by K. J. Emrick
He bent with some difficulty to cradle the white-haired ankle biter in his arms. Then he stood again, petting the dog between his two alert little ears. A Yorkie, Darcy thought, or maybe a terrier. It was obvious that the dog loved his master, and that his master loved the dog just as much.
“Now, see here, both of you,” Mister Baskin grumbled at Jon and Darcy. “What’s this all about?”
Jon looked at Darcy with an unspoken question. She shook her head. Smudge wasn’t here.
“Mister Baskin,” Jon said to him. “We’re sorry to disturb you like this.”
“Barge in on me, you mean.”
“We’re sorry for that, too. I’m investigating a break-in at my house today. Your name came up in the course of that investigation.”
“Hmph,” was the response to that. “Not the first time you accused me of something I didn’t do. Remember the whole deal at the Christmas pageant? What’s the matter? You run out of real criminals to harass? Seems to me the last big case I heard our dedicated police force handled was a bunch of kids stealing from people’s garbage cans.”
“All the same,” Jon continued in that same calm, reasonable tone, “I’d like you to tell me where you were today.”
“And I’d like to be left alone. You think either one of us is going to get what we want?” But then he sighed, and answered the question anyway. “The café. You saw me there Darcy, you know you did. Then I went for a walk around the park with Phineas here. Since then I’ve been home. You want to take my dog in for questioning, Chief?”
Darcy reached out and put her hand on Mister Baskin’s arm. Through the material of his sweater she could feel how frail the man had become. He used to be a real terror around town, yelling at all the local kids to behave and be quiet and go home. Now he was just a grumpy old man with nothing left in his life but a little mutt that was barely an armful for him.
“Roland,” she said, holding his arm, trying to reach out with her abilities to feel anything at all from him.
She felt absolutely nothing. There was no vision, no sense of right or wrong or neutral indifference. Just an angry old man in a knitted sweater and baggy slacks.
It wasn’t him.
A dead end. Smudge was depending on her, and she had guessed wrong.
Turning away from Mister Baskin’s glare, she went to walk out of the front door, but a thought occurred to her. “Roland, you knew my great aunt, didn’t you?”
“Everyone knew Millie,” he answered. “She was one of the few people in this town that I actually liked. That’s saying something for me.”
That was definitely true. “Do you know,” she asked, “if there was anyone who held a grudge against my aunt? Maybe somebody who wanted to hurt her?”
“Your aunt? Millie?” Mister Baskin actually laughed, which was something Darcy was sure she’d never seen him do. Ever. “There wasn’t nobody didn’t like her, Darcy. Oh, I remember she had her trouble with people same as you do, but that was because she didn’t back down. If somebody needed to be taken down a few pegs or such, she was there to do it. Always respected that about her. Say.” He screwed his face up now and peered closer at the both of them. “What’s this really about?”
“We can’t say a whole lot,” Jon told him. “What isn’t confidential is private. But I can tell you that someone is after something that belonged to Millie years ago.”
The old man’s eyes got a little wider. “Can’t anyone let the good ones rest in peace?”
Darcy smiled in spite of herself. If he only knew how restless Millie really was. Still, they weren’t going to learn anything here. It certainly looked like Roland Baskin wasn’t the one who had taken Smudge. Darcy doubted that he had the strength to kidnap a goldfish, let alone a strong and smart cat like Smudge. Defeated, angry all over again, and suddenly very tired, she turned once more to leave.
“Wait.”
This time Roland Baskin caught her by her wrist, his rough skin like old leather.
And in her mind, a vision sprouted.
Her Great Aunt Millie, sitting at a bench in the park, alive and well, and so much younger than Darcy had ever seen her in real life. A man, sitting next to her, with eyes the color of robin’s eggs and a smile that rarely ever came out. He was much younger back then, too. He was older than Millie by a handful of years but still young and handsome and…happy. It was a strange look for him but there was no mistaking Roland Baskin. The two of them talked for hours, almost every Tuesday, and Millie would often invite Roland and his wife over for dinner.
That was before his wife died. Before all the joy disappeared from his life.
Oh.
Darcy moved just enough to break the contact with the old man Mister Baskin had become. It hurt too much, seeing her aunt in such a happy time. She only had her aunt in spirit now. As grateful as she was to have even that, she missed Millie so much.
Withdrawing his hand from her, resting it on Phineas the pooch again, Mister Baskin almost smiled. His gray eyes softened, faded now and dull. “She used to say I had eyes as blue as a robin’s eggs,” he said to Darcy, as if he knew what she had just seen. “And she was always kind to me. She never had a complaint, or a harsh word, except once…”
His voice trailed off, and she could tell that he was remembering something that he hadn’t thought of in a long time. “Once I heard her say she was worried something might happen…to you. That someone was…I don’t remember. I’m sorry, Darcy. I’m an old man now. And back then I had lost my wife and I didn’t have time for my friends anymore. It was Christmas, you know, when I lost my Ruby. I didn’t have time for anyone, after that. I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention to what Millie was saying.”
Darcy met his stare, and it was him who backed away first. Maybe he was thinking that if he’d only listened to what Millie had tried to tell him back then, he could have helped.
Exactly what Darcy was thinking.
“We have to go,” she said abruptly. She didn’t know what had happened in her aunt’s life back then, but it was looking more and more like it had been serious, and more than that…
She’d kept it a secret from Darcy.
Why would she do that? How could she?
Back in the car, Darcy broke down. Completely, utterly, broke down. Tears came out in racking sobs and she slammed her fists against the dashboard until Jon came in through the driver’s side and pulled her to him and held her. That was the only thing that stopped her shaking and her uncontrollable ranting.
Roland Baskin had probably been waiting for Darcy to tell him that it was okay, that the past was the past and there was nothing they could do to change it now, and whatever had happened to her aunt wasn’t his fault.
She didn’t have it in her to tell him that.
Because, the truth was that the past was changing. Everything she had known about her aunt was twisting in her mind and she was beginning to see possibilities that had been kept hidden from her all this time. She was too angry at this shadowy stranger in her aunt’s life to give comfort and kind words to an old man who had been too wrapped up in his own grief to listen to anyone else’s problems.
More than that. She was angry at Millie.
“Jon…” It was all she could manage to say, between the tears and the shaky sobs that were stealing her breath.
“I know,” he said anyway, and she believed him when he said it. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
Chapter Four
Darcy’s mind became fuzzy, and her eyelids drooped. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, not with everything that was going so very wrong around her, but the gentle rocking of the car and the hum of the air conditioner lulled her to sleep as Jon drove them home.
Of course it wasn’t like she didn’t need the rest. She was coiled as tightly as a clock spring about to burst. She needed to unwind, just a little, if she was going to be any help to Smudge.
“You’ll find him,” Millie said to her. “You were always a smart one, dear.�
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Darcy blinked her eyes open to find herself sitting in a wicker chair on her own porch, in the middle of a sunny summer afternoon. The clouds were slipping by overhead, fluffy white with dark underbellies that promised rain for later.
She sat up taller and stretched, feeling disoriented as she looked all around. This was all wrong. Wrong season. Wrong place. Two seconds ago it had been nighttime. She’d been in the car with Jon on their way here, sure, but she didn’t remember getting out and she didn’t remember putting on this dark blue tank top or…
Of course. This was a dream.
“You always were good at telling the difference,” Millie said from the chair beside her. Her long black dress swayed with the motion of her rocking chair. She had taken off her matching hat and set it aside on the porch. In her hands was a journal with thick white pages and a front cover of purple leather embossed with a beehive design, the gold inlay bright and new. The journal. This was the journal that Millie had stuffed downstairs to keep it from being found.
Wonderful. More clues. More hints. What Darcy needed was answers.
“Did you ever consider putting it in a safe deposit box instead?” Darcy asked sarcastically. “Or maybe putting it into a plastic bag first?”
“Oh, I couldn’t put it in the bank,” Millie insisted, writing something clever on one of the pages. “It would’ve been found for sure. And I didn’t exactly have time to package it all nice and neat when I was looking for a hiding spot.”
“Well, that’s fantastic, Aunt Millie. Just fantastic. Now here I am with a ruined book full of half-finished ideas and clues and hints and what am I supposed to do with it all?”
She smiled at Darcy in that reassuring way she had. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Or you could just tell me.” Darcy stood up and began pacing on the porch, smelling the fragrance of flowers on the warm breeze. “You know? What about that, huh? Just tell me what the big secret is so that I can get Smudge back safely. Or better yet, just tell me where he is. How about that?”
Her aunt levelled her gaze, eyes flat and shadowed. “You know that isn’t how this works.”
“Do I? Do I? Seems to me this could work any way we want it to. I want answers, you have them, so why won’t you just give them to me?”
“Have you seen this?” Millie asked her in return, showing her the page of the book she had just been writing in.
It was the story Darcy had read of Millie seeing the little girl’s ghost down at the cemetery. It was full and complete here in the dream, and Darcy quickly scanned over the details she hadn’t gotten from the present-day version of the journal, finding the whole story no more helpful than the splotchy version she’d read before. “Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“Oh, dear, no. Not the story. Although I admit, it’s a good one. Humorous, even if it is sad what happened to that poor dead child. No, I mean the rest of it.”
“I can’t read most of the rest of it, Millie, because you stuffed it into a wall!”
Millie sat back, laying the journal open on her lap, and continued writing. “Well, there’s no need to shout.”
“Isn’t there? Isn’t there, Aunt Millie? Someone took Smudge, do you know that? Someone took him!”
Her aunt’s eyes turned sad. “Yes. I know that. You’ll notice he’s not here, with me.”
Darcy hadn’t noticed that, actually. Usually in these dreams Smudge appeared for her, too, causing mischief and helping in his own, special cat way. This time he was nowhere to be found.
“Millie,” she all but begged, falling down on her knees at her aunt’s side, “tell me where Smudge is. Please.”
“I’ve already told you, dear.”
“No you haven’t!” she exploded. “You haven’t told me anything! We just went accusing Roland Baskin of kidnapping Smudge and maybe worse. We wasted all that time when you could have just pointed your ghostly finger and told me what you needed to say!”
“Oh, my. Roland. What a nice man.” She smiled a secret smile that hid a schoolgirl’s fancy. “Such a fine man. I had a terrible crush on him but he was married. A bit older, of course. Well. More’s the pity. We were friends, and that was enough. Then his wife died and so did he, on the inside. There was nothing left of the man I knew. When I went to him with my greatest problem he was too far gone at that point to help me. And I couldn’t help him, poor man.”
Darcy appreciated the glimpse of a younger Millie, a normal woman with hopes and dreams and loves, but right now she didn’t have time to walk down memory lane. “I could have helped you, Millie. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you, but you never told me!”
“And why do you think that is?” she asked, looking up from her writing once again.
That question took Darcy by surprise. This was one of the most frustrating parts of interacting with ghosts. They would rarely ever tell you anything in a straightforward manner. Cryptic questions and oddly unrelated answers was what she’d come to expect. It was how they communicated from the other side.
It was like trying to speak a foreign language in another country. Sometimes the sense of things came through even when the words didn’t make any sense.
Darcy didn’t care. Her aunt was trying to tell her something important, but all she wanted was to get Smudge back. That’s what was important to her, right here, and right now.
“I’ve already told you,” Millie said again.
Darcy blinked, and the world shifted. This time she was standing in the kitchen of her aunt’s house. Disoriented, she stumbled a few steps, wondering if she was awake now. No. Things were different enough inside for her to know that this was still a dream.
She had replaced that wallpaper four years ago. That clock on the wall had stopped working last summer. It really was her aunt’s house, but back in a time period when Millie had been alive, and Darcy had been living here with her, and everything was right with the world.
Millie sat at the table, scribbling in that same journal. She wasn’t writing down her thoughts and feelings. She wasn’t writing down secret answers for Darcy to read over her shoulder.
She was filling in the decorative squiggles at the bottom of each page.
“I had to hide it in the basement, you know. He was coming. It was my time to go and I just didn’t have time to do anything else with it.”
Darcy watched her aunt’s hands write each meaningless symbol. There was another book on the table, a heavy reference book. Darcy could see the title clearly in the dream.
The Forgotten Land of Deseret.
Millie’s younger self looked around at Darcy in the dream, holding up the journal. “See? I’ve already told you.”
Reaching out with a shaky hand, Darcy touched her aunt’s shoulder. So real, in the dream. She could feel the soft fabric of her long black dress, she could see the kindness and love in Millie’s eyes. They’d had so little time together before death had claimed her. There were times when Darcy felt like…that she was…
“I can’t do this alone,” she said, putting words to her troubled thoughts. “It’s too hard. It’s too much. Just when I think everything was coming together in my life, something else crashes over me. I can’t do this one, Millie. Not alone.”
Her aunt stood up from her seat to give her niece a warm hug. “My dear. You’re not alone. You’ve never been alone. I’ve never left you. When I couldn’t stay with you anymore I still watched over you from this side of things. You have Smudge to watch over you, too. He’s such a good cat. You have Jon, and Grace, and so many friends. So many. Even people you don’t fully understand, like Sean Fitzwallis. New friends too, like Ellen. You were a little hard on her, weren’t you?”
Darcy stepped back with an embarrassed frown. “I’ll talk to Ellen. I promise. But Millie, I still have so many questions, and you might be the only one who can answer them. Where’s Smudge? How did you die? Why is the beehive journal so important? What do the parts say that are ruined? Millie, please…”
&nbs
p; The old woman’s ghost, the dream of her, shook her head and went back to the table. She picked up one of the books and pressed it into Darcy’s hands.
The Forgotten Land of Deseret.
“I’ve already told you,” she repeated, and Darcy felt frustration building in her again.
Clenching the book so hard that her knuckles turned white, she opened her mouth for a deep breath, about to shout the questions at her aunt all over again.
As if that would help.
Leaning forward, the angry words fell away. The seatbelt locked her in place as their car came to a stop in their own driveway.
“Hey,” Jon said to her, “I’m glad you slept a little.” He kept the engine running but turned off the headlights, plunging them into darkness. The sun had set. Night was on them.
“Turn them back on,” she said, her voice tight, “please.” She sat very rigid, suddenly afraid of what might be out there in the dark. There was light from the house, coming through the windows to cast a glow over the lawn and the trees waving in the gentle night breezes. It wasn’t enough.
Darcy didn’t breathe easy until he’d snapped the headlights back on. It had been a long time since she’d been afraid of the dark. Afraid of what might lurk in the shadows or go bump in the night.
Someone had taken Smudge, and nothing was right with the world. Bad things lurked in the dark, and time was not her friend.
Over a year ago now, Grace’s husband Aaron had been kidnapped. It had been his bad luck to walk into the middle of a bank robbery. They’d found him in time, before the robbers had done any permanent physical harm to him, but it had taken him a very long time to get over it. Grace had taken longer to find her way back to normal.
Darcy had felt something similar, too, during that investigation. She was feeling it again now. Worry. Fear. A tangle of emotions that combined into sour jelly in her stomach.
“Where were you?” Jon asked her after a moment of silence had passed between them. “Just now, I mean, when you fell asleep. You were dreaming.”
“I was talking to my aunt…” She looked down at her hands, still held tight and stiff like she was holding onto the book Millie had handed her. The book about Deseret. It wouldn’t have surprised her to find the book right there, carried over from the dream…
