“Ben …”
“I will come back,” he insisted.
He stepped away, turning again to find Nightshade. He felt empty and directionless, as if some tiny bit of life was turned loose in a sea of debris and blowing winds. He was about to be alone for the first time since he had come into Landover, and he was frightened almost beyond reason.
“Where do I go?” he asked Nightshade, fighting to keep his voice calm.
“Follow the corridor—there.” She pointed behind her, and torchlight glimmered along a shadowed corridor in which mist swirled like a living thing. “You will find a door at its end. The fairy world lies beyond.”
Ben nodded and walked past her without a word. His mind reeled with whispered warnings that he was forced to ignore. He slowed at the corridor entrance and glanced back. Willow stood where he had left her, her slender form a pale green shadow, her strange, beautiful face streaked with tears. He was filled with sudden wonder. How could this girl care so much for him? He was just a stranger to her. He was just someone she had happened across. She had blinded herself to the truth with fables and dreams. She imagined love where there was none. He could not understand.
Nightshade stared after him, her cold face expressionless.
He turned slowly away and walked into the mists.
Everything disappeared at once. The mists closed about like a shroud, and Ben Holiday was alone. The corridor tunneled ahead, coiling snakelike through pairs of torches that gave off dim halos of light in a haze of shadows and gloom. Ben followed it blindly. He could barely see the passage walls against which the halos cast their feeble glow, blocks of stone charred by flame and stained by damp. He could hear only faintly the sound of his boots as they thudded against the flooring. He could see or hear nothing else.
He walked for a long time, and the fear which had already taken seed within him spread like a cancer. He began to think about dying.
But the corridor ended finally at an iron-bound, wooden door with a great curved handle. Ben did not hesitate. He gripped the handle and twisted. The door opened easily, and he stepped quickly through.
He was standing in an elevator facing forward. A panel of lighted buttons to the right of the closed doors told him he was going up.
He was so astonished that for an instant he could only stare at the doors and the buttons. Then he wheeled about, searching for the door through which he had passed. It was gone. There was only the rear wall of the elevator, simulated oak with dark plastic trim. He felt along the edges with his fingers, testing for a hidden latch. There was none.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and a janitor got on.
“Morning,” he greeted pleasantly and punched button eight.
Ben nodded wordlessly. What in the hell was going on? He stared at the control panel, finding it oddly familiar. He glanced hurriedly about the interior and realized that he was on the elevator that serviced the building where his law offices were situated.
He was back in Chicago!
His mind spun. Something had gone wrong. Something must have gone wrong. Otherwise, what was he doing here? He braced himself against the wall railing. There was only one explanation. He had gone back through the mists completely; he had passed right through the fairy world into his own.
The elevator stopped at eight, and the janitor got off. Ben stared after him as the doors slipped closed. He had never seen the man before in his life, and he thought he knew all of the help that serviced the building—by sight, if not by name. They cleaned the offices on Sundays; that was the only time they were permitted to ride the elevators. He was always there, too, catching up on his paperwork. But he didn’t know this man. Why didn’t he?
He shook his head. Maybe it was someone new, he decided—someone the building supervisor had just hired. But new help wouldn’t work the offices on Sunday alone, not when they had access to … He caught himself. He smiled, suddenly giddy. Sunday! It must be Sunday if the janitors were using the elevators! He almost laughed. He hadn’t thought to ask the day of the week since he had crossed into Landover!
The elevator began to rise. He saw the panel buttons blink in front of him and watched them climb toward fifteen. The elevator was taking him to his office. But he hadn’t punched the button, had he? He glanced down in confusion and jumped. He was no longer wearing the clothes he had worn when Nightshade had sent him into the mists. He was wearing the running suit and Nikes he had worn when he had gone into the Blue Ridge.
What was happening?
The elevator stopped at fifteen, the doors slid open and he stepped out into the hallway. A jog left and he was at the glass doors that fronted the lobby to the offices of Holiday and Bennett, Ltd. The doors were open. He pushed through and stepped inside.
Miles Bennett turned from the reception desk, a sheaf of papers in his hands. He saw Ben, and the papers slipped from his fingers and tumbled to the floor. “Doc!” he whispered.
Ben stared. It was Miles who stood before him, but not the Miles he had left behind. This Miles was a shell of that other man. He was no longer simply heavy; he was bloated. His face was florid in the manner of a man who drinks too much. His dark hair had gone gray and thin. Worry lines marked his face like an etching.
The shock faded from his partner’s eyes and was replaced with undisguised rancor. “Well, well—Doc Holiday.” Miles spoke his name with distaste. “Goddamn if it isn’t old Doc.”
“Hello, Miles,” he greeted and stuck out his hand.
Miles ignored it. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe its really you. I thought I’d never see you again—thought no one ever would. Goddamn. I thought you long since gone to hell and shoveling brimstone, Doc.”
Ben smiled, confused. “Hey, Miles, it hasn’t been that long.”
“No? You don’t call ten years a long time? Ten goddamn years?” Miles smiled as he saw the stunned look on Ben’s face. “Yeah, that’s right, Doc—ten years. Not a living soul has heard a word from you in ten years. No one—me, least of all, your goddamn partner, in case you’d forgot!” He stumbled over the words, swallowing. “You poor, dumb jerk! You don’t even know what’s happened to you while you’ve been off in your fairy world, do you? Well, let me clue you in, Doc. You’re broke! You’ve lost everything!”
Ben felt a chill settle through him. “What?”
“Yeah, everything, Doc.” Miles leaned back against the desk top. “That’s what happens when you’re presumed legally dead—they take everything away and give it to your heirs or to the state! You remember your law, Doc? You remember how it works? You remember anything, goddamn it?”
Ben shook his head disbelievingly. “I’ve been gone ten years?”
“You always were a quick study, Doc.” Miles was sneering openly at him now. “The great Doc Holiday, courtroom legend. How many cases was it you won, Doc? How many shootouts did you survive? Doesn’t much matter anymore, does it? Everything you worked for is gone. It’s all gone.” The veins on his cheeks were red and broken. “You don’t even have a place with this firm anymore. You’re just a collection of old stories I tell the young bucks!”
Ben wheeled about and looked at the lettering over the glass entry doors. It read, Bennett and Associates, Ltd. “Miles, it seemed like only a few weeks …”he stammered helplessly.
“Weeks? Oh, damn you to hell, Doc!” Miles was crying. “All those dragons of the law you thought you’d slay, all those witches and warlocks of injustice that you thought you’d take on and straighten out—why the hell didn’t you stay here and do it? Why’d you leave here for your goddamn fairy land? You weren’t a quitter before, Doc. You were too stubborn to quit. Maybe that’s why you were such a good lawyer. You were, you know. You were the best I’d ever seen. You could have done anything. I’d have given my right arm just to help you do it, too. I admired you that much. But, no, you couldn’t survive in the same world with the rest of us. You had to have your own goddamn world! You had to jump ship and leave me with the rats!
That’s what happened, you know. The rats came out of their holes and took over—the rats, sniffing around the old cheese. I couldn’t handle it alone! I tried, but the clients wanted you, the business couldn’t function without you, and the whole goddamn mess went down the tubes!”
He sobbed. “Look at you, damn you! You don’t look like you’ve aged a day! And look at me—a boozed-up, burned-out wreck …” He shoved forward, neck muscles straining against the collar of his shirt. “You know what I am, Doc? I’m dead weight, that’s what I am. I’m something that takes up space—something the younger bucks are trying to find a way to shove quietly out the door!” He sobbed again. “And one day, they’re gonna do it, Doc! They’re gonna shove me right out of my own damn office …”
He broke down completely. Ben felt sick inside as he watched his old friend’s composure disintegrate completely. He wanted to step forward, to go to him, but he was unable to move. “Miles …”he tried.
“Get out, Doc,” the other cut him short, his voice breaking. He motioned roughly with his arm. “You don’t belong here. They took everything you had long ago. You’re a dead man, Doc. Get the hell out!”
He left the reception room in a rush and stumbled down the hall into his office. Ben stood rooted in place for an instant, then followed. When he reached Miles’ office, the door was closed. He grasped the handle and stepped inside.
Mist swirled past his face …
The mist disappeared. He stood in an orchard of apple trees ripe with fruit. Green grasses waved gently in the summer breeze, and the smell of honeysuckle was in the air. A pasture fenced with board rail painted white was visible in the distance, and horses grazed in its enclosure. A stables sat close by, and a sprawling ranch house of brick and stained fir overlooked it all from a tree-shaded knoll.
He wheeled about in shock, already knowing that Miles, the office, and the elevator would all be gone. They were. There was nothing left. Had he imagined them? Had he imagined everything? The terrible confrontation with Miles was still replaying itself hatefully in his mind, the emotions it had triggered razor sharp as they cut against his memory. Had he imagined the whole thing?
He glanced quickly down at his clothing. The running suit and Nikes had been replaced by slacks, a short-sleeved shirt and loafers.
What in the hell was happening?
He fought to control the fear that raced through him and brought what was left of his common sense to bear. Had he jumped through time, he wondered? He didn’t think so. But he might have imagined that he had. It could have all been just an illusion. It hadn’t seemed an illusion, but it could have been. The mists could have blinded him. His passage through the fairy world could have deceived him somehow. He could have gone nowhere at all. But if he had gone nowhere and if everything he had seen was an illusion, then what was he seeing now …?
“Ben?”
He turned, and there was Annie. She looked exactly as he remembered her, a small, winsome girl with huge brown eyes, button nose, and shoulder-length auburn hair. She was dressed in white, a summer frock with ribbons at the waist and shoulders. Her skin was pale and freckled, and the air about her seemed to shimmer in the flush of the sun’s midday light.
“Annie?” he whispered in disbelief. “Oh, my God. Annie, is it really you?”
She smiled then, that unaffected little-girl smile she always gave him when she found something amusing in his expression, and he knew that it truly was her. “Annie,” he repeated and there were tears in his eyes.
He started toward her, the tears almost blinding him, but her hands came up quickly in warning. “No, Ben. Don’t touch me. You mustn’t try to touch me.” She stepped back a pace, and he stopped, confused. “Ben, I’m not alive anymore,” she whispered, tears in her own eyes. She tried to smile through them. “I’m a ghost, Ben. I’m only an image of what you remember. If you try to take hold of me, I will disappear.”
He stood before her, confused all over again. “What… what are you doing here if you’re a ghost?”
She laughed gaily and it was as if he had never lost her. “Ben Holiday! Your memory is as selective as ever. Don’t you remember this place? Look about you. Don’t you know where we are?”
He glanced about, seeing again the pastureland, the stables, the horses, the ranch house on the knoll—and suddenly he did remember. “Your parents’ home!” he exclaimed. “This is your parents’ country home, for Christ’s sake! I’d forgotten about it! I haven’t been out here for … oh, I don’t remember how long!”
Her laughter crinkled the corners of her eyes. “It was your special hideaway when the rigors of city life became too much. Remember? My parents used to kid you about being a city boy who didn’t know a horse’s front end from its hind. You used to say there wasn’t much difference. But you loved it here, Ben. You loved the freedom it gave you.” She glanced about wistfully. “That’s why I still come here, you know. It reminds me of you. Isn’t that odd? We spent so little time here, but still it’s the place that reminds me most of you. I think it was the sense of freedom it seemed to give you that made me feel so good about it—that more so than my own love of the country.”
She wheeled about, pointing back toward the ranch. “Remember the dormer passageways that connected the sleeping rooms through their closets? We used to laugh about those, Ben. We used to talk about gremlins living there—as in the movie. We used to threaten to board them up if anything strange ever happened while we were staying over. You said we’d own that house someday, after my parents were gone, and then we’d board them up for sure!”
Ben nodded, smiling. “Annie, I did always love it here— always.”
She folded her arms across her breast, her smile fading. “But you didn’t keep the house, Ben. You don’t even come back to visit.”
He winced at the pain in her eyes. “Your parents were gone, Annie. It… hurt too much to come back after losing you, too.”
“You should have kept the home, Ben. You would have been happy here. We could have still been with each other here.” She shook her head slowly. “At least you should have come to visit. But you never came even once. You still don’t come. I wait for you to come, but you never do. I miss you so much, Ben. I need to have you by me … even though I can’t touch you or hold you as I once did. Just having you near helps me …” She trailed off. “I can’t make you see me in the city, Ben. You don’t see anything there. I don’t like the city. If I must be a ghost, I would much prefer to haunt the country where everything is fresh and green. But it is no good living here either when you never come.”
“I’m sorry, Annie,” he apologized quickly, anxiously. “I never thought that it would be possible for me to see you again. I would have come had I known that you were here.”
She smiled. “I don’t think you would have, Ben. I don’t think I mean anything to you anymore. Even your coming now was an accident. I know what you are about in your life. Ghosts have better sight than the living. I know that you have chosen to leave me and travel to another world—a world where I will become only a memory. I know of the girl you have met. She is very pretty—and she loves you.”
“Annie!” He almost reached for her in spite of the warning. He had to force his hands to remain at his sides. “Annie, I don’t love this girl. I love you. I have always loved you. I left because I couldn’t stand what was happening to me with you gone! I thought I had to try something or I would lose everything that was left of me!”
“But you never came looking for me, Ben,” she insisted, her voice soft and filled with hurt. “You gave up on me. Now I’ve lost you forever. You’ve gone into this other world, and I can never have you back. I can’t come to you there. I can’t have you close to me like this and I need that, Ben. Even a ghost needs the closeness of the one she loves.”
Ben felt his grip on his emotions start to slip. “I can still come back, Annie. I have the means to do so. I don’t have to stay in Landover.”
“Ben,” she whispered, her b
rown eyes sad and empty. “You no longer belong in this world. You chose to leave it. You can’t come back. I know that you have spoken with Miles Bennett. What he told you was true. Ten years have passed, Ben. You’ve nothing to come back to. Everything you once had is gone—your possessions, your position with the firm, your standing with the bar, everything. You made a choice ten years ago, and you have to accept the fact that it’s too late to change it now. You can never come back.”
Ben’s struggled in vain to respond. This was madness! How could it be happening? Then he caught himself sharply. Maybe it wasn’t happening. Maybe it was all part of the illusion he had suspected before, a trick of the mists and the fairy world, none of it real. The enormity of that possibility stunned him. Annie seemed real, damn it! How could she not be?
“Daddy?”
He turned. A small child stood a dozen feet away in the shadow of a giant apple tree, a little girl no more than two, her tiny face a mirror of Annie’s. “This is your daughter, Ben,” he heard Annie whisper. “Her name is Beth.”
“Daddy?” the little girl called to him, and her small arms reached up.
But Annie intercepted her, pulled her back, and held her close. Ben dropped slowly to one knee, his tall form stooped over, his arms folded against his chest to stop himself from shaking. “Beth?” he repeated dully.
“Daddy,” the little girl said again, smiling.
“She lives with me, Ben,” Annie told him, swallowing against her own pain. “We visit the country, and I try to teach her what life would have been like for her if …”
She couldn’t finish. She bent her head into Beth’s shoulder, hiding her face. “Don’t cry, Mommy,” the little girl said softly. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t all right. Nothing was all right, and Ben knew that it never would be again. He felt himself breaking apart inside, needing to be with them, wanting to hold them both, unable to do anything but stand there helplessly.
“Why did you leave us, Ben?” Annie was asking again, her eyes searching his. “Why did you cross over into that other world when we needed you so badly in ours? You should never have quit on us, Ben. Now we’ve lost you— and you’ve lost us. We’ve lost each other forever!”