Part 2: Red Rover
Chapter 11
Julia had dragged a chair to the Sweetgrass Room to sit and monitor the dumbwaiter and watch for Barnabas. She was reclining in her chair, trying to doze, starting awake now and then, when the cables began to slither and slip. Thinking it was a dream, Julia studied the moving cables dumbly for at least twelve seconds; but the tick of the ascending carriage and the slight tremor in the floor told her that the dumbwaiter was actually approaching. She shook her head, placing one hand against her aching neck. Barnabas was returning!
She glanced at the watch on her wrist. Seven hours had passed.
The carriage thumped to a stop. Julia was already on her feet, weak with relief and fatigue.
"Barnabas!" she cried joyfully.
She was surprised when the dumbwaiter door was tugged open and she saw him reclining lengthwise across the doorway of the compartment. His worried eyes locked on hers. There was a huddled figure beside him. Julia's heart sank at the pain and alarm in her lover's wet eyes.
"Julia," he whispered, "please come help—" he began to unfurl himself from the chamber, putting out one leg, ducking forward after it.
She was beside him in a second, reaching into the darkness. "David! What's happened to David?" she cried, but Barnabas caught her hands and pressed them to his chest.
"Julia, I found her again. It was exactly like last time, do you recall?" Barnabas straightened, stood upright.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, trying to free her hands.
"No, no, love, but—" Barnabas gasped, and she saw with a shock that tears were rolling down his face. "Julia, David is out there but I couldn't find him, so I have to go right back—right now—but I found—"
"Roxanne," Julia said in a voice of ashes. She saw the limp figure and its colors, blue, red. "Oh, my God. Barnabas—where does that dumbwaiter lead to, where did you go?"
"It was parallel time, Julia, the whole thing all over again! With Angelique, Roxanne, and Claude North and Timothy Stokes. Those two nearly caught me. And they mentioned Carolyn Loomis and Angelique's aunt Hannah, and it's happening over there right now, and you and I aren't there this time—" Barnabas caught his breath. He seized Julia. "Help me to wake her up. We have to waken her and free her of Angelique! We have to keep her here, safe! I beg you, save her life!"
At first Julia was able to respond.
She was a doctor, after all.
Between the two of them, Roxanne was ferried to another room and laid upon a sofa. Julia got out her stethoscope. She took the girl's pulse. She looked at her critically and took her blood pressure. She ticked off the hopeful signs in her patient along with the bad signs. But as she worked and thought, her heart was growing smaller, fading under the force of a terrible truth.
Barnabas stood back and watched Roxanne as though his eyes were actually attached to her body. He repeatedly wiped his tears. He wrung his hands. Every now and then, his eyes would seemingly start from his head as he considered this action, that course.
Julia told herself that she could imagine his thoughts.
He might be thinking: Where can we keep her? The basement of the Old House? Julia's equipment—the generator—Julia can try a course of light electroshock treatments the way we did last time—Roxanne will come round—we'll have Willie to help us—mustn't let anyone at Collinwood know this is going on—
She stepped away from her patient, thoughtful. Barnabas cleared his throat and pinioned her with a grave stare.
.
.