Falling into Forever (15 page)

Behind her, more laughter echoed through the swaying trees.

“June Bug,” she heard Jasmine calling from the shadows as thunder crackled in the sky.

“Stay away from me,” June shouted into the darkness, her shoes slopping through the mud.

The dimming bulb of the flashlight faded slowly in the

pouring rain as she hobbled from trunk to trunk, feeling her way in the slippery, pitch-black oak and magnolia forest. A tree root grabbed her foot and knocked her to the ground. The flashlight slipped from her trembling fingers into a murky hole of water, mud, and leaves.

Pain seared through her old knees and swollen ankles.

Lifting her body from the soggy ground, she suddenly spotted headlights traveling toward her in the distance.

“That's the driveway!” she whispered to herself as she dragged her legs over a jutting root, the relentless rain pounding her elderly frame. Her shoes grazed the gravel path, and she waited, sobbing, for the headlights to come closer.

Inside the dry Cadillac, Ian calmly maneuvered the heavy car down the muddy driveway toward Peyton Manor. A Beethoven symphony blared through the speakers. The windshield wipers fought back the rain in manic futility.

He squinted through glass, thinking that he saw something ahead in the road. “Good Lord, there's somebody there!” he said, blinking his eyes in the flash of a lightning strike. He cut the music, and his eyes struggled to focus on the driveway. “It's June!” he exclaimed, seeing the woman trembling in the glare of his headlights.

His foot slammed against the brakes to stop, and the heavy car swerved and slid side to side on the muddy pathway. Gravel and dirt sprayed into the trees along the road. When the Cadillac finally came to a halt, he lifted his head and looked over the steering wheel, uncertain of whether or not he'd run her down. But there she was, barely standing. He threw open his door.

“June!” he yelled.

“Ian,” she shrieked and collapsed into his arms. The

rain soaked his seersucker suit as he pushed her delicately into the passenger seat.

“Jasmine,” she whispered to Ian, her eyes shutting.

“She's going to hurt my baby.”

When the Cadillac crawled up onto the cobblestone roundabout in front of the dark house, June roused. “Ian,”

she moaned, her eyes glazed in fear. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn't answer the phone, June. I kept calling to check on you,” he explained as he lifted her from the seat.

“Let's get inside,” he said, wrapping her arm around his neck to carry her frail body up the porch steps.

His fingers tried the knob, but the lock held fast.

“Try the kitchen door,” said June, resting her arm on his shoulder.

So Ian sat June down in a rocking chair by the front door. He left and rounded the corner of the porch.

“It's locked too, June,” he called out from around the corner.

She rocked back and forth as quietly as if sipping her afternoon tea.

A cackle echoed from the trees. June suddenly stopped rocking.

“Hurry,” she said, grabbing his hand to steady herself as she raised her body from the wooden chair and motioned him to follow her around the side of the house.

Rounding the corner of the porch, June saw that a metal table and chairs outside the kitchen door had slid across the porch in the high winds. “Grab it,” yelled the woman, pointing at one of the chairs, fury raging in her chest. “We can do this together,” she said. “Swing on three.”

As they swung the metal chair, the kitchen door's glass shattered and sprayed across the floor. Ian reached his

hand inside to unlock the window, then raised the glass pane and stepped inside the house. Not waiting for him to unlock the door from the inside, June slipped in behind him, slicing her leg once more against a shard of broken glass. A spasm of pain seized her thigh. She yelled and pulled her leg through the jagged glass.

“Let me see that, June,” he said, reaching for the light switch. On. Off. On. Off. He flipped the switch up and down, with no results.

“Blast it,” he cursed and felt around on the counter for a towel.

“Hold still.” Running a dishtowel under the faucet, he held the wet cloth to her leg while she sat down on a stool in the middle of the kitchen.

“There's a candle in the cupboard,” June said, pointing to the cabinet under the sink. “Some matches, too.”

Ian lit a candle and set it on the counter in front of June.

It flickered when a gust of wind blustered through the broken window. She shivered and grabbed Ian's palm.

“You're trembling, June,” he said, patting the back of her hand. “I'll make a fire in the library to warm you up.”

“Don't leave me,” she quavered, shuddering and grasping at his shoulder. Her wild eyes blazed in the candlelight. Shouldering her weight, he helped her across the slick tile floor. Reaching the study, he sat her down in the leather chair. June sank into the deep cushions.

The dry kindling in the hearth caught fire fast as Ian struck a match against the brick fireplace and tossed it on the wood. Staring into the raging flames, June motioned for Ian to come closer.

“My brother spoke to me tonight,” she told Ian.

“I believe you,” he said, taking her hand, and they sat in silence a moment.

“The old one in the woods,” he said finally, nodding.

“Joseph told me about her. He believed her to be evil long before you ever recognized it.”

“But she was our nanny—mine and Joseph's,” June insisted.

“I know, June,” Ian acknowledged, checking her wound beneath the wet rag she held against her calf. “But your father Charles betrayed her.”

“Why did he do that?” June lamented. “How could he have done such a thing? It was an innocent baby. How could he have taken the child away from her, as if it were nothing to her?”

Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

“Your brother knew that she had cursed the family because of Charles,” Ian said, turning to the fire. “He spoke of it sometimes when we were alone on patrol in the woods.”

June raised her head and wiped a trail of tears from her cheek. “When you met him in that Allied camp during the war, did he tell you about me?”

“Of course,” said Ian. “And you are just as beautiful now as when he described you those many years ago.”

“Why did you never marry, Ian?” she asked.

“I promised Joey I would look after you if something ever happened to him,” he said, his gray eyes pleading for understanding.

“Did he ever show you his diary?” she asked, meeting his gaze.

Ian turned his eyes to the flames in the fireplace. “Yes,”

he murmured. “Though I wish he never had.”

“Alexandra took it when she was here,” June confessed.

“My God,” Ian said, coughing. “She doesn't know what she has done.”

“What did he see in that cave, Ian? What secret did he know that Jasmine would hurt anyone for, after all this time?” she pleaded.

“He never showed you?” Ian asked, dabbing a tear from her eye with the handkerchief stowed in his shirt pocket.

“His soul died before he returned to me,” she said. “He could show me nothing except the terror in his eyes when he spoke of his time away during the war. He was not my brother any longer, just a shell of the brother I knew and loved.” June held her hands out to him. “Now tell me, Ian.

I beg you, for my granddaughter's sake. What did Joseph see?”

“Damnation,” he declared, turning to the fire. “And resurrection. He told me that the beast spoke to him like a man, but spat fire from his gut like a dragon. When your brother stumbled upon him hiding in the cave, the beast begged for Joseph to slay him and end his immortal curse.

The creature ripped the rifle from Joseph's hands and pointed the gun at his own chest. But instead of killing him, the bullet melted into his skin, dissolving into the flesh.”

“And he saw this beast more than once?” June gulped, staring at Ian in disbelief. “Did you ever see it? Did he take you to the cave?”

“I never saw the beast,” Ian told her. “But Joseph returned to him, to speak with him. Joseph called him a time-walker, and he said that he had seen a drop of the creature's blood raise a wilting flower to full bloom before his eyes.”

“I never knew,” June's voice wavered.

“He was the never the same after that, June. The things he saw men do to each other during that war, so long

ago,” Ian said, shaking his head. “None of us were ever the same. But Joseph never got over what he saw in the cave, if he really did see . . .”

“You doubt my brother about this secret he entrusted to you?” she said defensively.

June raised her wobbly legs from the chair and dragged her body across the fire-lit room to her wooden desk. Sliding open a bottom drawer, her fingers wrapped themselves around cold metal.

June rubbed her shirttail along the barrel of the pearl-handled revolver. “Well,” she said, “even if you doubt Joey, that witch in the woods believes him, and she will hunt that book to the ends of the earth to find my brother's secret, to know the devil's face.”

“What do you think you are going to do with that gun?” Ian asked, raising himself from the fireplace hearth.

“Joseph gave it to me,” June told him, cradling the gun in her lap. “He wanted me to keep his things safe for him while he was gone.”

“You have, June,” Ian said, slipping the gun from her fingers. “You have kept all of his things safe, and Alexandra will keep the book safe,” he told her, stroking her silver hair as she laid her head against him and sobbed.

12
Fallen

The pounding of the creature's heart hummed in Alexandra's ears as she held her cheek to his chest, not wanting to let go. Growing louder, it rang in her head.

Her eyes stayed closed until she could no longer bear the sound. When her eyes popped open, she stared at the lit-up, red pulsing digits of her alarm clock.

“Here we go again,” she grunted and threw the blanket off her legs.

Stumbling groggily to the bathroom, she peeled off her clothes. She'd fallen asleep in her tee and jeans. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, and she tossed them into the hamper in the bathroom. Her nose twitched at the faint smell of smoke.

“Nasty cigarettes,” she muttered.

In the steaming shower, the torrents of hot water wrapped themselves like tight tendrils around her body.

Closing her eyes, she held her face to the shower spray and let the water pour over her head. The migraine had eased over the night, and she suddenly remembered her dream. She recalled how it felt when the creature had held her body tight in his grasp.

What was he?

Turning the faucet off, Alexandra stepped from the shower stall, wrapped a towel around her body, and heard her bedroom door creak open.

It was Jack, running from her mother.

“Jack! Come here, boy,” her mom called into the bedroom, shaking the dog's leash. Alexandra peeked out from behind her bathroom door while her mother rolled Jack off the bed.

With Jack gone for his morning walk, Alexandra left the bathroom door cracked open and wiped the steam from the mirror. Her green eyes peeked reluctantly from behind her drooping eyelids, and patches of brown freckles swallowed the tops of her pale cheeks.

Her thoughts shifted to Benjamin as she brushed a stroke of loose powder across her nose. She remembered how Benjamin had noticed her freckles when they first met.
Had he been flirting with me?

With a few flicks of mascara and a swipe of red lip balm, she had finished all the attempts at girlishness for which she had any patience.

At her walk-in closet, Alexandra unhooked a plaid skirt from its hanger. Her bedroom door creaked open again, and Jack strolled back into the room. Climbing on the bed, he snuggled down into the blankets and waited patiently for everyone to leave for the day.

“I'm leaving for work now,” her mother said as she peeked inside the bedroom. “Are you okay, Alexandra?

Did you get enough sleep?”

“I'm fine, Mom,” Alexandra called to her mother from the closet.

“Love you, babe! Call me when you get home,” said her mother before she turned from the doorway.

Alexandra listened for her mother's keys rattling in the front door lock. Once she heard that sound, she debated whether to crawl back into bed and hide under the covers with Jack for the rest of the day. But Benjamin's face eased

into her thoughts. With her decision made, she slipped on black Mary Janes.

After getting her shirt tucked and blazer buttoned, Alexandra grabbed her book bag from her bedroom floor.

“Once again running late,” she announced, glancing at the clock. Lifting the pillow Jack's head was underneath, she patted him goodbye. It was then that she noticed her uncle's journal lying on the bed. “I've got to show this to Taylor,” Alexandra told Jack and threw the book inside her bag before she rushed to the front door.

In the parking garage, her hair, still wet, clung to her face. She sprinted to her Jeep.
I hope Benjamin thinks that
frizzy hair is as cute as freckles,
she thought, rolling down her window to let her hair dry in the breeze on the ride to campus.

The morning traffic inched maddeningly through the downtown streets. Slowly Alexandra made her way toward campus. Ahead of her was an SUV large enough for its own zip code. She knew that she was probably following too close to its bumper. She heard her skirt pocket ring and drew out her phone to look at the call screen. She hesitated, but finally answered the unknown number.

“Hello?” she asked, holding the phone to her ear with one hand as she gripped the steering wheel with the other hand.

“Alex?” a male voice inquired.

“Maybe. Who is this?” she asked.