AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 4
It was late. Isabella closed the tent’s zipper behind her as she fell onto her improvised bed made out of clothes and newspapers. She stayed with Dan in her two-person camping tent in an alley behind the police station. Quite a genius move on Dan’s end. Nobody bothered her here. The police had come to know Dan over the years and they even protected her little tent once when city authorities tried to remove it.
Rolling over onto her belly, she turned on the little radio Dan found about two weeks ago. Both of them loved listening to it until they fell asleep. ‘White noise’ Dan called it. Listening to classical music, Isabella reflected on her new life in America and everything that had happened up until now. Those were by far the most bizarre, unthinkable, far-fetched, and at the same time most incredible weeks of her life. Nothing came even close to it.
As insane as she might sound, she absolutely loved it. Here she was, Isabella Astley, daughter of one of the oldest and most respected houses in all of England, living the life of an American twenty-first century homeless person. The thought was so preposterous, she couldn’t help but burst into laughter wondering what her mother’s reaction would be if she could see her right now. It gave her a great deal of satisfaction that she was still alive and free, even though it was far from what anyone in 1881 would call thriving. At least she had her freedom, something she and many other women didn’t have in 1881. “Screw you, Warrington,” she whispered, rolling onto her stomach. Screw was one of the words Dan had taught her to sound more American.
Sure, she had fallen low, from gold linens to dumpster newspapers. But as Dan always said as she stared at the sky from a small hole in the tent, only people from way up there can feel the loss of falling all the way down here. If you’re already living down here, you'll barely notice a thing. Isabella unwillingly had to agree with that.
Every day, Isabella would aid Dan in her early morning dumpster runs, which always ended in feeding a horde of feral cats at a park close by. In return, Dan would teach her about the wonders of the twenty-first century. Some made sense, others were too complex for her to understand. But all caught her mind in awe.
To this day, Isabella wasn’t sure why Dan was helping her and how much Dan really knew about who she was. Lucky for Isabella but unfortunate for the rest, people didn’t pay attention to the homeless. They were generally considered insane by society in the twenty-first century, which sadly had not changed from her own times. It never seemed strange to anybody that Isabella had no idea about even the most basic things of this world. And in the rare event somebody did wonder, Isabella just said that she’d had a head injury, a perfectly plausible excuse. Dan knew that this wasn’t the truth, but she never asked questions.
Over the past three weeks, Isabella had learned about the most astonishing inventions: cell phones, computers, airplanes, movies, and even how to search what Dan called the internet, a library of everything that exists, accessible on those devices called cells and computers. Not that Isabella could afford one of those magical machines, but Trent, an old social worker at the church where they ate lunch and took showers, was kind enough to let Isabella play with his phone while he volunteered at the soup kitchen.
As marvellous and magical as everything in the twenty-first century was, her favorite item turned out to be a small, black box called a radio. For hours she would sit next to it in Dan's small tent as they both listened to various stations, trading thoughts and sharing laughter. And from these moments, for a single brief moment, she would see her poor brother sitting next to her. Overnight, he had left everything he knew and held dear in an attempt to defy their mother and save her from that awful marriage. Back then, every day she received a letter from him, telling her not give up hope, that he would try harder, that America was promising… If it wasn’t for those letters, she would have not been able to keep on like she did. Until that eventful night changed everything.
She felt a pang of guilt that drove away the joy in her heart. She was living her freedom while her brother must be looking for her, sick to his stomach, not resting until she was found. Which in this case would be when? How? No, this new world, America, as much as she had come to love it, she couldn’t stay. She would have to find a way home to him. But Dan was always talking of the future, telling her she would soon be able to start going to school, get an apartment, and that all she needed was a bit more time to ‘recover’ from her accident. And then she would send her off into the real America, an America waiting to be conquered by a strong, kind-hearted, beautiful English lady named Isabella. Yes, those were Dan’s exact words. Little did she know that this would not be Isabella’s future at all. Soon she would have to start working on her plan to get back into her own time. Back to the past. Back to 1881. Back to everything she hated, and to the few that she cared about. And like every night, just before she was about to sink into a deep despair, Jerry, an older and overweight police officer who worked at the station this alley belonged to shouted: “Isabella! Turn that damn music off before people start calling me again with complaints!” She sent him a faint smile into the darkness, and like every night, didn’t turn it off but just lowered the volume. “Flatfoot,” Dan growled at Jerry, rolling over to her side. She didn’t mean it in a bad way. Isabella knew by now that he was Dan’s friend. One of the very few she still had.
Jerry was a good guy. He was not like the other ‘pigs,’ which was American for a mutton shunter, who treated the homeless like they were worth less than the rubbish they had to survive off. He checked in with Isabella whenever he saw her, always wondering what a pleasant young girl like her was doing living in the streets, which of course she never answered truthfully.
Isabella looked over to the silhouette of her dear friend. Dan was already sound asleep. She covered her with a blanket, twisting her mouth in disbelief about how much she had come to like this old, stubborn but selfless woman. She had become so much more to her than just a helping hand. She was almost like a mother to her, or at least what she thought a real mother would have been.
Like every night, half asleep, Dan checked under her pillow to make sure that the knife was still there. As much as Isabella enjoyed her freedom, being homeless was still a dangerous and cruel existence. Most of the people she encountered when out and about with Dan were not homeless by choice. Just like in her own time, they were outcasts, desperate lost souls forgotten and banned from society. For these people, life on the streets meant life or death. If it wasn’t for Dan, Isabella had no idea where she would be now. Perhaps dead, and that was by no means an exaggeration. Dan had told her that folks had started to notice a strange man, dressed in black, lingering in the shadows along the neighborhood each night for the past few weeks. By the morning, he would disappear and never be seen until the darkness once again enveloped the city. Could this possibly be the same man from before when she first arrived? It was a strange coincidence that this man seemed to be found mostly in the street where Isabella turned up. All thoughts set her thinking about her mother. Had he been sent by her? Revenge for leaving her high and dry without marrying her beloved golden chest? The thought of it made her swallow an angry lump in her throat, making her sleep even more uneasy. Isabella pulled the wool coat up to her shoulders and put her head to rest on a self-made pillow.
Every night when her eyes closed, and her mind slowly drowned in a lake of dark thoughts, a soft light would glow. A memory of the man who held her close against his chest when she first came into this strange world. Liam. She’d remembered his face and his warm comforting smile. She had only met Liam once and barely knew him. Putting it off as childish thoughts, she turned to her side, trying to think of something else. But he always seemed to be the last thing on her mind, before drifting off to sleep. Childish or not. Night after night.
Isabella woke up to the feeling of a cold hand pressed onto her mouth. The tent was pitch black. Unable to scream, she frantically wrestled the hand away in a sudden burst of terror as her eyes finally adjusted to dark. It was Dan, holding her mouth shut while placing a finger to her lips. Dan was holding the knife in her hand. She pointed at the tent’s zipper, that was slowly moving upwards. Someone else was there opening it. Her blood ran cold. The pounding in her chest was deafening. Her hands staggered to find something she could use as a weapon. Anything would be better than her bare hands.
The zipper slowly opened, revealing more and more of a dark silhouette. Isabella was holding her breath in fear for what could have been the devil himself that now stood in front of them. All of a sudden, Dan threw herself screaming onto the intruder, like a tiger fighting for its prey. Isabella jumped out after her, fingers clenched against the small beloved radio box that she had now turned into a weapon. It was hard to see in the dark, but it looked like Dan was on top of a huge dark shadow. Her mind now made up to fight to the bitter end, Isabella threw the radio as hard as she could. The radio bounced off the dark figure's head, which was followed by a loud, male cry. The man countered by throwing Dan off him like she was a feather. “Jerry!” Isabella squealed as she dived down toward the ground to reach for the knife that Dan must have dropped somehow. The intruder forcefully kicked the knife away “Jerry!” Dan yelled as she struggled to get back up. Out of nowhere, the blue lights of a police car started flashing up and down the alley. For a moment, the intruder was just standing there, looking at Isabella as if he were debating if all of this was worth fighting a cop over. He must have decided that it wasn’t, as he jerked around and ran off into the night, disappearing in the dark like the shadow of a daemon. And just like in one of these amazing moving photographs that Isabella had seen before and now knew were called movies, Jerry jumped into the alley with his gun pulled.
“Is everything okay here?!” Jerry rushed over right past them to take a quick look behind the tent before putting his gun away. He tried to help Dan back up on her feet, but Dan shook him off in pride, standing up by herself. “No. That devil was here. Tried to snatch Isabella,” Dan spat on the floor. “For Christ’ sakes, Dan, speak English!” Jerry shook his head, slightly annoyed. It was obvious that his nightshift had been a rough one. “We were attacked by the man that people keep seeing lingering around the neighborhood," Isabella tried to break the tension. "He tried to enter our tent. I… I think he might be after me for some reason,” Isabella clarified. For the first time she noticed that her hands were trembling. Jerry noticed it as well. He leaned his head to the side, talking into the police radio on his shoulder.
“Two-J-two Dispatch.”
“Two-J-two go ahead,” a woman talked back to him over the radio.
“Show me code six. I have possible twenty-seven. Suspect fled northbound. Male, unknown age, dressed in all black. Possibly armed. Most likely Ghost. “
“Roger that,” the voice replied through his radio.
"Ghost?" Isabella asked, confused.
"Yeah. That guy. People who can't be found in the system. No records. No matches. Nothing." Jerry sighed frustratingly. "We're already looking for this guy. I have been trying to chase him down a few times after receiving scared calls from neighbors who said he was standing out front on Fifth Street. But he gets away every single time. So far he has been peaceful." Jerry's gaze held Isabella's eyes. "But that seemed to have changed.”
“Fifth? That’s the street he attacked Isabella on after that car hit her,” Dan said moving her wrist left and right to see if it was broken. Jerry instantly took the bait.
“What car hit whom?” he asked in a suspicious police voice. This conversation was heading into dangerous territory for Isabella. She stepped in. “It was nothing, just a scare,” she said hastily before Dan could give away anything else about the matter. Dan got the hint. But so did Jerry. “Nothing, huh?” He shook his head in frustration. “Well, whatever nothing is going on here, it has to stop, Isabella. This is the end of your little runaway chapter. No offense Dan, but it’s time we find Isabella’s relatives and let them know that she's here.” Dan was outraged. “She is safe with me,” she scowled, her hair still frizzled from the match which made her look like a wildling. An angry one at that. Jerry wasn’t fazed at all. “Yes, I can see that…” he countered calmly but with a hint of sarcasm. That was more than Dan could handle. When it came to her beloved Isabella, she turned from a woman who didn’t care about anyone or anything to a lioness ready to pounce. “How dare you, I would give my life for this girl!” She shook her fist in a gesture that said all too clearly what she thought of Jerry's remark. Taking a deep breath, he changed his tone. “I know Dan, I know. But how is this supposed to go on? Living in a tent? Chased by a potential psychopath? Don’t you want to see her safe—er? Safer?” Dan didn’t answer that but turned her head away from him. Isabella now stepped in. She wasn’t that helpless lady from 1881 anymore and now had a say in what she wanted in life. She wouldn’t let Jerry take her away from Dan. “Thanks, Jerry. I know you mean well, but I will stay here with Dan. I couldn’t possibly leave now. What if he comes back? Dan needs me.” Surprised by her own bravery, she crossed her arms to signal that she was serious about this. Jerry stared at both of them, wondering how to approach this situation the right way. He scratched his head but suddenly lifted his chin as if he’d found the answer to this problem. “That's exactly the point. Do you really want to drag Dan into this? What if she gets hurt trying to defend you? And you…” he turned to Dan, “Wouldn’t it break your heart if something happened to Isabella? You can’t be with her every second of the day. God knows what could have happened if my shift would have ended an hour earlier this morning.” Neither Dan nor Isabella knew how to counter this. That was a genius strike on Jerry’s part—making both of them feel guilty if something should happen to the other one. For a moment, the three of them just stood there is silence. “He’s right, kid.” Dan was the first to speak. Under different circumstances she would have protested, told Dan that it was her choice where and with whom she frequented, but Jerry had raised a valid point. This man was after Isabella, and now she had managed to drag Dan, an older woman, into this. She had to disappear for a while. Away from these streets. But what was she supposed to do? Somehow Jerry read her mind. “Don’t you have family you can go back to?” A lie crept its way into her mind. But she knew it would only make things worse. “No.” She spoke softly. “What about friends?” Isabella shook her head. “Otherwise I have to arrange temporary housing at a halfway house for you.”
“No way!” Dan shouted at him shaking her fist. “I won’t let you put her in one of those holes, Jerry! They're full of drug addicts and you know that,” Dan must have hit the nail on the head as Jerry didn’t disagree but scratched his head as if he was searching for another solution. “Is there really nobody else we could call? Even if it’s just for a few days, it would give me some time trying to catch this guy.” Isabella hesitated. There was one person. But it would be quite unseemly. “Maybe, but it wouldn’t be proper…”
“Proper?” Jerry stumbled in shock. “Who cares about proper. Your life might be in danger.” Isabella had to agree with that. She nodded. Dan stared at her in anticipation like she was about to announce the meaning of life itself. “Who is it??” Dan and Jerry asked at the same time.
Nobody less than the man who seemed to be constantly on her mind…
“Damn it,” Liam coughed, swinging the windows wide open to let out some of the smoke. The fire alarm was unbearably loud, hurting his ears like someone was slapping them. He grabbed a towel and swung it in circular motions above his head to clear the air. But the alarm didn’t stop so he decided to just pull the batteries out.
Rambo, his incredibly chubby and strong-willed cat, thanked him for this move by poking his head out from the closet again. It was pretty much the only hiding spot left for him as Liam’s apartment was almost completely empty. Besides a mattress in his bedroom and a table with two chairs, there was absolutely nothing left in it. No rugs, no pictures, no decorations… nothing. It was a small one-bedroom apartment in the shadier side of the University District. Quite the downgrade from his downtown five-bedroom loft. But it was all he could afford at the moment—and even that was barely manageable.
