The Legend of Annie Murphy

by Frank Peretti

  EIGHT

  JERK! The hem of Lila’s long dress snagged on a nail and she stopped abruptly in midfall, hanging above the crowd. The people below screamed and scrambled and reached up to catch her and tried to figure out what to do.

  “Help her!”

  “Somebody get a ladder!”

  “Well, what’s she doing up there, anyway?”

  “Don’t move a muscle! We’ll get you down!”

  Well, she thought, the secret’s over.

  But there was still one big question to be answered. She looked eastward.

  And saw it. Annie Murphy’s latest carving. She gawked, then closed one eye as she slowly swung back and forth, hanging from the nail.

  Vertical lines. Jail bars! And Annie’s face, clear as could be, beyond the bars. Annie Murphy in jail!

  The carvings were starting to make sense: Cyrus shot, Annie in jail, Annie weeping for her husband. There were still some parts missing, but now Lila could see it clearly: Annie was telling her story!

  Oh-oh. She felt a strange tremor as if the building were swaying. Oh no, Lord, not here, not now!

  She could see the tall, lanky deputy coming through the crowd with a ladder. Then the deputy, the ladder, and the crowd started to fade and become transparent.

  “Hey!” somebody cried, “what’s happening to her?”

  “She’s a ghost!” a woman gasped. The whole crowd got upset and started babbling at once and gawking at Lila while the deputy kept trying to push his way through with the ladder.

  And then the sound of their voices faded as the town became a transparent, ghostly image standing over the crumbled ruins of the present.

  Lila began to fall, right through the dress and into the open, kicking and struggling but slowly dropping earthward like a feather. She cried, “Look out!” but couldn’t be sure anyone heard her.

  Something caught her eye. Up the street, amid the ruins and the ghostly old buildings the ruins used to be, stood a big man in a black suit and hat. He looked as solid and real as Lila looked to herself. He was watching her whole misadventure with piercing eyes, and she recognized him the instant before she fell among the crowd: Sheriff Dustin Potter.

  Deputy Hatch and the crowd had seen it but couldn’t believe it: That pretty, blond-haired girl turned transparent like a ghost and fell right through her blue dress. When people tried to catch her, she fell right through their arms and then sank through the steps of the courthouse like water through sand. Her empty, blue bonnet fluttered down and lit on a woman’s shoulder, scaring her into a faint. The woman’s husband caught her, and her son caught the bonnet. The whole crowd just stared pale-faced at that bonnet and the empty blue dress still hanging from the nail.

  “A ghost!” someone said, and then several folks repeated the word to each other in agreement.

  Those who saw Deputy Hatch with the ladder helped him heft it into place on the steps and lean it against the edge of the roof above. The deputy climbed up to the blue dress and carefully unsnagged it. He thought he recognized it and found a name tag on the collar that confirmed the owner. He’d check into that later. Right now he wanted to know what the mysterious young lady had been looking at so intently even as she dangled from the nail. He turned and looked the same direction he’d seen her look.

  What he saw in the cliffs did not startle him. By now it was exactly what he expected.

  CLUNK! SQUEEEAK! The door to the courthouse opened and out strode the auction committee.

  “Well, we have the results of the secret bidding!” Mr. Forshay announced, and then he shook hands with Judge Crackerby.

  Strangely, few seemed to care much about that anymore. Most were watching Deputy Hatch descend the ladder with the blue dress in his hand.

  “Hatch,” said the judge, “what in the world are you doing?”

  Hatch smiled innocently. “Just following your orders, sir—and making good progress, I might add!”

  At the University of Arizona Research Library, Mac and Dr. Cooper met with Mac’s secretary, Alice, and her son, Rob, around a large worktable in the historical archives department. Alice, an attractive professional woman, and Rob, a graduate student in history, had already laid out several old photographs of the town when it was in its heyday.

  “Excellent!” said Dr. Cooper. He carefully studied the photos of the storefronts, houses, hotels, and saloons, reconstructing in his archaeologist’s mind the layout of the town over the ruins that remained. “Annie and the kids would be moving about in the town and relating to it the way it once was, am I right?”

  “Yes, especially Annie,” Mac replied. “Though she’s between both worlds, she would mostly relate to the physical layout of the past where she’s making the carvings.”

  Rob clicked on a microfilm viewer on a side counter. “And here’s the outcome of that auction, Professor.” He scrolled through old, microfilmed pages from the Bodine Register, the local newspaper of that time. A headline read, “Judge Crackerby Highest Bidder,” and the smaller headline added, “Crackerby Takes Ownership of Murphy Mine.”

  “What about this sheriff, Dustin Potter?” Dr. Cooper asked.

  “There are several mentions of him in the Bodine Register,” Rob replied, “as well as a record of his election as sheriff in 1874, but I haven’t found any mention of what eventually happened to him. Strangely, he seems to disappear from the pages of history not long after June eighth, 1885.”

  Mac and Dr. Cooper looked at each other.

  “Disappeared from history or from the past altogether?” Cooper wondered.

  Mac was intense. “If he never returned to the past, it’s doubtful the kids ever made it back to the present.”

  Dr. Cooper’s eyes were set like steel. “We’ve got to know.”

  Mac turned to Rob. “You’ve found nothing about him after June eighth?”

  Rob scrolled further through the microfilm. “I did find one clue for you, although you may not like what it suggests.” He found the news article and pointed it out.

  Dr. Cooper read the name. “Hatch. Deputy Erskine Hatch.”

  Rob explained, “This and some other articles tell how he was appointed sheriff in Bodine the week following June eighth.” He looked over his shoulder at them. “This seems to suggest that Sheriff Potter was no longer around.”

  Alice added with sadness, “I wish we had better news for you, but as near as we’ve been able to uncover, the judge became a rich man, and the sheriff never returned to Bodine. As far as anyone knows, Annie Murphy was shot by Sheriff Potter and buried right before June eighth, 1885.”

  There was a knock on the door. Rob moved quickly to answer it. Another student stuck his head in and presented Rob with a small package marked “One-Stop Photo.”

  “The pictures from the night camera!” Dr.

  Cooper exclaimed.

  “In less than an hour!” the student proclaimed proudly. “I had them put a rush on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dr. Cooper received the package from Rob and tore it open. He pulled out the stack of photographs and froze, his eyes narrowing. His gaze locked on the first photo, and he felt his insides tightening like a drum. He handed it to Mac and then gazed with even more intensity at the second photo. He passed that one along and examined the third, then the fourth. By now they were all looking at the photos, passing them around in awestruck silence until Alice finally whispered, “My word . . . it’s Annie.”

  Two of the photos were blurry as if taken in a rush, but some were crystal clear and showed a ghostly figure, a young woman with red hair and frightened eyes.

  Mac was stunned. “Incredible! Absolutely incredible!”

  Cooper looked up from the photos and mused, “But consider this: These pictures establish that she was alive the morning of the eighth.” He looked at Rob. “So she couldn’t have been shot before the eighth.”

  “And certainly not by Sheriff Potter,” said Mac, “because he was thrown into the present before he got the
chance.”

  Dr. Cooper asked Rob, “Do you have anything more about Annie’s death? Any details at all?”

  Rob scrolled through the microfilm. “There’s one more article with nothing new.” He found the article and brought it into focus. “This news story indicates that she was shot by Sheriff Potter while trying to escape from the jail—” He stopped short, surprised. “It’s written in the past tense, as if the shooting had occurred the day before . . . but the date of this newspaper is June seventh.”

  “So Sheriff Potter is supposed to have shot Annie Murphy on June sixth,” Dr. Cooper said with a half smile.

  “But Jay photographed her alive on what would have been June eighth,” said Mac.

  “Which would have been the same day our friend the sheriff says he chased her, which would be a full two days after she was supposed to have been shot. And he still hasn’t shot her.”

  Mac had a thoughtful look on his face. “There’s something fishy going on here, some incorrect information.”

  “So there’s still hope for my kids!”

  “Rob, see what else you can find out about this deputy, Erskine Hatch. He may have kept a journal or records of some kind.”

  “You got it.”

  “Alice, anything else?”

  Alice nodded. “An artifact—direct proof of Annie Murphy’s existence.” She opened a corner cabinet and brought out an object covered with plastic. Setting it on the table, she removed the plastic, unveiling a fine wood sculpture: an old miner smoking a pipe, sitting on a keg of blasting powder. She gingerly turned the piece over to show the inscription on the bottom. “You can see her name here, ‘A. Murphy.’ Notice the crudeness of the letters and the numbers of the date. It looks like someone had to show her how to form the letters, stroke by stroke.”

  Both Mac and Dr. Cooper recognized the carving technique. They’d seen it before in the cliff above cemetery hill. “Yes,” said Dr. Cooper, “the weeping woman was carved by Annie Murphy, no doubt about it.”

  Rob had been scrolling further through the microfilm and announced, “Those photos of Annie brought something to mind. Come look at this.”

  They huddled around the microfilm viewer as Rob scrolled down to an article in the Bodine Register headlined, “Ghosts Visiting Bodine?”

  Dr. Cooper and Mac skimmed the article.

  “‘Ghosts . . .’” Dr. Cooper read aloud. “‘. . . several ghosts sighted around the town . . . one thought to be Annie Murphy . . .’”

  Mac exclaimed, “Here you go, Jake, third paragraph: ‘the ghosts of two children are said to have appeared near the Crackerby Boardinghouse, and another, that of a young girl, in front of the court- house. Judge Crackerby emphatically denies the rumors.’”

  Dr. Cooper’s heart leaped. “Jay and Lila!” He leaned closer, carefully reading the whole article. “They were seen at the boardinghouse, the courthouse . . . on the roof of the mercantile! They’ve been all around that town!” He had to laugh with pride. “They’re trying to track down Annie Murphy! They’re retracing her steps. Way to go, kids!”

  Mac had skimmed down toward the bottom of the article. “And look at this, Jake: It says Bodine had several small earthquakes during that time. Those would have to be the same gravitational disturbances we’ve been feeling. Because the vortex joins past with present, both worlds are feeling the same disturbances.”

  Dr. Cooper read further. “‘. . . as well as several mysterious rock slides from the cliffs around town, also blamed on the visitation of Annie Murphy’s ghost.’” He shot a glance at the carving of the old miner. “So Annie Murphy’s carving away right now—a century ago.”

  Mac was getting excited. “Jake, this means there have to be more carvings. Your kids may have already found some of them.”

  “And,” Dr. Cooper added, “they’ve figured out that Annie is the key to their getting back to the present.”

  Alice showed them photocopies from an old diary. “Regarding more carvings, look what a woman named Helen Billings recorded in her diary about that time: ‘I will miss Annie and Cyrus. Sometimes I think my sorrow over losing them affects my judgment, for early yesterday morning I am certain I saw their faces looking at me from the cliffs above their half-completed cabin.’”

  Dr. Cooper thought about that one. “A carving overlooking the home she and Cyrus were building . . . another overlooking Cyrus’s grave . . .” Cooper looked at Mac. “Both carvings were made from key locations in Annie’s life.”

  “Which would also be true of the courthouse and the boardinghouse,” said Mac, picking up the idea.

  “I’m not sure about the mercantile.”

  “But I think the kids are onto something.” He had to smile. “They’re thinking like archaeologists. They’re reading a story in Annie’s carvings much as one would read the picture symbols in ancient hieroglyphics. Annie was illiterate, so it makes sense that she would try to carve her story.” In just another quick moment, Dr. Cooper was quite sure about his theory. “Mac, we’ve got to find that carving of Annie and Cyrus. We’ve got to find that cabin’s location.”

  Mac added, “And the sites of the old boardinghouse, the courthouse, the mercantile . . .”

  They both thought of an eyewitness source and said his name at the same time, “Sheriff Potter!”

  They hurriedly gathered up all the photos, articles, and other data Alice and Rob had gathered and dashed out the door.

  NINE

  Lila remained still, her heart pounding, squeezed into a hiding place between the courthouse floor joists. She’d fallen right through the courthouse steps and landed soft as a feather in the rubble of the present-day Bodine. But gravity, time, and space were in a teasing mood. She’d hardly had a chance to get herself oriented before the quivering stopped and she was solid again, totally in the past, trapped in the dingy, dirty crawl space.

  A few adventurous fellows had tried to come after her by prying off some boards and peeking inside. But it was easy to tell they were timid about crawling into such a dark place to look for a ghost. When their wives showed up and insisted they not get dirty, they abandoned the idea altogether, nailed the boards back on, and left, talking excitedly about giving their story to the local paper.

  Lila remained still, listening to the town outside come to the end of its day as horses clip-clopped and wagons rumbled lazily out of town. Doors and windows were closed to the cooling air, and the last pedestrians on the wooden sidewalks bid each other good night.

  When it was quiet and the light coming through the cracks between the boards began to ebb, she lowered herself to the dirt floor and had a look around. The crawl space was a cobwebbed, dusty world with plenty of dried out rat carcasses. Roughhewn beams and floorboards were only two feet above her crawling body. She wasn’t usually bothered by tight places, but the thought of an entire courthouse resting just above her did jangle her nerves a bit.

  Then she heard a voice. “Lila?”

  “Jay! I’m over here. I fell through the front steps.”

  “Yeah, I fell through the floor. Come over this way.”

  She crawled through the dirt, shoving cobwebs and dead rats aside, and finally saw her brother coming the other way. He’d lost his borrowed clothes just as she had and looked very dirty. He also looked very excited.

  “Lila,” he said in a hushed voice as they met nose to nose under the floor beams. “I heard the judge and those guys on the committee talking. It’s all a big scheme. They fixed the auction so the judge could get the Murphy Mine.”

  Lila could feel her skin tingle. “And the only reason the mine was put up for auction is because the Murphys are both dead. . . .” Her eyes shifted about as she added, “Or at least, everyone thinks they’re both dead.”

  Jay was emphatic. “Somebody shot Cyrus from the mercantile roof, and then they framed Annie so they could get rid of her. But get this: Some people around here aren’t so sure Annie’s dead. Nobody saw her body in the coffin they buried!”


  Lila cocked her head and raised an eyebrow as she had an interesting thought. “Well, that sure explains why we’ve seen Annie still alive after she’s supposed to be dead. That grave up on cemetery hill is a fake!”

  “Something went wrong. Annie got away before they could hang her.”

  “Or shoot her!”

  They both thought of it at the same time: “The time warp!”

  Then Jay chuckled. “So the judge is in a real pickle, isn’t he? He couldn’t find her to kill her so he faked her death to get her mine. But now her ghost is back—at least, that’s what his wife thinks.”

  “So do a lot of other people around here.”

  Jay shook his head at the thought: “If the judge ever finds her, he’ll kill her for sure.”

  Lila hated the thought as she spoke it. “He still might. Remember what the legend says about her, that she was shot trying to escape.”

  “Well . . . maybe we can change that. At least, I’d sure like to.”

  Then Lila remembered her discovery and burst out with excitement, “ Jay! I found it! I saw Annie’s carving!”

  Jay got excited and almost bumped his head on a floor beam. “How? Where?”

  “Hanging from the roof by my dress, I saw it!”

  Jay looked a her funny. “Hanging from the roof by your dress?”

  “It’s a long story. But Annie carved an image of herself behind jail bars! She showed herself in jail!”

  Jay understood what that meant and let out a low whistle. “Then we’re on the right track. She’s telling what happened to her in carvings.”

  Lila was tickled with the discovery. “Just like a totem or a hieroglyphic!”

  “So here’s my guess: She’s probably going to make her next carving from the jail.”

  Lila considered that and nodded. “Sure. The courthouse where she was tried, and then the jail where she was locked up.”

  “It’s getting dark. When the town’s all tucked in for the night, we’ll go check it out.”