She was five years old, when she was found alone on the Molly Claire, her old-fashioned white nightgown sewn with hand-tatted lace and splotched with blood. She held a man’s pocket watch in her hand; a watch belonging to the Molly Claire’s captain. The captain, Jeffrey Browne, was not aboard his ship, and neither were the three members of his crew. The Molly Claire was safely anchored in the San Francisco Bay, and every piece of equipment was onboard. The three wetsuits belonging to the crew were still laid out in preparation for a dive that never happened, the air tanks were filled, the regulators, meters, and gauges in perfect working order. The cabin was a mess of maps and hand-scrawled notes, but the captain’s wife said it was always in disorder. The radio worked, and the inflatable emergency raft was neatly stowed. Earlier that day, a fog had rolled in into the Bay, but that was nothing usual, and no distress call had been sent or received.

The only sign of distress had been the blood on the girl’s nightgown. It seemed the crew had intended to wait out the fog by eating lunch; a pot of canned stew sat on the small galley stove, and four bowls were laid out on the table. Three of them had untouched stew inside.

The captain and crew were never found, not in the nineteen years after the girl was discovered - but that was not the greatest mystery in my life. The mystery that haunted me was the girl herself, for even as no one could discover where the crew of the Molly Claire had gone, no one could discover how the girl had come to be on board. She was not a missing person, for no one had reported her lost.

And I was that girl.

I remember nothing of who I was before that night, but I remember standing in the rocking empty solitude of the Molly Claire, the comforting weight of his pocket watch in my hand. It fitted my palm as though it were made to be there, and the ticking of it was just below the beating of my heart and just above the creak of the ship and murmur of the waves.

The silence. The emptiness.

The moment when I finally grew wearied of standing there, and slipped the pocket watch inside the front of my bloodied nightgown (just where the initials M.C. were sewn in pale green thread) and sat down at the table to finish the bowl of stew, still slightly warm, that someone had left behind.

I think of that girl, and that silence, whenever I have a case involving another child, such as the one I have now.

I was told the basic facts over the phone before I came:

Amy Collins, six years old, was put to bed around 7:30 on a Tuesday night. Three hours later, she woke up screaming. She was in such a hysterical state that it took her mother forty-five minutes to calm her down enough that she could speak. Every week this happened, every Tuesday at 10:30, and every week Amy told the same story.

There was a man. A man with bloody clothes and a weeping knife. He came into Amy’s room and woke her up by touching her with his bloody left hand. Amy tried to show her mother the blood on her pajamas where the man touched her. His fingers were cold; the blood was warm. Amy gagged at the memory - the first time, she threw up on her mother’s lap.

There was no blood on Amy’s pajamas. No matter how often her mother said it was a dream, Amy wouldn’t believe her.

There was a man, Amy said. There was blood.

There was a weeping knife.



We are flown into Kittery, Washington by Amy’s aunt. Bethann Cooper is a tall woman with a rugged face that speaks of an outdoor life spent raising dogs and horses. She gives me a firm handshake, then sits down in the only chair the Travelodge gives its guests. She is not the sort of woman who is comfortable with small talk, but without that social cushion, she has nothing to say.

“How is Amy doing?” I ask, sitting down on the bed across from her chair. Ben hands her a glass of water, filled from the bathroom tap and probably warm. Rob leans quietly against the wall, not directly behind her, but slightly out of her line of sight. He’s holding his iPad, but I know there’s a backup digital recorder somewhere in his pockets. He’s never without one, when we are interviewing a client.

“Amy is - Amy is still having the...dreams. And she still insists they are real. That the man with the knife is real.” Bethann turns the glass around in her hands. “Patricia is taking her to a psychologist. They had their first appointment four days ago.”

I nod my head encouragingly, although psychologists aren’t of any interest to me at all. “Have you told your sister that we are here?”

She turns the glass faster, creating a small maelstrom just under the rim. “I told her I’ve talked to you. I showed her your website.” She looks up, her mouth twitching awkwardly. “That was probably a mistake. But I’ll take you to meet Patricia. Once she meets you, she’ll see that you aren’t - aren’t - ”she breaks off, flailing for a word that isn’t an insult.

Inwardly, I sigh. I’ve met Patricia Collins only through the information Ben has dug up online, and even that little has shown me how unlikely she is to be receptive to what I do.

“You understand,” I say, using my gentle voice, “that in order to help Amy, I do have to be given access to her.”

She scoots to the edge of her chair, closer to me. She doesn’t notice when the maelstrom breaks over the edge of the glass and water splashes on her knees. “But you can do that? You can save Amy?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rob shift position and Ben raise his head to look at me.

“‘Save’ Amy?” I ask. “Has something changed? Is Amy in danger, Bethann?”

She puts the glass down on the floor, hard enough to thunk against the wood beneath the thin beige carpet. “I stayed over at their house last week. Amy had the...dream, and I was there. I saw it happen. We were - Patricia and I - we were right outside her room. Waiting. Patricia didn’t want us inside; she says it’s important Amy not give in to her fears, she has to be given the chance to get control of them on her own. That’s what Patricia thinks.”

I nod. I’m not agreeing with what Patricia thinks, just showing that I’m listening.

“Patricia’s watch is a little slow, I think, because she thought it wasn’t time yet, and she went to check something in the other room. I was there alone, right outside Amy’s door when she started to scream.” Bethann stops, and I see the echo of Amy’s screams in her eyes. She has to visibly force herself to keep speaking.

“I opened the door, scratching along the wall for the light switch in Amy’s room, but I couldn’t find it, so I just ran to her bed. She was sitting up, and her hand was against her chest, like she was holding something trapped there. When I reached her, she took her hand off her chest and grabbed my hand. It was dark - there was only the light from her nightlight - but I felt something warm and wet rub off her hand onto mine. I felt it. It - it made me feel - I can’t stop thinking - ”

Bethann stops again and puts her hand, hard, against her forehead. Her strong, no-nonsense fingers are trembling. “I - I’m sorry. Can I have some water?”

I pick the motel glass up off the floor and hand it to her. She drinks, draining the glass as though it were filled with whiskey.

“That night was just so horrible,” she says when the water is gone, and she has composed herself. “The waiting, and then - the stories Amy has told, of the man, and the - the weeping knife, and the blood. It felt like blood, what she wiped off onto my hand. You know how blood....feels.”

“What did you see on your hand?” I ask, when she doesn’t continue.

“Nothing. There was nothing on my hand, nothing on Amy’s hand, or her pajamas, or the bed sheets, either - I looked. And Patricia was talking about night terrors, and too many snacks at bedtime, and telling Amy it’s all a dream. And I - I sat there on Amy’s bed feeling that smear of warm blood on my hand, thinking - thinking that I.....”

“You don’t think it’s a dream,” I say, when it’s obvious she isn’t going to be able to say it.

A shudder tears through Bethann’s shoulders. “I’m not a particularly suggestible person. I’ve always believed ghosts are something natural. I’ve read a lot of theories that make good logical sense: magnetic disturbances, sub-sonic sounds, mistaken perceptions. Nothing that is truly dangerous. But now - and it sounds so silly that I’ve changed my mind because of an invisible smear of blood - but now I know that if the man in her room is a ghost, then he’s more than a magnetic disturbance. Amy’s in danger.”

Ordinarily, I don’t like putting things into people’s heads (whatever they say, people are very much suggestible) but there is something I need to know. “Bethann,” I say, “when you were in Amy’s room, what did you smell?”

“Smell?” She looks puzzled, and then suddenly her eyes widen. Instinctively, she grips the place on her hand where Amy touched her that night. “Oh.” She keeps both hands clenched together, and presses them against her stomach. “I - I - that’s how I was so sure I felt blood. I smelled it. In Amy’s room, I smelled the blood.”

Behind her, Rob makes a tiny satisfied noise and makes a note on his iPad.

Ben catches my eye and raises his eyebrows. I am not sure Bethann is in the best mental state just now, but I nod.

He comes over to the bed and sits beside me. “I’ve been wondering,” he says, “what Amy means when she says the man has a ‘weeping knife’.”

Bethann looks distractedly at him, still holding her hands against her stomach. “I don’t know why Amy calls it that.”

“Has she told you what the knife looks like?” Ben asks.

She shakes her head, and he leaves me alone on the bed.

“I’ll meet with Patricia if you can arrange it,” I say. I can’t promise Bethann anything as I shake her hand, and escort her to the motel room door. Most of what we call life is just messy layers of mystery and impossible things.



The next day I get the call: Patricia has agreed - reluctantly - to talk to me. I go alone to her house, a gracefully aging Victorian house that could easily be called a small mansion.

Patricia offers me something to drink, then sits with her knees turned sideways and holds her hands on her lap. The short, thick-fingered hands she shares with her sister contrast sharply with the overall elegance of her skirt and frilled blouse. Amy, in a pale blue dress and straight-combed dark hair, sits at the other side of the room.

“The psychologist says it’s normal - night terrors, you see. I can’t punish her for it, though of course they’re very difficult. These disturbances.” She glances at her daughter, then leans very slightly forward across the coffee table and lowers her voice. “The psychologist says there’s a likely link between them and my husband leaving. He says once Amy comes to terms with our divorce the nightmares will stop, and we should allow her the time to deal with it in the way her subconscious has chosen. The whole thing’s been....stressful.” She stops, looking away from me under the thick sweep of her mascara, and I know I am supposed to take pity on her.

“And did your husband leave on a Tuesday night at 10:30pm?”

Patricia gives me an annoyed glance. “Of course not - his leaving was entirely civilized. There were no dramatic late night displays. But that isn’t what the trouble is. The trouble is my sister getting you all involved when there is no problem, only a perfectly normal expression of loss.”

“Bethann believes she - ”

“Oh my sister. Bethann believes all sorts of things. Like that nonsense about you and - ” Patricia’s eyes immediately fly wide and she touches her too-large hand to her mouth.

I take advantage of her social guilt. “Please, if I could just speak to Amy? Just so I could tell Bethann I saw nothing wrong?”

Patricia doesn’t want to allow this. She shifts on her expensive couch. “Just for a moment, perhaps,” she says, “A few words. I couldn’t allow any - any of that sort of thing.”

I’m not sure what sort of thing she means; perhaps it’s time to google myself and see what the latest rumors are. “No,” I agree. “Nothing at all like that. Bethann paid my plane fare here, and that’s nothing I can refund. I’d like to at least give her the reassurance that everything’s okay with Amy. So that she’ll...be more comfortable.”

Maybe it’s the mention of the non-refundable payment, maybe the implied statement that I will make her sister leave her alone, but Patricia nods to me, and then toward the chair where Amy sits, more silent than any six year old should ever be.

I rise slowly and walk over to sit on the footstool beside Amy’s chair.

“Amy,” I say, quietly. The girl looks at me with mute suffering eyes. I know she’s been close enough to hear everything we’ve said. “Do you understand the difference between a dream and what’s real?”

She looks for her mother, but I have positioned myself so that Patricia is hidden. Amy looks back at me, and slowly, she nods her head.

“Is the man with the knife real?” I ask. Behind me, Patricia’s designer skirt snaps against her knees as she stands

The terror rises immediately in Amy’s eyes. “Yes,” she whispers. “But he goes away and no one believes me.”

“I think you should go, Miss Browne,” Patricia says.

There is nothing else I can do, only one thing I can say. As I stand, I reach out my hand and touch Amy’s. “I believe you.”

Patricia sucks in an outraged breath, and when we reach the front door, she says, “I don’t want you to come here again, no matter what Bethann paid you. What you do, this...profession of yours, it isn’t nice. You hurt people.”

“Yes, sometimes I do.” At the moment, I rather want to hurt her.

She stands and watches until I am back in the rental and Rob is driving us away.

Ben speaks up from the backseat where he slouches, a book laying spine-downward across his knees. His hair is ruffled up on his head, his brown eyes sleepy. “Is there slippage?”

I think of Amy’s eyes. “Yes.”

Ben pushes himself upright. “Then why are we leaving?” He unbuckles his seat belt and wedges himself between the front bucket seats. “If there was slippage, I need to take readings.”

Rob takes a precise left at the intersection, back toward town and our motel. “I take it the mother is going to be a problem?”

“Patricia Collins is everything we thought she’d be, and more.” And that reminds me. I turn my head to look at Ben. “The internet isn’t saying I sacrifice small livestock or speak in demon tongues again, is it?”

“No more so than usual.” He grins.

The Collins’ house was only a mile out of town; Rob reaches our motel and makes a smooth left turn into the Travelodge parking lot. He takes a moment to shut off the heater, radio, and adjust the angle of his tires before he shuts off the engine. Only then does he swivel in his seat to face me. “Will we have access?”

“I’ve been banned from the Collins estate.”

Ben groans, leaning forward to bump his head against the back of my seat. “I told you I should have come in with you. People like me, fuck knows why.”

Rob pops the trunk, then starts unpacking the equipment we’d been optimistic enough to bring. I help him, and together we lug it up the concrete stairs to our room, number 24.

“Do you think it’s her that’s slipping, or is it the man?” Rob asks.

I shake my head, shrugging.

“We have to gain access,” Rob says. He trips on a pair of Ben’s tennis shoes as he comes through the motel door. After he sets down the bag he’s carrying, he picks the shoes up and puts them away in the closet. “Maybe you should have taken Ben inside. Put him to work being likeable.”

Ben comes in, carrying his leather bag. He goes straight to his laptop and sprawls on one of the beds to log on. Rob gives Ben’s boots a pained glance, then pointedly goes back to unpacking the equipment.

I’ve worked with Rob for eight years, Ben for only two, though it feels much longer . We spend our life crammed together in small hotel rooms and smaller rental cars and most of the time we save money by sharing one room. The men flip coins for who gets the fold-out cot. I swear Ben’s figured out some sort of higher-math equation, because the coin almost always comes out in his favor. I don’t flip - and it’s not because I’m a woman. I don’t flip because I’m the boss...technically, at least. It’s my name that opens the doors - and, I have to admit, slams a few more. I’m Molly Claire Browne, and yes, my adoptive mother did name me after the mystery that has haunted my life - taking her cue from the initials embroidered on my nightgown. Fate, she calls it.

That’s only one of the issues I have with my mother.

Ben looks up from the laptop with a snort of laughter. “Your stalker’s posting again, Molly. He’s got a jpeg of you with the ghost of Julius Caesar. Fuck, that’s some bad Photoshop.”

“I wish you’d ban him,” I say. Ben runs our website. He’s got all the passwords and the power online.

“He’s too amusing to ban,” Ben says. “Besides, this way I know where he is. I’m tracking his IP.”

“Are you online to be amused, or are you working on this?” Rob asks.

“I’ve already researched the hell out of this area, and that house. It’s an old fucking house, built back in the early 1800s; that’s plenty of time for murders to have happened, but I can’t find them. Doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen, though. There’s no local history or paranormal group, but I could go to town and dig up a few talkative geezers.”

I start to shake my head, but shrug instead. “Keep your cell on. And don’t take the car.”

He closes the laptop and shoves it into the backpack he carries for his record-keeping gear.

When he’s gone, I sit down on the bed he vacated and pull my knees up to my chest. “I have to get into that house,” I say. “Maybe Ben could jam whatever burglar alarms they have, and I could pop in through a window.”

“I’m glad you waited until Ben left to suggest that.” He hesitates, and before he even speaks I know what he wants.

“Rob, I’m not in the mood. I’m too tired from the flight, and I’m stressed.”

“It’s better when you’re stressed. I get stronger readings.” He unzips one of the bags on the table and takes out a gadget that looks half Geiger counter, half steampunk mad-scientist device. “Can we try this? Controlled testing is the only way I’m going to know if this works when I take it out in the field.”

I look around the motel room. Everything is brown, even the things I’m fairly certain didn’t start out that way. It’s a sad, tawdry little room, and I can imagine perfectly well what these walls have seen. I don’t want to see any of it first-hand. And I don’t want any of it seeing me.

“It doesn’t have to be in here,” Rob says. He gestures toward the window with the gadget. “There’s some kind of...tool shed behind the Travelodge. I checked earlier; it isn’t locked.”

He gives me the look he gives pieces of machinery when they won’t function properly.

“Fine.” I stand up and we go out to the tool shed.

The reason it isn’t locked is because they are only using it to store recycle bins. Someone hasn’t been picky about what they throw inside, and the shed stinks of rotten things. Rob fiddles with his gadget until a blue light appears on the display, then he looks at me and nods.

I close my eyes. It bothers me to see people I know disappear, even though I am actually the one who is leaving.

I feel it first as an electrical tingle across my body. The current deepens, the hair prickles along my arms, and I shiver as my body temperature drops. As I Slip I hear Rob’s gadget emit a clicking. It becomes distorted as sound flattens and wavers, finally disappearing into atonal white noise. I open my eyes.

Rob is gone. It is deep night outside the shed. A sliver of moon slits open the sky like the narrow edge of a knife. I haven’t gone far; a few days, at most a week. It is peaceful now inside the shed, and the rotten smell has been washed away. When I don’t consciously choose, I almost always Slip to the quiet times, the times when I am alone and there is no one else.

Rob will want a sample. I bend over and pick a magazine out of the recycle bin, then Slip back, keeping my eyes open so I can watch the world waver around me in bursts of evening and morning. I see a twenty-something girl empty a bag into the recycling bin - only a quick glimpse, and she doesn’t notice me, tucked away in shadow and fleeing time.

“Excellent,” Rob says, his machine now emitting a high-pitched whine. “That was really good, Molly.”

I hold out the magazine, and the whining increases to an uncomfortable pitch. “Dammit, Rob.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He holds the gadget even closer to me, watching the display as colors and numbers flash across it. Then he reaches out and touches the magazine, a smile flickering across his mouth. “I’m still amazed by this, you know. How far did you Slip? Forward or back?”

“Forward. A week, maybe.” I show him the date on the magazine, not that it proves much. Some people save their magazines for weeks, others read and throw them out the same day.

He shifts the gadget to an easier position, then takes the magazine out of my hand. As soon as I’m not touching it, it disappears. There’s no pop, and no ripple in space and time - the magazine simply isn’t here. Rob’s machine stops whining, clicks a couple of times, then goes silent. He touches the display, seemingly pleased.

“I take it that thing makes really loud sounds when there’s a time-displaced item in front of it?” I ask. I usually don’t understand the function of any of Rob’s machines, but this one seems fairly obvious.

“It’s a trifield natural EM meter. Much more accurate than the gauss, ELF, or ION detectors.”

“How nice for it.” I loop my arm through Rob’s and tug him out of the shed. “I did my performing seal trick for you, now I think you’ll have to buy me dinner.”

He stares down at the gadget’s display as we walk to the Travelodge, trusting that I won’t lead him into a ditch or in front of a truck. “If I could just figure out how you do it,” he says. “What makes you unique.”

“Not so unique.” We’ve found others, although most of these cases are themselves fairly ordinary, related more to stress and violent emotion than ability. Almost anyone can Slip, I’ve found, and among the people who have, most don’t know what they’ve done. If the twenty-something girl emptying the bins had caught of glimpse of me, what would she have thought? That she was having a hallucination? That she had seen a ghost? I would wager serious money that she would never have considered time travel.

“Dinner,” I urge, tugging Rob toward the car. It was a little early, but I was hungry, and tonight I would be too busy to eat.

Invited or not, I planned to attend Amy’s next episode.