Chapter
Thirty-Six
I look at the words on the screen. The words stare back at me with glib
defiance. Despite our very best efforts, we have returned home, but to a home
none of us ever dreamed of visiting.
For a moment none of us speak. We all stare at the screen, all keeping our lips
sewn shut. The first thing that strikes me is that, at first glance, not a lot
has changed in the world. There are no flying cars or spaceships. No aliens or
desolate nuclear landscapes like some doombringers might have us believe. The
world has continued spinning, and all that appears to have taken hold is
digital media.
‘How is this possible?’ Yates asks.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sandra adds and her eyebrows lean to meet in the middle.
I turn to her. I feel breathless. I’m part afraid and part excited. We’ve
essentially travelled to the future. I don’t know if that was by intention, if
we’re the first or we’ll be the last, but somehow, by skipping between worlds
we’ve become travellers in time. I dare not say the words out loud in case they
sound far to inexplicable to support. ‘We weren’t from this year,’ I say. ‘The
last time I checked it was 2015. I think anyway, it’s not like we keep
calendars.’
‘It was,’ Yates replies. ‘I keep a diary,’ he adds as though the admission of
that fact was embarrassing.
I consider the image of a diary floating in the air with a feverish fountain
pen skipping across the pages. It’s no wonder that people used to think Yates’s
house was haunted.
‘But this is unbelievable,’ Sandra exclaims. ‘People always said they used to
think they were in the desert for weeks, I remember one poor man said a month.
But of course only minutes go by.’
‘Maybe time behaves differently between the plains?’ Yates suggests.
‘Plains, I like that,’ Elle says. ‘So much better than worlds.’
‘But sixty years?’ I reply.
Elle takes on a peculiar expression. I know what she’s thinking,
I’m thinking the exact same thing. If sixty years have passed, then, in lieu of
extreme old age, our parents might have joined us among the dead. It’s strange
that only a year ago, or apparently sixty now, the dead conjured such a
frightening image in my mind. It was the unknown and the unknown must be
quashed and rarely spoken about. Now, death is just another stage of life.
‘My dad,’ she says quietly. ‘He might be looking
for me.’
‘We can go and find him,’ I say, happily. I’m pleased to have the opportunity
to help Elle for a change. My quest to find Penny has so often left her needs
aside. Now they can take the forefront.
Sandra buts in, ‘Excuse me, don’t you think you should let everyone know what’s
happening before you go gallivanting off. Teague’s fault this all may be, but
these people need direction. They’ve been robbed of their home and dumped in an
alien world, plain, however you want to put it.’
‘Sandra,’ I say. ‘I want to help, really I do, but I’m not a leader. I can’t
tell these people what to do with their lives. I don’t even know what to do
with mine.’
Sandra wasn’t for convincing. ‘But you must know somewhere where they can go?’
I wrack my brains. I look to Elle and Yates. Both of them look back, clearly
searching for answers themselves and finding none.
‘Look, Easton,’ Sandra says. ‘I’m not asking you to find a solution. But a lot
of people were willing to follow you out of the town. I hear things, people
don’t keep secrets there…wherever there is now. Like it or not, whoever did
this to them, you were going to leave the desert, now you have and we’ve all
followed you here. You know this world…’
‘But I don’t!’ I respond. ‘This is sixty years from the world I knew.’
‘Then we can all find it together,’ Elle says. ‘But I have a suggestion. Why
don’t we get away from the scorchmark and the roadblocks and all of this mayhem
before people start coming.’ She looks me in the eye. I know she’s trying to
tell me something and I have to search for a second before I realise what.
We’re back in the real world now. Who’s to say Windermere and her friends
aren’t still in a position of power. They’ll know this has happened and they
won’t leave it lying for long.
‘We’d better move then,’ I say.
‘The house?’ Yates says. ‘If it’s still standing there.’ His voice
is sad and I realise how much the old cottage meant to Yates, despite the years
of misery he spent there.
Elle
looks at me. I notice the eyebrows pressed together and the way she absently
pulls on her cardigan sleeves. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Don’t you think that’s going to be the first place they
look for us?’
‘Who?’
She raises her eyebrows as though it should be obvious.
‘Windermere and her people. How do we know they’re not already coming?’
‘It’s sixty years in the future,’ I say. ‘How do we know
they’re even still around.’
Even as I say it I know I’m silly to even think the
words. The dead have no life expectancy.
‘Well where can we go? Somewhere with a lot of space.’
We think for a second. Sandra waits with anticipation.
She expects us to come out with the perfect place to support a hundred people
all at once.
My
mind draws a blank. The commotion is raising all around us. There are more
police now, and fire engines. The woman we saved from the car is still speaking
to someone, though she seems to have calmed somewhat. Where can we go? An
abandoned apartment block? That’d be nice – Ghost Towers we could call it. Or
Spooky Heights. I wish I could ask Benjamin. I start and think he might be in
Central Park even now. Has he continued the same routine? Has he been waiting
for me for our game of chess for the past sixty years?
Just
as I’m drawing a blank, Yates perks up.
‘Where’s
the last place Windermere will come looking for us?’
‘Pet
home? Refuge centre? Anywhere with nice people,’ Elle grumbles.
‘Thacker,’
he replies. ‘We go to Thacker’s house.’
Yates
greets my stare with a sense of enthusiasm I’m not accustomed to finding in
him. Thacker’s house was big, but it also contained Thacker, the woman who sent
us to the Doldrums in the first place. What if we get there and she responds by
sending us back?
‘What
if she’s waiting there?’ I ask.
‘Then
we face her,’ Yates says. ‘She has to answer for what she did.’
‘So
who’s side are we on?’ Elle asks. ‘Because it’s starting to sound like we’re
with Windermere?’
‘We’re
on our own side.’ I reply a lot quicker than I expect of myself. ‘We’ve got
involved in a lot of stuff and we have to stop it all one way or another. I’m
sick of people sending us places, making us do things. This woman killed us
when we were already dead. I think we should get some payback.’
‘Excuse
me,’ Sandra explains. ‘Your revenge mission sounds very exciting, but what
about all these people here? Are you really going to be dragging them along
with you?’
‘I’ve
already thought of that,’ Yates says. ‘We can’t do this alone, Easton. We’re
going to need some help.’
‘I
think I know where he’s going with this,’ Elle groans, placing her hand against
her forehead. ‘Are you sure we should be doing this, Yates. After everything he
did?’
‘Oh
God,’ I say. ‘Not Graham.’
Yates
goes to jump to his boyfriend’s defence.
‘Is
he still you boyfriend?’ I ask. ‘What’s the relationship rule when one of the
parties is kidnapped after a big argument? So much has happened since then?
Sixty years of things have happened.’
‘But
we have to try. You said yourself Graham could be brilliant if he applied
himself. This could be a chance for him.’
‘I’m
sorry, who’s Graham?’ asks Sandra.
‘Yates’s
boyfriend,’ Elle explains. ‘He was alive but figured out how to switch to the
dead side and back again.’
‘Sounds
like an impressive boy.’
‘He’s
an idiot.’
‘An
impressive idiot,’ Yates defends.
‘Impressively
idiotic,’ Elle mutters.
‘He
did have a lot of equipment lying around,’ I say, acting the mediator. ‘If he
still has it that is.’
‘Be
that as it may, you can’t drag a hundred people around a world they don’t
know,’ Sandra says. ‘They’ve been through enough.’
‘Sandra’s
right, Easton,’ Elle says.
I
press my fingers to my temples. Another decision. And once again I’m asked to
decide people’s futures when I don’t even know my own.
‘How
about this,’ I suggest. ‘We take everyone to Yates’s house. We can travel a
couple of miles down the road so Windermere doesn’t notice any activity there
if she’s watching or she can in fact do that. Then us three go to find Graham.’
Sandra
nods. She still frowns but her nod shows some sign of agreement.
‘Sounds
like a plan,’ Elle says. ‘Now, who’s going to explain to this lot how to
travel?’
‘How
about you explain it to me and I’ll show them?’ Sandra suggests.
I
launch into the explanation of travelling, how we can step through the fabric
of the universe as if we were crossing miles in less than a second. I explain the Edge and how you can be falling
and know you’re moving forward at the same time. I don’t mention that we can
revisit our own memories. One step at a time.
‘And
you’re sure this is safe?’ she says.
‘Everyone
does it,’ Elle replies.
‘That
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe or a good idea.’
‘Trust
us, it’s safe. We’ll all go together the first time.’
Sandra
looks dubious. ‘Are you sure there’s no other way? We all just got here in a
similar way and lost most of our party.’ She looks down for a second as though
she’s just realised what she said. ‘It’ll be hard to convince people to do the
same thing again.’
‘It’ll
be this or walking,’ Yates says. ‘And it’s a long way from here.’
Sandra acquiesces and we cross to the group. As we reach
them, Sandra picks up the pace.
‘Where are Richard and Beth?’ she asks. She casts around.
‘And Fernando?’
It
strikes me how well Sandra knew all these people, how much she must be hurting
inside after losing so many.
‘They
got tired of waiting,’ explains one man with an arm around his partner. ‘After
everything, I can’t blame them. Where’s Teague? A lot of us would like to talk
to him.’
‘We’ll
be finding Teague, you mark my words,’ Sandra replies with fire in her eyes.
I’d like to talk to the man myself. Still the knot of quilt squirms in my
stomach and I don’t think it will go away. But then, should I feel bad? I
mistrusted Teague with good reason. It didn’t mean he had to switch back to his
old ways just because I thought he might. Even so, my excuse doesn’t help me
unclench.
‘We’re
going to go somewhere safe,’ Elle explains. ‘Just while we find out what’s
happened.’
‘We
want to go back,’ someone shouts, a woman’s voice from the back of the crowd.
‘We didn’t choose this.’
My
anger rises at the injustice of it all. I didn’t choose this for these people
either and now they want me to fix it. They’ll stand there like sheep waiting
to be led, and then complain when they don’t like the direction they’re taken in;
never considering that they could lead themselves.
‘By
all means, feel free to leave,’ I say before I stop myself. ‘I didn’t want this
for any of you, but we’re going to do our best to make sure you all find a home
where you want it.’ I pause before saying. ‘This world isn’t perfect, but no
world was. I was forced to become a member of yours but I met some brilliant
people. Isn’t that all that matters?’
Elle
reaches over and squeezes my arm. In that second I consider how far I’ve come.
From the day I died in a car crash to now. The Easton of a year ago would have
never stood up for himself, or even spoke in front of a crowd of people. I’ve
grown. And not through easy means, but then I guess no one does. If this isn’t
alive then I don’t know what is.
Slowly,
we convince everyone to join hands. We make jokes about this being like a hippy
sit in. Some people are won over. There are some more grumblers, some more
leavers, but eventually we all band together. In the end there are fifty of us,
fifty brave travellers willing to fight the tide of whatever life throws at
them.
Now
we have a direction, a means to an end. We will end this feud with Thacker and
Windermere and get on with our own lives. We’ll find the people we love and
start a new life in this world shared with the living.
As
I close my eyes and step into the cold black nothing, the smell of haybales and
dusty books in my memories, I take a first step forwards. A step of my own
accord, not dragged sideways by someone who thinks they know better.
