Of course he wasn’t thinking it through. If she disappeared, then he would never be warned about the tunnel through time and he would step into it. She’d hear the stories of the ghosts and come to report on him, only to be sent back.
Time travel made Lois’s head hurt. She had to wonder whether they’d been through all this before.
Had she tried to convince Clark, he’d stayed and she’d disappeared only to have things start all over again? How many iterations had they been through, like some sort of demented version of Groundhog Day, except that there was no one to remember that things were repeating?
She cut the power to her phone and slipped it back into her purse. If she did manage to get back to the future, she might need the phone to last long enough to call the police.
Clapping sounds from the darkness startled her.
William Robinson stepped out of the darkness, walking toward her. How much had he heard? The sounds of music would have probably reached out much farther than speech.
“An amazing performance,” Robinson said. “Truly a masterpiece.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You…” he said. “Convincing a man with a bright future to throw it all away.”
Apparently he hadn’t heard, or he’d have a much different take on things.
“Whatever choices Clark has to make are his alone,” Lois said.
“You think losing one of the brightest stars of a generation isn’t going to affect every member of our troupe? Do you think success in the theater is easy?”
Lois wasn’t sure she liked his tone or the expression on his face. The fact that he was carrying a cane despite lacking a limp worried her as well.
“Clark says you’ll be fine without him.”
“He’s a fool, blinded by love,” Robinson said. “Willing to fall for the first trollop with an engaging story.”
“I thought you said there were others who’d tried with him?”
“Common women,” Robinson said. “Easily seen through even by a man as thick headed as young Mr. Kent. You, my dear are en entirely different kind of creature.”
“I’d like to think so,” Lois said.
“You’re clever, I have to admit. That reporter story was inspired. But even as perfidious as I thought you were when we first met, I had no idea…”
“”What?” Lois asked.
“A married woman shouldn’t be trulling around for other men.”
“I’m not married!” Lois protested.
“You told the desk clerk you were a widow when you knew perfectly well that your husband was alive.”
“I don’t have a husband!”
“Tell that to your betrothed,” Robinson sniffed.
Uneasy, Lois backed away from him, only to feel arms wrap around her and a cloth held up to her nose.
She tried to struggle, but she was held in a grip like a vice, and she couldn’t breathe. She felt confused, and her muscles felt oddly weak.
No matter what she tried, he seemed to be ready for her, and as she grew weaker, her options grew more and more limited.
As she fell unconscious, she managed to look up to see a familiar face, although now it was wrinkled, with gray hair.
“Hello dear,’ the thug grinned down at her. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
************
She gasped for air; her tongue feeling like it had swollen to three times its former size. She’d been blindfolded and couldn’t see anything.
“Thank heavens,” Robinson’s voice sounded relived. “I thought you’d killed her.”
Still groggy and sick, she tried to open her eyes but everything was blurry.
“I should kill her, after what she’s done to me,” the thug’s voice was deeper than she’d remembered, more throaty.
“I do not believe it’s my place to come between a man and his wife,” Robinson said. “I only ask that you keep her away from Mr. Kent until after we leave.”
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t go nowhere,” the thug chuckled. “Me and the missus have some getting reacquainted to do.”
“I’d feel eminently satisfied if you give her a few extra wallops for all the trouble she’s caused.”
“She’ll get what’s coming to her.”
She couldn’t help but fade from consciousness.
**************
When she woke again, it was light.
From the smell of things- wood chips, hay, dust, old sweat and the smell of new horse droppings, she assumed she was in a barn.
“You awake, chippie?”
Lois blinked.
“Shouldn’t have used so much Chloroform,” he said. “It’s not like the old movies. Thought you’d swallowed your tongue there a few times.”
Her eyes finally focused.
The man who’d fallen into the tunnel through time with her had been in his late twenties. This man had to be forty years older.
He leaned close to her and grinned nastily. “You’re awake for real this time. Had a few false starts earlier.”
“What’s going on?”
Despite having apparently had a night’s sleep, she still felt groggy and confused. Her head was pounding with a tremendous headache.
“I knew you’d end up here,” he said. “Heard the boss talking about you doing some story about a dead guy from the nineteen tens.”
“What happened to you,” Lois asked. Her voice was as hoarse as if she’d been strangled again, and her throat was dry.
She’d been kidnapped on multiple occasions since the first time in the Congo. She’d learned a few things about escaping. She needed time to assess the situation, to regain her strength and to make a plan.
As long as he was talking he wasn’t doing anything worse.
Getting hysterical would only make it easier for him to choose to kill her, and it would limit her options. It was harder for someone to kill someone they saw as a person, although given what she knew of his employers, she couldn’t rely on that.
“There wasn’t a hotel here in 1872, you know,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many people I had to…take care of before I understood I really went back in time. I thought they were all making fun of me, lying.”
He pulled Lois up into a sitting position. Her hands were tied behind her back. He pulled the blindfold from her eyes and she saw that she’d been right. She was in some sort of stable or barn.
“Things got hot around here for a while. I looked for you until the locals started trying to lynch me. I figured I’d head down to the old west, meet some real heroes.”
He grabbed a canteen from the ground, unscrewed the cap and lifted it to her lips.
Trying not to think about where the water in the canteen had been, Lois sipped. Although it was lukewarm, the water soothed her parched throat and she found herself gulping at it greedily.
“Turns out it’s all a big lie. You know what a saloon smells like when it’s a hundred degrees outside, nobody’s heard of air conditioning, and some of the guys have been on a trail drive for a month without bathing? It’s like hell on earth.”
He pulled the canteen from her lips and screwed the top back on. He set it down beside him.
“Cowboys are just stupid working grunts, Might as well be longshoremen without a union. There wasn’t even hardly any killing.”
Lois was sure that hadn’t stopped him, but she knew better than to say so.
With the water, she felt her strength returning. She slowly started trying to test the ropes around her wrists.
“I bummed around, robbing stagecoaches and trains, the usual,” he said.
He’d been thorough when he’d tied her; he was clearly a professional, even if he didn’t seem terribly bright.
“It sounds like you did all right for yourself,” she said.
He scowled. “You ever had to use an outhouse in the middle of summer? Even if you dodged the rattlesnakes, the smell would kill you. I’m a modern guy…I should have been able to rule like a king.”
Reaching behind her, he checked her bindings. Lois fought not to scowl.
“Instead, I wasn’t any better than anybody else. I had it worse, really, because I knew better. Those dumb schmucks never heard of flush toilets, deodorant, air conditioners…but I knew. I never knew how good I had it back in the real world. That’s where you come in.”
“Me?” Lois asked cautiously.
“You’re a smart lady. You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t have a way back,” he said. “When you go, I’m coming with you.”
*****************
Nothing she could say convinced him that their trip back in time had been an accident. The more she tried, the angrier he got.
Apparently he’d buried some of his loot and planned to be rich when he went back to the future.
Telling him might have tempted her, but it would involve bringing Clark into this. She couldn’t risk Clark getting hurt, not for her.
He had some idiotic idea that he could stop World War One; there was no way he’d put her life over that of millions of other people. Even if he did want to find her, he wasn’t a detective. She’d have had a much better chance of finding him than vice versa. He was only a farmer and an actor.
Yet the thug would kill her for sure if they missed their window. He had no idea there was a time limit, but he wasn’t stupid enough to keep her alive forever.
He’d torture her to get her to talk, and it was only a matter of time before he got angry enough to kill her.
She forced herself to dry heave, claiming that she was still feeling sick from the chloroform.
That did it. Despite his expertise in some areas of crime, at heart he was still a follower. He hadn’t had the forethought to bring food.
She listened as he left, then she rolled over.
There was a nail projecting from one of the beams. Given her experiences, that was all she’d need to escape, assuming there was enough time.
***********
His room was empty.
Lois found it ironic that Clark’s was the first place she ran to instead of to the police, only to find that he’d decided to abandon her after all.
Her chest hurt.
A maid was passing by.
“Have you seen Mr. Kent?” Lois asked quickly.
The maid frowned at her. Again she was in a dress that looked like it had been slept in, with dirt and other unmentionables probably embedded in the fabric.
“The troupe left last night, Miss,” the woman said. “Something about catching an early train to Atlanta.”
That was that then.
Her chance at love, and her chance at finding her way home all gone at the same time.
She felt numb.
She was almost out of money, and her options in this time period were going to be few and far between. She didn’t have any references, and it wasn’t like jobs were easy to come by.
For a moment she considered asking the maid where she could apply for work.
Letting herself hope had been foolish. She knew better than to depend on love. It had let her parents down, let the people she reported on down…she’d never really seen a time outside of books or movies where love really worked out for anyone in the long run.She walked through the halls of the hotel in a daze, feeling a little like a ghost herself.
Reporting her kidnapping to the authorities was the obvious next step, but Lois couldn’t make herself care. She wondered for a moment if she really was having lingering aftereffects from the chloroform.
She stepped outside onto the wide veranda.
It really was beautiful here. It was just too bad.
Feeling the warmth on the back of her neck from the sun, she rested for a moment. She couldn’t make a plan when it felt like the light had gone out of her life.
A prickling sensation on the back of her neck caused her to slowly turn. If the thug was back, she’d scream and cause enough of a commotion that he’d have to go away.
On the lawn, looking up at her was Clark Kent.
She felt as though her heart was exploding.
“Clark!”
He looked up at her, and his face brightened into a look of joy.
Last edited by ShayneT; 08/29/14 12:14 AM.
