Time Drifters

Tarrytown, New York—Six months earlier, March 2001

Everything has a beginning, even if we start in the middle. Just like Time.

Time is a tricky thing. It races and bends and drags. It’s elastic. It wraps around and through everything we do and everything we see and feel and perceive. Maybe because we live in it we don’t really notice. Like everyone else, I’ve stared at a ticking clock and convinced myself that time is a constant and daring to think otherwise is nuts. But I’ve seen things that other people think are crazy, and until I was twelve I didn’t have any way to prove it otherwise.

I can tell you, there’s a big difference between where you’re from and when you’re from. Everyone talks about the “where” and they don’t even think to talk about the “when.” I didn’t either until just after my birthday, on March 11, 2001. In less than ten days, I was going to discover the real importance of “when.”

My Mom has often said I’m ahead of my time. I think that started because I was born two weeks early, while they were visiting cousins of mine in Richmond Hill outside of Toronto, up in Canada.

“Liam, you just couldn’t wait to say ‘Hello.’”

But really, Tarrytown is my home. We’re just up from New York City, about 35 miles on the eastern bank of the Hudson River where it widens into what’s called the Tappan Zee—a native and Dutch mash-up meaning sea. Learning early in life that the river runs south and that it soon empties into the Atlantic, I always had the impression that The Hudson was just taking a moment to rest in the big valley before its journey out into the great unknown. For that reason, I also thought that Tarrytown was a good place to be, tucked into the hills to the east of us, being in a stable and quiet place just before you get sucked into the crammed vortex of The City.

We are famous as the home of author Washington Irving, the man who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow—the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane and all that? And also Rip Van Winkle, the story of the guy who lay down for a nap and woke up twenty years later. Disorienting? Definitely. And very creepy, if you weren’t expecting it.

And if you ever came to spend a while in Tarrytown or our northern neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, or really anywhere in the local Catskill Mountains, you’d soon get it. That Sleepy-Hollow feeling, where things aren’t normal.

I used to think it was just the woods around town that had a special kind of weirdness to them but as I got older I realized it was more widespread than just that. Around some of the mansions and estates that Tarrytown is also known for, like Mr. Irving’s place, Sunnyside, and the Rockefeller’s Kykuit, or even in Patriot’s Park or down on the banks of the Hudson… I would often get the sense that other people were there. Not like they were ghosts but as if they were present, just not visible. Corner-of-your-eye kinds of happenings that make you stop and listen. I’m not just talking about a scared-of-the-dark kind of weirdness, either. It’s something I can feel and I have ever since I can remember. It’s true, I swear.

Most people—including my parents—will tell you that the wind is blowing. Simple as that. To me, I can almost hear voices speaking from behind the trees, while the breeze rustles the leaves into piles and then swirls back to blow them free.

Not having any brothers or sisters to talk to about it or verify what I sensed, I’d sometimes check if other kids noticed what I did. But apart from sneers, shaking heads, a lot of heckling that I was “just scared of ghosts,” or getting branded as “acting weird,” all I was left with was my own curiosity… plus the niggling certainty that there had to be an explanation. And it was curiosity that drove me the day that I met Miss Prankle… the afternoon my best friend, Harris, and I were coming back from school, when I was about to get the answers that would change my life.

“Maybe I should put in a volcano, just to make my Dad happy… or get him off my back,” Harris said, staring at the sidewalk as we trudged along. He’d been going on at recess and again at lunch about his Science Fair project, determined that since this was a one-time, invitational event for Middle School kids that he had to make his project the most awesome it could be. “It’s classic old-school and kind of kids-stuff, but it really is part of the picture.”

“Volcanoes are cool,” I agreed. “But so are earthquakes just by themselves. You’ve already got that slippy thing.”

“A tectonic plate!” he shouted, like I’d just hit him. “Liam, no! If you don’t even get it, I’m in total trouble.”

Harris grunted and kicked a big crusty glob of ice off a melting snow bank just as we were stepping off the curve. Watching it skitter on the pavement, we only saw the car when it seemed too close to brake for the intersection. We both froze. The front wheel crunched our ice chunk into snow and the man laid on the horn. He swerved and I grabbed Harris’ jacket sleeve and jumped just before he skidded past us, brakes squealing and tires whirring. Once he’d finally stopped with his bumper sticking out onto the next street, he rolled down his window to swear at us.

The lady across the street noticed, too.

“Crazy old coot,” she hollered. “That’s why there’s a speed limit.”

“It speaks,” said Harris, his eyes wide and staring at the woman. “Wrankle, runkle, Prankle, prunkle,” he muttered. He often said silly things and unfortunately I usually knew what he was talking about.

This odd woman had moved into the house at the corner of North Washington Avenue just after the beginning of the school year when we’d started attending Tarrytown Middle School. The name on the mailbox by the street had been changed to W.V. PRANKLE. The man before her had been a shut-in, a mean grouch who hardly ever spoke and wouldn’t give kids back any balls that landed on his property, so the house already had a bad reputation. All the kids noticed this new owner starting to decorate the shutters with bright colors, and how she put strange kinds of sculptures on the porch… ones made of twisted wire and shiny stones. Harris swore she was a sorceress because she’d hung a “witch symbol” in her front window just around Hallowe’en. But I told him that was called a dream catcher and my Mom had one in our window by the back door. But fair enough, it felt like something was going on over there and I was curious to figure it out someday.

“Oh, dear,” the woman said loudly. “Could you boys possibly lend me a hand for just a minute, please?”

Harris’ eyes went really wide and then darted to the ground. I felt embarrassed and my face went hot. There’s no way the woman hadn’t noticed and he might as well have just told her, Heck no! You’re too bizarre for words. I knew how that felt.

“What seems to be the trouble, Ma’am?” I asked, repeating what I’d heard that police officer ask my Mom two weeks ago when she got stopped for speeding coming back from White Plains, and she started crying before he’d made it to the window—It was a speed trap, she’d said, over and over.

“Oh, my tire’s gone flat,” the woman said, stepping away from the rear of her car. The trunk was open and she was pointing to some wooden cases that were brimming out the back. “I’ve got to unpack all of these before I can inflate it. But I need to get them to the store before it closes today.”

“Probably magic wands, or toad’s eyes,” Harris whispered in my ear. I frowned at him.

Her accent caught my attention. It sounded like something from the Caribbean. I’d only seen her at a distance but now I noticed that her hair was grey and brown mixed together, and very tightly curled. Her skin was deep tan colored and even darker since she seemed to be flushed from the cold afternoon.

“I… uh,” I stuttered in hesitation, looking over at Harris.

“We have to get homework done on our Science Fair projects… right away,” Harris said. He was nodding his head like a pigeon, trying to get me to agree with him. Gosh he was dorky sometimes.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he continued, making it obvious that he was being extra nice.

“Don’t let me halt the progress of Science,” the woman said. “Young, inquiring minds have priorities and curiosity is one of them.” She shot a look at her watch and then took in a deep breath and rubbed a finger lightly between her eyebrows. My Grandma Anderson did the same thing when she got really worried.

“I can help, for a few minutes,” I said, looking both ways, ready to cross the road. Harris tugged on my coat sleeve.

“Lee! Liam,” he insisted urgently.

“I think you’d better go,” I said, freeing my arm. He looked stupefied but I just left him standing there as I jogged back to the other side.

“Oh, thank you, young man. That’s so nice,” the woman said. “I’m Wini Prankle. Wini, or Miss Prankle, whichever you like,” she added with a chuckle.

“Liam,” I said. I extended my mitten for a handshake, only then remembering Mom said it wasn’t polite unless you took the mitten off. “Uh, Liam Trinder,” I continued, stuffing the mitten under my arm while we shook hands.

“It’s very nice to meet you… Liam Trinder.”

She got my name right on the first try, and she said it so sweetly. She pronounced it with such great care, I felt proud to have the name I did. Despite the fact that she obviously had troubles, she took a moment to look right at me. I noticed that she had a scar that sliced very closely to her right eye. It made the corner of her lid look a bit droopy. It might have made anyone else look sinister, but not her.

I knew the warnings about talking to strangers, and all the chatter from the kids at school about this “kooky” woman. But Miss Wini V. Prankle had a twinkle in her eye and I decided right then and there that I liked her.

“Bye,” shouted Harris, sounding like he was giving me a final warning that he was really, actually, honestly leaving. I waved at him and he took off as though he were running for his life.

This was no big deal.

At least, I didn’t think so until I went to lift the first case from the trunk. They were made of light-colored wood, something like pine and weren’t more than five inches wide and tall and about two feet long. So it was odd how super heavy they were.

“I probably should have put some into the back seat instead,” Miss Prankle said, while she added another case to a pile she had started on the snow-packed driveway.

“You got rocks in these?” I asked, wincing as soon as I’d said it. I knew it wasn’t polite to poke in other people’s business.

“Yes, I do,” she responded casually. “All different sorts of rocks, of course.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “That explains it.” And yet, not really.

“I make jewelry and artistic things with some of them,” she explained, as though answering the questions I had never spoken. “Some I sell just as they are. People take a liking to them for decoration.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, trying to get a hold of another box. “People do that, for sure.”

“I’m keeping you from a Science project?” she asked.

“No… well,” I said, hesitating. Should I tell her?

“Harris and I, we got picked to go to Tri-State for the seventh grade, for an invitational, ‘cause it’s not a real Fair until tenth grade,” I explained. “Not together, just both of us with our own projects. And Ms Kretch said we should do something extra to our displays to make them better. I figured if mine got picked out of everyone else’s then it must still be good enough for the really big competition. Plus the Fair’s this Friday. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“What’s the focus of your project?” she asked right off, making me think she might be in favor of me changing it up.

“Animation.”

“Ah, cartoons,” she noted, smiling.

“No, real stuff,” I corrected. “Like three-dimensional animation. You know, with optics and glasses, and how the mind gets the whole effect, because the theme is about going against what you think to be true. Not that I’ve done one, myself… a film, I mean.” Truthfully, I didn’t even understand it all, but I had pieces that my Dad had made me research, since he was an engineer and I liked the drawing part.

“My goodness,” she said, impressed. “The real McCoy. The bona fides.”

“Who?” I asked. She laughed. I could tell I’d messed up something but once an adult was laughing and it was going in your favor, there wasn’t much point in stopping them.

“I meant, that’s interesting as a theme and a topic,” she said. Her face lit up and I noticed that her scar ran part way down her right cheek and put a crinkle in her smile on that side.

“You’re giving people something to look at while you explain the Science,” she added. “That’s good. You can discuss the consistency of vision that helps us perceive film and three-dimensional mapping. Because, after all, it’s just an illusion, isn’t it? The pictures don’t really move… we just perceive that they do.”

I nodded a bit, surprised that she seemed really smart.

“Plus it helps for folks to understand how they can visualize,” she continued. “That’s a very good thing. If you can see something in your mind, then you have a better chance of making it happen.”

“I guess so,” I said, getting tired and puffing a bit from all the work. I could feel Miss Prankle watching me as I lifted out the boxes so I was being extra careful not to bump any of them, or to look like I wasn’t strong enough to do it. But as I reached down to get one of the boxes in the last layer, I heard a funny scratching noise and I jumped back.

“What?” she asked.

“There’s a noise,” I said, pointing. “I think it’s a mouse, or something.”

We looked and she poked around.

“I don’t see anything,” she said, reaching for another box while she was in there. “Almost done,” she added with a smile, bumping me with the box before she walked away with it.

I looked at the pile behind the car and wondered how long it was going to take to put them all back after she fixed the tire. Maybe she could do that part. Well, no. Better get it over with.

I reached back down and grabbed the next case and as I was lifting it, I heard the noise again. A real buzzing and rattling this time. Really weird. Very Sleepy-Hollow.

“Whoa, whoa,” I said, tripped out that something inside was moving.

“Hmm?” she asked.

“Don’t you hear that?” I said, holding the box. “There’s definitely something in there.” I could feel the vibration right through the wooden sides and swallowed hard. “Is there, like, a pager in there?”

“How odd,” Miss Prankle said, taking the box from my hands. She held it up towards her ear but the buzzing had stopped. “I don’t have a pager, so I don’t see how it could be.”

“It was there,” I insisted, reaching out to touch the box but she had turned with it towards the front of the car.

“I’d better put this one into the front seat and have a look at it later,” she said. “No time to lose.”

“But what’s in there?” I asked. Now I wanted to know.

“Only rocks, I’m sure, as you say,” Miss Prankle answered, putting down the box and closing the passenger door. “But I promise to let you know if I find anything else.”