The Legend of Annie Murphy by Frank Peretti

stooping, and crawling up the hill toward the cemetery, the last place they’d seen their father.
    â€œOuch!” Lila plucked a cactus thorn from her hand. “I guess we’re solid again.”
    Jay raised his head just enough to see the town below. “Yeah, the town’s solid too. Guess we’re all the way into the past like before.”
    â€œSo what’s happening to us?”
    â€œWell, I think we’re fading between the past and the present every time gravity gets wiggly.”
    â€œSo why can’t we just stay in the present where we belong?”
    â€œThat’s what we have to find out.”
    They kept crouching until they were hidden from the town by the crest of the hill. Then they straightened up, confident they would not be seen. They found the cemetery, in much better shape now, with the headstones new and still standing. There were even flowers on some of the graves.
    â€œHere it is,” said Lila.
    She’d found the grave of Cyrus Murphy. It was still fresh, recently dug.
    â€œOh no . . .” said Jay.
    Beside Cyrus’s grave was another, more freshly dug: the grave of Annie Murphy.
    â€œSo she is dead,” said Lila. “Then how could we have seen her?”
    Jay shook his head, totally perplexed. “It’s this time warpy stuff, I guess. Everything’s mixed up. But I wonder . . .” He stared at Annie’s grave.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhy is her grave here in the past, but not in the present?”
    â€œMaybe the marker got moved.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    They looked toward the cliff to the south. They knew just where to find the image of the weeping woman, but . . .
    â€œCan you see it?” Lila asked.
    Jay squinted, closed one eye, and tried to retrace all the landmarks he could recognize, but the image wasn’t there. He shook his head. “If it was a natural formation, you’d think it would still be there.”
    â€œSo somebody carved it, all right.”
    â€œWhich means it hasn’t been done yet.”
    Lila recalled, “Professor MacPherson said Annie Murphy was a wood and stone carver. She could have done it . . .”
    â€œBut it’s not there yet, and she’s dead.”
    Lila’s face sank. “Oh yeah . . .”
    Jay thought a moment. “But what if—let’s just try this a minute—what if Annie isn’t dead? I mean, Mrs. Crackerby and the gardener both saw her and thought she was a ghost. But like we just found out, when this time thing gets stirred up and we fade between the past and the present, everything looks ghostly to us.”
    Lila nodded, turning it over in her mind. “And we must look like ghosts to them. We scared Mrs. Crackerby pretty good.”
    â€œSo it goes both ways.”
    â€œWell, we know we’re not ghosts. If we were really dead, we’d be in heaven with the Lord right now, not stumbling around in the past trying to figure out what happened.”
    â€œSo what does that say about Annie Murphy? She looked like a ghost when we saw her, and she must have looked like a ghost to those other people. But she doesn’t have to be dead to do that. Maybe she’s alive and tangled up in all this time business just like we are.”
    Lila’s eyes brightened. “And maybe she’s the one who got us tangled up in it. It all started when she ran into us.” Then her face fell again. “So why is her grave here?”
    â€œI think there are some missing pieces to this puzzle that we need to find out.” Jay was already laying plans. “What did Mrs. Crackerby say? Something about Annie being up in her old room?”
    â€œUp in her and Cyrus’s old room, looking out the window.” She snapped her fingers. “And remember what Professor MacPherson said? He said Annie shot her husband in the bedroom of a boardinghouse!”
    â€œLet’s go have a look.”
    The Crackerby Boardinghouse