Epilog

“Good morning,” Rachel greeted then studied her Precept. “It isn’t that you didn’t sleep well .. but something is obviously on your mind.”

Derek nodded, frowning but not in concern. His gaze was distracted, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“Maybe you don’t need me to .. disturb you,” she went on, tactfully backing away.

“No. Don’t go, Rachel,” he requested, snapping back to the present. “I could use someone to talk with. I had an unsettling experience last night.”

“Oh ..? How do you mean?” Rachel slowly sat down. “You’re usually so well balanced that it’s strange to hear you use that word when you talk about yourself.”

“It .. I was asleep.”

“A dream?”

He nodded. “Yet it was more than a dream.”

Rachel eased forward, concentrating. “The forest ..?”

“No. I know I didn’t leave my room. It was raining. I was asleep. I didn’t wake up. I didn’t wake until this morning.”

“So it wasn’t frightening,” she frowned.

“Not in the least. It was puzzling. It still is. I found myself in a desert but I didn’t recognize it.”

“Well, Derek, with the best will in the world,” Rachel half laughed, “even if you had by some remote chance visited every square foot of every desert there is on this planet .. deserts change. The wind, the elements – ”

He was shaking his head. “I did not know this desert,” he said forcefully.

“Okay,” Rachel agreed. “What was it like?”

Derek shrugged, his shoulders taut. “Sand. Rocks. Cliffs. It was very hot. I wore a shirt, pants, boots. I was sweating.”

“I know you didn’t recognize it but .. did it remind you of any place? I haven’t been to that many deserts but .. the Sahara is sand dunes. The Gobi is gravel. The Mojave is scrub.”

“The Middle East. The Holy Land. The Sinai Peninsula. That area.”

“Okay,” Rachel nodded. “You’ve been to those places. Did it seem .. familiar in any way?”

Derek hesitated. “Yes. Distantly. I think I may have visited somewhere nearby but not close to where I was. Yet even that seems wrong. Everything was .. too sharp, too new looking.”

Rachel sat up. “Could it be .. time?”

Derek looked at her. “The past. A desert .. from the past.”

“That’s progress,” she suggested. “What else happened?”

“I found myself there. I think I was more bemused, more curious than worried. I looked all around me, turning a complete circle and studying the landscape out to the horizon.”

She held up a hand. Derek stared at it.

“Did you feel .. isolated, like you knew you didn’t belong there, or connected in some way?” she asked.

Derek’s gaze fractured and he looked away, digging into the memory, not of what he’d seen but of what he’d felt.

“How odd … ” he breathed.

Rachel felt a shiver race up her spine. Cautiously, she moistened her lips. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to disturb whatever mental process was taking place.

“It was both,” Derek replied distantly. “Isolated .. because my time is now. Yet I was connected as well. Not so much to the place but to the man.”

“What man?” Rachel murmured, frowning.

“I completed my circle and there was a man there. Dressed .. like, not quite as you would imagine an Arab to look but similar. Cotton robe, a head cloth, swarthy skin, dark eyes, a beard. I didn’t know him yet .. I wasn’t scared of him either and he seemed to know me. Me, in my shirt and pants and boots. Something reached across time to join us in some way.”

Rachel swallowed and said nothing.

“He held up his hands to show he had no weapons. That he was a friend,” Derek continued softly. “I asked him what he wanted.”

“Did he answer you?” she inquired in a whisper.

Derek nodded. “He said .. repay the debt.”

“That’s all.”

“Yes. The dream faded, turned into other things.”

“Repay the debt,” Rachel repeated. “What debt? What does it mean?”
“That is what is so unsettling,” Derek replied. “I have no idea.”

Continue to Part II – Blood Price Introduction Return to Home

Poltergeist: The Legacy

Wheel Of Fire

Part I – Blood Genesis

© Jay Brown, 2002

Wheel Of Fire

Part II – Blood Price

coming soon