"Well, that's a relief, thank you," Steven said.

"I'm still not sure what your skin was doing," Daniel said.

"Well, I'll take no shifting over shifting any day. Doesn't seem to help with the bruising though."

"And the bruising is only visible in the River," Daniel noted. "You look fine normally, at least right now."

They walked out of the bathroom and Daniel returned to his bedroom.

"There is one more thing I want you to have," Daniel said. He handed Steven a quart size jar of clear liquid.

"Protection?" Steven asked.

"Yes," Daniel replied, "but not ordinary protection. This is special stuff, designed to resist time-based attacks."

"I've had my father's protection," Steven said, "but it hadn't occurred to me that there might be different...flavors."

"What kind does your dad make?" Daniel asked.

Steven shook his head. "I really don't know. I just a.s.sumed that protection was protection, all the same."

"Everyone has their own recipe," Daniel said. "Your dad's is probably his own personal preference. Do you have some around?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Steven said, walking to the kitchen to find the bottle. He located it hidden behind the cereal boxes in a cabinet.

"Would you mind if I sampled it?" Daniel asked. "In addition to my time studies, I'm a bit of a protection connoisseur."

"Sure," Steven said, handing him the bottle. Daniel raised it to his lips and took a mouthful. After a moment, his eyes went wide, staring at Steven. Then he swallowed it.

"What?" asked Steven. "Too strong?"

Daniel left the room and returned with the collector knife, invisible in his hand. "Could I pour a little into this?" he asked, removing the top and exposing the hollow inside.

"Why?" asked Steven.

"I want to a.n.a.lyze it. I've never tasted anything quite like yours."

"OK," Steven said slowly, wondering what oddity Roy was using. Daniel took the bottle, entered the flow, poured a tiny amount into the top of the blade, then handed the bottle back to Steven. He left the room and returned to his bedroom.

Steven followed him. Daniel raised the knife to the box, but stopped.

"Oh," he said. "I can't a.n.a.lyze this without losing the sample of the gla.s.s man. I'll have to wait until I get home and get this sample transferred, then I'll take a look at the makeup of your father's protection."

"So it tastes unusual?" Steven asked.

"Everyone's recipe is a little different, so there's always slightly different tastes. But this one is unique. It doesn't taste like most of them."

"Probably too much vodka," Steven offered.

"It's liberal on the vodka, yes," Daniel said. "But it's not just that. There's something else very interesting going on." He stretched his arms, extending his fingers, feeling the protection moving through his body. "It feels like a general protection, but it feels different. Stronger, more intense and focused. Whoa!" Daniel spread his fingers wide, then curled them into a fist. He smiled.

He turned to look at Steven. "Your dad makes some good s.h.i.t, my friend!"

Steven smiled. Roy hadn't yet confided his recipe to him, but with Daniel's help he might be able to needle it out of him.

"You realize you won't be going to sleep now for at least another hour," Steven said.

"Don't care," Daniel said. "I have other work I can do. Why don't you try to sleep? I'm going to leave as soon as I wake up in the morning."

"Wake me up before you go," Steven said, "and thanks for your help Daniel. I don't know how I would have figured any of this out without your help."

"Oh, no problem," Daniel said. "And let me tell you, this shot of protection was worth the trip!"

Chapter Three.

Steven saw Daniel off the next morning and decided to spend some time with Roy's book, which was at Roy's house. As he drove over to Roy's, he imagined his father and Dixon blissfully ignorant of what was happening here at home. He deserves a break, he thought. I can handle this on my own.

At Roy's he let himself in and put on a pot of coffee. Then he sat at the kitchen table where Roy's book had been sitting for quite a while. Steven began leafing through it.

It was composed of several sections, each one newer and bound to the previous sections. He was the fifth generation of Halls to be reading it, and he expected some day he'd add his own section onto the end. It was already a few inches thick and a little unwieldy to carry, but after hearing Daniel describe how rare such a book was, he resolved that when it pa.s.sed into his hands he'd make sure it was freshly bound and any delicate pages preserved. Maybe he'd even digitize it as a backup.

As he turned the pages, he kept an eye out for sections that he might understand. Most of the book seemed written in a cryptic way that made no sense. He knew the words were English, but when he read them he couldn't piece together a meaning. Once he had some experience with a subject it gave him a personal context and he found the words began to click in his mind and their meaning cleared. Several sections had opened up to him after he'd been exposed to ghosts and some of the creatures he and Roy had come across recently. He was hoping now that he'd had a brush with the gla.s.s man he'd be able to find something in the book that helped him.

He was surprised to find an extended section from Roy's grandfather, Charles. It read clearly to Steven, and he a.s.sumed this was because it dealt with something he'd been exposed to. Hoping it was something that might shed some light on his current situation he poured a cup of coffee and read.

January 21 Teresa has been terrified by Jenny Mae for several nights. I agreed to sit with her and examine the manifestation. She says JM appears every night just as she is trying to fall asleep. I will set up a chair in Teresa's room and observe and see what I can do to help. Teresa looks as though she has not slept in many nights. She tells me she often succ.u.mbs to sudden and uncontrollable bouts of vomiting when the child appears. Something must be done. - Just as Teresa said, her head had not been on the pillow for more than a couple of minutes before the ghostly apparition of JM appeared. Since she was only three years old when she pa.s.sed on, her spirit was about two feet tall, and it materialised, hovering in the air at the foot of Teresa's bed, and it drifted up towards Teresa, who appeared terrified, pulling the bed covers up around her chin in fright. The floating child's face was angry that Teresa wasn't wanting to play, and it repeatedly flew at her with an angry scowl, Teresa cowering her head under the covers each time the child approached. The child worked into a frenzy and eventually let out a wail neighbors in the next county could have heard. Teresa screamed in response. This angered the child more. I rushed to Teresa's side to comfort her and to see if my presence would calm her, since her reactions to the apparition were in my opinion the reason it was accelerating its haunting of her. The ghost child was drifting around the room and when it saw me next to Teresa it became angry again. It began to shake in place, as though it was being rapidly moved back and forth an inch each time, and I felt myself shaking too, in response. I suddenly felt very dizzy and disoriented, and was afraid I might throw up. I slipped into the River and had the impression that I was being physically dislocated. I observed my body and Teresa's body shifting in small, unusual ways, just like the shaking of the ghost child. When I had the good sense to look at my wrist.w.a.tch, it all came clear to me. The hands of the watch were rapidly moving backwards and forwards. One moment it would read two seconds later, the next several seconds prior. In its anger the ghost child was whipping us backwards and forwards in time, and it was making both Teresa and myself ill, as our mortal minds were not able to handle anything other than the pa.s.sing of normal sequential time. I could see the child knew this would be the result of its attack upon us. The sicker Teresa became, the more it smiled and giggled. It liked that it could punish her for not playing with her and doing as it wanted. I stood and banished it from the room, but it took several tries before it would leave, and by this time Teresa was violently ill indeed.

January 22 I gave Teresa a potion just before bedtime that I believe will help alleviate the attacks of the ghost child. Tonight I watched as the child appeared, became angry, and began to shake once again, but Teresa was fine and after a while the child gave up and faded away. I told Teresa we would try again the next day.

January 23 Again Teresa drank the medicine I provided her and once again as the ghost appeared and tried to whip her back and forth in time it came to naught. Teresa laid back down in bed and attempted to go back to sleep even before JM had disappeared from the room. I believe so long as she takes the precautions I have provided to her, she will be able to get to sleep and stay asleep regardless of what the ghost in her bedroom attempts. She promised me she would continue with the potion, and I agreed to check on her in a week.

January 29 All is well, JM has given up attempting to haunt Teresa any longer now that Teresa cannot be made ill and the child's vengeance is denied. I will continue supplying Teresa with potion for another month, and after that time, provided JM doesn't appear, she can try forgoing the medicine and see if a new pattern has been developed, hopefully one in which JM doesn't appear at all.

Below this last entry Charles had drawn an image of the ghost child floating at the foot of the bed of a young woman. Seeing its little feet dangling in the air gave Steven a chill. I hope I never run into such a thing, he thought.

The concept of time being used as a weapon was new to him. Charles must have had a recipe for a time-based protection, like the stuff Daniel gave me, he thought. He wondered if the recipe was in the book, or if it had been pa.s.sed down to David and Roy. Perhaps Roy's protection incorporates it?

Steven turned the page and kept scanning for more pa.s.sages that he could interpret. Of all his progenitors, Charles seemed to have the most time-related entries. Just as he found a section on time binding, his phone rang. It was Daniel.

"Steven, I'm sorry to call," Daniel said. He sounded worried.

"Sure, are you in trouble?"

"Kind of," Daniel replied. "I've broken down just outside of Ellensburg. My car isn't the most reliable thing but I thought it would make it. Apparently not. I've got a truck coming but the best they'll do is tow me to Ellensburg."

"I'm on my way," Steven said. "See you in a couple of hours."

Steven left the book and poured the rest of the pot of coffee into a travel mug. Then he locked up Roy's house, got in his car, and headed east on I-90 as fast as he could go.

Steven found Daniel at an auto repair shop in Ellensburg. The car would be finished by the end of the day. They decided to return to Spokane in the meantime so Daniel could finish a.n.a.lyzing the piece of the gla.s.s man collected by the knife. Steven would drop Daniel off to pick up his car in Ellensburg on his return drive home.

Steven told Daniel about the pa.s.sages he'd found in Roy's book as they drove to Spokane.

"I was wondering, since Charles had a protection with some kind of time element in it, perhaps it's been worked into the stuff that Roy uses all the time?" Steven asked.

"Very possibly," Daniel replied. "There's a lot going on in your father's juice, let me tell you. It could very well have some time stuff already in it. I don't know how Roy feels about sharing the family information, but if Charles had a lot of time experiences I would love to read through them. There aren't a lot of works on the subject and I've exhausted all the ones I have; it'd be like fresh blood to me."

"Well, I suppose I could ask him," Steven said. "When he's back."

They talked more about the book and Daniel's take on time bindings before the subject seemed worn out and silence filled the car.

"So," Steven said, struggling to keep the conversation going, "you know Eliza?"

"Yes," Daniel replied.

"How long have you known her?"

"Almost twenty years."

"You'll have to forgive me," Steven said, "the River is all new to me; did you two meet because of that? Do you guys have conventions or something?"

"No," Daniel replied, "we met in a chat room, online. I think our mutual interests sparked things, but there was an attraction there for sure."

"Oh, you two were a thing?" Steven asked.

"For a while," Daniel said. "Troy's my son."

Whoa, Steven thought.

"Eliza didn't tell you?" Daniel asked. "From the look on your face, I'm guessing she didn't."

"No, she didn't," Steven answered. So what? Steven thought. It doesn't matter. Don't overreact.

"You know how you can really like someone," Daniel said, "but could never live with them? That's me and Eliza."

"So you really like her?"

"Who doesn't?" Daniel said. "She's immediately likeable. Everybody loves her. I just couldn't live with her. And we haven't had a 'thing' for many years now. We're friends. More like professional acquaintances than anything. She has a lot of those."

"And Troy?" Steven asked.

"I don't understand that part," Daniel said. "I offered child support, I offered to stick around and be his dad, but she didn't want any of that. She wanted to raise him entirely on her own without my involvement. I wasn't too happy with that arrangement at first, but she insisted. I decided to honor her requests and stay out of his life. I've only met him once. That was a hard day, let me tell you."

"I'll bet," Steven said. He thought about his son, Jason, and couldn't imagine not being involved with him. But then, Jason was at college and was busy with school and friends. He didn't see him very often, which seemed like the right thing to do, to let him live his own life without a lot of interference. h.e.l.l, he'd been pretty distant from Roy up until this year, when Roy stepped in to help him. In reality he hadn't been all that close with his own father in the past, or even with his son now. Best not to judge, he thought.

Once they reached Daniel's house in Spokane, Daniel set about a.n.a.lyzing the sample he had stored in the box. He placed it in a much larger wooden box, about the size of an old 27" television. After several minutes he began to see the symbols he was looking for.

"Far more complex," Daniel said, interpreting the symbols. "But we're getting there. Can you write this down, Steven, while I dictate? It will be easier."

"Sure," Steven said, sitting at a small desk and arranging some paper for him to record Daniel's comments.

"His name is...Frank Wilmon..." Daniel said, spelling the last name. "He's been trapped since...1933."

"Eighty years!" Steven said under his breath.

"He died in 1974," Daniel continued. "The cage was constructed by..."

Daniel paused.

"...Sean and Garth Wilmon, his sons, ages seven and five at the time." Daniel turned to look at Steven. They both seemed surprised.

"That wasn't what I was expecting," Daniel said.

"Me either," Steven replied. "Is there more?"

"Yes," Daniel said, returning to the symbols. "Sean pa.s.sed away. But Garth is still alive."

"Does it say where he is?" Steven asked.

"No," Daniel replied, "but you can usually find that out in other ways, like the internet."

"Can I use this computer, here?" Steven asked, referring to the computer sitting next to him on the desk.

"Sure," Daniel said. He returned to the symbols, looking for more information.

Steven began searching for Garth Wilmon. It didn't take long to locate a phone number which had a 360 area code.

"Found it," Steven said, "looks like the Olympia area. I'm going to give it a call."

Daniel didn't respond, immersed in reading more symbols.

Steven dialed the number. "This is Tall Pines, how may I direct your call?"

Steven paused. Tall Pines? Was it a hotel? "Can you connect me to Garth Wilmon?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wilmon isn't in his room right now. Would you like to leave a message?"

"Sure, but before I do, can you tell me what Tall Pines is? Are you a hotel?"