…we see families with mostly little kids and wonder whether we’re on the Disneyland Monorail. And it looks like we are.
“Oh, well,” comments Alice, “whatever it takes to get us to the library in the middle of a lake. It looks like those rifts are helping us now, rather than hindering us.”
I squint at a figure I see at the other end of the car. It seems to be the same skeleton, indicating to me again through gestures that I’m on the right track. (!)
We get out at the next stop and see a directory with a series of banner-type titles along the top:
AERODYNAMICS *LANGUAGE ATHERTON MEMORIAL LIBRARY KNOTT HALL *ECONOMICS
Someone has an eye for puns. The library is indeed in the middle of A LAKE. 
Alice looks the building over. “It’s just as I remember it, except it doesn’t seem to be where I remember it.” It looks just the same to me–even with the facade pointing southeast. And I remember all the detail the same–including the building number, the notices posted at the entrance, the uniformed guard stationed near the doors, and the older shapely woman–I swear she could be Sally Mears’ mother–as the check-out librarian. And in the distance I see Phoebe Atwood, she of the intellectual bearing and knockout face and figure, at the reference desk busy doing librarian stuff. Alice inspects the applied-science stacks–where I checked out the recipe books that Alice has left at her home–and I decide to investigate some of those huge atlases in the large shelved table near those stacks.
I idly thumb through the Rand McNally Marketing Guide, one of the largest books I have ever seen. I turn a page and see something, inserted in the book, that delights me, and will prove quite interesting to Alice when I show her…
…It is a copy of Cliffs Notes on The Kama Sutra. I stuff it into my pocket for when Alice and I go back to her place 
At this point Alice returns from the stacks. “I ran into Jill McMillan, a friend of mine who works here. She says that my book was given to the library as a donation. The guy who donated the book was Lemoyne.”
“That figures,” I reply, “but you still haven’t told me what’s in the book that’s so important.”
“Yeah, sorry for keeping you in the dark. I promise I’ll tell you all about the book as soon as we get home. Another thing; we seem to be the only two people who know that history has changed. According to a historic plaque I saw, the Lemoyne Company sunk a bunch of concrete pillars in the lake in the late 1970s and built the library on top of them. They also donated the train system.”
I try to put it all together. “So Lemoyne changed history?”
“Yep. I’m sure it was him.”
“But why? And why are we aware of the change?”
“I don’t know” Alice admits.
We leave the library and head for the train. Waiting for us on the platform is the skeleton. He points towards a yacht which is moored nearby and walks over to it. He hasn’t steered us wrong yet, so we follow him as he walks up the gangplank.
Once Alice and I are aboard, the skeleton casts off and takes us out onto the open lake. When we are far away from both the library and the shore, he stops the boat and walks over to a staircase which leads below deck. Alice and I descend the stairs and find…
the mutilated corpses of Phoebe Atwood, Brenda Sharp, and Cornelis Oranjeboom.
Their dismembered bodies are strewn about the room as if they were discarded toys.
As the stench of death fills your nostrils…
I hear the skeleton yell, “I didn’t do this!” He then disappears saying, “A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.”
Both Alice and I are in shock. We turn to each other dumbfounded about what has happened to our friends.
Alice finally breaks the silence. Bearly being able to compose to herself she says, “The ‘person’ who did this is likely the same person who’s trying to alter reality in his or her favor.”
“Lemoyne?” I whisper.
“A little while ago I would’ve been sure it was him,” Alice says in a voice that holds back fear, grief, and outrage. “But now, I’m beginning to think that Lemoyne is just an errand boy used for just a specific job and paid off by altering the past in his favor. There’s somebody else behind Lemoyne–somebody who has a bigger goal than tinkering with the past so his business profits.”
“Do you know who?”
“I have a hunch but we’ve got to get off this boat right now. I’m sure we’re being set up.”
Alice and I dive off the boat into the lake and start swimming for shore. The water is cold and I slowly make progress for the shore. Alice, however, is a surprisingly adept swimmer and gets on land about five minutes before I do.
Soaking wet, we look for shelter and see a small cottage nearby in a grove of douglas firs. We run for the cottage and knock on its door. There’s no answer. I then try the door knob which turns out to be unlocked. Alice and I walk in the cottage…
…and I try several times to shut the door, which appears to have a mis-fitted latch. I see a lever hanging down next to the door and give it a quarter turn upward, clockwise.
The lights go on all over the place and a false wall collapses. Then we see a victrola; its lid pops open and an old shellac record starts to play.
“Oh, the head bone connected to the–neck bone…the neck bone…”
At just that moment a small book falls off the mantelpiece near the false wall. I walk over. It’s a Bible, opened to the 38th chapter of Ezekiel. I’ve read the Bible several times…
Alice glances out the window and yelps in fright. She hurries to me and, quivering in horror, points out the window.
I shudder too, as I see three masses of decaying flesh–ragged flesh over bones–moving around. As the song progresses we sense what the prophet Ezekiel must have seen in his vision of the valley of the dry bones, and make the connect with the old black hymn “Dem Dry Bones.” Indeed–the flesh regenerates, making the bodies more and more whole. Then our fright turns to amazement—we now see the nude, but live again, bodies of Phoebe, Brenda, and Cornelis!
We also turn around, in time to see the skeleton who has guided us, taking on flesh too. Now this skeleton is a whole man, nude of course; but he steps calmly over to a huge wardrobe trunk across the room and selects clothes, very ordinary ones. The three regenerated librarians do likewise.
The former skeleton greets us. “My name is Charles Salbert. Ms. Terwilliger, I can assist you and your friends with the effort to identify anyone hiding behind Lemoyne. I understand you’ve been supoenaed to testify against him next week.”
“January 7 to be exact,” says Alice; she and I have just recovered from the shock. Salbert picks up a cell phone and calls someone and says, crypticallty, “Sector 19, 26A; five others.” Within fifteen minutes a helicopter appears. The pilot lands. Slabert makes hand signals, since our voices can’t be heard over the copter. After a short ride we set down in the field in the back of Alice’s yard. Alice and I and the librarians step out. The courtly Salbert bids us good-bye for now, and declines payment for the ride. He hands Alice a note: As before I can and shall assist you where you cannot assist yourselves. He returns to the copter and flies away.
“Noy that was an experience!” I comment. We’ll have to hear from Phoebe and the others how they would up as carrion! But we have been very busy and it’s time for recreation. Salbert had told us about a carnival set up just out of town.
Harry Rudolph was an old carney, not above cheating customers at the “games of skill” he conducted. His latest effort was skittle ball–swinging a tethered ball around behind a tenpin so it will swing back and knock the pin over. Now Harry was teaching the business to his 18-year-old son Laurance, six months out of high school.
Part of the scam is to set the pin off-center just enough so the ball will either miss it on the backswing or harmlessly bounce off.
Now Alice and I are at the carnival, this time with all fifteen of the Sharps’ children–from the eldest Andrew to the youngest Owen. Also Jock and Lorna are with us. Jock has fully recovered and is now a sworn peace officer, though in mufti.
We approach Harry’s booth and Alice steps up first. She wears a bright orange blouse and black slacks, and her hair is in a rounded bouffant. Harry turns to me and says, “Letting the little woman try her luck, eh?”
Alice speaks with dignity. “Sir, I am not a ‘little woman.’ Here’s the money–”
“First let me show you how we do it,” says Harry politely. “I apologize for sounding patronizing.” Laurance stands in front of the booth and swings the ball around, and it swings back and knocks the tenpin down. The prize for doing it this way is a short-wave radio–two-way–which I notice Alice has been eyeing.
Andrew Sharp has lived up to his name. He urges Alice not to try. But I sense she has been thinking about the matter ever since we approached the booth. “I see how to do it now.” She hands Harry a dollar and he stanrts to hand her the ball.
“Excuse me,” she adds. He had presented the ball to her right. She shifts slightly and takes the ball in her left hand; using a mirror-image of Laurance’s swing, she swings the ball around clockwise, and it swings back and knocks the tenpin off the stand. I catch it and hand it to Laurance. Alice approaches for her radio.
“I can’t accept that. It wasn’t set up,” says Harry. The crowd, which had applauded Alice’s successful effort, groans.
Jock speaks up, subtly showing the badge pinned inside his sweater. “She did it fair and square, Mr. Rudolph. Shall I contact the carnival manager?”
Harry knows when he’s been licked. He hands Alice the radio, and she thanks him. No hard feelings. We walk triumphantly away; I overhear an enthusiastic crowd approaching Harry’s booth.
Alice tells me about the book she located–and from the tone of her voice, the increase in the size of her pupils, and how close she stays to me as she walks that she wants to try this out when we return to her home. In the secret bedroom.
As we leave the carnival a few hours later, Harry waves–holding a big stack of bucks.
We bid Jock and Lorna and the Sharp kids goodbye, and go back to Alice’s secret bedroom. 
suddenly the room goes dark and all are disoriented.
After a few minutes the dizzy feeling abates, and while darkness pervades the atmosphere, the room now feels cool and damp. It smells of dirt, and there is now a crunching noise under foot and the sounds of dripping water.
A blinding spot light appears, and when vision returns, it shows April Blonda tied to the wall spread eagled.
You can now see that you are in a large cavern. April is terrified. She doesn’t look harmed, and then she catches sight of you.
“Help me,” she whimpers. “I think I’ve been here for days. They’ve been torturing me.”
But I just saw her recently, you think.
You walk towards her, getting ready to release the bonds.
“There’s something you’ve gotta know,” she whispers, “none of us are gonna get out of here alive.”
Suddenly, the ropes holding her arms and legs jerk and rip poor April apart. The room is showered in blood and parts of April.
Hollow laughter fills the cavern, and…
You lick the blood and gore from you lips. You then turn around quickly to look for the source of the cackle. You can not seem to place where it came from, it sounded as if it originated in you head.
You begin to mull over the situation when…
…the rift wafts away. April is still tied up, but very much alive and whole–and terrified.
“Some monstrous character made me wear my Mom’s oldest blouse and jeans! And they don’t fit me! I burst right out of them!”
I dare not approach April, however. I can see evil characters lurking nearby.
Then I remember Salbert’s promise. And I hear a helicopter landing outside again.
Salbert is once again the skeleton–but has a ruse in mind. He tells me, Alice, Jock, and the husky boys Mike Bradley and Artie Brown–what his plan is.
We dig a grave off to the north side of the utility shed. We hastily fashion a tombstone and inscribe on it,
“APRIL ANN BLONDA
1988-2002
beloved daughter of Robert and Mary Blonda
Brutally tortured and murdered
to our heavenly Father we entrust her spirit
December 28, 2002.”
Alice, who can mimic girls’ voices, stands near the shed and speaks in a wailing voice, “Mother! Dad! Bobby! George! Where are you?!!”
Two sinister voices near the tower speak.
“She survived that torture? I thought we ripped her apart!”
“Well, she won’t survive now. I think she ran over behind that shed over there.” The two evil men run that way.
They come upon the grave.
“April Ann–she’s already buried?”
With that the tombstone falls backwards. The ground parts slightly and the skeleton sits up and howls like a banshee!
The two men are white with fright as they run off the property. One dies of a heart attack across the highway from the Terwilligers’, and the other is taken babbling to a mental institution; he’ll spend the rest of his days in a padded cell.
The skeleton becomes Salbert again. We untie April, clad in bra and panties. Alice gives her a sweater and skirt to wear; amazingly, they fit. April cries a little but she returns to the surface with us, and Daniel and his wife, who goes on duty soon, will drive her home.
Alice says, “See what I mean? Some of those rifts can be really mean.”
I needed no further convincing. But as Salbert now suggested, the worst of it has now ended for her–and, we hope, for April…
Alice and I return to the underground bedroom, where she opens the Kama Sutra book:
{hjijack}
EXCUSE ME, but WHY do you keep undoing every damn plot point I create dougie?
Why are you so seemingly slap dash in your writing that you cannot include what came before and you revise out most things I do. That is not being creative, that is showing a lack of vision so things can stay as you want them, which goes against the concept of this ongoing story.
By the way… carriage returns and paragraphs are a feature you could have in your posts where this thread is concerned.
{/hijack}
Several hours later, Alice and I have tried out most of the positions listed, and we finally get around to talking about the recipe book and what’s so important about it.
“I’ll show you the text,” Alice begins. “The trick is that you only read every fifth word of the recipe. Here, I’ll show you… hey, wait a minute! Where’s the book?”
The recipe book is gone. We search the room, and then the catacombs, but we can’t find it. The book has been stolen. Tee conclusion is inescapable: someone, probably Lemoyne, knows about the catacombs and the underground bedroom.
We return to the bedroom and sit on the bed.
“Well, what do we do now?” I ask Alice.
[aside to Hastur]
Don’t take it so hard. I was merely appalled by the death-and-dismemberment motif you added. I had never contemplated murder of positive characters when I first posted to this thread, or before or since. I had included April Blonda as an incidental character, rather than an element of a horrific murder mystery. It’s the same with Phoebe and the others…I just wish there was a way to sustain it without subjecting my non-criminal characters to a grisly murder…
—d.m.
[/aside to Hastur]
“You remember that carney?”
“Of course! Harry Rudolph! He could sniff something like this out…takes one to know one, I guess. And I think some of that rubbed off on Laurance too. Well, the carnival will be here for another week.”
“We have something else to consider,” Alice adds. “Don’t be too antipathetic toward the rifts… you know, with the dry bones and the Salbert skeleton.”
“You mean these situations should take care of themselves?”
“Certainly. We must go through the motions when dealing with a crime, but keep in mind that it’s not likely that April Blonda or those librarians are doomed.”
“Very well… your point [and yours, Hastur :)] is well taken. We do have the 171 gnomes and Lemoyne and the situations your parents have brought up to consider… and Salbert probably has other fish to fry. I defer to you.”
Alice gets sultry again and lies on her back. All this time we’ve been lying side by side naked. “Any more Kama Sutra tstuff to try?”
“Probably not; we’ve even exhausted the Cliff Notes.”
“But we’ve not exhausted each other…” I see Alice’s pupils grow big again; and I’m close enough to her chest to hear her heartbeat, even as we know some more surprises are in store…
suddenly the room shifts, morphs, Alice waves to me as my vision fades and goes to black.
I awake in a bright white room. I look around… padded walls. Hey… I’m in a straitjacket!
The door to the room opens and a short bald man in a lab coat comes through.
“I am Doctor Marston,” the man says. “I see that you have finally come out of sedation. Let us take a moment and discuss your delusions…”
However, just like that, I’m back in the bedroom with Alice.
“Where were you?” she asks. “You had this distant look in your eyes.”
“Nothing,” I say. “I was just thinking of something. But I’ve seem to have suddenly forgot what I was thinking of.”
Alice sees this as a time to press the remote button to her stereo to and play her Portishead CD again. We hear the thereman opening to “Mysteron” followed by Beth Gibbons’ voice and, next thing we know, we’re more or less occupied for the next hour or so.
Afterward, while we take a break in our activities, a question reoccurs to me.
“Alice?” I ask. “Who’s James Erdmann? I don’t think I ever found that out.”
"James Erdmann is a mathmematician who’s sort of a peripheral member of my network, says Alice who then leans over on side toward me and starts running her right index finger in a pattern on my chest. Her pattern is that of a sideways eight–the sign for infinity.
“Is he one of the few people who can fully understand the contents of ‘23 Herring Recipes?’” I inquire.
“Not from what I’ve heard,” Alice says. “Although he is very bright. After you and Lorna mentioned him, I ran a check on him. He’s been doing nothing but teaching mathematics at some small college near San Francisco for the last six years so I don’t think he’s the one behind all this mischief. Still, there were some interesting things about Erdmann that I was going to look into before we got distracted.”
“Do you want to follow that trail now?”
“It’s worth a look.”
With that, Alice and I get up, get dressed, and head to the house where Alice books two tickets to San Francisco.
An hour later, we walk into the airport…
the room shifts again, nausea overwhelms me, and again I am in the padded room in straitjacketed bondage.
“So,” Dr. Marsten says, “How long have you been having these delusions about a life with Alice?”
Dr. Marsten stares at me as confusion overwhelms me.
He taps his pencil against his clip board.
“Alice died five years ago. You should know that. You killed her.”
I’m dazed and stunned. A minute ago, Alice and I walked into an airport. Now, I’m restrained in a mental hospital and am being accused of killing Alice five years ago.
“Killed her?” I say incredulously. “I would never do ANYTHING to hurt Alice. And she is not dead.”
“Very good performance Mr. _____,” Dr. Marsten says cynically. “You almost have me convinced that you didn’t kill Alice and she’s still alive. But you must realize the longer you hold out, the longer you must remain here.”
“Where am I?” I ask.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Dr. Marsten replies. He then pushes an intercom button and says, “Send in Dr. Kimerra and Mr. Crimson please.”
A minute later, I hear a buzz. Dr. Marsten opens the door and two men walk in. The first one wears a blue suit with a tag on his lapel identifying him as Dr. Kimerra. I recognize him immediately as the sandy-haired man who earlier walked up to Alice and Shirley and referred to them as “Helena” and “Shirley” respectively.
The second one–Mr. Crimson–is even more disturbingly familiar. He wears a sold black suit, a red pinstriped shirt, and suspenders. He’s “the center man”–the lead interrogator who earlier cuffed me to a chair for shock treatment.
The three men huddle and discuss something in a corner of the cell out just out of my hearing range. Then, Mr. Crimson walks up to me and says…
Sorry, but the fourth sentence of the sixth paragraph should read:
I recognize him immediately as the sandy-haired man who earlier walked up to Alice and Lorna and referred to them as “Helena” and “Shirley” respectively.
“You’re far too purple, you know.” He grins nastily.
Confused, I look at him. He watches me for a moment, apparently expecting some reaction that I do not show. Abruptly, he turns back to the others.
Then…
…without warning there is a loud crash and the door to the hall bursts open. The skeleton walks into the room, holding a fire axe. For a moment, the three men stand there stunned. Then Dr. Marsten reaches into his coat and pulls out a gun. The skeleton is too fast for him, however, and Marsten collapses in a heap with the fire axe imbedded in his forehead. Mr. Crimson and Dr. Kimerra flee out another door.
The skeleton releases me from the straightjacket and then turns into Salbert again. “Marsten was lying, _____. These guys are on Lemoyne’s payrole.”
“Where is Alice?” I ask him desperately, “is she OK?”
“She’s alive, but she’s definitely not OK. Do you remember what happened at the airport?”
I shake my head.
“Well,” Salbert explains, “you and Alice had just entered the airport when a couple of guys dressed like security guards detained you. They took you to a back room, drugged you, and tossed you into a van. They took you to this hospital (It’s the Eloise Center for the Criminally Insane, by the way). Alice is here somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“What were they going to do with me?”
“Lemoyne wants you out of the way. Under the guise of treating you, these guys were going to torture you both emotionally and physically until they drove you to suicide. That Crimson guy is a genuine psycopathic killer and a patient at this place.”
“He’s the one who should be in this straightjacket,” I sneer.
We hear the shouting from the direction that Crimson and Kimerra fled in. Salbert grabs my hand and leads me out into the hall…
and suddenly stops.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “A skeleton running around the hall is going to look suspicious.”
Salbert ducks into an open examination room and rips a plastic model skeleton from its hook and wheels. He then rolls the empty frame over to me and ties a string around his skull.
“Hook me up,” he says while holding the end of the string up to the hook. “This way we can make our way down the hall with less notice.”
I connect Salbert up to the hook and frame and he goes limp so his impersonation of a fake model skeleton is more convincing. We then proceed down the hall in the direction where we heard Crimson and Kimerra.
“Where do we look?” I whisper to Salbert.
“Until we have a concrete plan, I suggest we peer in any door that are ajar or unlocked,” Salbert whispers back as he hangs from the hook. “But be subtle about it.”
The first door I see is for Room 23. I check the door knob. It’s unlocked so I open the door a crack and peer in. There, I see…
…a padded cell. I can hear struggling sounds in the room. “We’d better not try this alone,” says Salbert. “Use your cell phone and dial Menu 996-0-1-##, then say ‘Medic!’ at the top of your lunds.”
I comply. I can hear footsteps–from both ends of the hall. One set faint, the other much stronger. The near footsteps turn out to be Professor Fields and Officer Don Clay–and Jock. Now Salbert says, “Let’s go into the room.”
There is Alice, in a straitjacket and with a gag in her mouth. I am horrified by this and manage to free her. Just at that moment Jock, the lawyer, and Officer Clay, gun drawn, come in.
Alice, wearing light pajamas under her straitjacket, leaps out of the “bed” in the cell and embraces me, crying hard.
“We’ll have to leave immediately,” says Professor Fields.
Two medics come in, and Officer Clay orders them to get out of the way. Prof. Fields shows them a writ of Habeas Corpus and says the institution will be criminally liable if they interfere. We get a heavy robe and slippers for Alice, who is still sobbing and clinging to me as we walk out. I hastily scribble a note saying “A. Terwilliger released today”: and drop it on the counter at Admissions.
Outside we meet Lorna, Alice’s parents–and Jack Sharp, along with fellow rich guy George Galloway, Samantha’s father. Lorna, Paul, and Eda have filled him and Mr. Sharp in on what all has happened. "I’ve been trying to get the goods on that S.O.B. Lemoyne for years, " George says. “And that overlord of his, as well.” We’re now in the Sharps’ big van, but not to return to Alice’s house; we’re going to Fields’ office and then to the courthouse. “I’m not sure,” George continues, "but the big man may be Dr. Marston, or someone else with ties to the mental hospital.
Alice, still trembling and clinging to me, tells of her harrowing adventure. But she interrupts herself to ask Mr. Galloway, “Who else might be implicated?”
Mr. Galloway wants to hear Alice’s story, and, of course, so do I and the others, especially attorney Fields. So Alice waits to tell us of her ordeal while Mr. Galloway tells us what he has found out…