Mirror, The (4 page)

Ginny joined Katie by the tree and gave her surroundings a closer inspection. The House of Mirrors had not changed. From the outside, the building looked just like the one they had entered minutes earlier. The exhibit's sign was exactly as she had remembered it.

Nearly everything else, however,
had
changed. The House of Mirrors was nowhere near the eastside strip that had been cleared for the "Sixties Revival." It occupied a lot on the main road about a hundred yards from an arched fairgrounds entrance. The arched gate was new, as were a freshly painted red barn and a white maintenance building that flanked the House of Mirrors.

The trees and bushes had changed as well. They were greener, fuller, and far more numerous. Ginny remembered seeing a few yellow leaves when she had arrived. She saw none now. The leaves were green – bright green – as if they had just responded to the first kiss of spring.

Ginny looked beyond the front gate and saw something even more alarming: an unoccupied stretch of low-cut grass that hours earlier had served as a parking lot for several hundred cars. She didn't even bother trying to find her 2018 Toyota. She knew it wasn't there.

"I'm afraid," Katie said, breaking the silence. "The grounds look different. The plants look different. We're not in the same place. I know it. We're not in the same place!"

Ginny put her hands on her twin's shoulders and looked her squarely in the eyes.

"Get a grip, Katie. Freaking out is not going to help. We have to keep our heads. There has to be a logical explanation for this. There has to be."

Ginny gave Katie a hug, stepped back, and glanced again at the fairgrounds entrance. She looked for a sign of activity: a person, a dog, even bird or two. She sought confirmation that she was still on the same planet – or at least fully conscious – but saw nothing useful.

The notion that this was all a nightmare remained ever present. Perhaps this was nothing more than a simple dream with a scary twist. Maybe Ginny and Katie
had
taken Marta's advice and gone home and gone to bed. What else could possibly explain what they had seen and done?

Ginny wondered too whether this could be some sort of practical joke for a reality TV show or a new
Candid Camera
. Perhaps she and Katie had been selected, based on their wholesome appearance, for a series with a
Through-the-Looking-Glass
-type theme. She could just hear the ten-second promo:

"She walks. She talks. She has a perky twin sister. She's
Alice in Timberland!
Next on Teen TV!"

Ginny's gut, however, told her that she was stuck not in a dream or a television program but rather something that defied human understanding. She was as conscious and sober as she had ever been and knew that conscious, sober people did not pass smoothly through plates of glass or travel from night to day in a matter of seconds. Something was seriously wrong.

She grabbed Katie's hand and pulled her forward.

"What are you doing?" Katie asked.

"I'm leading you out of here. We won't accomplish anything standing around," Ginny said. "There are houses on the road that leads to the highway. Let's go to one of them and see if we can find someone."

A short while later Ginny found herself walking beside Katie on Blackberry Lane, a mile-long access road that connected the fairgrounds with State Route 169. She did her best to raise Katie's spirits and keep their conversation focused on solutions and not problems, but with each step she began to succumb to her own doubts and fears.

It wasn't hard to find reasons to worry. Fifteen minutes into the walk, Ginny had still not seen nor heard another human being. She had heard a dog bark and a few birds chirp but nothing that might suggest meaningful contact was near. If people occupied this strange world, they had yet to make themselves known.

Ginny looked for familiar landmarks when she and Katie turned onto Blackberry Lane but saw little that gave her comfort. The sign directing visitors to the fairgrounds had changed in size and color and a rural fire station that had once been visible from the turnoff had, for all practical purposes, disappeared. So had a cell tower that once shot above the surrounding treetops. Not that it mattered. Cell service, as both girls quickly discovered, had ceased to exist.

"Do you think we're still in Maple Valley?" Katie asked.

"Yes," Ginny said without hesitation. "I know we are. The hills haven't changed and neither have a lot of things I've already seen, like some of the buildings at the fairgrounds or even this road. It's still Blackberry Lane. There's still a big ditch on this side of the road and a pond on the other. I don't know what's happened to us, Katie, but I'm a hundred-percent certain we're still in Maple Valley."

"Do you think we're still in 2020?"

Ginny stopped when she heard the words, turned to face her sister, and saw fear in her eyes. She didn't want to answer that question. She didn't even want to
think
about it, but she knew she would have to broach the subject of time travel sooner or later.

It wasn't just a proverbial elephant walking at their side. It was a mastodon. It was also a subject that wasn't entirely new to the twins or members of their family. For that reason alone, Ginny chose her words carefully.

"I have no reason to think otherwise, Katie. I still believe there's a rational explanation for all this – maybe even a simple explanation. We just have to keep pressing ahead until we find it."

Ginny saw Katie avert her glance, lower her head, and nod slightly. She didn't know if she bought a single word, but she suspected that she'd made some progress. She threw an arm around her sister and guided her forward down a road that seemed a bit narrower and bumpier than the one they had traveled several hours earlier.

As they continued down Blackberry Lane, Ginny noticed another difference. There were fewer houses – a lot fewer. On the drive to the fairgrounds Friday afternoon, she had noticed at least a dozen houses on each side of the road. On the walk from the fairgrounds, she had so far seen just two. Both were unoccupied residences in the early stages of construction.

Ginny knew it was only a matter of time, however, before the sisters encountered a house with living, breathing residents. Even before they reached the top of a rise in the road, she saw a row of mailboxes and newspaper tubes. The receptacles sat atop a brown rail near what appeared to be the entrance of a driveway. Trees and bushes obscured the rest of the road.

"Do you see what I see?" Ginny asked.

Katie gave her sister a sidelong glance.

"I do."

The sisters picked up the pace.

Ginny started to speak again when she heard a sound she hadn't heard in several hours: the dull rush of an approaching car. She looked over her shoulder and saw a green pickup move toward them at roughly forty miles per hour. With large, rounded fenders and a grille that resembled a cattle guard, the vehicle looked like a relic from a classic car show. When it became apparent that the driver had no intention of slowing down, Ginny pulled Katie to the side of the road.

"Step back, Katie. He's moving fast."

Ginny waved frantically as the driver, an elderly man wearing what looked like a flannel shirt and a baseball cap, approached. She hoped to persuade him to pull over to the side of the road, where the twins could gain information and perhaps a ride to the nearest town.

The driver, however, apparently interpreted her wave as a friendly greeting. He honked and waved as he approached and continued down the road at the same speed. He finally stopped in front of the row of boxes, about a hundred yards away, but only for a few seconds. He stuck newspapers in two tubes and sped off.

Ginny and Katie gave chase until the futility of their pursuit set in. When they saw the truck round a bend and disappear from sight, they slowed to a walk.

"At least there are people here," Katie said as she caught her breath. "Thank God for that. Maybe the next driver will stop."

"He will," Ginny said. "I'll take off my damned blouse and stand in the middle of the road if I have to. I know that will work."

Katie laughed for the first time since she had passed through the mirror.

Ginny rewarded her sister with a smile but didn't hold it long. She knew something else and wasn't all that thrilled about sharing the information.

"What's the matter, Gin? You don't look happy. You should be. I think we're going to get out of here. I can feel it."

Ginny didn't respond right away. She instead lowered her head and kept walking.

"Ginny? What's the matter?"

The older twin looked at the younger with heavy eyes. She took a deep breath before finally breaking her silence.

"Did you see what the driver did when he stopped?"

"Yeah," Katie said. "He stuffed newspapers in the tubes. So?"

"He did more than stuff newspapers in the tubes. He stuffed
today's
paper in the tubes."

Ginny felt her stomach drop as she saw confusion and then concern return to her sister's eyes. She knew, just as Katie now knew, that their Eureka moment was coming up. When Katie looked at the row of boxes and started to run, Ginny grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"You stay here, Katie. Do you hear me? You stay right here. We're going to do this together. We're going to walk up to those paper tubes and do this together."

Katie nodded but didn't say a word.

When the girls reached the row of boxes and tubes a minute later, Ginny stopped and turned to face her sister. She grabbed Katie's hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

"All right then. Let's do it. I'll grab a paper and bring it back. We'll look at it together."

"OK."

Ginny gave her sibling a reassuring smile and stepped forward. When she reached the nearest of the two yellow tubes, she stuck a hand in the receptacle and pulled out a rolled newspaper that seemed unusually thin. Whatever it was, it wasn't a Sunday edition full of ads.

She walked back to Katie, stood by her side, and pulled her close.

"Here we go," Ginny said with a deep sigh. "I'm going to open it now."

She waited for a final green light and got it in the form of a nervous smile. When she saw Katie bolster the smile with a nod, she slowly unwrapped the paper and held it out.

Ginny needed only a split second to see that her life was about to change. She scanned two headlines that looked like entries in a history text: ROCKEFELLER GAINS SUPPORT IN OREGON and U.S. SENDS ADVISORS TO VIETNAM. The paper, a Saturday edition of the
Seattle Sun
, had confirmed her worst fears.

She put a hand to her stomach and tried to keep from vomiting for the second time in as many hours. For a moment, she stared blankly into space and tried to digest the enormity of it all.

When Ginny snapped out of her daze, she immediately thought of her sister and again extended an arm. She knew Katie would need comfort, big-time comfort. She could only imagine what was going through
her
mind.

Katherine Lucille Smith, however, hadn't stuck around to offer her thoughts or even receive a comforting arm. Before Ginny could say May 2, 1964, Katie had fallen to the ground.

CHAPTER 7: GINNY

Saturday, May 2, 1964

This time Ginny needed two minutes to revive her sister. Not that it mattered. When she told Katie that the date on the newspaper wasn't a misprint, Katie fainted again.

Ginny was more than a little envious. She too wanted to drift off to a place where people didn't walk through mirrors and travel back in time fifty-six years. There was something decidedly appealing about remaining in your own era.

When Katie regained consciousness, she looked at Ginny as if confused and then as if fearful. She glanced at the paper and broke into sobs.

"Please tell me this is a nightmare. Please tell me this isn't real."

"I can't, Katie. I can't. We really are in 1964."

Katie sat up and stared at Ginny blankly, as if locked in a trance, and then gazed at a field on the other side of the road. Within seconds she started breathing rapidly and shaking her head.

"I don't believe it," Katie said. "I don't."

"You have to."

Katie shook her head more forcefully.

"No. I don't," she said with a frantic edge in her voice. "Time travel is not possible. It's not. You know it's not, Gin. You
know
it."

Ginny looked at her sister and wrestled with competing thoughts. Part of her agreed not only with Katie but also with a team of physicists that flatly declared in 2011 that time travel was impossible. The scientists had reported that nothing, not even a single photon, could move faster than the speed of light. An effect, they concluded, could not occur before its cause.

Ginny wanted to believe that science had all the answers, but she suspected, in this case, that it did not. According to her parents, time travel was more than just possible. It had been a Smith family tradition for more than twenty years.

"I know nothing of the sort, Katie, and neither do you."

Ginny stood up and helped her sister to her feet.

"What do you mean?" Katie asked.

"You know exactly what I mean."

Katie turned away and walked a few yards to the entrance of the dirt driveway, where she appeared to collect her thoughts. When she looked back at Ginny, she did so with clear eyes.

"I never believed those stories," Katie said.

"Do you think Mom and Dad lied to us? Why would they lie?"

"I don't know," Katie said. "I don't. Maybe they wanted to warn us about the dangers of the world. I just know I never believed their stories."

"Do you believe them now?"

Ginny stared at her twin. When she didn't get an answer, she repeated the question.

"Do you?"

Katie looked at Ginny but couldn't hold her gaze. Within seconds she dissolved into tears.

"I don't know!" Katie snapped. She shook her head. "I don't know what to believe."