by David Risen
She speared a bite of her salad and ate it, wiping the ranch dressing off her mouth with a napkin.
“I could give you proof, but you would go looking for her. She’s much happier now, so you should just leave it alone.”
Rider shook his head. “So I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”
She leaned toward him. “Allow me to explain the way things really are. Many different opposing powers make up the corporeal realm. Life and death, love and hate, creation and destruction, male and female, dark and light, spiritual and carnal.... For every soul, there is a perfect match in the opposite gender. You and Lauren were compatible, but you weren’t perfectly mated. Both of you knew that all along at an unconscious level, and that is part of what led to such unhappiness.”
Rider leaned back. “You don’t sound like any nun I’ve ever heard of.”
She shrugged. “Religion is as individual as a fingerprint. Even true believers don’t swallow everything a religion tries to sell them.”
“I want Lauren back,” he growled.
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Only because she’s gone. You know as well as I do that your marriage was over two years ago.”
He sneered. “I believe that’s the line of shit you’re trying to sell me.”
She shook her head, reached in her purse, and passed him a manila envelope full of papers.
“What’s this?” he said.
“That’s the copy of the divorce papers Lauren’s Lawyer, Steven Mize, was about to serve you.”
Rider’s mouth fell open.
“Now, I realize that you’re going to think we forged them, and it’s not like you can just go to Mr. Mize’s office and ask him about it. But if you’re nice to your mother, I’m sure she has the juice to authenticate it.”
Rider didn’t know what to say.
Sister Jacobs took another bite of salad, and washed it down with her Coke.
“This is a serious problem for you,” she said. “You filed a missing person’s report on your wife, and the police have spoken with her lawyer. They also know about the life insurance policy. The only thing they were waiting on was the body.”
“Are you serious?” he said. Right now, his own voice sounded alien and far away.
She took another sip of her Coke.
“Your immediate problem is what happened last night.”
Rider snapped out of it. “What?”
Her eyes lit up as if she recalled an important point. “I guess you haven’t read the paper this morning. Your house burned to the ground last night without you in it. They think that you’re on the run. Your probation officer is going to court today to revoke your probation.”
“My house burned down?”
She nodded. “We had nothing to do with that. That was your new friend. My guess is that when the police catch up to you, you’ll not only have to serve all of the two years you have left, but you’ll also have to stand trial for murder.”
“This is nuts,” he pleaded.
“Oh, don’t worry. The police don’t have a body, because there isn’t one. Lauren is alive and well. Any attorney worth his salt will get you out of it, but you’ll still have to serve two years in prison on your other charges.”
Rider shook his head. “You’re sure about all of this?”
“I’ll buy you a paper on the way out. In an odd way, your friend is right. Whatever you do, don’t use your wife’s bank cards.”
“I’ve got to get out of here!”
She shook her head. “There’s no arrest warrant for you right now. There will be by the end of the day. But you are right. We do have to get you back to your roach motel before your friend returns and finds you gone.”
Rider gaped at her in awe.
“How could you do this to me?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t done anything to you. The only reason I asked you here was to warn you and offer you a way out of the mess you’ve made for yourself.”
“What way out?” he barked – loudly enough for several other patrons to turn and look.
She smiled. “You had no way of knowing it, but your friend is actually one of the most dangerous people in the world. She has to be stopped.”
Rider gave her a shrewd look.
“So you are out to get her?”
She held up her hand. “No. She’s far too powerful for us to challenge her directly, and contrary to what I’m sure she’s told you, we don’t go around killing people. The much better option is for us to keep her in a little box.”
“Why are you afraid of her?”
She gave him a stern expression that looked like it belonged on the face of someone much older.
“If I had supernatural power at my disposal as she said, it would be the cosmic equivalent of a double A battery; she would be the equivalent of one sixth of the sun. The fact that she’s here in the form that she’s in puts our entire realm out of balance.”
Rider made a circling motion with his hand.
“Get to the point.”
“Have you told her about my property in Tennessee?”
Rider shrugged.
She gave him a grave look. “Keep her away from it. The only thing that awaits you there is death, and you would permanently destroy the balance of this realm.”
Rider smirked. “Why would I do that?”
She took another bite of her salad and swallowed. “Help me with this, and I’ll see to it that all of your legal problems disappear.”
Rider rolled his eyes. “My mother’s a Superior Court Judge. I like my chances.”
She nodded. “I can also get your daughter back.”
Rider gave her a look of disbelief. “Oh, so you can reverse time?”
She shook her head and gave him a Mona Lisa smile. “The reason my sisters and I have remained hidden since ancient times is because we have capabilities that some people would use to tip the scales of balance in their favor. Our order is about preserving the balance, but in extreme cases, we can bend the rules.”
The newspaper confirmed that Rider’s house burned to the ground.
As soon as he climbed back in the Chrysler Caravan taxi, he took his cell out of his jacket pocket, and called his mom.
The phone rang once before she picked up.
“Rider what did you do?” she said without as much as a greeting.
Rider turned his left palm up. “What are you talking about?”
“Your probation officer is at the courthouse right now getting Judge Shubert to sign a warrant for your arrest. Did you do something to Lauren?”
Rider snarled. “I’m not even gonna honor that.”
“Well, it sure does look like it. They’ve got you rummaging through her office hopped up on something twice. Then, there’s that million-dollar life insurance policy, and apparently, she was about to file for divorce. The paperwork was done. Steve Mize was just waiting on her to give him the go ahead.”
“I haven’t made a claim on her life insurance.”
“But you’ve certainly used her debit card. Then you burned down your house and took off. If I were a district attorney, I’d burn you at the stake.”
“Of course you would. You’re an evil bitch with a stone in your chest, but there’s one small thing you’re all forgetting: I haven’t done anything wrong.”
She sighed.
“I don’t know what to tell you. The best thing you can do is get down to the jail house and turn yourself in.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“No, but I know the law, and I deal with assholes all day. If you’re not an asshole, you sure smell like one.”
Rider rolled down his window and threw the phone out. His heart pounded in his chest. His hands shook.
“You okay?” the cab driver said.
Rider scowled at him. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”
Rider returned to Raven’s Rest Motel just after one.
He couldn’t get comfortable. He took two Lortab 10 tablets before he
caught the cab to Bridgeton, and since he returned, he popped a Xanax and a Klonopin washed them all down with what was left of the bottle of Mr. Boston, and he’d still managed to pace a hole in the rug.
The Sisters really were bad girls, and they had him by the short and curlies. It didn’t matter what he did at this point, he was screwed, and no one could help him.
The motel room door opened just after three.
Rider turned to find his new friend pushing her way inside the fusty room.
She turned to face him as she closed the door, and when her eyes contacted his face, her first expression was one of shock, and it quickly settled into a look of stormy resolve.
She stood up straight and marched toward him so aggressively that her movements stunned him in place.
“What is it?” he said.
She extended her hand and her index finger.
The instant that the tip of her finger contacted his forehead, his vision blacked out.
Rider was gone before his knees buckled.
Something is wrong with Rider’s Body.
He feels thin and small, and the normal stabbing pain in his left shoulder and hip that he usually tunes out has disappeared.
The surface below him scrubs his chest, stomach, and fronts of his legs.
A damp chill cascades through him as a strange breeze rushes over all of the skin of his back and through his hair.
Hair that doesn’t feel right.
Somehow, in the time between now and when he fell asleep, his hair had grown all the way down to his back. And someone extracted him from his clothes.
The sensation of something slowly crawling up his right leg causes him to open his eyes, but when he tries, his muscles don’t even twitch.
He smells the pungent aroma of damp earth.
He hears the breeze rustle through treetops not far away.
His eyes open slowly and new emotions join his own.
He finds himself surrounded by waist-high reeds. Whoever controls his body stands, and the motion summons the jiggling of two jelly-filled sacks on his chest.
About a hundred feet straight ahead, the clearing he stands in gives way to woods.
His host looks down, and to his dismay, he discovers that he is now a woman.
She cranes her neck around behind her and finds the dried-up, rotting remains of either an old barn or stable.
The white paint that once covered its surface has flaked off leaving nothing but faded flecks of paint on the gray boards.
Something about the shape of the old building – the open-mouth arch where a set of double doors should have been – summons feelings of déjà vu from his host.
An electric pang of panic shoots through her chest. Rider doesn’t know how he understands the meaning of these feelings, but somehow, he realizes that the woman in whom he’s embedded within can’t recall anything about how she came to be here or why she’s naked.
Her body feels heavy and weak – like someone who had slept far too long.
She looks left to find acres of corn as far as the eye can see. And thankfully, no one is about.
She looks right and discovers the back of a small, white house with a screened-in back porch about fifty feet away from her. The house is small and square with a cinderblock foundation and wooden siding painted white.
A clothesline full of various articles stands not far from the right side of the house.
His host squats low and creeps toward the house – listening carefully for any noise inside, but the land around her is as silent as stone.
When she reaches the clothesline, she snatches a slate-gray ankle-length dress from it and ducks back into the reeds where she pulls it over her body.
Then she stands, and starts quickly and quietly down the clearing and through the woods with her heart racing.
An eternity later, she finds a dirt road.
Something in the rustic foliage and the whispering brooks calms her, and she senses that she knows this place.
It is a cool day, and judging by the sweet smell of the air, early Spring.
The fear and panic within his host and the aching pains in her bare feet as she treks alongside the gravel road distracts him, but Rider notices that he seems to be in the middle of nowhere. His host thinks of nothing but getting as far away from the house where she stole the dress as she can before whoever attacked her realizes she is missing.
Woods surrounds the road on both sides for the first hour of the hike.
Then the trees thin out revealing massive farms.
A chord of terror rings through her chest, when she hears something motoring up behind her.
She looks left and right for somewhere to hide, but the woods stand too far away.
She casts fearful eyes back down the road, and her heart sinks into her stomach as a black Ford Model T grumps up the hill toward her.
She jumps backwards off the road.
The car sputters and grunts to a halt a few feet away.
The door on the far side of the car swings open and a short and dumpy man wearing a gray bowler hat with a black blazer and a dirty white shirt with a red bow tie peers back at her through oval-framed spectacles.
“You okay, Miss?”
She takes a step back away from him.
“I must find my way into town,” she says – her voice filled with panic.
The formality of her language surprises Rider, and the timbre of her voice seems familiar.
“You in some kind of trouble?” the man responds.
Her emotions explode within her. She covers her face and burst into tears.
The old man waddles toward her and clasps her shoulders.
She blinks at him.
The deep wrinkles around his eyes, and sparse gray hair protruding from beneath his hat reminds Rider of a man in his sixties.
The man drops his head and takes note of her blistered, bare feet and then the contusions on her arms that the dress doesn’t hide.
“Miss, can I take you to see the sheriff?”
She shakes her head. “If you’ll kindly show me into town, I’ll make my own way.”
“Do you live around these parts?”
She bunches her lips together and looks down at her bleeding, dirty feet.
Rider feels the old man staring at her for a moment longer until he finally nods as if deciding something and extends his wrinkled hand toward his car.
“I guess I can motor you into town.”
She steps away from him staring at the Model T with trepidation. Rider feels himself rolling his eyes.
“In that contraption?”
The man’s pale lips curve in a condescending smile.
“Where’ve you been the last twenty years? Almost every family has one of these.”
“It frightens me,” she replies.
The old man gives her a puzzled look.
“Ole Myrtle here won’t hurt you. She’ll just get you where you’re a’goin a whole lot faster.”
He steps over to the passenger door of the car and opens it for her.
She’s torn.
She doesn’t want to walk anymore, but she doesn’t know if spending time with the old man is the answer either.
She feels dirty, and the thin cloth dress is the only item separating her from nakedness.
“I’ll have you in town in less than twenty minutes.”
She eyes the old man and then the car. She doesn’t think her bare feet can take much more walking.
She steps over to the car, sits down in the passenger’s seat, and crosses her legs. The man slams the door behind her with a heavy metallic bang.
She eyes the controls.
She wonders about the purpose of all the pedals, the lever poking up from the floor beside her left leg, and the big metal wheel by the other door. All the complicated-looking machinery only serves to make her more nervous.
The man pauses at the front of the car long enough to bend down and do something that causes the machinery to co
ugh to life. The entire carriage around her vibrates and shudders as if it is either going to fall apart or explode.
Her eyes dance about the vehicle frantically.
Rider is merely amused. He’s never seen anyone manually crank a car.
The man opens his door, and the seat springs groan as he eases down onto the driver’s side of the bench.
The old man pivots uncomfortably and eyes her with concern.
“You gonna be alright?”
“Is this carriage supposed to shudder like this?”
The old man laughs and pats the metal dash. Then he presses in one of the pedals, moves the lever to her left, and the Model T grumps forward.
She closes her eyes tightly as the car bumps and rocks down the road. After a few moments, she realizes that she isn’t going to die, so she opens her eyes and looks down at the floorboard.
At her feet, she finds a newspaper. The date stamped at the top of the page announces, “June 18, 1928.” The headline reads, “Amelia Earhart Completes Long Flight Across the Atlantic.”
Rider’s host wonders who or what Ms. Earhart was running from.
The old man cocks his head toward her.
“You got a name?”
She frowns.
Now that he mentions it, she doesn’t know her name.
“Amelia,” she says.
The old man makes a wry face.
“Where’re you from?”
The panic inside her deepens as she realizes that she doesn’t know that either.
“Very far,” she says.
“What was your family name?”
Her eyes find the paper again. She focuses on the author’s name beneath the article. “Anthony Long,” it states.
She looks at him. “Long.”
The old man shakes his head. “Now that you proved you know how to read the paper, you want to tell me what’s really going on?”
A feeling of impending doom swells in her chest.
“You look like someone who’s been through a big ordeal,” he presses. “Them bruises on your neck look like somebody tried to get you, and they was pretty serious about it.”
“I don’t recall,” she blurts.
“Come again?”
“I remember nothing before waking this morning in a field. I don’t know my name, where I come from, or why I bear all these peculiar injuries.”
