by Ford, Lizzy
“The doctor believes your father doesn’t have more than a day, maybe two, before his heart gives out.” Philips words made my breath catch. “I am gathering what family can make it here within a day. If there are any acquaintances you wish me to contact?” By his doubtful look, he didn’t think I knew anyone.
“What of the Indian Chief?” I asked. “They have been neighbors for years and share land.”
“A practice I will put an end to when John passes.”
“Not if the lands all go to me.”
“Cousin,” Philip smiled. “Your claim to his property will not stand in court. You have no husband and no real claim, unless you can prove you are his daughter. You disappeared a year ago. The courts will believe a father first, a faithful cousin second.”
Anger trickled through me. He was sure of himself, already discrediting my ability to hold onto John’s lands. They weren’t mine, but the thought of a man like Philip taking over anything of gentle John’s made me mad.
It was getting harder to remember that I was here for one reason only: to keep Running Bear or his twin from starting a war. I didn’t need the drama of John and real Josephine’s life.
But I couldn’t help liking John a lot and hating Philip, either.
“We will discuss this when my father is gone. Until then, you will respect my wishes,” I told him. “The Indian Chief will be invited here.” If I can’t get answers, I’ll bring the answers to me.
Philip’s assured smile faded.
I turned my back on him and returned to John’s side.
He slept the entire day. I sat beside him, texting Carter when possible, and holding John’s hand when Nell or Philip or a servant or other visitor was present. I barely noticed the passage of the day, until someone came in to light the candles and lanterns around the room.
Nell brought me a small dinner. When finished, I rose and went to the fire, body stiff from sitting still all day. I watched the flames, allowing my mind to roam restlessly. No matter what, I had to get some fresh air in the morning, or I’d go crazy. John was too sick for me to go far.
The well – and the woman I saw falling into it – drifted through my thoughts.
It wasn’t the real Josie I saw in the distant memory, but it was someone, possibly one of the girls the sheriff had mentioned. I had been about to pry the wood off the top when he appeared. Nell was likely to be too worried about John to hover around me if I stepped out to the barn for some air.
“Josie, you should rest. Tomorrow, the house will be full. You will have to entertain, and I don’t know if you’re well enough yet,” Nell told me primly. “To bed, child.”
I didn’t roll my eyes like I wanted to and forced a smile. I had too many questions about what was going on around me, and I wasn’t able to stop thinking about the well. And … I was more worried about John than I thought I should be.
I went to my room, grateful that Nell didn’t follow. Upon entering, I stretched back to untie the girdle and took a deep breath.
The comfortable room was warmed by the fire with light from lanterns giving it a cozy glow. I found myself smiling, liking the bedroom that technically belonged to a stranger.
I went to the jewelry armoire to replace the necklace Nell insisted I wear this day. I went through the drawers, surprised by the amount of jewelry. It was expensive, too, with each necklace, ring and bracelet laden with precious or semi-precious stones. They were all well cared for and polished without even a fingerprint or smudge showing.
I admired them, unable to fathom why a girl who lived with a father like John and jewels this spectacular would ever consider running away, unless the man John wanted her to marry was a real monster.
With a grunt directed towards the bulky clothing, I knelt to reach the drawer at the bottom of the armoire. It was jammed, and for a moment, I wondered if it was just for show. With a hearty jerk, I dislodged it.
It was shallow and empty, except for a cell phone charm that read Happy Graduation! in one corner.
I stared at it. “What on earth?” I squeezed my eyes closed then opened them. The flashy, twenty-first century charm clashed with the world I was slowly adapting to.
Unease went through me. I plucked it up and saw it was connected by a thin wire to something beneath the bottom of the drawer. I pulled it, and the false bottom popped up.
“Three cell phones.”
Just like the sheriff said. Three other girls sent to live with John, maybe even for the same reason I was there: to change history. I had wanted to write them off as posers after John’s money, until Carter confirmed others might have preceded me. My faith in him was shaken once more, and I hesitated to touch the cells. The whispers were back but too faded for images to form.
There was something wrong about these phones, an instinct, a knowing, a flare of intuition that told me something bad happened to those who owned them.
None of them left. Sheriff Hansen had said.
Three phones. Three whispers at the well …
Both located on John’s property.
No. The man on his deathbed had nothing to do with this. I couldn’t even entertain the possibility.
Coldness filled my chest, freezing it. I cocked my head to the side, struggling to decipher what the empathic memories were attempting to convey. The only thing I saw was the same images from down the hallway: shadows, blood, voices, a fire. The energy or memories around the phones were too weak to show me anything.
I touched one phone. The cool metal beneath my fingertips made my dread grow stronger.
“Flip phone,” I almost giggled, a little hysterically. The bulkiest cell phone was clearly from the late nineties, while another looked like it was closer to five years old. The third was newer, maybe two years old. The women they belonged to had been taken from different years but sent to this one.
I touched the start button at the bottom of the youngest phone, not expecting its screen to light up.
It did. Like mine, there was no explaining how, given the lack of battery power and signal. There were fragments of a few messages on the front screen from the same contact I had: Carter.
Where are you?????? Read the most recent one. The others sent slivers of panic through me.
No matter what - don’t let him know why you’re there.
I can’t let this happen again. You WILL NOT go to …
I swiped my finger across the screen, alarmed at the idea there was some kind of danger here – one that Carter knew about and was refusing to share with me. To my frustration, the screen was locked by a passcode.
I set it down and reached for the next one. There were two messages on the screen from Carter.
How does he know who you are?
Get out. NOW.
I tried to unlock it but found it passcode protected, too. I picked up the oldest cell phone, certain there was no passcode on it. Its screen was tiny, dim, and cracked beyond repair, a reminder of how far cell phone technology had come in the past twenty years. There was no keypad, just numbers with letters, and a quick examination showed no camera, either.
A crack of lightning startled me. My eyes went to the window. I hadn’t been outside all day and was surprised to see the sky still covered with dark clouds after the three days of rain. Lightning rippled through them in the distance, followed by a low grumble of thunder.
Not another storm! A gust of wind tossed the drapes into the air. I rose and crossed to the window, closing it. I watched the sky for a moment, eyes falling to the barn, and I wasn’t able to stop the thoughts that formed.
Three phones. Three other women from my time had been in this room. Three voices in the well.
What was going on? I didn’t want the truth to be what I was inching towards, that someone in this house had a hand in getting rid of my predecessors.
I returned to the armoire and took a picture of the three phones then carefully replaced them beneath the false bottom. Satisfied it look the same way it had when I found it, I closed th
e drawer and sat back on my knees.
“Who put you all here?” The questions swirling through my mind took a moment to crystalize. My heart was beating fast.
What danger lurked in the house or nearby town?
I can’t let this happen again, Carter had said.
Fear blazed to life within me. Of all the mysteries, this was the one that scared me the most. I could see Philip being in on this but no one else.
I sent Carter the picture I had just taken and a text.
I think you’re keeping something important from me. If I’m in danger, I need to know, Carter.
Why not at least warn me?
Thunder drew my gaze towards the barn. I went to the window once more and gazed out.
The whispering I had heard around the phones was too faint, but that around the well was louder. If I couldn’t read one, I should be able to read the other. Gripping and releasing my cell phone, I couldn’t help thinking I needed to know what – or who – was in the well. I dared not risk waiting until the second storm was over.
The stable hands finished rounding up the horses and secured the barn before trotting towards the servants’ wing of the house.
I tucked my phone in a pocket and moved away from the window. Going to my door, I opened it, expecting to find Nell loitering the way she always seemed to be. No one was in the hallway, though I heard the movement of someone in one of the rooms whose door was cracked open.
I crept towards the stairs, cringing when the floorboards creaked beneath my light step. I hurried down the grand staircase, eyes darting around to make sure no one saw me.
The house was brightly lit and quiet. Voices of the visitors from town came from the parlor, and I assumed Nell was with John. The shutters had been drawn on the windows on the main floor, and I hurried to the front door, pulling it open. Stepping out, I closed the door quickly and breathed a sigh of relief that I had made it this far. The wind was strong, though it contained no telltale droplets of moisture that would precede another hard rain.
I took it as a good sign and raced from the house to the barn, pressing myself to the side not visible from the house. I tucked errant hairs caught up in the wind behind my ears. The charged wind was exhilarating, warm and cool swirling around me in a dangerous dance.
Lightning like that from the night I arrived made me look upward, and an instinct wriggled. If I had arrived in a lightning storm, was there some way for me to leave during one, too? Was Carter’s weird magic or technology tied to the charge of electricity from lightning?
Why am I thinking about it now? It wasn’t the day I was supposed to change things, and yet, with John almost gone and the mystery of the three other girls twisting my insides, I couldn’t help wishing I could hop in a car and just go home if things got too bad here.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I hurried to the back of the barn, where the loose hay had been covered with heavy canvas to keep it from blowing away. Leaning against the back of the barn, I pulled out the cell to read Carter’s message.
You’re the fifth girl we’ve sent back to this time. Four of you were supposed to take on the role of John’s daughter. The other three identified Taylor and disappeared soon after he realized who they were. It was the first straight answer he’d given me about the others.
“Five girls?” I gasped. There was too much behind his simple explanation for me to know where to start asking questions.
I had found three cell phones. Did that mean another woman was still here somewhere? Or had she been sent from a time with no cell phones?
“Four girls meant to take the place of John’s daughter,” I repeated, confusion turning to anger.
Do you mean John knows I’m not his daughter?
I pressed send, panic mixing with my anger. I shoved the phone in my pocket, gaze going to the well. Unable to suppress the need to know what happened, I crossed to it and gripped a wood board, yanking at it. A splinter pierced one finger, but the board gave.
The whispering was back. Tossed around by the wind but eerily present, trying to tell me a story I wasn’t able to understand.
I leaned over and peered into the well. It was too dark to see anything. I withdrew my cell again and flipped the camera to flash then lowered my arms as far as I could into the well.
I snapped a few pictures. The brilliant flash was almost as bright as the lightning and I winced, hoping not to draw attention from the house.
A crack of thunder almost made me drop my phone. I yanked it back and hastily retreated to the barn wall to get out of the wind.
Carter had responded.
It’s possible. He’s in the late stages of senility, so he may not understand that. But I don’t know what happened to the other girls; I just knew we had to risk sending you back to save lives. Remember - if you don’t succeed, a million people die.
His response managed to calm and confound me. Whatever his reasoning, he was at least being more honest this time, though why he wasn’t straight up with me before, I didn’t know. I decided to ask a question I should have when this adventure started.
How do I get out of here? I texted next. Is it through the storm, like I came here?
I sent the message and then flipped to my photo reel. It contained only the pictures I had taken since arriving. None of those I had of my life were present, and for a moment, I felt a deep sense of loss.
What if I was stuck in the past without anything to remind me of my world?
I blinked away the thoughts. I wasn’t about to give up on Carter, my purpose or my belief that there were good people like John and Nell in the world. I forced myself to focus on the pics I had just snapped.
Focusing on them, I stifled a cry. The camera had picked up what I wasn’t able to see – but which I could hear through the whispers.
I had found three of the four women Carter sent back.
CHAPTER TEN
Three heads were at the bottom of the well. One bony skull stared up at me, its long blond hair all that identified it as a woman. Another head with long, blonde hair was face down with its skeletal remains covered by a faded blue gown while the third head was off to one side, alone, with no body or clothing or anything identifying about it except for her hair.
Blonde hair. Like mine. Three girls sent back to pretend to be the daughter of a kind but senile man named John. It made sense that they’d all look similar, which meant every girl who came before me ended up murdered at the bottom of the well.
But why and by whom?
“Sheriff?” I whispered hoarsely. He knew or suspected me of being just like the other three. He’d flat out admitted that none of the other girls made it out of the town alive, and he’d been prowling around the well earlier that day.
Had he somehow figured out they were in the past to stop him from the massacre that was coming?
If so, who had put the phones in the armoire? Why did he offer to help me and rescue me the way he had?
I stared at the images, nauseated. The dry well had been filled with dirt to a point, but the fall was still far enough to kill someone if they went in headfirst.
Or were thrown in after being killed elsewhere.
My shock began to wear off, and I sent the image to Carter with a note. Not totally sure, but I think these are the other three women you sent.
He had already texted a response to me about leaving.
“You leave when you succeed in changing history. The plains have a lot of lightening storms this time of year with enough power to send you back,” I read aloud. “What if someone figures me out and throws me into a well, Carter?” Once again, I was stuck on the idea that there was more than bad communication here, that the darkness I sensed came from my intuition warning me not to trust Carter fully.
My hands shook. There were tears on my cheeks and the image of the girls in the well remained on my screen. I could hardly believe it was real, that I lived a hundred feet away from a well filled with the remains of the women who might’ve been the
re for the same reason I was. At least I figured out my danger, though I had no idea which direction it’d come from. Philip was first on my list, followed by the sheriff.
Fighting Badger … but he collected bodies in his cave. He didn’t throw them in wells.
A message popped up on my screen.
My god. You need to work fast. We sent you all back to John, because he is in the right location, senile and would accept you without question. I don’t know how someone figured out what we were doing. If you can get DNA, we’ll confirm if those three are your predecessors. Any idea where the fourth is? She wasn’t like you all.
“Really, Carter? DNA?” I replied.
How did he not think that sending back four girls to the same old man wouldn’t raise suspicion? That cousin Philip and nanny Nell weren’t going to notice when someone unrelated to the family like the sheriff had figured it out?
Um, I’m not crawling down there for DNA samples. I replied. There’s a lightening storm tonight. If I can talk Running Bear out of starting a war, can you bring me home tonight?
I pushed myself away from the wall. I trotted around the side of the barn, no longer caring how nice John was or how bad the storm was going to get. The Native Americans had said their lands were towards the west, along with the location where I had arrived. I was going to tell their chief about the rampage and then go back to the moldavite and wait for Carter to get me.
Entering the warm barn, I saddled the horse I had borrowed a few days ago and led him out of the barn, mounting after I closed the door. The gown in all its layers was uncomfortable and bulky but thick enough to protect me from the wind.
I oriented myself then urged the horse to go west, towards the road that ran towards town, between John’s lands and that of the natives. It was the same direction as Fighting Badger’s cave. Though I didn’t recall anything in his mind about his village being close, the frequency of his brothers’ visits made me think that this general direction was a smart place to start.
I can’t do this anymore. It took effort to suppress my growing panic.
The charged wind was growing stiffer, the rumbling thunder closer. I glanced up nervously. If my choice was to brave a storm and be home in my time by morning or stay inside where it was safe until someone threw me in a well, I would brave the storm without question.
