He sobbed. “Look at you, damn you! You don’t look like you’ve aged a day! And look at me — a boozed-up, burned out wreck…” He shoved forward, neck muscles straining against the collar of his shirt. “You know what I am. Doc? I’m dead weight, that’s what I am. I’m something that takes up space — something the younger bucks are trying to find a way to shove quietly out the door!” He sobbed again. “And one day, they’re gonna do it. Doc! They’re gonna shove me right out of my own damn office…”
He broke down completely. Ben felt sick inside as he watched his old friend’s composure disintegrate completely. He wanted to step forward, to go to him, but he was unable to move. “Miles…”he tried.
“Get out. Doc,” the other cut him short, his voice breaking. He motioned roughly with his arm. “You don’t belong here. They took everything you had long ago. You’re a dead man, Doc. Get the hell out!”
He left the reception room in a rush and stumbled down the hall into his office. Ben stood rooted in place for an instant, then followed. When he reached Miles’ office, the door was closed. He grasped the handle and stepped inside. Mist swirled past his face…
The mist disappeared. He stood in an orchard of apple trees ripe with fruit. Green grasses waved gently in the summer breeze, and the smell of honeysuckle was in the air, A pasture fenced with board rail painted white was visible in the distance, and horses grazed in its enclosure. A stables sat close by, and a sprawling ranch house of brick and stained fir overlooked it all from a tree-shaded knoll. He wheeled about in shock, already knowing that Miles, the office, and the elevator would all be gone. They were. There was nothing left. Had he imagined them? Had he imagined everything? The terrible confrontation with Miles was still replaying itself hatefully in his mind, the emotions it had triggered razor sharp as they cut against his memory. Had he imagined the whole thing?
He glanced quickly down at his clothing. The running suit and Nikes had been replaced by slacks, a short-sleeved shirt and loafers.
What in the hell was happening?
He fought to control the fear that raced through him and brought what was left of his common sense to bear. Had he jumped through time, he wondered? He didn’t think so. But he might have imagined that he had. It could have all been just an illusion. It hadn’t seemed an illusion, but it could have been. The mists could have blinded him. His passage through the fairy world could have deceived him somehow. He could have gone nowhere at all. But if he had gone nowhere and if everything he had seen was an illusion, then what was he seeing now…?
“Ben?”
He turned, and there was Annie. She looked exactly as he remembered her, a small, winsome girl with huge brown eyes, button nose, and shoulder-length auburn hair. She was dressed in white, a summer frock with ribbons at the waist and shoulders. Her skin was pale and freckled, and the air about her seemed to shimmer in the flush of the sun’s midday light.
“Annie?” he whispered in disbelief. “Oh, my God. Annie, is it really you?”
She smiled then, that unaffected little-girl smile she always gave him when she found something amusing in his expression, and he knew that it truly was her. “Annie,” he repeated and there were tears in his eyes.
He started toward her, the tears almost blinding him, but her hands came up quickly in warning. “No, Ben. Don’t touch me. You mustn’t try to touch me.” She stepped back a pace, and he stopped, confused. “Ben, I’m not alive anymore,” she whispered, tears in her own eyes. She tried to smile through them. “I’m a ghost, Ben. I’m only an image of what you remember. If you try to take hold of me, I will disappear.”
He stood before her, confused all over again. “What…what are you doing here if you’re a ghost?”
She laughed gaily and it was as if he had never lost her. “Ben Holiday! Your memory is as selective as ever. Don’t you remember this place? Look about you. Don’t you know where we are?”