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Authors: Dorien Kelly
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it off as a grand joke. If he found something, well, that would be the more difficult conversation. Not that anything involving Vi had ever been easy. But up until the end, it had always been worth the price.
Liam walked to the northwest corner of the field and began his square grid pattern, keeping one eye on the GPR screen and one on the rough, pitted sod knotted with weeds below his feet. It was slow work, and mystifying, too. The bluish bars on the small display dipped and wavered from time to time as he tromped along. He had no idea what it meant, but his heart still jumped when the image in front of him did. After nearly an hour, he’d completed a quarter of the field.
As he made a right angle turn to cover the next quadrant in his grid, Liam stumbled. Once he’d caught his balance, he looked back to see what he might have caught his foot on, but the ground was no worse than what he’d already tread upon. Less rocky, in fact.
Odder yet was the sense that someone was watching him, even though he knew he was out of range of human eyes. As an Irishman, he was honor-bound to believe in the possibility of ghosts. As a man of science, he was equally compelled to believe that there was a concrete, rational explanation for these sensations. Either way, he didn’t like it. Head down, he walked on and tripped on nothing again. This time, it seemed that the watcher was laughing at him.
“Damn obnoxious annoyance,” he muttered to the thing that either existed or not, and thus could either hear or not. “Go the hell away.”
Vi woke abruptly. She sat up and rubbed the side of her face, which was numb from having been pressed against the desk’s wood surface. She wasn’t quite sure what had snapped her from her dream—the first she’d had in months.
“Rog?” she called, thinking perhaps he’d been whining to get out. But then she spotted the little dog sleeping fat-belly-up on a bit of carpet to the room’s far left.
Something had brought her from that place of lush beauty back to the everyday, and it wasn’t just the ferocious growling of her stomach. Vi pushed away from the desk and surveyed the cluttered room. It was exactly as unattended as she’d left it.
As she glanced past the window, a bit of black caught her attention. Vi moved closer. It was a car parked at the back of the property…the same black car that yesterday she’d seen hung up on a rock. In the field beyond, a figure appeared from behind the car, walking a steady line parallel to the house.
Image traveled from eyes to brain, and Vi felt so muzzy-headed that she began to doubt she’d awakened at all. If this were the old days, Liam would be a farmer out to plow his field and she would be his love. Except neither this land nor she were his, and that was no plow he wielded. It was a modern thing, a flat black rectangular box growing off him in a most absurd way. She assumed that it must have some sort of screen, the way he was down peering at it.
“You were right about the man,” she said to Roger, who’d awakened and come to stand at her side. “Nothing with a Rafferty is ever as it seems, now is it?”
What, exactly, the reality was remained to be learned. Fueled by the anger that came from being trespassed against, Vi stalked out the front door, Roger on her heels. Having Liam briefly out of sight did nothing to dissipate the feeling. Vi clenched her hands, and her blunt-cut nails nipped at her palms.
She rounded to the back of the house. As she walked, her trousers’ legs brushed against the lavender that bordered what was once Nan’s cutting garden. The plants were spent, their stalks now more silver than green and their long and slender flower heads gone to seed. Still, their perfume wafted into the cool air as she passed.
Nan would have told her that the scent was for meditative relaxing, and she would have been right to a degree. At the moment, Vi would have to roll about in a mound higher than Nan’s house to
Liam walked to the northwest corner of the field and began his square grid pattern, keeping one eye on the GPR screen and one on the rough, pitted sod knotted with weeds below his feet. It was slow work, and mystifying, too. The bluish bars on the small display dipped and wavered from time to time as he tromped along. He had no idea what it meant, but his heart still jumped when the image in front of him did. After nearly an hour, he’d completed a quarter of the field.
As he made a right angle turn to cover the next quadrant in his grid, Liam stumbled. Once he’d caught his balance, he looked back to see what he might have caught his foot on, but the ground was no worse than what he’d already tread upon. Less rocky, in fact.
Odder yet was the sense that someone was watching him, even though he knew he was out of range of human eyes. As an Irishman, he was honor-bound to believe in the possibility of ghosts. As a man of science, he was equally compelled to believe that there was a concrete, rational explanation for these sensations. Either way, he didn’t like it. Head down, he walked on and tripped on nothing again. This time, it seemed that the watcher was laughing at him.
“Damn obnoxious annoyance,” he muttered to the thing that either existed or not, and thus could either hear or not. “Go the hell away.”
Vi woke abruptly. She sat up and rubbed the side of her face, which was numb from having been pressed against the desk’s wood surface. She wasn’t quite sure what had snapped her from her dream—the first she’d had in months.
“Rog?” she called, thinking perhaps he’d been whining to get out. But then she spotted the little dog sleeping fat-belly-up on a bit of carpet to the room’s far left.
Something had brought her from that place of lush beauty back to the everyday, and it wasn’t just the ferocious growling of her stomach. Vi pushed away from the desk and surveyed the cluttered room. It was exactly as unattended as she’d left it.
As she glanced past the window, a bit of black caught her attention. Vi moved closer. It was a car parked at the back of the property…the same black car that yesterday she’d seen hung up on a rock. In the field beyond, a figure appeared from behind the car, walking a steady line parallel to the house.
Image traveled from eyes to brain, and Vi felt so muzzy-headed that she began to doubt she’d awakened at all. If this were the old days, Liam would be a farmer out to plow his field and she would be his love. Except neither this land nor she were his, and that was no plow he wielded. It was a modern thing, a flat black rectangular box growing off him in a most absurd way. She assumed that it must have some sort of screen, the way he was down peering at it.
“You were right about the man,” she said to Roger, who’d awakened and come to stand at her side. “Nothing with a Rafferty is ever as it seems, now is it?”
What, exactly, the reality was remained to be learned. Fueled by the anger that came from being trespassed against, Vi stalked out the front door, Roger on her heels. Having Liam briefly out of sight did nothing to dissipate the feeling. Vi clenched her hands, and her blunt-cut nails nipped at her palms.
She rounded to the back of the house. As she walked, her trousers’ legs brushed against the lavender that bordered what was once Nan’s cutting garden. The plants were spent, their stalks now more silver than green and their long and slender flower heads gone to seed. Still, their perfume wafted into the cool air as she passed.
Nan would have told her that the scent was for meditative relaxing, and she would have been right to a degree. At the moment, Vi would have to roll about in a mound higher than Nan’s house to
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