by Nick Jones
Above us a massive flash of lightning illuminates our surroundings momentarily and I see Amy’s face again. Her hair is wild and snaking outward in an explosion but this time she isn’t screaming, this time she’s holding her breath and looking directly at me, and I see determination and focus in her eyes. Like me, she’s kicking against the current, which feels like giant hands tugging and pulling at us.
I pull Amy close and kick with everything I have but it’s no use. The power of the current is incredibly strong and it’s dragging us towards the storm drain. Against my instincts I begin to swim with the flow rather than against it. Amy tries to pull away and I hear her desperate screams but tug her closer still and continue on, swimming with the current but edging slightly to the side with each stroke. Swirling hands pull and roll us, but rather than sink, we rise up and move towards the bank a little. Amy thrashes and panics and, just as I think we’re winning, slips free of my weakened grip, shooting upward. I follow, breaking the surface as another huge crack of lightning flashes overhead, followed by an angry roll of deep thunder.
Amy is near, coughing and shouting, but already drifting away and it’s immediately obvious that she can’t swim. Dread threatens to take me but this is different to last time; Amy has never made it to the surface and, although I can see she’s struggling, this thought gives me some hope. She cries out, I call back and tell her not to fight. I don’t think, I don’t panic, I just swim and manage to reach her before she sinks. In a voice as loud as I’ve ever found, I tell her to lie on her back and let me pull her ashore. She wraps her hands around my neck and my body goes to work, dragging us both to the safety of the bank, only twenty feet away but it feels like a mile. I glance back at the storm drain, at the vortex of deadly water that has dragged Amy to her death more than once, and snarl. Not tonight. My lungs may be on fire, my head thumping as fast as my heart but I won’t stop until I’m sure she’s safe. I kick and push and although progress is slow – and it’s hard to see where I’m going with the rain pounding the surface like ball bearings – I am moving, I am saving her.
We finally reach the water’s edge and crawl through silky, thick mud before collapsing onto the bank, exhausted. I hold Amy close, I never want to let go of her again, the girl who, for the first time in history, lives beyond this moment. She’s coughing and crying but she’s alive, and as the lightning and thunder continue their angry exchange, I begin to laugh. Amy looks up at me, scared but also confused by my sudden outburst. Again the lightning strikes but this time it looks like fireworks, like multi-coloured bursts of joy, as though the night is joining in with my celebration. The air crackles with the after shock of power and Amy joins me; initially smiling, then giggling and then belly laughing. Full and loud. We are both flat on our backs and laughing like a pair of demented hyenas.
Suddenly, thunder deafens us both, so loud it shakes the ground and Amy stops laughing, pulling herself against me. ‘We won’t get struck by lightning will we?’ She asks.
‘No way,’ I snort. ‘There’s no way.’
That could easily happen. Oh God, the irony!
In the distance, on the lip of this basin of a field, I spot a building. It’s small and boarded up – in the future it’s a café, I think – its roofline will offer some shelter. I stand and reach down, lifting Amy up onto her feet. ‘Come on,’ I say, wiping mud from my face. ‘Let’s get out of the rain.’
Amy blinks up at me through a torrent of water and nods her agreement. We walk quickly towards the building, both of us wincing as bolts of lightning find their way to earth. Ten feet from the building – which I remember now is a disused toilet block – another bolt of lightning flashes overhead and we break into a run. Only when we reach the comparative safety of the building do we find our humour again. Amy is shouting, whooping and shaking her fist at the sky. It appears, initially, to be anger but it’s more than that, it’s a release from fear, I realise, and perhaps a latent understanding that tonight, against all odds, we are victorious. It was close though and I wonder, as I watch my sister snarl and laugh in the face of nature, if she knows how close, that we robbed death tonight.
I join in, shouting and asking the storm if it has anything else to throw at us. Amy looks up and smiles and I feel like a stone is lifted from my chest and suddenly my lungs and heart have room again. My grief. Gone in an instant and all it took was a smile.
Our elation subsides a little, probably due to the adrenalin wearing off but mainly the cold, setting into our bones. Amy’s teeth begin to rattle, her arms shaking along in rhythm. ‘I’m cold,’ she hisses, lips peeled back and dark. I can’t tell in this light but I bet they’ve turned blue.
I take off my hoodie, wring it out as best I can and hand it to her. She puts it on and I’m pleased to see it covers her, almost to her knees. I begin running on the spot, like a crazed hamster on a wheel. ‘Do the same!’ I shout and she does, and within thirty seconds we’re laughing again. After a whole minute of this madness I see steam rising. We stop and I draw her close. ‘I’m sorry that was so scary,’ I say.
‘I thought I was going to drown.’ She shivers. ‘But you saved me.’
‘I wasn’t going to let that happen to you.’ Not again. I squeeze her and it’s as if the pressure of that forces my tears to arrive. I let them come. For once, they’re tears of joy.
Amy peers out over the lake, the scene of the averted disaster, ‘Where are we?’
‘We’re still in Cox’s Meadow,’ I reply, hugging her. ‘But this is a different time, the worst flood in Cheltenham’s history.’ New understanding of the past rides in on my words. Before I intervened, Amy drowned here and probably died in the depths, pinned by the powerful draw of the storm drain. Logic dictates that if her body then travelled back to 1992 she would have been buried twenty feet deep, in earth not yet excavated. No wonder we never found any trace of her. No one would ever have thought of looking that deep. I grimace at the thought and pull away to get a good look at her. Amy stares back at me, pale and cold but magically alive. ‘When is this?’ She asks, the question perhaps her first attempt at accepting her new time-travelling status.
‘2005,’ I reply.
Amy looks around and then up at me, ‘Is this where you’re from?’
I draw in a shivering breath, uncertain Amy will understand what’s happening. Christ, I only just about get it myself. ‘I’ve come back from 2015.’
‘Wow.’ Amy exhales loudly. ‘That’s a long way away.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, urging her into another twenty second jog on the spot. ‘How many times has this happened to you?’ I ask as we run.
Amy shrugs, ‘I don’t know, a few.’
‘And what have you seen?’
‘Stuff. Weird things.’ Amy replies without looking up. ‘Everything is… different.’
‘It’s the same for me,’ I say. ‘But I go back and see things I sort of remember.’
We both stop, panting and a little warmer. My mind – busy up until this point – decides it’s time for my next little panic attack. I’ve saved Amy but for how long? We’re both dislocated after all, both scheduled to return to our respective times but God only knows how that’s going to work. I’m due back to the present and Amy, back to ’92. And, to add some spice to that little marinade I’ve been dragged here, by future girl!
Thunder and lightning continues to hammer the sky as if time itself is angry at me and my ‘double jumping’ antics. I need to think fast and prepare for whatever it’s going to throw next.
‘Amy,’ I say, with careful urgency, ‘I need to tell you some things that are very important, okay?’
She looks up, wide-eyed and innocent and nods.
‘Good.’ I smile. ‘You can learn to control your travelling just like I have.’
Amy frowns, ‘Control it?’
‘Yep.’ I nod. ‘And the most important thing is that you mustn’t be afraid anymore.’ Amy shrugs but doesn’t say anything. She looks at the floor. I get it. I remem
ber being seven and being told not to be afraid. It isn’t that easy though, is it? Plus, I don’t even know if what I’m telling her is true, whether she can really learn to control her gift/curse. All I know is that saving her from drowning is only one of many possible time-travel related deaths ahead of Amy in the next twenty-three years.
Amy shrieks and pulls the hoodie I gave her down over her knees, flushing with embarrassment.
‘It’s okay, honey,’ I assure her, realising her dress must have just disappeared. ‘You’re okay. No one’s going to see anything.’
She glances back and nods through gritted teeth. Brave girl.
‘How come your stuff doesn’t go?’ She asks, with a hint of envy.
‘It does normally,’ I say, glad of the anomaly, ‘and it will soon I guess but I’ve jumped more than once and I think it takes time a bit longer to catch up with me, to realise what I’ve stolen.’ I give her a wink and earn a smile but then she scowls, her right hand reaching for her temple. It’s a gesture I recognise all too well – brain freeze – and I don’t need Mark’s calculator to know that if her clothes have just gone, then it won’t be long before she does too.
I kneel and place my hands carefully on her shoulders. ‘Amy,’ I say sternly. ‘Where you are standing when you travel is the most important thing.’ She looks at me, clearly confused. I carry on, searching for words that will make sense to her. ‘Think about the fair. It was fine in 1992 but look at it now.’ She looks out on the flooded meadow, a wild, almost biblical scene and then back at me. I say, ‘When you do travel, I want you to think about the safest place to travel from.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Amy shivers. ‘I’m really cold.’
Damn it. I’m doing a pretty shitty job of briefing my sister for a lifetime of time-travelling. Amy gasps and then cries out in pain, a sound that makes me clench my whole body in empathy. ‘Has everything gone blue?’ I ask, trying to get a sense of exactly when she’s going.
Amy stares at me with that don’t be silly expression again. ‘Not blue!’ she says, wincing in pain. ‘Red.’
Red. Like Alexia. My first thought is blue for boys and red for girls but the actual answer is more obvious, more universal somehow. Direction of return. Opposite trajectories. Amy is going back to 1992 and that must be red.
Her eyes search the air as if transfixed by magical, invisible creatures. ‘I’m going soon,’ she says in the same monotone voice she adopted the last time.
The rain thickens to a heavy downpour as Amy cries out again. I need to get her somewhere safe, and quickly. I scan the area, desperately trying to find a good spot, trying to merge the landscape I see before me with my memory of the fair. I stop suddenly. Is this where the entrance was? It’s hard to be sure – the layout is so different –but I can imagine it, thirty feet away, lighting up the night like a giant horseshoe. If it is, then it’s a good place for Amy to return to. It’s safe and high up and more importantly the same in the past as it is now. No trees, no barbed wire, no buildings. ‘Follow me,’ I shout, voice raised against the storm.
‘Where are we going?’ Amy cries, understandably reluctant to step out into the freezing rain again.
I reach for her arm but then pull back. Be careful, Joe. What would happen if I travelled with her again? Don’t even go there! ‘Just trust me,’ I shout. ‘Come on!’
Amy nods and we run, feet splashing in the mud to the spot I remember, the place that welcomed me to the fair in 1995. Amy is crying now, hands pressed to her temples. ‘It hurts,’ she hisses.
‘I know,’ I say lamely, searching the environment for any more clues that I’m right about our location. It doesn’t help. All I can do now is hope.
‘Will I see you again?’ Amy asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply, then thinking on my feet, ‘but you mustn’t tell Joe about this when you get back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it might change things.’
She seems sad about this but then nods, ‘I’m good at secrets.’ She squints, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. Amy Bridgeman is many things. Stupid is not one of them. She doesn’t say it but her expression says, Pinky Swear. I suspect she knows who I am, probably knew from the start, but she doesn’t say it. She’s attempting to smile but I can see her teeth clenched against the pain.
And then she goes.
I watched Other Joe disappear once and that image stayed with me; it was amazing, but nothing compared to watching Amy leave. Her moment of departure is instant, shockingly so. Her physical self ceases to be, her outline momentarily embodied by rain that hasn’t yet realised it shouldn’t be held in the air any more. I see a glass-like, beaded sculpture of Amy in the rain, lit by distant lightning and then she’s gone, the water falling away, leaving a space where my sister was.
I stand for a few seconds in awe. Amazed at the things I get to see, things that will never become normal for me. The minutes pass, the wind drops and the rain thins to a cloud of descending mist. And then the pain of my own brain freeze arrives with such a fierce and aggressive rush that it almost knocks me off my feet. I scream and break into a run, heading for the nearby field, praying I can make it in time; not to God, but to time itself, I think.
I bargain as I stagger towards the field, which is waist high in crop. ‘All I’ve done is put something right. A seven-year-old girl drowned. What good could that have done?’ I cough and wince as the icy warning locks in, pushing my way through the tall corn. ‘All I did was put it right!’ I shout, as a single flicker of lightning in the distance is followed by a low rumbling response, as if time was listening but is bored of my mortal wishes.
I reach the very centre of the field and close my eyes. My last thoughts – as I return to 2015 – are imagining all the ways a vengeful time could have taken Amy between now and then.
15.
I’m in the same spot I left in the past, right in the middle of the field. It’s dark here too and for a moment I wonder if I’ve travelled at all. But then I notice the ground, now stubbled with an inch of hard crop rather than waist high corn and feel the instant and wonderful release from cold pain.
Is it definitely 2015 though, I wonder? It’s hard to tell and I can’t exactly check my iPhone – not that I’ve got one – but you get what I mean. I draw in a breath and realise for the first time in weeks, I don’t actually know what to do next. There is no plan for after the plan. A shiver runs through me, partly the cold but also the thought of twenty-three years passing in the blink of an eye. I peer across the field towards lights and see the building that, minutes ago, Amy and I sheltered underneath. I’m reassured. It’s back to how I remember it in the present. The boards are gone and it’s been refurbished into a café overlooking Cox’s Meadow. It was a toilet once. Nice. Very nice in fact because it means I’m… ‘Home,’ I whisper to no one, rubbing my aching shoulders.
I take a step but my body feels as though it’s made of metal, cooling and on its way to setting hard. I swallow and my throat burns. I take another step but I’m doing it with my entire body clenched. It’s such an effort in fact that I’ve stopped breathing. I pause, hands on my knees and suck in a long breath, head pounding. I feel utterly empty. Like I haven’t slept for days, run a marathon, legged it up a mountain and then stood around getting cold, until I can no longer feel the blood in my veins. In other words, I feel like crap, like I’ve been poisoned.
A half moon lights the way as I stagger, one painful step at a time, towards the road. It’s quiet and empty but for a fox that pauses when it sees me and then slips into the shadows. It moves quickly. I, on the other hand, do not. I’m about forty feet from the edge of the field and calculate that at this zombie rate I should make the town centre by morning; just in time for my current clothes – God only knows where they are supposed to be – to ping away somewhere. Naked in town and walking through sludge. Ever had that dream? Well, it could be my –
I see car lights. Hear an engine revving loudly, screeching tyres. A ver
y modern beam of bluish light scans over the café and then spins across me. The car parks up, its interior light flicks on and I see a man but don’t recognise him. I lurch to my left and totter, uncertain my legs will carry me to the safety of a nearby hedgerow. Another person gets out of the passenger side. A woman, I think, but she’s a shadow against the streetlights.
‘Joe?’ The woman calls, a plume of grey breath rising from her as she breaks into a run.
My heart races at the sound of my name. ‘Alexia?’ I reply, but my voice is weak, like a heavy smoker about to keel over.
The woman is running fast now and when I finally realise who it is my legs give way and I drop to my knees, mouth hanging open. ‘Amy,’ I gasp. ‘Amy, help me...’ Seeing her causes an intense fire of emotion to sear through me, in spite of my exhaustion. She’s a woman now, of course; tall and as beautiful as I imagined. She calls my name again and just as I’m about to fall forwards, she kneels and catches me. I can’t think anymore. She’s hugging me. My grown-up sister is hugging me.
‘It’s alright,’ she says, voice familiar but deeper and richer than I’ve ever heard. ‘You’re okay now, I’ve got you.’
I close my eyes and hold her tightly, never wanting to let go; Never again. Tears come, a release from the pain that has built up over the years. My words begin to fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, my voice raspy and arriving in bursts. ‘It took me so long to get to you, it was so hard Amy, I wasn’t sure I would –’
‘It’s okay now,’ Amy assures me as my world goes black.
I float below consciousness, aware but not awake. I can’t feel my body but I’m aware of being laid flat in in the back of a car, the one I guess they arrived in. They? Amy and a man. Who is he? I try to move, the leather creaking beneath me. Amy is holding my head. She tells me that I will be okay and then instructs the man to drive faster. I glance at him. He’s late twenties, maybe early thirties. Short hair, intense expression. He nods as Amy speaks. I look up at her and she says, ‘You’re safe now Joe, everything is going to be okay.’ I manage a smile. She’s an angel, I think, as she strokes my head and I go again, into blackness.