‘Yeah, I might have noticed. I’d check the temple first, if I were you.’
Grumbling, I made my way back outside. There still weren’t any guards around the prison, which suggested to me that they either weren’t used to having prisoners, or they never had people turn up uninvited at all. Some warriors were sitting around a little campfire all the way on the other side of the temple and a single guard wandered the perimeter, prodding the bushes and trees with his spear, but otherwise the coast was clear once more. I rushed over to the temple, sticking to the ever-growing shadows and keeping my head as far down as I could without dragging it through the dirt.
Each step was slightly too high and too narrow to climb comfortably. Vines and moss had started to claim the temple as their own, constricting and suffocating. Dry leaves crunched and crumbled under my feet. Crackling through the silence. As I got higher and higher I noticed the moon creep from amongst the orange and pink sky - still only a pale and ghostly face, but a face watching all the same.
I had to wait a while at the top, hiding behind a pillar, while the two men guarding the temple’s entrance talked in a strange, deep language. Eventually they decided to head on down the steps and join their tribesmen around the fire. I don’t blame them for abandoning their posts; the aroma of their dinner was billowing up with just as much gusto as the fire’s smoke, and believe me when I say that whatever it was they were serving would have been worth giving myself up for. Roasted vegetables; the seared tang of rich meat. It certainly made me realise how much dissent my own stomach was voicing.
Alone at the top, I made my way into the temple’s hall.
It was much colder than even the outside’s evening chill, and despite the flaming torch lying at the base of each pillar it seemed strangely darker, too. My footsteps echoed under the arching roof. Between the flickering, golden pillars I could see out across the treetop canopies, see the leaves turn from green to grey to silhouettes, see the birds fly to their roosts.
I almost screamed like a banshee when I saw Pierre standing between two of the columns, cast in a bronze glow by the torches and looking larger than life. But then his expression didn’t change, and neither did his dramatic and heroic stance. And he really did look larger than life, because he was about a foot and a half taller than his incarcerated counterpart. He even stood atop a podium. I knocked on his chest and yes, he was a statue.
‘What the hell have you been doing, Pierre?’ I whispered, the hairs on the back of my neck - and indeed, my arms and scrotum - standing on end. Sure enough, there was a similar statue in between every set of columns; not all of them looked like Pierre, but all of them shared the same concierge’s uniform.
I hurried down the length of the hall, trying not to look any of them in the eye. I could feel them watching me as I passed, judging me as an unwelcome guest.
How on earth did a whole club of concierges from the modern world get statues built after them in an ancient temple?
Given the events of the past day, I now understand that it was a silly question.
There was an altar at the end of the hall, sloped like a lectern. Two doorways led out from the wall behind it, and unlit they looked like two black rectangles painted onto the stone wall. Like a backdrop on an old movie set, nothing quite looked real. Not… authentic. I’d almost approached the altar when I heard footsteps approach, so I sprinted into cover behind the nearest pillar.
The gentleman with the chain running from his nose to his ear came out first, accompanied by somebody I assumed had assisted in Pierre’s kidnapping. They looked cocksure. And then following them, stooping so as to fit through the doorway, came a man with a gigantic headdress. Feathers of all shapes, sizes and colours spilled up and outwards so that his head resembled a peacock’s tail. A piercing of jagged bone passed straight through his nose.
The two warriors stepped aside so that their leader - or priest, perhaps, but certainly he occupied a position far more grandiose than their own - could approach the altar. His hands hovered over its surface for a moment, as if whatever lay upon it radiated an intense, burning heat, and then picked up the artefact before him.
He held Pierre’s keys up above his head, marvelling at the way the light from the torches danced and glistened across its golden surfaces. He turned the ring round and around so that all the keys tumbled and fell, over and over again. He ran his fingers over the edge of their teeth, all silver and bronze, and grinned with a mouth that had none of its own.
I thought that he would take them back to whatever chambers lay beyond those black and void-like doors, but he laid the keys back down with all the gentleness of a midwife handing over a newborn baby. He muttered some ecstatic gratitudes to the two warriors, and then the three of them retired back to wherever lay out of sight.
I sneaked over once I was sure they weren’t coming back and, holding the keys together so that they wouldn’t jangle on the steps going down, made my way back to Pierre’s cell.
‘Are you sure there isn’t a rule about mucking about with other people’s timelines?’
Pierre looked up from the floor of his cell. He was still slumped against its wall. His eyes grew back some of their old sparkle when he saw the keys in my hand.
‘Not particularly. I mean, it’s not exactly encouraged… but whatever can happen will happen, right? And besides, they only know the one reality. How would they know it’s been tampered with?’
I went to give him the keys but he brushed them away. ‘Get me out of this cage first. Use the silver one, third from left. No, your other left.’
I picked out the one he’d described; it was simple in design but the silver had been twisted and knotted in places, almost as if it had meant to be wood but gotten its elements mixed up.
‘There was a… erm… statue of you, up in the temple. Care to explain that?’
Pierre shrugged and started playing with the rope around the bars of his cell. ‘A few of us - guys in my sort of business, I mean - wanted to organise a little vacation. To get away from all the busyness and fussiness of hotel-work, you know? We wanted to go somewhere where there weren’t so many… people.’
‘And that worked out brilliantly, did it?’
‘How was I to know an otherwise undiscovered tribe would be watching us come and go? It’s not as if they were in any of the history books where we’d come from. Clearly they found something wonderful in the way we vanished from door to door, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why…’
‘They seem to think you’re gods,’ I said, popping the key into a hole in the wood Pierre was pointing at. It looked like he’d been chipping away at it while I’d been away. I turned the key and the makeshift door swung open, even though there definitely hadn’t been any sort of lock mechanism inside. I thought it best not to ask questions by that point - the answers only seemed to lead to more confusion. ‘And they were acting as if these keys were the arc of the covenant.’
‘Nice way to treat their god, huh,’ said Pierre, getting to his feet. He fell back down. ‘I guess it taught us a lesson, at least. You were right. You can only stir the pot so much before it starts spilling out over the edges.’
‘I’m not sure what that really means, but we need to get out of here.’ I helped Pierre to his feet, putting his arm around my shoulders for support. I handed him the keys, but again he dismissed them.
‘You do it,’ he said. His eyelids were drooping. ‘It’s the big golden one. Yeah, that one. It’s easy, just turn.’
Off in the distance I heard cries of frustration and the sounding of a tuneless horn. There were a great many angry voices.
‘But where should we go?’ I asked, suddenly feeling as if I was going to be sick. ‘What if I send us somewhere horrible?’
‘What, worse than this? You won’t. Just concentrate on where you want us to go, and really focus on it. Forget about everything else, and just turn.’
I put the golden key into the makeshift lock and tried to forget about
the rush of furious tribesmen running their way towards us.
I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
Chapter Fourteen
Back came the light and back came the heat. You know the feeling of when it’s a devilishly cold day and you walk into a Debenhams or whatever, and that gust of warm air is blown over you from the heater above the door? It wasn’t all too unlike that. I carried Pierre through and then shut the door behind us.
It had worked. I couldn’t believe it had actually worked. I’d been sure I was somehow going to lead us into the heart of a sun or through the door of a greengrocer’s in Hiroshima just as the bomb dropped. But we’d ended up exactly where I’d imagined.
There was an old bed just to the right of where we’d entered, so I walked Pierre over to it and helped him lie down. The mattress was a far cry from the standard he was used to at Le Petit Monde, but at least it was soiled by age and nothing else.
The windows were still intact, which meant that the thorns and leaves of the world outside hadn’t found their way in… at least, not too much. A vine had crept through a crack in the floorboards and tied itself around the room’s sole chair. The ceiling was sagging; I guess it hadn’t been designed with the monsoon season in mind.
Next to the chair was a desk, which aside from a layer of dust as thick as a book’s spine was in pretty much perfect condition. It looked out across the jungle’s treescape; a pair of binoculars hung by their strap from a hook attached to the window frame. On the table was a porcelain mug - no, two, for one was hidden beneath a raggedy, faded napkin. To the right was a stove, and on it sat an old-fashioned teapot. But back to the table. There were a number of books and pamphlets scattered across its surface. I flipped through them with little interest, pausing only to smirk at one of the covers: The Do’s and Don’t’s of a Professional Concierge: Never Complain and Always Wine.
A single light bulb hung low from the centre of the sagging ceiling, but it had long lost any enthusiasm for illumination.
I looked out of one of the windows, and my whole world started to spin. My stomach roiled and my brain grew too big for my head.
There I was, looking up at the tower. Not me, as such, but me a few hours earlier. I’d just emerged from the jungle with Pierre, and I was staring up at where I now stood with my hand covering my eyes. He must not have been able to see me because of the glare of the sun against the glass. And then it hit me: of course that was the case, because it was me down there, and I’d already looked and seen nothing at all. And, seeing nothing, the me from hours before walked over to the outhouse with Pierre, just as I had.
I looked a real mess. I wondered how much worse I looked now; there was a reflection in the glass but I was doing my best to avoid its gaze.
The sickness in my stomach lessened and the buzzing in my head grew quieter, so long as I wasn’t looking at myself. It wasn’t as weird as I had imagined it would be; it was like watching a home movie of myself, only it was happening right there in the world around me. I guess it would have been different if I’d gotten any closer - close enough to notice how perfect a copy he… it… I was. Close enough for it to become real. But I figured I’d never meet myself… after all, I’d already know about it, wouldn’t I?
Pierre still lay on the bed. He wasn’t exactly sleeping, nor did he seem all that battered anymore. But he certainly wasn’t in any state - or any mood, at least - to move.
I opened the rickety door and walked out onto the surrounding balcony, taking extra care not to put my foot through another plank.
There we were, hiding behind the outhouse. How childish it looked from up there, watching unseen. I didn’t try to hide behind the broken banisters; I already knew I didn’t see myself. I guessed it had been a couple of minutes already, which meant there was still some time before the thief emerged from the door… and before the natives took Pierre as their false-god prisoner. But I’d already gone round this carousel one time too many, so I didn’t want to miss my window. Given that I couldn’t see myself appearing anywhere for a third time, I had to assume one of two things: that everything would go to plan, or that everything was about to go very wrong indeed.
I hurried down the steps as quickly as I dared. They were damp, weak and in some places had fallen away completely. I was lucky that none snapped under my weight, for some seemed to be kept in place only by the foliage that had devoured it. Flakes of white paint scattered over my shoes, which would have bothered me had the jungle not already stripped them of all prior respectability.
The grass surrounding the tower hadn’t been trimmed in what looked like centuries, so it was no trouble at all to crouch unseen and wait for the thief to make his entrance. The blades went up the inside of my trousers and tickled my calves.
Wait, what if this isn’t the exact same world? I thought. What if this is a world where the thief is a giant cockroach, and for some reason I’m still chasing after him like an absolute lunatic?
But something told me it was the same world that I’d been in before - not some alternate version of it where I’d once turned left instead of right, or where I’d sniffed my nose when I should have blown it, but the exact same. And right or wrong it made little difference. So long as I got my briefcase, I planned to be out of that world and back to my old one quicker than you could say empirical testability falsifiability.
I was pretty sure I was going to throw up my heart when I saw the door to the outhouse open. My hands were clammy, presumably receiving all the moisture that my mouth was not. And yet despite that, I found myself needing to swallow far more often than was at all necessary.
The thief stumbled forwards, slamming the door behind him just as I heard the sound of Viola firing her pistol - a sound that was cut off by silence so quickly it was as if two different cassettes had been stapled together by mistake. He paused to catch his breath, my briefcase hanging lazily from his hand, and threw his gun into the undergrowth.
I saw myself go to grab the case, and found myself starting to stand up, too, as if I were nothing more than a reflection of my past self. It was lucky, then, that Pierre reached out and held me by the arm, whispering that it wasn’t the right moment, otherwise I might have blown my cover entirely. Of course, things didn’t exactly go to plan for dear old Pierre, and I had to quite literally bite down on my tongue to stop myself from warning them. Not that I needed to; I couldn’t have ever done it, of course, given that it never happened.
I watched the natives burst out from behind us and drag Pierre away; I watched as my past self stood up and faced down the thief, only to choose to instead follow the furrowed troughs Pierre’s dragged legs had left behind.
It was now or never. Pierre had been right; it would have been pointless to try and grab my briefcase while he’d still been on his guard from Viola’s torture room, but now he was waving it about like a flag-bearer whose team had just scored the winning touchdown at the Superbowl. He’d never see me coming.
I crept up behind the thief, stepping heel-to-toe to not make any noise.
Don’t look back, George. Whatever you do, don’t look back.
That’s what Pierre had said as I’d chased after him, and once more I heard him say those words. Finally I knew why he’d said it. I looked down the path being bulldozed through the leaves and felt that sick, swirling feeling again as I saw my past self giving chase. But I also saw Pierre, who was looking not at his pursuer but at me, my present self.
‘How do you know I’ll find you?’ I heard my past self shouting, as Pierre disappeared further into the jungle.
Quite without thinking I raised my hand, sending him a thumbs up. Letting him know that he’d make it out safe and sound.
‘Because you already have,’ I heard Pierre reply, and then he was gone. My past self disappeared after him.
I was alone with the thief, only he didn’t know it yet.
I lunged at the briefcase and snatched it out of his hand.
‘What the hell?’ came his eloquent
response. But then what else did I expect from a man who steals briefcases? He swung a panicking fist, probably expecting a knife-wielding local to have crept up behind him, from which I dodged back with ease. His eyes grew wide and confused.
‘Did you miss me?’ I asked, stepping further back and holding up my briefcase in a mimicry of his earlier taunt. I’d almost forgotten its weight, how its cold leather felt in my hand. ‘Thanks for keeping hold of this, but I’ll be taking it from here.’
That’s about as far as the fuel-tank of my confidence was willing to carry me. It dropped to empty the moment I realised there weren’t any more steps to my escape plan. I’d done a great job of climbing the ones available to me, but all they’d done was lead me to a top-floor landing without any doors… so to speak.
That’s probably why the thief found it so easy to grab hold of the briefcase again, his right hand pinching down onto my own while his left yanked at the case’s bottom. To make things worse, he was putting all his not-inconsiderable weight into his shoulder, which he repeatedly rammed into my ribcage. Bright flashes of pain sparked down my side and my breathing became short.
I could go back and try that fight a thousand times over, but it was a fight I was never going to win. Not fairly, at least.
He still had that stupid black scarf pulled up over his nose, masking the best part of his face. He looked like one of those desperate kids in council estates, the types who think they look hard for tying bandanas over their mouths. Granted, they do. But this man’s attempt at intimidation did nothing to scare me; it just made me want to punch whatever was behind it all the harder.
With my left hand I grabbed a big clump of black cotton and pulled. It didn’t come easily. But I yanked hard, hoping that it would burn his neck a little as it unravelled, and it came free like a shoelace pulled loose from a knot.
I ran the cloth between my fingers; back and forth, back and forth. There was something familiar about the material, something that made me think of home. Home home - not Le Petit Monde but my cosy cottage in Littlewick Green. I had this scarf, didn’t I? Sure I did; it was hanging on one of the coat hooks just inside the front door. How did he get it? How could he have? It was mine, for sure. You know the way you can tell if something is yours by the way it smells, not just with your personal scent but something more, something ethereal, almost as if all your memories have soaked deep into its fabric? It was mine, but yet… no, it wasn’t.
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