One
"There's no way you can help me on this dumb paper. The topic's worse than stupid. Even the school library didn't have anything on it," Carl Freeland growled at his sister. "So drop it." He slammed the front door to his grandmother's old house behind him and stomped mud across the entry hall floor.
Kara looked at her twin as she dropped her books on the chair in the hall. "It's just a history report, Carl. What are you so bummed about?" She peeled off her rain-soaked sweater and kicked off her shoes. Spring in the Rockies. God, what a place to be stranded. Talk about a nowhere, backward excuse for a town. The closest real shopping mall was all the way back down in Denver.
She shoved her long hair back over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of the two of them reflected in the mirror over the chair. Outwardly they looked a lot alike with the same curly auburn hair, lean bodies and long legs. Although Carl's legs were more muscular than hers were, the two of them had the same green eyes. A pink sticky-paper hung in the middle of their reflection.
"Aunt Jen's out," she announced, reading the note she pulled off the smoky glass. "'Book signing in Denver, then a meeting. Home late. Food in the fridge.'" Kara shivered. Just the two of them alone in this creepy house. It didn't make any difference that they'd been here almost a month now. The place was still probably crawling with ghosts. Gram's included.
"So, what's new? Good thing Aunt Jen never got married. She's always flitting around somewhere or other." Carl slicked back his wet hair with his fingers. "We could disappear into thin air and nobody would ever notice. Not that I particularly mind. I don't need anyone keeping tabs on me, breathing down my neck or telling me what to do. I like being on my own."
"Well, take off and strand me at school again and see who's breathing down your neck then!" Kara flipped on the hall light, pushing back the gloom. The more light the better as far as she was concerned, that was for sure.
Carl dropped his backpack on the bottom step. "Look, Beanpole, I came back for you, didn't I?" He stripped off his fleece vest and dropped it on the floor.
Kara glared at him, then picked up the soggy vest and added it to the pile of stuff on the chair. Aunt Jen was such a neat freak, not laid back the way Mom had been.
"You were late, so I gave Tiffany a ride home. It isn't as if I had anything else to do. She just lives down by the lake, not the other side of the state. Besides, it was raining and she'd have gotten wet."
"Cheerleader getting wet? No. You couldn't let that happen, now could you?"
"Come off it, Kara. It's not my fault you decided to paddle home like a drowned duck. Besides, I picked you up halfway here, so back off." Carl slouched down on the stairs. "Besides, you could make a few friends yourself. Try to fit in, make my life a little easier."
Kara pushed past her brother and headed toward the kitchen. God, Carl is such a self-centered idiot. Not like Dad. I could always count on Dad. He and Mom understood. They always cared what we did. Kara heard Carl's shoes drop on the bottom step before he started to follow her through the formal dining room and into the kitchen.
"Like you care if anyone notices me, Carl? Please. But hey, if you have any doubts that Aunt Jen knows every time you smile, just get sick again. She'll definitely have something to say about you coughing and hacking around. Besides, everybody always notices you. Me, I'm like a radio. You know, just background noise. But not you. We've only been here four weeks and you fit in after the first day, Mr. Oh Wow!" Kara sounded grouchy, even to herself. What does it matter anyway? I don't like this house or this town or--maybe some food will help my attitude.
"Yeah, well, that's a real problem--me getting noticed at the wrong time. I ticked off Old Man Ball, and that's why he gave me this stupid research report." Carl opened the fridge door and grabbed a package of deli meat and a handful of sliced cheese. "Dumb history prof."
"No, way," Kara countered taking an apple. "That's not how he handed out topics in my class. We asked for what we wanted, and I got life in the fifth through eighth century AD post-Roman period. Would you stop dropping sandwich crumbs on the floor! I'm tired of cleaning up after you. And stop calling me Beanpole!"
"That's the same topic I got saddled with, only he made me take it. Probably so you could show me up. One of the other basketball players warned me about Ball. Says he doesn't like the athletic types, just the flighty little flirts who hang on his every word. Who cares about his stupid paper, anyway?"
"You do. Dad would have cared too. And I'm not a flirt."
Her twin walked away from her, his back stiff.
Kara, you dope. Bringing up Dad. "Carl, wait. So, I'm an airhead. I think I know just the book we need for those reports. Follow me." She paced back the way they'd come, then down another hall. Proudly, Kara flipped on the light in the old study and stared at the floor-to-ceiling walls of books in the cozy room.
Or it might have been cozy if a fire had been going in the fireplace. "I left the book on the window seat over there." She pointed to where a large window seat complete with faded chintz padded cushions broke the west wall of books. "Maybe I didn't? No, Aunt Jen must have put it away."
"Or maybe your brain's like a sieve, and I'm in big trouble," said her twin. "Why do I ever listen to anything you say?"
"Yeah, well at least I've got a brain, which is more than I can say about you." Kara scanned the books on the shelf in front of her. She'd left a paper sticking out of the one she wanted.
"Forget it." Carl walked over to a sketch-filled drafting table. His steps sounded hollow on the polished wood floor. "There's not going to be anything in here about barbaric warriors in post-Roman Britain." He flipped through some of the drawings, then strode to the window seat and plopped down.
Kara glanced out the window behind him. Icy water still carved wet rivers down the grimy glass. Outside, Gram's manicured garden looked barren, lonely and soggy. Puddles of rainy slush covered the gravel paths and coated the bare branches of the bushes. I hate rain. It rained at Mom and Dad's funeral. "Carl, would you just shut up and help me look? It's a little brown book."
"None of those in here." Carl sniped.
Kara ignored him. "The Celts, that's the title. Oh yeah, and it smells a little like roses."
"You've got to be kidding. Girly, wimpy smelling roses?"
She could feel him staring at her.
"Hey, I almost forgot. One of the guys told me about a Tae Kwon Do school here in town. I went and checked it out at lunch." Carl thunked his foot against the wood seat. "We start Monday afternoon. You can applaud any time now."
"Would you get serious? If Aunt Jen finds we've been messing with her precious research books, she'll kill us. You'd think we were still little kids."
"Speaking of killing, have you heard what the kids at school say about Gram's missing companion-artist friend?"
"Carl!"
"No, really. The story is Gram murdered her, got rid of the body, then died so she wouldn't have to explain anything to the police."
"You're morbid." She looked over his shoulder at the rain soaked landscape. Pines and bare-limbed aspens shivered in the wind howling off the mountain. The grass was just starting to turn green. It looked about as inviting as an oil slick. She sighed more heavily.
Carl reached behind him and pulled a book out from under the cushions. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. "This what we're looking for?"
"That's it." Kara snatched the book from him, and it fell open to a paper-marked page. She breathed in the scent of faded summer roses. "This is where I found the medallion."
"You mean that necklace-thing you wear?"
"Right. The medallion." Kara nodded. "I did some checking on the Internet, and I think it's some kind of Celtic design. It could be a copy from some old design or even an authentic ancient pattern."
Carl rolled his eyes.
"Anyway, this is where I found it. Right here with this page of drawings that somebody added to the book. The sketches must have been done a long time ago, judging by how faded and brittle the paper is."
"Even so, there is an imprint of something still in the paper," Carl said. "Is it your medallion?"
"I think so." Kara pulled her medallion from beneath her shirt. She'd worn it as a necklace almost since the day they had moved here.
"Well, it does look the same," agreed Carl. He studied the book.
Kara's attention centered on her medallion. Something about it pulled at her when she stared at it, had pulled at her since she first found it. If she could just trace the design in the right order, then... She let the medallion hang free and laughed at herself. Talk about letting your imagination run away with you.
"Wouldn't Aunt Jen just die if she thought someone had been drawing all over the pages in this book? And not just the extra sheet."
"What do you mean?" Kara asked.
She stared, curiosity warring with dread as her brother flipped through the pages of the small volume. Page after page had rough sketches. One map had symbols written over different place names. Kara turned back to the page that had been marked by the extra sheet and her medallion.
Staring out at them from the book was a rough sketch of a barbarian hunter striding through a forest. On the added page torn from a spiral bound sketchpad someone had drawn a detailed portrait of a Roman-looking warrior.
"They look so real, like they could open their mouths and talk to us." Carl said. He sounded impressed. Definitely not his normal bored, yeah-right attitude.
Sometimes his guard slipped, letting her catch a glimpse of the inner feelings they'd shared before they'd come to live with Aunt Jen. But Carl never, ever slipped in front of anyone else, especially not any of the guys he hung with at school.
Silently the twins compared the first man's face, drawn in the margin of the page that showed a walled villa, to a different man's face on the folded sheet of drawing paper. Kara started to read from the text. "'The Saxons invaded post-Roman Britain at the invitation of'"
The lights flickered, almost going out.
"Oh jeez, there goes the electric again!" Kara hunched up her shoulders. She really, really didn't like this house. Absently she fingered the intricate design on the medallion, the silver metal warming in her fingers.
"It must go out every time it storms around here." Carl shrugged. "You know, whoever did these sketches was really good. Maybe even better than me. I know." He hummed a few bars of some spooky music. "I'll bet it was our missing artist."
Kara ignored her brother. "It would be so awesome to really see these guys, don't you think? They would have been so different from the losers at school." She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. "If I try, I can almost smell that forest and hear the birds in the trees."
A loud clap of thunder shook the room, rattling the window. Kara nearly jumped out of her skin. She jerked her hand away from the medallion. The medal thunked against her chest swaying on its chain as the lights in the room flickered and died.
Brilliant sunlight illuminated the skin of her hand where it rested on the drawing of the hunter. Kara looked up from the book. "Oh my God," she breathed, staring out the window.
Carl followed her glance, looking up, then almost dropped his half of the book they'd been studying. Brambles twisted around the outside sill. Striding through the clearing was a shaggy-haired man wearing a round metal helmet, and leading a pony laden with a slain deer and a huge shield.
"Do you see that?" Carl gasped. He watched as the man disappeared back into a forest that was not their tame backyard. Carl shoved the book into Kara's unresisting hands, then scrambled completely onto the padded window seat.
"Carl, what are you doing?"
"Standing up?" He unlocked the window and wrestled it open, leaning out to get a better view.
"Carl, stop it! Get back in here." Kara heard a definite squeak in her voice. She grasped the intricately carved window frame for all she was worth. "Don't, please. This is not our backyard!"
"Jeez. He looks like that guy in the book!" Carl had his head and shoulders outside the window.
"No way. Somebody's just trying to scare us! Besides, the caption under that sketch said something about a sixth century--what about the sword on his back? Barbarians wore swords on their backs. Modern, civilized people do not wear swords sticking up over their shoulders! Something's more than just a little wrong here! We are talking prank of some kind. Wilderness re-enactors, maybe some kind of rear view projection, or how about a movie company filming some historical something or other. There is no way that could have been the guy out of the book. Do you hear me?"
"Man, you're such a worrywart." Carl shoved her away from himself, and swung one leg out over the windowsill. "I've got to check this out."
"Wait! Do not climb out there," Kara begged. "Carl, this is crazy. You don't want to go out there. I mean, out there can't even be out there!"
"I'm not going to do anything dumb. I just want to..."
Desperate to get him to listen to reason, Kara grabbed hold of the waistband of her brother's jeans. She tried to pull him back, but it wasn't working. Quickly changing her grip, Kara tugged on his arm.
Carl didn't want to be rescued. He pulled away from her, jerking his arm out of her grasp. He toppled out the window into the briars under the sill and into, well, she wasn't quite sure into where. Kara lost her balance and fell backward off the window seat, dropping the book. As the book fell from her grasp onto the floor, the loose sheet of sketchpad paper fluttered out the window. The errant page floated to the ground near where Carl lay sprawled.
Scrambling up, Kara scooped up the book and knelt on the window seat. "Aunt Jen will kill me. I can't lose pages from her research books! These dumb books are half the reason she dragged us to live in this backwater in the first place."
"It's just a drawing." Carl gingerly picked himself up out of the brambles, and pulled some wicked looking thorns out of his jeans. Scratches oozing blood on his hands attested to his encounter with the thorns.
Kara leaned out the window and tried to reach the paper. "What are we going to do?" The sketch lay out of her reach on the brambles, a corner moving in a gentle breeze.
"Don't worry, I'll get it back for you," Carl said.
The sketch lifted on a breath of air and floated further from the window. "The drawing is blowing away. You've got to get the drawing, Carl."
"Yeah, yeah, I am. Whoa, Kara. You've got to see this forest. This is really something." He looked to either side then knelt down and touched the grass at his feet. "It is definitely not Colorado." Standing up, he held his hand out for her. "Watch out for the thorns."
"No, wait, Carl. Forget the drawing. Oh, jeez, you can't even be there! Come back in here. That guy looked more than dangerous, like some kind of old-time mountain man or something. He could still be out there! Dad was right. Carl, you do need a keeper." The medallion was getting hot, almost burning her skin through her shirt. Grabbing her brother's hand, she tried to pull him back to safety.
"Would you just come on?" Carl tugged her through the window.
