Linked Through Time Read Free Page B

of nervousness.
    “Quit being a baby,” I muttered to myself, as I barked out a fake laugh that sounded forced and tight. My eyes flickered to the dark corners of the hayloft. Sometimes animals took refuge in barns during storms. Animals of all shapes and sizes.
    Thunder shook the roof and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I was not going to give into my fears and act like a little seven year old. I was fifteen for crying out loud.
    A pair of tiny beady eyes appeared under the fringes of a pile of loose hay, not far from where I stood. The last of my false bravado vanished and I let loose a piercing shriek. Turning to the hatch, I jumped through the square opening just as a flash of lightning illuminated the sky. For a moment, the entire barn lit up like fireworks, so bright that I could see each individual stalk of hay and every twisted knot on the wide barn poles.
    Then all was dark again.
    Like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole, it too felt as if I fell for an eternity. Except my feet never touched the barn floor.
    I must have jumped too far. Helpless, my arms waving madly, I tried to twist my body in midair.
    My head bounced against something hard and a wave of nausea ran through my body, engulfing my mind and swallowing my senses. Dizziness took over and then luckily… a blissful nothing.

Chapter Two
    Mistaken Identity
     
    The smell was overwhelming. Sort of a warm, gamey, animal smell mixed with... ugh... manure. It permeated my senses and threatened to suffocate me. Even in the stifling darkness, I could tell I was sitting on dry, crackly hay, its pointy stalks poking through the thin cotton of my T-shirt. The familiar rough wood grain of the barn walls pressed against my cheek. Heavy snorts of breath startled my slow process of puzzle solving into hyper-drive. There were positively, absolutely no animals in the barn when I had last been able to see. Right before the storm.
    I tried to move, but the pounding in my head countered every motion, sending me back into a fetal position of pain. I ran my hands up and down my body, feeling for injury; my heart pounding loudly in my ears as I tried not to think about what was breathing in the mysterious dark corners. Nothing felt broken or even scratched. It was only my head that felt like it had been cracked in half, its pieces swollen and throbbing.
    A pinprick of light pierced the darkness, sweeping the floor of the barn in a wide arc. As the light came to rest on my face, I winced at the stab of pain that shot to my skull.
    A dark shadow approached. “Sarah! My goodness! She’s in here, Louis!”
    The words bounced around my brain in a jumble. “Well, when you didn’t come in for cake, I should have known something was wrong.” The voice was a woman’s, accented heavily in that Minnesota-Norwegian twang.
    I felt a hand grab my arm. “Are you all right, Sarah? What happened?” the woman prodded.
    Pushing the light from my eyes, I staggered to my feet, holding on to the wall for support. “I think I hit my head when I jumped through the hatch,” I muttered, motioning to the square door above. And, did you just call me Sarah, twice?
    Everything felt off… strange, fuzzy, like in a dream. The jackhammer in my head wouldn’t stop and I placed a hand against my temple in a futile effort to still the constant pounding. I followed the woman from the dark barn, uncomfortable with how close she was walking next to me; so close we were practically touching. I didn’t want to seem rude or ungrateful, the woman had found me after all.
    No one else had the decency to even come looking. Where were Corey and Dad? They were probably clueless to my situation. Probably too caught up in a “riveting” game of cribbage or Lincoln logs. My thoughts dripped with sarcasm, tinged with a little bit of hurt. I knew Dad and I hadn’t exactly gotten along lately, but to not even notice I was missing? That stung worse than one of his lectures any day.
    I noticed the