“It’s the sheriff!” Mandy was hysterical. “He’s shooting at us!”
Tess grabbed her little sister by a wrist and pulled her away from the house. They were both crying and stumbling. They ran in the drainage ditch all the way home and flung themselves into the barn.
Mandy ran to lie beside the little blind bull calf. She lay her head on Flopper’s side. When he didn’t respond, she jerked to her feet.
She glared at her sister.
“He’s dead!”
“Shut up!”
Cissy Johnson had awakened, too, although she hadn’t known why.
Something, some noise, had stirred her. And now she sat up in bed, breathing hard, frightened for no good reason she could fathom. If Bob had been home, she’d have sent him out to the barn to check on the girls. But why? The girls were all right, they must be, this was just the result of a bad dream. But she didn’t remember having any such dream.
Cissy got out of bed and ran to the window.
No, it wasn’t a storm, the rain hadn’t come.
A motorcycle!
That’s what she’d heard, that’s what had awakened her!
Quickly, with nervous fingers, Cissy put on a robe and tennis shoes. Darn you, Janie Baum, she thought, your fears are contagious, that’s what they are. The thought popped into her head: If you don’t have fears, they can’t come true.
Cissy raced out to the barn.
The Young Shall See Visions, and the Old Dream Dreams
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
There has long been a substantial crossover between writers of science fiction and writers of crime and suspense fiction, but most of the early names that come readily to mind (Poul Anderson, Anthony Boucher, Fredric Brown, Isaac Asimov) are male, simply because in its earlier years, few women wrote sci-fi. Now, of course, there are many women in that field, and a number of them — Kate Wilhelm, for example — have also contributed to mystery fiction.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch (b. 1960) was born in Oneonta, New York, attended the University of Wisconsin and Clarion Writers Workshop, and now lives in Oregon. A freelance journalist and editor and a radio news director earlier in her career, she edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the venerable journal founded by Boucher at mid-century, from 1991 to 1997. With her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, she founded Pulphouse Publishing (1987-92).
While Rusch is better known as a science fiction than a mystery writer, having won the prestigious John W. Campbell Award for new writers in 1991, she has a solid record of achievement in both genres. Among her sci-fi works are Star Trek (in collaboration with her husband) and Star Wars novels. The’ cross-genre Afterimage (1992), written with Kevin J. Anderson, is a fantasy serial-killer novel. Her mystery novel Hitler’s Angel (1998) was a critical success, and in 1999, she scored a rare hat trick, winning Reader’s Choice Awards from three different periodicals: Science Fiction Age, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and (with the World War II-era mystery “Details”) Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine.
“The Young Shall See Visions and the Old Dream Dreams” first appeared in EQMM’s stablemate, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Nell rubs a hand on her knickers and grips the bat tightly. Her topknot is coming loose. She can see strands of hair hanging in front of the wire frames of her glasses.
“What’s the matter, four-eyes? You nervous?”
She concentrates on the ball Pete holds in his right hand instead of the boys scattered across the dusty back lot. Any minute now, he’ll pitch, and if she thinks about the ball instead of the names, she’ll hit it.
“You hold that bat like a girl,” T.J. says from first base.
Nell keeps staring at the ball. She can see the stitches running along its face, the dirty surface disappearing into Pete’s fist. “That’s because I am a girl,” she says. It doesn’t matter if T.J. hears her. All that matters is that she spoke.
“Pitch already!” Chucky yells from the grassy sideline.
Pete spits and Nell grimaces. She hates it when he spits. With a sharp snap of the wrist, he releases the ball. It curves toward her.
She jumps out of its way and swings at the same time. The ball hits the skinny part of the bat, close to her fingers, and bounces forward.
“Ruuun!” Chucky screams.
She drops the bat and takes off, the air caught in her throat. She’s not good at running; someone always tags her before she gets to base. But the sweater-wrapped rock that is first base is getting closer and still she can’t hear anyone running behind her. She leaps the last few inches and lands in the middle of the rock, leaving a large footprint in the wool. A few seconds later, the ball slams into T.J.’s palm.
“You didn’t have to move,” T.J. says. “The ball was gonna hit you anyway.”
“Pete always does that so that I can’t swing.” Nell tugs on her ripped, high-buttoned blouse. “He knows I hit better than any of you guys, so he cheats. And besides, the last time he did that I was bruised for a week. Papa wasn’t gonna let me play anymore.”
T.J. shrugs, his attention already on the next batter.
“Nell?”
She looks up. Edmund is standing behind third base. His three-piece suit is dusty and he looks tired. “Jeez,” she says under her breath.
“What?” T.J. asks.
“Nothing,” she says. “I gotta go.”
“Why? The game’s not over.”
“I know.” She pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “But I gotta go anyway.”
She walks across the field in front of the pitcher’s mound. Pete spits and barely misses her shoe. She stops and slowly looks up at him in a conscious imitation of her father’s most frightening look.
“Whatcha think you’re doing?” he asks.
“Leaving.” Her glasses have slid to the edge of her nose, but she doesn’t push them back. Touching them would remind him that she can’t see very well.
“Can’t. You’re on first.”
“Chucky can take my place.”
“Can’t neither. He’s gotta bat soon.”
She glances at Chucky. He’s too far away to hear anything. “I can’t do anything about it, Pete. I gotta go.”
Pete tugs his cap over his eyes and squints at her. “Then you can’t play with us no more. It was dumb to let a girl play in the first place.”
“It is not dumb! And you’ve gone home in the middle of a game before.” She hates Pete. Someday she’ll show him that a girl can be just as good as a boy, even at baseball.
“Nell.” Edmund sounds weary. “Let’s go.”
“He’s not your pa,” Pete says. “How come you gotta go with him?”
“He’s my sister’s boyfriend.” She pushes her glasses up with her knuckle and trudges the rest of the way across the yard. When she reaches Edmund, he takes her arm and they start walking.
“Why do you play with them?” he asks softly. “Baseball isn’t a game for young ladies.”
He always asks her that, and once he yelled at her for wearing the knickers that Karl had given her. “I don’t like playing dollies with Louisa.”
“I don’t suppose I’d like that much either,” he says. When they get far enough away from the field, he stops and turns her to him.
There are deep shadows under his eyes and his face looks pinched.
“I’m not going to take you all the way home. I just came because I promised I would.”
“You’re not gonna see Bess?”
He shakes his head, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the slender ring that cost him three months’ wages. The diamond glitters in the sunlight. “Karl’s back,” he says.