***DISCLAIMER: This chapter talks of suicide and death.***
— bannister bridge —
July 4th, 2027
11:01 pm
GISELLE HELD WILDFLOWERS in her hand as she looked down from her spot on Bannister Bridge towards the river below her.
She had picked the wildflowers from the same spot at the front of Dare Manor that Barbara had picked from on the day of her wedding.
She looked down at the flowers, briefly wondering if they were the descendants of the same flowers that had been in her bouquet. It would be more symbolic if they were.
Tears welled in her eyes as she gripped onto the bouquet, the warm-toned streetlight to her right dampening the vibrant blues and pinks of the petals.
"Oh, Will," she sighed, turning her gaze back to the river. "I love you."
She imagined him standing in the same spot she was in, eighty years between them. Living parallel to each other, never to intersect ever again.
A deep, aching grief gripped at her stomach, making her feel nauseous. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, closing her eyes as she tried to focus on her breathing.
She was used to this feeling. It came and went in waves since the night she had last seen Will.
It had gotten easier to coexist with in time, but the feeling never lessened. She didn't think it would ever lessen.
When her gut settled, she moved her hand away and looked back to the river.
"Um, hey, Will," she said, her jaw trembling as she tried to keep her tears at bay. "I, uh, I miss you. Liam misses you—even though he's never met you, he still misses you. I tried explaining everything to him, but I don't think he really gets it, you know?" She dug her fingernail into a stem in the bouquet, feeling her tears finally slip down her cheeks. "I'm actually mad at you right now," she revealed. "Really, really mad. Why would you do this? How could you do this?"
She pressed a hand over her forehead, sniffling. "Gosh, it breaks my heart knowing that you felt so awful and so hopeless that you thought you had to do this. You didn't have to, Will. You were supposed to go out and live, to try and be . . . happy—" her voice broke on the word, sobs taking over her speech.
She smushed the bouquet to her chest, turning around to lean her back against the railing as she cried into the foggy, night air.
"Why?!" she yelled out. "Why?!"
Her own echo answered her back, making her feel more alone than ever. She cried until she couldn't anymore, her lungs spasming, causing her breath to hitch as her tears ran out.
She stared down at the crumpled bouquet in her hand, picturing the matching bouquet from years earlier, the one that had walked down the aisle with her to greet her husband.
Her heart burned thinking of the memory, and she wished nothing more than to go back in time to that moment, when Will was smiling and happy and alive.
But as she turned around and held her bouquet out over the river, she knew that that would never happen.
With a broken heart, she released the flowers, watching them fall and disappear into the merciless rapids below—just the way she imagined her husband had disappeared eighty years before.
• — • — •
July 4th, 1947
11:01 pm
William Joseph Dare dangled his legs over the rushing river below him. A bottle of unopened vodka clasped in his fist, waiting until the clock stroke midnight to disappear into his body.
The annoying feeling of sobriety weighed heavily on his mind. The urge to take just a sip pecked at him, but he kept from
doing so.
No, he wouldn't do that on her birthday.
He was saving the bottle for his birthday, when he planned to drink himself into oblivion with the hope of accidentally falling off and accidentally inhaling a few lungfuls of water and accidentally losing brain function from lack of oxygen.
It didn't matter much to him not having any oxygen. He'd gone three years feeling like he never could take a good enough breath. That's how long it had been since he had seen her. Spoken to her. Felt her.
He could still picture her frightened face. Dirt was smudged on her cheeks, her eyes were wet from her tears, her lips trembling in terror, yet she she still looked absolutely beautiful.
Her face was what had gotten him through months of pain and humiliation and suffering as a prisoner of war, all because he knew he'd see that face again when he got home. Just that one, little thought kept him sane. Kept him going.
Once this is over, I'll get to see Giselle. Giselle and my son. I'll get to be happy.
The day he arrived at the manor was supposed to be the happiest day of his life. He had fantasized about it in his head, about him coming home to his family and finding Giselle and his son there, crying happily as he engulfed his little family into a hug.
But that never happened.
Instead, he arrived to see his that his siblings had all grown up into people he barely recognized and Marguerite had married Lawrence and was pregnant—but the most startling thing was that each and every one of them all had the same emotions on their faces.
Sadness.
Pity.
Grief.
Because they knew what he didn't.
That the gateway linking him to his wife and son and aunt was gone.
He went to the spot the tree once stood that night, taking his anger out on the nearest tree until his fists were so bloody that they slipped off of the bark.
He threw himself into work more than ever after that, developing a terrible routine of working during the day and continuing work in his study at night, often with a drink in his hand and dark thoughts on his mind.
Life slowly became too hard, Death slowly became more inviting, and his thoughts continued to darken until they lead him to Bannister Bridge with a bottle of vodka.
When the morning rays began to paint the sky and cause the wild river to glitter like the eyes of the women he couldn't see again, he noticed that the seal on the vodka hadn't been broken yet.
Something in him couldn't do it. Maybe it was because he felt too sick to down a full bottle of vodka, or maybe it was because he needed a clear mind to think over his decision.
But a clear mind would keep him from doing what he wanted to do . . .
Without a second's hesitation, he pushed off of the railing and plunged into the rushing river below.
He floated on his back until his clothes weighed him down, and then sucked in water like it was the oxygen he desperately needed.
He felt euphoric until he started to choke and icy cold regret struck him like a lightning bolt in the chest.
He tried to swim upwards, to dispel the water from all the places it didn't need to be, but death gripped onto him like a vice, giving him one last picture of Giselle before he couldn't see any longer.
•
•
•
"Grandpa! He's right here!" a panicked, male voice cut through the early morning air, feet running along the river bank.
"Go, Axel! Take the life preserver!" an older, gravelly voice responded.
There was a splash.
And then there were arms around Will's lifeless body.
"Hold on tight, Axel!" another voice yelled out. "Keep his head up, son! We're pulling you in now!"
A hand lifted Will's chin, bringing his head up above the water.
"Dad! Grandpa! I don't think he's breathing!" Axel yelled. "And he's cold!"
"Damnit," Axel's father breathed out. "Dad, what if—?"
"He'll be fine, Joey," Axel's grandpa assured gruffly, though his voice sounded strained. "We'll do CPR."
"What if CPR doesn't work?"
"Be optimistic, son. You can't think negatively when things like this happen. God brought us here for a reason."
In seconds, Will's body was being lifted out of the river and rolled onto his back. He was soaked to the bone.
"Alright, move back while I work," Joey shouted to his son. Hands pressed down and up on Will's sternum. Oxygen was breathed down his throat.
After a while, a cough wracked in Will's chest, liquid bubbling up his esophagus and out of his mouth.
"Turn his head to the side!" the oldest man called out.
Joey complied with his father, turning Will's head as the half-dead man coughed the fluid out of his body.
"Gi . . . selle," Will breathed out after a fit of coughs.
"What'd he say?" Axel asked.
Will opened his eyes, spotting three people leaning over him.
"He said her name," the old man with bright, white hair said, staring down at Will with watery blue eyes.
"Who . . . are you?" Will asked.
The old man smirked, the action so familiar to Will it almost took the breath back away from him. The old man suddenly gasped, bringing his hand up to his chest and looking over his shoulder towards the woods behind him.
Will followed his gaze, his entire body freezing when he caught sight of a tree that shouldn't be there.
A tree covered in birds and bugs and snails.
"It's ready for you," the old man told him.
"What?" Will rasped, scrambling to sit up.
"You have to go," the man to his right, Joey, told him. He had similar features to the old man, and had dark hair. "Go tell grandma 'hi' for us."
"How is it here? Is she here?" Will nearly yelled. "Is Giselle here?!"
"It's here for us," Joey explained. "And you."
Will tried to stand, Joey and Axel helping him up. He felt dizzy, his chest aching from the compressions.
"It's your turn to go to another time, Papa," the old man said.
Will stared at the man, taking in his blue eyes and the tilt of his lips. That smirk—that smirk was indisputably Giselle's. But how . . .?
"Liam?" Will dared to guess.
The old man smiled big, his wrinkles pulling taut and his eyes pooling with tears. "That's right, Papa, I'm here just like you told me I would be."
Will had never met his son, had only seen pictures of a sweet little boy, but right then he could see his son's wide grin and happy eyes under the years of weathering and age.
He could even see Giselle in the man's features, in the stitching holding him together.
"How is this . . . you're so . . . old," Will rasped. "Am I—am I in the future?"
Liam shook his head. "No, Papa. We're in the past. In your time." He pointed to the tree. "It brought me here to you, and now it's calling me back. If you touch it while it's calling for me, it'll take you to me and Mama."
"But—but it's gone," Will informed. "The tree is gone."
"Yes, your tree is gone," Liam corrected. "But this one is ours—a descendant of the old tree," he explained. "I found a seed in the woods years after the tree disappeared, and planted it right next to the angel statue. I didn't even know what I was doing. I just planted it because it felt right, but that little seed took up until now—eighty years after I did it—to mature enough." He gestured to his son and grandson. "We just came from the year 2107. 160 years from this moment in time."
He grinned at Will's shocked expression. "But I'll explain the rest of that sometime later. Right now, Papa, you need to go see Mama," he pointed back to the tree. "All you have to do is touch it."
Will stared at the tree, frowning when he looked back to his son. "But, I can't travel. It won't let me," he said. "I've tried before."
"It'll let you, Papa, I promise. It'll take you right where you belong, and you belong with me and Mama." He smirked.
"Just go, Grandpa," Joey encouraged.
Will looked back and forth between the two men before turning his head to look at the tree once more, the birds in the branches staring blankly down at him.
He slowly walked towards it, raising his arm. Just as he was about to place his hand over the bark, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at his descendants in amazement.
This can't be real . . .
"Go, now, Papa," Liam encouraged. "You know Mama doesn't like waiting."
Will smiled at his son and pressed his palm against the tree like he had seen Giselle do so many times before. And, like Giselle, he disappeared when he did it.
He was gone in the blink of an eye, the tree and the bugs and birds staying put as it waited for his descendants to travel next.
"That man is going to be the best father a little boy could ever ask for," Liam said, swiping at his wet eyes with the backs of his age-marked hands. "I knew that as soon as I met him."
"I miss him," Joey spoke.
"We'll see him soon enough," Liam told his son, slinging a frail arm around his shoulders. "That tree will keep all of us connected for generations, and when we come back, I'll get to introduce you to some of the best people you'll ever meet."
• • • • • • • • • • •
Words: 2,146.
Question: Did this chapter confuse you?
Please let me know if it did. I didn't have anyone to proofread/edit this so I don't really have any feedback to go off of. I tried my best to go through and make edits, but I always miss things.
Anyways, we have one more chapter to go! Stay tuned for the epilogue on Wednesday!
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