Free The House Near the River by Barbara Bartholomew

anywhere.
    They lived in a geographical area where everybody pretty much sounded and looked alike, had a common frame of reference. Where she was from, people from many nations mixed and rarely could come together on a common point of view.
    No way did she belong here, but somewhere inside she wanted to weep at that idea. After this, would she ever feel she belonged anywhere ?
    Grandma’s farm, today or tomorrow, was the fixed point of her existence. Somehow it was home. She was glad when they began to drive over the rough, rutted trail that led to the house.
    Shirley Kay had fallen asleep so Matthew lifted her onto his shoulder. David was barely awake, but before Angie could reach for him, Danny had lifted him in skinny arms and staggered toward the house with him.
    Clemmie followed the others in, seeming lost in her own thoughts, while Angie stood alone watching the others vanish inside. Terrifyingly she began to see or imagine lighted cracks in the atmosphere around her, glimpses it seemed into other worlds, and once again she wondered if she was losing her mind.
    She saw Grandma in her middle years , looking past her as though studying the horizon for a storm. On the other side, she witnessed her cousin once again, and though she couldn’t hear the words, thought she saw on Amanda’s lips her own name. And further on in the distance she saw more vaguely the form of a woman, hardly more than a girl, a dusky-skinned maiden of surpassing beauty who had to be a descendant of one of the native American tribes. Tears trickled down a face that was the mask of tragedy.
    Each opening beckoned to her, drew her toward it with such force she could hardly resist. But even though she had only minutes before decided that she did not belong in this place, she fled past those portals, real or unreal, to run into the house, slamming the door behind her and running into Matthew, who had returned after apparently stowing his little niece in her bed.
    “Whoa, Ange,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
    She pressed against him and felt his arms wrap around her. “They’re trying to take me away,” she whispered.
    “Who?” he asked. “Who would take you away?”
    “The universe. The world. The balance of time.” She was close to hysterical and, pressing her face against his chest, she barely managed to keep from tears. Then she tore away from him and, ignoring the voice that called after her, went back to the bedroom she shared with David.
    Finally she slept, but it was one of those nights where reality met with illusion and throughout the hours she saw cracks of light and scenes of familiar people and places appear around her. She didn’t know what part of it she dreamed, wether she actually witnessed any of those scenes, but when she awakened it was with a heavy feeling of dread. When she reached across the bed and couldn’t find David, then opened her eyes to see she was alone, she came close to panic.
    Still in her nightgown she ran from the room, calling his name. In the dining room she was stopped by Matthew, who grabbed her hands and said, “He’s all right, Ange.  Clemmie is feeding him breakfast in the kitchen.”
    She pulled her hands free and raced into the kitchen where, just as he’d said, David and Shirley Kay as well were peacefully eating cereal. Clemmie looked up to see a wild-eyed Angie still in her nightgown, followed by her brother and frowned.
    Getting the message Angie fled to her bedroom and tried to catch her breath.
    Nightmares, she told herself. Only nightmares .
     
    Usually Clemmie did her washing on Mondays, but with everything going on she was running behind. The kids were out of school now for the summer, vacation began in early May, so while Danny was sent to the field to help his uncle, the girls went with them to town to do the laundry.
    Angie was glad they didn’t have to heat wash water in an iron pot over a fire in the yard, the way Grandma had described earlier family women washing clothes,