by Jadyn Chase
“You see, Alex,” Jackie breezed, “it just so happens that I stumbled upon that name a’ yours recently. That’s the reason I remember it. It really is a stroke of luck you walk in here when I just discovered it and had it on the tip of my tongue when you just said it.”
“What name?” I hated to ask.
“Alexander Lincoln Shelton.” He set his teacup on the desk and swiveled his chair around to face one of the rectangles. He touched some of his other paraphernalia and the thing lit up with more winking pictures.
A tapping sound followed. “I remember that name quite distinctly. Alexander Lincoln Shelton. I mean, how many Alexander Lincoln Sheltons can there be on the internet?”
“The what?” Did I say those words out loud?
He didn’t answer. The moment the words crossed my lips, an image appeared before my sight that struck fear into my heart and made my hair stand on end. A likeness of me, my parents, my three brothers, and my sister appeared where the other pictures once had been. This one didn’t fade or blink away. It stayed there.
“You see?” Jackie chirped. “It says here you resided in Dover Castle with your father, Henry Mackenzie Shelton, your mother, Elizabeth Margaret Shelton, your brothers William Ashworth, Thomas Tierney, and James West Shelton, and your sister Mary Emily Shelton.” He glanced over at me. “Am I right so far?”
I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t breathe. I could only gape at the image in blank shock. It couldn’t be. Whatever he intended to say, it couldn’t be. I couldn’t listen to him. I had to stop him before he destroyed everything, but I couldn’t budge.
Jake wheeled around. “Corker, mate!” He raised one hand above his head and Jackie copied him. They slapped their hands together before receding back into their seats.
Jackie turned back to the image. “It says here that you disappeared from the Great Armour Hall on 28th July 1840. It says here you hasn’t been seen since. Is that right?”
My head felt heavy. I needed to sit down. The problem was I was already sitting down and that didn’t help at all. I lunged to my feet. “Look here, lads. I so appreciate the cup of tea, but I really must be going. It was such a delight to meet you both. I’m sure you have a lot to….”
I set my tea down as hastily as I could without spilling it. I didn’t even get a chance to drink it. I spun away and made a dash for the door. For two strapping young specimens like them, the boys could move surprisingly fast.
They jumped at me without spilling one drop of their own tea. They seized me, one on each arm and hauled me back. “Hold it right there, guv! You’re not going anywhere at this time of night.”
They fought me back into the room. Somehow or other, they managed to fling me into the same chair like some sort of criminal under arrest. I held up both hands in surrender. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’m not who you think I am. I’m just…. I’m just….”
I couldn’t think of one decent remark to make about who or what I was that could explain this. The two leaned over me which only succeeded in petrifying me even more. Not even Jake’s assurances to the contrary could convince me they didn’t mean me harm.
“Keep your knickers on, codger,” he snapped. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I was just…. going to…..” I faltered.
Jackie resumed his seat first and attacked his…. whatever it was. “Everybody take a deep breath and use your brains. Jake, for the love of Christ, will you sit down? You’ll give the blighter a bloody aneurysm.”
At his order, Jake retreated back to his chair. He hurled himself into it so hard I feared it might crack under the strain. I certainly sensed myself heading for the same fate. Jake picked up his teacup and glared at me over the rim.
Sadly, Jackie proved the only person present capable of taking a deep breath at this point. He held up his hand as if to steady us all. He rotated his chair around again, but he didn’t return to his work. Instead, he picked up the cake and started serving the slices onto dishes.
He handed them all around. My awareness shifted gears and my stomach commanded me to pay attention to that and nothing else. The first bite dissolved on my tongue in buttery, sugary, lemony goodness. Ah, lemon cake. My favorite.
I floated into a dream, but Jackie’s voice startled me back to Earth. “You say you came from the Castle. When were you there?”
I swallowed the lump in my mouth. In the blink of an eye, I couldn’t taste it at all anymore. “It’s 1840. Everybody knows that.”
“Where were you in the Castle?” Jake chimed in.
My eyes slid to his chiseled young face. Where was I in the Castle? “I was in the old pump chamber.”
The brothers exchanged glances. “Never heard of it.”
“You must have,” I returned. “It’s on the second level down in the old tunnels.”
“There ain’t no second level down, tosser!” Jake barked. “It’s lost. No one knows where it is or how to get in or out.”
I rounded on him with exaggerated dignity. “Excuse me, young fellow. I think I know the tunnels a bit better than you do and I certainly know where I was. I know the tunnels like the back of my hand.”
Jackie laid his fingertips on his brother’s arm. “Let’s all keep our heads. Our good friend Alex here lived in the Castle in 1840. Isn’t that correct, Alex?”
“Of course it’s correct.”
My manners seemed to be wearing off on them. “That would have been before the second level got lost to modern knowledge.”
“Modern knowledge?” I repeated. “What precisely are you trying to infer?”
“I’m not inferring anything, mate,” Jackie murmured. “I’m telling you plain as punch it’s near two hundred years since you disappeared from the Great Armour Hall—you and your family. It’s 2019 now. Wherever you were or whatever you was doing down there, two hundred years have passed.”
I blinked first at him and then at Jake. “You’re having me on.”
By way of answer, Jackie waved toward the detritus on the table. “Do you see these things? They’re called computers. They’re machines that can process billions of computational mathematical processes in a split second. There’s a vast network of these and other machines like them all over the planet and even in orbit thousands of miles above the surface of the Earth.”
I gaped at the things in mute horror. He couldn’t be telling the truth.
When he spoke again, he barely breathed above a whisper. “You’ve never seen them before, have you?”
A thunderclap went off in my head. In a split second, everything I had seen between waking up in the pump chamber and now slotted together in an enormous jigsaw puzzle. What he said explained the lights, the strange apparatus in the Castle, the lack of servants, the weird objects on the road to this farm—all of it.
My head toppled and my vision blurred. I swooned in my chair and cold sweat broke out all over my body. I heard the lads chattering in the background.
“Crikey!”
“He’s fainted.”
“Quick! Open the hatch!”
“Take it easy! You’ll damage him.”
“We won’t damage him. He’s not some bloody antique from the blasted museum. He’s a man!”
“For shite’s sake, will you shut your piking hole and help me get him into the cave? What’s the matter with you?”
I didn’t catch anymore. I must have drifted out of consciousness because when I woke, I was lying on a cot of some sort. I raised my head and looked around. Jake and Jackie sat near me, but I didn’t recognize where I was.
Workbenches packed a windowless room all ablaze with those awful lights. Mountains of curling glass festooned every surface along with more of those…. computers, they called them. Some of the glass receptacles bubbled and fumed. They gave off a stale odor I didn’t fancy much.
Jackie leaned into view. “Are you right, Alex?”
My hand flew to my head. “Where the devil am I?”
“This is
our cave. You fainted so we brought you here to sleep it off.”
I looked around. “Cave? You called…. that other place the cave.”
“That?” Jake chuckled. “That’s just our office. This is where we do our real research.”
I scrutinized my surroundings. “What research is that, may I ask?”
Jake cackled with glee and smacked his knuckles into his brother’s arm. “Wouldn’t you like to know, eh!”
The two of them burst into maniacal laughter to raise the roof. I couldn’t see what they found so unaccountably amusing, but since I didn’t understand anything else that was going on around here, I didn’t pursue the matter.
3
Alexander
I strolled up and down the benches in the Whitlock brother’s so-called cave. I couldn’t fathom what sort of research these two young lads might get up to in their secret underground laboratory and they didn’t enlighten me.
“Here’s what comes to me,” I remarked between examinations of the mysterious equipment. “If I woke up in the pump chamber, then it stands to reason the others must have done the same thing.”
Jake didn’t look up from his computer. “We can’t assume that. They could be anywhere. They could be dead.”
“How could they be?” I countered. “Whatever made me fall asleep must have made them fall asleep, too.”
“What if someone poisoned you and not them?” Jackie asked between bites of cake.
“Then they wouldn’t have disappeared at the same time, now, would they have?” Jake pointed out. “No! I say they all fell asleep at the same time. Whoever put Alex here in the pump chamber must have put them all there.”
I rubbed my chin. “Now that you mention it, there did seem to be some long wooden boxes in there.”
“We should go check it out,” Jackie suggested. “We should go down there and see what’s what.”
Jake peered around him. “What—now?”
Jackie shrugged. “Later.”
“Why not now?” I asked. “There’s no time like the present.”
Jake bestowed a patronizing smile on me. “Because it’s four o’clock in the bloody morning, gobshite.”
I knit my brow at him. “I don’t understand your colloquialisms. What does that mean?”
Jackie interrupted. “It means he hasn’t learned to behave in civil society the way you have, Alex, but he’s right. We can’t just go torching up the hill and storming the bloody Castle. Even if it was business hours, you couldn’t go up there looking like that.”
I cast a glance down at my clothes. “What’s wrong with the way I look?”
“Not a flamin’ thing as long as you’re on your way to 1840. You can’t go about the streets looking like that. We’ll have to change your clothes. Here. Put this on.”
He crossed the room to a closet I hadn’t remarked before. He took out the strangest outfit I ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. He held up a flimsy undergarment without sleeves. Huge gaping holes hung down nearly to the waist. A garish caricature of a beach and a palm tree graced the front.
The trousers—if one ventured so far as to call them that—were barely as long as my forearm. They wouldn’t have covered below my knee and they, too, bore the indelible imprint of palm leaves, waves, and exaggerated lettering I didn’t bother to read. The incoherent color combination made it revolting indeed to look upon.
I reared back in offended pride. “I will most certainly not wear that! You can’t honestly expect me to desecrate my being with that…that rubbish. I’ll have you know I’m a gentleman of the upper class. I have a standard to uphold, you know.”
Jackie made a face. “Apparently.”
Jake guffawed from his seat. “Why don’t you wear a jolly bikini, then?”
Jackie spun around braying like an ass. The two flapped hands once again roaring at some secret joke between themselves. I scowled at them, but as their antics shed no light on the subject, I ignored them.
When they collected themselves enough to think straight, Jackie returned to examining me with an unflinching gaze. “We’ll have to get you some of Dad’s clothes.”
I cocked my head. “Your father? Is he here?”
“He’s over in the house, but he’s sound asleep. We’ll have to wait until he wakes up so we can sneak into his room and rifle his closet.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. “I didn’t realize he was…..here.”
“He isn’t,” Jake returned. “He’s in the house.”
Now I viewed their establishment with new eyes. “You maintain this…. this cave of yours on your father’s farm? What does he think of all your research?”
“He doesn’t know bugger all about it. He never comes out here.”
I could only search the room in wonder. “He doesn’t know about…. all this?”
“He knows the office, but he keeps out of it,” Jake added. “He hates computers or anything scientific—not his cup of tea if you know what I mean.”
I nodded and rubbed my chin some more. Now that I considered it, I didn’t blame their father one iota for steering clear of this house of horrors. I wouldn’t have come out here for all the gold in the London Bank if I had known what I would find.
All at once, Jake whipped around in his chair. “Hey! What about the bonzer?”
“The what?” I asked.
Jackie jumped a foot off the ground. “Of course! Perfection, mate!”
They slapped their hands above their heads again and Jackie took off at a run. I didn’t see where he went. “What the blazes is going on now?”
Jake went back to his computer as though nothing had happened. “You’ll see. Now sit down, Alex, old sod. I want to talk to you.”
I slunk to a seat near him, but I didn’t want to look at that cursed machine of his. It seemed to harbor a lot of dangerous secrets I would just as soon forget.
He turned it around so I had no choice but to look at it. “Now I want you to describe for me exactly where this pump chamber of yours is and how you got into and out of it. This is a diagram of the tunnels as we currently know them.”
I frowned at the schematic. “This is woefully inadequate. It doesn’t show half the tunnel system.”
“These are all the ones we know about. Where are the ones you know?”
I pointed at the screen. “This is the first level down. The opening to the second level is here.”
He scowled. “That can’t be right.”
“It is.” I turned away. “If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go see for yourself.”
He pivoted around in his chair and his eyes lit up. “Alex! You’re brilliant.”
Before I could stop him, he dove out of his seat and grabbed me by the head. He yanked me in and kissed me on the lips before pushing me away.
I howled in horror and scraped my knuckles across my mouth. “You…. you fiend! What in the world do you think you’re doing? Are you completely dotty?”
At that moment, Jackie returned with a pile of clothes draped over his arm. He saw what his brother did, but he didn’t seem to think it all that out of the way. “Here. Try these on.”
I launched out of my chair. “What sort of hooligans are you? Your…..your brother here just made advances on me! I won’t have it. I don’t care what you say. I’m leaving!”
Neither of them moved and they certainly didn’t react to my outburst. Jake swiveled around and creaked his chair back. Jackie laid his prizes on the table and rounded on me. They both leveled me with clear, unwavering eyes.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you, old boy,” Jackie remarked. “If you walk out that door right now, the first person you meet is going to start asking a whole lot of awkward questions about why you’re dressed like that and where you came from and all that blather.”
“You’d do much better sticking with us,” Jake flipped his thumb back and forth between himself and his brother. “We already know about you and, in case you failed to notice, we’re trying to
help you, though why we should want to do that, I can’t fathom.”
The two of them studied me with that pointed expression that left nothing to the imagination. I wilted into the nearest chair and hung my head. I smashed my hands between my knees in desolation. “You’re absolutely right and I can only extend my sincerest apologies for my behavior. Please excuse my outburst. I am indeed an ungrateful and selfish cretin. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Well, that’s all right!” Jake spun around and immediately attacked his computer without a second thought.
Jackie picked up one of his many treasures. “These should fit you and no one will look sideways at you.”
I scrutinized the item in question. The first article was an oversized purple shirt without buttons, collar, or decoration of any kind. It didn’t even have cuffs. The pathetic excuses for sleeves didn’t even reach my elbows.
Jackie put it down and stepped forward. Before I could stop him, he laid hold of my jacket. “Here. Take these off.”
I slapped his hand away with an audible cry of alarm. “Unhand me, you foul beast! I think I can undress myself without any assistance from you.”
He retreated smirking like a weasel. He perched on the edge of the table and leveled his hateful grin at me. He crossed his arms to watch.
I shrugged my jacket back into place and drew myself up. “Where shall I dress?”
Jackie waved his hand around the room. “Here, of course. There is nowhere else unless you want to change in the closet.”
Jake emitted a snort of amusement, but when I scowled down at him as black as thunder, he shrank away. He didn’t stop smiling, though. These two made me so insensibly furious I didn’t know what to do. I snatched the clothes off the desk and stormed to the closet.
Once inside, however, I discovered that I couldn’t untangle the clothes from one another. I couldn’t even make out what they were. Even if I could have oriented them in the dark, I didn’t fit in the cramped space. I bent over to take off my shoe and cracked my skull against the wall.