The Five Lives of John and Jillian Read online

  The Five Lives of John and Jillian

  By Greg Krehbiel

  Crowhill Publishing

  Laurel, Maryland

  http://crowhill-publishing.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Greg Krehbiel

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692623701

  ISBN-10: 0692623701

  Contents

  Author’s Introduction

  The Witch’s Promise

  The Witch’s Bastard

  What God Has Bent

  Pipe Dreams

  Excerpts from the Mueller Family Tree

  A Collision of Worlds

  Afterward

  Author’s Introduction

  These five stories of varying lengths explore the lives of two star-crossed lovers in slightly different scenarios. Specific details of their lives change from story to story, as if each story represents how these two people might interact in different worlds.

  You’ll get to know John Matthews and Jillian Collins as they meet, fall in love, and fight their personal demons. The stories aren’t intended to be sequential, and, indeed, one of the stories is set in a different decade than the others. Read each of them as if the story is an independent interaction between these two characters.

  The Witch’s Promise

  An it harm none, do what you will.

  - The Wiccan Rede

  Lend me your ear while I call you a fool,

  You were kissed by a witch one night in the wood,

  And later insisted your feelings were true.

  The witch’s promise is coming.

  Believing he listened while laughing you flew.

  - The Witch’s Promise, by Jethro Tull

  Chapter1: The Chase

  On a living room floor in a small townhouse, three women and a man sit inside a ritual circle, reciting their mantras. The scented smoke from a brazier wreaths their heads before floating out the screen door and onto the porch. After a few minutes of meditation, they each share a private concern and hear counsel from the leader, then they each take an object that symbolizes their problem and place it in the center of the circle, next to the brazier. The leader instructs them to visualize the object as the problem itself.

  One of the women puts the picture of a former lover in the fire. Another woman nods to the man, who takes a picture of the two of them, tears it about half way, slides a playing card between, and drops it on the burning coals.

  * * *

  “The train station’s ahead on the right,” John Matthews told Al Watkins, who was driving his cobalt blue BMW north on Route 197 from Bowie. Al was an old friend, and John’s first and best client — a developer who purchased abandoned properties in P.G. County, Maryland, and converted them into small office units, with John’s expert assistance as chief architect.

  “I appreciate the lift.”

  “Easier for me and you,” Al said. “This way you don’t lose that non-billable time on the train.”

  “I bill you for that time,” John objected. “I work on the train.”

  Al laughed. “I can picture you between a fat lady and a smelly old man, with your drafting table on your knees in front of you, one hand bristling with pencils and a beer in the other.”

  “You’ve seen me?”

  Al chuckled. “So are you sure about this weekend?”

  “What about it?” John asked, but then he remembered. Al was a great guy, but no Jehovah’s Witness was more faithful with his tracts than Al was with his invitations to mass.

  “Sorry, Al, but I’m going to West Virginia this weekend. I hear there’s been another Big Foot sighting, and ....”

  “All right, all right,” Al said. “You can just say no, Mr. Skeptic.”

  “No,” John said with a grin, but then his gaze strayed to the train station parking lot and he shouted aloud.

  “Hey. What’s that guy .... He’s in my car!”

  “He’ll run when we pull up,” Al said. “I’ll honk the horn.”

  “No,” John protested with a devious smile. “I don’t want him to run until I’m a little closer. Drop me off here. I’m gonna catch the bastard.”

  “Do you want some help?” Al asked.

  “No offense, Al, but I think this is going to be a chase, and I don’t think you’re up for it. Although you would be handy in a fight.”

  Al laughed and placed a beefy hand on his ample belly.

  “I was offering to drive closer and keep a look-out, Mr. Track Team,” Al said. “I don’t think a car radio’s worth the trouble.”

  “It’s not. It’s the principle of the thing. Just let me out,” John insisted.

  “Okay. Don’t hurt him too bad,” Al said. “Remember, buddy, you’ve got a mean streak. Don’t let it get you in trouble. I’ll keep an eye from here.”

  * * *

  The last of the evening sun poured through an open kitchen window and illuminated the thick steam that was rising from a large pot of soup. Both seemed to meet and gently caress the thin, pale but attractive face of Jillian Collins as she savored the heavy smell of garlic and sage. A meager portion of raw goose, cut in small pieces, lay on the wooden chopping block — right next to an extraordinary meat cleaver. In another setting it might have looked like a prop for a Hollywood version of the kitchen at Camelot, complete with carved, dark-wood handle and a heavy, horror-movie blade.

  Soup and deep meditation wove together seamlessly in this kitchen. Jillian scraped the goose into the pot and stirred it once or twice without breaking her concentration or losing her train of thought. She turned back to her kitchen table, which was strewn with colorful cards. An unimaginative soul might have thought that a child was making a bad attempt at solitaire. The cards seemed out of place, oddly decorated and somewhat larger than normal.

  She drew one and placed it face upward on the table, then sighed deeply.

  “Sean. What am I going to do about you?”

  She looked out the window with a distant expression. Heavy clouds were rolling in quickly. Perfect weather for a pot of soup.

  She stirred the pot again and absent-mindedly ran her fingers along a small collection of CDs, immediately above the portable boom box.

  * * *

  John stepped out of Al’s car on Rt. 197 and tried to ease his way down the wooded slope to the parking lot. His car wasn’t five feet from the edge of the woods, and the pine needles on the ground muffled his footsteps. He saw a pair of legs sticking out of the passenger side of his car — a Ford Mustang convertible.

  Perfect, John thought. I’ll slam the door on his legs.

  But pine needles notwithstanding, John’s next step might as well have sounded a car alarm. He was so intent on the thief he wasn’t watching his steps. He tripped on a root, startled a cat out of the underbrush and caught his balance on a sapling. The noise alerted the thief, who immediately jumped out of the car and started off at a run across the parking lot towards the power-line right of way.

  John smiled as he watched the young man’s uneasy and somewhat awkward pace. He’d be an easy catch. John tossed his sports coat in the front seat of his car, closed the door, then looked up the hill at Al and gave him a thumb’s up and a smile. He set off at a run, quickly shrinking the thief’s lead to less than fifty feet, and gaining fast.

  The little man headed straight for a clump of trees near the six-foot chain link fence that closed off BG&E’s right-of-way. John watched him disappear behind a bush, then reappear on the other side as if he’d run straight through the fence.

  John wasted precious moments looking for a hole in the fence, but finally decided to scramble up and jump. He tore his pants leg in the process, but now he was on flat gro
und again.

  You’re gonna pay for my pants too, John thought.

  It was just running now, and John was gaining, but the slightly built thief made another detour under a clump of Laurel bushes and into a dark patch of woods beyond.

  John checked himself and re-evaluated his strategy. The thief wasn’t fast, but he was no fool, and John thought better of running headlong into such a perfect ambush. He slackened his pace and pushed through the hole — an animal trail, maybe — with his hands and arms protecting his face and mid-section.

  That was a good thing. Almost too late, John saw a 4-foot long piece of 2x4 swinging at his head. He ducked and blocked, remembering a little of the Kung Fu he took as a youngster, but not quite enough. A nail in the wood ripped a gash in his shirt sleeve and a glancing blow sent a searing pain along his forearm. He swore and turned, ready for close-range combat, but the man hadn’t stopped to fight. He was already flying farther down the path.

  John took up the chase again and suddenly heard his mother’s chastening voice in the back of his head.

  “John, you’ve already ruined your pants. Next it will be your shoes. And you barely avoided getting your teeth knocked out. How much is it worth to catch a petty thief?”

  “But Mom,” he said aloud, not caring who might hear, “this is the best fun I’ve had in months.”

  A moment later he crashed through another bramble, heedless of the toll it was taking on his expensive leather shoes.

  * * *

  Only semi-conscious of her actions, the thumb and forefinger of Jillian’s right hand hovered between two CDs while her left hand drew another card and set it face upward on the table.

  The warrior.

  Jillian breathed in deeply and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  John was so intent on the chase that he didn’t notice how quickly storm clouds had gathered. An ear-splitting crack of thunder announced the start of a late-summer downpour.

  By this time he had lost all sense of direction and had no idea where he was. He’d run at least a mile, and he couldn’t point the direction back to his car. The little man was slow, but he could pick a path through the woods like a deer, and when John tried to take a different route to cut him off he frequently had to pull himself out of a ditch full of brambles.

  The woods were starting to thin, and from time to time he saw the outline of a solitary house through a bare patch between the trees. Unbidden, for no reason John could imagine, he remembered adolescent fantasies about lonely, witchy women living in secluded cottages in the woods. Snatches of lyrics toyed at the edge of his mind as he raced. Was it Stevie Nicks, or Heart? He wasn’t sure.

  Few men could have kept up the chase for this long, but John was quite fit for his 33 years and his quarter mile would still place in most high school track meets. He was winded and his feet were aching in his ruined dress shoes, but he could hear the thief coughing and wheezing, not far ahead. If it weren’t for the decreased visibility from the rain, he’d have had this guy by now. But for all John’s speed, he had to admire the thief’s cleverness. He used every possible advantage — the cover of a fallen tree, the shelter of a thick patch of undergrowth, and even the direction of the wind, which blew rain in John’s eyes and clouded his sight.

  But now he had him. The man was out of breath and in pain, bending over and clutching his side. The chase was over. Now John had to plan how he wanted to close in for the fight. For all his tricks in the woods, might this guy have a knife, or even a gun? Was it worth the risk?

  John pressed ahead and sprinted the last 20 feet.

  Once again, he underestimated the man’s cunning. He had appeared more winded than he was, and as John approached he made another desperate sprint — straight towards a house no more than 50 yards away.

  He ran down a fairly flat track across thin woods, and John was catching him with every stride, but just as John closed the gap and was about to grab a flailing arm, the man pivoted on one foot and turned, faster than a rabbit, making the last dash towards a fence, or shed, some ten feet away.

  John turned and pursued, running madly around the corner of the fence. He knew it was a mistake even before the metal trash-can lid crashed into his face and chest. The little guy’s blow packed enough force to stop John dead in his tracks, lift him off his feet and send him two feet backwards onto the wet earth. As he saw his own blood splatter his rain-drenched shirt, he laughed at himself, fell backwards and lost consciousness.

  Chapter 2: The Witch

  Winter nights we sang in tune,

  ... or was that ...

  She is like a cat in the dark and then she is the darkness

  ... He couldn’t be sure.

  Eerie dreams blending snatches of childhood fantasies somehow merged into the waking vision of a tall woman pulling him out of a cold puddle and into the shelter of her black overcoat. Or was it a cloak? His vision seemed blurred, either from rain and blood in his eyes, or from the cymbal crash on his head.

  She put a cup of some warm liquid to his lips and he drank greedily. Ever since he was a young boy John had a notion of the ideal hot beverage. Something the servants might offer a Medieval Lord when he came back from a hunt. Something frothy and slightly alcoholic and sweet and hearty and a little spicy. Nothing ever slaked his desire, although mulled cider mixed with spiced wine sometimes came close. John didn’t know what this was — more broth than drink, he reckoned — but he felt strength and warmth returning to his lifeless, cold body — at least enough to let the woman help him to his feet and through a side door into a blessedly warm and dry kitchen. She sat him in a wicker chair and he clutched the arms, fearing he might swoon and fall off.

  He blinked his eyes clear while his mind wrestled with competing thoughts. Where was he? Who was this woman? Was this still a dream?

  He could only hope.

  Pain brought his mind back to reality. The woman was daubing his right eyebrow with a cotton swap soaked in alcohol.

  “I don’t think you’ll need stitches,” she said, and then, anticipating his movement, added, “but I wouldn’t try to get up quite yet.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and kept him firmly but gently in the chair. “You’ve bled a bit, and your body is cold. I don’t know how long you were laying in that puddle before I found you.”

  She wrapped him in the mysterious black garment. It felt like wool, and it seemed to have a brass broach of some odd design, but it was warm and dry, and right then that was all he cared about.

  “Thank you,” he finally managed, taking the mug of broth from her hands and sipping it eagerly. “It was rather brave of you to bring me in like that. Shouldn’t you have called the police?”

  She chuckled. “You don’t mean me any harm, do you? Besides, I was expecting you.”

  He looked at her face and blinked again, certain he didn’t recognize her. His mind kept trying to get organized. Why was he so wet? How could she be expecting him? He’d been running in the woods. Blind chance had led him to her back yard.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, but I saw your card.”

  “Ah,” he said, feeling for his wallet, wondering if she’d taken one of his business cards — which bothered him a bit — a wallet is private territory — and wondered even more how that translated into ‘expecting him.’

  She laughed again. “Not that kind of card.” She reached a long, slender arm to the small kitchen table and retrieved something like a rather large playing card, although the picture didn’t seem right. John had seen cards like that before.

  “Oh, tarot cards,” he said, trying to hide his smirk. He didn’t want to be cruel, but tarot cards, palm reading and crystal balls shouted “naïve” and “superstitious” as well as every prejudice he had against religion in general. But the woman was being kind to him, so he decided to behave.

  “You don’t believe?” she asked, slightly confused. “The cards told me to expect a man who had been in a fight, and here you are, bloody nose and
everything.” But then she looked confused. “Although I have to admit I wasn’t reading them all that accurately. I expected the other guy to have the bloody nose.”

  As if on cue, a large drop of blood fell onto his lap and soaked into his dark wool pants. He tilted his head back in the chair and she handed him a tissue.

  “They say it’s actually better to lean forward,” she said, giving him a few more tissues, “but suit yourself. When you’re ready you can have some more soup. For now I’ll make some coffee and we’ll talk.”

  John watched as the kind stranger put a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave and retrieved her funnel, filter and a stone jar from the spice cabinet. The opening and closing of the cabinet door left a trace of earthy, spicy sweetness in the air, which stirred a thought in John’s mind. He was completely awake now and began to take in his surroundings. He was in a kitchen — an exceptionally neat and clean kitchen — but little oddments here and there stuck out: the cleaver, for one, and the collections of dried herbs hanging from the cabinets.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” John said, remembering the line from Sherlock Holmes. “You’ve seen my card, but I don’t know you at all. Can I draw one off the stack so I can get your profile?”

  Jillian smiled pleasantly. “Touch my magic cards with your bloody, muddy hands? I think not.” She glided to the table and absent-mindedly flipped over another card, as if she intended to show it to him. John studied her face and thought he saw a moment of surprise, and then the slightest blush in the cheeks, but she simply set the card on the table and continued with her preparations: retrieving two cups and saucers from the cabinet, and one large soup bowl.

  “My name’s Jillian Collins,” she said. “And I can fix those pants for you, although the shirt is totaled. I’m a seamstress. Not that I do pants, as a general rule. I do interior designs. Curtains and upholstery, mostly. But I can fix pants.”

  “I’m John Matthews,” he replied. “And I’m deeply in your debt, Jillian. I suppose I could have caught a nasty bug, laying out there in that puddle. Something even nastier than your trash can lid.” He laughed at himself, and tried to force the tissue into his aching nose so that he could hold his head up straight without bleeding.