Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  The following day Lance had handed in his resignation at the fast food restaurant where he worked, spent his final wage packet on a diamond ring and then proposed to Chrissie, which, it turned out, had proved to be the ultimate distraction in preventing her from asking awkward questions.

  ‘There are six games tomorrow and four more on Sunday,’ Lewis said, scrolling through a webpage that listed the coming weekend’s fixtures. ‘That gives us ten chances to multiply our money.’ He turned in his seat and grinned. ‘If everything goes to plan, by this time next week we’ll be millionaires!’

  ‘You mean Lance will be a millionaire,’ Sam corrected.

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ Lewis said. ‘I’ve been looking into setting up a private limited company, with Lance as the Director and you and me listed as employees. We covered it all in Business Studies last term. With Lance as the figurehead and you predicting the future, Sam, we could diversify our interests, moving into currency trading and the stock market. It’s still gambling, really, but with the prospect of better returns.’

  ‘And what’s your role in all this?’ Lance asked.

  ‘Me? I’m the brains of the operation, obviously! I was thinking it might even be sensible to make a loss on some ventures so as not to attract interest.’

  Sam stood, crossed the room and opened the bottom drawer of his wardrobe, where his bottle of Tetradyamide was hidden in a balled pair of socks. There were now ninety-six pills, which, while it might seem like a lot, was hardly an unlimited supply. Appealing as Lewis’s plan was, once Sam’s financial problems were solved, his mum was better and he had Eva back, there were probably better uses for it than simply lining their own pockets. For one thing Esteban Haufner was still out there and might be preparing to strike again. Sam was, in fact, counting on it. McHayden had once described him as ‘the ultimate defence against threats to the nation’, and with Tetradyamide in his possession he would be ready and waiting should Haufner stick his neck out.

  ‘So that’s it then?’ Lance asked, springing dexterously to his feet and eyeing the bottle in Sam’s hand. ‘The drug that makes all this possible?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said, and tightened his grip around it.

  ‘Let’s have a look then.’

  Sam licked his lips and gazed down at Lance’s outstretched hand. The bottle of Tetradyamide was his, and the thought of anyone else touching it gave him an odd, twitchy feeling. But then he was probably being irrational; if he couldn’t trust Lance then whom could he trust? He nodded and slowly, almost reluctantly, passed the bottle over.

  ‘Tarter…tetra…tetradynamo…’ Lance mumbled, squinting at the faded label.

  ‘Tetradyamide.’

  ‘And what happens when you take it?’

  Sam scratched his head. ‘Well, normally it takes a few minutes to kick in, then I start to feel, I don’t know, sort of funny. It’s like time gets disjointed, frozen moments instead of a continuous flow, sort of like the pages in a book. When that happens I can choose when and where to send my mind, same way as you’d flick back and forwards through a book.’

  ‘Like an out of body experience?’ Lance twisted the cap off the bottle and shook a pill into his hand. ‘Sounds way cool. Apart from the smell, I’m almost tempted to take one.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Sam yelled, surprised at the volume of his own voice. ‘Sorry, it’s just that’s all I’ve got. They’re too valuable to waste, Lance. On you it would only slow down your perception of time and make it look like Lewis and I were moving really, really slowly, but to us it would look like you were moving really fast, if you see what I mean. It’s only because of this,’ he tapped the scar behind his ear, ‘that I can do what I can do.’

  ‘What happens to your body when your mind is, you know, away?’ Lewis asked. ‘Is it like when you collapsed at your dad’s funeral?’

  Sam frowned. He had been sitting down on every occasion he’d taken Tetradyamide and had always come around in the same place. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Could be, although I don’t remember biting my tongue or anything like that, so maybe my body just goes limp. Why don’t you stick around for a bit and see for yourself? I’d be interested to know, now you mention it.’

  ‘Sounds kind of vulnerable,’ Lewis said. ‘You know, to tied shoelaces and marker-pen moustaches.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Sam said. ‘Lance, can I have the bottle back now? I’m getting nervous you might drop it or something.’

  With a sigh, Lance returned the cap and handed the bottle back. ‘You know, I quite like the idea of making time slow down. Maybe I can give it a try when you see that scientist dude again and get some more.’

  ‘There won’t be any more,’ Sam said, shooting Lewis a nervous glance. ‘Listen, Lance, before we go any further, there’s something I should probably tell—’

  He was interrupted by the doorbell.

  ‘Expecting anyone?’ Lewis asked.

  Sam shook his head, wrapped the socks around the bottle once again and returned it to the drawer in his wardrobe. After removing the chair from under the door handle, he poked his head out. The shapes of several people were moving about on the other side of the frosted glass panel in the front door. The bell sounded again, and his grandmother came scurrying out of the kitchen to answer it.

  Sam stepped out onto the landing. Standing on the other side of the door was a person he had last spoken to on the day of his father’s funeral, or, more actually, in this timeline hadn’t.

  ‘Inspector Hinds,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you since…’

  ‘The day you completed the facial composite. And it’s Sergeant now.’ She stepped over the threshold, pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to Sam’s grandmother. ‘This is a search warrant, madam. It’s a criminal offence to obstruct us in the line of our duties.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sam asked. He glanced over his shoulder to see Lewis and Lance emerge from his bedroom.

  Hinds cleared her throat. ‘Samuel Rayner, I’m arresting you for the murder of Malcolm Fairview. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention anything while questioned that you later rely on in court.’

  Chapter IV

  Rough Justice

  1

  August 1927

  It was a warm, late-summer’s morning and the countryside around Upper Blinkhorn Station baked in the rising sun. Not long after arriving at work, Stephen was called into Phillip Deacon’s office and found him scraping out the blackened contents of his pipe.

  ‘Have a seat, lad,’ the stationmaster said, angling the mouthpiece at a chair on the other side of his desk. ‘There’s summat I wish to discuss.’

  During eight years under Deacon’s tutelage, Stephen had risen from the rank of junior porter to that of assistant stationmaster, second in command only to the man himself. Deacon had taken Stephen under his wing (no doubt as a pet project at first) and over the years a friendship of sorts had developed, with the older man providing some of the support and guidance so absent in Stephen’s life. If not quite the father figure Stephen longed for, Deacon had become more like the friendly uncle he never had, all of which made the formal nature of the meeting a little unsettling to say the least.

  ‘Nowt to fret about,’ Deacon said, obviously sensing Stephen’s apprehension. He withdrew a tobacco pouch and began refilling his pipe. ‘Just wanted a word concerning arrangements for next year. I haven’t told the others yet, but I’m coming up for retirement this December.’

  ‘Oh,’ Stephen said, struggling to make sense of the idea of the place without Deacon in charge. ‘I had no idea, Phil.’

  ‘No reason you should, lad. The thing is, I want you to take over the reins when I leave.’

  ‘As stationmaster?’

  ‘Aye.’ Deacon struck a match, dipped the flame into the bowl of his pipe and puffed smoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘The other men respect you, Stephen, and you’ve proved time and again that you’re up to ta
sk.’

  ‘Don’t you think I’m a little young still?’

  ‘Not much younger than I was when I first stepped into the job. It would mean an increase in salary, too – more than a hundred pounds a year.’

  Stephen smiled, wishing his mother were alive to see him. ‘It’d be an honour, Phil.’

  ‘Grand, that’s settled then.’ Deacon rose from his chair and led Stephen to the door. ‘It’s a relief to know the place will be in capable hands once I’m gone. Andrew’s had his beady eye on the job for a while now. Just between the two of us, it gives me the collywobbles to think what might happen with him running the place.’

  Deacon’s nephew, Andrew Potts, was a signalman at the station. He was a little too fond of the drink and used his familial connections to flaunt company rules, frequently turning up for work late and dishevelled.

  ‘One last thing,’ Deacon said as they stepped out into the warm sunshine falling on the platform. ‘Since we’re on the topic of not getting any younger, have you given any thought to settling down yet?’

  Stephen felt beads of perspiration spring out across his forehead and wiped them away with the back of his hand. Potential wives were hardly ten to the dozen in the village, and since his mother’s death his attentions had been divided between his job at the station and the task of exploring his gift from above, which was how he had finally come to regard his funny turns.

  The turning point had come three years ago, when, in the summer of 1924, he had taken a week’s holiday in London. Aside from the occasional trip to Sheffield or Leeds, Stephen was unaccustomed to city living and had been immediately intoxicated by the hustle and bustle of the nation’s capital. On his second-to-last day, he’d visited the library of the British Museum, where he discovered a dusty, yellow-paged tome entitled The Principles and Practices of Buddhist Monks tucked away on one of the more secluded shelves. After reading it cover-to-cover in a single sitting, Stephen had sequestered the book under his jacket (an act of which he still felt ashamed) and soon began practising what it referred to as ‘meditation’.

  Over the following months and years he had incorporated the techniques into his daily prayer routine, honing his concentration and mental fortitude to the point where he was able to summon one of his funny turns almost at will, and extending the distance that he could propel his mind to several days into the past or future. Disappointingly, though, opportunities to do God’s work in and around the village had so far been as thin on the ground as eligible young ladies, and over the past year or so Stephen had grown increasingly frustrated, not to mention lonely.

  ‘It’s something I’ve been giving some thought to,’ he admitted.

  Deacon chuckled and hiked up his belt. ‘Glad to hear it, lad. Good for keeping up appearances, too. I don’t mean to pry, but a young fellow like yourself living alone…people start to talk.’

  Stephen wiped his forehead again and squinted against the sun. There was another reason behind his reluctance to start courting: his mother aside, he had never told a living soul about his funny turns, and there was no knowing how another person might react.

  ‘There’s this niece I have,’ Deacon went on, ‘other side of the family from Andrew, of course. She’s a nice lass, pretty as a picture too, and—’

  He was cut off by a boom loud enough to rattle the waiting room windows in their frames, and stepped back, his pipe dangling from his lips.

  Stephen spun around. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the direction of the signal box a mile down the line. Without a thought he took off towards it, scarcely breaking stride as he vaulted from the end of the platform.

  After a hundred yards along the side of the track, a quick look behind showed several of his colleagues following after, Deacon close to the back. The smoke mushroomed into a cloud as Stephen approached, soon blotting out the sun. A stitch began to throb in his side but he pushed on through the pain.

  Eventually he rounded the embankment where the track cut into a hill and skidded to a stop as his mind struggled to comprehend the scene of utter devastation that greeted him two hundred yards farther down the line. It seemed as though there had been a collision between the 0836 Wakefield express and a freight train that should have been shunted to a siding while it overtook. The front three carriages of the Wakefield train had become derailed and lay toppled on the slope of the embankment like a child’s scattered building blocks. Dazed survivors were slowly gathering on a field of wildflowers at the bottom of the slope, where some were attending to the others’ wounds among the buttercups, poppies and daisies. By the foot of the steps leading up to the signal box, Andrew Potts staggered about with a look of abject bewilderment on his face.

  Stephen shook himself into action and made straight for the first carriage. Comprised almost entirely of wood, it had crumpled like a squashed matchbox. A fire had broken out, presumably fuelled by gas for the on-board lamps. After tearing off his jacket and hat, he wrapped his shirt around his face to cover his airways, climbed on top of the carriage and slid in through the frame of a shattered window, dropping to the opposite wall with a crunch of broken glass.

  Flames danced high all around him, hungrily devouring the wooden structure. Crouched, Stephen peered through thick, stinging smoke. The majority of the seating had become detached from the floor, which now stood like a wall to his left, and lay in a jumbled heap among the bodies of between ten and twenty passengers.

  ‘Hello?’ Stephen called out, scanning the hellish sight for any sign of life.

  He saw none and was about to turn back when a faint groan, only just audible above the crackle of burning wood, caught his attention. Scrambling forwards on hands and knees, he homed in on the source: the sound was coming from the far end of the carriage, where a loose wall panel had fallen across an upturned bench.

  Stephen yanked the panel back. Lying beneath it was a beautiful young woman with a fringe of soft brown curls. A golden locket hung on a chain around her neck.

  ‘Miss, can you hear me?’

  Her eyelids fluttered open, her gaze briefly resting on his face before they drifted closed again.

  Stephen heaved the wall panel up and flung it away. Only then did he notice the blood soaking through the material of her dress: protruding from her abdomen was a splinter of wood roughly the size and length of his forearm.

  He gripped the semi-conscious woman under the arms and dragged her back towards the window through which he had entered. The carriage was approximately ten feet wide, and he would have struggled to reach the upper wall even without the additional weight. He laid the woman down and pulled an unattached bench over, then lifted her onto his shoulder and, standing on top of the bench, heaved her up and out of the window before clambering through himself.

  A small crowd had by now amassed on the side of the embankment, Deacon among their number. Stephen unwrapped his shirt from his face, took a breath of fresh air and scooped the woman up once more.

  ‘Help!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got a survivor here!’

  Deacon came hurrying to meet him, but froze when he saw the spear of wood skewering the woman’s stomach.

  Stephen lowered her gently to the grass. ‘She needs a doctor, Phil. Do you think I should pull it out?’

  Deacon shook his head and crouched beside them. After several seconds he looked up. ‘It won’t do any good, lad. She’s already gone.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ Stephen said, his knees suddenly weak. ‘She was alive when I found her. She opened her eyes and looked right at me.’

  Deacon drew himself up and placed a hand on Stephen’s shoulder. ‘You did your best, lad. Nowt anyone else could’ve done. She’s with the Lord now.’ Suddenly he spied Potts still meandering about by the signal box and released Stephen. ‘You!’ he bellowed, and charged towards his nephew. ‘This is your fault!’

  ‘U-uncle Phillip?’ Potts stammered.

  Deacon grabbed him by the collar and lifted him clean off his feet, shaking the man like a rag doll. ‘Wha
t happened, you imbecile? You were supposed to divert the damn freight train!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle, I…I must have dozed off.’

  ‘Dozed off?’ Deacon yelled, and cuffed him around the head. ‘There’s people lost their lives on account of your negligence, and you’re telling me you dozed off?’

  Stephen turned back to the beautiful, dead stranger by his feet. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, and bent to stroke her hair. ‘I know exactly what to do. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.’

  He planted a kiss on her forehead, stood and walked down the embankment, past Deacon and the whimpering Potts and around the side of the signal box. Once out of sight, he slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, clearing his mind of all external sensations and focusing on no more than the air passing in and out of his lungs, each breath a little deeper than the last.

  Anger and loss flowed over him, swallowing him up, drowning him in their hollow ache. He felt his body begin to tingle and shake as one of his funny turns took hold. The world beyond his eyelids darkened as though the sun had gone down, and then suddenly Stephen saw himself back at the handrail of the Northern Star, his brother’s oilskin hat bobbing up and down on the waves below.

  He blinked and was outside the signal box again. With no volition of his own, he saw himself stand and walk stutteringly back up the embankment, where he stopped and crouched by the young woman’s body. He scooped her up and carried her back to the burning carriage, then slid through the empty window and deposited her under a fallen wall panel at the far end before crawling back out on his hands and knees.

  After pulling on his shirt, hat and jacket, he watched himself sprint towards the station, the cloud of smoke shrinking before him with each long, backward stride. Eventually he reached the platform and rejoined Deacon. They entered the stationmaster’s office, where they silently discussed Deacon’s plans for retirement before Stephen rose from his chair and strolled back towards the ticket office.