MacFarlane's Ridge (28 page)

Wanda shrugged. “Not exactly. He won’t die, like I said. He’ll just throw up for a while.”

Cam looked at her, impressed. “What inspired this?”

Wanda examined the reins. “Because Wayne won’t try anything with you if he’s throwing up every twenty minutes. It was the only thing I could think of, besides killing him, and I haven’t figured out yet if I should do that. I have to think about it.”

“Why?”

Wanda didn’t look at her. “Just trust me on this one, okay? He may need to live, at least just a little while longer. But I promise I’ll make him miserable as long as I can.”

Cam smiled to herself, despite the coldness of Wanda’s words. “We could just dump him out on the side of the road. No one would ever find him out here.”

Wanda nodded. “I considered it, but you have to admit he is remarkably resilient. He did recover from a heinous leg wound, if you recall. I’m afraid if we dump him he’d eventually find his way back to civilization. Then we’d spend the rest of our lives wondering if he was coming back to Haver Springs.”

“Good point.”

Wanda hesitated a moment. “You don’t really believe him about Rob, do you?”

Cam stared straight ahead. “Jamie said Rob was dead. He saw it happen.”

“Jamie is a child. What the hell does he know?”

“Maybe it is better this way, Wanda. I’ve thought about this a lot,” Cam admitted. “I think he was ready for me to go back, and he just didn’t know how to tell me. He basically ignored me the whole time we were in Richmond.”

There was a retching sound from the back of the cart.

“How ya doin’, honey?” called Wanda.

Wayne gagged loudly.

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything,” she chirped. She turned to Cam with a grin. “Maybe he’ll dehydrate and die on us, and solve the whole dilemma for me.”

“There’s always hope,” Cam said dryly.

They were approaching a large open field. Waves of young tobacco plants covered the ground.

“We’ll be there soon, you know,” said Wanda. “Probably by mid-day tomorrow.”

“What do we do once we get home?” Cam mused.

“You go back to your little shop on Meador Street.”

“What about you?” Cam asked.

Wanda ignored her, and began to whistle a jaunty tune.

“Wanda, stop that. What about you?”

“I’m staying here.”

Cam felt her mouth drop open. “Are you insane? You can’t stay here!”

Wanda tugged the reins, and the horse came to a stop. “Cam, I don’t have to explain myself to you. You seem to be forgetting something. I am from here. Just like you are from Haver Springs, the future. I was born in 1743, Cam. I am entitled to stay here and die here some day, if I choose to. This is where I am supposed to be.”

Cam stared at her. “But you’re not little Winifred Mayberry lost in a cave anymore! You’re Wanda Mabry. You’re a history professor, for crying out loud!”

Wanda smiled sadly. “And maybe if I had been born in the 1960’s, like you, Cam, I would be able to go back and have that life again. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, believe me.” She sighed. “Who wouldn’t want to return to a world like that? A world where mothers don’t have to die in childbirth, a world where you can hop on a plane in Charlotte, and four hours later be in Los Angeles? Hell, in the here and now, Los Angeles hasn’t even been discovered by the white folks yet; there’s nothing there right now but some Mexican peasants and their sheep and a few lonely priests. Don’t think for a second that I haven’t considered my options. I just,” she paused, “I just don’t belong there. I feel like I could do something of substance if I stay here, where I’m supposed to be.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Wayne Sinclair slept restlessly, tossing and turning in the back of the wagon.

“Where will you go?” Cam asked quietly.

Wanda shrugged. “The Revolution is in full swing in the northeast. They always need people there. Maybe I’ll go be a spy, or a doctor, or dress in men’s clothes and pick up a musket.” She brightened for a moment. “Maybe I’ll start keeping a journal too, so you’ll know what happened to me!”

Cam burst into tears. “When I get back, everyone here will have been dead for two hundred years!”
Except Rob is already dead, and it’s because of me.

“Cam,” said Wanda firmly. “It is time for you to go home. And if I have to throw you into that whirlpool myself, you will go.”

“We are headed to Fairy Stone, aren’t we? That whole thing about it being a one-way ride, that was just a bluff, wasn’t it?”

“Some of it,” acknowledged Wanda. “To answer your question, yes, we are headed to Fairy Stone.” She glanced back at Wayne, snoring blissfully. “But I meant what I said. There are other portals, I’m sure of it. I’ve been studying this for a while, remember.”

Cam sighed. “This whole thing has been like a dream. I can’t believe I am going home.” She blew her nose on a corner of her dress. “I don’t really have any reason to stay here, though, do I?”

Wanda shook her head. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t.”

“Okay.” Cam took the reins from Wanda, and coaxed the horse into action. They spoke no more as the cart rolled through the great tobacco field.

The next morning, Wayne was still weak, but had ceased vomiting. He scowled at Wanda and Cam, brandishing his pistol.

“I don’t know what you did, Wanda, you witch, but I know you’re behind this. As soon as you get me home, I’m going to kill you. And since everyone thinks you’re already dead, it won’t matter,” he grumbled.

“Wayne, you’re babbling like an idiot,” said Wanda, tossing a bowl of cold porridge at him. “Just shut up and eat this.”

He frowned at her. “I suppose I should thank you for not letting me die?”

She smirked. “Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind, honey.”

“You’re hateful, Wanda. How much farther is it?”

She looked out over the valley. They had camped for the night in a small glade on the hillside. The morning view was spectacular. “Not far, Wayne. We’ll be there sometime today.”

Cam returned from the woods.
If nothing else, I’ll be happy to pee in a real bathroom soon, I have to admit. And use real toilet paper
, she thought. She was actually beginning to look forward to going home. As long as she didn’t think about Robert MacFarlane.

Wayne drove the cart that morning, with Wanda beside him, giving directions. When the sun was directly overhead, the wagon creaked to a halt. They were at the foot of a mountain.

“Fairy Stone,” breathed Cam.

Wayne just looked at Wanda. “I knew you were lying, you bitch.”

She smiled at him. “I’m sure you did, honey. But if you had been absolutely positive, you’d have killed me in Richmond, wouldn’t you?” She turned back to Cam. “Are you ready?”

Cam grabbed her bag from the back of the cart, and followed Wanda through the trees.

The cave was small, just like she remembered. Had it really been only a few months since Cam had slipped into the whirlpool under the falls? It felt like a lifetime.

“How are we supposed to find our way through here?” asked Wayne sarcastically. “It’s pitch black in there.”

“I brought a lantern. Here.” Wanda handed it to him. There was a soft glow in front of them, and Cam looked around. She was tired of caves.

“It’s not far inside,” Wanda said. “You can hear the water from here.”

Cam listened, and indeed she could hear it, not far off at all. She followed Wayne and the bobbing lantern through the tunnels. Wanda was right behind her. Before she knew it, they were there. The room opened up before them, the waterfall cascading in from the top. The vortex spun below the falls.

“Here we are,” Cam said in a small voice.

Wayne turned and smiled at her. “Make yourself comfortable. You’re staying here.” He drew the pistol from his belt.

Cam stared in shock. “Now? You’re going to shoot me now, when we’re so close to home? Wanda, why didn’t you take his gun?”

Wanda simply shrugged. “Long story.”

Smiling, Wayne stepped closer. “I can’t have you two spoiling things for me when I get back to Haver Springs, can I?” He leveled the gun at Cam. It was old, to be sure, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to fire.

Suddenly Wanda leaped at Wayne, knocking him to the ground. Before Cam knew it, Wanda was standing again, and this time she was the one holding the pistol. It was pointed at Wayne’s head.

“Time to go, Cam,” she said. “Jump.”

“Wanda, I…”

“You need to go. By the way, when you get back, you might want to look for the rest of Mollie’s journals.” Wanda never took her eyes from Wayne Sinclair.

“Listen, Wanda,” Cam stammered. “If you ever happen to be near MacFarlane’s Ridge, and you see Mollie…”

Wanda nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do. I’ll tell her. I promise.” She smiled sadly at Wayne. “Now go.”

Cam obeyed, and as her feet left the ledge, she heard the crack of the pistol. She turned her head in mid-air to see, but she was falling too fast. She hit the icy water, and went straight down. She could feel her lungs tightening as the swirling pool closed over her head.
Rob, I’ll never forget you,
she thought. After that, there was nothing but the darkness.

Part Two

Haver Springs, VA

The Present

Summer in Haver Springs was trying desperately to hang on. Although it was late September, the past few weeks had remained warm and balmy. Light breezes blew across the trees, leaves turning red and gold, almost as though they were begging fall to arrive.

Granny’s Goodies was in business once again. It had been closed for several months, while the owner was on an extended vacation. The shop re-opened upon her mysterious and sudden return home in early summer. Interestingly, another shop owner had left town at approximately the same time but had not returned. Wayne Sinclair’s antique store was taken over by his creditors, who then merrily auctioned off the entire place and its contents. Sinclair’s store was now being run by a pleasant gentleman named Hal, whose wife, Alice, ran the local coffee shop. Hal got the whole thing for a fraction of what it was worth.

A police cruiser pulled up in front of Granny’s Goodies, and a handsome, if slightly pudgy, young police officer got out. He had a small scar on his forehead, the result of a head injury from the previous fall. All in all, Haver Springs, Virginia was a nice place to be at the end of summer.

Cameron Clark heard the jingle of her sleigh bells, but didn’t bother to turn around. She knew it was Troy. He came by every day at one to bring her lunch. She finished tidying up a display of glass milk bottles.

“How are you, Cam?”

“Good, Troy. Thanks.” It was the same conversation they had every day at one. Every day she ate either a tuna or a chicken sandwich and a small bag of chips. Once again, as it had been a year ago, Cameron Clark’s life was predictable.

“Getting ready for Antique Week?” He glanced at the front display case, which had a small padlock on it. As always, the box held the Culloden sword and Mollie Duncan’s journal. There was also a water-stained copy of
MacBeth
that had been there since Cam’s return to Haver Springs.

Troy hopped up on a barrel and unwrapped his sandwich. “Antique Week will be a bit different without Wayne Sinclair, won’t it?” he began.

She stared at him. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.” Troy was the only one who knew the truth about the Faeries’ Gate. Everyone else in town thought she had had some kind of a personal emergency, and that she had been back in Charleston with a sick friend for five months.

She had really been forced to tell Troy. When the Fairy Stone park rangers had found a half-drowned filthy woman in period costume with no identification lying on the banks of Smith Creek, they had been quite adamant about not turning her loose on her own. She had babbled and raved about some very odd things, they thought, and finally it had occurred to her that they should probably call Troy to come get her, if he was even still alive. Fortunately for everyone, he was, and had driven up to fetch her. He had even helped her locate Mollie’s journal – they found it lying in the small chamber at the entrance to the cave, where Cam surmised that it must have slipped out of her coat so many months before. She had told Troy everything – well, almost everything – on the ride back to Haver Springs.

“Cam, you can’t just not talk about Wayne. Okay, so he’s dead, but you can’t just pretend he never existed.”

“Can we not talk about him right now? Please?” she asked, nibbling the crust of her whole wheat bread. Antique Week would be kicking off soon, but Cam’s heart just wasn’t in it this year.

Troy sighed. In the months Cam had been back, she had been different, and he was worried about her. “You aren’t the same,” he pressed.

“No, you’re right. I’m not. You would be different too if you had been where I went and couldn’t even tell anyone about it. I have to lie to everyone in town and smile and say Charleston was hot and muggy but yes, I had a nice time and my friend is much better now, thank you very much,” she snapped.

Troy glanced around. There was no one in the store. Business at Granny’s Goodies had been slow this summer. Part of that was because occasionally Cam would simply leave the “Closed” sign up and disappear for a day. He had followed her one time, to see where she was going. She had driven up to the deserted MacFarlane’s Ridge. He had watched her from a distance, not intruding, but just trying to make sure she was all right. She had sat upon the crumbled stones of a fallen hearth, and stared off into space. Later, she had wandered up the overgrown path to the ruined foundation of another cabin, where she had picked wildflowers and placed them at the doorposts.

“You need to come to grips with this, Cam. Wayne’s dead. Wanda’s long gone. Everyone you met there is dead and gone. I hate to be nasty, but it’s true.”

She had never told him about the depth of her feelings for Rob, only that she had met him and thought he was nice, and that she had lost him in the end. Cam wasn’t going to tell Troy about the night Sinclair had arrived at the Ridge, and she and Rob had snuck out in the moonlight to the partly finished cabin on the hill. That was for her, and her alone. She kept it locked in a small room where no one would ever go.

“I know, Troy. I’m trying. It’ll just take some time,” she smiled wanly. She put her half-eaten sandwich aside and hoisted a box to the counter. “Look, I’m not really hungry. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Listen, I’ve been thinking. You need some closure to all this, right? You need to know what happened to them,” he said gently. She burst into tears, and he patted her head awkwardly. “So I have an idea, okay?”

“What?” she sniffed.

“After Antique Week is over and done with, let’s go down to the county archives. We can make copies of Mollie’s letters she wrote to Robert MacFarlane, and maybe that will tell you something about what became of all of them.”

“He died.”

“But she wouldn’t have known that right away, maybe. Besides, I know there are letters there. She might have written to him after… after you left Richmond.”

She looked up, wiping her eyes. “Troy, that’s not a bad idea at all.”

“Good, because there’s more.”

“Go on.”

He took a deep breath. “You said that just before you came back, Wanda said something about looking for the rest of Mollie’s journals.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” she asked.

“Why would she want you to look for Mollie’s journals?” he asked earnestly.

Cam shrugged. “Closure?”

“There you go,” he grinned. “Her journals will tell you all about the family, and you’ll be able to move along with your life because you’ll know they were all okay. They probably all lived happily ever after, or some crap like that.”

For the first time in a while, she laughed. “Somehow, Troy, you always know what to say.”

“Yeah, well,” Troy blushed, “that’s why I’m such a great guy.”

“You are.” There was an uncomfortable silence, and then she hopped off her perch on the stool.

“Anyway,” he said, “in the meantime, why don’t you start digging through some of your granny’s stuff? Maybe you’ll find a big stash of Mollie Duncan’s journals.”

Cam rolled her eyes. “Yeah. If it only it were that easy.”

“Hey, you never know. You had the first one here all along.” He tipped his hat to her politely as he walked out, and she considered that he was right. After all, she had found the first diary and the Culloden sword in a trunk in Granny Emily’s attic. Who knew what else she would find once she got around to digging through all that junk?

She flipped the “closed” sign around on the door – no one had come in today anyway, so what was the point of staying open? Cam went upstairs, showered, changed into a pair of clean sweatpants and a t-shirt, and headed to her grandmother’s bedroom.

Emily’s genealogy sheet was still in its folder. She hadn’t looked at it since – was it really a year ago? She had never even bothered to look through that file since she came back. She hadn’t wanted to know, really. What if it turned out that sweet, pudgy little Hamish had died of cholera at the age of two, or that Mollie Duncan had never survived childbirth? Reluctantly, she opened the manila folder.
Better to find things out now than wonder for the rest of my life
.

She spread the sheet out on the roll-top desk. The names leaped off the sheet at her, familiar.
Angus Duncan, b. 1746, son of Hugh Duncan
.
Mollie Duncan b. 1750.
Sarah Duncan b. 1755, married Ian MacFarlane, d. 1774. Jamie MacFarlane born and died 1773. Hamish MacFarlane b. 1774.

She trailed her finger along Emily’s squiggly lines. There it was.
Angus Duncan m. Unknown 1774.
Cam laughed softly. How Wanda would love to be referred to as
Unknown
! Cam followed the line down towards her own name, and froze. Isaac Duncan, Senior, the physician. She followed the line back, in reverse this time, from Isaac traveling back up to Angus and his unknown wife. And there, in Emily’s neat, even letters, was what she had missed before. No wonder she had never been able to see the resemblance between herself and Angus, or Mollie either, for that matter. It was why Wanda had been so evasive, laughing when Cam asked if Wanda was her great-great-something-grandmother.

Angus Duncan m. Unknown, 1774. Children include three boys and a girl, including their adopted son, Jamie Fleming Duncan, from whom Isaac is descended. Jamie b. abt 1764 in Glasgow, Scotland.

Cam was laughing so hard she was shaking, and tears ran down her face. Wanda had known all along. Cam was not descended from an American Revolutionary War patriot named Angus Duncan at all. Her great-ancestor was a beer-swilling, foul-mouthed eleven-year-old guttersnipe from Glasgow.
Granny Emily would be spinning in her grave if she knew!

She flipped through the other papers in the file, but there was nothing in there about Mollie or Wanda, or even Angus. There were marriage and death certificates for Granny Emily’s parents and grandparents, as well as Cam’s own parents.

Peyton Clark born Feb. 17, 1940, to Emily Duncan Clark and Charles Clark. Died April 12, 1977. Cause of death: massive head trauma secondary to motor vehicle accident. Deborah Cameron, born April 1, 1942, to Margaret Kerr Cameron and Leonard Cameron. Died April 12, 1977. Cause of death: massive head trauma secondary to motor vehicle accident.

Cam shivered and dropped the certificates back on the desk. She didn’t remember much of her parents at all. She had been only nine, after all, and so much of what she did remember was obscured by the memory of a doorbell ringing, late at night, and the soft voice of Cam’s babysitter, a nice teenage girl from next door. There was another voice, a man’s voice, and a gasp of horror from the sitter. Then the sitter had gently led the state trooper in to speak to Cam, who lay silent under her blankets, just listening, and numb with shock and fear.

Cam shook her head, willing the recollection to go away. Wait a minute…

Intrigued, she picked up her mother’s birth certificate again.
Deborah Cameron, born April 1, 1942, to Margaret Kerr Cameron and Leonard Cameron.

That was interesting. Her maternal grandmother was named Margaret Kerr. She wondered absently if there was any connection to the Kerrs of MacFarlane’s Ridge. Cam herself had been born in South Carolina, which was why she had chosen to go back there for college, and stay there after graduation, but both of her parents had been born and raised in Haver Springs.

She muddled through another stack of documents. Her eyes began to ache from staring at the fine print and spidery handwriting.
Margaret Kerr, born December 25, 1910, to Mary Mitchell Kerr and Jackie Kerr.
The rest of the Kerr information must be in another file. She wondered how far back it went, and smiled at the thought of crooked old Tom Kerr riding lopsided on his horse.

Cam went through all the motions of Antique Week, feeling herself mechanically greeting customers and selling them odds and ends. She didn’t even feel like haggling over prices, and in truth just wished they would all go away. When it was finally over, she asked Troy to pick her up early in the morning, so they could get to the county archives.

“Cam? Where are you?” Troy called.

She sat up abruptly, disoriented, and looked around. Once again, she had fallen asleep reading. “In here,” she called.

Troy poked his head into Emily’s room. “What are you doing?”

“Um.” She ran a hand through her hair. “How did you get in?”

“The side door was unlocked. You must have forgotten to latch it after I left yesterday.” He looked at her sternly. “That’s dangerous, you know.”

“I know. I didn’t realize I had left it open,” she admitted. “What time is it?”

“Quarter after eight. You want to take a shower before we go?”

She nodded. “Yeah, let me just grab a quick one.”

“Okay. Want me to go make some coffee?”

Cam smiled gratefully. “That would be wonderful. I’ll just be a minute.”

Troy thundered down the steps to the kitchen, and Cam showered hurriedly and pulled on fresh clothing. She brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair. By the time she got downstairs, the coffee was ready.