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I assessed the room. There was one small window high up that latched from the inside. It probably led out to the forest that surrounded these buildings. It might be rigged to an alarm, but I didn’t see magnets attached to the frame or silver tape to the glass itself, so I didn’t think so.
Now if only I could slice these electrical tapes somehow.
I looked at the metal examination table(I didn’t even want to imagine what they planned to do with that), and its various clinical instruments. No scalpels or bone saws or anything that would help me.
Man, I’d give anything for Bryant’s Bowie knife right now. Even a pair of Alice’s dull sewing shears...
That last thought whipped my head around to the two desks in the corner. Nothing obvious on either desktop, but there was a very good chance one of the drawers held something I could use.
With my ankles tied(dang, I shouldn’t have forced their hand to do that), I couldn’t stand and walk over to the desks. I could, however, scoot my chair over inch by inch.
Start, stop, wait to make sure no one heard me before another slide. Again and again, closer and closer, I finally made it to the first desk.
With my wrists taped to the arms of the chair, it took a great deal of rocking and maneuvering my fingers to pull the top drawer open. I was rewarded to find a pair of scissors, but I only had time when I heard the voices in the hallway to grab and stuff them inside my loose sleeve before scooting back across the room.
I was back in place when the door unlocked and opened. Tom Black walked inside and closed the door behind him. Then he pulled up a chair in front of me and sat down as if he were about to have a nice fatherly chat.
“You probably have a few questions,” he said.
Unable to speak with my mouth taped shut, my eyes narrowed at him to make my opinion clear.
He sighed. “Yes, I suppose you do want to slit my throat right about now.”
I grunted my affirmation.
“It would probably be better if I showed you something first,” he said. “Maybe then you’ll have a different opinion about this...situation.”
Tom walked over to the corner desk and returned with something that made my stomach drop. It was the leatherbound journal I had seen only hours ago.
Or a good century, to be exact.
“You’ve seen this?” Tom remarked with hiked brows.
I refused to answer, but the confirmation was painted all over my face.
“This belonged to a man by the name of Albert Raymond Wilkens, a very important political figure in this state at one time. He was extremely forward thinking. Brilliant, too. He imagined the incredible possibilities of someone traveling through time in order to change the events of history. Ambitious, to be sure, but he worked and searched his entire life to accomplish this.”
I looked away in annoyance, hoping he wouldn’t continue. It was coming too close to my own truth.
“Then quite by accident he made an incredible discovery,” Tom continued. “He found an actual portal that could bend time into itself like a rubber band. Or more like a slingshot, launching someone from one time period to another.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes as if the thought of this was ridiculous.
“Wilkens found it when he was out hunting on Grandfather Mountain, you see,” Tom said, ignoring my snort. “He wrote that after spotting a stranger dressed in very unusual clothing coming out of a cave, he went inside and explored the tunnels for himself.
“What he found was incredible. Foreign symbols sketched on the rock wall, along with a small metal cylinder that magically lit up when a button was pressed. He even drew a picture of it in his journal. See here?”
He turned to the page and held it up for me. I tried not to look, but curiosity got the better of me and I turned and saw a very good sketch of a modern flashlight. Mine.
That’s why I couldn’t find it when Bryant and I had hiked back to the cave. Wilkens left my satchel, but had taken the flashlight for proof of my traveling from a future time.
Tom pulled a sepia photograph from the parchment pages and held it up. My stomach rolled to see the photo of a woman looking towards the camera while reaching the top shelf for a can of beans in an old west general store.
“Great likeness, Callista,” Tom commented, sliding the photo back into the crackling pages.
“Wilkens wrote about this amazing time traveler. He couldn’t know for sure, of course. Not until he witnessed this woman, you, time jump for himself when he stood outside the cave room where you magically disappeared, never to be heard from again.”
Watched me?
