The Legend of Annie Murphy

by Frank Peretti

  Jay and Lila laughed along. “That’s right, we just got into town.”

  “Well, around here the ladies dress a little more modestly. Hold on.” In a short moment, the lady returned with a calico skirt. “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Lila Cooper.”

  “Well, Lila Cooper, I’m Maude Bennett, and I’ll sell you this skirt for ten cents. Now find a deal like that anywhere else!”

  Lila gawked at her. “Ten cents?”

  “For today only.”

  Lila dug into her pocket and pulled out a dime. “It’s a deal.”

  Jay opened his mouth to say something but was too late; Lila plopped the dime in Maude Bennett’s hand and took the skirt. Maude looked at that dime with great interest.

  “Uh, that’s a new kind of dime,” Jay tried to explain. “They probably haven’t gotten out this way yet.”

  Maude Bennett only squinted at it. “Don’t have my glasses.” She tossed it in the air and caught it again, then smiled. “A dime’s a dime.” Then she looked them over and shook her head. “What kids wear these days!”

  Jay ventured a question. “Uh . . . who got hanged?”

  Maude shook her head. “Nobody. They shot Annie Murphy before they could hang her. She’s already dead and buried.”

  The kids couldn’t help their horrified expressions.

  “She’s dead?” Lila asked.

  “It’s a long story, kids. You should ask the judge about it. He knows what happened.” She started into the mercantile but muttered over her shoulder, “A lot more than he’s telling, if you ask me.”

  The kids walked a little farther until a notice tacked to a wooden post caught Lila’s eye. “Look at this, Jay: ‘Sheriff’s Auction: The Murphy Mine and All Land Holdings.’”

  “The Murphy Mine?” Jay scanned the notice.

  “‘Upon the demise of the previous owners,’” his eyebrows shot up, ‘Cyrus and Annie Murphy, . . . the mine is up for sale to the highest bidder. Sealed bids to be submitted to the auction committee at the courthouse.’”

  “‘Eight o’clock P.M., June eighth,’” Lila gasped, “‘1885’!” They stared at each other, then at the posted notice.

  “It’s really happened . . .” Jay finally spoke in awe.

  “We’ve gone back in time!”

  FOUR

  A proper-looking man in a business suit—an 1885 business suit—came walking by, and Jay asked him, “Sir, could you tell me today’s date?”

  The man took a moment to study the kids up and down before answering, “Well, it’s June eighth, of course.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” The gentleman continued on his way, but not without a second, curious look over his shoulder.

  Jay sighed. “Lila, maybe you’d better put on that skirt.”

  They ducked into an alley to get out of sight and do some thinking.

  Lila pulled the skirt on over her shorts. “Jay, I think it’s real.”

  “So do I.”

  “So we’re in real trouble.”

  Jay wrinkled his brow. “Back in Bodine—I mean, the one we left—it was June tenth. So we’re off by two days and . . .”

  “And about a century.”

  “But are we really in Bodine? I mean, the Bodine that used to be here—that is here.”

  “And why is it here?”

  “Why are we here? This is too weird.”

  “It has to have something to do with all that gravity and time/space stuff Professor MacPherson was talking about.”

  Jay nodded. “Like some kind of time warp or wrinkle or vortex or something. But remember? It happened when we came in contact with Annie Murphy.”

  Lila shot a glance toward the alley entrance. She was thinking about the gallows and Maude Bennett’s comment. “But how did we do that, Jay? Annie’s dead.”

  “She looked pretty alive when we saw her.”

  Lila thought it over and shook her head. “I don’t get any of this.”

  “So let’s go talk to the judge.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Jay shrugged. “Maude Bennett said he knows what happened to Annie Murphy. If we can find out exactly what happened to her, we might be able to figure out what’s happened to us.”

  She considered that and gave a little shrug. “What have we got to lose?”

  With a deliberately casual air, Jay stepped out of the alley. “Lila, come on.”

  She lagged behind, looking down at herself. “I’m wearing a skirt with Reeboks. I look dumb.”

  “Well, at least you’re decent,” Jay said with a grin.

  She scowled at him. “You’re no help.”

  With no alternative, she joined him on the sidewalk and together they looked up and down the street. Now just how did one go about finding the judge? There must be a courthouse somewhere, but as yet they couldn’t see it.

  A gray-bearded miner came walking by, toting a saddlebag over his shoulder. Jay asked him, “Excuse me, sir. Where might I find the judge?”

  “Judge Crackerby?” The miner broke into a wheezy laugh. “Heh, over there,” he pointed across the street, “at the Crackerby Boardinghouse. He’s a little busy, though. I hear Mrs. Crackerby’s having another one of her spells.” He laughed at his own wisecrack as he continued down the sidewalk.

  They started across the dirt street, this time being careful to look both ways for wild wagons first.

  The Crackerby Boardinghouse was a two-story Victorian just across the street from the mercantile. It had a spacious porch and fancy white trim. A small sign hanging in front identified the house’s proprietors: Amos and Beulah Crackerby. The front door was standing open, and there seemed to be a hubbub going on inside. Two old spinsters with their hair all pinned up came out the door looking very concerned and talking in hushed tones. As they passed Jay and Lila on the front walk, the kids caught a few words of their conversation: “. . . she’s seeing things? Just too much for her, that’s all . . . I wouldn’t know Annie Murphy dead or alive . . .”

  Lila whispered, “Seems like everybody’s talking about her.”

  They came to the front door and could see several people gathered in the finely decorated drawing room: a heavyset woman with her hair in a bun, a maid, a gardener who still had a hoe in his hand, and a kindly, white-headed doctor with a stethoscope around his neck. They were huddled around a large, wingback chair, all muttering and fussing over the plump woman sitting there, apparently in a faint.

  “Give her air!”

  “Give her water!”

  “Give me some room to work, please!”

  “I saw her!” the plump woman gasped. “Just as real as any of you standing here! It was Annie!”

  “Beulah, that’s enough of this nonsense!” scolded a rather imposing man standing behind the chair. He was bald on top, had long white hair on the sides of his head, and wore an impressive black suit and vest with a gold watch chain hanging from the pocket.

  That has to be the judge, the kids thought.

  “But Judge,” said the lady with the bun, “Clyde saw her too, running down the street like a wild woman!”

  “That is utter nonsense!”

  “So what was the sheriff chasin’ if he weren’t chasin’ Annie Murphy?” asked the gardener with the hoe. “I seen her light out of here like a puff of smoke, and then I seen the sheriff goin’ after her! You can’t tell me there’s nothin’ goin’ on!”

  The judge got red in the face. “No, Clyde, but I can tell you to get back to work or you’re fired!”

  The gardener waved him off as he turned to go. “Okay, okay. Don’t listen to me. I’m just the gardener.” He went out the door, passing Jay and Lila as the kids ventured in.

  The judge had plenty of wrath left over for the maid. “And that goes for you too! Get back to work and earn what I’m paying you!”

  She scurried off, her feather duster in her hand.

  “Well,” said the doctor, wrapping up his stetho
scope. “She’s perfectly all right. With her strong heart, she’ll outlive all of us.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful?” said the lady in the bun. “And don’t you worry, Beulah. Sheriff Potter’ll get to the bottom of this. He’ll snatch that Annie Murphy by the scruff of the neck and drag her back here—”

  “No!” Mrs. Crackerby squeaked. “I don’t want that spirit back in this house! Besides, she’s a ghost.

  How is the sheriff going to grab a ghost by the scruff of the neck?” She looked at the doctor.

  He just shook his head. “Don’t ask me. I only deal with live people.” He picked up his medical bag and left.

  “Beulah,” said the judge, trying to sound a little sweeter, “you don’t know it was a ghost.”

  She objected, “I could see right through her, Amos!”

  “Beulah . . .”

  “She was up in her and Cyrus’s old room, just standing there, looking out the window.”

  The lady with the bun pondered out loud, “If she’s back, it could be for justice—for revenge!”

  That brought a squeak of fear from Mrs. Crackerby.

  “Eloise!” the judge snapped. “Didn’t you have some baking to do?”

  “Well, lots of times when ghosts come back, that’s the reason.”

  “We’re not dealing with a ghost here!” the judge insisted. “And I’ll thank you to get back in the kitchen and stop filling Beulah’s mind with such rubbish!”

  Then Jay piped up, so suddenly it startled Lila. “Was she wearing a long blue dress, and did she have long red hair?”

  Silence. They all gawked at the young intruders.

  Then Mrs. Crackerby responded in a slightly healthier voice, “Why . . . yes, she did.”

  Then Lila had another question, “And was she kind of flat, like a picture, and kind of wavy and fuzzy and floating in the air?”

  Mrs. Crackerby looked up at her husband. “See, Amos? I’m not crazy! They saw her too!”

  “Oohhh, saints preserve us!” said Eloise.

  The judge only got redder. “Who are you children, and what are you doing in my house?”

  “Well, we’re doing some research on the Annie Murphy case, and we were told you’d know about it.”

  “Are you Judge Crackerby?” Lila asked.

  The judge lowered his bushy eyebrows. “I’ve never seen you children before.”

  “Well . . . we’re new in town . . .” Jay tried to explain.

  “But we saw Annie Murphy,” Lila piped up, “and we’re trying to find out where she went.”

  Slam! The judge pounded the back of the big chair in anger. “I’ve had quite enough of this! I should turn you both over my knee—”

  The earth wiggled under their feet—or did it just feel that way?

  The judge came around the chair with a walking stick in his hand, saying something about knocking some sense into them.

  But he began to fade. The whole room did. The judge, Mrs. Crackerby, Eloise, the furniture, the house—everything was turning transparent and ghostlike.

  Mrs. Crackerby wailed, looking at them with huge, frightened eyes. “GHOSTS! More ghosts!” She was transparent. Her voice sounded far away.

  The judge came at them with his walking stick, ready to wallop them. By now the whole building had become so thin and ghostlike that the floor couldn’t support them anymore, and Jay and Lila sank through it as if it were water. When they had dropped through the floor up to their chests, their feet landed on solid ground beneath the house. The judge took a swing at them, but his walking stick passed right through them, and they hardly felt it.

  They ran—or tried to run. It was like trying to run through chest-deep water as they pushed their way through the big Persian carpet and under the coffee table. Mrs. Crackerby screamed and Eloise wailed and Judge Crackerby kept pounding at them with that walking stick.

  So this is how it looks to a cat being chased, Lila thought. The carpet was only inches below her chin. As for the skirt she’d just bought, it had faded like everything else and she’d run right out of it.

  Oh-oh. The judge was between them and the front door, just waiting with that stick. Jay took a sharp right. Lila followed, and they ducked through the sofa and the wall to the outside, passing through the shrubs and into the open. The ground in the front yard covered their ankles until they reached the street. Then it dropped away and they could see they were running on the ground that would be there a century later, several inches higher. They ran for all they were worth, encountering a few more ghostly people in the street who spotted them and cried out in terror.

  The whole town was ghostly again, and they could see the present-day ruins through the transparent walls of the century-old buildings. They were running over rocks and around bushes that would exist in the present. At the same time, they were also dodging ghostly buildings and people that existed a century earlier. It was all too strange.

  Dr. Cooper and Mac had been sitting on the ground with their hands up until they thought their arms would fall off. They tried to reason with this gun-toting kook who thought he was a sheriff from the Old West.

  “Listen,” said Dr. Cooper, “let me try to explain this one more time—and can I put my hands down?”

  But the sheriff wasn’t listening. He was staring wide-eyed, looking every direction, as if seeing a vision.

  “Sheriff?”

  “It’s . . . it’s Bodine!” he said. “It’s Bodine, right here! Like a mirage! I can see right through it!”

  Dr. Cooper and Mac were momentarily puzzled. They could see right through the sheriff as well.

  Then they realized the sheriff was off guard, looking the other way. Dr. Cooper and Mac took full advantage of that and pounced on him.

  They passed right through him, landing in the road on the other side. They scrambled to their feet again.

  The sheriff spotted them on the other side of him and spun around, startled. He tried to aim his gun but fumbled it. It dropped from his hand.

  Mac tried to catch it. His fist closed completely, grabbing nothing, and the gun fell to the ground, sinking until only part of the barrel was exposed.

  Dr. Cooper tried a judo move to bring the sheriff down, but his arms passed through the sheriff’s body as if the man were made of smoke. The sheriff swung at Dr. Cooper, but his fist and arm passed right through Dr. Cooper’s body.

  That was enough to make them both pause. They stood there, staring at each other.

  “You’re a ghost!” the sheriff exclaimed, looking Dr. Cooper up and down.

  “So are you,” said Dr. Cooper, observing the transparent man standing before him.

  “I can see right through you!”

  Dr. Cooper nodded. “Same here.”

  After several slippery attempts, Mac finally managed to pull the gun free from the ground. “Jake, check this out.” In a way, Mac was juggling as he brought the gun over: The gun, like the sheriff, was transparent. It sank through Mac’s left hand and fell into his right, then sank through his right hand and fell into his left.

  “What in the world . . . ?”

  “Mass occupying space, but misplaced in the time dimension,” Mac mused. “Neither here nor there, but somewhere in between.”

  Suddenly the gun fell into Mac’s hand and stopped. It was solid again.

  So was the sheriff. He looked around, aghast. “The town! It’s gone!”

  “And now . . . fully in the present!” Mac looked very closely at the sheriff, then, with a quiet, “May I?” touched him. “Yes. Spatially in the present . . . dimensionally in the past . . .”

  “What are you saying, Mac?” Dr. Cooper asked.

  Mac hesitated to answer. He asked, “Sheriff, I’m sorry for the confusion we’re all experiencing here, but with your cooperation I think we can resolve it.”

  The sheriff looked down at his gun in Mac’s hand. “I guess I’m listening, professor.”

  “Can you show us where you were when . . . when it got dark?”<
br />
  The sheriff pointed. “Back there in those cliffs. There’s a gap in there. I was chasing Annie Murphy.”

  “Can you show us, please?”

  The sheriff led them through the ruins of Bodine and up to the base of the cliff where he pointed out a narrow opening in the rock.

  Dr. Cooper spotted the footprints of his children right away. “Jay and Lila came this way.”

  “Who?” asked the sheriff.

  “My children, a boy and a girl, fourteen and thirteen.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I haven’t seen any kids, just Annie Murphy.”

  “The footprints go in,” Dr. Cooper observed, “but they don’t come out again.”

  Dr. Cooper and Mac clicked on their flashlights. That startled the sheriff. “How do they do that? You have kerosene in there somewhere?”

  Mac tried to explain. “It’s electricity produced through a chemical reaction in disposable power cells . . .” But he could see the sheriff wasn’t following him. “Uh, we’ll explain it later.”

  “Come on,” said Dr. Cooper. “Let’s take a look.”

  They ventured into the cliff, flashlight beams searching about, until they came to the narrow room some fifty feet inside.

  “This is where I last saw her,” the sheriff explained. “She was standing right there. I tried to grab her, and the next thing I knew, it was dark and she was gone and so was the town, and there you two were.”

  “Your footprints lead out, but they didn’t lead in,” Mac observed.

  Dr. Cooper spotted something in a corner and stooped to pick it up. It was his other camera, the one he’d sent Jay and Lila after. “They were here, all right.” He shined his light all around the room, trying to find any other passage they could have used. There was no other way out. He checked the camera. “Several shots have been taken. If the kids took pictures of what they saw . . .”

  “There’s a one-hour developing service back in town,” Mac said.

  “Mac.” Dr. Cooper looked directly at Richard MacPherson. “Do you know where my kids are?”

  Mac turned to the sheriff. “Sheriff, can you tell me today’s date?”

  “June eighth, 1885,” said the sheriff.