• Mary? No. You’re not Mary.
• Nah. I’m not that poor cow.
• So who are you?
• You’re new, aren’t ya?
• Is it obvious?
• You can’t hide much here for long.
• I’m Alice Monroe. Who are you?
• Tess.
• That’s it? Just Tess?
• What do you need to know anything else for?
• I just thought …
• Well, don’t. Best thing you can do here is not think.
• How can you not think?
• You do. After a while, you just do. If you start thinking about where you were before, well, that don’t do you no good.
• Why?
• And don’t think about getting out of here, neither.
• If we got here, there must be a way out.
• What do you know about it? You just got here.
• I know the laws of science. If we can be brought here, then there has to be a way we can get out.
• Oh, we can get out.
• You see?
• But we always get brought back.
• How? Is that what happened to Patience?
• The snooty cow was the one it took, then?
• Patience.
• Patience? That’s a laugh.
• Why?
• ’Cause that’s all we have left here. Patience.
• How long have you been here?
• Dunno.
• Think.
• Don’t tell me what to do. There’s enough pushy cows here already.
• I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you around, Tess. But can you remember how long you’ve been here?
• No. But it’s been a long time. Ever such a long time.
• Who’s Prime Minister? Do you know that?
• What would the likes of me care about summat like that?
• You’re young. You can’t be more than, what? Fifteen? Sixteen.
• I’m over sixteen and a half. Nearer seventeen, if you please.
• Then you must have seen the Prime Minister on TV. You can’t have spent all day watching MTV.
• What are you talking about? Was you at the poppy before you was taken? What are you talking about? What the ’ell’s MTV?
• You don’t know what MTV is?
• No. But I’m not stupid, so you can take that out of your voice.
• What about school? Didn’t you study politics at school?
• I ain’t never been to no school.
• That doesn’t make sense.
• You’re the one as is makin’ no sense. School’s not for my kind.
• What kind is that?
• The poor. I had to work. I didn’t have no time to waste at school. You’re off your head.
• What year is it? Who’s on the throne?
• I dunno now.
• When you came here. What was the year and who was on the throne.
• 1892, and Queen Vic was queen. I saw her once, an’ all. Went up West, special. Right sour-faced old cow, she was. Face like misery, she had. A waste of a day, that was.
• 1892?
• That’s what I said.
• It can’t be.
• It’s a fact.
• But I was born in 1959. I was in 1995 when I was brought here.
• Yeah.
• That doesn’t surprise you?
• Everybody here is from somewhere different in time.
• But that’s impossible.
• It’s true, hon.
• Who said …? Wait. I can sense you.
• That’s Sandi, that is.
• Tess is right. We’re all from different times. And if you’re going to say ‘That’s impossible’ again, don’t. It’s a real drag. I heard it a million times since I got here.
• When was that?
• You say you’re from, what? ’95? Twenty-six years, hon. Who’d have thought twenty-six years in Hell would be so damn dull?
• What do you mean, Hell?
• Isn’t it obvious, hon?
• Hell?
• Where else should we be? We’re all dead. In Hell, where we deserve.
‘Emily?’ Lechasseur rattled the kitchen door-handle again, but the door remained stubbornly shut. Abandoning the handle, he braced himself against the facing wall and kicked hard at the door itself, his foot driving at its central panel with all the strength he could muster. He knew these old houses. He knew how they were put together. The door should have been sent splintering into the kitchen. At the very least, the bolt-mechanism of the handle should have broken, letting the door open. Instead, the door stayed resolutely closed, and Lechasseur’s foot felt like he had just tried to kick his way through the wall of St Paul’s. He kicked the door again, even though he knew it would be futile. It hadn’t moved an inch. Lechasseur swore under his breath. What should he do? Wait here for Emily or continue his own exploration?
‘Emily,’ he called. ‘If you can hear me, I’m going to take a look down those stairs. See if maybe I can find a way up to you.’ As Lechasseur had expected, there was no answer. He called again, saying that he would be back within a few minutes. He was certain Emily hadn’t heard his call. At the head of the basement stairs, Lechasseur took half a step, then stopped. He returned to the hall, pulled the nearer of the two tables to the doorway and wedged it there, so that it would stop the cellar door from closing behind him. He had taken half a dozen steps down and was reaching in his pocket for his lighter when he heard the door bang against the table.
Emily turned sharply as she heard the kitchen door slam shut behind her. She sighed as the door rebounded open instantly, revealing the hall outside. ‘I’m all right,’ she called. ‘Don’t worry about me.’ There was no answer. ‘No, really,’ she added sarcastically. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ Still no answer. Emily shook her head fondly. Honoré was probably exploring the cellar already and hadn’t even heard the kitchen door banging. She returned her attention to the kitchen. For a moment, Emily couldn’t quite work out what was wrong with the room, and then it struck her. It was clean. Unlike the rest of the house, it was free from years of dust and inattention. It was spotlessly clean, exactly as Emily imagined Mrs Barton would have kept it. The kitchen table was scrubbed, the cooker gleamed and crockery was stacked neatly waiting to be put away. And there was a smell, too. A warm, comforting smell, as though something had recently been cooked. Emily passed her hand by the front of the cooker and yanked it back immediately. The oven was still hot. A large kettle, sitting on the back hob, began to whistle and steam. Emily reached for a cloth hanging from a hook by the cooker and moved the kettle from the hob. But the kettle’s whistling grew louder. Emily peered at it in confusion for a second, until she realised that the whistling was actually coming from outside. She had a fraction of a second to realise what was happening, what was causing the whistling, before the house exploded around her. The blast sent her sprawling onto the floor, shattered glass and broken masonry flying around her, dust filling the air, choking her as grit and debris clogged her throat. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut to keep the grime and smoke from stinging her eyes. From nearby, she heard the sound of footsteps and the hollow clunking of broken bricks moving against one another. She opened her eyes tentatively. ‘Honoré?’
She wasn’t inside the house any longer. Instead, she was lying outside on a huge pile of rubble; all that remained of the house. The footsteps belonged to a fireman, looking at the devastation with horror in his face. Emily followed his gaze and saw a small, still hand sticking through the rubble, its skin charred and scorched till it was almost black. Emily closed her eyes to blot out the horror of the sight. Even before she opened her eyes, she kn
ew that she had moved again. The sharp, bumpy carpet of bricks had been replaced by smooth, even, cool linoleum. She was back in the kitchen. The undamaged kitchen from before the bomb had torn it apart. The kettle still bubbled contentedly, the whistling sound dying as the water cooled slightly. The kitchen looked exactly as it had, but the comforting atmosphere had gone. In its place, Emily felt an apprehensive chill.
She moved hurriedly back out into the hall.
‘Honoré?’ she called. ‘Honoré?’ As she had anticipated, only silence answered. The dust and grime were gone and the hallway shone, every surface freshly polished, every picture frame straight and evenly lined up on the wall or on the tables. The letters that had so affected Emily a few minutes earlier were nowhere to be seen. Emily felt her unease about the house’s relationship with time growing stronger, as if time itself was pushing against the walls. Resisting an initial urge to block out the sensations, Emily forced herself to relax. She closed her eyes, eased her mind open and reached out mentally, trying to find the source of these sensations. A coldness enveloped her and rapidly grew more intense. She began to feel the time that surrounded her. It should have been moving, flowing as the universe intended it to. Instead, time was held here. At least, small snatches of it were. Tiny fragments of time held captive and straining to be set free. Time itself was …
Click.
Emily’s eyes snapped open. There had been a sound in the house. Quiet, almost imperceptible, but definitely there. A single click.
After a short period of silence, Emily heard the static hiss and whine of a wireless set being tuned.
• What do you mean, we’re dead? We can’t be dead. We’re talking.
• Look around you, hon. Try to touch something. Try to touch me.
• I can’t.
• Of course you can’t. You can’t touch dead people.
• I’m not dead. I can’t be. Tess?
• I dunno what this place is.
• But you don’t think it’s Hell.
• I … I dunno.
• Listen, hon. No disrespect to Little Tess, but she spent most of her time whacked out of her skull on a mixture of gin and opium. She wouldn’t know if a bus ran over her feet.
• Hey. I’m not stupid.
• I didn’t say you were, hon.
• I might not know smart words like you, but I’m not stupid.
• Ignore her, Tess. Tell me, where do you think we are?
• I told you. I don’t know.
• You must have some idea.
• You’re wasting your time with her, hon.
• Be quiet, Sandi. Tess, you must have thought about it. You said you’d been here for ages.
• Yeah.
• So you must have thought about where this is.
• Well, I have sort of thought of something.
• Go on.
• It’s the last place I remember being before I was here.
• Where?
• A little place I goes sometimes, when I got the cash. Chang Wu’s. He’s a Chinee. Got some real good stuff, he has.
• Stuff? What kind of stuff?
• What kind of stuff do you think? I told you. He’s a Chinee. What else would they have? I go there to chase the dragon.
• Dragon? Opium? You were in an opium den?
• Yeah. The law don’t bother the place – except when they’re in for some themselves. Chang Wu’s got the best stuff, too. Says his brother brings it in on the boats.
• Lucky you, hon. I’d kill for some grass about now.
• Go on, Tess.
• I was there. He’d give me a real nice spot. All quiet and out of the way. He said I could chase the dragon all night if I wanted. He’s all right for a foreigner. Always dead polite, and he never tried nothing on with me.
• Not that you remember. Maybe while you were off chasing he was copping a feel.
• He wouldn’t.
• Ignore her, Tess. How were you having the opium?
• A sort of pipe thing. You just puff on it and you’re away.
• I know the thing.
• Do you?
• No, I don’t do it myself. I’ve seen them around, though. Bongs, we call them in my day. Some shops sell them as conversation pieces. Charge a fortune for them, too.
• One minute I was there, the next I’m here.
• That sounds familiar, if you substitute my office for your … whatever you’d call it. Drug den? So, suddenly you’re here.
• Yeah. And that’s why I think I know where this is.
• Tell me?
• My head.
• What?
• This is my head. Everybody knows you have really weird dreams when you mix gin with the poppy. That’s what I’m doing. I’m dreaming it all.
• She thinks she’s tripping and we’re part of her trip.
• That’s absurd.
• Amen to that.
• But I don’t believe this is Hell either. I don’t believe in Hell – or Heaven.
• Give it time, hon, and you will.
• Stop calling me hon! I’m not your bloody hon, okay?
• Whatever you say.
• Your idea that we’re in Hell is just as stupid as her thinking we’re in some sort of spaced out trip.
• Don’t call me stupid. I hate that. I’m not stupid. I’m not.
• Of course you’re not, Tess, dear.
• Joan?
• Yes, Alice. Now, Tess, nobody thinks you’re stupid.
• She does. She said so.
• She’s new here, Tess. She’s upset and confused. And sometimes we all say things we don’t mean.
• I don’t believe I’m part of her trip.
• Trip? I don’t understand, Alice.
• Trip. Hallucination. Brought on by drugs.
• No, I’m afraid we’re all here. Alice, where’s Mary?
• I don’t know. She got upset and sort of, well, just disappeared.
• She does that sometimes. It’s easy to lose yourself here.
• Her head’s not all it should be anyway, poor cow.
• Tess! Please don’t use that horrible word.
• Sorry, Joan. I’ll try not to use it.
• Thank you.
• At least when you can hear me.
• Cheeky young devil.
• How’s her ladyship?
• Patience? She’s upset, as you’d imagine. But we all are, when it happens.
• When what happens?
• There’s so much you’ll have to get used to, Alice. So much we’ll have to prepare you for.
• I don’t understand any of this.
• None of us does, dear. Like Tess and Sandi, we all come up with ideas.
• All I want is some answers.
• Answers are the one thing we can’t give you, Alice. We don’t have any.
• What about Patience? You must be able to tell me what happened to her.
• Ain’t just her it happens to. Happens to us all, some time or other.
• But we won’t have to think about that for a while yet, Tess.
• Why not?
• Cos someone was took not long ago, and there’s always a good gap between times.
• This isn’t making any sense. Maybe this is a dream – only it’s me who’s dreaming it.
• I’ll explain as much as I can.
• Joan …
• Tess can help.
• It’s not that, Joan. It’s coming back.
• Nonsense. It can’t be. Patience was only just brought back.
• I know it don’t make sense, but it’s coming. I can feel it.
• You know,
I hate agreeing with the little goof, but I think she’s right.
• Sandi? I’d almost forgotten you were here.
• They’re right, Joan. I can feel something. It’s like …
• A cold wind.
• It’s like all the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, except …
• Except we don’t have no hairs or necks here.
• You’re right, Tess. I can feel it now.
• But it can’t. Patience is only just back. You said.
• I know. I don’t understand. It’s never happened like this before.
• What can we do?
• Nothing we can do, hon. Just wait to see who gets picked for the torture.
• It’s getting closer.
• It won’t hurt, Tess. Remember, whoever is picked, it won’t hurt.
• It’s one of us. Joan, I don’t want to go back there.
• It’s all right, Tess. It’ll be all …
• Joan? Joan?
• She’s gone, hon.
• Alice! My name is Alice, not hon! Can you understand that?
• Hey, okay. Chill, okay?
• Where’s the girl? Tess? She’s not here.
• She was taken at the same time as dear Joan.
• Patience? Are you all right?
• Something is wrong. Two of us have never been taken at the same time – and never so soon after the previous occasion.
• Why change now?
• I do not know, but I pray to the Lord that they are safe.
Lechasseur followed the stairs straight down towards the basement. Halfway down, his footsteps changed tone. He was walking on stone steps rather than on wooden ones. The sound of the cellar had changed, too. A few seconds earlier, the room had sounded cramped, his footsteps barely causing the slightest echo, but now there was a more expansive, hollow-sounding resonance from the basement. A dim, flickering oil-lamp set high on the wall ahead showed a brick archway leading from the cellar through to another room beyond. As he came level with the arch, Lechasseur could see a series of similar arches leading into the distance. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to turn all the basements on this side of whatever street this was into one huge room. He just about had time to wonder why, before the answer hit him. The pungently sweet smell was unmistakable.
Opium.
Echoes Page 4