[ April 7, 2004 ]

ANN

The Waldorf is one of those hotels that I suppose could be in any big city in the world. The fact that it's smack dab in London seems to add a luster of eccentricity to its rich interior colors and the heavy furnishings in the sedate lobby. It was all 'veddy veddy,' if you know what I mean.

This chill ran through me as I strode with purpose down the carpeted hall of an upper floor of this venerable institution, following the numbers on the hotel room doors until I realized I was close. I stood down a ways and looked at the door. It was ajar. I looked at the note in my hand that held the room number but honestly, I didn't need it. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that this wasn't the place.

A sudden rush of ominous tidings filled my veins. The worst movie I ever saw in terms of major, horrible impact on me was The Exorcist. I was raised Catholic; I believed in demons and demonic possession with a little girl's belief in things that go bump in the night. I'd never shaken it. I felt like I was walking into that movie only instead of going in as a priest with God on my side, I was entering it as a sinner with no one around to lend a hand as I entered battle with a demon and tried to keep her from possessing my soul.

There was no turning back. Somehow, that firm knowledge gave me courage to do this. Actually, it wasn't really courage, I suppose. It was just that when all your choices are taken away, you do the only thing left.

And this was all that was left to me. If I was getting back to PW and bringing Terry's Ann back to him in Terra Nova, this was the only way I'd do it.

I took another step and felt like someone had reached out an unseen hand and pulled me forward an inch further than I'd planned to go. Was this the pull that Ann had written about and Terry had told me about? If so, what did this say about the manipulations she might have been able to do? This witch inside there ... was she pulling the strings of everyone in the family? I pulled back with my will. The door opened a bit wider.

Fuck her. She was the cause of all of this, I thought darkly. Fuck her. She had no power over me. I held the cards in this game. I knew things she couldn't have begun to guess.

A maid came wandering around the corner and I nearly walked into her because I was concentrating on that door so hard. She a friend of yours, she asked me, nodding over at the door. Just business, I said. Careful, she told me, that one in there was not so nice.

Yeah, you don't know the half of it, I thought.

And then I just walked in the room. Didn't even bother to knock. Why should I? She had sensed me coming, that I knew. Well, she sensed Ann coming but she had no idea exactly which Ann she was getting. This was one willing to risk everything for the one chance to go home.

Everything.

I mean it. Everything was on the line. It was do or die. I either gave up and said I was beaten by this witch I suspected was the reason I was there in the first place, or I find a way to trick her into contacting my Isobel again. Or reversing whatever magic she'd worked to switch me with that other Ann. Then again, a real part of me knew ... it might have been this other bitch, this Dea that was supposed to be a goddess according to Dino. I thought on that sad phone call we'd had before I left PW and wondered ... if she could remove Uma from PW, could Dea have prevented me going back when I wanted to return to PW in part to help find Uma? But, hey, goddess or witch, either way ... I was going to fucking find a way around whoever had done this to me. There might not be a portal here in Terra Nova, but there was the tiniest of hopes left ... if this Isobel could contact my Isobel, she would be the one to help me get back. So that made this witch inside, this Isobel, my one chance home.

Slim chance? Absolutely. But slim's better than none, my uncle used to say.

A presence in the room but all I saw at first were the scattered leavings of a life spent locked up in a hotel room for way too long. Christ. Dirty dishes. Decaying evidence of room service meals ordered and rejected for the large part. Wine bottles, empty.

Rancid odor of a fevered body that had not been washed.

I almost fell on my ass in my rush to back away when I finally saw her. Jesus. She came skulking up out of the bedroom area of the open suite and approached me in semi-gloom. I saw her moving and realized she wanted it dark in there. I wanted her to see ... I wasn't afraid of her and I wasn't going to be intimidated. I fumbled for the switch and the sudden amber light filled the outer room of the suite.

"Isobel," I breathed out and then really saw her. I felt my ass bump into a chair and I stumbled. "Oh, my God. What's happened to you?"

Terry had said she was beautiful. This ... this thing in front of me looked barely recognizable as a version of the woman I knew as Isobel. Her hair was stringy and ratty; there was a streak of white hair at her left temple. Her eyes were sunken and the circles under her eyes were so dark and so pronounced on her pale skin that it almost looked like she'd painted them on. She was sporting some kind of brown robe; it had probably been silk at one time but now it looked like nothing so much as a dust rag. This was not ... there was no way ... this could never be ...

"Isobel," she muttered to me and gave me this smile as she got close. "I'm Isobel. But not the one you know. Am I, Ann?"

God.

God no.

My only advantage had been knowledge. My only bargaining chip was the fact that she didn't know me and didn't know that I knew who she was and that she might be capable of helping me to contact my world.

"Yes. Your world. That other place. I can smell it on you. How did you get here?" And even as she said this to me, I tried so hard to cloud my mind in other things in case she was somehow reading the details of my knowledge of PW and the people back there ... and the portals. She got so close. She stunk and I felt my nose rebel. It made her laugh at me. "Doesn't matter, you're going to tell me what I need to know, one way or another. You're going to give me what I want."

I tried to remember the lesson Max had given me once about negotiating. Step one ... get their attention. Step two ... convince them you have something they want. Step three ... convince them to deal with you. Was that right? Oh God oh God. I couldn't remember. I couldn't do this by myself. I needed someone whom I would have felt safe just to be with, someone I would have simply had total faith in that his strength, both mental and physical, would have saved this day. I should have brought ...

"You shoulda brought Thorne for sure. But he isn't here to help you, is he? Not that he'd do you much good but at least he's tougher than you. Yeah, I know, honey. You impressed? Don't be. It don't take much to read you, Ann. You got too many tells and you don't even try to hide," she said.

Hide. Wasn't I a champ at hiding? Maybe I could hide from her?

"Mira," she compelled me. "Look into the mirror. Tell me what you see, Ann."

She took my hand and I just went with her. It was never a decision I remember making. It was just ... it just never seemed an active choice and yet I never fought it ... like I was just doing what I was supposed to with no real reasoning on my part. And just like that, we were standing in front of a large mirror. She looked inside it and I saw Terry. In his office not that far from me here in London. I recognized his tie and knew it was one of the ones he'd brought with him on this trip because I'd told him I loved the colors. I gasped and she laughed at me. And then the image shifted on me ... and I saw Jack.

"Oh God," I whispered.

"That all you got to say?" she said, irritation and disappointment in her voice. "Look close."

But I didn't have to look close to know what she wanted me to be seeing. Somehow, she'd reached inside me and found the one view into PW that I had most wanted. Jack! Oh God. And I knew it was my Jack because he was in my house back there. He was sitting on the back deck and he looked so sad.

"Oh, Jack. I'm so sorry." I whispered it out. My heart in five simple words. Choking on the instant pain to be so far from him. And the oddest thing ... as soon as I uttered those words, his head lifted and he looked around him. Like he'd heard me. I thought ... if he can hear me then I have things to say ... and I rushed up to this mirror atop the dresser and my hands pressed in on the glass around his body and I was saying ... I was babbling: "Jack! I'm here. Don't give up on me. I swear I'm trying to come back to you. I'm sorry I left like I did. I still love you. Please don't hate me."

When his eyes looked in my direction, I realized that I was seeing him through an old Naval mirror he'd hung on the back wall of my house. Its roundness had always lent an ethereal, distorted touch to the images of the yard that were reflected in it. Mirror to mirrored surface ... from one world to the other. I would have given so much for this nightmare to be over. I just wanted to go back.

"So you've betrayed him, too? Something we have in common, honey. Jack is your strongest bond to that world?" she said behind me. "Interesting. But he's not the one I want to see."

"You leave him alone," I told her as I rounded on her. "You've harmed him here. I won't let you hurt him there."

"I don't want him, honey. I want Isobel. You help me contact her and I'll give you what you want. I'll send you back."

And this was when it crashed in on me. I'd really fucked up this time. 

"And what do you want?"

She blinked as if I had shocked her with my stupidity. Tears stood in her eyes and she trembled when she screamed, "I want what's been taken from me!"

I refused to let her intimidate me ... or rather, I refused to let her see she'd intimidated me. I felt my chin rise and I gave her a steady look. My voice was strong. "I'm not going to help you."

"You already have."

She shook her head at me and I read the wrath in her eyes. And behind me, I felt things shift and change. When I turned, the lighting of the scene inside the mirror was completely different and the person I saw was no longer Jack but was now ...

"Isobel." I whispered it out. She looked through the mirror directly at me. I swear it's what it looked like. She was standing in her bedroom in California and I wondered ... was she really seeing me?

She took a step toward me and I just knew ... she was looking through a mirror there and ... she knew I was here. The Isobel of this world was at my shoulder; I heard her gasp ... such pain she held there in her voice. I turned and caught a glimpse of her face. She pushed past me to step closer to the mirror.

I looked back in that mirror and knew ... I had to get the attention of the Isobel of PW who was staring at the Isobel of this world. My chance ... I grabbed for it: "Isobel! I need help. I'm somewhere ... another world ... there is no portal for me here and I can't get back without help. And don't ..."

My throat seemed to close just as I was about to warn Isobel not to trust this Isobel ... and then I felt this Isobel next to me give me a hard shove away from the mirror. I fell to my knees with the force of her power. And things started happening too fast and I couldn't understand everything that I was seeing but I do remember reaching back into my Catholic schoolgirl days to find a prayer for help. Even now, the irony of that is not lost on me. Clinging to the one religion I'd abandoned in order to get divine intervention to return to the one world I'd abandoned. Symmetry, eh? Or was it just another trick of kismet?

Struggling to be heard, struggling to make sense of this ... struggling to stand and ...

I turned and looked toward the mirror in time to see Isobel reaching her hand into it, and the reflective surface rippled out like water where she touched. Her almost-mirror image on the other side, my Isobel, echoed the gesture, and then I saw them draw together and disappear, as if they were falling into each other. I gasped at the sight. Even a child of Catholic mysticism would never have envisioned that. I was on my feet, fighting nausea and a blinding headache.

Inside the mirror, through the rippling surface, I could not make out all the details. But there were two Isobels. One was mine and she looked as always. The other was the witch from here, notably different and it wasn't just the white streak in her hair but that was a major change that was clearly definable. My Isobel seemed to be struggling to maintain her foothold or something ... it was hard to understand what they were doing.

It came to me with a sureness of pure logic ... evil versus good ... the age-old struggle. I had unleashed the power of evil upon good.

When I yelled their name, they both looked at me. I knew my Isobel ... she shone through to me. She called my name. I said, "Help me! How do I get back? I can't find a portal."

She cried out to me even as her hand reached out to me, "Ann, hurry! This is your way back. Come into the mirror."

I rushed toward the mirror ... before I could reach into it, the rippling grew more and more violent. And then I felt this wave of some kind of power charge out of the mirror and pass over me ... pushing me back ... it seemed to swirl around and then sweep back toward the mirror. A flickering moment later, the glass shattered like a bomb had gone off inside the image.

Shards shuddered and hovered in the air. I screamed. Desperate, I thought to rush forward toward the exploding mirror but some self-preservation kicked in and I covered my head and dove behind the bed. When the tinkles and crashing stopped, I trembled as I stood to survey the damage.

On the carpet all around the dresser, there were large and small chunks of broken mirror. In each one, there were pieces of the scene. I saw Isobel and Isobel and Cort in a barren, wintry forest. I reached down and had this mad idea that maybe I could shove all the broken pieces together like they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and they'd like meld back together or something and I could step through ... but even as my fingers touched the first piece, the scene disappeared and I was left staring at my own face in the mirrored shard.

"No!" I screamed it out. "No! Come back! Isobel! Cort ... shit. Oh come back. Help me. Please don't leave me here!"

I don't know how long I sat on that floor. It was a long time. I refused to give up on the hope that if I just stayed near the remnants of that mirror, they'd come back for me. It took a long time for me to cry. But when I did, I cried with the emptiness of one who no longer has hope.

And for a long time after that, I just laid there on the floor. I didn't feel the glass pieces beneath me. The only thing that really roused me was my cell phone. I didn't answer it the first two times I heard it go off. It seemed so far away and I knew there was no one calling who even knew me. Wrong number, I thought to myself.

But the third time it rang, I sat up and got to my feet. I heard the crinkles of glass under my shoes as I walked into the outer area of the suite and dug my phone out of my purse.

It was at my ear and I knew who was there but I just couldn't talk to him.

"Annie? Jesus ... where you been? I've been trying to call you and ... Annie? I hear you breathing. Fucking talk to me, love. Are you in trouble?"

It flashed through my mind ... the last time he'd not been able to reach the woman who'd owned this phone, it had been his Ann and she'd been in trouble and he'd not been able to save her. It choked me up and I held my hand over my mouth to keep the sob inside.

"If you can hear me, Ann, talk to me. Please."

If only she had just talked to him ... none of this would have happened, would it? If she'd just talked to the one person who cared most about her and let him help her. I wouldn't make the same mistake even if I suddenly gave her absolution for having reacted so insanely in an insane time.

I swallowed hard. Cleared my throat. My voice sounded small to me. "I'm here. Sorry."

"What's wrong, love? Y'okay? Maid says you've not been in your room all day and I was worried ... Annie? Where are you?"

"I'm here." I looked around the room. And that's something that's the truth, now, wasn't it? I was here and I wanted to be ... there. I heard this strangled whimper come out of me and I sunk to my knees. "Oh, Terry."

"Tell me where you are. I'm on my way."

"No. Don't come here," I whispered to him. I looked around this wreck of a room. I looked down at myself and saw blood trickling from scratches on my arms. I just didn't think I could survive him knowing what I'd done -- that I'd gone against his wishes to see Isobel and in the process, I'd fucked up our last chance to set both our lives right again. If I'd listened to him, or if I'd insisted he come with me, this might never have happened. He might always hate me for what I'd done. "I'm okay. I just ... I just need some time. Don't worry about me. I just need ..."

"Where are you?" This time, his voice was rock hard. He must have suspected something.

"No. Just let me be for a while. I'll be back at the hotel before too long. I promise. I'll check in with you when I get back."

I hung up on him and turned the cell off. I was so numb. So totally unprepared to face this reality that I was stuck here permanently. I went in the bathroom and stood looking in the mirror and pulled tiny slivers of glass from my arms. There was a solid crack that ran virtually smack down the middle of the mirror. As I worked on my arms, I'd catch these fleeting double images of myself in the reflection and it felt oddly right that this was the view I had of me just then.

I washed off the cuts and knew they were going to sting in the morning but none were bad enough for stitches or scarring. I worked on my legs next. No problems there either. When I was finished, I rinsed red blood out of white towels and watched as the water went from red to pink to clear in the marble sink. I hung the towels along the edges of the tub to dry. I walked back out in the bedroom area and sat on the crumpled bed sheets to stare at the remnants of the shattered mirror.

My face flittered and dodged in and out of the shards and I got mesmerized in the haphazard violence of the sight of this. Time just melted away and all I could do was let it pass.

"Annie. What's happened here?"

I heard his voice like it was from a distance. I thought it was from the mirror and I dropped down on my knees to see if a miracle had happened. But strong arms picked me up and carried me into the other room. He let me cling to him and it was all I could do for a long time. He just rocked me; and it made me come back to myself.

"She's going to destroy them," I mumbled into his neck.

"Where's Isobel?" he asked me. And I knew that I owed him the truth.

So I told him what had happened. And that, in the end, I hadn't been a match for her malevolence.

"I'm never going to be able to forgive myself. I did this. If I hadn't been in the portal, the switch wouldn't have happened in the first place. And if I hadn't come here today thinking I could outsmart her, she wouldn't be loose in PW. They are not prepared for her. I just ... God. I hate myself."

"Shh. S'okay, Annie." He stroked my hair and kept on rocking me but I felt the tension in him growing as I told him about what I'd done. Finally, he found the only thing he could even pretend was a positive out of this debacle: "Hey, your Isobel is her match. Something tells me, they're more prepared for her than we ever were. And now that she's gone from here ... things will ... it'll settle down, right?"

"I'm so sorry, Terry." I started crying and could feel his shirt's collar growing damp from the tears. "I fucked up so bad this time."

"It's done now." He said it so matter-of-fact. It made me sober up. "Let's get out of here. Nothing here but the stench of a bitch woman."

He stuck my purse in my hand and took me out of the room. I never looked back. He helped me in a taxi out front and we took off for the hotel. I don't know that I said too much more that night. I just felt like I was lost and so alone in this. He insisted on sleeping on the couch in my room and I knew he was really worried about me. I wondered, though, if part of it was just that he didn't know how he was going to face this future himself and so he slipped into nurturing mode to keep from having to deal with what this meant for him.

We were both of us the victims. I was now really stranded here and he could never again reach her.

Sometime very late into that night, I rose from a sleepless bed and went to sit on the floor by the couch where he was stretched out. He asked me what he could do for me and I said, "Fix this, Terry."

His hand touched my shoulder and then he squeezed. "I would if I could but I can't, Annie."

"What are we going to do now?"

"I don't know. But whatever we do, we'll stand by each other, right?"

My answer ... I couldn't speak just then ... so I reached up and patted his hand on my shoulder.

Time passed. I heard him shift on the couch. "I had the best of intentions, Terry. I wanted to bring her home to you. I swear it."

"Yeah. I know you did. I trust you, Annie."

The road to hell, they say, is paved with the best intentions. So here's my life then, I guess. Fate's fucked me over this time and I can't help but feel like whatever lesson I was supposed to learn is getting buried underneath the anger I'm slowly realizing I'm consumed with.

That's how it's turned out for me. Despair. Bargaining. Depression. Anger.

I'm reaching for acceptance.

I reach for it a little more each day. I can see Terry's doing something rather similar. He's dived into work and he's dived into surrounding me with that professional bloke who can take care of any crisis. Only this is one thing even he can't solve.

But, y'know, the funny thing is ... in a way, it's that he can't solve it that solves it for me. I never had been one to feel like I ever wanted to rely on any man too much. I am a lot more intent on standing on my own two feet and fighting my own battles. And as I'm doing this, I find that I'm becoming a resource for him. We're both numb, we're both worried, we're both mourning.

But we are finding the other is a source of strength, compassion and forgiveness. I don't know why the forgiveness is important, but it is for both of us. He surrounds his guilt like it's a burden he can pad in bubble wrap and not let it out to hurt anyone else. I build monuments to my guilt.

When he tells me he appreciates what I tried to do and tells me that in the long run, he understands why I took what seemed like the only chance left, I don't look too hard in his eyes to see if he's harboring some speck of anger at me for having done what I did.

And I reassure him in so many ways that she knows he loves her. She does. I have no doubts on that score. But I hope he doesn't see in my eyes that I figure she's enough like me that there may be some part of her, however small, that is sad to think he may forget her.

The other thing is ... I don't know that we've either one of us really given up. I think we're both thinking something's going to happen and the answer's going to be there. I keep thinking ... if there was a way in, there's a way out. But then I think, well, if Isobel was the way in, then with her departure, the way out went with her. It's that I keep forgetting that little tidbit that makes me realize I'm still fighting this even if I'm giving in to the realization that I've got to accept that the fight's futile.

This is how we'll stumble into the future.

I may not have much here in this other place, but at least I've got him by my side. I am so lucky to have a friend like him. It's the only thing of value, isn't it? I'm smiling as I write this because the thing is, I might have finally learned the best lesson of all ... I know now that what I value and trust most of all is friendship.

TERRY

It didn't hit me right away. The import of what it all meant. At first, I was safe inside the need to rescue her. That's me, then. Preferring to solve other people's crises than even admit I have one of my own to attend to.

By the time it hit me, I was imprisoned on a 747 that was still four hours out of DC. And the reason it hit me was this: the thought of going home.

Home.

I didn't have a home anymore. Not really. The person who'd made it a home ... she was gone now. This was when I had to admit to myself that I'd never get her back.

When it hit me, I turned my head to the right and watched the woman next to me pretending to sleep. I knew she was awake. Half-dead on her arse, but awake. Not because she wanted to be but because she was afraid that she didn't know the difference between a real nightmare and a dreaming nightmare anymore.

I got up and walked slowly down the aisle. Gave the flight attendant watching over us an automatic smile before slipping inside the gents. The face that looked back out at me seemed older than the last time I'd looked in a mirror.

How could I go home now? I didn't know how to walk in that house I'd made with Ann and know I was alone. How do I face the awareness that I couldn't save the one woman my entire future was built around? It is humbling to a man like me. I'm used to having the answer. I'm used to being the one who knows how to save the day and then just does it without fanfare.

I waited inside that little compartment until I had some grip on my emotions. Gave myself a quick look-over before walking out. Saw that hard set to my face and knew I could play this the right way for a bit longer.

It took me days before I finally broke down. I was sitting up late at night in the chair that was across the room from the bed we'd shared. Staring at our bed. Hadn't slept in it once since we'd returned from London. It just seemed wrong to sleep there. Not without her. Wishing her home and the next thing I knew, I found myself face first in her pillow. Trying to smell her familiar scent. I couldn't find her. The lingering reality of her was leaving me as fast as the little things like this ... like having our sheets washed and no longer able to have the comfort of the essence of her memory stay there where we'd shared so many intimacies. I didn't want to let her go. I wanted to be surrounded in her. I jumped up and pawed through the things on her vanity until I found that perfume she loved, the one she special-ordered from some place in Indiana ... it was called Rain and it smelled ...

One drop on my finger ... holding it to my nose like it was the most precious elixir in the world ... and I could close my eyes and almost believe she was there with me because ...

Something inside me really caved in. It was because of this ... a reminder of her. Knowing that's all I had left of her.

"Annie, I'm so sorry. I miss you so much." I just stood there holding this bottle of perfume and finding the sense of Annie in that scent ... and I felt pure rage come out from where I'd so carefully shoved it down for weeks now. I heard myself bellowing and cursing. I let it all come out and fuck this entire world, if Isobel had been there, I would have fucking killed her without a second's hesitation.

I smashed every bottle on the dresser. I would have destroyed every stick of furniture in the room but the door opened and the ghost of Annie came walking through to scream at me and get my attention.

And then she held me while I cried. When it was over, she never mentioned it to me again. I'd woken up on the floor, stiff and drained with a blanket over me and Ann's pillow under my head. I found her downstairs after I'd taken a shower. She was puttering in the kitchen and it was like we were somehow back to the simple routine we'd been in before we'd gone to London.

London.

I wished I hadn't brought her with me. But I did it because I hated the idea of leaving her alone ... if something had happened to her while I was gone, I would never have forgiven myself. But it was in London that she got screwed over ... we both got screwed over one last time by the bitch witch Isobel.

The day it happened, I remember feeling edgy all day. I thought maybe it was a hangover of the night before when I'd been out doing the town with Annie. We'd had a good time and I found it so easy to talk to her, as usual. She was already such a good friend to me. I had smiled all night each time she would say something that told me she hadn't given up trying to find a way to return to her world and to bring back my Ann to this one. It was the first time in so long that I'd let myself play along with her hopeful nature.

After work, I'd gone back to the hotel from the office and found out she hadn't returned. I tried calling her twice over about an hour's span. Left her voice messages. Called a third time and I was getting worried ... then she picked up the phone. But from the first moment she answered, I could tell ... something was really bad. After we got cut off and I couldn't get through to her again, I'd had her last call with me triangulated and when I saw she was calling from the Waldorf, I knew she was in trouble. I knew she was there because of Isobel. I suspected another spell. I cursed myself the entire ride over there for letting my guard down. How could I have been so stupid? She'd never forgive me if something had happened because I hadn't kept her safe from Isobel.

It was so much worse than I could have imagined. I had never once really thought Isobel was behind the switch of the two Ann's, so I never thought she could be the answer to our problem. But I sat there holding this other Ann and listening to what had happened and I realized ... if I'd only listened to her instincts, then I would have been there with her to face Isobel and this would never have happened.

And just like me, hey? I got lost inside taking care of Ann. Got her out of there, tucked her into her bed in the hotel, kept vigil over her. Got myself through that night and the days that followed by taking the job of sheltering her as my priority.

Now it seems to be her turn to be shoring me up.

Guess that's how we'll make it for a while. I don't know what the bloody fuck we'll do for the future. I stood in the shower this morning and cried again. I miss my wife.

It's like I'm on autopilot these days. I think Annie is getting along better than me and maybe it's because she's finding out that helping me is helping her. She's turning out to be a friend in a time when I need one a lot more than I wish I did.

This is tough, y'know? For so many reasons. It's the loss, of course. But it's also the damned circumstances. My wife's gone but her ghost is living with me.

The ghost seems to be the only one who really understands what I'm feeling. She says that some day, we'll move to acceptance and then it won't hurt so much. I don't know, though, if that isn't wishful thinking. My wife's gone and I share a lot of the blame for that. Maybe one day, hey? And on that magical day, maybe I'll accept this loss and find the way past the pain.

Until then, my thoughts will hover on that other world even as I try to figure out where I go from here.