She nodded, vaguely, and then let her eyes wander the office as if he was no longer worthy of her attention. There was a bank of filing cabinets, a locked gun cabinet, numerous community action posters tacked to the walls and little else. With nothing on show that would stimulate either a small child or a genius, she turned her attention to the book she had earlier taken from Pops’ library and had been carrying around with her ever since.
‘What are you reading?’ Lucas asked, craning his neck to get a peek of the cover.
‘It’s a book on hypnosis,’ she replied. ‘It’s a little hard going, but I hope to get through it by the end of the day.’
Lucas looked again at the book. It was as thick as his wrist and she was just four years old. He doubted he could get through a tome that size in a week, let alone a single day.
‘Who are you planning on hypnotising?’ he asked.
‘Myself,’ she replied, keeping her eyes on the text rather than him.
‘Why do you want to hypnotise yourself?’
‘It seems like an easy way to conquer fears,’ she replied, her eyes still focused on the book. Then after a moment’s reflection, she looked up at the police chief’s son. ‘Do you believe in monsters?’ she asked.
Lucas smiled. This was more like the kind of question he expected to receive from a child of this age.
‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘I believe in monsters. They haven’t been giving you any trouble, have they?’
Her eyes widened, as much with suspicion as disbelief.
‘Are you telling me that there are monsters,’ she asked, ‘because that is not what the other grown-ups say?’
‘Do I look like a grown up to you?’
He got up from behind the desk so that she could take a proper look at him. She quickly traced his outline with her eyes. He was more than twice her height and taller than both of the women currently in the station.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, you do.’
He knelt in front of her, so as to look her eye to eye.
‘I’ll tell you what my dad told me. Monsters do exist. They have the potential to exist inside us all – in our heads and in our hearts. Though they may try to hurt us, they are powerless unless we choose to let them in. Do you understand?’
She nodded.
‘Good, because in that case you have nothing to worry about. And you certainly don’t need to hypnotise yourself. If any monsters do try to hurt you, just let me know and I will come and sort them out. I promise.’
‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
He made the gesture by running his index finger across his chest in two broad diagonal strokes. He did not know it, but one day he would fulfil the morbid pact he had just made with this seemingly harmless child.
Rose had finished attending to her business with Val and she came back to take Emmy home. The professor was still working when they returned to the observatory. It seemed to her like he was always working. He only came to see his granddaughter when it was time for her to go to bed. In doing so, he also made good on his threat. Once more, Emmy was to spend the night in complete darkness. And once more, the fear returned.
The second time was even worse than the first. It was no longer the unseen monsters lurking in the dark that caused her to be afraid. She now had to contend with a more tangible threat. The words spoken by the teenage boy in the police station returned to her.
Monsters do exist. They have the potential to exist inside us all – in our heads and in our hearts.
It was not the monster that may exist in her heart that she feared. It was the monster that existed in the heart of the one closest to her. The real monster was her grandfather. More than twenty years worth of memories came flooding back into her head; the experiments, the radiation, her father, Tibet and Lucy. There was so much tragedy and heartache separating that innocent four year old and the troubled twenty six year old she would eventually become. It was almost too much for her to take.
She rolled off the bed and was relieved to once more stand on her grown up feet. After fumbling in the dark for a brief moment, she was able to locate the door. This time she put a lot more effort into breaking the lock. She kicked and kicked, ramming the flat of her foot into the woodwork with all her might. It only gave a little, but she noticed that no matter how much energy she expended, she felt no signs of strain or fatigue. Nor was there soreness in her bare foot. She now occupied a place beyond the physical. It occurred to her that to all intents and purposes, she was quite possibly immortal.
The locked door no longer seemed like such a problem. She retreated to the far side of the room to allow for a maximum run up. Then with complete abandon, she charged, leading with her right shoulder, into the door. The impact, though powerful, was also painless. The door, along with Emmy, collapsed out onto the corridor, hitting the floor with a thud.
There was no way that such a racket could go unnoticed. Pops had to have heard it. If she had regained her memory, it followed that he could have too – along with his unnatural powers. She needed to get out of there before he came looking.
Her memory illuminated the darkened building, providing her with clarity far greater than the light of a torch, and she immediately headed for the exit. This time she did not even bother with a door. The lounge had a large panoramic window and she jumped straight though it like the glass had been replaced with rice paper.
Upon landing, she instinctively brushed off the shards of debris and felt around for any breaks in her skin. She firmly ran her palms over the contours of her body, applying pressure in the search for pain, but finding none. There was not a single scratch on her and she felt as strong as she had ever done. As strong as she did when astral travelling.
Starlight cast a glow over the land, allowing her to see the ramshackle buildings of Jackson’s Hill glistening in the distance. Never in her life had she felt so glad to see that place. It may not have been exactly where she wanted to be, but it was a start. As she looked for the road, her eyes caught sight of a figure standing in the shadows.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked, nervous despite the seemingly invulnerability of her metaphysical form.
‘It’s me – Jimmy.’
Hearing his voice dropped a notch on the belt around her heart. At last she had a link to reality. When she was four years old he would have been a baby. He no more belonged in this bizarre revisiting of her past than she.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I keep blacking out. I came here looking for you this afternoon, but you weren’t around. There was only your grandfather and this may sound crazy, but I don’t think he could see me.’
‘That’s not crazy at all. In fact, it makes perfect sense.’
‘It does?’
‘Yes. I know where you’ve been all day. You’re not blacking out. You’ve been reliving the past. In this place, in this time, you’re just a baby. You are not forming coherent memories of what happens to you, but it’s all recorded. Earlier, when you came for me, you were asleep, just as we both are now. When the morning comes we’ll revert back to our childhood selves. Unless...’
‘Unless what?’
The thought had occurred to Emmy that there may be no escape for Jimmy. She had a body waiting for her back home. He had nothing. He was dead in the most literal sense. As if he had been able to read her thoughts, there was a sudden shift in his countenance. He did not appear worried, but surprised.
‘Is this Heaven?’ he asked.
‘Not as you know it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want you to worry, though. I have to leave here, but I will come back for you. I promise.’
He nodded.
It was now time for her to put another hypothesis to the test. Contact between two disembodied essences had been what brought them to this place. There was a chance that a similar contact could help her to find her way back home. She took hold of Jimmy’s hands
and felt her spine stiffen as pure energy surged through her body at the moment of contact.
***
‘Whoa!’ exclaimed Marie.
‘Do you care to elaborate?’ asked Charlie.
‘The signal just went crazy. I’m picking up a massive spike of energy and it seems to be centred on Dr Rayne’s cord.’
Charlie quickly pushed his colleague to one side in order to look over the readouts himself. Emmy’s signal had indeed received a substantial boost. Possibly enough for the override to kick back in. Without giving it a moment of further consideration, he slammed his palm down onto the abort button.
His partner’s return was instant. Emmy was back, but the big question remained – where had she been?
Charlie and his assistant were quick to help the returning traveller out of the projection chamber. At the same time, they performed a cursory examination of her body for signs of trauma or injury.
‘You cannot know how glad I am to see you guys,’ said Emmy. ‘I feared you might’ve given up on me.’
‘Give up on you? Never. Besides, you were only gone for three hours.’
She looked her partner in the eyes. Searching for any hint of deception.
‘I was gone for a whole day. At least, I think I was.’
Charlie shrugged aside her confusion.
‘You know how it is. The longer you’re gone - the more time dilation you experience. How do you feel apart from that?’
‘I’m not sure; you’ll have to give me a moment.’
She slid out of the chamber and onto the floor. After what had been twenty four hours for her, she expected her legs to be stiff or weak. They were neither. She flexed her arms. Again, they felt fine. As hard as it was to believe, she really had only been gone for just a few hours.
‘Well?’ prompted Charlie.
‘I feel good. In fact, I’ve never felt better after an astral trip.’
‘That may have something to do with the energy surge just before we pulled you out. What happened exactly?’
Her colleague was buzzing with expectation. His features were lit up with optimism. After all of their negative experiences with the military takeover and resulting standoff between nations, they were finally applying the technology in the way they always intended it to be used.
‘I was with Jimmy,’ she told him.
Confusion spread across his face, evening out his features and removing the optimism as it went.
‘Jimmy died weeks ago. Without the radiation, how is it possible for him to have remained?’
‘The radiation is a part of him. It affected not just his body, but his entire spirit. He waited for me to come and find him and when I did, that’s when we went to...the other place.’
‘The other place?’
His features were no longer even. She took a deep, calming breath. What she was about to tell him would be hard for him to accept. She was struggling to process it herself.
‘You shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we’ve known that something else existed for a while now. The work Dr Stark carried out whilst we were in Tibet was pretty conclusive. When two deceased spirits make contact after death they create a reaction that opens up a wormhole in time and space.’
‘In TIME and space?’ interrupted Charlie. ‘We didn’t know that. I thought you just travelled to some far flung corner of the universe. Nobody mentioned time travel before now.’
‘Okay, I admit that I may be getting ahead of myself with this one. The thing is, when I passed through the wormhole with Jimmy, I didn’t just go to somewhere else, but somewhen else. I relived an entire day from my childhood.’
Charlie placed a hand to his head and slowly brushed back his thick, black hair. To say she had just thrown him a curveball would be a major understatement. They had always tried not to jump to any conclusions regarding the possibility of an afterlife. The idea of consciousness somehow existing beyond death raised far too many questions. Now they had no choice other than to meet those questions head on.
‘You want to go back, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Not to being four years old, but to that other place – yes, I do. This is what we always dreamed of, Charlie. We are venturing into completely unchartered territory here. Do you realise what that means?’
‘Unfortunately, I do. It means that if we get lost, nobody will be able to find us.’
‘Well, I got lost and you found me.’
‘For all we know – that was just luck. Things could turn out very differently the next time.’ He paused, before allowing a smile to break across his face. ‘But we’ll deal with that when we come to it. For now, I want to know everything. Tell me more about what you saw. You said you were four years old, right?’
‘Yes. I had to relive one of the most terrifying nights of my life. I remember it so well, like it was only yesterday. Hell – it was yesterday. That night was the first time I ever experienced genuine fear.’
‘What happened? I mean, why were you so scared?’
‘It’s stupid really. I’d just read a horror story and once the lights went out, my imagination went wild. Why do you think that might’ve been?’
‘Kids are scared of the dark.’
‘No, I mean – why do you think I went back to that of all nights? Why not some other random event from my past?’
‘You said that night was the first time you had experienced fear. Were you scared when you and Jimmy crossed into the wormhole?’
‘You think it wasn’t random?’
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? If fear was the dominant emotion you were feeling at the point you crossed over, then it seems plausible that you could have identified with a previous moment when you felt the same emotion.’
She nodded. Times really had changed. Back in the early days of the research she had been the level headed one. It was now Charlie who cut through the feelings of awe and giddiness to pinpoint the truth.
‘It also means that we should tread carefully,’ he added. ‘This isn’t the first time your subconscious has been calling the shots. And we both know just how destructive a path that can lead us down, don’t we?’
Again, she nodded. The tulpa, an autonomous entity created from her subconscious, represented both her greatest and her darkest discovery as a scientist. The fact that it could not be fully controlled implied that she too was beyond rationality. Her instincts could never be truly trusted.
‘So what exactly are you saying?’ she asked.
‘I think we should take things back a notch. Slow down a little. Take a bit of time to learn more about what we’re dealing with before we send you back.’
‘You’re the boss.’
He tipped his head back and drew a deep sigh. The look in her eyes pointed down a road he found all too familiar.
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes you do. The only time you ever concede that I am in charge is when you’re planning on defying me. Please promise me you aren’t going to do anything stupid.’
A mischievous smile spread across her face.
‘Come on, Charlie. We’re scientists. When have we ever dealt in absolutes?’
Chapter 3
She lay on her bed with the bottle of pills in her hand. It was no coincidence that her last episode had been the day before she started on the medication. To stop taking it would almost certainly bring about a relapse. Those tiny chemical compounds were all that kept her demons at bay. Without them, her deepest fears and desires would manifest in the form of a tulpa – a being born of the mind.
The problem for Emmy was that her demons were the only connection she had to the past – to Lucy. Would it really be that bad if she were to indulge every once in a while? Her lover lay comatose in a hospital bed - nothing but a shell, devoid of all consciousness. If she only had a way to return Lucy to the person she once was, Emmy would gladly take it. She wanted so much to hold Lucy in her arms again, to feel her lo
ver’s breath on the nape of her neck. Did it matter if it was only a cruel illusion?
Without removing any of the small tablets inside, she tightened the lid and placed the container onto her bedside cabinet. A moment later, she picked it back up and took it to the bathroom, where she proceeded to empty the contents down the toilet. After watching the pills sink like tiny depth charges, she hit the flush.
Charlie would go crazy if he knew she was giving up her medication, but that was only if he were ever to find out. She had no intention of telling him. This time she would keep her unique ability to herself. This time she would be able to control it without pharmaceutical assistance. At least that is what she kept telling herself.
The first thing she noticed when she arrived at the lab was that there were many more bodies than usual. The Company employed a sizable team of lab technicians that worked to a strict rota. She had come to work to find all of them in attendance at one time.
‘Isn’t it a little crowded today,’ she said to Charlie, whilst taking a seat at her desk.
‘A necessary precaution,’ he told her. ‘After yesterday’s near miss, I figure we can do with all the help we can get.’
‘Near miss? If anything, I would say we hit the bull’s eye yesterday. There is no further place for us to travel than where I went.’
‘And do you know where that was exactly?’
She glanced away, avoiding his gaze.
‘I didn’t think so. That’s why we must use caution. I know you’re anxious about finding Lucy, but we don’t even know that everybody who passes through the portal goes to the same place. Just because you and Jimmy found each other, doesn’t mean a thing at this stage.’
Emmy had to concede that he was right. Charlie was always right. That was what made them such a great team. When one of them was about to be swept away on a tangent, the other would always drop anchor and make sure they did not get too carried away.
‘So what’s the plan of action, boss? I take it you don’t want me crossing over again just yet.’
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 64