by Sean McMahon
He’d spent a solid twenty-or-so hours mulling that one over. How a radio receiver could pick up anything at all in their shared state was mind-boggling, but why the batteries retained their power long enough to allow for a solid one-minute-and-twenty-seven seconds of uninterrupted music before dying completely, he had no idea.
Unbeknownst to Peter, the point of re-entry into the timestream brought with it a gift. One that took the form of a spike in residual energy, which transferred from his body and into the radio clutched in his grasp. Not enough to power a lithium battery of a smart-phone by any means, but just enough to send a charge into the more conventional cathodes and anodes of the batteries of old, allowing for the build up of electrons to serenade them with a song.
Always the same song; “Mr. Sandman.”
Always eerie as hell.
Always fizzling out into nothingness before the song itself could finish.
‘Because, honey,’ began Fearne, for what felt like the one-hundredth time, ‘it makes us sound like we’re in a tribute folk band. And that is not as cool as you think it is. Nor is it how I want to be remembered once we get back.’
‘We’ve re-Pete’ed, what? Seven times now? And–’
‘Just stop.’ said Fearne.
‘What?’ said Peter with as much innocence as he could muster.
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Doing what?’ he said guiltily.
‘Adding emphasis to the Pete part in repeat. Stop it.’
‘Why are you so against that?’
‘Babe, I love you. You know this. But so help me God if you call it Re-Pete’ing again I’m going to beat you to death with my stiletto.’
Peter fell silent, lamenting over how relationships could be challenging at the best of times. The way the person you live with chews their cereal, as if channelling the spirit of a cement mixer that has an inability to break down cornflakes, so just churns them over and over into infinity whilst you sit their nursing your passive aggression, stealthily turning the volume up on the TV in the tiniest of increments, taking comfort in the sweet release that will only come in four and half minutes when they finally finish the bowl and exorcise the industrial-machinery-demon that has claimed their soul for the malevolent end of breaking your own spirit for no other reason than because it can.
For example.
But there was something about time travelling together that not only highlighted these minor gripes, but also amplified them. Indeed, a fact both Peter and Fearne were quickly realising was that having only each other to talk to and interact with was not quite the holistic honeymoon either of them could have predicted.
Of course, it was fun at first. Downright adorable, in fact. Getting to spectate on their friends living out their lives. It was extremely eye-opening too, seeing how people acted when they believed they weren’t being watched.
Case in point; Peter really didn’t have Will down as the sort of man that would spend so much time rummaging within his nostrils, eager to acquire the rare nose gold that occupied the caverns within.
Whereas Fearne had always wondered how Daisy acted when she wasn’t in a group environment.
Robert’s wife was always so positive and happy, giving the best advice to those who needed it. Fearne had almost expected her friend to perhaps have the mouth of a dock worker behind closed doors, possibly knocking back secret cigarettes and vodka shots. But, rather disappointingly, Daisy was every bit as wonderful to her husband when no one else was watching at all as she was when they had company.
Jerry wandered past them, then cocked his ear, turning on the spot to face them.
‘Eek, hey Jerry!’ said Fearne, cooing enough to make Peter recoil at the thought of the inevitable parenting that was edging ever closer.
Responding to his name, he ran over to them, his tail wagging enthusiastically.
‘Wait, what’s happening?’ said Peter, as Jerry pounced on Fearne and began licking her out-of-phase face, each lick generating lashings of electrical energy that sparked across her skin.
‘Oh no!’ said Fearne, in quick realisation.
‘How is that possible? We can’t interact with anything or anyone here!’ said Peter, utterly confused.
They had yet to figure out what had caused them to become trapped within their time-loop, the memories on the lead up to their deaths unhelpfully locked away behind a mental block that would only crumble when they were sub-consciously, and emotionally, capable of comprehending it.
It was a mercy, in this instance. For if they were aware of what had brought them here, they would have also been forced to deal with the truly awful implications of Jerry being in-phase with them; that during their last stand with their murderer, Jerry had tried to aid in Peter’s escape up the staircase of Kevin’s basement. That in doing so, he had put himself in the firing line of Malcolm’s fury. And so it was that Jerry had become the first dog in the entire universe to become a time traveller.
A canine Restarter, or in this case, a spectating Repeater, that had suffered the same fate as Peter and Fearne.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Curious Case of the Dog in the Timeline
Timeline Alpha – 49th Repeat – Saturday, August 25th, 11:27am
Having Jerry as a companion brought with it certain perks; for one thing it was far more difficult to fall into a cycle of despair over the futility of their new existence when they had his well-being to consider and, slowly but surely, the needs of the tenacious Springer spaniel superseded their own.
They played with him regularly, gave him their undivided attention in an attempt to distract him every time he tried to drink from one of the many water sources the three of them had encountered, as he was forced once again to lay down in defeat, huffing with frustration.
‘Poor little guy, just can’t draw a sip,’ said Fearne, kneeling down on the ground next to him and ruffling his ears, the crackle of blue sparks causing his tail to wag rather than distressing him.
‘Makes me glad I haven’t felt thirsty the entire time we’ve been here,’ said Peter, not for the first time wondering why on Earth that was.
They had been watching their friends from afar, and were currently following a handful of them as they embarked on their woodland walk. Having stopped to tend to Jerry, they took the opportunity to take stock of what they had observed on their latest attempt at fusing together the multitude of puzzle pieces, which made up the entirety of their thirty-three hours of repeating time.
Their friend Will was currently lamenting how they had hit a dead-end, and would need to double back on themselves in order to make it back to Fir Lodge.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Fearne, as Jerry ceased feeling sorry for himself, stood up, and shook out his body from nose to tail, before waddling off to sniff only God knew what. ‘This thing we’re caught in?’
‘Repeating, you mean?’ said Peter.
Fearne had finally given in and allowed Peter to refer to themselves as Repeaters, but it still wasn’t growing on her in any substantial way.
She was honestly just tired of having to come up with new ways to describe their activity within the bubble of time they were imprisoned in.
‘Suuure. Yeah, that. Something must have caused it. This can’t all be random.’
‘We’ve spent tons of repeats going over this,’ Peter replied wearily. ‘It always happens the same way; we drop Jerry off, return to the lodge, the creepy fog rolls in, and boom. We’re right back where we started.’
“Restarted?” he thought. “Nah.” Repeated was better.
‘Exactly. Which indicates that whatever sent us back here happened before we returned to the party.’
‘We’ve retraced our steps multiple times,’ pointed out Peter. ‘If there was something else to it, we’d have seen it by now.’
‘I don’t…’ something was blocking Fearne from thinking clearly. As if she knew the answer to that question, but was somehow unable to articulate it. Every time sh
e came close to forming a coherent thought, her mind drifted. ‘Is it me or is it getting harder to concentrate?’
‘Yeah, now that you mention it,’ said Peter. ‘Also, is it my imagination, or is it getting harder to focus on what the gang are saying?’ he added, referring to their friends.
She’d noticed it too.
In fact, it was just another thing on a very long list of issues that were gradually filling her with a mentally debilitating sense of trepidation.
For example, Fearne couldn't help but notice the saturation that had occurred in the short time they had been away since this repeat and the last. As if someone had removed the Instagram filter on their lives and dropped the overall hue by a drastic percentage. Their last repeat had definitely been more Mayfair, colour wise. In stark contrast, this new loop they had entered into was more...
"Hudson," thought Fearne happily. God, she missed her phone.
Before she was stuck inside the weekend that refused to end, there was not an hour that went by when she wasn’t either scrolling through her social media feed, or applying a carefully tweaked filter to a photo of the two of them. The withdrawal was accentuated by the inherent boredom that came from not being able to interact with anything in the physical world. All they had with them was the retro cordless radio that Peter was clutching every time they started over.
“Start-Over,” she thought. That sounded marginally better than repeats.
*
After a short while, their canine cohort decided it was time to lead Peter and Fearne away from the woods and back the way they came.
He had taken them under his wing ever since he had discovered they could see him. It had been driving the poor dog crazy for his first handful of trips back through time; unable to interact with anyone, especially his dad. Despite the fact he had no real comprehension of the passage of time, Jerry had felt constantly burdened by his ineffectual attempts at falling back in-favour with the humans at Fir Lodge. He had tried all manner of things to make it back into their good graces, hoping to regain his status of being a good boy.
That had all changed on his fourth trip into the past. Just as he was starting to suspect that he was, in reality, a bad dog – as if he were being punished for a crime he could not remember committing – the humans were having another meeting and eating food. He really couldn’t believe his luck at how predictable this group of people were when it came to when they ate.
It had taken Jerry a while to find his way back to them, what with not having the advantage of his sense of smell, which had only recently become unreliable. Instead, he had to focus on actually learning the way to where the food would be.
However, as his dad had often told him, he was a clever boy, and had mastered the route much faster than even he would have expected, were it possible for Jerry to quantify such an arbitrarily redundant musing as “trial and error.”
He simply repeated a task until it yielded results. Or it didn’t.
It was only when he entered the garden and saw another dog just like him, breaching his territory without so much as a customary sniff that he’d had enough. Not even a sign of bowing in submissive appreciation.
That annoyed Jerry, and he decided he could not stand for it.
He ran at the dog and barked for attention, entirely unaware that he was barking at his past-self, what with never having seen his own reflection in three dimensions before. Jerry’s past-self was immediately aware of his presence, and after scoffing a sausage given to him by a woman he would later understand to be called “Ra-ra”, he sauntered off to give his time-travelling self some space.
Jerry the Restarter had tried and tried to eat the scraps of food that had fallen beneath the picnic bench, until eventually realising his attempts were pointless.
It was during this futile endeavour that he first caught wind of a new scent; one that smelled like rain and thunder, two things that usually put him on edge, but in this instance had led him to the only two humans that could see him; Peter and Fearne.
After three more jumps back into his own past, he had finally managed to track them down. And now, here he was, weeks later, still teaming up with the only two people he could sense and smell in the same way he could when he was alive.
With a jolt, Jerry was pulled from his own doggish thoughts as he realised they were approaching his home. Jerry felt a surge of discomfort, for reasons he couldn’t quite rationalise. Partly, because he was a dog, but equally because his long-term memory was uncharacteristically shrouded by a feeling of confusion. He knew he should be rushing home to see his dad, who would surely be worried about him. But something was repelling him from that place, as if a crow-scarer resided within the humble lodge, waiting to generate a huge bang if he so much as thought about returning. Or worse, a handsy child with jam-covered fingers eager to ruin his day by making his coat all sticky.
Jerry shuddered at the prospect of that.
He adjusted the route he was taking, and gave the lodge that was once his home a wide berth, drawing the attention of a very astute Fearne.
*
‘That’s the second time he’s done that,’ noted Fearne, as she observed Jerry dodging out of the road to stay away from his home.
‘Hmm,’ said Peter absently, wondering if he could influence any of his friends to put the footie on this afternoon.
They had learnt that the power of suggestion seemed to result in a feedback loop of sorts; if he said the same words over and over enough, sometimes his past-self would repeat them back in the past as he uttered them. But with two words being his record, he was trying to determine the best phrase to utter in the hope it would lead to a tangible decision being made. “Football on, maybe?”
‘Pete, have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’
He turned around to face Fearne, who had stopped and was standing several yards behind him, now outside Kevin’s lodge.
Jerry, meanwhile, was hunched down in the long grass on the opposite side of the road to them, having none of what he assumed was going down.
‘Of course?’ he said, knowing full well this was a trap.
Regrettably, the rising in his voice coupled with the end of his response sounded suspiciously like he was asking a question, rather than stating a cold, hard fact.
‘Oh Lordy, Peter.’
Fearne ran a hand through her long brunette-coloured hair, utterly crushed that even when she was the only other person on the entire planet that he could interact with, he had still managed to find a way to not listen to her.
He tried to disarm her with his trademark smoulder, but Fearne couldn’t be bought.
‘Don’t you give me that look,’ she said, the dimples in her cheeks, as always, betraying her attempt at conveying true anger. ‘I said, what if we’ve been thinking about this all wrong? What’s the one thing you come back with every time a repeat is triggered?’
‘You?’ said Peter, trying his best to regain ground, but ultimately still being the worst at paying attention.
‘Yes Peter, ten points to bloody Gryffindor for stating the obvious. I meant besides Jerry and me.’
‘Oh, the radio!’
‘More specifically, the radio from Jerry’s place!’ she said, mimicking the build-up just like she recalled Hal did whenever he geared up towards a mic-drop moment.
‘So, you’re saying we should put it back?’ said Peter, still rather lost.
‘What the fu–? No! How would that even remotely…’ she took a breath and exhaled sharply. ‘I’m saying, that whatever happened to us may have a connection to this place. I say we spend the remainder of this weekend here!’
Seeing no reason other than the rambunctious shiver that ran down his spine and filled his stomach with dread, Peter reluctantly agreed to Fearne’s proposal, unaware that this decision would send ripples across time that would come back to hit them like a tidal wave when they finally reached the shore that represented their future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
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The Lake of the Damned
Timeline Alpha – 486th Repeat – Friday, August 24th, 12:02pm
They landed abruptly into a fresh loop, as Peter clutched on to the memory he was replaying in his mind prior to the previous thirty-three-hours coming to their natural end. He had been running over the events they had witnessed all those repeats ago.
Even now, knowing what they knew, having seen it with their own temporally-discombobulated eyes, it didn’t seem real. Like watching someone else’s lives play out. Literally, it turned out, to the bitter end. Seeing their own deaths had given Peter nothing if not a darker sense of humour.
He shook away the already-fuzzy memory, pulling himself back to whatever constituted the present. After a relentlessly tumultuous fling with the harsh mistress known as “trial and error”, the Repeaters had at least discovered a powerful secret that lurked within their own fragmented consciousness; a ferociously versatile energy that imbued them with a monumental amount of leverage against the rising tide of their circular nightmare.
They had initially dismissed the short bursts of static shocks they continually experienced when connecting with each other in their own past, incorrectly assuming it held no purpose other than to keep them exactly that. Apart. But they eventually stumbled across the game-changing side-effects that prolonged contact afforded them.
During a particularly dismal repeat, they had broken down, collapsing in each other’s arms as their memories began to fail, finding themselves truly on the cusp of being swallowed up by the ruthless timestream that held them captive. This sadness had led to a passionate embrace between the two of them; one fuelled by both their undying love for one another, and their intense will to rebel against the backwards laws of physics of what they understandably presumed to be the afterlife.