Fiona McGuigan would never have predicted the sort of day it would be—that Aileen Evans would vaporize like morning dew over the Smokey Mountains.

It started at the hair salon during a scalp massage. Sudsy and laid back in the sink, Fiona felt time tick backwards as the pungent rinse washed her grey hair color down the drain.

“Did you read the article about that senator?” Millie asked from the chair beside her. “He accused the government of re-engineering crashed UFO’s to advance technology.” In her early fifties, Millie still had a smart, softly rounded figure, and why wouldn’t she? Millie and Fiona bicycled everywhere, and they lived in the mountains.

“No, I’m saving my paper for later.” Fiona slid upright in the chair to be towel dried. “You think that’s strange, Tom wants Renata to have a C-section so their baby can’t be born on Halloween. He thinks the child will be plagued by spirits for the rest of its life.” She slipped her glasses back on. “People get stranger every day. Glen Stokes thinks there’s a ghost in his barn.”

Millie gave a soft scoff, but her retort was cut short by the jingle from the front door. A man entered—a tall, powerful looking, ruddy outsider with strawberry blond hair. Fiona didn’t care much for red-headed men. This one had charismatic eyes that had likely squinted out a thousand cigarettes and took in the salon in a long sweep. “Hello, ladies, I’m hoping you can help me find a good friend of mine. She moved here within the last year or so—couldn’t live in the city anymore. Her allergies were that hard on her.” His sympathy for the woman washed through the salon like hot chicken soup on a snow day. “She phoned me a while back to give me her new address, and I could kick myself, but I lost it. I’ve got a picture of her here, if you’d take a look.” He pulled a photograph from the pocket of his canvas shirt and handed it to Sandra who had just put down the phone.

“She looks like that new girl—Aileen,” Sandra said. “You know her, Millie. Doesn’t she live near—”

Millie vaulted out of her chair. A mint green curler rolled over her ear and dropped to the floor. “Let me see that.” Crossing the salon in four steps, she took the photo from Sandra. “That doesn’t look like Aileen at all, not a bit. This is a small town, Mister . . .”

“Jackson.”

“Well, Mr. Jackson, I’ve lived in Franklin County my whole life, and I’ve never seen that woman. You should try Newtonville. They tend to attract more people from the city.”

Unfortunately, Sandra wore her gullibility like a bull’s eye. He plucked the photo from Millie and handed it back to Sandra. “Look again. Where do you think she lives?”

Behind Mr. Jackson’s red head, Millie’s eyes trained on Sandra and delivered an ice blast of such severity that Fiona immediately thought back forty years to when Millie discovered she was pregnant by Billy Agnew.

“Oh boy,” Fiona said under her breath.

Sandra handed the picture back with a pathetic chuckle. “Now that I really look at her, I can tell she’s not who I thought. Sorry, Mr. Jackson. Millie’s right—try Newtonville.”

Mr. Jackson shut down his charm. “I’ll find her, you can count on it.” He shot Sandra one last glance and left the salon.

Millie whipped off her waterproof smock. “Wife beater. Aileen told me about that red-headed devil. He stabbed her with scissors, of all the horrible things. I saw the scar. C’mon, Fiona, we’ve got to warn her.”

Three rows of green curlers banded Millie’s head. Fiona laughed. “We’re to go running off with wet hair and curlers flying in our wake?”

“Yes!” cried Millie, shoving an arm in her quilted jacket. “We didn’t fool that Jackson jack-ass for a second. He’s going to find her. Let’s go, woman. We’ll finish up later, Sandra.”

Millie grabbed Fiona’s denim jacket off the coat stand. Fiona wiped a drip from her cheek, threw the towel on the chair, snatched her coat, and ran out the door behind Millie.

***

When Aileen opened the front door, the coffee she’d been drinking spewed two feet and pelted Fiona’s chest. If Fiona hadn’t been a head taller than Aileen, she’d have gotten it in the face.

“You look like scarecrows.” Aileen’s laugh was flavored with dry amusement as usual.

Poor girl, Fiona thought. How does a community protect a woman from her own husband? She frowned at Millie. They had raced their bicycles to Aileen’s house like they were twelve-years old. Millie’s head looked like a ship wreck in contrast to Aileen’s tidy blonde shag. Fiona imagined her own head of disrepair and almost laughed.

“Get in the house,” Millie’s eyes darted over the gravel driveway that bisected the cleared slope before it zigzagged back to the main road. Fiona squeezed Aileen’s arm and gave her a gentle push to avoid a trample by Millie.

It took no time for Aileen to surmise that Mr. Jackson and her husband Clive were one and the same. A dozen kinds of terror flashed in Aileen’s eyes. Millie and Fiona followed her down a dim hall to the bedroom at the back of the house. Buttermilk walls reflected light from two casement windows flanking a pine armoire that Aileen whipped open.

“Mechanical persistence,” Aileen said, swiping a basket clear of underwear. “That’s how he pursues—like a machine—impersonal, relentless, lethal.” She scooped sweaters and pants into a knapsack. From under the quilt covered bed, Aileen yanked a maroon duffel bag, pre-packed and ready for flight.

Fiona’s stomach clenched as she imagined Aileen forced to make such wretched preparations. “If you’re sure that red-head is Clive then we should call the sheriff.”

Aileen snorted, grabbing a fleece pullover off a bow-back chair. “The police can’t protect women from men like Clive. I have to get out of town now—fast and far.” She reached down to tie her shoes. Just below her tiny waist, the small of her back came exposed and Millie’s eyes grew wide as she flicked her head in that direction. Fiona saw it—a wedge shaped pucker—the scissor scar. The coward! He’d stabbed her in the back.

“We’ll take you, Aileen,” Mille said. “I know a sure way out of the mountains. He’ll never hurt you again.”

Aileen let go a short exhale, and with moist eyes she regarded each woman. “We’ve not known each other long, but you’ve been good friends to me, and I can’t thank you enough.” She hugged them both. Fiona felt fine tremors fire-up under Aileen’s skin.

They hurried back to the front room. Aileen dropped her bags on the floor. “I’ll get my car keys.”

“We’re not going by car,” Millie said.

“Of course not.” Fiona crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re going to peddle Aileen over the mountains on our handlebars.”

Aileen’s face turned ashen, and it took a moment for Fiona to realize it wasn’t the handlebars that terrified her, but a distant sound—gravel grinding under tires.

“It’s him. It’s him,” Fiona repeated, not meaning to sound like an alarm clock.

Aileen squeezed flat against the wall and spied out a pane in the front door. Her gaze left the window and turned on Fiona. She blinked. “It is him.” For a moment she looked like a rabbit ambushed by a wildcat. Then Aileen became the wildcat. She turned the deadbolt shut.

“Out the back door!” Aileen darted once to grab her bags.

Fiona had enough sense not to let the back door bang against the house. The three women ran for the woods. If she hadn’t been scared to death, she’d have felt like a young girl sprinting to the hundred-yard finish line.

They made it to the cover of ragged hemlocks where they stopped to catch their breath and peer back at the house. The sound of fists hammering the front door spurred them deeper into the woods.

Millie led the way along the mountain trail. Two months ago, they had picked blueberries on the sunny incline along Taylor Creek, but Millie didn’t head that way. She veered off the path into denser bush, held back a switch-like branch, and motioned the two women to pass in front of her. Usually the forest smelled of fallen leaves and rich loam, but that day it smelled damp and dangerous.

Fiona pushed along the trail into the wilderness for two minutes before stopping and turning to face Millie. “If you expect me to lead the way, Millie, you’d better tell me where the devil we’re going and why we’re going there. And, if you expect to be taken seriously, rip those curlers from your head.”

Millie ignored the two dangling curlers and glanced at her watch. “Let me go first then. We’ll need the sun, so we’ve no time to waste. Once we cut around to my trail, I can tell you as we walk.”

As Fiona walked in Millie’s footprints, one keening musical note cut back through the still woods. Here they were running for their lives and Millie was singing?

A branch cracked in the underbrush behind them. Fiona’s heart lurched. She peered wide-eyed around a twisted trunk. Aileen gripped her forearm as the pink flush drained from her face.

A hairless tail scurried under a fir tree. “It’s just a rat,” Millie said.

“As long as it’s not a six-foot red rat with a knife,” Aileen whispered.

Fiona’s heart lurched again. Knives? Scissors?

Millie scoffed. The woman had iron clad nerves. “Aileen, if I had a way to get you out of the country, would you trust me? Would you go?”

“I trust you, Millie. But if you expect me to trek over these mountains, I’ll end up as a not-so-lovely corpse.”

“Oh, you’ll keep on being lovely,” Millie said. “We’ve less than an hour to hike.”

Fiona gaped at her friend. “What on God’s green earth have you got hiding in the woods, woman?”

“Move on and I’ll tell you.” Millie glanced back over her shoulder, then shooed Fiona forward. “Do you remember my great-great-grandparents helped move the slaves out of the mountains to their freedom?”

Fiona stepped over a fallen pine tree and straddled it to look back at Millie. “You wrote a speech about it in grade six. Went to the finals, if I remember.”

“I never knew the true mechanism of their deliverance until last year. If what I show you became public knowledge, there’d be mayhem on the mountain, and I’ll not have my home turned into a circus. I trust you both to keep it a secret.”

Fiona narrowed her eyes at Millie. “And here I thought I knew all your secrets, Millicent Grant. Let’s hear it then.”

Millie opened her mouth, then appeared to think better of it. “Remember that newspaper article on the alien technology? Just keep an open mind, okay.”

“What?” Fiona searched Millie’s eyes for signs of senility—nothing—clear as crystal.

“It’s best I show you. We’ll be there soon.” Millie used Fiona’s shoulder to steady her footing over the log.

Clouds darkened the woods. Aileen flashed Fiona an apprehensive look. Could Millie have an alien space-ship parked in the woods?

“Impossible.” Fiona grumbled under her breath as she dropped in behind Millie.

***

The gnarled woods grew thick enough to swallow them. They walked the rest of the way in silence, finally emerging at a clearing where the sun bid them brilliantly. A wind rustled the forest floor, twitched a leaf up and sent it into the clearing where it sailed toward a lone stone structure standing on the far side. Millie drew forward once again with that misplaced propensity for song. She projected a melody of three notes that seemed to hold in the air until Fiona thought she heard just one note. She gave her head a shake and hurried to catch Millie. Smokey Mountain mist must have wafted into her ears.

As they crossed the clearing, Fiona kept an eye on that structure as it seemed to tug at the fine hairs on her neck. It looked like a tall altar of sorts for secret alpine offerings. Two upright stones were topped by a horizontal shelf like a Stonehenge cast-off. As she approached, she noticed the altar stood inside a circle of short rocks jutting from the earth, a perfect circle with a diameter of approximately thirty feet.

“There’s not much time.” Millie checked her watch. “We need solar energy inside the circle.” She focused on Aileen. “These stones will take you away from here.”

Aileen squeaked, then cleared her throat. “Are you crazy? This is serious, Millie. If Clive finds me—I’m dead. He traced me here to this mountain, to the house and can easily track us here to the middle of nowhere. I thought you understood I need to get away—far away.”

“Don’t think you’re the first desperate soul to be running for their life in these mountains,” Millie said. “You’ve got Clive after you, they had bloodhounds and slave catchers. Those poor people didn’t believe their freedom lay in these stones either, but they went, driven by desperation.”

“They went where?” Aileen asked.

One of Millie’s curlers rolled off her head and hit the ground, but she didn’t even flinch. “My mother called this place the sieve. An old story claimed beings from other planets used the stones to visit Earth—that the stones are place markers for a field of energy activated by sound and light waves.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Aileen exclaimed. “Your grand idea is to send me to aliens on a beam of light!”

Millie laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t send you to another galaxy, Aileen, I can only send you to Canada.”

“Canada?” said Aileen and Millie in unison.

“How do you know it works?” Fiona asked.

“It works,” Millie said. “I sang to it. It sang back.”

Fiona hadn’t heard a thing. She tilted her head to pick up wayward transmissions.

Aileen stared at Millie with a sharp, bitter gaze. “I think you’re frickin crazy.”

“Of course you do,” said Millie. “Who wouldn’t—that’s the key to keeping it secret.” She turned her attention to Fiona. “You know my mother was a recluse until late in her life. They call it agoraphobia now, but that disorder kept the sieve secret, even from me, until she was finally treated.”

Fiona felt like a character in a fairy tale, and as her reality shifted, she realized it wasn’t such a bad feeling. She had a million questions. “Have you seen it work?”

But Millie didn’t answer. Actually, she looked quite queer with her mouth gaping.

“Across the clearing,” Millie said. “It’s Aileen’s husband! He followed us.”

The red-headed man had emerged from the woods and started toward them with a slow, confident gait like a predator who knows his prey doesn’t have a hope. A flash of light glinted off something shiny in his hand.

“Stay right where you are, Aileen,” Millie ordered. “Get out of the circle, Fiona.”

“He got to you, and you set me up,” Aileen cried, dropping her knapsack from her back. “You’ve brought me here like some sacrificial offering. How could you?”

“That’s not true.” Millie pulled Fiona off feet that seemed to have grown roots.

Aileen dropped to the ground.

“Trust me, you’re going to be just fine.” Millie said, tugging Fiona behind her. “Stay right there.”

Clive closed in on the circle.

Fiona searched the ground for a stout club.

“I’ll kill you this time, Jackson. I swear it.” Aileen wrestled with her duffel zipper.

Millie reached a spot ten feet outside the circle and turned.

“For God sakes, we can’t just leave her there,” Fiona pleaded.

“Get over here, Fiona.”

“He’s going to murder us all,” Fiona cried.

“No. This will end here,” Millie replied coolly, her gaze on the maniac stepping into that circle like she was watching nothing more frightening than strawberry jam coming to boil.

Then suddenly Millie drew a deep breath, threw back her head and let go a crescendo of sounds that extinguished every sound in the woods and stopped Clive cold. This time Fiona knew there was no mountain mist in her ears. Every note Millie sang held. She sent eight notes into the sky, but the sounds didn’t fade as you would expect. The consonance grew into one ringing vibration that Fiona felt echoing in her soft centre. With closed eyes, Millie’s face seemed to glow in glorious rapture. Gradually, the sun’s light dimmed, and Fiona expected to see it cloaked in cloud, but there were no clouds. Perhaps the sun itself had grown brighter while Millie sang.

“Oh,” Fiona said, weakly.

Clive and Aileen were gone.

***

Of course Fiona had worried that day in the woods that Aileen had not been delivered safely from Clive. But Millie had explained that the sieve had an unusual sorting mechanism. It had a way of reading people—those that entered the sieve with ill intentions did not walk away in Canada. Where they went was anyone’s guess—a Bermuda Triangle-like mystery.

A few weeks later, Fiona sat at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee. The television was angled in such a way that she could catch the news if she wanted.

“There’s some good news to report.” Good news? That’s rare. Fiona focused on the television.

“There was a festive feel today in Dane City as a local citizen delivered glad tidings and the loot too.”

The camera swung from the reporter to the backside of a man wearing a Santa hat with a sack slung over his shoulder. He walked up the front steps of a modest clapboard home and rang the bell. The door opened to reveal a bewildered, grey-haired man smoothing his thick hair back with a swipe of his hand.

“Mr. Abernathy?” Santa asked. “I understand you lost your retirement fund to a financial advisor by the name of Cheryl Matthews.”

Mr. Abernathy nodded his head, clearly dazed by the Santa get-up and camera crew. At this point the camera zoomed in on Santa as he pulled a cheque from his sack. Fiona fell off her chair. There was no mistaking it. That Santa was the wife-beater Clive, or so she had thought.

Fiona listened to how, Robert Jackson, not Clive at all, but an all-round good Samaritan, had chased a scam artist, they flashed a picture of Aileen here, all the way to Canada where he recovered stolen funds in a maroon duffel bag, but had mysteriously lost Cheryl Matthews. Dane City’s hero, Jackson, was then detained while the police sorted out his story. Apparently, Aileen had also cheated Robert Jackson’s father out of his life savings.

“Cheryl Matthews disappeared, and that’s all I can say about it at this time,” Robert Jackson said to Mr. Abernathy. “By the grace of God, that money didn’t go with her.”

Then Mr. Jackson turned to the camera. “I’ve had a tough go these last couple of months, and I’m leaving Cheryl Matthew’s whereabouts to the police. There’s another matter that’s piqued my interest.” His smile crept like a scorpion along Fiona’s spine. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it, so I’ll be spending some time in the Smokey Mountains with . . . a circle of friends.”

About the Author

Sharon Bernas

Sharon Bernas fell in love with writing at the University of Toronto where she holds a science degree in psychology. Sharon has a certificate from the LongRidge Writing Institute. She is an active member of a local Romance Writers of America chapter. Sharon has been published in The Quick Brown Fox, and writes for Life to Life Magazine as Bethany Baguier.