Autumn Rose

"A horse?"

"Yeah. That's what I thought, anyway. I guess it could have been a really big dog?

"Then a guy came and got me out of the car and drove me to his house...," Maggie said, feeling her face flush with the memory. "But now I think maybe I was dreaming...?"

"You do seem to have hit your head pretty hard. You may have hallucinated...

"Have you had any alcohol this evening?"

"No, I haven't been drinking.

"I even made up a name," Maggie said, attempting to laugh at herself. "Thomas Lindsey. He had a beautiful white First Generation Mustang... "

She didn't notice the sharp intake of breath from the sheriff, nor the look that passed between him and the two EMTs.

"We'll get you to the hospital. They'll want to do a CT scan and check for a concussion."

"Can I call my sister?" Maggie asked. "She's waiting for me. She'll be worried."

"Of course, miss.

"Is your phone in the car?"

"It was on the passenger seat. I doubt it's still on the seat though."

"Sure. Give me a minute."

The sheriff went back to her car and found her phone in the passenger side footwell. He brought it to Maggie and set it between her ankles on the gurney.

"How about you call her when you get to the hospital? You will have more information after they see you there."

***

Maggie lay on the gurney in a small curtained alcove in the emergency room bored out of her mind. She could hear someone raging in the opposite corner of the room, and another person sobbing in pain. A man moaned in pain in the alcove next to hers. She tried not to listen as the doctors and nurses questioned the man about what had happened to him as the tried to help him. She was sitting propped up in the gurney when a nurse slid the curtain open, rattling the tiny hooks which attached it to the ceiling.

"Sorry you are having to wait," the nurse said. "Full moon tonight," she explained with a shrug. "And it was Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious, but...

"You were in a car accident? Can you tell me how you're feeling?"

"Uh... yeah. I hit my head and have a terrible headache. My whole body hurts, too. Especially my abdomen...," Maggie trailed off, embarrassed. She slid her hand down along the soft fabric of her dress from between her breasts past her belly button.

"Okay. That full-body achy feeling is typical of a car accident. Your whole body tensed up for impact. It's only natural. But we'll take a look to make sure you don't have any internal issues and do a CT scan to make sure there's no concussion.

"Strip down and put this on," the nurse said, handing Maggie a long hospital gown.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," the nurse said and started to leave.

"Wait!"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I need to use the bathroom."

"Oh, sure. Of course. This is room A4. The bathroom is between B2 and B3," she opened the curtain and pointed to a corridor that ran perpendicular to the one Maggie was on.

"Thank you. I won't be long."

Maggie made a beeline for the bathroom. She locked herself in, pulled up her dress, pulled down her panties, and sat on the toilet sighing with relief as she finally let herself pee. Then she looked at the crotch of her panties and gasped. There was a stain of bright red blood and a glistening substance drying on the gusset. She touched it and rubbed it between her thumb and index finger, noticing it was sticky and had a pungent ammonia-like odor.

"Not a dream, then," she murmured to herself. "Fairie magic..."

She cleaned up and washed her hands and then went back to her room in the ER. When she removed her dress to put in the hospital gown, she gasped again. This time at the long red stripe that ran from her left shoulder to her right hip and along her pelvis, already starting to purple. The growing bruise did a lot to disguise the bite marks that covered the undersides of Maggie's breasts and trailed down her stomach to her inner thighs.

"Fuck," Maggie muttered to herself as she put on the hospital gown. "What the hell happened to me?"

The doctor came in with the nurse from earlier just as she was climbing back into the hospital bed. They sent her to get a CT scan and X-rays of her chest and then she was back in the ER again to wait for the results. She lay in the room, staring up at the ceiling, wishing she could sleep but there was far too much activity around her to rest. She felt herself drifting, but could never reach actual sleep. She heard the nurse talking quietly with Sheriff Hill out in the corridor.

"Did Miss Woods say anything about her accident?"

"No. Nothing."

"She mentioned Thomas Lindsey and a white Mustang when she was being loaded into the ambulance."

"No shit? It's that time of year again, isn't it?"

"Yep. The Harvest Moon. Some sweet young thing always encounters Thomas Lindsey."

"How long has it been?"

"Almost fifty years now."

"You'd think the kids would get tired of that old ghost story."

"You'd think. But I don't think that's what's going on here. Miss Woods isn't from around here. She was just passing through. There's no way she knows the legend of the disappearance of Lindsey."

"Can I help you, sir?" the nurse called out a little louder.

"Yes, ma'am," came a voice familiar to Maggie. "We're looking for Maggie Woods. I'm her father."

"Of course, Mr. Woods. She's right here in A4. She should be sleeping, but you can go on in."

Maggie lifted her head and smiled at her dad and aunt as they came in to sit with her.

"Hey," Maggie said to them, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Hey, kiddo. You gave us quite a fright."

"I'm okay. Sore. But okay. At least I think I am. The doctor has been busy."

The words had barely left her mouth when the doctor flung the curtain aside dramatically and stepped in, flicking the overhead light on.

"Miss Woods, I have good news."

"Excellent. You're about to tell me I am perfectly okay and am free to go."

"Close. Not quite.

"Is this your family?

"My dad and my aunt."

"That's good. Because you are going to need someone to drive you home."

"That is not what we call 'good news'."

"You do not have a concussion, but you do have a bruised sternum and two cracked ribs from your seatbelt. You will need some pain medication which you shouldn't drive while taking."

***

Maggie rode with her aunt and her dad drove her car to Waterford. The sky was already starting to lighten in the east as they rolled into the small town off of US6. Her sister Ellie came out on her porch in a fluffy terry cloth robe and bundled Maggie into the house and into the guest bedroom to get some sleep.

She was awakened far too early by the sounds of boisterous children running through the house. She rolled over to bury her head in her pillow but a small boy crashed into the room and jumped on her.

"Aunt Maggie! Wake UP!" he yelled.

"Ouch! Ow-uh! Stop! Ryan! Stop! Ooof!"

"Ryan! Leave Aunt Maggie alone! She needs her sleep," Ellie's voice came from the kitchen.

"Too late," Maggie sighed to herself. She sat up in bed, groaning with pain, and pulled her overnight bag towards her. She sorted out some clothes and then headed toward the bathroom to get ready for the day. She spent a little bit of time studying her many bruises before she got dressed. She could just about convince herself that all the bruises came from her car accident, but she knew that the marks on her neck, breasts, and thighs came from Thomas.

She made her way to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee before taking a seat at the table.

"Are you still up for going down to the Johnny Appleseed Festival today?" Maggie's sister asked her as she came into the kitchen from the living room.

"Yeah. That's why I'm here after all. Just don't expect me to be able to move very fast. I hurt all over."

"No problem, Mags."

Maggie did her best to enjoy her weekend with her family. She liked visiting with them. Everyone but her still lived in the same county where both sets of her grandparents had lived and raised their families. She was the only one who had made it out of its gravitational pull. One of the reasons she made the long drive back almost every month was to show her nephews and many younger cousins that it was actually possible to leave town and still be connected to the family.

On Sunday afternoon, Maggie drove home as sedately as possible. She did not take the pain medications the doctor had prescribed, aware of what he had said about the dangers of driving, so she was in some pain, but she knew she could get through it if she just took her time.

She was enjoying the fabulous mid-September weather when she got to the western junction of US6 and OH-66. The sky was a clear, crisp blue and the temperature was in the low 60s. The corn and soybeans in the many fields she passed by were a pale amber. Most fields were hives of activity with harvesters and trucks transferring grain. She slowed down trying to figure out exactly where she'd had her accident on Friday night.

She could see a cemetary, larger than the Lindsey one, neatly kept behind an elegant church painted a nearly blinding white.. A half-mile further on, there was a poorly maintained gravel driveway, leading to a copse of trees. Maggie wouldn't have been able to say why she did it, but she decided to turn onto the driveway and carefully drive until she was in front of a partially collapsed house under the tall trees. She experienced a flash of memory as she recognized the front porch and the light fixture from Friday night. The roof of the little house was caved in and she could see through the front of the building into the sitting room to see the whitewashed fireplace, weathered by wind and rain but still recognizable, with a clock still on the mantel reading quarter after twelve. She shook her head, even more confused than she had been. She maneuvered her car around to head back down the driveway, noticing a mailbox laying askew in the tall grass at the edge of the highway. She got out of the car to get a closer look and was just able to make out the word "Lindsey" on the side. She let out the air in her lungs in a huff and got back in her car to make the rest of the trip back to her home.

***

Other than her somewhat obsessive and mostly fruitless searching for information about Thomas and his disappearance, Maggie returned to work as normal. She was in pain from her injuries but she could not shake her curiosity about Thomas Lindsey. Even as the bruises his mouth had left all over her body yellowed and then faded, all she could do was think about him and how he'd made her body feel. By the Wednesday after her accident she was Googling for any information she could find about him. She couldn't find much on-line and ended up calling the local newspaper, amazingly still in print daily, to find out more. All she was able to learn was that a Thomas Lindsey had disappeared some time ago, but the reporter she talked to assured her there was more information than that in their archives. Maggie made an appointment to visit the newspaper offices during her next visit home in October. She really wanted to learn more about the mystery of Thomas Lindsey.

Her sister had invited her to her nephew's birthday party the second weekend in October. The party was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, so Maggie made arrangements to drive over early on Friday afternoon to meet with the reporter at the newspaper about Thomas before heading the rest of the way to Indiana.

When she got to the newspaper office, she was shown to a reading room where the reporter had gathered information about Thomas.

"If gathered everything we have here," he said, holding up a manilla folder and thumbing through the contents showing her printouts of newspaper articles. "We're still a little behind the times, so I had to get some of the early stories off of microfiche, but I think I got everything important."

"Thank you so much, Mr. Hopkins. You didn't have to go to all this trouble."

"Well, first of all, you're quite welcome. Secondly, I do this nearly every year, this was just a bit earlier than usual."

"What? Why?"

"The publisher likes to do a follow-up story every Halloween. It's our local spooky disappearance story and people are still fascinated by it all these years later. Even the kids won't let it go. Every year, someone claims to have seen Thomas along US6."

"Oh," Maggie's eyes were big as saucers. "Can you just tell me the story in general? I'm not from around here. But I met someone calling himself Thomas Lindsey when I had a car accident last month. The sheriff said...

"Let's just say I'm curious."

"Of course, my dear."

The bare bones of it were heartbreaking.

On Halloween night 1970, one Thomas Lindsey disappeared after an argument with his parents about failing out of college and going to Vietnam. He'd gone to his grandmother's house and she was the last person to see him. After his disappearance, Thomas's mother fell into a deep depression and killed herself. His father became a recluse. He was a confectioner and developed a reputation as being the Willie Wonka of northwest Ohio. His grandmother was put into a nursing home due to dementia. She claimed that Thomas was stolen away by fairies.

Every October since then, at least one person had reported an encounter with Thomas Lindsey. Often it was just a fleeting glimpse of a white Mustang in the fog. In 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, and 2012 young women had claimed they met Thomas and more than a few of those had claimed they had sex with him."

"What?" Maggie was incredulous. "With a ghost?"

"According to them, he still looks like a 20-year-old college student."

"You're kidding."

"Well, in the '70s and '80s they didn't think he was a ghost. They thought he was a draft-dodger returning home after running away. It wasn't until the '90s that people started considering it a ghost story."

"It's more like a fairy tale," Maggie mused. "He returns every seven years. Maybe his grandmother was right; he was stolen by fairies."

"You can have this," Mr. Hopkins said, handing her the manilla folder. "I have my own copies."

***

Maggie made it to her sister's house that afternoon without any incident. When she got there she was exhausted far beyond what was normal for her, though. Her nephews hadn't even made it home from school yet and she was already napping in the guest room. When the boys got home they invited her to play a game on the Switch. She lost resoundingly in Mario Kart repeatedly, much to the boys' amusement.

They decided to have a Friday night movie marathon and order pizza for dinner. Maggie was starving, but after just one slice she started to feel nauseated.

"What's wrong, sis?" Ellie asked.

"The pizza is too greasy, I think. It just doesn't agree with me."

"Okay. I'm sure there'll be some left. You can have it later when your stomach settles."

"Sure."

The family sat eating popcorn and watching a Captain America movie. Maggie found herself ugly crying during the fight between Cap and Iron Man and couldn't stop her sobbing.

"Maggie! What the heck is wrong with you? You're crying at an action movie. Haven't you seen this movie before?"

"Yes. Lots. I love this movie. It's so sad, though. Their friendship..."

"Why are you crying? You never cry at movies. Not even Titanic."

"I don't know. I'm crying all the time these days. I cried watching The Lord of the Rings last weekend..."

Ellie gave her sister a puzzled frown and shook her head, but didn't have a chance to follow up because her younger son chose that moment to knock the bowl of popcorn over onto the sofa cushions. Once the mess was cleaned up, Maggie begged off watching a second movie, claimed exhaustion, and went to bed.

She woke up at 5:30am, jumped out of bed and threw up in the toilet before heading back to bed to get some more sleep.

She woke again at 9am, feeling somewhat better. She dragged herself out of bed and went to the kitchen in her pajamas to have a cup of coffee. Her brother-in-law was there working on making French toast. She nodded at him while she poured her coffee and he nodded back.

"Good morning, Eli."

"Mornin', Mags.

"Did I hear you puking early this morning?"

"Unfortunately."

"Feeling better now, though."

"Mostly."

"So you're sick, tired, and weepy...," Eli said, looking at Maggie while he mixed his eggs and milk with cinnamon and vanilla.

"I guess..."

Eli nodded and seemed to be debating with himself about what to say next when his older son ran into the room wanting to know when his birthday breakfast would be ready. Maggie took the opportunity to go to her room to shower and get ready for the day.

Maggie did her best to enjoy her day with her family, but she just wasn't feeling like herself and her sister wasn't the only one to notice. After dinner her step-mother cornered her in the kitchen as she finished drying off dinner dishes to put them away.

"I didn't think you had a boyfriend," Sharon commented as Maggie came back from a trip to the bathroom after another bout of nausea.

"I don't," Maggie responded, puzzled.

"Then do you even know the father? I always thought you were the responsible one, but I should have known better. You're living up there in Detroit, alone. Becoming a loose woman. You probably don't even know the father's name!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't act all innocent with me, young lady. You are clearly pregnant."

"What? I am not!" Maggie shouted. 'I'm a virgin, right?' she thought to herself.

"Now don't be lying to me, you harlot!"

"Harlot?!?! Who talks like that?

"I don't have to stay here and listen to this!" Maggie stormed to the guest bedroom and grabbed her stuff before rushing to her car and leaving without telling anyone.

***

A half hour later she was cruising along US6 in Ohio, the full Hunter's Moon low on the eastern horizon, lighting her way. As she came to the southern junction with OHIO-66 she slowed her car as she passed the cemetery and church on the right. Her heart started pounding with fear when she swept through a dense cloud of fog before slowing down further. She was driving slow enough as she passed the site of Thomas's grandmother's house that she was able to clearly see the white Mustang parked on the gravel drive in front of the building. She had already pulled in behind the other car before she noticed that the building again looked as neat as it had in her dream.

She knew she shouldn't be there. In her heart she was terrified. She had seen this very house just the month before in terrible disrepair, but now it looked almost inviting. The porch light was on, and from the smell it was clear there was a fire in the fireplace. A lamp glowed cheerfully in the front picture window. Before she could talk herself out of it, she jumped out of her car and bounded up the stairs to the porch before knocking heavily with her knuckles.

She had no sooner stopped knocking than the door swung open to reveal Thomas wearing a loose white button-down shirt, green corduroys, and standing in his bare feet. Behind him stood a tall, slim young man, with wild red hair and amber eyes, a mischievous smile on his face.

"Maggie?" Thomas said, his voice sharp with anger. "What are you doing here? You can't be here. How...?"

"Thomas? I don't understand what's happening...?"

"You must introduce me to this beautiful mortal," Thomas's companion interrupted in a clipped British accent.

"Robin, this is Maggie. Maggie, meet Robin." Thomas introduced them, his lips curled, his eyes darting around the room. Robin held out his hand to Maggie. She took it gingerly and he raised her hand to his lips, first kissing the back of her hand and then pressing a kiss into her palm.

"Well met, beautiful lady," Robin murmured as he straightened, pulling her into the house by the hand he still held.