Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

floor.”
    Elizabeth shuddered at the image. What a terrible thing for a child to see. No wonder he had nightmares.
    “I’d never seen death before,” Simon continued, “but I knew it was there in the house that night. I think I knew it before I went to bed, but I didn’t do anything. Didn’t do a damn thing. I just stood there. His face was... blood gushed out of his mouth, spilling down his neck over a jagged gash. The front of his shirt was soaked in it. And the smell.”
    Elizabeth felt a chill. Was this what his nightmares about her were like?
    “Everything about him was just as it had been in my mind. That final, horrible image of him lying there, dying. He looked at me with such urgency I wanted to bolt for the door. He was lying there in a pool of his own blood, reaching out to me, and I wanted to run.”
    Simon wiped a hand across his face, briefly pausing to massage his temples. “He tried to say something, but there was too much blood. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear him. I don’t remember doing it, but I must have knelt down next to him. He whispered to me, in a voice I couldn’t forget in a thousand lifetimes. ‘We’re running out of time,’ he said, and then his eyes cleared and he... he smiled at me. The tension faded away. ‘You made a fine man,’ he said. A fine man.” Simon shook his head and groaned in self-derision.
    She wanted so much to go to him, to wrap her arms around and him tell him he was a fine man, that everything would be all right. He wouldn’t welcome it. He was hanging on by a thread. If he needed space, no matter how much she wanted to hold him, she’d give him that.
    His breath caught and he shook his head, struggling for control. “And then he was gone. Just like that, this man, who meant everything to me...”
    He flexed his hands and cleared his throat. “It wasn’t until the servants came in that I even noticed his hands. The watch, our watch, was in one.”
    “And the scarab ring was in the other,” Elizabeth said suddenly, remembering Simon’s reaction when he’d seen the ring for the first time.
    He didn’t look at her, but nodded slowly. “And a scrap of black cloth,” he added, and then pulled himself from the memory. He wiped his palms on his pant legs. “Of course, the family did their best to keep it quiet. Announced his death as a tragic accident, a senile, old man falling down the stairs. Falling down the stairs? It wasn’t any accident and they couldn’t have cared less,” Simon said, his voice rising in anger.
    No wonder he never spoke about his family. How could they have been so callous?
    He pushed out a quick breath and continued, “They took the watch and the ring. Locked them away with everything else he owned. Everything he was, just swept away and covered with lies.”
    “So, you hadn’t seen the watch until we opened the boxes in your house that night,” Elizabeth said.
    Simon leaned back in his chair. “The nightmares started the night I received the crates.”
    “That’s natural. Seeing his things, triggering old memories.”
    “They weren’t about my grandfather.”
    “Oh,” she said softly. “You mean you dreamt about me before we got here. Before we even—”
    “Yes. The night his things arrived. I’ll admit I’d had dreams about you before that,” he said with an almost shy smile that faded quickly. “But not...”
    “With me dying.”
    He glared at her so fiercely, she thought he might try to grab the words out of the air and cram them back down her throat. She drew her knees up to her chest and watched him stride back to the window. He pressed his fist against the glass.
    “It’s happening all over again. Inch by inch, night by night, I’m drawn closer to it.”
    “Tell me about them,” she said, knowing even the worst had to be better than the helplessness she felt.
    His back tensed, and he gripped the window sill. “No.”
    She eased off the bed and laid a hand on his back. He jerked forward, but she wouldn’t relent. “Simon.”
    He turned around, and she’d never forget the haunted look in his eyes as they bore into her, beseeching and desperate. “Don’t make me relive them.”
    “I don’t think you need my help for that. You’re doing that right now aren’t you? You close your eyes and they’re there, aren’t they?”
    He let out a shuddering breath. “Yes.”
    “Then if I have a starring role in them, shouldn’t I—”
    “Don’t make light of this,” he bit