by Ali Sparkes
‘Your dad—he was a genius?’ asked Ben and inside him the fear and amazement were beginning to mix with the most awful sense of pity. Something really terrible had happened to these two children and they had absolutely no idea.
‘Oh yes—he is,’ said Polly, rubbing her ankles through her short grey socks, to warm them up. Her buckle-up sandals were navy and polished. ‘He built all this stuff. It’s all terribly hush-hush, of course, but now that you’ve seen it there’s not much point in fibbing, is there? He’s a genius and he knows how to make your heart freeze … and then just start up again! Whenever you like. Isn’t that fantastic?’
‘Oh yes—jolly fab-oh,’ muttered Freddy, who was also fully out of the torpedo by now and gingerly walking around to his sister, on very shaky legs. ‘I think he should go back to using rats. I’m sick of waking up feeling all queer and then finding out I’ve missed Journey Into Space.’
‘So—so you’ve had your heart stopped … and then just started again?’ said Ben. ‘You’ve just been frozen in time? I mean—that’s cryonic suspension, isn’t it?’ He liked sci-fi stuff and stored up these kinds of phrases. The brother and sister looked at him in surprise. And then at each other.
‘Gosh—Father must have told you quite a lot,’ said Polly, a new respect creeping into her high, elegant voice.
‘Um … no. Not really,’ said Ben. ‘Look—there’s something you two should know—but … look, have you got any sweet drinks or anything?’ He looked wretchedly at Rachel and she returned his expression. How on earth would a bit of sugar help a shock this big?
‘Heaps!’ said Polly, proudly. ‘Tizer! We’ll get some from the refrigerator as soon as the door opens.’
‘What should we know?’ asked Freddy, and he was looking hard at Ben. Man to man, thought Ben. ‘What’s going on?’
Ben shuffled his feet. His fear was quite gone now, but he found his stammer was back, all the same. ‘When d-did your d-dad put you under?’ he asked.
‘Wednesday,’ said Freddy. ‘Why?’
‘What date?’
‘The sixth. Of June. What are you driving at?’
Ben closed his eyes and it was Rachel who said, gently, her voice full of sadness for them. ‘What … year?’
Freddy gulped and Polly paled. ‘1956, of course,’ said the boy. His eyes glittered and he stood up straight and then shouted ‘1956! 1956!’ And he watched their faces and his eyes skittered around the room while he chewed on his lower lip, and he finally said, ‘When … what … is the date now?’
The door hissed and clunked and the mechanism reversed. Rachel pulled it open. ‘You stay here—with them—I’ll find the Tizer. Don’t let them out … not yet.’
‘What the heck do you mean?’ shouted Freddy, and he tried to stride angrily across to the door but his legs gave way under him. He sank down next to his sister and she grasped his hand tightly and bit her lip.
‘Oh, Freddy,’ she said. ‘What has he done?’
Rachel ran through the bathroom and into the kitchen. The fridge was still working although its light didn’t switch on. It was still full of tins and boxes. There were bottles of Tizer in its door—and they looked OK. She hoped the lids wouldn’t have gone rusty or something on the inside. She ran to the drawer, looking for a bottle opener—these weren’t the kind that unscrewed—and found one, quickly. Awkwardly she fumbled with it until at last the cap shot off and danced across the Formica worktop. She did a second bottle and ran quickly back through the bathroom with both. Before she reached it, the door at the other end opened, and Freddy and Polly staggered through, Ben behind them, shrugging at her and shaking his head. ‘I couldn’t stop them,’ he said.
She and Ben had both realized that the sight of the dust all over the things in the living areas would provide the clue that they had been left, hearts stopped, for a bit longer than a week. As Freddy and Polly moved through the bathroom and into the kitchen, they were already beginning to slow down and sweep horrified glances from one side of the room to the other. In the chamber with the torpedoes the dust had not been so obvious, somehow. Everything in there was pale and grey-looking anyway. But here, on the blue and cream kitchen furniture, across the draining board of the sink, over the curved metal toaster and the pale lemon biscuit tins, the layer of dust was mournfully obvious.
Rachel pulled out two low stools from beside the sink. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Sit down and drink this. You really, really need it.’ Dazed, they both sat and accepted a bottle. They drank a little, and then pulled faces. ‘Flat,’ said Freddy.
‘Drink it anyway,’ said Ben. ‘You need the sugar.’
Freddy took a long drink and then sat up, looking levelly at Ben. ‘All right. Don’t try to fudge us. You’d better tell it to us straight. How many months have we been down here? And what’s happened to our father?’
Ben winced. Months. They still thought it was only months. But then—why not? Dust like this could build up in months … maybe. And it wasn’t as if he and Rachel had arrived in shiny silver cat-suits, waving ray guns, like anyone after the year 2000 was supposed to have looked like to people living back in the old days. They wore jeans and sweatshirts, and many kids in 1956 probably wore something similar. ‘Look—I don’t know what happened to your father,’ said Ben, as kindly as he could. ‘But you ought to know this. It’s going to be a bit of a shock. This isn’t 1956 any more.’
They stared at him from round blue eyes—desperately unprepared for what he was about to say.
‘Freddy … Polly … This is 2009.’
There was an incredibly long pause. Then Freddy let out a shuddering breath and his shoulders started to hitch and his head dropped and he rubbed his eyes. When he looked up his face was pink and he was shaking his head. He was in fits of laughter. Polly was staring at him, a shaky smile beginning to dawn on her face.
‘You—you—you must have thought we were born yesterday!’ hooted Freddy, slapping his thigh like someone in a pantomime. ‘Honestly—I—I really, nearly … you nearly had me! That was good—that was … I have to say … really the tops! The tops!’
Ben and Rachel looked at each other, aghast. Now what?
‘We’re not joking,’ said Ben, but now Polly was laughing too. ‘We’re not!’ he shouted. ‘Look—look— have you seen anything like this in 1956?’ He pulled up his sleeve and showed them the watch he’d got for Christmas. It was a gleaming dial of digital numbers, the liquid crystal display twinkling with blue-green light, offering up the time of day, the date, a stopwatch function and even a calendar and calculator if you wanted it. It kept exact time, as it was connected to a global satellite, and it was sleek and fantastic and totally twenty-first century.
Freddy grabbed hold of his wrist and stared at it. ‘Wizard!’ he said, respectfully. ‘I’ve heard you can get those in America.’
‘Oh come on! In 1956? Not on your life!’ Ben began to flick through the different modes of the watch, like a desperate timepiece salesman, urging Freddy to believe the unbelievable. ‘See—it can do that and that and …’
‘Stop it,’ said Rachel. ‘They’ll know soon enough. We need to take them back up the ladder. Back to the house. That’ll settle it.’
‘You bet your life it will! Father will soon sort you out,’ said Freddy, slamming the Tizer bottle down and getting to his feet.
‘D-did you live in Darkwood House too then?’ asked Ben.
‘We do live in Darkwood House!’ snapped Freddy. ‘And you don’t! So pack it in! Stop being such an ass!’
He pulled Polly up with him and they walked smartly, although still rather unsteadily, through to the bunk bedroom and on into the sitting room with its silenced reel-to-reel machine. Ben and Rachel watched them take in more dust on all the surfaces but they didn’t slow down. They strode across to the door which lay open to the corridor—a shaft of pale daylight showing at the end by the wall ladder.
‘Careful—you’re still really weak,’ said Ben, as they both flung thems
elves righteously up it. He was right too, they had to pause halfway up, but eventually they were on the surface and when Ben and Rachel had caught up and clambered out onto the soggy mud around the hatch, they found the brother and sister standing staring around them in silence.
‘Well,’ said Rachel, at length. ‘I guess you can see it’s not June any more. It’s August. Nearly September.’
They continued to stare. Stricken and still. ‘Where’s the garden?’ said Polly, in a choked whisper.
‘Oh—um … well it is a bit overgrown,’ said Rachel, apologetically. ‘Mum and Dad aren’t great gardeners … and Uncle Jerome wouldn’t know a lawnmower if it bit him.’
‘It’s … it’s a jungle …’
Freddy was slowly turning around, taking in the trees and bushes. Ben could guess that he was sizing them up and remembering them as they had been … just a day ago in his world. He gulped several times and his hands went into fists. His skin went pale. Then he stepped across to Polly and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re not to panic, Poll. All right? Don’t have hysterics. We’ll work this out. It’s probably not … I mean, it needn’t be as long as they say.’
But Polly had turned and was taking in the evidence of all the digging Ben and Rachel had done around the hatch. ‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘Look how far under it was. They really did dig us out! Why would he have done that? Why would Father have buried us?’
Tears welled up in her round blue eyes and began to spill silently down her cheeks. Rachel felt her throat constrict. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she had woken up that morning only to find more than fifty years had passed. She moved over to Polly and took her hand, amazed to find how normal and warm it felt. ‘Look—don’t worry. It’s OK.’
‘How?’ said Freddy, and his voice sounded hard— tightly controlled. ‘Exactly how is it oh-kay? If you’re telling the truth …’
‘Freddy—look,’ sniffed Polly, pointing to the crumbly remains of the log. ‘The drop log. That … that’s all that’s left of it.’
Ben felt out of his depth. He wanted to do something, to help in some way, but he couldn’t think how—except to get them back to the house and give them a cup of tea, with lots of sugar. That’s what Mum always did when someone was upset.
‘Come on,’ he said, sounding much more decisive than he felt. ‘Come back to the house with us. You can have a cup of tea and we’ll talk about this.’
To his immense surprise, Freddy and Polly just nodded and as he moved away towards the stream, they simply followed. They were in shock, of course. They hopped over the stream, Freddy taking Polly’s hand, and climbed up the slope, hanging on to branches as Ben and Rachel did, looking around bleakly.
At least, thought Rachel, they won’t find too much to startle them at the house. It couldn’t have changed much in a hundred years, let alone fifty. But, of course, she was wrong. As soon as they were through the front door, Polly cried out, ‘No!’ and put her hands to her mouth. Freddy stood still and slowly took in the hallway. It certainly had many of its original features, like the floor tiles, the stained-glass door, and the picture rail and old coving on the ceiling. Obviously, though, it had changed a lot.
‘Where’s the clock?’ whispered Polly. ‘And the occasional table? And … the wallpaper? The pictures?’ She spun slowly around, staring at the hallway as if she’d just landed on another planet. Rachel took her hand again and led her along to the kitchen. It didn’t help. Although the old ceramic sink and a built-in wall cupboard were original, the units were only a few years old—pale oak and very twenty-first century.
‘Come on—sit down. I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Rachel, and began to fill the jug kettle at the tap. Freddy stared at it.
‘You can’t put that on!’ he said. ‘It’ll melt!’
‘Oh—oh no.’ Rachel looked down at the kettle, seeing it with new eyes. It was made of plastic, of course, and connected to a round base which was plugged into the socket. In 1956 the kettle would probably have still been put on the hob. ‘It doesn’t work like that any more … and it’s a really tough kind of plastic. Look.’ She plonked the kettle jug down onto its base and switched on the socket. Immediately the water level gauge on the side of the jug lit up blue. Freddy and Polly blinked and then stared at each other and then back at the kettle. Their eyes were now wandering all over the very average twenty-first century kitchen they had stepped into.
As Ben got milk from the fridge Polly whispered, ‘Is that a sort of television set?’
‘Ah—no. No, that’s a microwave,’ explained Rachel and Polly looked scared. Freddy stood up with a clatter of his chair on the tiled floor.
‘Are you sure that’s safe?’ he asked.
Rachel shrugged and opened the door. The light went on, revealing the revolving glass plate inside and two baked beans which had been welded to it for some days now. ‘It cooks food. Really quickly. That’s all.’
‘We know what it does,’ said Freddy, much to her surprise. ‘Father says they’re not safe. He doesn’t trust the inventor—that American chap, Spencer. Father says these things could cook your insides if you stand too close to them.’
‘You mean, you had microwaves in 1956?’ Ben was amazed.
‘Well, we haven’t, of course!’ said Freddy. ‘Some swanky American restaurants have got them—and I wouldn’t go near one. You can cook your brains!’
‘Look—it’s OK,’ said Rachel. ‘They’ve done lots of tests on them and they’re not at all dangerous now. We use them all the time—you know, for ready meals and stuff—when Mum and Dad are away. Uncle J can’t cook for toffee and we just live on cook-chill chicken tikka massala and moussaka and stuff.’
‘Chikka tikka what?’ said Polly, looking appalled.
The kettle was bubbling urgently now, so Rachel shut the microwave door and took the jug off its stand. Ben had got four mugs and now dropped round tea bags into each of them.
‘No—no teapot then,’ said Polly.
‘Well, yeah, we do have a teapot,’ said Ben. ‘We get it out for visitors sometimes. You know, old people. They like teapots and all that cup and saucer stuff. We just dunk teabags in the mug, though. Less washing up.’ Rachel poured the boiling water in and Ben squished the teabags around with a spoon. Freddy and Polly watched, wordlessly, as the squashed tea bags were scooped out and fired into the bin in the corner.
‘Milk—sugar?’ said Ben, unscrewing the lid of a plastic milk container.
‘Yes, please,’ said their guests, looking extremely uneasy.
At last their tea was in front of them. Polly took her mug with a shaking hand. As she sipped her tea, her face relaxed. It obviously tasted all right.
‘Is it OK? Sweet enough?’ asked Rachel, anxiously. She had put two heaped teaspoons of sugar into each of their mugs.
‘It’s very nice, thank you,’ said Polly with a polite smile. Then her eyes widened in shock as she watched her brother drink his. Freddy drank from one of Ben’s mugs. It had a picture of Bart Simpson on it, showing off his yellow cartoon bum. Beneath the cheeky image were the words ‘Eat my shorts!’ Polly spluttered through a mouthful of tea and looked away, blushing furiously.
Rachel shot her brother a disapproving look. ‘Ben!’ He shrugged, looking bewildered.
‘Sorry,’ said Rachel. ‘Um … it’s kind of a joke— you know? From a TV show.’
‘Oh yes. Yes, of course,’ said Polly, but she was still staring into her own mug. Freddy had turned his around and was gazing at it in amazement.
‘Eat my shorts? What does that mean?’
‘Um … it’s kind of … a … a challenge,’ muttered Ben.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ asked Rachel, drawing up a chair and sitting down with the brother and sister. ‘This really must be a terrible shock for you.’
‘What—what year did you say this was again?’ asked Freddy, and Ben and Rachel looked at each other, wondering whether to start him off once more. Then Ben had an idea.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’
Under the stairs was a box where they kept newspapers for recycling. Uncle Jerome picked up the Guardian in town from time to time, and the local free paper found its way, somewhat infrequently, to the house. Ben hauled out two Guardians and The Advertiser, and took them back into the kitchen. He spread them out on the table. ‘Look, Freddy,’ he said. ‘Look at the date—and—and—just try to stay calm.’
Freddy pulled the newspapers towards him. The front cover of one showed a picture of soldiers in the Middle East somewhere. The other one had a photo of the Prime Minister attending a ceremonial event in Westminster. The Advertiser showed a local carnival queen in a very skimpy shorts and a crop top and a sash.
‘Gosh!’ gasped Polly, pulling the local paper towards her. ‘You can see her underwear!’
‘Poll—look,’ said her brother gravely, pointing to the date at the top of the page. For a long while neither of them spoke. Then Polly began to cry again.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘It’s true. He’s really gone and done it! He left us! How could he? How could he?’ She buried her face in her hands and sobbed loudly, without restraint; and why should she restrain herself? thought Rachel. If she were in Polly’s place, she’d be beyond hysterical.
‘What is this row?’ barked an impatient voice and everyone jumped and looked round. Uncle Jerome had come down from his attic and stood in the doorway. He was clearly rather alarmed. It took a lot for Rachel to cry like that. Now he saw that it was not Rachel, Uncle Jerome looked even more alarmed.
He took a step inside the kitchen and looked at Polly and then at Freddy. He clutched at the side of the fridge and pushed his spectacles up his nose, blinking repeatedly. Then he took his spectacles off, rubbed his eyes, put them back on again, and just stared. Then, like Freddy and Polly twenty minutes earlier, his knees gave way and he sank to the floor. ‘Ghosts …’ he breathed. ‘I always knew this place was haunted …’