by Mark Tufo
She nodded. “Perhaps. I can tell you that I know how the chest inside which we found the items arrived here. And I know how someone knew to store these items for you. The chest itself told me much; it is hand carved from three woods. Red oak, white oak, and southern yellow pine. These were common materials in the time the original four lived, and these chests were the most common storage container. But the contents of the chest is all from the time of the recent past four.”
Peter turned to look directly at Isabel. “Are you saying Galen transported that chest through time? And told one of the four to leave us clues?”
“According to those closest to him, he could physically transport from place to place, and there is no other explanation how the trunk could be here and in this condition. The wood is not treated in any visible way, yet it doesn’t appear to be any older than 40 years, much less three hundred. And it’s small as trunks were built then. Not even thirty inches long, only nine inches high.”
“Jesus,” Peter said. “So Galen was here. He could as easily have visited me.”
“I don’t believe it possible,” Isabel said. “I do not believe he could come face to face with any of the original four’s incarnations. He would have had to approach someone else who had access to the trove of historical photographs, the dress, all of it.”
Isabel turned and took both of Peter’s hands in her own and squeezed them.
“There are things I am not sharing with you yet, Peter. With regard to Galen and his visit to Chris’ time, what’s done is done in the past, and it may not have happened yet in our time frame. You see, Peter, he and Katherine were very close, so these two, when alone together for periods of time, could have discovered disturbing things and developed plans to remedy them. Since Katherine could see the future, and Galen could travel through time, they were a perfect partnership for this dire situation. To help you, the very people threatened by Vickar’s curse.”
Peter shook his head. “Isabel, some of those pictures are from the 1980s. How did they get in there? Which one of us knew? You have to tell me that much.”
“You will learn this, Peter. But I cannot tell you. Keep in mind, this would have taken quite a leap of faith, but from what I know of these four, they were determined. There is a good chance that Katherine had premonitions and visions of things she only shared with Galen. They may have done things only they knew about with regard to the destruction of Murdock Vickar.”
Peter stood and stretched his legs. He looked down at Isabel and smiled.
“I’m more confused now than before, I think. But I also feel a bit better, because if Galen and Katherine were helping us from way back when, then they might still have some tricks up their sleeves.”
Isabel shook her head. “Don’t rely on their trickery,” she said. “But on your own..”
*****
CHAPTER TWELVE
At the hospital, Emma hobbled down the hallway toward the trauma center in her walking cast. It had been a busy day. With summer here in Laguna Beach and the surrounding beach communities, accidents had ramped up. Heavier traffic, distracted drivers, near drownings, gang shootings in places you wouldn’t expect them to happen. The inland summer heat could get to anyone, but Emma saw its affect in the worst ways.
Pacific Trauma Center, located adjacent to South Coast Medical Center and even connected by a covered walkway, was a cooperative venture with SCMC, and had so far worked out well. The hospital could boast a trauma center – the only one for fifty miles – and they didn’t have to absorb the cost of running it. The center employed top trauma surgeons, residents and interns, and doctors like Emma Sandelli made it hum.
For her injury, they had brought in an aluminum support stand designed to allow her upper thigh to rest on its brace as she stood for long surgeries. As a result, the weight that if put on her leg for long hours could cause tremendous discomfort, was nonexistent. For all intents and purposes, she could operate as if she had no broken leg at all.
The cast was due to come off in just over another week, but it would be even weaker then, so this device would be a perfect tool to use during her strengthening.
A young boy of ten years was on her table. He had been in a severe car accident in Laguna Niguel less than 90 minutes ago. He had removed his seat belt to attempt to get his iPod from between the two front seats, and when his mother had seen him out of his belt, she turned to scold him and tell him to get back down and buckle up.
And that’s when her car veered onto the textured inside shoulder, jumped the median like a stunt car, and smashed head-on into the semi-trailer rig.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The driver of the rig was horrified, but not badly injured. He had been brought in, and as they prepped the boy for surgery, Emma had spoken with him, and some other less-injured witnesses.
Shaking badly, the driver told police as she looked on and listened, that the car had jumped the median and had made a beeline toward him. He’d been driving at a legal speed of just over forty miles per hour.
The combined impact speed was nearly ninety miles per hour, and according to people on scene, the mother, having been turned in her seat, was knocked sideways by the airbag, snapping her body violently upon impact.
She had clearly managed to scare the boy back into his seat, and apparently the impact had taken place just as he’d snapped the safety belt back on.
But the car had become airborne as it jumped the heavily planted median, and as it began its front-heavy, downward arc toward the speeding rig, the worst possible thing for the boy’s mother happened.
The front end tucked beneath the truck, shattering the windshield into a thousand crystalline pieces and sending the engine smashing into her body. Worse yet, the rear of the car hadn’t lost its forward momentum one iota and had to go somewhere.
On initial impact, the metal framework of the driver’s seat twisted and snapped, and the boy’s head had whipped forward, impaling his eye socket on one of the sharp, flexible support bars that jutted through the leather.
As the car landed on its front grille, and the twisted metal and engine shrapnel killed the boy’s mother instantly, the hurtling car literally bounced. Witnesses said after initial impact with the truck and earth, it sprung nearly four feet off the ground like an Olympic gymnast, and would have cleanly end-for-ended, except that as the car folded against the front of the truck, the entire back seat and trunk section sheared off and rocketed over the top of the rig.
It landed seventy-five yards behind the initial impact zone.
And the boy was still lodged inside the car with seat parts and other metal works lodged inside his body, holding together his shredded internal organs as gingerly as a pile of Pick-up Sticks.
And even as the section of the vehicle in which the boy was trapped slid to a stop, the truck’s tremendous momentum kept it moving forward, having already taken the front half of the car from forty miles per hour forward to nearly forty miles per hour in the opposite direction, like a giant steel tennis ball being swatted away by a giant mesh racquet.
Emma looked down at the boy on the table. He was going to die, she knew.
The team was in place, and the machines were breathing for the boy. Emma gave her orders, asked for the tools she needed, and they were put efficiently in her hand.
She cut. The metal pieces exposed in the X-ray were in places from which she knew she couldn’t extract them safely. No amount of blood pouring into this child’s body, no amount of mechanical breathing would save him.
It was days like this she felt useless.
And her hands stopped moving. She stared at the boy on her table. She felt the eyes on her.
“Dr. Sandelli?”
She stared. The voice came from somewhere else. And her hands began to move. In swift motions, she cut and removed the metal fragments. Large. Small. Particles. And as she did this, the cuts behind them healed themselves.
She did not look at the others. Emma knew she mus
t be dreaming this, for it could not happen. Cauterization was automatic. Blood stopped flowing from the wounds.
She heard nothing then, but pure silence. Only the machines in the room. Not a breath from those around her.
Her hands moved along, and she realized her movements were only pantomimes for those watching her. She took out the foreign objects, yes, but as they came free, no visible damage lay in their wake. If not for the existing blood layering the wounds, everyone would have noticed. As she worked, she still couldn’t believe nobody had said anything abut the miracle they witnessed.
And then it was done. And the boy was alive.
“Close him up,” she said.
And they laughed and clapped their hands. They acted as if Emma had worked a miracle. They had seen it with their own eyes, as she had, but they believed it was her surgical expertise that had saved the boy.
But Emma knew. Emma knew the feeling that had surged through her body as she sliced with the scalpel, and brought the curved needle back to sew up in her path.
She had healed him alright.
Emma the witch – Emma the healer – had saved the boy who could not be saved.
Emma stepped away from the table and removed the support brace from her leg.
And passed out.
*****
When Emma awoke, Matt was beside the bed. She looked at him as though she had no idea why he was there.
“Hey, sunshine,” he said.
“Matt . . . I—”
“You passed out in the OR.”
“Shit.”
“What happened?”
Emma didn’t answer for a moment. Then, as if by an enormous brain data download, it all flooded back to her. She looked at Matt, and a faint smile touched her lips.
“I have powers, Matt. I can heal.”
“Yeah, duh and all that. You’re a trauma surgeon, Em. Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean like that, Matt.” She looked around the room, and at the curtain blocking her view of the next bed over. “Are we alone?”
Matt walked over and peeked behind the opaque curtain and nodded. “Completely.”
“The boy was as good as dead, Matt. Dead. He had a steel rod through his eye, for God’s sake, Matt. He had been punctured so many times there’s no fucking way I or anyone else could’ve saved him.”
“I get that,” Matt said. “It’s all anyone’s talking about out there.”
“It wasn’t me. Or . . . not the me who’s been doing this stuff for my entire career. It was my powers, Matt. I didn’t even use the needle. Not really – I kind of moved it along, but the wound was healing itself. Everything I did was just for show.”
“Wow. I don’t even know what to say.”
“How is he? How long have I been out?”
“One thing at a time,” Matt said. “I hear he’s doing fine, but I haven’t been here that long. I got here just as you were finishing up, so I was in the lobby. I thought we might be able to take in a late lunch together if you had time. Then all hell broke loose. You were only out like fifteen minutes and I’ve been here since they got you to the bed.”
“Still sober?” she asked, taking his hand.
“Clean and,” he responded.
Emma squeezed his hand and smiled. “You’ve discovered your power, and I know mine.”
“This seems to be happening fast, Em.”
She nodded. “It’s like we’re on a steep downhill slope, gaining speed without much control, right?”
“Isabel’s our speed brake,” Matt said. “Thank God for her, otherwise I think I’d probably careen off a mountainside.”
Emma squinted down at her arm, then up at the IV rack. It was only then that she realized they were feeding her fluids intravenously.
“Matt, hand me a package of that gauze and some tape from that right hand drawer, would you?”
He did, and she removed the IV line and taped the gauze over the puncture.
“I’ve got to go see him.”
“I understand. Are you staying the rest of the day?”
“I’m on call, but I might be able to get out for 45 or so. Suddenly I’m starving.”
“Magic sure takes it out of you. How about a sandwich from Charlie’s?”
“Perfect and close,” she smiled. “Give me about fifteen minutes, okay?
Matt nodded and Emma gave him one more squeeze of the hand. He left the room with her, splitting off in the direction of the lobby as she turned right toward the IC ward.
But she knew the boy didn’t need intensive care. He was going to be just fine.
*****
“Something’s bothering me,” Matt said.
“I figured,” said Emma.
“Em, I can’t stand that Joshua Mattingly dies so young. At the hands of that bastard.”
Emma laughed. “Matty, it’s not you, okay? He died back in 1940, and as a result you were born.”
Matt nodded and took a small bite from his sandwich. He washed it down with a drink from his Coke and looked at Emma again.
“I’m scared to go back in, Em.”
“I know, and maybe you don’t need to. With Joshua’s death so early, the time proximity to the photos we’ve already gone into is impossible to determine. None of us would look much older, if at all, considering we’re witches and we age more slowly. We’d have no way of knowing how close to the event we were without dates written on the photos. I don’t want you to risk going into a photo that ends with your death – the fire at the church.”
“I don’t need any convincing, Em,” said Matt. “I don’t think even Isabel knows what might happen if we die in one of the trips back.”
Emma smiled at him. “We’ll figure this out tonight. I think we need to go back in, whether you do or not. There are too many dynamics here we aren’t aware of yet. We need to find out if Ferguson Carver died, and if so, when. He’s the key to all of this.”
“Fucking bastard,” Matt said. “A murderer and a rapist, and who knows what else he’s done.”
“Did,” Emma said. “He’s probably dead, too.”
Matt shook his head. “But he’s still here, Em. No matter what, he’s still here in one form or another.”
“And he always will be unless we learn more and find out how to stop him.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” she said, putting the half-eaten sandwich back on the paper plate. “I have to get back now. Ally’s coming in later. Take care, Matt. And don’t worry, okay?”
But when she left him sitting there, she knew in her heart that it was all he would do. And she prayed he had the strength to withstand it.
She was beginning to care for him more than she would ever have believed possible.
*****
They reconvened that night, again meeting at Emma’s house. With Allyson’s father in an evening-long sensitivity seminar required for all senior police officers, Allyson had a few hours of perceived freedom at least, and Lawson Newland did not yet know Emma or the location of her house. It was safer than the canyon house.
Peter sat next to Allyson on the sofa, and across from them Isabel had taken an armchair.
The beanbag chair in which Matt sat looked extraordinarily uncomfortable, but it was likely because Matt hadn’t fluffed it right before falling into it. Now one elbow was practically rubbing the floor and he tried to look casual by supporting his chin with his hand.
He wasn’t fooling Peter.
Emma was content to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Matt.
Emma shared with all of them her amazing experience that day, and they were dumbfounded. Even Matt, who’d heard the story already. They asked her what it felt like as it happened and other questions she couldn’t answer; all of them but Isabel, who only smiled.
Peter knew this was not a surprise to the old woman. It was expected.
Emma shared her feeling that they were picking up speed, feeling nearly out of control in the quick advancement
of their knowledge of the various powers they possessed.
“It’s true,” Isabel said. “Things are culminating now, and I feel it will not be long before the confrontation takes place.”
Matt gawked at her. “The . . . final confrontation?
“Of course the finality of it depends on how it turns out. But at this point, the two who must do more to make this happen are Allyson and you, Peter. You were keys in the past, and you are keys today.”
Peter didn’t like the sound of it. But he knew it was true, and if Allyson was by his side, he was sure he would gather the determination to do what was necessary.
Isabel looked squarely at Peter. “Galen was a time traveler, as we discussed in private. Katherine sees the future.”
Emma gawked. “What the fuck? Web?”
“Em, relax.”
“Fuck relax, you can time travel?”
“I can’t. At least not yet. Apparently Galen could. He may have come to this time at one point. In our past lives.”
They looked at him as though he were drunk.
“When? Just as Vickar cast the spell they were all burned,” Matt said. “He wouldn’t have had time.”
“He could leave his body, as you can,” Isabel said. “In those moments, after Vickar cast his spell and they joined hands to cast their own, he could have left his body and traveled forward to find you.”
“But how – how would he know which when to travel to?” asked Emma.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. He would have had all the time he needed, for the body is just a shell. It is just a place for the soul to live. Galen left his body, but nobody knows how long the soul can live without. The only one who might know that is Galen.”
They stared at her. Even the sound of their breathing did not break the pure silence in the house.
“Galen could have remained outside his body indefinitely, traveling forward in time, sensing where his and his loved ones’ future shells would be. He had perhaps visited them several times at several different times of their lives, and realized they had made a mistake in their spell; they had not caused remembrance of purpose.”
