She woke up.
She wasn’t dead. She was alive and lying in a rented apartment in Vancouver. Her name was Judith Fletcher and she was thirteen years old. Her father, an architect, had been appointed to work on a new hotel complex in the city and he had taken the opportunity to bring the whole family over to travel around Canada. That was where they had been for the past three weeks. And today they were due to fly back to London.
On Flight 715.
Judith got up, went into the bathroom, and splashed cold water over her head. She looked into the mirror. Two blue eyes set in a round, freckled face, with fair hair hanging long on each side, looked back. In the bedroom, she heard Maggie wake up and call out for her. That was Maggie through and through. The only time her eight-year-old sister ever stopped talking was when she was asleep. But Judith ignored her. She had to think.
She knew it had just been a dream, a horrible dream. But at the same time she was certain that it was something more. It had all been so real. She had dreamed before, but never in such detail. And no dream had stayed with her the way that this one had. She could still remember everything. And even as the water trickled down her cheeks and dripped off her chin, she realized that this dream had one other difference too. She knew what it meant.
It couldn’t have been simpler. She was going to die. At three minutes past six . . . that was the time she had seen on the clock. She even knew how she was going to die. The vicar-who-wasn’t-a-vicar had told her.
Flight 715.
The plane was going to crash.
Judith wasn’t superstitious. She didn’t believe in ghosts, witches, UFOs, telepathy . . . or any of the other things that the boys at school were always talking about. She had watched one or two episodes of The X-Files but the stories hadn’t interested her simply because she couldn’t take them seriously. Just because something couldn’t be explained, that didn’t make it supernatural. There was no such thing as the supernatural. That was what she had always thought.
Until now.
Now she remembered—there was a word for what she had experienced. Clairvoyance. There were people who dreamed things that were going to happen, things that did happen. They were called clairvoyants. And they weren’t all weirdos either. Judith’s history teacher had once said that Joan of Arc was a clairvoyant. So was the American president Abraham Lincoln, who had actually dreamed of his own assassination a week before it happened! A writer—Mark Twain—had dreamed of the death of his brother. There was even some guy who had described the sinking of the Titanic in every detail . . . fourteen years before it had happened.
The dream had changed everything. Because she knew in her heart that it hadn’t simply been a dream. It had been something altogether more frightening. A warning. It didn’t matter what she believed or what she didn’t believe. She couldn’t ignore what she had seen.
She left the bathroom and went back into her bedroom to get dressed. Sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers, and baseball cap. Her parents were also awake and had quickly fallen into the chaos of last-minute packing.
“Where are the tickets?” she heard her dad call out from the other room.
“By the bed.” That was her mom. Sandra Fletcher worked as a hospital administrator. She had taken unpaid leave in order to make the trip.
And in a few hours’ time, the four of them would be boarding a plane, Flight 715 to London, and they would all die. At three minutes past six (the plane was due to land at a quarter past six in the morning) something would go horribly wrong and . . .
“Do you want some breakfast, girls?”
Mark Fletcher had poked his head through the door, breaking off Judith’s thoughts. He was a fit, athletic man in his early forties, just a few streaks of gray in his hair.
“I’m starving!” Maggie was standing on her bed. Now she began to jump up and down, her pigtails flying. She’s excited about the flight, Judith thought.
The flight . . .
She said nothing while Sandra served up their last Canadian breakfast: waffles and crisped-up bacon with maple syrup. There were cases everywhere. The family had taken so much luggage with them that they had almost been charged extra at Heathrow and since then they’d added more than a few pounds of souvenirs, clothes, and—ever since the girls had found they were half price in Canada—Rollerblades and CDs. Her mother pushed a plate in front of her but she ignored it. She had been frightened by what had happened. But she was almost as frightened at the thought of what she now had to do.
“What’s the matter, Judith?” Mark Fletcher had noticed the look on his daughter’s face.
“I’m not going home.” And there it was. She’d done it, said it. As easy as that.
Mark laughed. “Thinking about school, are you?”
“Vacations have to end sometime, Judith,” her mother said.
“No.” Judith’s face was almost expressionless. “I’m not going on the plane.”
Her parents exchanged a look, a little puzzled now.
“What do you mean?” her father asked.
“She’s scared!” Maggie giggled and dipped her finger into the maple syrup, drawing a circle on her plate.
“The plane’s going to crash,” Judith said. “I’m not going on it. None of us are.”
Sandra had been holding a mug of coffee. She put it down. “What are you talking about, darling?” she said. She sounded so reasonable but Judith knew she wouldn’t be that way for long. “You’ve never been scared of flying.”
“I’m not scared. I mean, I’m not scared of flying. But I’m not going on that flight. Seven One Five . . .”
Mark smiled, still trying not to take his daughter too seriously. “We can’t change the tickets,” he said. “You know that.”
“We can buy new ones.”
“Do you have any idea how much that would cost?”
“There’s no question of buying new tickets!” Sandra exclaimed. “What is all this, Judith? Why are you being so silly?”
“I’m not being silly . . .” She had to tell them, even though she knew what they would say. “I had a dream.”
“A dream!” Her mother relaxed. Judith saw she was relieved. A dream was something she could handle. It was something she understood. “We all have bad dreams,” she said.
“It’s only natural.” Mark took over from his wife. “It’s a long flight. Uncomfortable . . .”
“Airline food!”
“Yuck!” That was Maggie’s contribution.
“Nobody enjoys flying,” Mark went on. “But just because you have a bad dream about something doesn’t mean anything’s going to happen.”
Judith felt a sudden sadness. She had never known her parents to be so predictable. “It wasn’t an ordinary dream,” she said. “It was different. I was in a cemetery—”
“We don’t really need to hear about it,” Sandra interrupted. She was a little bit angry now and somehow that was predictable too. “For heaven’s sake! You’re thirteen years old now, Judith. You know what dreams are!”
“You’ll have forgotten it before we get to the airport,” Mark said.
“I’m not going to the airport.”
Mark and Sandra looked at each other again, suddenly helpless. Judith knew what they must be thinking. She had never behaved this way before. But she had never felt this way either. Even now, sitting with her breakfast in front of her and suitcases everywhere—everything so normal—she felt as if she were only half there. The other half was still trapped in the dream. And she knew. That was the worst of it. She knew with cold certainty that she was right, but that there was nothing she could do or say that would persuade them. Judith had never been more alone.
Her father tried another approach. Humor her. Reason with her. And if that doesn’t work, get angry with her. Practical Parenting for Difficult Daughters. Chapter Three.
“This is ridiculous, Judith. Nothing’s going to happen to the plane.”
“You’re just upsetting Maggie.”
“Anyw
ay, there’s no point arguing about it. We’re leaving on Flight 715 at midday. If you’re really so childish that you’re going to let a dream upset you, that’s your problem.”
“But what if I’m right, Dad?” Judith knew it was hopeless but she had to try one last time. “What if it wasn’t a dream? What if it was . . . something more?”
“You don’t believe that nonsense. You’ve never believed it.”
“You’ve been watching too much television.”
“You know, Judith, this is so stupid . . .”
And it was that last line, the scorn and the superiority in her father’s voice, that convinced her. She had known what she was going to do, almost from the moment she had left the bathroom, but she had been unsure whether she would have the strength to do it. Now she acted without thinking. Suddenly she stood up. Then, before anyone could stop her, she pushed away from the table, jumped over one of the suitcases, and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Judith . . . ?” her father called out. But even if he had guessed what Judith was planning, it was already too late.
Judith ran across the hall, her heart thudding so hard it made her ears ring. Without stopping, she reached the front door. It wasn’t locked. Her hand was trembling as she turned the handle and opened it. And then she was out in the warm sunshine, running across the lawn and onto the pavement.
The sidewalk. That’s what they call it in Canada.
It was a crazy thought. But it was all crazy. She was crazy. That was what her parents would think. Before they murdered her.
She would worry about that later. The apartment was on Robson Street in one of the busiest parts of Vancouver. In less than a minute Judith had been swallowed up by the crowd of morning commuters. Even if her parents had realized what she had done and followed her out, they would never find her.
She had been around the city only the day before and knew where she was going. She made her way down to the waterfront and found a snack bar with a view across the lake to the Burrard Inlet, with mountains and pine trees behind. She had ten dollars in her pocket. Enough for a few drinks. Enough to allow her to stay as long as she needed.
Judith Fletcher eased herself into a plastic chair, pulled her baseball cap down over her eyes—hiding herself from the world—and prepared to wait until the flight had left.
Her parents, of course, were furious when she slunk back to the apartment just before midday. She had never seen them so angry. Their anger almost made them ugly, twisting their faces, burning in their eyes.
“How could you, Judith? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“We’ve been worried sick about you. A young girl out in the city on her own!”
“Do you know how much this is going to cost us?”
“Were you out of your mind?”
“When we get back to England, you are going to pay for this, young lady. I don’t know how . . . But you’re going to pay!”
Her father had never smacked her. Not once in her entire life. This time, Judith knew he had come close. Perhaps if she had been a boy it would have been easier. A quick whack with a slipper and the tension would have been released. Instead, her parents’ anger slowly wore itself out and the rest of the day was spent in a silence as flat and as unforgiving as the cemetery of her dream. Mark Fletcher made a telephone call and managed to persuade the airline to take them—at no extra charge—on a flight the following day. That at least helped. The bags remained packed. Mark worked. Sandra went for a walk, bought a takeout lunch for them all (Judith didn’t eat), and killed time.
The afternoon crept slowly on. Maggie watched television, then went out for a walk with her father. Sandra wrote a letter. Judith spent most of the time sitting by herself. She was ignored by everyone. Her parents were sullen. Maggie seemed completely baffled . . . as if her big sister had been taken over by someone else.
And all the time Judith thought about Flight 715. Where was it now? Crossing the Arctic Circle? Dipping south over the Atlantic? The strange thing was, even now she had no doubts. The plane was due to land at ten o’clock Canadian time and she still knew with a horrid, cold certainty that at that moment her parents would understand. The plane would crash. The dream had told her as much. She thought of the passengers. All of them would die. She could almost see the fireball of flame, hear the ambulances tearing across the run-way as she had heard them that morning in bed. Now she was guilty. Shouldn’t she have warned them too? Couldn’t she have stopped the plane from taking off? No. She forced the thoughts out of her mind. She couldn’t have done more than she had done. The rest was out of her control.
But at ten-fifteen her parents would understand. And then they would forgive her. Everything would be all right.
At five past ten her father got up and left the room.
Maggie was already in bed but Mark and Sandra hadn’t said a word to their other daughter and she knew that they had allowed her to stay up on purpose, that they wanted her to be with them now. Mark made the call from the hallway. Again, he didn’t say what he was doing but Judith knew he was calling England.
She heard her father’s voice, a low murmur on the other side of the door. Sandra was reading a paperback novel she had bought for the journey home. She flicked a page. There was a rattle, the sound of the telephone receiver being replaced. Mark Fletcher came back into the room.
He stood in the doorway. Judith waited for him to speak. And at last the words came.
“Flight 715 landed at Heathrow fifteen minutes ago. It was ahead of schedule. Now I’m going to bed.”
Judith never knew.
Nor did her parents.
None of them ever found out.
Because they weren’t at Heathrow, they didn’t see the passengers come off the plane. There were about three hundred of them. Apart from the Fletchers’ own empty seats, it had been a full flight.
The first person off the flight was a fat woman with large eyes and a shock of yellow hair. Then a young boy holding a teddy bear that was missing an arm. His parents were right behind him; a sullen-faced husband and wife, holding hands, not talking to each other. They were followed by a black man in a leather jacket. He was biting his fingernails. And so it went on . . .
The last person off the plane was the pilot. He was a thin man with long, untidy hair. Years ago he had been injured in a motorbike accident. There was a scar on his cheek and he had broken his nose. As he left the plane, he was looking tired and sick. His face was pale. He had been sweating. His shirt was still damp, sticking to his chest.
There were three officials waiting for him. “Are you all right?” one of them asked.
The pilot shook his head and said nothing.
But an hour later he told his story. The officials sat opposite him across a long table, taking notes.
“It was the plumbing system,” he said. “It must have sprung a leak. God knows how many gallons of water there were swilling around down there. And then, of course, with the altitude, it froze. Ice is heavier than water . . . I don’t need to tell you that. And it was heavy! I knew something was wrong . . . the way the plane was handling. But it was only when the flight attendant told me they couldn’t flush the toilets in economy . . .”
He smiled but there was no humor in his face.
“Anyway, by then it was too late. There was nothing I could do. As you know, I radioed ahead. Got all the emergency vehicles waiting. I could just about fly but I wasn’t sure I could land. Not with all that weight. It was a full flight.” The pilot had opened a can of Coke. He drank it all in one gulp. “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “if there had been one extra ham sandwich on that plane, I don’t think we’d have made it.”
“You were lucky,” one of the officials said.
“You’re right. I heard that there was a no-show at the last minute. A family of four and a ton of luggage.”
“Why weren’t they on the plane?” the official asked.
The two other official
s shook their heads. “I’ve no idea,” the pilot said. “But I’m glad they weren’t. Because I’m telling you, I’m not exaggerating. If they’d been on that flight and we’d had that extra weight on board . . .” He crumpled up the can and looked at it for a moment, lying in the palm of his hand. “None of us would be here now,” he said. “They saved us.”
He threw the can into a wastepaper basket and quietly left the room.
Howard’s End
Howard Blake didn’t even see the bus that ran him over. Nor did he feel it. One minute he was running across Oxford Street with a stack of CDs in his hand and the clang of the alarm bell ringing in his ears and the next . . . nothing. That was the trouble with shoplifting of course. When you were caught, you just had to run and you couldn’t stop at the edge of the street for such niceties as looking left and right. You just had to go for it. Howard had gone for it but unfortunately he hadn’t made it. The bus had hit him halfway across the street. And here he was. Fifteen years old and already dead.
He opened his eyes.
“Blimey!” he croaked. “This isn’t happening.”
He closed them again, counted to ten, then slowly opened them, one at a time. There could be no doubt about it. Unless this was some sort of hallucination, he was no longer in London. He was . . .
“Oh blimey!” he whispered again.
He was still wearing the same black leather jacket, T-shirt, and jeans but he was sitting on a billowing white substance that looked suspiciously like a cloud. No. He couldn’t pretend. It was a cloud. The air was warm and smelled of flowers and he could hear music, soft notes being plucked out on the strings of what he knew must be harps. About fifty feet away from him there was a pair of gates, solid gold, encrusted with dazzling white pearls. Light was pouring through the bars, making it hard to see what was on the other side. And there was something strange about the light. Although it looked very much like sunshine, the sky was actually dark. When Howard looked up he could see thousands of stars, set against a backdrop of the deepest, darkest blue. It seemed to be both night and day at the same time.
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