Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection

by C. M. Stunich

  With another pop and a flash of bright light, the park disappeared around us, and the ambulance sat parked in front of the large, stone apartment where the four of us lived happily together in Salem.

  6

  I stood alone outside of the large walk-up apartment building, staring up at the top windows where my bedroom was. There was a strange feeling around the place as if it were familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. I looked up and down the street and noticed the ambulance had disappeared. I was alone yet again.

  I swallowed through the dryness in my throat, stepping toward the entrance of the thrift shop. I paused when my eyes fell on a line of police tape over the door. The lights were off, and an eeriness hung around me. The sun was setting in the far distance, and a cold chill set into my bones.

  Moving slowly, I pushed the door open. It was unlocked, which was convenient as my dream-self didn’t seem to have a set of keys. When I stepped inside, I hardly recognized the place. It was dusty and dark, linen sheets covering most of the merchandise. Something wasn’t right. I stood in place, taking it all in for a long minute before realizing this wasn’t the thrift shop I knew.

  The door shut behind me and I jumped, my gasp deafening in the strange stillness that filled the space. I reached to the wall to turn the light switch on, but nothing happened. Not even a flicker. I swallowed again, the heavy scent of dust filling my nose. I walked through the space, every step sending a deeper chill to my core.

  Police tape circled the middle of the large store, and when I turned the corner, a cry escaped my lips. There were white markings in the shape of a human body on the ground, and a small form lay in the center covered in a white sheet. A body. It was a dead body.

  I took a step back, tripping over the leg of a display rack and falling harshly on my back, my elbows aching as they crashed into the stone floor. I crawled back away from the body, looking around frantically. “Hello? Is anyone here?” My voice echoed in the surrounding space, the darkness pressing against me.

  My eyes adjusted even more, the white mass of the blanket draped over the body glowing brighter by the second. I swallowed, but my voice wouldn’t come. I wanted to call for help, to call for someone, anyone, but the fear paralyzed my throat. Who was under that blanket?

  I swallowed deeply and forced out my words. “Guys?” I called out, waiting for them to appear. But they didn’t, and I was still alone. “Not the best time to disappear, here!”

  I awkwardly pushed myself back up to my feet and wandered around the space, keeping a decent distance away from the dead body. Deeply hidden under the scent of dust was the acrid scent of decay. I pulled my sleeve down to cover my nose, gagging as I became more aware of the looming feeling of death around me.

  “Guys?” I called louder, my voice hoarse and my throat sore. My chest ached, and my mind felt numb. I desperately looked around for a clue of any sort to give me answers. I came to the desk where a cash register sat, even more unfamiliar and confusing. A newspaper sat folded on the counter, and I picked it up, dust falling from it as I opened it to the front page. Murder. I read the article twice over, no mention of a name, but the description felt familiar, all too close.

  “Agatha,” I whispered. I looked down to the form covered in the sheet, my chest tightening. “Oh god, I remember. Agatha?” I took a timid step toward the covered form, my eyes tracing the line of the body beneath. It was small, dainty. No more than five feet tall, the body haunched. My blood ran cold. “Agatha, is that you?”

  Realization flooded my mind, memories bursting through the blanket of confusion that had clouded my mind until this point. “Agatha, it is you.” Agatha was dead, she’d been murdered. That’s right, I remembered. I read the newspaper once more, confirming my suspicions. I hung my head, a deep sadness replacing all emotions that had previously consumed me. My voice came out a whisper. “Agatha’s dead, that’s where she was. She wasn’t kidnapped, she didn’t disappear. She died.”

  My voice echoed, but no reply came. I waited a long moment, looking around. Voice louder, I called out into the room, stifling the sobs that threatened to burst from my chest at the crushing realization that the woman I so desperately sought had been killed. “I solved the mystery, dammit! Wake up now!”

  But I didn’t, the dream kept going.

  I groaned loudly, frustration filling me. I ran back to the front of the thrift shop and tried to open the door, but it was locked. I looked around for the key, feeling my pockets, but they were nowhere in sight. I groaned and slammed my fist against the door, recoiling in pain as sharp needles shot down my arms. I looked down and gasped as the deep bruises appeared yet again. I cursed softly, pacing back and forth, trying to think. But the whole thinking thing was a lot harder to do when you were trapped in your own consciousness.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I rubbed my hands up and down along my arms, moving to the storefront as I peered outside, the sun having fully set and the lights from the street lamps glowing an eerie orange along the street in front of me. “I solved the mystery,” I shouted through the glass. “You can come out now. The game’s over.”

  Nothing happened. The guys didn’t appear. I looked down at Agatha who still lay there, dead. My lip quivered, and I turned away, tears burning my eyelids. I was surrounded by too much death, I couldn’t cope. My mind fell to Finn, lying somewhere in that ambulance, dying. Far too much death.

  “Stupid rotten tomatoes,” I sore again, picking up my pacing once more. After all that, I still didn’t have the answer, somehow. I ran my hands through my tangled hair, desperately trying to come up with an idea, anything that would lead me toward solving this mystery. What was the mystery? Agatha was here, she was dead. “You must not actually dead,” I said to the corpse. I paused staring at it for a long moment. Do I dare?

  I approached the body, my heart beating quicker with every step I took toward it. When I finally stood above her, I stared down for a long moment taking deep breaths, willing myself to find strength. I closed my eyes and bent down in one swift motion, grabbed hold of the sheet and pulled it. When I opened my eyes, I held in a scream, bracing myself for the appearance of a dead corpse… but nothing was there. It was empty, nothing but the bare floor beneath sheets, dust falling and settling around where I disrupted it by removing the blanket. “What the…”

  I let the blanket fall beside me, looking around, but the room was still. There was no body, there was no form. Nothing. I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion filling me once more. “This is a dream, this is all a dream. This isn’t real.” I kept repeating it, but I somehow didn’t believe it anymore. There was more going on than simply being stuck in a dream. My mind was trying to tell me something, and I was too stupid to figure it out.

  “Think,” I heard Tom’s voice repeat in the back of my mind. I groaned loudly, anger filling me his time. “I am thinking, you dingbat!” I shouted, my voice echoing loudly in the silent shop, too loud in my ears. I fell back to my knees, my body shaking. I stared at the newspaper.

  A flash of memory spurred me forward as I pulled it toward me, my eyes scanning it again. “Okay, think. Think.” I then looked up to the ceiling, remembering something about the upstairs, my fingers wrapped tightly around the newspaper in my hand.

  “Newspapers…” Something in my subconscious tugged me toward the basement door, the door leading to the apartment upstairs. I steeled myself and let the newspaper fall to the ground. “Newspapers, article clippings…” That’s it, there were more newspapers upstairs. Memories of flipping through newspaper clipping for hours on end with Agatha filled my head. If there was an answer to all this, it would surely be there.

  And with another proof, the room disappeared once more.

  7

  “Okay, brain, no more popping around like something from a silly fantasy novel!” I called out to my own consciousness, disoriented as I found my footing, standing in the middle of the upstairs bedroom.

  The room felt just as strange and unfamiliar a
s the thrift shop downstairs. I couldn’t quite place what was different, but it wasn’t the same bedroom I’d spent the past few months sleeping in, that was for sure. Eyes scanning the silence-filled space around me, I took in my dust-covered surroundings. The bed sat pushed to the far wall, intricate wooden carvings sweeping over the expansive headboard. The sheets were a muted pink, lace spilling out beneath the heavy quilted comforter.

  The pictures on the walls were unfamiliar and ancient-looking, like archival photographs you’d find tucked away in the protected back rooms of the library. A chill crept up my spine as I stood there, absorbing my surroundings.

  My eyes fell to the large framed painting on the wall directly across from the bed. This one I recognized. The same painting of the grand, dove-white classical-style stone hotel graced the wall of my own room, a closer-up image of a grand wallpapered room with elaborate furnishings next to it. Tracing the edge of the frame with my fingertip, I left a trail of dust in its wake. I let my hand drop, a slow breath filling my lungs as I tried to make sense of where exactly I stood.

  I was at home, but not. Peering closer at a black and white photograph on a nearby dresser, my eyes fell to a familiar face. Young, different, but familiar. “Agatha,” I breathed, lifting the photograph to take a closer look. It was unmistakably her, but a solid fifty years younger. She looked younger than I was now in this photograph, her ruffling skirts and tight, buttoned-up overcoat so vastly different than the housecoat and slippers I had grown so used to seeing her in.

  Setting down the photograph, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that pulled at the far reaches of my memory. I looked around at the other photographs, each older than the last. As I stared at the young, pretty Agatha, the cogs in my mind began turning.

  I thought I knew where I was, but there was no way...

  Plunking myself down on the floor near a pile of newspapers, I began poring through them. Scanning the front page of a small, folded paper, my eyes clung to the date in the top right corner.

  A soft gasp bubbled from my throat. Impossible. I flipped through the rest, each dated the same year. 1895. “How is this possible?” I glanced back up at Agatha’s photographs, the style of clothing and ancient look of the photographs were in line with the year of newspapers.

  Tom’s voice echoed in my mind. “Think,” it told me.

  I was so very tired of thinking.

  I pushed myself up and ran to the window, pushing the billowing, velvet folds of the curtains away as I peered outside. Another gasp escaped my lips. The street below was unrecognizable. Dirt replaced the asphalt, and horse-drawn carriages lined the streets. Impossible.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I said, slinking back to the large bed and collapsing onto my back. “I’ve gone back in time. That’s pretty darn cool.” I could hear Tom’s gruff voice again, nagging me. Think. I sighed and sat up, looking around. “Well, what do you want me to do? I’m sitting in a dead woman’s apartment in the 1800’s,” I called out to him, not expecting a response.

  Rubbing my eyes, I let out a frustration-filled groan. I jumped from the bed and paced the room, wracking my brain for something, anything to tell me the significance of this place, this date. I trailed my fingers along the wall as I walked, thinking back to the scene in the thrift shop downstairs. “Agatha is dead,” I stated aloud. That much I knew. I remembered seeing the reports, reading about the events in the newspapers in my waking life. I swallowed through the growing lump in my throat as the image of the white cloth-covered corpse on the thrift shop floor filled my memory. I shook my head, ridding myself of the grisly image.

  “Think, Price, Think.” I could almost hear Tom’s voice mimicking my words in my mind. “Think.”

  I knelt down in front of the newspaper clippings again and began flipping through them, one at a time. I put aside the yellowed papers dating late in the 1800’s, and when I came to a brighter-white paper, I paused. Unfolding the crisp sheets, I held it out at arms-length and scanned the tiny print that ran across each page. Page after page I flipped through until I finally came to what I figured my darn dream was leading me toward.

  I dropped the newspaper in front of me and stared down at my own face. Patting my pockets, I swore when I remembered I didn’t have my phone. I read the year printed on the newspaper. “What year is it?” I asked aloud, looking around the space, even more confused than I had been before. But the room around me remained antiquated, the frilly pink sheets still falling from the ancient-looking bed behind me. My eyes fell again to my face on the page, and I stared at myself, my modern clothing and colored photograph jarring against my outdated surroundings.

  “How is a newspaper from the twenty-first century sitting in a room in the 1800’s?” A spark flashed in the back of my mind, and my eyes narrowed. I pushed the paper aside and read through the rest, my eyes skimming each page of the papers, my thoughts growing wilder by the minute.

  Paper after paper seemingly following the events of my life sat before me. A group photo of myself and some friends at a fundraising event last year - or whatever year it was - in Portland, a picture of my grandparents at some formal senior’s event a few years before... “Who would have been collecting these things? Why?” I could almost see Tom smiling in the back of my mind, encouraging me on.

  Okay, so I’m on the right track, at least.

  I continued to flip through the papers, an image of the grand-opening of my juice shop, my smiling face standing next to Gerard at the shiny front doors, eager to celebrate my launch. My stomach tightened at the site of him, a queasiness settling just below my bellybutton. Squeezing my eyes shut, I was overwhelmed by the memory of the courthouse. Gerard’s judgemental eyes peering up at me, standing next to his spunky little blonde fiancé. Gag.

  I bristled as the sound of the game show music filled the room around me. No, no, not again! Pressing my hands to my ears, I tried to hum over it, but it was no use. The sound seemed to come from within my brain. There was no escaping it. Angry faces from the crowd filled my head, and I focused my eye on the familiar painting on the wall. The same painting that hung in my own room. “This isn’t real, it’s a dream.” The painting calmed me, reminding me of my own reality. Wherever or whatever that was.

  The meowing of three scared-sounding cats made me pause. I looked around the room somewhat crazed, scooting back to peer under the bed. No cats were to be found. “Come on!” I shouted, falling back onto the plush carpet, my gaze trailing the intricate swirls of the plasterwork on the ceiling, finally settling on the square glass pendant lamp that hung above me.

  My breath caught in my throat. The memory of the glass prison suspending me over the pit of hungry animals overwhelmed my thoughts, my heart beat increasing within my chest to the point of being deafening. I closed my eyes but could still see the lights, still hear the crowd chanting and screaming. The same crowd and same voices from the trial. What kind of a sick nightmare is this? “Wake up, Price! Wake up, wake up, wake up,” I cried. Nothing happened. My stupid waking conscious ignored me. I lay there, shaking, the terrifying lights and music and chanting filling my eyes, my ears… The crowd screamed, “Witch, witch! Drop the witch!” My eyes flashed open.

  “That’s it!” I bolted to my feet, rushing over to the photograph of Agatha. I peered at it, a slight smile pulling at the corners of my lips. “That’s it, you sly little minx.”

  Agatha peered up at me from the photograph, her sweet smile brightening her face, and I could have sworn she blinked at me from within the frame. I could sense Tom’s encouragement from the darkest corners of my mind. I took in a deep breath, my eyes not once pulling from Agatha’s picture.

  “You can’t have been kidnapped, because you’re dead,” I began. “But that didn’t solve the puzzle, I’m still here. Which means you’re not really dead, though I saw the murder scene down below. I read about it in the paper.” Taking in another slow breath, I paused. The smile nearly burned my cheeks. “But you’re not really dead, are you? Becaus
e you’re a witch.” I paused again, for effect. Waiting for the guys to appear any second. “You’re a ghost, damn it! And you can’t kidnap a ghost. You disappeared because you’re not really here. You’re a spirit!”

  A loud pop startled me, and I spun, my breath coming in a quick, ragged gasp as I stood face to face with a smug-looking Agatha.

  “Took you long enough, you useless little bean pole.”

  I stepped toward her, my arms hugging my chest. My face ached from smiling in relief. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see your face, Agatha.”

  She scrunched her mouth together, her wrinkles growing more prominent. She looked so different from the photograph, though somewhere deep within that elderly face of hers I could still see the young, pretty girl from the picture.

  “I thought you’d have solved this dreams ago,” she sneered, her eyes rolling back into her head. “How chaotic this dream of yours has been. You really should get that little brain of your checked out once you wake. Too many vegetables does a brain no good, you know.”

  I rolled my eyes, a giddy laugh emanating from deep within my chest. I looked around the room and faltered. “Uh, Agatha?”

  Agatha groaned. “What now, cabbage patch? I have things to do, places to be…”

  Eyebrow raised, I crossed my arms, shaking my head in disbelief. “You are literally in my dream. Where else do you have to be?”

  “I…” She began but then groaned again, raising her hands in defeat. “Spit it out, pork chop.”

  I bristled but let that one go. “If I solved your mystery, why are we all still here?”

  8

  Muted footsteps sounded through the walls, telling me more people approached. I held my breath, listening to the familiar cadence of each step. I let out a slow breath, a tightness returning to my chest as I waited. I knew those footsteps.