by Sean McMahon
The resulting surge of feedback had changed everything and, for the first time, they experienced an invigorating sense of hope. The colours of their bleak surroundings had been restored, returned to them, the sun once more collided with their skin and allowed for the sensation of heat to warm their previously moderated body temperatures, and their friends even came back into focus, no longer the shadowy echoes they had devolved into. Even the faint smell of flame-grilled burgers and sausages filled their noses once more, reminding them of what it felt like to be hungry for the first time in what they had, at the time, worked out to be several months.
They learnt that they could move small objects, and in some instances even larger items, as long as they remained in close proximity to their past-selves.
It was glorious.
Until it wasn’t.
Over time, the power faded, as did their memories of one another. And suddenly, they found themselves faced with a new problem they didn’t even know they were fighting; after all, what good could come from the knowledge that sustained contact was the key to engaging with the past, when the person sitting opposite you had become a total stranger.
As the fire of their love for one another was doused by the oppressive fog which clouded their minds with each jump back into the past, those feelings transcended into unadulterated confusion.
They recognised that they were significant to each other, and the music playing throughout their time-loop afforded them brief respite; like air pockets in the heart of a cave that gave them a chance to remember what they meant to one another all over again.
But sure enough, those moments became more and more fleeting, and they would often wander aimlessly throughout their repeats, sometimes ending up deep in the woods, far away from music, their thoughts and shared connection growing ever more tenuous.
And so it was that they found themselves re-materialising into yet another repeat of days gone by, as Peter took advantage of the brief charge that ran through their veins every time they were hurtled back to the beginning of their journey.
He clutched the radio he had reappeared with, and reached out for Fearne’s hand before she had a chance to object. The contact fizzled between them, and he looked deeply into her beautiful, brown eyes.
‘We’re getting out of here’ said Peter, a grim look of determination on his face, one greatly accentuated by his strong jawline, which was made all the more prominent thanks to the way he was clenching his teeth.
‘How,’ said Fearne, her voice barely a murmur.
‘Through the forest. We’ll keep going until we’re as far away from this place as possible.’ He lowered his voice and moved closer to her. ‘To somewhere not even time can catch us,’ he muttered, as if it made a difference.
Fearne became excited. She had a faint memory that she possessed vague evidence this would never work, though she couldn’t remember precisely how or why she knew this. She blinked the thoughts away, intoxicated by the prospect of freedom, and instead agreed with…
“Peter, his name is Peter,” she said to herself sternly, the charge between them keeping the integrity of her mind afloat in the sea of haziness. A lake that was lapping over the sides of the dingy which represented her consciousness, threatening to capsize and flip them into a deeper purgatory.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, and they shared a mischievous smile.
This would work.
She knew it.
*
Not wishing to waste a single second, Peter and Fearne ran towards the grey haze of what was once Will’s red car, treading lightly on the bonnet, onto the roof, and over the rear of the car, their feet hitting the shingle of the driveway without so much as a single crunch.
‘Yeah, these have to go,’ said Fearne, kicking off her stiletto heels as she remembered, albeit for a second, that she wouldn’t feel pain by running barefoot.
They set off again, their pace brisk, running along the road at first, waiting for an opening in the surrounding woodland, due to it offering the least resistance. They passed lodges they didn’t recognise, and flew past the humanoid shadows that they knew were once the fully-defined tenants of their own history. They could feel the charge building between them, splashes of arcing blue energy spitting from their interconnected hands like oil hitting a naked flame.
Their own thoughts intermingled, and they telepathically agreed to channel that energy into their increasing momentum, not wishing to waste it on repairing their fractured recollections. They had a singular goal; escape.
They were travelling so fast through the thickets, trees and foliage that they didn’t even so much as glance at another horizontal shadow that had become clearer than the rest, thanks to their self-restoring residual charge. A tall, dark man that was unloading various folders and items, including unseen syringes filled with green liquid, into a nearby shack. Nor would they have understood his significance due to their current cognitive dissonance.
They traversed steep inclines, burst through numerous clearings, vaulted over rocks and vehicles and fences, cutting through the Pentney Lakes like a lightsaber through Darth Maul, until finally, they reached their last hurdle; an expansive lake that stretched out all the way into the perceivable horizon.
They glanced at each other, understanding that this was the last test, the last obstacle keeping them from vanquishing whatever it was that was keeping them here. In order to escape the laws that governed them, they would need to break the rules. They would need to stop thinking like they were alive, and start fighting like their souls depended on it.
They would have to swim.
They jumped as one into the water, preparing for the longest swim either of them had ever attempted. The water remained undisturbed, their invasive presence causing not so much as a ripple.
Curiously, as they waded further in, their actions were devoid of aforementioned wade. They were simply walking, as the water level rose to their waist, then crept slowly up their chests, like a holographic simulation of what water used to be.
Fearne took a deep breath, and pressed onwards, as she stepped further into the lightless murkiness, and the water level reached her nostrils, before engulfing her head. She panicked, her eyes widening, finding herself involuntarily flapping her head from side to side, trying to regain buoyancy. Despite her temporally-compromised mind, she still possessed a deeply innate muscle memory, knowing that she could not breath underwater.
In her panic, she completely forgot that all she needed to do was go back the way she came. That the rising tide would not engulf her if she walked her way back across the riverbed. She waved her arms frantically, trying to part the water surrounding her, unable to reconcile in her mind that the water was little more than an illusion. But the oppressive fathoms harboured an uncertainty that grew exponentially with each passing moment.
With her vision obscured by the watery haze, her other senses became heightened, her fear of drowning flooding her body with an incredible blast of blue energy. It was then that she felt something grab her hand, and she flinched as it pulled her forwards, before hearing a familiar voice in her head, who she knew to be Peter.
“It’s okay,’ the voice said soothingly. “We can breathe.”
She relaxed, and opened her eyes, realising that against all odds, she trusted the voice with every fibre of her being. Fearne gasped for air, expecting her lungs to fill with the submerged plant life and green hued river water, her body instead filling with something far less life-threatening; relief.
They moved through the darkness, not wanting to push their luck by talking, steeling glances at the unsettling visuals of sunlight dancing across the water above them. Slowly, as the fear ebbed away, it became fascinating. They were viewing the world from a perspective no one had ever witnessed before.
They picked up their pace, unimpeded by the water. In fact, it felt identical to running on dry land, due to the silt of the riverbed refusing to give way under their out-of-phase weight. The only notable difference
arriving in the form of a large carp, that appeared from nowhere and passed through both their faces, along with schools of smaller fish which proceeded undeterred through their bodies.
And then they heard it; the sound of rushing air.
A truly soul-destroying notion filled Fearne’s mind, as she remembered precisely how she knew this wouldn’t work.
Though they had never taken this particular path, they had done this before. Different routes, different paths, but it all ended the same way. As they reached an unmarked point in their journey, the fog always caught up to them.
She gasped, not for air, but in horror, her eyes filling with tears of desperation as the memories of every single repeat came flooding back to her in a way the water that surrounded her never could.
Peter and Fearne hadn’t merely dabbled with this plan several times. They had already tried it two-hundred and sixteen times.
As their two-hundredth-and-seventeenth attempt was slowly but surely obliterated by the static fog, she knew it did so with a singular purpose; to whisk them away from the lake.
A lake of the damned.
To send them back to the beginning of their thirty-three-hour time loop.
With a heart as broken as her mind was fractured, she collapsed on to the river bed, bringing her knees up to her chest, and wept until she too was atomised, and sucked back into hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sins of The Past
795th Repeat
After just shy of eight-hundred do-overs, the reluctant time travellers were mere echoes of their former selves. In truth, they had lost all recollection of exactly how long they had truly been there.
Their memories were shot to hell, and it took virtually all they had just to remember their own names, let alone each other. Mistrust and suspicion had resulted in the Repeaters wasting many of their chances to set things right.
Today was one of those mornings.
They sat there in Fir Lodge, glaring at each other. Both trying to ascertain the hidden agenda of the other. What was once a hyper-realistic ocean of colour was now an immaculate, white hellscape, dust motes around them falling like snowfall, swirling back into the air whenever they reached out for them, unable to settle. Every item in the lodge had lost detail, now mere shapes that resembled the things they actually were. The place felt more like a pristine sanatorium now, rather than the holiday retreat it once was.
Shadows of people they almost remembered as being real wandered the halls like mumbling spectres, reliving their history, completely oblivious to the presence of the two of them, who were little more than ghostly spectators of a past that had no desire to include them.
Suddenly, noise erupted throughout the lodge; a deafening assault to what remained of their consciousness that initially terrified them both. The sound of rushing air flooded their eardrums, coupling with the sound of an other-worldly gong which exacerbated their mutual confusion.
For a brief moment, their senses were bombarded by a disembodied hovering noise, reminiscent to that of an alien spacecraft, which sounded as if it were potentially descending upon them, ready to end this eternal torment and release them from the purgatory that they were indefinitely detained in, like the waiting room of an unstaffed doctor’s surgery, or the queue of a post office.
An ethereal cheering emanating from an unseen crowd followed, unsettling them further, leading them to the alternative possibility that they were the unwilling participants in some form of Truman Show-esque social experiment.
And then they heard syllables, which slowly evolved into words, and then matured into sentences, until, eventually, their minds deciphered what was happening.
Music.
It was music! The man recognised the voice as being that of Michael Jackson. The woman, meanwhile, recognised the track itself as being “Dirty Diana.” Their mutual suspicion and inexplicably misappropriated hatred drained away from them, their cerebral synapses permitting them once again to see each other for who they really were. At least to the point where they knew they could trust one another.
The unexpected distraction cut through the tension that was lingering between them like a serrated blade. A metaphor that seemed ironic, though Peter struggled to remember exactly why.
‘Jesus, that was a long one!’ said the woman. The man couldn’t quite remember her name just yet.
‘Yeah, how long were we out, do you think?’ asked the man. ‘Hours?’
‘Felt like days.’
They both took a deep breath, shaking off the aftershock of a fight they couldn’t remember having.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ said the man. ‘We can’t even work together anymore,’ he added, remembering the sense of self-imposed isolation they had both been indulging in for the past goodness knew how long.
The woman hesitated, as his name took shape in her mind, finally revealing itself to her once again.
‘Peter,’ she said. ‘I love you. You know that, right?
‘I know…Fearne,’ said Peter, hoping his memories hadn’t betrayed him and that he’d gotten her name right. He placed his head into his palms, rubbing his sockets firmly, then looked up at her, knowing once more who the woman sitting in front of him truly was.
A tear rolled down the dark skin of his face, as the devastation that he had almost forgotten her again sunk in.
The music afforded them an additional bonus, as the entirety of their memories began drip-feeding back into their minds.
‘We need to get out of here,’ said Peter. ‘Maybe try to leave again?’
‘What’s the point. You know it just leads to another…reset.’
Another bout of funnelled air filled the room, and the Repeaters recoiled reflexively. It was far more visceral than the music, evoking a sense of stomach-churning dread that they gradually recognised as the harbinger of a repeat; the phenomena Fearne slowly remembered as being what they were currently the slaves of.
‘That can’t be right,’ said Fearne. ‘It’s not dark yet…’
As they covered their ears, preparing themselves for their inevitable journey back thirty-three hours into the past, they were instead greeted by the presence of a tall, muscular man, who materialised at the top of the communal staircase.
The man brushed away the imaginary dust from his trousers and approached them in the communal living area.
Fearne hopped up off of what she had forgotten was her favourite sofa and stood next to Peter, who remained seated, but leant forward protectively.
‘No need to be afraid,’ said the man. ‘I’ve been watching you for some time. Quite the pickle you’re in,’ he added, grinning from ear to ear.
‘You can see us?!’ said Peter, a duality to his tone that revealed both fear and relief. It had been so long since they had been able to speak to anyone but each other.
‘See you, hear you, but most importantly of all, I can help you,’ said the man. ‘I’m just like you. Travelling through time, trying to find my way home. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know what day it is, would you?’
The question, as intended, threw both Peter and Fearne on the back foot. Instead of questioning their impossible guest, they found themselves engaging with him in conversation. They had no way of knowing this was one of the man’s “go to” diversion tactics when marking a new target; lure them in with banality. After all, time traveller or not, human beings were conditioned to abide by simplistic social cues. It had been a challenge for him, a sociopathic outsider, to learn how to manipulate that.
‘Saturday. I think,’ said Fearne, not entirely sure the information she was providing was accurate.
‘Splendid,’ said the man, clapping his hands together loudly, the sound distracting them once again like a well-timed magician’s flourish. ‘That means we can do this tonight, if we play our cards right. Maybe one or two tries for good measure, depending on how well we work together.’
‘Do what tonight?’ said Peter, wholly lost.
‘Why, escape th
is place, of course!’ said the man. ‘My goodness, I haven’t even asked you your names. How rude of me,’ he said, extending his palms towards them in an open gesture, implying the friendly transparency of camaraderie.
‘Fearne. And this is Peter.’
‘You seem like a wonderful couple. You are together, I assume?’
They nodded in unison.
‘And who are you exactly?’ said Peter, softening his tone, entirely sucked in by the man’s charm.
‘I go by a few names,’ said the man. ‘But to my friends…well, they call me Malcolm,’ he added, taking several strides towards Peter, and extending his hand.
Peter followed suit, and recoiled as the energy surged between them, ripples of blue and red energy arcing between their hands as they shook.
As they pulled apart, Peter felt notably drained, his mind foggy once again.
‘I’ve never seen the energy go that colour before,’ said Peter, genuinely excited despite his tiredness.
Any change to their routine at this point was a welcome one.
Malcolm smiled, baring his predatorial teeth, the sudden danger Peter was in entirely lost on him. Unbeknownst to this younger, greener – in terms of time travel at least – version of Peter and Fearne, this was not the Malcolm from either their past or present, but the version of Malcolm from their soon-to-be future. The Malcolm who would later bring both Restarters and Repeaters together. But before he could do that, there were things that needed to be done. Events that needed to be set in motion. And Restarters that would not be born at all until he fixed this particular wrinkle in time.
‘Oh, there’s a lot about this place you don’t know,’ said Malcolm reassuringly. ‘Come on then, no time to waste. Follow me,’ he added, turning around and heading back down the communal staircase.
As the two of them watched him make his way down the stairs, Peter leaned in to Fearne.
‘I have a really good feeling about this, Fearne,’ he muttered, in a hushed undertone.