Once in Every Life

friends, all fighting one another, face-to-face. Killing one another.

Tess shivered at the thought. No wonder Jack had nightmares and couldn't sleep. He was grappling with a disorder that wouldn't be understood for another one hundred years. He probably thought he was insane.

Suddenly the haunted eyes made sense. So did the anger and the anxiety and the shield of silence. And the fear that he would hurt someone. They were all ways to deal with sanity that occasionally seemed to slip, with nights that wound their way through hell before coming to the light of morning.

That's why I'm here. The realization hit her hard. No one from this century could help Jack. It was up to someone with the knowledge of the future. It was up to Tess.

"I can help you, Jack," she murmured. "Just come home and let me try."

Tears burned her eyes. Her voice cracked with emotion. "Just come home."

Jack drifted in and out of consciousness. Finally he blinked awake, feeling groggy and disoriented.

Fear started as a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach and graduated into a suffocating presence. His heart started beating faster, harder, thudding painfully in his rib cage.

He eased his eyes open and immediately regretted it. Late afternoon sunlight stabbed deep in his skull. He winced, knowing what would come next; what always came next.

The migraine began as a low, thudding pulse in the back of his head. With every heartbeat it expanded, seeping through his brain and drilling hard behind his eyes. Nausea churned in his gut, its vile, bitter taste invading his mouth.

Where the hell was he?

Frantically he searched for landmarks, and found none.

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He was sitting beneath a tall cedar tree in the middle of a huge field. It could be any field, anywhere on the island. The only thing he knew for sure was that it wasn't his field.

Trembling, nauseous, he tried to stand, but his legs were too weak to support his weight. Halfway up, he wobbled, reached blindly for the tree. Rough bark scraped his knuckles and bit deeply into the back of his hand. He yanked his hand back and pinned it protectively to his chest. Warm blood seeped into the dirty fabric of his long Johns.

Staggering sideways, he hit the tree hard. Pain ricocheted through his shoulder and shot down his arm. Panting hard, he leaned heavily against the thick trunk.

Panic and despair choked him as he tried to remember. Something, he thought, desperately, please let there be something....

But there was nothing. No memory; no hint of memory. His mind was chillingly, terrifyingly blank.

He banged his head back against the tree and squeezed his eyes shut. He started to fist his gun hand and felt a red-hot stab of pain.

He glanced down. His hand was a scraped, wood-infested blur of dripping blood and ripped flesh.

The image hurled him back in time. Bloody fingers, a bloody arm. Blood and dirt, blood and dirt, blood and?

Johnny.

Jack moaned softly as image after image spiraled through his mind. The rain, the thunder, the image of Johnny's dead face in the window. The nightmare.

He remembered what he always remember

ed: the beginning and the end. It always started with the nightmare and ended with the darkness.

Self-loathing washed through him in a dizzying, nause-

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ating wave. He ignored the pain and curled his injured hand into a bloody, shaking fist.

The war was over, goddamn it. Why couldn't he forget? Why?

He'd tried so hard. He'd done everything the doctors had told him to do; he'd told himself he'd done the manly thing, the normal thing; he'd sealed his lips and never once spoken of the bloody battlefield at Antietam or the day Johnny had died.