Valley of the Moon by Melanie Gideon Read Free Book Online Page A

for twenty-four hours. It was only on the morning after the full moon that time resumed its natural pace.
    “The earthquake happened on the day of the full moon,” she reminded me.
    “What are you implying?”
    She made the irritated face she always made when she hadn’t quite figured something out.
    “Obviously she’s mentally unstable,” I said.
    “That’s just it. She doesn’t seem unstable to me. Joseph—” She stopped. “What if she’s perfectly sane?”
    —
    “Put her in the wing. The back bedroom,” said Martha.
    I laid Lux on the bed and she did not wake. Since she was unconscious, the two of us took the opportunity to survey her openly.
    “What is the meaning of her shirt?” asked Martha.
    “Something…sexual?” I guessed.
    “Maybe. But why does she wear it?”
    “Perhaps she likes drawing attention to herself.”
    “How can she breathe in those trousers? That can’t be good for her reproductive organs. I wonder if she has any identification on her? I’m going to check her pockets,” Martha announced.
    She approached the bed and slid her hand into Lux’s left dungaree pocket. Nothing. From her right pocket she pulled out a wrinkled-up sweets wrapper.
Jolly Rancher
. She smelled it.
    “Cherry,” she said. “Admit it, Joseph.”
    “What?”
    “You’ve never seen any woman dressed like this.”
    “Yes, because I do not make a habit of cavorting with the insane.”
    “Oh, stop it. Something about her isn’t right, but it isn’t that she’s crazy. There is no mercantile on earth that sells clothes like this in 1906.”
    “You’re saying she’s telling the truth?”
    “I’m saying you have to open your mind. The unexplainable has already happened. We’ve been trapped by a fifty-foot wall of fog for four months. If we try to walk through it, we die. We must consider other”—she whispered, as if it hurt her to say it—“possibilities.”
    I sat down in a chair.
    “What are you going to do?” she demanded.
    “I’m going to wait until she wakes up.”
    “And then?” she pressed me.
    “And then I’ll ask her some more questions,” I said, trying to sound as if I had a plan.

T he sheets smelled of sun. The man who’d made me kill poor innocent Wilbur stood looking out the window, his back to me. I coughed and he turned around.
    “You’re awake,” he said.
    Joseph, that was his name. He was about six feet tall, with dark hair and eerie light blue eyes. His face was tanned and a bit weathered; he was middle-aged, probably in his forties, but he was in good shape. He bristled with vitality.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “You fainted.”
    “I did?”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “I remember feeling dizzy.”
    “And how do you feel now?”
    I took stock. No headache, no dizziness—I was hungry, however. “Starving.”
    “When did you eat last?”
    “Around seven last night. A couple of spoonfuls of Jif.”
    He made a funny face and I was embarrassed, as well as intimidated. He had a posh English accent.
    The room was furnished impeccably in nineteenth-century farmhouse décor; not a detail had been overlooked. There was a washstand with a basin and pitcher. A rag rug. A lantern hung on the wall. The floor was hardwood, studded with black nails. The mattress rustled beneath me. Horsehair.
    Why was the house outfitted like this? And why was this man dressed like Pa from
Little House on the Prairie
? Was this a movie set? Was he an actor? My mind kept scrabbling for purchase. The only thing that made sense was that they were in the middle of filming a scene when I arrived. But why didn’t they stop acting when I’d barged onto the set? And why did the pig die when I entered the fog? That wasn’t a special effect. The pig had really died; I’d felt its limbs go slack.
    My heart started to pound. I put my hand on my chest to try and slow it down.
    “Rest,” he said. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”
    The thought of being left alone panicked me. I