Mac had skimmed down toward the bottom of the article. “And look at this, Jake: It says Bodine had several small earthquakes during that time. Those would have to be the same gravitational disturbances we've been feeling. Because the vortex joins past with present, both worlds are feeling the same disturbances.”
Dr. Cooper read further. “â. . . as well as several mysterious rock slides from the cliffs around town, also blamed on the visitation of Annie Murphy's ghost.'” He shot a glance at the carving of the old miner. “So Annie Murphy's carving away right nowâa century ago.”
Mac was getting excited. “Jake, this means there have to be more carvings. Your kids may have already found some of them.”
“And,” Dr. Cooper added, “they've figured out that Annie is the key to their getting back to the present.”
Alice showed them photocopies from an old diary. “Regarding more carvings, look what a woman named Helen Billings recorded in her diary about that time: âI will miss Annie and Cyrus. Sometimes I think my sorrow over losing them affects my judgment, for early yesterday morning I am certain I saw their faces looking at me from the cliffs above their half-completed cabin.'”
Dr. Cooper thought about that one. “A carving overlooking the home she and Cyrus were building . . . another overlooking Cyrus's grave . . .” Cooper looked at Mac. “Both carvings were made from key locations in Annie's life.”
“Which would also be true of the courthouse and the boardinghouse,” said Mac, picking up the idea.
“I'm not sure about the mercantile.”
“But I think the kids are onto something.” He had to smile. “They're thinking like archaeologists. They're reading a story in Annie's carvings much as one would read the picture symbols in ancient hieroglyphics. Annie was illiterate, so it makes sense that she would try to carve her story.” In just another quick moment, Dr. Cooper was quite sure about his theory. “Mac, we've got to find that carving of Annie and Cyrus. We've got to find that cabin's location.”
Mac added, “And the sites of the old boardinghouse, the courthouse, the mercantile . . .”
They both thought of an eyewitness source and said his name at the same time, “Sheriff Potter!”
They hurriedly gathered up all the photos, articles, and other data Alice and Rob had gathered and dashed out the door.
L
ila remained still, her heart pounding, squeezed into a hiding place between the courthouse floor joists. She'd fallen right through the courthouse steps and landed soft as a feather in the rubble of the present-day Bodine. But gravity, time, and space were in a teasing mood. She'd hardly had a chance to get herself oriented before the quivering stopped and she was solid again, totally in the past, trapped in the dingy, dirty crawl space.
A few adventurous fellows had tried to come after her by prying off some boards and peeking inside. But it was easy to tell they were timid about crawling into such a dark place to look for a ghost. When their wives showed up and insisted they not get dirty, they abandoned the idea altogether, nailed the boards back on, and left, talking excitedly about giving their story to the local paper.
Lila remained still, listening to the town outside come to the end of its day as horses clip-clopped and wagons rumbled lazily out of town. Doors and windows were closed to the cooling air, and the last pedestrians on the wooden sidewalks bid each other good night.
When it was quiet and the light coming through the cracks between the boards began to ebb, she lowered herself to the dirt floor and had a look around. The crawl space was a cobwebbed, dusty world with plenty of dried out rat carcasses. Roughhewn beams and floorboards were only two feet above her crawling body. She wasn't usually bothered by tight places, but the thought of an entire courthouse resting just above her did jangle her nerves a bit.
Then she heard a voice. “Lila?”
“Jay! I'm over here. I fell through the front steps.”
“Yeah, I fell through the floor. Come over this way.”
She crawled through the dirt, shoving cobwebs and dead rats aside, and finally saw her brother coming the other way. He'd lost his borrowed clothes just as she had and looked very dirty. He also looked very excited.
“Lila,” he said in a hushed voice as they met nose to nose under the floor beams. “I heard the judge and those guys on the committee talking. It's all a big scheme. They fixed the auction so the judge could get the Murphy Mine.”
Lila could feel her skin tingle. “And the only reason the mine was put up for auction is because the Murphys are both dead. . . .” Her eyes shifted about as she added, “Or at least, everyone
thinks
they're both dead.”
Jay was emphatic. “Somebody shot Cyrus from the mercantile roof, and then they framed Annie so they could get rid of her. But get this: Some people around here aren't so sure Annie's dead. Nobody saw her body in the coffin they buried!”
Lila cocked her head and raised an eyebrow as she had an interesting thought. “Well, that sure explains why we've seen Annie still alive after she's supposed to be dead. That grave up on cemetery hill is a fake!”
“Something went wrong. Annie got away before they could hang her.”
“Or shoot her!”
They both thought of it at the same time: “The time warp!”
Then Jay chuckled. “So the judge is in a real pickle, isn't he? He couldn't find her to kill her so he faked her death to get her mine. But now her ghost is backâat least, that's what his wife thinks.”
“So do a lot of other people around here.”
Jay shook his head at the thought: “If the judge ever finds her, he'll kill her for sure.”
Lila hated the thought as she spoke it. “He still might. Remember what the legend says about her, that she was shot trying to escape.”
“Well . . . maybe we can change that. At least, I'd sure like to.”
Then Lila remembered her discovery and burst out with excitement, “ Jay! I found it! I saw Annie's carving!”
Jay got excited and almost bumped his head on a floor beam. “How? Where?”
“Hanging from the roof by my dress, I saw it!”
Jay looked a her funny. “Hanging from the roof by your dress?”
“It's a long story. But Annie carved an image of herself behind jail bars! She showed herself in jail!”
Jay understood what that meant and let out a low whistle. “Then we're on the right track. She's telling what happened to her in carvings.”
Lila was tickled with the discovery. “Just like a totem or a hieroglyphic!”
“So here's my guess: She's probably going to make her next carving from the jail.”
Lila considered that and nodded. “Sure. The courthouse where she was tried, and then the jail where she was locked up.”
“It's getting dark. When the town's all tucked in for the night, we'll go check it out.”
“You got it.”
“There's only one problem.”
“What?”
“I don't know how to get out of here.”
When Dr. Cooper and Professor MacPherson returned to the ruins of Bodine, they found Sheriff Potter walking up and down where the streets used to be, scowling angrily.
“Where have you been?” he growled. “Don't you know what's happening in this town?” Then he muttered to himself, “That dirty, low-down . . . Wait'll I get my hands on him!”
“Get your hands on whom?” asked Dr. Cooper. Sheriff Potter came right out with it. “Judge Crackerby! He went ahead with the auction and bought the Murphy Mine! He didn't even wait for me!”
Mac was interested. “You saw him?”
“You bet I did. Saw him on the steps of the courthouse just shaking hands with Forshay and smiling big.”
“The courthouse?” Cooper asked. “Where?”
Potter pointed. “Over there, that pile of gray stone. That used to be the courthouse and those planks out front used to be the steps.” Then he added, “Saw your daughter too. She was hanging from the roof of the courthouse until she fell off.”
That spun Dr. Cooper around. “What? Are you sure?”
“Don't worry, she wasn't hurt. I saw her fall and it was nice and slow.”
“Another gravitational tremor,” Mac noted. “You and the kids slipped in between time for a moment.”
The sheriff stuck a finger in Mac's face. “And I've had enough of it! Enough, you hear? If you're such a smart, educated professor, then get me back there, and right now!”
Dr. Cooper asked, “What about my son? Did you see him anywhere?”
“No Doc, just your girl. She fell off the front porch roof into a crowd of people standing around for the auction . . .” The word
auction
seemed to make him angry again, and he started muttering to himself, “He thinks he's going to pull this thing off, well, not without me he isn't. . . .”
“The news article,” Mac whispered to Cooper. “The ghost of the young girl seen at the courthouse.”
“On the roof . . .” Cooper mused. “She had to be looking for Annie, perhaps trying to see another carving. But there was also the auction going on.”
Sheriff Potter paid no attention to their whisperings. He'd walked past them to take a closer look at the machine they'd brought back from town, hitched to the back of Mac's jeep. “What in the world is this thing?”
“It's a hydraulic lift,” Dr. Cooper answered. “You stand on the platform, and it lifts you to whatever height you want.”
Potter shook his head with amazement. “First you have wagons that don't need horses, and now
this!
What are you going to do with it?”
“Well, the town isn't here anymore, and the terrain has gone through some changes as well. We need to be able to see the cliffs around town from where the buildings, rooftops, and windows used to be.”
The sheriff was puzzled. “Why? What are you looking for?”
“Oh . . . I guess we'll know when we see it. But we need your help. You know where the buildings used to be. Perhaps you could show us, maybe even draw a map.”
“If it'll get me back where I belong, it'll be a pleasure.”
“Then let's get right on it,” Mac urged. “I'm sure the vortex is growing more unstable even as we speak.”
South of town, the sheriff directed them to a desolate, empty hole resembling a gravel pitâsomething he didn't expect to find there.
“Hydraulickers,” he muttered in amazement. “They've washed away the whole Murphy homestead.” Mac nodded as he explained to Dr. Cooper, “Miners would sometimes use high pressure streams of water to wash away the earth in their quest for gold.”
“So hydraulickers took the gold and left us this hole,” Dr. Cooper observed. He cocked his hat back on his head. “Well, we guessed right. The terrain has definitely changed.”
“They were building their cabin here,” the sheriff insisted, trying to persuade even himself. “They were staying at the boardinghouse until they could get it finished and came out here most every day to work on it. Cyrus had a trough to catch gold set up in a creek that used to run through here, and the cabin was right . . .” As he stood in the center of the yawning pit, he had to look all around for any landmarks that could tell him where the cabin had been. “I think it was right about here, only this hole wasn't here.”
“Time for the lift,” said Dr. Cooper.
Mac hauled the lift into the pit with the jeep, and they positioned it according to the sheriff's best guess. Then all three men stepped onto the platform and Dr. Cooper started it. The lift began to rise with an electric hum as the sheriff, amazed and startled, hung onto the safety railing for dear life.
When the platform had risen out of the hole to where ground level had been, Dr. Cooper and Mac started scanning the cliffs, often closing one eye.
“How's our location, Sheriff?” Cooper asked.
“Close,” he responded. “But what are you looking for?”
“Got it!” Mac hollered in jubilation, pointing at the cliff to the west.
Dr. Cooper looked that direction and then laughed in delight. “Yes, absolutely!”
“What?” asked the sheriff. “What is it?”
He looked where they were looking and, following their example, covered one eye. It was obvious he saw it as he muttered in shocked disbelief, “What is this, a joke?”
“No joke, Sheriff,” Mac replied. “It's the real thing.”
Less than a quarter mile away, the cliffs revealed a young couple with their arms around each other. They were looking down at where their cabin would have been, their faces full of joy and hope. The resemblance to the old photograph of Annie and Cyrus Murphy was unmistakable.
“This is where the story begins, don't you think?”
Cooper asked.
“I would say so,” Mac responded. “A young couple with a great future ahead of them.”
“Their hopes soon to be shattered by what happened at the Crackerby Boardinghouse.”
The sheriff was getting irritated at all this cryptic talk. “Just what are you two talking about? What story?”
“The story of what really happened to Annie Murphy,” said Dr. Cooper. “We have strong reason to believe that Annie Murphy carved her story in the cliffs around this town from key locations where her story took place: the courthouse, the boardinghouse, this spot right here.”
The sheriff gazed at the image in the cliff again as his face grew pale.
Dr. Cooper continued, “The next image in the story would probably be visible from the site of the boardinghouse. Can you show us where it was?”
The sheriff was still staring at the cliff carving, stunned.
“Sheriff Potter?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, the boardinghouse . . .”
“Please,” said Mac. “We're in a hurry.”
Deputy Erskine Hatch carried the lost clothing in his arms as he knocked on the door of a little house just across the alley from the Bodine Mercantile. A pleasant lady with her brown hair in a bun answered the door.