The Girl in the Blue Shoes

by Shaun Hume

  ‘How did you get a hold of these notes?’ I pressed with relentless and inquisitive reverberations.

  ‘They were sent on some kind of delayed post. He paid someone in the Royal Mail a considerable amount of money to post the notes so that they would be in constant transit, from post office to post office, all over the world, until finally arriving back at Christ Church on the date he had stipulated. If he had returned by then, he would have simply intercepted the package and still no one would know anything about it. But he didn’t return, and so the notes were received by whom they were intended for, one of my colleagues.’

  ‘And how did you get involved in the project?’

  ‘My name was in his notes. It seemed he had already hand picked his retrieval team before he had left. He knew who he wanted to go after him when and if the time came. I was approached my someone who seemed to not only be highly connected, but also intensely convincing.’ Her soft brow crinkled a little when she said the word “convincing”, and I was in no doubt of what she meant.

  ‘How much money were you offered.’ A thin smile shimmied across her thin lips, the Girl, for the first time, relaxing.

  ‘Let’s just say I don’t shop at “Sales” anymore,’ she replied with a poignant bending of her dark eyes, her cheeks tilted upwards ever so slightly. ‘Enough to pull me away from my previous engagements at any rate, and any others I might be offered in the meantime.’

  I pondered a moment over her mention of previous engagements. But with little advancement in my thoughts, and even less chance of The Girl in the Blue Shoes revealing much more by way of facial expressions, I instead turned to my most pressing enquiry.

  ‘And who is this … person, I saw walking around, twice, like a lost ghost? Who was it if not you?’

  She looked all around her, slowly but clearly furtive, as if she fancied herself in a spy film.

  ‘They’re called Duplicates. They’re created, along with the rest of the world, every time someone crosses over. As I said, we don’t know why and can’t control it. Not yet.’

  ‘Duplicates?’ I repeated quite unnecessarily, but she went on without a miss of beat, as if she had expected me to question her all along.

  ‘At this stage there have been no problems. The Duplicates somehow cease to be, as soon as their real counterpart returns.’

  She must have sensed much of my thoughts after her last words, as she quickly rattled on.

  ‘But those involved in the project feared that if a person was still physically alive, but was not for any time physically occupying space in this world, that it would cause a cataclysmic rift, and a tear in space and time would occur.’

  I understood the premise easily, but the actual conjunction of the idea I was struggling with a little. She went on, her voice lowering an increment.

  ‘Two beings that are essentially the same entity can not exist in close proximity to each other. The Duplicates offer a certain jeopardy to the project. But nothing too serious yet. We have that in hand too.’

  ‘You mean you lock them away? Or kill them?’ I said, allowing a scrap of anger to creep into my voice again.

  ‘We do what needs to be done.’

  I followed as much as I needed to, enough to know that if what she was saying was true, and I was more and more rolling towards the understanding that it was, then there was no right for this so called professor to be still in operation. What he and his cohorts were doing put everyone, in the whole world, in danger, all at once, and it wasn’t to be tolerated.

  ‘But that’s abominable,’ I threw back, ‘how can they – you be playing with such a fire as this? They must be stopped!’

  ‘No, they can’t be,’ said The Girl in the Blue Shoes, her agitated excitement for the first time ebbing away to be replaced by a small flow of solemnity, her long lashes diving towards each other the smallest of degrees.

  ‘What do you mean they can’t be? Are you saying they shouldn’t be or they really can’t be stopped?’

  ‘It’s … both,’ she said with a final coy tone, my patience slipping.

  ‘Then why are you telling me any of this? Why are you telling me if you know my intentions will be to stop it?’

  ‘To convince you not to try. You wouldn’t be able to anyway.’

  ‘Why not? They’re only Oxford professors, and I’ve already stopped one or two of that breed of horse in my time,’ said I, with a wistful jaunt into memory, and the recollection of the proving of a point some half dozen years ago.

  ‘Who are you going to go to? Who will believe you?’ she almost demanded, this time forgetting to keep her voice down. A pair of hipsters sipping skinny flat mocha lattes or some other such pretentious swill looked over towards us as if we had just insulted their choice of spectacle frames. As I will add, internally I did.

  ‘As I told you, I can be effective enough on my own,’ I replied.

  She then leant back in her seat and crossed her arms like an aggravated girlfriend, her lips, for the moment, still but firm. Her dark eyes were dazzling to me, beautiful cheeks and nose for the first time registering with my senses, and I barely had the presence of mind to wonder if she had some kind of shepherding power that she had just now turned on, in a last ditched attempt to win me over to her side.

  Of course, all girls have this talent, but their power lies in when they use it and in what situation. I took the compromise of drinking my lukewarm tea I had ordered an eon ago and she uncrossed her arms. Maybe she had conceded that I could not be shut up. Or maybe she had convinced herself that I could, and that she had just done it. Either of which I wasn’t sure, but instead rose to my feet and left.

  5.

  I walked again until the dark was deep, and the sanguine statues and brooding buildings of Oxford were now only dark towers to my eyes, holding no hope but only mystery. Watching, waiting, pressuring me towards my next move.

  I had no intentions of retuning to London, there had been much too much unearthed for that, so instead I laid tracks for a nearby bed and breakfast that I had frequented some time before.

  Connected and terrace like, the lodgings I took position at stood out a keen white, bucking the usual off yellow and ancient hue of its surrounding stonework kin, up and down the street. I made entry and secured a room easily enough, drawing only minimal curiosity from the house’s lady inn keeper. She handed me my key with softly smile and I climbed the narrow stairs and to bed.

  I spent the rest of the night sifting though what The Girl in the Blue Shoes had told me, kneading it all in my mind, like my brain was made of plasticine.

  So I was right, I had been right all along. I fixed on the satisfaction of that realisation for some time, but not for too long, as it was indeed no real surprise. Confirmation of my suspicions was merely an extra motivator, not the sole one. But it was as I thought this that I wondered who The Girl in the Blue Shoes would go on to tell about my noncompliance, my refusal to acquiesce with her, and by extension, the founders of the project and their wishes.

  I had no idea how far reaching the whole episode had spread. Was it still simply a handful of secretive Oxford geniuses? Or had a higher power taken a quick interest, and therefore, lay a stake to the claim as well? Who next might I have dropping in at their leisure to not so subtly convince me to back off?

  Exhaustion pulled at my skin. Clawing me, dragging me into the dark depths of slumber with hooks on chains. I felt warmth and fear as I stepped over the threshold and into the land of dreams and nightmares.

  A plain room stretched out before me, glowing with light, but bare. It at first looked like an office, complete with a floor of felt as foe carpet squares, but then soon seemed more like a bedroom. The door that led off of it stepped only into a room which should have a bath and sink, but had only the memory of them, marks on the floor where they once would have been.

  She appeared to me then, this Girl in the Blue Shoes, purely naked, her skin a bright white light. I did not expect, not a warmness but the hotness in
the light, as it blazed from her body, the keen lines and smooth textures throbbing with intensity.

  Tendrils of fabric flowed from her head, multicolours more bright than the white of her skin. They were caught in a watery wind, moving ravenously but in slow motion.

  She greeted me with an outstretched hand, but it was too bright to look at let alone touch. Slowly the corners of the room became vivid, filling in the gaps of my vision with endless staircases leading to enumerable dark passageways. Suddenly my heart was drawn away from the Girl and towards the dark archways atop the staircases. But the light, pulsing now from her skin, was so intense my eyes began to hurt and throb. I felt the touch of cold upon my hand and my heart contracted, the pit of my stomach falling out and shattering on the floor in a billion tiny pieces which bounced and then became marbles of clear white light.

  Thud.

  The dull sound of a heavy glass falling onto a floor rug from a short height woke me up.

  I looked all around me. The small bedroom I had spent the night in was all as it had been before, minus the contents of two bar fridge style bottles of rum. These sad glass creatures stood still and empty, much like the stout glass that had just fallen out of my slumberous grip and onto the floor. I lumbered to my feet and headed for the tiny ensuite bathroom, pawing at the scalding water before finally immersing myself within its flow.

  The lady of the house looked in on me after I had showered and redressed, but after refusing her ruby-cheeked offer of breakfast I took to the streets once more.

  Ripples of warmth still rose from the uneven paths like millions of translucent hovering feathers, elevating to meet my face in a soft embrace that was both invigorating and calming.

  It was as if Time was slowing everything up, like it too was on the lookout for me, trying to slow my steps, stem my progress towards uncovering one of its deepest, darkest secrets. Time was worried. But it was its own worst enemy, unable to stop what it was responsible for. And as I felt another fresh wave of confidence lap over me I had the sudden inspiration to visit my old friend. I have already mentioned him before, someone who could not only quite possibly help me along my away, but also be able to water my confidence and make it further grow.

  I turned the path to his door like an old tune, and indeed it was, a familiar melody that had always brought me comfort in the past. But today, despite my optimism, time wore on and the track to the house took on more the pace of a funeral march. I felt my stride dull a little, the heavy thump of sun on my back now just that, no longer a warming lift, as it had all too recently delivered.

  I approached his house, as it was, at the end of a lane in a regal part of the town. It swam towards me, the thoughts in my mind dripping across my eyes, bringing back memories of days I had been there before.

  Just then the words from “Graceland” by Paul Simon drifted into my head and I thought about my son.

  Losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow …

  It had been so long since I’d seen him. He’s a grown man now, an Oxford graduate in his own right. We took a trip along the canals of Oxfordshire when he was nine years old, and the owner of the house I was approaching joined us for much of that journey. It was, in fact, from his back garden where we set of on that delightful midsummer trip, there being a canal that runs right past the long back garden. It was the last occasion my son and I had spent any real time together, any meaningful time. And one of those last times had been at this house.

  After that his mother took him away to the States. To Tennessee ironically, or not, a mere good few hours drive from Memphis. We conversed, a little, as he grew. But the frequency of the letters grew less than he, and the distance seemed further and further away.

  During that road-swapped-for-water trip we had almost worn out the cassette tape of Paul Simon’s album of the same name as the song. And each time since that I thought about my son and my dear friend in the same wisp of cloudy thoughts, right up there Graceland would be, floating with everything else.

  My traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets, I’m looking at ghosts and empties …

  6.

  Though, as I got close enough to the house for my hand to rest upon the worn wooden front gate, my trepidation dispelled. I was home, my intellectual home was again before me.

  My knock on the front door was greeted with a booming call from within. I stepped through the unlocked door and over the lived-in threshold. I walked into his house and was instantly hit by the steady coldness of the place. It wasn’t that it was a disinteresting or clinical looking abode, far from it. On the entrance hall table alone were the most curious and jumbled assortment of articles and artefacts, the walls as I past them adorned in photographs and oil paintings and watercolours of every era and style imaginable. The place smelt of tweed and sharpened pencils and washed woollen carpet. I could tell there were several windows open about the house, the easy late morning flutter brushing its way past my face already, like a swarm of invisible butterflies.

  ‘Come along in,’ he called from the deep, and I was given to sidle further deeper, along the stone flagged hallway and down a step into a rather brighter living room that looked out upon the long green lit garden. The specimen danced with lilac and butter and snowy white blooms that spoke of a crisp late spring in full song.

  He turned his thin spectacles onto me and ruffled his tall eyebrows with a somewhat searching stare. I could see the curiosity in his eyes, almost exploding as it was, like a caged firework.

  More than a year had gone since we had last seen one another, but to me it somehow seemed like half a lifetime. It wasn’t my memory that told me more days had passed than should have, instead it was his face that sang the song of many moons gone by. His torpid mouth slacked, his concrete grey eyes spongy in the full light of the living room and ringed with a reminiscent vigour. His collection of wrinkles too seemed to have enlarged considerably and a faint droop hung around the southern end of his cheeks.

  However, despite all this, when he next spoke it was with his usual extroverted and impish chirp, one which had so many times held me in rapt concern and intrigue for what ever it was next to be let fly to the air in that most peculiar and arresting of tones he possessed.

  ‘I see, as you have,’ said he, ‘come for some advice and guidance from your old friend?’

  ‘You could say that, Bertie, yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Or is it more?’ he pipped, ‘a different sort of question you would like to ask?’ And as much as I had not read anything in his expression, the old man had deciphered volumes within mine, his careful hook and bait entwined, thrown out lose in front of my eyes.

  ‘There is something,’ I began to explain, and it fell out of me in a rush. I told him of all my suspicions and worries and my seeing The Girl in the Blue Shoes, from beginning to end. No stone left unturned.

  When I’d finished my tale, then taken seat and deep breath, far from looking shocked my old companion drank in every word I spoke. As if he was all too readily expecting my story, he’d lapped it up almost greedily, compelling me to believe I had given him new fuel and fresh fire to his own internal furnace.

  ‘You’ve noticed it too!’ he exclaimed most emphatically, actually rising out of his chair for a half second as he uttered his relief and excitement. ‘I had questioned myself about this more than anything. But so obvious were the transgressions I thought that there was no question of the validity of my thoughts. And now you have come to me to prove it – well! Let me get you my findings so far, that they may help you understand its impact even more.’

  And with that the little man shot out of his armchair like a sparrow through the hedgerow and was off towards a part of the house I knew contained his extensive study. Fluid sounds of papers manhandled and books shifted here and there now flew into the room, and I felt a tingling rise in my own elation. I could feel more credence was about to be given to my cause, exactly as I had hoped,
but never dared to expect or plan for. Bertie came back clutching a deep volume bound in thick brown leather. He propped himself back up in his chair and immediately flew into a recital of what he had observed.

  ‘Twenty three March,’ he said, ‘I saw Black Tie Man again, walking with an abnormally wide gait and dragging his heels along the ground as he went. He appeared to be trying to get the attention of someone across the street without waving or calling out. But when I looked over in the direction of his attentions, there was no one to be signalled.

  ‘Twenty nine March, Woman in Red passed me for what I was sure was the third time that day. I made to pursue her through what I thought was a minimal crowd, and for Oxford compared to any metropolis of decent size it was a mere handful of people. However, no sooner had I begun to follow her steps, then she disappeared from sight.

  ‘Two April, The Man in the Leather Jacket made a peculiar movement when confronted by a large group of students today. Undergraduates in a thick knot had stopped by the entrance of Keble College, all milling about as if in wait of an instruction. The Man in the Leather Jacket approached them, crossed the street before he had made contact, and then crossed back again when he had passed. To the young ones’ credit they had only been taking up no more than half of the footpath, more than enough room for The Man in the Leather Jacket to get by. But he persisted in crossing the busy street twice in order to pass no more than a few yards of space. Again, I made to follow his progress, but soon thereafter, he rounded a corner and was gone.’

  I listened intently and without interruption, Bertie keeping his eyes on the scribbled pages of his book sitting upon his lap the whole time he spoke. When he had finished the third description he closed the notebook and looked up, even though it was quite obvious that there was much more which he had recored in his large anecdotal tome.