Between Two Worlds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Also from Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  4760 Preston Road

  Suite 244-149

  Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Between Two Worlds

  Copyright © 2011 by Shelter Somerset

  Cover Art by Catt Ford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61581-884-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  May 2011

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-885-3

  Dedication

  To Guido

  Chapter 1

  Aiden Cermak navigated the central Illinois country lanes in his 1994 Chevy Cavalier, hoping he’d find the Interstate. He’d been in such a hurry to do more research for his Amish article before heading back to Chicago, he’d left the directions in his room at the bed and breakfast. He’d forgotten even his Oakley knock-offs. Not that he needed them. Drizzle had begun falling that Sunday morning the moment he’d pulled out of the inn’s parking lot. He knew I-57 lay somewhere east, but each time he turned down one of those slick, buggy-battered lanes, that cross-stitch of blacktop and compacted gravel weaving through mile after mile of corn, soybean, and grain fields, he’d hit a dead end.

  Heading along one such impasse he spotted, through the intermittent sweep of his windshield wipers, a black family buggy ambling ahead. He figured they were stragglers on their way to church. Once alongside, he slowed to a snail’s pace and lowered the passenger window. The dark-bearded driver reined the horse to a near stop and craned his neck at Aiden over the heads of the woman and two children sitting to his left, his face screwed up with suspicion. Aiden noticed a few more children and adults crammed into the backseat. He was about to ask for directions when, out of the corner of his left eye, he saw something which struck him as odd. About fifty yards away, a pickup truck was careening toward them. The driver swerved left, then right, then left again—bearing straight at the buggy.

  Aiden floored his Chevy, tires screeching and loose gravel spitting up, and veered into the pickup’s path. The pickup was deflected off of Aiden’s front left bumper, sending the bumper flying like a maple seed into the nearby soybean field. Aiden’s coupe slammed into the legs of the horse, causing the horse to slam down onto the pickup’s hood. He heard a horrible sound of crushing metal and shattering glass and felt a dizziness that seemed unearthly.

  Coming out of the spin, he sat, shaking, and gazed through his shattered windshield. On the opposite side of the lane in a deep ravine, the pickup truck lay upside down. A small fire had ignited on the undercarriage. The tires, facing the dreary June sky, spun freakishly.

  He looked toward the buggy, about twenty yards from where his coupe had stopped. It was upright but askew. The passengers, dressed in black church clothes, had already alighted and appeared uninjured. By the look of the shaft, twisted and snapped in half and lying in the middle of the lane, he marveled that the buggy had not been hurled onto its side, tossing out all of its passengers. The driver with the short dark beard sprinted to Aiden’s side.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a husky voice.

  “Yeah, I think so.” Aiden scanned his body, still strapped in by the seatbelt. He swept the shards of glass from his lap. “I seem okay.”

  The man, his eyes so dark they reminded Aiden of deep pond water, waved over the two boys who were examining the horse that lay quivering on the side of the lane. “Take care of things here,” he told the boys, one a teenager, the other about twelve years old. “Make sure he’s okay. There’s nothing you can do for Dexter now.” He hurried to the pickup where the eldest-looking man with a long grizzled beard was pulling the driver from the truck’s cab. Aiden watched the dark-eyed man help lay out the driver, then smother the undercarriage flames with his black coat.

  Overcome with a sudden urge to get out of his car, Aiden unhooked his seatbelt and, with the aid of the two boys, floundered out of the coupe. Brushing flecks of glass from his jeans and hair, he suppressed an impulse to roll in the wet soybean field, as if to rub out the entire episode. He remained calm, not wishing to look like a faint-hearted Englisher in front of the Amish.

  “Everything all right?” The gray-bearded man jogged over.

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  “Ya, we are goot.” He raked a shaky hand through his beard. “By the will of God, my wife and all my children are fine, but not so much that boy.”

  Aiden followed the man’s doleful gaze. Along the side of the lane lay the pickup driver’s limp body. He looked about Aiden’s age, in his mid-twenties. His eyes were closed, almost serenely. The dark-eyed man, apparently the gray-bearded man’s eldest son, knelt beside him. Near the buggy, the wife and her two young daughters huddled together. Their calf-length black dresses and white capes hung heavy from the drizzle. The smallest girl trembled in the arms of her big sister.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” the teenage boy asked.

  “Yes, of course!”

  Chastising himself for failing to have thought of it before, Aiden reached into his front jeans pocket for his Motorola and dialed 911. The father gave him their location, and the operator said she would dispatch help right away.

  Snapping his phone shut and stuffing it back into his pocket, Aiden noticed his Chevy. All the windows had shattered from the impact. The left headlight was smashed in like a watermelon and the bumper was gone. The left side of the hood was concaved, the front right quarter deeply dented, and his two front tires had blown out. Aiden shook his head in disbelief and realized just how lucky he was to be standing.

  He noticed the two boys staring helplessly at their chocolate-brown gelding. More had been lost in that accident than his sixteen-year-old secondhand coupe. So much more. He looked at the pickup driver lying on the side of the lane. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.” The father stared at the injured man along with Aiden. “We saw what you did. You steered your car in front of that pickup on purpose to spare us. My whole family would be dead if not for you.”

  “It was all very automatic.” Aiden flushed.
“I guess anyone would’ve done it.”

  “Nay.” The father shook his head. “Da Hah led you to save us.”

  A few minutes later, screaming emergency vehicles raced down what seemed the endless ribbon of gravel lane, followed by flashing red lights reflecting off the sides of the family’s wet buggy and the crack of static and voices transmitted through police radios. Emergency medical technicians scrambled to the pickup driver’s motionless form and rushed him off to the hospital. Firefighters doused his truck. Only the calmness of the police officer, as Aiden tried to keep his voice from quaking while giving his account of the accident, matched the serenity of the surrounding farmland.

  The father stepped in and related what he knew, highlighting how Aiden had been so quick in cutting off the pickup driver from careening into their buggy and how the pickup truck had just missed striking them. Aiden shuddered, remembering the image of the pickup driver’s face, twisted in horror, just before their vehicles had collided.

  A second team of emergency medical technicians examined Aiden. He appeared uninjured, but based on the condition of his car, the EMTs encouraged him to ride to the hospital in Decatur for further tests. Rolling his eyes, he protested. The father insisted that he go. Embarrassed, Aiden reluctantly allowed the technicians to place him on a stretcher.

  Just as the EMTs loaded him into the back of the ambulance, he heard the pop of a handgun. Poor Dexter, he thought. He closed his eyes, wishing he were back home in his studio apartment in Chicago.

  The curtain to Aiden’s emergency room cubicle was pulled aside with a discordant screech, and a young, attractive doctor stepped in.

  “Looks like you’re good to go.” She closed the curtain haphazardly so that the emergency room remained partially visible. “All your tests came back negative. No internal injuries. No contusions. Nothing broken. Barely a scratch.”

  “I could’ve told you that.” Aiden sighed and rested his head back against the thin white pillow of his gurney. He turned his head away, tired of looking at the same white-tiled ceiling.

  After more than six hours, he was eager to leave the hospital. Yet, with his car totaled, there was so much he needed to do before he could go anywhere. He’d already reported the accident to his insurance company. Now he needed to find transportation back to Chicago. He supposed even a small city like Decatur had car rentals.

  “It was a good idea you came to the hospital to make sure,” the doctor said. “You can never be too certain. You had a pretty nasty accident from what I heard. Lucky you came out unscathed.”

  “What about that man in the pickup? How’s he doing?” Aiden knew the doctor had bad news the moment she averted her eyes toward the white granite floor.

  She looked at Aiden and said through stiff, plum-red lips, “I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

  Aiden flinched. Even though he did “save” a nine-member Amish family from a head-on, he was unable to dispel the shock that he had caused another man’s death—someone near his own age.

  When he’d left for the town of Henry in the heart of Illinois’s Amish Country Friday afternoon for what he’d hoped would be a productive research trip, he had never imagined he’d be involved in a fatal car wreck. He wished he’d never accepted that writing assignment from Midwestern Life magazine.

  Initially, he had been excited about learning more about the Amish. He remembered the small Amish community where he grew up in southern Maryland and always wished he’d gotten to know them better. Being agnostic, he knew he could never share their religious zeal, but their old-fashioned lifestyle had always captivated him.

  “Do you have someone to give you a lift home?” the doctor asked with a soft voice.

  Aiden’s mind still hovered over the dead man. “I need to pick up a rental car.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend you drive home tonight. Do you have a place to stay locally?”

  “He’ll stay with us.”

  Both Aiden and the doctor looked in the direction of the coarse, yet warm, voice. The Amish father from the accident stood in the opening of Aiden’s curtain. In one hand he held Aiden’s duffel bag and in the other a black, wide-brimmed hat. His grizzled beard fell nearly to his belly and his gray eyes sparkled under the fluorescent lighting.

  “I’ll be taking him back home with me,” he said.

  “Just in time,” the doctor said. “I just gave him the green light. He’s looking fine. I’ll go get his release papers.” She smiled and eased past the Amish man with a nod.

  “We got this from your car.” The man took one step into the cubicle and set down Aiden’s duffel bag. “I was going to leave it for you earlier but wasn’t sure you’d get it. You were getting tests.”

  “Thank you for thinking of it.” Aiden sat up on the gurney, his eyes riveted on the middle-aged man. “I’m glad it was in good hands.”

  “I’m Samuel Schrock.” He offered his large hand. “We never got a chance to formally introduce ourselves.”

  “I’m Aiden Cermak.” The two men shook hands. Aiden noticed the rough calluses on Samuel’s farm-worked hand, and he was embarrassed Samuel might think his computer-using hand was too soft. He feared two years of city life was rendering him squishy. He had always wished he could live a more subsistence lifestyle like the Amish. Modern life, with urban-centered jobs, made that dream near impossible.

  “Ach.” Samuel dropped himself into a chair in the corner of the cubicle. His chubby belly pushed passed his suspenders. “Getting your release papers might take another two hours. You know hospitals. They do their job, but sluggish machines.”

  Aiden pondered how an Amish man would be such an expert on the running of hospitals, but he smiled in agreement. Still gazing at the man in wonder, he said, “You really don’t have to put me up.”

  “Where else would you go? Hotels are costly. It’s the least we can do.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden. It’s asking too much.”

  “It’s no burden. My wife and me discussed it, and we both agree you should come. Nimmand hott graysahri leevi vi dess, es en mann sei layva gebt fa sei freind.” Samuel interpreted for Aiden, although Aiden understood enough textbook German to figure out what he’d meant: “No greater man of God than he who lays down his life for another.”

  “Oh, but really.” Aiden flushed.

  “I heard you telling the police officer you’re here from Chicago doing research on the Amish, ya?”

  Aiden lowered his eyes and nodded. “I’m writing a magazine article.”

  “It’ll work fine for you then. You can see firsthand how we live, for your article. My family’s a large brood, but we have room for you. You can stay with us until someone comes and gets you or until you rent a car. Your car, like my horse, didn’t survive the accident.”

  The legendary Amish generosity left Aiden near speechless. But he worried whether such devout Christians would be so quick to welcome him into their home if they knew the truth about him. And on top of that, he was a non-believer.

  “I really don’t know what to say.” He pushed aside his concerns for the moment. “I’m very grateful, beyond words.”

  “It’s us who are grateful to you.”

  Samuel gazed toward his lap, slowly shaking his head. His beard swept across his belly like a furry pendulum. “If only we had been a trifle earlier leaving for church, maybe things would’ve turned out otherwise. With nine of us going off to the same place in one buggy, we can sometimes be sluggish. Ach, but when God wills things, there’s nothing to be done.”

  God’s will—something Aiden failed to understand in Amish culture, in any culture. He knew the Amish placed everything in the hands of God, no matter what, good or bad. Aiden could not reduce everything so simply to a matter of mystical forces, not when people ultimately caused most of life’s heartaches.

  A specter of the pickup driver’s horrified face just before their vehicles had collided flashed through Aiden’s mind. He gathered his hands into a tight ball and swallowed.
“Do you know anything about the man in the pickup?”

  “Bobby Jonesboro? He’s a local English boy. Twenty-three, I think. The sheriff said it was pretty clear by the accident he was at least double the legal limit. I was sorry to hear he died, but the Jonesboro boy was known for his weekend binge drinking. In a way, you saved him, too.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You saved him from killing nine people.”

  A nurse broke their contemplative silence when she brought in Aiden’s release papers. After she left with the signed forms, Samuel gave him privacy to dress. Before stepping outside his cubicle, he tore off the hospital bracelet, tossed it into a receptacle, and washed his hands of the whole place.

  He expected to see a horse-drawn buggy idling in the hospital’s main entrance drive-thru, but when Samuel slid open the door to a passenger van, he flushed from his assumption. A half hour away by even a fast-moving ambulance, Henry was, of course, much too far from Decatur for a buggy ride.