Tempus Genesis

by Michael McCourt

Eric eased the dustbin lid sized steering wheel clockwise, requiring some strength, as he steered the ‘Belle’ onto the main promenade in Brighton. It was first light, a bright sunny morning and the sight of the sea made Eric smile. It always did. A handful of people populated the seafront, some early to rise, joggers and dog walkers, others yet to retire to bed after a long night out. All noticed and admired the gleaming green bus and its reminder of simpler times.

  Eric felt fresh and lively. He had slept well. Eric took his driving responsibility seriously, even though he was ‘relaxed’ regarding behaviours’ on the coach. Passenger safety was important. Eric always made sure he consumed little alcohol on the night of his Brighton weekends and he would sleep well in his regular bed and breakfast digs.

  Eric loved Brighton and the once a month visit was a joy for him. It was a break from a largely loveless marriage. He wasn’t unhappy but after forty years he disliked the routine of later life. As far as his wife knew Eric’s monthly trip was a pensioners night out by the sea, he had decided she was better off ignorant of the truth behind his ‘work’ in retirement.

  Eric had spent his evening at the theatre, watching a John Godber classic; ‘Bouncers’. Being Brighton the doormen and women were working the door of a gay club. The play had outlandish gay, transvestite and lesbian characters and Eric found it surprisingly good fun.

  Eric steered the bus towards the bus stop, the usual meeting place, he smiled at the waiting crowd. The big man ‘Minnie’ stood head and shoulders above the women, Eric liked the young man from what he had seen of him. Eric waved to them, stopped the bus and opened the door. The party staggered onto the bus, flopping into seats with exhaustion. He noticed Minnie slide out of sight at the very back, with one young woman sliding in with him. Eric smiled and then turned to greet Mary, who rolled her eyes at Minnie’s behaviour.

  Oliver ran down the hill towards the seafront. Oliver could see the coach as he rounded the corner onto the promenade. He was breathless and his heart was pounding. Unable to run another step he slowed to walk, waving his hands in the hope the coach would see him and not leave without him.

  “There he is,” Jamie tapped Mary on the shoulder and pointed for her to look out of the rear window of the bus. Mary turned her head to see Oliver waving.

  Jamie went to the door of the bus and hung out of the front step, waving an arm back to Oliver, “Come on Ollie you’re holding us all up. Run, god you are so unfit.”

  Oliver was still a distance away and responded to Jamie’s call by picking up his pace to a light jog. Eric smiled.

  “He is useless,” offered Jamie in observation.

  “Where has he been?” asked Mary of no one in particular.

  “Other World I bet,” the muffled call from the back of the bus was Minnie. He sat up, hair all ruffled and smiled at Mary, “It’s one of those alternative places, hippy therapy, fairies and stuff.”

  “What?” Jamie and Mary asked in tandem.

  Minnie stood up, smiled at his female friend who was out of sight, tucked into their love seat, and walked down to Mary and Jamie, “When we disappeared for the afternoon, we zipped round the lanes, he found this shop and stared in its window for like half an hour,” Minnie explained.

  “Why?” asked Jamie.

  “I think he’ll have gone back, maybe knocked up the owner, the shop had ‘regression’ written in the window, he was odd from the minute he saw the word.”

  Jamie didn’t make the connection straight away, “Regression?”

  Mary did recognize the word and instantly recalled its connection with Oliver, “Shit,” she whispered to herself.

  Oliver hopped on the bus, gasping he spoke to Jamie “We have to hold a party next week, at your place, it’s the nicest pad.”

  “What, why?” replied Jamie.

  “I’ve just invited someone to it,” smiled Oliver, who then flopped breathless into one of the front seats. His friends swapped familiar looks of confusion at Oliver’s unusual approach to life.

  The shiny green bus made good speed along the M23 motorway, which was all but deserted. Holding a steady line on the inside lane, Eric checked his mirror and relaxed into the straight stretch. This was effortless motoring and enjoyable. He barely noticed the tightening in his left wrist and hand, nor the firmer grip it took of the left side of the steering wheel.

  Nearly everyone slept on the coach, Minnie cuddled his girl, and Jamie had found one female friend to sleep against. She too slept. Mary looked at Oliver who sat on the nearside of the coach. He did not sleep either but stared out of the window, preoccupied. Mary had tried to talk to him, he would only offer that he had met a very interesting girl. Mary asked him about the regression sign in the shop window and Oliver conceded he had been curious, as it was offered as a therapy. It worried Mary that he said he might read over his old papers on the subject. She remembered the time at medical school when he had immersed himself in study, obsessing with his hypothesis on past lives regression. Mary also remembered the ridicule, Oliver’s dénouement and subsequent depression and mental ill health. Mary had watched Oliver nearly fall again last year and hoped he was not stirring up his ideas once again today.

  As if sharing Mary’s memory bank Oliver too was recalling the time when he had spectacularly failed in front of the whole medical school. He couldn’t let himself recall the Deans name, nor the professor at the time. Just their names made him feel sick with anxiety. Oliver watched the world pass by outside of the bus window, he remembered how ill he became. Chased from the faculty within the fervor of a twenty first century witch-hunt, he had become depressed. It took him nine months to find himself and to establish an effective pharmacological and talking therapy regime. It then took another two months to find a university that would allow him to complete his medical studies. Oliver recalled of this and he especially could not believe he had once again exposed himself last year scribbling out his hypothesis in front of an eminent post graduate class. But even these painful memories couldn’t prevent him from once again ruminating about his one big idea having seen Jenny’s performance in ‘Other World’.

  Eric’s left hand tightened on the wheel one more notch. He subconsciously compensated for the increasing anti-clockwise force by pulling slightly more with his right hand. Eric was not conscious to the opposing forces rising between his right and left hands.

  Oliver sighed and tried to shake off the anxiety rising in him. He could not let himself get ill ever again, but he had seen, witnessed, Jenny induce an altered physical state of some kind. He was convinced she was genuine in her assertion that she could regress to past lives, but what he witnessed was unique in the physical visceral access she partially revealed. Less an experience, more an ability, possibly even a power. It was this possibility Oliver could not shake. As a minimum, but with caution, he would read over his old papers later that day.

  If Eric had the time he would have noticed his left hand tremor as it built up its force and strength. He would have seen the skin on that hand ripple, move, as the hand took control of the wheel. Eric had barely a moment to wonder if he was having a stroke, before his left hand violently pulled the wheel down, aggressively taking the bus away from its straight line. He gripped his right hand over his left and desperately tried to correct this action, pulling back against his left. Eric had a vague sense that behind him his passengers were screaming and bodies were falling between seats. The bus struck the barrier at an angle almost ninety degrees with the line of the road.

  A modern coach would absorb much of the impact at this speed within its roll cage, an invisible frame that formed a ring of protection for occupants. A thirty year old bus was paper thin in comparison.

  The green bus hit the barrier, ripping open the vehicle from the front wing, across the door and creating a tin can gash up to the first two nearside rows. Had anyone been sat there, they would have instantly been ripped apart. If Eric had not secured some correction and applied the brakes as hard, the gash would have ripp
ed on two more rows and sliced into Oliver.

  The coach leaned on its two nearside wheels, and slid screaming along the roadside steel barriers. Sparks fired through the morning air. The tyres on both wheels blew out and the drop of the bus onto hard metal rims shuddered through every passenger. It looked likely that the bus would flip across the barrier and roll down the steep embankment on the other side. This would kill many if not all inside the old bus.

  Oliver’s experience of the crash was less than slow motion. He sat there in a surreal quiet, with the distant echo of chaos some way off. He had become aware something was not right and had looked across the aisle to see Eric fighting to control the bus. When it hit the barrier he had watched the metal side of the bus rip open and the jagged violent gash of razor shards of steel, slice slowly towards him. Like a snake stalking its prey he felt sure it would strike and rip into him. Unable to act against the forces that pinned him to his seat, the gravity of a bus about to roll and his own arms gripping the seat in front, he closed his eyes expecting a grotesque death.

  A combination of experience and good health and strength came together enough for Eric to turn the wheel, even without tyres, one important inch. This was the fraction of difference between dozens of corpses or life. The coach crashed down as it corrected itself, the front axel collapsed, the force smashing the front windscreen peppering Eric with fine glass. The wrecked vehicle screamed to a halt on the hard shoulder. Eric sat shaking breathless at the wheel still gripping it tightly. Blood trickled down his face from many small cuts inflicted by the spray of glass. Eric pulled himself to his feet, stepping painfully from the drivers’ seat.

  “Is everyone okay?” he asked, selfless of his own injuries.

  Oliver’s head had struck the side window with force when the bus corrected itself. He had then lurched forward as it stopped quickly and his neck jarred as he fell back upright. Concussed he had watched Eric stand, perceiving more of a fuzzy outline than a clear picture of him. He could hear Eric talking but not the words. He sensed moans and the dull sound of shock behind him. Yet as Oliver tried to focus on Eric, to help regain his senses, he was drawn by something around Eric’s soft image. Oliver thought he could see a bright blue hue surrounding Eric, enveloping most of his upper body. It weaved and danced and Oliver felt the blue ghost was not around Eric, it was leaving him. Oliver tipped his head stiffly to one side. He watched curiously as the cloud of energy, like departing cigarette smoke, faded to nothing above Eric’s bloodied face.

  9.