Reaching Through Time

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Reality won out, coming into focus for Drake four days after he was admitted to ICU. His doctor introduced himself one early morning during rounds. “Dr. Sherman,” he told Drake.

  “What happened?”

  “Flu,” Sherman said, adjusting Drake’s oxygen mask. “H1N1 variety. You had a bad case, and we threw every antibiotic in our arsenal at it.”

  “Swine flu?”

  “A misnomer. Its DNA harkens back to the pandemic of 1918.” Sherman wrote on Drake’s chart as he spoke. “Soldiers brought it with them from Europe, unknowingly infecting people. The virus spread like wildfire worldwide. The pandemic killed maybe one hundred million people. The current strain isn’t as deadly, but still plenty of people have died from it, mostly the young. We’ve haven’t figured out why. Your mother says you didn’t get the vaccine for it.”

  Drake flicked his eyes toward the door. “Where—?”

  “She went home to shower and change, said she’d return in an hour. She’s been here round the clock.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “Couple of more days.”

  Drake’s heart sank. How was Gina? How could he find out?

  “Mom, I’m begging you to do this for me.” Drake lifted his oxygen mask to speak clearly.

  “Drake, please forget about this girl for a while. I’m sure her father’s taken care of her.”

  “But I have to know!”

  Connie repositioned the mask on his face. Drake wanted to rip it off and throw it on the floor.

  “One of your new friends from school called to check on you.” His mother tried to change the subject.

  What friend? Drake had no friends except Gina.

  “Her name was Beth. Isn’t that the girl who showed you around at registration?”

  Drake waved his mother’s words away. “Mom, please go up and check on Gina. It’s the only way. I’ll draw you a map of how to get there. Please!”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Is she that important to you?”

  “Yes.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll ask my friend Lois to ride up with me tomorrow after work.”

  “There were so many trees across the road on Sandstone Mountain, we couldn’t even get close to number thirteen.”

  Drake’s stomach knotted with his mother’s report. Lois had come into his room with her and nodded repeatedly to second the bad news. “Did you try?”

  “A cat couldn’t have gotten through that mess of trees. They were lying every which way, pines and oaks. It was a real mess.”

  Drake turned his head, shoved his partially eaten dinner away from him on the rolling table a nurse had placed across his bed. He had no appetite. All he wanted was to get out of this hole.

  Connie stopped the tray from sliding onto the floor. “Now listen up, son. I know you’ve been sick and I know you’re worried about this Gina, but I won’t excuse bad manners. Lois gave up her afternoon to go on this little jaunt with me, so yes, we tried and couldn’t get there.”

  Lois cleared her throat, stepped between Drake’s hospital bed and Connie. “You know, my mother was born and raised in this city. She’s eighty-three now, and she’s a real historian about these parts of North Carolina. Used to be a docent in the museum downtown, and can rattle off information about the area all the way from before the Civil War.”

  Drake sighed, bored.

  Lois forged ahead. “Anyway, I asked her about Sandstone and the families who used to live up there. A few of those houses have been passed down from generation to generation. You know, before developers came in and started buying up properties and building new vacation homes.”

  “And?” Drake said, to keep Lois on message.

  “Well, she recalls that back after the war ended, in ’forty-four, a professor from some fancy university in Boston moved into the old McCaw residence. Pity they had to sell out back then, but they lost both sons in the war.” She shrugged her plump shoulders. “So this old man was a recluse. Didn’t have anything to do with anybody. Wouldn’t let anyone on his property except the grocery delivery boy. In those days, there was a store at the foot of the mountain and they’d bring orders up to you. Not like today.”

  Drake was growing impatient listening to Lois ramble. “What happened to him? Did he have a daughter?”

  “No kin. Just him. Mama said the house burned down in the mid-fifties, and the old man died in the fire.”

  Drake gritted his teeth. He was over hearing Lois’s meaningless story.

  Connie asked, “What happened to the house?”

  “Don’t know,” Lois said.

  Exasperated, Drake sank into the pillow. He didn’t know one thing more about Gina than he had the day he’d gotten sick.

  Drake was cleared to return to school, and Connie sent him off with a list of Mother’s dos and don’ts. As soon as he was in his car, he ditched school and headed up Sandstone. The higher up he drove, the more he saw the colors of autumn. He remembered once hearing “Spring marches up the mountain, autumn flows down it.” He understood the meaning now. Bright red and orange leaves exploded on tree limbs. In the valley, where he lived, the trees were barely tinged with color. Overhead the sky was brilliant blue, and the air was so clear and clean it stung his lungs.

  The road veering off to the Dennisons’ was littered with leaves and branches. No wonder his mother hadn’t been able to get there. He ended up parking far from his original summer space and making a slow laborious climb over felled rotting trees. They looked as if they’d been there for years instead of only a few weeks.

  By the time he reached the bend in the path to the Dennisons’ property, his bad leg ached and his lungs burned, but his longing for Gina drove him beyond his pain. He caught his breath, straightened, rounded the bend. He stopped cold. In front of him lay the property and the grand old house in ruins.

  10

  Drake went numb with shock. The house lay broken, wooden walls ripped and charred down to the stone walls black with soot. The roof was completely caved in, the turret looking as if some giant’s hand had clawed it apart. The white picket fence where Gina met him every day was gray with age, the paint chipped and peeling, sections of it lying on the ground. The wisteria vine was so overgrown he would have needed a machete to get through it.

  Drake limped toward the broken hulk of what had once been Gina’s beautiful home, stepped over a section of the downed fence, plowed his way through overgrown weeds that only weeks before had been a lush green lawn. Maybe he was going crazy. Maybe his summer job had never happened. Maybe everything had been an illusion—the work and Gina, Gina, Gina.

  He stopped in front of the cracked and broken porch, now impossible to navigate. Lizards rustled over burned boards and small animals scurried out of his way. Dazed, Drake heard Lois’s words: “… burned to the ground in the mid-fifties.”

  And then he remembered the last thing Dennison had said to him before taking Gina back into the house. “There’s a large rock on the back corner of the property. Look for it later.” It had made no sense. And yet …

  Drake took his time walking beside the ruined house along what had been the path he’d taken into the gardens. There were no gardens now, just weeds and brush, dead growths that he couldn’t recognize as ever having been flowers. He found tangles of thorny rosebushes, all dead. He passed the weathered bench where he and Gina had sat for summer lunches and stolen kisses. A fist-sized lump clogged his throat.

  The back line of the property was semicircular, with the largest area marked by tree stumps and a sheer drop into autumn-colored woods. He hiked the long perimeter, his leg in spasms. In a far back corner, Drake found a wedge of jutting stone. It stood a good four feet high and held faded charcoal markings in the shape of an arrowhead, pointing down. Goose bumps skittered up his back. He’d handled a lot of arrowheads during his summer job. Someone had left him a message.

  He searched the ground for a sturdy stick, found one and began to poke the area surroundin
g the rock. Nothing. “Deeper,” he told himself. With two hands, he shoved the stick hard into layers of dead leaves and dirt. The stick hit something solid. More rock? Drake shifted awkwardly to his knees and dug through the rotting wet foliage with his bare hands. He touched the surface of something hard and smooth. With the stick he pried a rusty metal box from the earth.

  He scraped dirt off the top, saw that it was the old square breadbox that had once sat on the Dennisons’ kitchen counter. With shaking hands Drake hammered the stuck lid off with a nearby stone. Inside was Gina’s sewing kit, musty-smelling, brittle with moisture. There was also a long envelope, better preserved because it had been wrapped in a thick layer of plastic wrap. He stroked the sewing basket, unable for the moment to open it. Instead he unwrapped the envelope and with cold dirt-covered fingers unsealed it. The words were written in Dennison’s distinctive flowing handwriting. Drake sat in the old leaves, leaned up against the big rock and read.

  SEPTEMBER 1952

  I hope Drake Iverson is reading this, because it’s meant for him and will make no sense to anyone else. I have much to explain to you, Drake. Explanations you deserve. Where to begin?

  The clock, I guess. You were always suspicious of it—with good reason. I found it in an old attic in Boston in 1917 and quickly learned it was a time portal.

  Drake stopped, reread the last sentence. Time portal? Was the professor joking? Making an excuse for taking Gina away? And yet Drake had to admit that the clock had been weird—beyond weird.

  I do not know if it was created in the past or the future; I only know that it allowed me and Gina to travel through time. In 1917, World War I broke out, and in 1918 a virulent influenza began to spread around the world and kill more people than the war itself. I sought to save my precious Regina from this disease.

  Drake paused. Gina had been real. All that had happened to them had been real. And the “days” he’d spent holding her, loving her, had also happened, with mere hours stretched somehow by the clock’s bending of time.

  I cannot tell you why I chose to bring her forward to this time period. Perhaps I simply thought that science had advanced enough so that she would be safe. We first came one year ago for the summer, but she was desperately lonely. When we came this year, I advertised for a summer helper, a companion for her, really. When you came, when the portal that extended outward to the white fence allowed you inside its boundaries, I was overjoyed. I had no inkling that it would. That Gina liked you instantly was even better. Your curiosity about the clock almost destroyed things, but you stayed in spite of my dire warnings and you did your job, and yes, you loved my daughter. I wasn’t blind to your feelings, my boy—or to Gina’s. I passed through the portal daily, returning to Harvard—I really was a professor there, with summer classes to teach.

  There was a flaw with the portal, however. While it allowed the future to come into our world, it did not allow the past to leave its protection. We learned this the hard way when Gina’s cat left the property one day and turned to ashes and dust in front of our eyes. Horrifying. And that is why I could not allow you to carry Gina off the property for medical treatment that night. She would have evaporated in your arms.

  Drake shuddered, thinking how close he’d come to destroying Gina. He shivered against the autumn chill, glanced at his cell phone, now working perfectly. Although it was practically noon, the sunlight offered no warmth.

  The clock had flaws, which I had neither the expertise nor the skill to repair. Storms caused the portal to become unstable. It warped ahead or backward or stopped working altogether. Electrical static made it impossible to pass from one time period to the other. Now you know why Gina was so terrified of the thunder and lightning. If I was stuck in our time, she had to wait alone, trapped in a universe she couldn’t escape or understand. As for you, nothing from your era—your phone, your computer—could function within the protected halo of the portal because these items had not been yet invented. And yet the portal allowed you to pass through. I know not why. Nor could I ask any of the scientific minds at Harvard, who would take it for advanced study. A time portal was far too dangerous a tool to fall into hands that could misuse its power.

  I returned Gina to 1919, where she died from the flu.

  Drake’s vision blurred and he stopped reading. She was gone … very close to a hundred years gone. But he had held her, kissed her, loved her. And she’d taken his heart with her.

  One day when you are older, and if you ever travel to Boston, here is the place where she is buried.

  Again Drake stopped reading, all but blinded with tears. He vowed to go to the address Dennison provided and visit Gina’s grave one day. He took a shaky breath and returned to reading the letter.

  As for me, well, I hardly matter. My grief was fathomless, and I had no reason to return to this time period. So I remained in my own time, lived my days as best I could. I escaped the flu (how ironic that I should live and she should die). I retired from teaching when World War II broke out. Another war! Do men ever learn? I came here in the late forties, bought the house and property. I have left it in a trust to Harvard, which assuredly doesn’t realize they own it, for few people check out these things.

  I know one day you will come here seeking answers, and I hope you will discover this message and Gina’s sewing basket. Inside, I’ve also left you some money, as I know I never paid you for your work. Remember the bills were minted in the early fifties, and that makes them more valuable than the money of your time.

  One more thing, Drake … I have destroyed the clock, so the time portal is no more. No one needs to time-travel into heartbreak. I leave you with a final comfort: your name was the last word on Gina’s lips.

  Regards,

  Dr. Avery Dennison

  11

  Drake sat staring at the back side of the destroyed house and at the gardens, holding the letter detailing answers to questions he could never share. Time travel. Who would believe him? He thought about his case of the flu, and of Gina’s. Of how sick she’d been and how she’d probably suffered. He lived in a time when the science of medicine had been far enough advanced to help him. She had not. Her flu had morphed into his variety, and he had been saved. His leg cramped from being curled under him and his back ached from leaning against the hard rock. Yet he couldn’t leave. He picked up the sewing basket, held it in his lap, feeling the weight of it, the reality of it. Gina had touched it.

  He lifted the lid, saw two envelopes, one holding money, the other a neatly folded handkerchief. The material had yellowed with age, but a nosegay of purple lilacs graced one corner. A note was fastened to the cloth with a straight pin. In Gina’s hand, he read:

  In the Victorian love language of flowers, purple is what is given when the first emotions of love stir in one’s heart. I give you this, dear Drake, to express what is blooming in my heart even now as we sit together in the workroom. I wish you saw yourself as I see you—strong and handsome, with a smile that makes me weak. You fret about an imperfect leg and fail to see your perfect heart. All my love—Gina

  Drake buried his face in the handkerchief, and although it was very old he could still inhale the rosewater scent of her. “I love you,” he whispered.

  Drake staggered upright, shook out his bad leg, waited for the cramping to ease. He tucked Dennison’s letter into the basket, kept the handkerchief in his hand. Having known and loved Gina meant that his life would never be the same; he was already old beyond his years. Love could do that. The thought made him smile.

  He thought about the mountain, the ground where he stood, about the people who’d lived here so long ago. He’d touched their artifacts, the tangible proof of their existence. They were all travelers through time, each of them bound to it, like it or not. In the city below he had a life waiting for him. He would finish high school and college and become an architect. And he would build a great house like the one in front of him had once been. Then and there he swore an oath to do it. Gina had made him u
nderstand his own worth.

  Cradling the basket, Drake started the long, difficult trek to his car. A hawk’s cry forced him to look skyward. The bird swooped and soared, sunlight sifting through its feathered wings as they caught a draft of wind, lifting it ever higher into the sky.

  Our love is frozen in time

  I’ll be your champion and you will be mine …

  —AMY GRANT, GARY CHAPMAN, KEITH THOMAS

  1

  She materialized in broad daylight onto a green lawn in front of a brick house on a residential street. She could have handled the mistake easily if the teenage boy across the street hadn’t glanced up from washing his car at that very moment. Staring, he dropped the hose. She panicked. This should have never happened. She shouldn’t have been seen. The laws governing time travel forbade it.

  She crouched, as if making herself smaller would make a difference. It didn’t. The boy walked to the end of his driveway, his gaze razoring in on her. He jogged across the street. Maura did the only thing her fifteen-year-old brain could think of—she pretended to pass out.

  He leaned over her, blocking the sun and creating a shadow. “Hey, you all right?”

  She willed the ground to swallow her.

  He dropped to his knees beside her. “You okay?”

  She continued her charade.

  She heard the alarm in his voice. “I’ll call nine-one-one.

  She didn’t know what 911 was, but what if it drew a crowd? Maura’s eyes blinked open. She groaned.

  “You came out of nowhere and passed out cold. I should call an ambulance.”

  Thinking fast, she offered him her hand. She spoke seven languages, was glad he had spoken to her in English, her first. His cadence and dialect sounded odd to her, but she thought she could approximate it if she tried. “Help up,” she said.