No True Echo

by Gareth P. Jones

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘I mean, what did she do? Did she have a job?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She was still at university when she had me. She dropped out, I think.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Scarlett. ‘We’ve gone past the turning.’

  She slammed on the brakes and I felt my whole body jerk forward then rock back. Scarlett looked over her shoulder and put the car into reverse along the road, then turned right onto a dirt track that cut through a field. Having rained continually for the past three days, we hadn’t got far before the car began to skid and slide in the mud, unable to go any further.

  Scarlett switched off the ignition and undid her seatbelt. ‘We’ll have to walk,’ she said. ‘When you get out of the car, get out quickly and close the door behind you straight away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So you don’t let the cat out.’

  ‘What cat?’

  ‘That cat.’

  She pointed over her shoulder where a terrified-looking cat was digging its claws into the backseat. I reached down and inspected the collar around its neck. The cat was quaking in fear. He hissed at me as I read his tag.

  ‘He’s called Rascal,’ I said, stroking his head.

  ‘Well, let’s keep Rascal in the car. It’s bad enough stealing an old lady’s car, but losing her cat would be awful.’

  The Green Door

  Scarlett was walking fast and I was doing my best to keep up, but I was also trying to avoid the really deep puddles, which involved a lot of hopping and jumping.

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m trying not to get my socks wet,’ I replied. ‘So is your life always like this?’

  ‘These days it is, yes. Things are more complicated where I’m from.’

  ‘You mean that we’re all simple here in the valley?’

  ‘Things are simpler here, yes.’

  I made a big jump to the other side of the path to avoid an enormous muddy puddle, which Scarlett had just walked straight through.

  ‘You look like a demented frog,’ she said.

  ‘A demented frog?’ I replied, but Scarlett wasn’t laughing.

  We were approaching a cluster of trees at the edge of the field. I had never been to this spot before. It was the sort of place that tourists liked. The valley was full of holiday cottages for city folk to hire so they could ramble through nature and get away from the hustle and bustle of their normal lives – an idea that made no sense to me.

  ‘Just over that ridge is a farmhouse,’ said Scarlett. ‘I’m going to need to go in and you have to stay put. No matter what happens.’

  ‘What might happen?’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she exclaimed. ‘Why did I even let you come along with me? You’re … well, you’re you.’

  ‘Thanks … I think.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it as a compliment. Listen, Eddie, something is happening in the house down there that is going to change everything and Cornish is trying to prevent it. When I succeed in stopping him, I may not come back. Do you understand?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She sighed. ‘But do you understand that I’m asking you not to follow me?’

  ‘Yes, I understand that.’

  The rain was taking a break so I lowered my hood, only to feel a huge drop land on my head when we stepped under the trees. I followed Scarlett to a point where we could see the farmhouse she had been talking about.

  The walls were covered in ivy and the brickwork was patchy and old. The whole place looked mouldy, neglected and rundown, but a light on inside indicated it was not as abandoned as it appeared.

  ‘Stupid girl. Why did I come this way?’ Scarlett muttered, looking at the steep, muddy slope down to the farmhouse.

  ‘Rascal is managing all right.’ I pointed out the cat scampering down the hill, then jumping over the stream that ran in front of the house.

  ‘The cat,’ she whispered. ‘This is bad.’

  ‘You’re really worried about the cat, aren’t you?’

  ‘The cat couldn’t have got out of the car itself, which means someone let it out, which means someone is behind us.’

  She said it so seriously it made me want to laugh, but from the way she was looking at me I didn’t think this would go down well.

  Then we heard the gunshot.

  ‘Stay here,’ said Scarlett, and she went skidding, slipping and sliding down the slope, reaching the bottom in seconds. She glanced back up at me, to check that I hadn’t followed, then jumped over the stream and went into the farmhouse.

  ‘Stop right there.’

  The voice came from behind me. I turned and saw, standing behind me, the police officer who had come to our school on Thursday.

  ‘Was it you who let Rascal out of the car?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cat.’

  ‘Yes. It was an accident,’ she replied. ‘My name is PC Liphook. I need to talk to you about the stolen car parked in the field up there. This is very serious but if you do everything I tell you now, we don’t have to make matters any worse. I heard a gunshot.’

  ‘Yes, it came from the farmhouse,’ I said.

  ‘Is that where your girlfriend went?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend. I do like her and I think she likes me – you know, in an irritated kind of way, but I don’t think it’s black and white. You know, not like penguins.’

  ‘Why are you talking about penguins?’

  ‘It seems to be what I do when I get nervous.’

  ‘Is there an easier way down?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.’

  I could tell Liphook was considering the best thing to do next but the sound of a second gunshot made her spring into action.

  ‘Stay here. Don’t move.’

  She turned and ran along the top of the ridge to find a safer way down. The gunshot echoed around the valley and through my brain. All I could think was that Scarlett was inside that house. I began down the slope but lost my footing almost immediately. I stumbled and slipped. I grabbed a tree trunk and looked down. From this angle I could see the farmhouse door clearly. The bark of the tree dug into my palm but the pain vanished as I recognised the dark green door.

  I had seen it before. I had stared at that door many times. It was the door from a past I had never known.

  It was the door from the photograph of my mother.

  The Reclamation of Sense

  I don’t know how I reached the bottom of the slope but, by the time I did, I was wet and muddy. I staggered through the stream to the farmhouse and reached out my hand to the green door. I half believed it to be some kind of mirage that would vanish at my touch, but my fingers connected with it. It felt almost disappointingly real as I pushed it open and heard voices inside.

  ‘You’re only making matters worse for yourself, Patrick,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘This isn’t about me,’ Cornish replied. ‘My actions are for the greater good.’

  The door got stuck on a floorboard, but I pushed it harder, and stepped into a gloomy room with piles of books everywhere, stacked up like a city skyline. They covered the floor, shelves and furniture. I could feel the ticklish threat of a sneeze building up in my nose from the dust. Hearing something quietly banging in the next room, I pushed the second door open and saw Rascal in the kitchen, trying to get at a terrified mouse trapped inside a clear plastic mousetrap. The voices were coming from behind the door at the other end of the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cornish. ‘You have left us no choice but to take matters into our own hands.’

  ‘Why? Because you disagree with something you don’t understand?’ said Scarlett.

  ‘We understand that it’s wrong to allow the rich to live whatever lives they choose again and again. We understand that echo technology is the single biggest threat to all of our futures.’

  ‘Patrick, I’ve seen more of the future than you. Things have changed. Th
ere’s much more to this than you could ever understand but, most importantly, the fact I’ve jumped back further than you should tell you that this line of action is doomed to failure.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s not a case of belief. I promise you that this echo jump has only created a new timeline and even here, with both Melody and Maguire dead, guess what? Echo technology will still be discovered. You can’t stop it.’

  ‘We can if we terminate him in the originating timeline.’

  ‘It’s frightening how little you understand. I’ll bet you don’t even know how you ended up here in this version, do you? You jumped back to a different world. How did that happen?’

  ‘My comrades and I understand enough. We know that this needs to be stopped.’

  ‘Patrick, please. Put the gun down.’

  She said the words calmly, but I felt anything but calm. I rushed to help her but my foot caught a pile of books and sent it crashing to the ground, meaning I stumbled into the room and smacked my head on a grey cabinet. I staggered back and saw computers, graphs, strange humming machines and charts. Cornish was holding an old farmer’s gun, which he was pointing at Scarlett who was sitting on the ground, her back against a cabinet like the one I had just head-butted. She held her right hand to her stomach and I could see dark blood leaking out between her fingers. She looked in a bad way, but not as bad as the man next to her who was lying face down, his white lab coat bloodstained and torn by the bullet that had taken his life.

  ‘Eddie, I told you not to come in.’ Scarlett winced with pain as she spoke.

  ‘You’ve been shot,’ I said. In the corner of the room was an overturned chair and camera tripod. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  ‘This doesn’t concern you,’ she replied.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ said Cornish. ‘Doesn’t it concern him more than anyone?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Not here. Not this Eddie. What you’re doing doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Sense is the thing we’re trying to reclaim.’

  ‘You can save the speeches and the flawed logic for your hearing.’

  I couldn’t follow much of what they were saying but I was clear on one thing: we were sharing a room with a dead man and Cornish had killed him.

  ‘Have you gone mad, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Eddie,’ he said. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’

  ‘This is a complicated situation,’ said Scarlett, ‘and it’s one I need to deal with in accordance with protocols.’

  ‘You have protocols for this?’ I exclaimed. I was trying not to look at the dead body but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  ‘Eddie, you have to get out now,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Not without you,’ I said.

  I was trying to stall for time. Any second, I thought, the police officer would be here to sort everything out.

  ‘Patrick, you’re leaving me no choice,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ said Cornish.

  Whatever happened next occurred too fast for me to work out the precise order of events. I could not say if Cornish pulled the trigger before I dived in front of the bullet or if I stepped in his way before he fired. All I knew was the agony of the bullet ripping into my chest.

  And the shock.

  And the fear.

  A Night at the Hospital

  Liphook had hoped the museum would bring back memories but it had changed too much from the original. The smart museum, with its extensions and explanations, was a far cry from the rundown farmhouse. Besides, her main memory of that long day wasn’t the farmhouse but the hospital.

  She remembered how Sergeant Copeland had ambled in and immediately made a beeline for the vending machine. It seemed to Liphook that he was very calm, given the situation. Certainly he looked calmer than she felt. It had been his day off, which explained why he was wearing a snug-fitting wool jumper and a pair of shorts.

  ‘Well, Liphook, you did want excitement,’ he said, pondering which of the chocolate bars on offer was worth his money. ‘What’s the situation, then?’

  ‘One dead, three unconscious,’ replied Liphook.

  ‘Unconscious? Why?’

  ‘The doctors can’t work it out. Two of them have gunshot wounds but that doesn’t appear to be connected. It’s like they’ve fallen asleep with their eyes open. All three are still breathing, but their heart rates are unnaturally slow.’

  ‘Sounds a bit peculiar.’

  ‘It’s very peculiar,’ said Liphook. ‘Neither of the gunshot victims sustained serious injuries to the head. The shooter shows no sign of injury at all and yet it’s as though they are all in a coma. Also, two of the victims are minors, sir.’

  ‘Children?’ said Sergeant Copeland.

  ‘Yes.’

  Having finally decided on the chocolate bar he wanted, Copeland dropped the money into the slot and hit the buttons to extract it. ‘Do you want anything, Liphook?’

  ‘I would, actually, sir, yes.’ She chose the biggest bar in the machine, feeling in desperate need of something sweet to replace the bitter aftertaste left by the long wait for the ambulance to arrive, with only the wide-eyed lifeless bodies for company.

  ‘So who’s who then?’ asked Copeland.

  ‘The shooter is called Patrick Cornish. He’s an English teacher at Wellcome Valley school.’

  ‘That’s funny, you were only there the other day, weren’t you?’

  ‘Sir, none of this is funny,’ Liphook said grimly.

  ‘No, of course not. I just meant it was a coincidence. So, an armed English teacher. Who did he shoot?’

  ‘Edward Dane, one of his pupils. He lives with his grandmother, Ruby Dane.’

  ‘Yes, I know her,’ said Copeland. ‘She’s a local artist. All those splashes are not to my taste really but she’s a nice lady.’

  ‘She says Eddie sometimes gets a lift home with Mr Cornish. She has never heard Eddie talk about this girl, though. Nor does she know why they stole a car.’

  ‘A car theft too? This must feel like Christmas for you,’ said Copeland.

  ‘Christmas usually involves less blood, sir.’

  ‘Of course. Yes, of course.’ Sergeant Copeland laughed awkwardly.

  ‘There was a girl involved in the car theft too. She is the other gunshot victim.’

  ‘Terrible. A local girl?’

  ‘Actually, no, sir. This is the missing girl we spoke about yesterday, Lauren Bliss. The station is trying to contact her parents.’

  ‘How remarkable. What was it? Some kind of Bonnie and Clyde romance?’

  ‘This is where it gets really strange. It seems that Lauren had a second identity. She put on a red wig and caught a train using the name Scarlett White. She arrived here on Wednesday and started school on Thursday.’

  ‘What do you mean started school? You can’t just start a school like that.’ Sergeant Copeland clicked his fingers, forgetting he had been holding a coin and sending it flying across the waiting room.

  Liphook explained what she had learned. ‘A couple calling themselves Mr and Mrs White bought a house here in the spring. They applied to the school, then Scarlett came for an interview back in the summer.’

  ‘Have you spoken to them?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The Whites live in Scotland. I managed to establish that they did not buy a house in Wellcome Valley, nor did they come here in the spring. In fact, they had never heard of the place. Also, their daughter Scarlett is not missing.’

  Sergeant Copeland pulled a biscuit from his top pocket with the flourish of a third-rate magician, and looked at it with a satisfied smile. ‘Identity theft?’

  ‘I believe so, sir, but do you remember how you told me Lauren came here in the summer? The dates coincide with the school interview.’

  ‘Remarkable. What about our corpse? How does he fit in to this ripe old pick-and-mix bucket?’

  ‘He’s the owner of the property. His name is David Maguire.
No one knows much about him. Bit of a hermit. Apparently he used to work at the university as a professor of particle physics, but he lost his job years ago and he’s kept himself to himself ever since.’

  Seeing a paint-splattered woman enter the waiting room, Sergeant Copeland raised his hand and said, ‘Hello, Ruby. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve been better, Jim. No one can tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sergeant Copeland. ‘It is a terrible business. Terrible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘A cup of tea, perhaps?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ She turned to Liphook. ‘You asked me if I could think of anything that could explain any of this. There is one thing you should know.’

  ‘Yes? What is it?’ asked Liphook.

  ‘There’s a possibility that David Maguire is Eddie’s father.’

  Thursday Again

  It was another miserable day in the valley. The sky was dark and I was as far back in the bus shelter as I could go to avoid the rain. I knew it was the morning because I was dressed for school and waiting for the bus, but what morning was it? How had I got here? I racked my brain for the last thing I could remember.

  The bullet.

  I placed my hand on the point it had entered my body. No pain. I pulled up my shirt. There was no wound. No blood.

  The arrival of the school bus took me by surprise and showered my legs with puddle water.

  ‘Ready, Eddie?’ said Bill. ‘Then jump on board and hold on steady, Eddie.’

  I stared back at him. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Today? What day is it?’

  ‘Thursday,’ he replied. ‘Come on, Eddie. I can’t stand around discussing days with you. We’ve got places to go.’

  I got onto the bus and sat down by Angus. ‘Morning, Eddie,’ he said. ‘Anything amazing to report?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Anything amazing since yesterday?’ he said.

  ‘What day was yesterday?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. What day was yesterday?’