Friday 24 October 2014

Box Set - Chapter Thirty-Six

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.





Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 271

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.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 270

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.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 269

‘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?’