But Not Forever Page 3

  Kerry appeared holding towels and a water bowl. She patted at my feet. “There, there, Emma. Hold still for Doctor Withers. His job is to help you.”

  “I don’t know who he is,” I wheezed. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “I must clean off the muck first. And then some antiseptic before I stitch.” Doctor Wither’s hands darted out at me. His eyes snaked across my flannel-wrapped body. A tobacco-stained tongue slithered out past his teeth, licking his lips.

  “Please . . .” I couldn’t tell if my mouth moved. Faces melted. The room teetered as hands pulsated and dissolved. My nose tingled with the sharp odor of antiseptic. Another set of smaller hands appeared along with the doctor’s. They slid away the wetness along my eyebrows. I heard my skin punch open and felt tugs of thread being laced through.

  There was no pain.

  I was spinning, spinning. . . .

  Let me wake up at the river. Everyone will call me “Sonnet” again. I’ll help pack up. We’ll pile into the big, white van. Cruise back down this horrid mountain. To Seattle. Back to my life. My normal vacation.

  I would have cried if I could, but as it was, I closed my eyes and fell into a reddish-brown-drug-induced stupor. . . .

  WAKING with a start, I sensed someone in the dark room with me. A ghostly figure crept toward the bed with both arms outstretched. Hands reached for my neck.

  I couldn’t move. I strained to scream but no sound came out. One of the hands extended behind my head and lifted it up. The other hand slipped something over it, tucking it into the top of the flannel nightgown. The shadow leaned over and dragged something from under the bed. It backed away and slid out of the room.

  The door closed with a soft and final click.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emma

  2015

  A foul odor swept across Emma’s face, rousing her as it irritated her skin and stung her eyes. A doorknob ground and rattled, and a voice called out on the other side of the door. She raised her head and sat up, sneezing, and ran her hands along her arms and legs.

  The little door squeaked open. The outline of a young man stood in the doorway, his face hidden in darkness, his dark, unkempt hair almost touching his shoulders. He was tall and strong and without a doubt, did not belong in a lady’s room. “Please sir—have you no sense of decency?” Emma gathered her legs to her chest and threw her arms around her knees. “Please remove yourself!”

  “Sonnet?”

  “Surely you know my name is Emma. Now, go!”

  The bedroom door opened with a blow against the wall and two more people ran in. “What’s going on, Rapp?”

  “Something’s wrong with Sonnet.”

  Emma drew herself into a haughty pose and mustered as much pride as possible. Three criminals had accessed her family’s private quarters while she sat unclothed in her closet. “I am not Sonnet! Now, leave my room. As you can see, I still have to dress.”

  They stared at her without moving. Without speaking.

  The lower body of the one called Rapp was an unwanted spectacle before her. His too-big trousers stopped at his knees, and a spot of tree sap dripped on his sun-browned leg as if he had just been cutting wood.

  A lumberjack. In her bedroom.

  Emma pressed her eyes shut to avoid his naked limbs and armed herself in self-righteous anger in case the vilest situation were to occur. Next would be a bloody scream if she opened her eyes and still found him in her room. “Leave now, Mister Rapp! How many times must I ask! I shall no longer be pleasant and will shout and summon the hired help, if you do not. My father will see you off this mountain for good.”

  “Mister Rapp?” He backed away shaking his head. “Hired help? She’s gone flipping berserk. You handle her.”

  The dark-haired girl and the blonde reached in and hauled her to her feet. Emma was bruised and scratched, and her undergarments were dirty and torn. She blinked and tossed her head away from the eyes of her unexpected guests to the corner of the room where she had cast off her dressing gown. It was gone.

  She blinked again. And again.

  Emma’s beautifully appointed pink-and-white bedroom had vanished. The two girls moved toward her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes darting across the dark, empty room. “What’s happened? Where am I?”

  “Quit playing. Whose clothes are those?” The blonde reached for her arm.

  She backed away. “Who are you? What have you done?”

  “Sonnet? What’s wrong with you?” The blonde lunged.

  “I am not Sonnet! I’m Emma!” She pitched around to the bedroom door just as another dark-haired girl appeared.

  “Rapp said you needed help. Here’s Evan’s sweatshirt.” She held out the garment and then frowned, running her eyes down Emma’s body to her bare feet and back to her face again.

  Emma shrieked and thrust past this latest outsider, knocking her away hard against the wall. The three girls pushed and shoved each other in their hurry to follow as she staggered into the empty hallway and dashed down the stairs.

  The air was suffocating her with dust and decay, and her heart thumped madly as she searched every corner, every surface, for something familiar. What had happened to her home? Her mother’s piano hunched like a whipped creature, battled and worn, the only piece of furniture in the entire house.

  Her imagination flitted to the implausible, the insane. Had she missed something terrible? A fire? A flood? That made no sense. None of it made sense. She must be dreaming. She must be.

  They forced themselves around her like small beasts in a terrifying nightmare. She pressed her back against the side of the piano and wiped across it, inspecting her hand. Her fist clenched. She moaned and eyed the knot of three girls—their short, tight trousers and manly shirts and shoes as foreign to her as jungle garb. They gabbled like monkeys, pointing at her and waving their heads around. She heard the names they called each other, but their diction was appalling.

  She understood nothing of their back and forth. Nothing!

  The one named Lia glided to her in slow motion as if trying not to startle a wild animal. “Here. Let me help you with the sweatshirt,” she whispered, and attempted once again to dress her in the lumpy garment. She laced it through Emma’s arms and over her head, and then backed away just as a very large male, topped with short, clipped hair the color of her own, joined them.

  He pushed his face close and stared down her body to her knickers. “What the hell? What’s wrong with you? What’re you wearing?”

  “She’s found some old clothes and gone stark raving mad, Evan,” said Niki.

  Emma reared away from his collarless shirt and short pants and glowered, slapping at him. His legs below his knees were also naked. “The only thing wrong with me is your unwelcome presence in my home.” She lifted her chin and hardened her face at this interloper. “I am Emma Sweetwine, and you, sir, are trespassing!”

  His mouth gaped opened. He moved even closer. “What in the world?”

  “Hey! I just found something!” Mister Rapp rushed in, the last to join the smothering circle crowding her. He brought a badly damaged photograph from his bag and held it out, positioning it in a channel of light. “Look. This is too weird.”

  Emma snapped her eyes at the worn brown-and-white photograph. “There we are. My parents. My brothers, Jacob and Miles. My father is a very important man, and my mother has a temper . . .”

  “Monte Cristo Ice Caves Fair,” Niki interrupted, reading the banner that hung across a mountain in the photo’s background.

  “Yes, the Ice Caves Fair is the weekend after this one.” Emma frowned. “But how can that be? I haven’t been to the fair, as yet. But here is the photograph.” Her finger skimmed across it. “Why am I wearing that dress?”

  “No!” Rapp brandished the photo at them. “Look at the date on the banner.”

  Lia lifted her head. “August twenty-first to August twenty-third . . . 1895?”

  “1895? 1895?” Jules wailed.

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nbsp; The house grew quiet. The rain had stopped. The front door was thrown wide open to the outside world. A bird called out something evil, something dangerous, running shivers down Emma’s spine. Her head throbbed with the horrendous smell and the strangeness of the day. She was sick with confusion. And when her mother caught sight of the wretchedness that was once their home, hellfire would reign down on them all.

  “What happened, Rapp? I left you and Sonnet in the bedroom,” said Lia.

  He ran his hands through his locks and tugged. “The closet, Lia. Up there in that bedroom. That’s what happened.”

  “The closet?” Evan slowly turned toward the staircase. “Up there?” One by one they all looked.

  “Rain was coming in the open window,” Rapp continued. “So, I closed it, and we heard Niki and Jules in the hallway. I told Sonnet to hide in the closet. She opened the door and the wind blew the window open and the door knocked her inside. I couldn’t get it open. When it finally budged, Sonnet sat there with different clothes talking all proper like she didn’t know me.” He nodded at Emma. “It was her.”

  Lia grew silent, transfixed by Emma, who was still jammed up tight to the piano. She poked her head at Emma’s, inches from her face. “She’s paler, her freckles less prominent, like she’s never in the sun.” Lia held the ends of Emma’s hair, pulling it straight. “And her hair’s longer than Sonnet’s. At least five inches longer. Show me the photo again, Rapp.”

  He held it out. “Look,” she whispered. Lia held Emma’s wild hair back behind her head and brushed it forward, letting it fall over her left shoulder in an identical style. “The girl in the photo has shorter hair by about five inches. Now, how do we explain that?”

  Evan paced around, cracking his knuckles. “She’s my twin sister and this girl isn’t her. I should know. Something has gone terribly wrong.” He stared at the ceiling. “Think, Evan.” Walking the perimeter of the room again, he stopped suddenly. “Could they have switched? Could it be possible? But why?”

  The others huffed out their disbelief. But Evan marshaled his body and moved toward the staircase. “I’m gonna investigate!”

  Lia grabbed Emma’s hand. They thundered after Evan amid the grime, rushing up the stairs on each other’s heels.

  Rapp led them to Emma’s room. “This one. It happened in here.”

  Evan strode to the closet door and opened it, the rusty hinges crying out like a wounded animal. “What if . . . what if . . .” He held up his hands and stood still. “What if they switched because they look alike and, and . . . god, I don’t know what the reason would be.”

  Evan swung around, a final reckoning spreading across his face. “This is going to sound crazy, but what if this closet is . . . some kind of portal? Some kind of time travel highway, right?”

  Portal? Time travel highway? The foreign words were ominous, spitting out of Evan’s mouth as fast as the lightning that had crackled across the sky. Emma’s heart began to sink. He was right. Something was terribly wrong.

  “What year do you think it is?” Niki narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms at Emma, challenging her.

  “It’s 1895, of course.”

  “Oh, god,” Lia groaned “A really great history lesson. What have we done?” She looked as if she were going be sick.

  “Told ya there were ghosts in here,” said Niki.

  Jules pressed her fist to her mouth and whimpered.

  “I forced her to go,” said Rapp. “She didn’t want to. She asked me if I could see the bubbly air. I thought she was kidding around, and I told her she was crazy. Oh, man, I feel terrible.”

  Emma saw Rapp, finally, his face illuminated clearly for the first time by the dim light of her bedroom window. Her heart lurched to a stop. On top of everything else, now this? She held herself and swayed, willing herself not to faint, and wondered what was in the canvas bag that crossed over his body. Hammers? Lord, help her—his eyes . . .

  “This is our reality. We just have to deal with it.” Evan held out a small, slender box, a white arc of light casting a lit path onto his face and into the gloomy room. “And we have to find our way back to the picnic before they come looking for us. It’s almost one, and they’ll kill us if we’re late.” He dropped the object back into his pocket.

  Kill us? Emma tore her eyes from Rapp and fixed on Evan and the light shining through his pants. At any moment, a fire would surely engulf this person who spoke of attending a picnic with potential murderers as calmly as if he were discussing a game of poker with friends.

  She was going insane.

  “So . . . Emma,” Evan said. “You’ll have to come with us and be Sonnet until we can figure this thing out.”

  Jules gasped. “Seriously? We’re going to pass her off as Sonnet?”

  “What else can we do? Look at her. She’s helpless. She doesn’t even have clothes. And anyway, how will we explain losing Sonnet? Think about it, Jules.”

  “Absolutely not,” Emma said, holding on to the last of her dignity. “I will not be passed off as someone named Sonnet. I know nothing of you people.”

  “Evan’s right, Emma. You can’t stay in this empty house. We’ll take care of you. We’re all you’ve got now.” Lia held her arm and gestured at the boy who had, thus far, not caught on fire. “Look. That’s Evan McKay, Sonnet’s twin brother. Jules McKay is Sonnet’s older sister. Niki Macadangdang is Sonnet’s cousin and my sister. I’m Lia Macadangdang, Sonnet’s cousin and best bud. Rapp Loken there—he’s our friend. Now you know everyone. We’re not strangers.”

  “Your family name is Loken?” Her mouth dropped open. She dragged her attention away from the mystery of Rapp and took measure of her other four guests. Sonnet’s cousins, the long-haired, dark-skinned Macadangdang sisters, stared back, Niki in brashness and Lia in anguish. They were both as exotic as gardenia blossoms, odd in this cold light, more belonging in the environment of a hothouse. Tahiti, Emma thought. Maybe Tahitians had come to Monte Cristo.

  Sonnet’s older sister, Jules McKay, was lovely . . . a magnificent, golden orb attached to Niki’s side as a barnacle would be to its ship. She had made the greatest attempt at some semblance of flair. At least her clothing matched in color. And their leader, Evan McKay, twin of Sonnet, was muscular under his tight, white shirt. Where Rapp’s dark hair hung too long, Evan’s red hair bristled too short.

  “It is a difficulty to understand you, Lia. I don’t know what a ‘best bud’ is. And even your names are uncommon. Whatever is a Macadangdang?”

  Lia nodded. She spoke slowly, enunciating her words as if she were speaking to a child. “Emma, I know you don’t understand much of this, so I’ll just say it. We think what’s happened is that you are from our past. And we, for you, are from the future. It’s not 1895 here. The year is 2015. One hundred and twenty years in the future. And somehow you’ve switched places with my cousin who looks just like you.”

  “That’s why the house is a wreck,” said Jules. “It’s been abandoned for probably a hundred years. Monte Cristo is a ghost town. No one lives here anymore.”

  “Ghost town . . .” Emma shivered.

  Lia clasped her hand in hers. “We want Sonnet back here with us as much as you want to go back to 1895 and your family. You have to trust us to come up with a plan. We’ll take care of you in the meantime . . .”

  “Okay, Emma,” interrupted Niki. “Chop, chop. If you’re coming, we gotta get back to the river now. We all brought extra stuff, so we can swing by the cars and fix you up before you’re around the adults. We’ll stick your hair into a baseball cap until we get home and can cut it. Mom has eagle eyes. And then you just need to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Cars?” Emma frowned. She turned her battered shoulders to the empty space that had once been a stunning room with all the latest amenities. Furniture, carpets, and knickknacks had all disappeared. Her family and the hired help had vanished, leaving her alone with strangers. She wiped dirt from her face with the long sleeves that hung down past her hands,
her awful fate sinking in. “I’m not dreaming this, Rapp Loken? The future is here?”

  He smiled. “The future is here.”

  “And someone named Sonnet, someone just like me, has gone away, and I have replaced her. And you will help me. You will all be my friends.” Emma gripped Lia’s hand, exhausted and ready to buckle. She was numb to it. Too tired to fight. She would have to accept their offer, even with the possibility of losing her life on account of tardiness. She had no other choice. She rolled her eyes down the fuzzy garment to where her knickers gathered with a pink ribbon around her knees. Her dirty legs and feet were bare beyond the cotton material.

  Rapp handed Jules his bag. “You can climb on my back, and I’ll carry you down the hill, Emma.” He tossed his dark hair and sent her a reassuring grin. “I’ll be your packhorse.”

  All Emma had was faith. She ignored the violent thumping of her heart and the tears threatening to fall from her eyes again, and wished her visitors to see her as brave. She dropped Lia’s hand and took hold of Rapp’s as they made their way down the staircase and out the doorway to the porch. They jumped over a splintered hole. Rapp kicked away blackberry vines and stood two steps below her. Emma said a quick prayer, not much more than a keep me safe, and leapt up on his back for the trek through the forest to the river.

  In the lead, Niki and Evan were already forging through the dense stand of trees that stood where once grew a manicured lawn. Rapp followed Jules, her smaller but identical sweatshirt blazing AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF CAPE TOWN across the back. Emma twisted around one last time and watched as Lia banged the front door shut, closing her home off from this astonishing new world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sonnet

  1895

  A door cracked open, and with it came giggling. I poked my head out from under the sheet. Dull mist parted, and agonizing misery receded along with my fuzzy dream. Finally, a morning without that wretched medicine forced down my throat.