into the water, and next thing I knew, there you were, drowning.”

  Faye stared at him, aghast, speechless. If Pat hadn’t come back...she would have died in this time? Marshall would have shot her? It would have happened today, right now, but for Pat. She could almost see it happening, as if it had happened and she’d witnessed it with her own eyes. Marshall reaching over the side of the boat, fishing her out of the water before she could drown and return to her own time. They would have struggled over the gun, but it would have gone off in the struggle, shooting Faye in the stomach. It hadn’t happened, and all because Pat had come back for her. They’d changed history again.

  “Pat,” Faye breathed. “Why am I here?”

  “I don’t know,” Pat said. “But at least you’re here a little longer.”

  Faye wrapped her arms around him, around this old priest in a young man’s body who had traveled almost a century back in time to rescue her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said, patting her back. “Truth is, I just really missed being in this body.”

  Faye laughed and wiped the tears off her face.

  “You look good,” she said.

  “You look a little different,” he said, smiling. “But I’d know those violet eyes anywhere.”

  “Faith!”

  Faye looked up. She could see Carrick down the beach jogging toward them. Pat turned his head to look.

  “My God,” Pat breathed. “Carrick. He’s a baby.”

  “He’s thirty-five,” Faye said. “Big baby.”

  “He was my age when I saw him last. And I was... How old do I look?”

  “Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight,” she said.

  “Twenty-seven. That’s how old I was when I met Carrick the first time. How does this keep happening to us?” Pat asked.

  “What?”

  “Time.”

  “If I knew, I would tell you,” Faye said. “Carrick’s going to ask who you are. What do I tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him the truth,” Pat said. “If you want me to.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because he’ll believe me.”