Children of Eternity Omnibus

by P. T. Dilloway

  “It’s fine. She’d be glad it’s getting some use.” He backed out of the driveway and then drove down the hill.

  Behind her, Prudence and Wendell leaned against their windows to get a better look as a town came into sight. A white steeple pierced the morning sky ahead of them with the ocean spreading out behind it. A row of low buildings ran on either side of a wide street, along which were parked numerous automobiles of different shapes and sizes. A blue-and-white sign announced they had arrived in the town of Seabrooke, population 2,074.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Pryde said. “You kids got any idea where you want to start looking?”

  Samantha shook herself away from admiring the buildings and automobiles to say, “Would you mind if we got out and walked around? I think it would be easier that way.”

  “Sure. Why don’t you kids get out and do a little window-shopping. I’ll meet you back here in about an hour. I got to check on my boat.”

  Mr. Pryde pulled over to one side of the road and the three children got out. He waved to them before he took off down the road, disappearing around a corner. Samantha stood with Prudence and Wendell on the side of the road, in awe of how large and grand Seabrooke appeared in comparison with Eternity.

  A sharp pain stabbed Samantha’s head. She cried out, Prudence and Wendell grabbing her by the arms before she fell. “Samantha, what’s wrong?” Prudence asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Samantha said. The pain subsided and they pressed on to a shop. Prudence threw herself against the display window to gape at the mannequin dressed in a glittering black dress. “Designs by Suzie,” Samantha whispered. She looked up at the sign over the door, which read, ‘Designs by Suzie.’ The pain in Samantha’s head returned.

  “Can we go inside?” Prudence asked.

  “I don’t want to go in there. That’s for girls,” Wendell said. “It’s not like they’ll have anything for you anyway.”

  “They will so!” Prudence shot back. “We can probably find you a nice dress too, Wendy.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Can’t you two be quiet?” Samantha said. She rubbed her temples, the pain growing worse, to the point where she could hardly see. “Stay here and wait for Mr. Pryde.”

  “Sam—” She didn’t hear the rest of Prudence’s question. She bolted down the sidewalk, trying to escape the pain.

  Chapter 12: New Beginnings

  As Samantha ran, she looked up at the names of the shops through a red haze of pain. She knew every store name before reading it off the sign. She finally collapsed onto a chair outside a café, shaking her head at the realization she must have been here before.

  With her head still pounding, she tried to think of when she might have been here and whom she might have been with. Nothing emerged from the subconscious soup in her brain to provide her with an answer. There has to be some way to find out, she thought.

  “Excuse me, can I get you something?” Samantha looked up to see a fat old woman standing by the table.

  “No, I was resting for a moment,” Samantha said.

  “These tables are for customers only, young lady. Move along before I call the police,” the old woman said.

  Samantha got up from the table, the pain in her head easing somewhat. She patted her pockets, feeling the jewelry she’d brought from Pryde’s cellar. She needed to find a place to sell the jewelry for some local currency. Where could she go? She should have asked Mr. Pryde before he left, but she didn’t want to make him more suspicious than he probably already was about why Samantha and her “cousins” were here.

  She continued along the sidewalk, which sloped down towards the sea. Near the bottom she came to a stop in front of a clapboard shack with everything from an anchor taller than the Primrose to a bathtub strewn about the front yard. The words, ‘New Beginnings Antiques’ were painted on the front window. Something told her this was the place to sell her jewelry.

  She opened the door, a bell ringing overhead. Inside she found the store as disorganized as the front yard. Old clothes, appliances, books, and knickknacks were spread about the shelves with no organization. In a glass case at the back of the store she found rows of broaches, necklaces, rings, and even war medals. The sight of so much jewelry gave her the sick feeling they wouldn’t want any of hers.

  “Can I help you?” a woman called out. Samantha turned around to find a middle-aged woman in a ratty brown sweater and a pair of reading glasses standing behind her.

  “Yes, I think so. You buy old jewelry, right?”

  “That depends on the quality.”

  Samantha reached into the pocket of her jeans to take out the bag of jewelry from Pryde’s cellar. She emptied it out onto the counter. “Is any of this high quality?”

  The woman bent forward, squinting behind her reading glasses to study the jewelry Samantha had poured out. As the woman examined an emerald broach, Samantha put a hand to her forehead. She couldn’t shake the feeling she had been here before. But she couldn’t simply ask the woman if she had been here previously without sounding like a lunatic.

  When the woman turned to Samantha, she took off her reading glasses and raised an eyebrow, “This is a magnificent collection. How did you happen to come about them?”

  “They belonged to my mother,” Samantha said. She couldn’t tell the woman she’d stolen them from a serial killer who’d taken them off his victims over three hundred fifty years.

  “Your mother? Where is she?”

  “She’s dead. Both my parents are dead,” Samantha said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Whom are you staying with now?”

  “I’m staying with my cousins. They’re Amish,” she said, remembering what Mr. Pryde had said the day before.

  “You must have come a long way then. There aren’t any Amish communities in Maine I’m aware of.”

  “We did come a long way. On a boat,” Samantha said.

  “I see.” The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “I think you and I need to have a discussion with Sheriff McCovey.”

  “The police? Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I’m sorry, young lady, but I can’t accept stolen goods from a runaway. It’s against the law. Now, why don’t you sit down and the sheriff can take you home.”

  “I’m not a runaway,” Samantha said. “I’m—” She tried to come up with a plausible explanation for how a fourteen-year-old girl could end up on her own with a bag of jewelry. She finally snatched the bag from the counter and took off running. The woman shouted for her to come back, but Samantha paid her no heed. She had to get out of here before the police showed up and asked her questions she couldn’t answer, like where she’d come from and where she’d been for the last nine years.

  Samantha ran along the docks, searching for a place to hide from the police. Fishermen looked up as she ran by, one even whistling at her. Behind her, she heard a siren and knew she didn’t have much more time to disappear before she was caught.

  As she continued to run past boats and piles of equipment, she looked back for any sign of someone following her. She turned her head around in time to run into a man tying up his boat. They both tumbled to the ground, the bag of jewelry shooting out of Samantha’s hand and spilling on the ground. She sat up to find Mr. Pryde standing over her, offering her a hand.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Why you running?” He indicated the bag of jewelry lying on the ground. “What’s all this? You been stealing from people? Is that your game? You and your friends come here pretending to be Amish so you can rob folks?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” Samantha said. She took a deep breath before saying, “We’re not really Amish. We are from a community that hasn’t had any contact with the modern world in over three hundred years. It’s on an island near here. We sailed over here in a boat.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “We’re usually self-sufficient,
but the crops failed last year and then this blizzard killed our livestock and—” She stopped to wipe tears from her eyes. “We’re desperate and we don’t have any money, so I took all the jewelry and I tried to sell it to this woman but she thought I stole it and called the police. I’m really sorry about lying to you after everything you’ve done. Please don’t tell the police about Wendell and Prudence. They didn’t do anything wrong. This is my fault.”

  Mr. Pryde reached into his pocket for a cigarette, lighting it with an unsteady hand. He blew out a stream of smoke and then said, “I ain’t going to let Sheriff McCovey take you. The way I see it, you ain’t done nothing wrong.” He bent down to shovel the fallen jewelry back into the bag. Then he handed the bag to her. “We’ll straighten all this out.”

  “You mean it? Thank you, Mr. Pryde,” Samantha said. She kissed Mr. Pryde on the cheek, causing his cigarette to fall from his lips. “You’ve been so wonderful to us. Isn’t there anything I can do to repay you?”

  “You can stop that crying for starters,” Mr. Pryde said. “Everything’s going to be all right. The sheriff and I go way back. He won’t touch you long as you let me do the talking.”

  Samantha wiped her eyes and nose, biting down on her lip to keep from crying any more. Part of her worried this might be some kind of trick, but she didn’t think Mr. Pryde capable of such deception. Not after all he’d done for them already.

  When she returned to New Beginnings Antiques, she found a fat, bald man in a dark blue uniform talking with the shopkeeper. Sheriff McCovey turned away from the woman at Mr. Pryde’s approach, his red face brightening with a smile. “You caught our runaway, eh, Judah? Hate to tell you, but there ain’t no reward on this one yet.”

  “She ain’t no runaway, Rick,” Mr. Pryde said. “She and her cousins been staying with me the past couple days.”

  “That a fact?” Sheriff McCovey asked. He turned to Samantha, his voice rising as if talking to a small child. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Samantha Young.”

  “How do you and your cousins know old Judah here?”

  “He’s our third cousin. On my mother’s side.”

  “That a fact, Judah?”

  “Sounds about right. I let her have that stuff there, just some old stuff of Laura’s. I reckon she didn’t need it.”

  “That a fact, Samantha?” She nodded. “Well, sounds like we got everything about wrapped up then. Unless you got anything to add, Miss Pestona?”

  “I think that’s a satisfactory explanation, Sheriff,” the woman said. “If you boys don’t mind, young Samantha and I have some business to conduct.”

  Miss Pestona led Samantha by the arm into the store. As she sorted through the jewelry Samantha had brought, she asked, “You said your name is Samantha Young?”

  “That’s right.”

  Miss Pestona paused to squint at Samantha from behind her glasses. “It’s funny, about ten years ago I had a woman come in here calling herself Samantha Young. She looked just like you. She was older than you, of course. I’d say by about thirty years. She even had a necklace like that.” Miss Pestona motioned to the half-heart necklace around Samantha’s neck. “I don’t suppose she was your mother?”

  “Yes, my mother. She told me about this place. Before she died, of course.”

  “That’s a terrible shame. She seemed like a nice woman. She knew more about antiques than anyone I’ve had in here.” Miss Pestona finished sorting through the jewelry and then reached into her sweater for a pad of paper. “You have some nice specimens in here. I’ll take these ones and give you a thousand dollars. If you want, I can give you the name of a broker in Portland who might take the rest.”

  Samantha nodded, her mind too distracted to consider whether she was being cheated or not. A Samantha Young who looked like her being here almost ten years ago? Along with the déjà vu she’d felt earlier, she knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. But thirty years older? That meant she would have been forty. She did the terrible math in her head, figuring her parents would have been dead for thirty-five years now.

  Despite biting down on her lip, Samantha couldn’t keep from crying again. Miss Pestona put an arm around her shoulder and asked what was wrong. “My mother, what did she say when she was here? She died when I was little. Anything you could tell me would be helpful.”

  “Mostly we talked about military antiques. She bought an old set of binoculars off me. Your mother was very knowledgeable about that.” Miss Pestona tapped her glasses against her chin. “You might want to talk with Mrs. Milton over at the Seafarer Bed and Breakfast. I think that’s where your mother stayed at when she was here.”

  “Really? Oh, thank you Miss Pestona. I’ll talk to her right away.” Samantha almost raced out the door, but Miss Pestona grabbed her arm.

  “Wait a second, young lady. Don’t forget your money. I’ll be right back.” When Miss Pestona disappeared into the back room, Samantha went over to an antique mirror to study her face. She tried to imagine herself at forty-four with wrinkles instead of pimples. Had she been thin or fat? She thought of asking Miss Pestona, but decided the question would sound too odd. Maybe she could find a way to ask Mrs. Milton at the inn.

  Miss Pestona returned with an envelope, inside which Samantha found slips of green paper. Dollars, she thought. Now she, Prudence, and Wendell could purchase the supplies for Eternity. But first she had something more important to do.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said to Miss Pestona and then bounded out the front door to find Mr. Pryde. She took his hand and started to tug him uphill. “Come on, we have to find the others,” she said. There wasn’t a moment to lose; she had waited too long already.

  Chapter 13: Transformation

  Joseph logged the latest entry into his computer. So far he had catalogued nineteen varieties of chemicals taken from the underground chamber. He examined a slide from each one in his microscope—careful not to touch any with his bare hands—ecstatic whistles turning to stunned silence.

  The results were unbelievable. The compounds in these formulas were unlike anything he had ever seen before. The molecular structures didn’t correspond to any known substances. He couldn’t be certain without better equipment, but he didn’t think some of the elements in these compounds could be found on the Periodic Table.

  With each substance he catalogued he included a hypothesis of the chemical’s effect on the body. Each one stimulated different areas of the brain, he surmised. The one he had ingested in the cave must have stimulated the visual and learning areas, although he couldn’t be certain because he had not found another jar of it. Others affected creativity or pleasure centers. Still others affected the level of hormones secreted within the brain.

  He considered what to do with the potions. The obvious solution would be to turn them over to a real laboratory for more in-depth analysis and study. Perhaps these chemicals could restore movement to crippled limbs or combat Alzheimer’s.

  But then if he turned them over to someone else, those people would get the credit and not him for the greatest discoveries in medical history. He might get a brief mention in someone’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, behind the scientist’s mother or Jesus Christ if he was lucky. No, the fame, fortune, and glory extending from those discoveries belonged to him. He would be the only one to make acceptance speeches for the Nobel Prize.

  He went to the door, stopping before he turned the knob, the memory of last night coming to him. Samantha Young might still be in the house. He didn’t want to see her again and risk further humiliation. He turned back to the jars lined up on the table. None of the chemicals on the table could make her fall in love with a geek like him. Unless—

  Of course! Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? If these compounds could alter hormonal levels and affect parts of the brain, perhaps they could transform him from a geek into a stud. No single potion he’d found would do the trick, but if he found a way to separate the elements of each potion and then combi
ne them he might be able to concoct what he needed.

  One look at her last night had told him she was the woman for him. Her exotic beauty compared to the other girls in Seabrooke was like an orchid in a field of dandelions. Everything from the homemade clothes to the way she cut her hair to the lack of makeup indicated this was a girl who didn’t care about fashion trends or what other chattering hens at school might think of her. She was a strong, independent woman. He had to have her.

  In the driveway he saw only Pop’s truck and the rusty hulk of Mom’s station wagon. Pop must have taken the car with Samantha. He would be pissed if he found out Joseph had taken the truck, but there wasn’t time to wait for Pop. He found Pop’s spare keys in the toolbox under the kitchen sink and then hurried outside to start the truck. He backed out of the driveway and turned onto the road towards Seabrooke.

  When he passed the welcome sign, he checked to make sure Sheriff McCovey wasn’t anywhere in sight to bust him. The last thing he needed right now was to get detained by the cops and have to explain why he’d taken the truck. Then Pop would find out and ground him, forcing him to sleep in one of the guest rooms to cut him off from his equipment. He couldn’t afford those kinds of delays now.

  As he passed by Designs by Suzie, he slowed to get a look at a redheaded boy arguing with a fat girl. Joseph remembered owning a Spider-Man shirt like the one the boy wore. He’d worn it every day during the summer when he was ten after Pop let Mrs. Schulman take Joseph to see Spider-Man 2 in Ellsworth. As for the fat girl, he could have sworn Mom had worn a turquoise dress like that in a picture taken from when she was pregnant with him. These kids must be Samantha’s cousins. He was tempted to pull over and ask about her, but he didn’t want to reveal his intentions.

  Instead, he accelerated down to the corner, finding an empty parking spot behind Grossman’s Pet Store. He looked around again to make sure no one noticed he’d driven the truck into town. He nearly fell out when he saw her in the mirror.

  Samantha sat across the street at a table of Barb’s Grill. Even with her face covered by her hands there was no mistaking that bronze skin of hers in a town like Seabrooke. He wanted to race across the street to ask her what the problem was, but he couldn’t take the chance of making a fool of himself again. He watched her for a few minutes in the rearview mirror, until Barb the owner of the café came out to shoo Samantha away. Joseph ducked in the driver’s seat, his entire body shivering.