‘Katie,’ he said. And she felt a different kind of jolt. Her stomach turned over. How did he know? She’d never seen him, had she? But then she remembered; her name was monogrammed on her canvas school bag.
‘You don’t know I’m Katie,’ she said defensively, picking up the bag and hugging it to her chest. ‘It could just be some designer’s name. A designer handbag. The latest Katie.’
‘But you are Katie,’ he replied, still fixing her with his bright eyes. ‘No one else could be. And besides, there is no Katie designer label – Kate Spade, yes, but no Katie. Trust me. If you had my mother . . . I learned to read tracing designer labels on her handbags.’
Katie laughed. ‘Do you think she’s my mother’s twin sister?’ The other patients in the doctor’s office looked up, offended by her laughter. The boy gave them a cheery wave and they glanced away, as if he had made an obscene gesture.
‘Reilly Jackson,’ he introduced himself. ‘Well, actually Reilly O Jackson.’
‘What does the O stand for?’ Katie asked, before she could stop herself.
Reilly shook his head. ‘The O stands for O,’ he said, and mimicking a breathless ingénue voice quoted:
‘O brave new world, that has such people in’t.’
He really did laugh this time. ‘Before the designer handbags and the soap operas, my mother used to be quite a good actress. She did lots of Shakespeare.’
‘The Tempest,’ Katie said. ‘My mother went through a Shakespeare phase too. We have the complete works, bound in cream suede to match the living room. Mimi thinks it gives the apartment some depth.’
To Katie, this Reilly O Jackson seemed nearly perfect. There must be some catch. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, and then wanted to bite her tongue off. After all, she was sitting in a psychiatrist’s office too. Reilly didn’t seem to mind her bluntness at all.
‘I want to save the world,’ he explained, ‘and the world seems to think this is bonkers.’ For the first time she looked up, directly into his clear blue eyes.
‘That’s the least bonkers thing I’ve ever heard,’ she said, then wished she hadn’t. Katie looked down at her hands twisting in her lap, like the other patients in the room, at her bitten fingernails. ‘I’m, like, so much crazier than you are,’ she confessed. ‘At least you say something that makes sense. I write – and write – and write – and it’s all nonsense.’
Reilly didn’t look suspicious, or distrustful. He didn’t look worried, the way Dolores did when she found Katie’s scribbles, or frightened, like Mimi. He just looked incredibly interested.
‘What do you write?’ he asked. ‘One person’s nonsense is another person’s masterpiece.’
‘It’s just gibberish,’ Katie said. ‘Like I’m taking notes in a classroom, at some kind of lecture or something. Here, I can show you,’ she said. Rummaging through her rucksack, she pulled out a tattered piece of paper, covered in words, scrawled in her own handwriting.
Visions – mirror – walking stick – DuQuelle – Alice – James – Tempus – Occidit – Fugit – Verus – Malum – Lucia – Belzen – Grace – Corset – Angel – fleas – Felix – Florence – Seacole – Russell – salve – charge – charge – CHARGE – Jack – Jack – Jack . . .
‘I don’t even know when I do it,’ Katie explained. ‘Mimi, that’s my mother, and Dolores, our housekeeper, find piles of them. And then I keep seeing . . .’ Katie trailed off. She’d shared enough with Reilly O Jackson. Too much in fact.
Reilly read through the paper. When he looked up at Katie, his eyes were serious, a deeper blue. ‘It could be automatic writing,’ he suggested, ‘like writing in a trance. You could be tapping into your unconscious . . . or . . . the spirit world . . . or . . .’ He turned redder and Katie understood. There were certain things you think, particularly at night, that you just don’t say out loud.
It had been a long time since Katie met anyone she liked as much as Reilly O Jackson. But the time had come to shut up. Why should she talk to him about all this stuff; she wasn’t even telling the doctor. She couldn’t tell anyone. It was too weird.
The crazy endless writing was bad enough. And then there were the visions. The worst thing was, it all made much more sense than she wanted to admit to anyone, even to herself. In the depths of her being, she was remembering. The visions that came to her weren’t of her time. The people who appeared wore old-fashioned clothes. The men rode on horses and the women wore long skirts. But the people themselves, strange as they appeared, were not strangers to Katie. The pretty girl with the serious grey eyes, the studious boy who rubbed his hair until it stood on end – they seemed like old friends. And the tall pale man in the black silk top hat. She knew the glitter in his green eyes, and recognized his walking stick. It was exactly like hers.
Was it all just a trick of her mind? Or was there a reason? She realized she’d been staring into space for a long time, but this didn’t seem to bother Reilly O Jackson.
‘Here,’ he said, handing back her scrawled paper. ‘Keep the papers, and take care of them. I think they’re important. I think they’ll tell an amazing story one day. Somehow, some day, you’ll understand them.’
The receptionist looked up from her gossip magazine. Katie cringed when she saw a photograph of Mimi on the cover. ‘Reilly Jackson,’ the receptionist called out, as the doctor hovered in the doorway, visibly alarmed at the two teenagers together.
‘Jack!’ the doctor greeted him with practised familiarity. The boy gave him a guarded look, suddenly quite a different person. ‘Jackson,’ the doctor corrected himself, ‘Reilly Jackson, how good to see you.’ Reilly Jackson obviously didn’t share these feelings. The square shoulders slumped and the brown hair fell over his blue eyes. With a parting, almost pleading look at Katie, he slouched towards the door. He wasn’t going to give the doctor anything.
‘Jack,’ Katie thought. ‘The doctor called him Jack.’ And there he was, in her mind’s eye. Jack: in a blue and gold military tunic, sabre at his side, the unkempt hair replaced by a neat trim and some rather fantastic sideburns. Jack: a dashing soldier of another time. The visions. Why the visions? Katie shook her head slightly, and this figure merged with the retreating back of the boy in the psychiatrist’s office. Jack.
Chapter Four
The Snow Globe
As Katie walked home, jostled on the busy streets, she felt giddy, almost light-headed. At last, a sprinkling of Christmas spirit. She had managed to talk to the doctor for a full hour, sounding frank and open, but without telling him anything important. And she’d met someone who made sense to her: a boy, a funny, kind boy, who just happened to be a co-crazy. But as the doorman swung open the glass doors to 50 East 89th Street, she realized she might never see Reilly O Jackson again. He’d never been in the doctor’s reception room before. Katie thought hard. ‘I’ll tell Mimi that I’m beginning to open up emotionally,’ Katie decided, shaking snow from her boots and whistling ‘Jingle Bells’. Mimi loved doctors, especially the ones that were paid to listen to her talk. She’d been waiting for Katie’s breakthrough for a long time.
George was sitting behind the front desk, as he had been for the past twenty-five years. ‘I’ve lived through lots of Mimi’s Christmases,’ he called out to Katie, ‘but this one is the limit.’ He lifted yet another bundle of packages – wrapped gifts, orchids, cupcakes – all for Mimi.
‘Send the orchids to Mount Sinai Hospital,’ Katie instructed, an old pro at dealing with Mimi’s gifts, ‘and eat the cupcakes yourself. Mimi will shriek if she sees all those carbs. I’ll take the packages up. I’m sure we’ll all be glad when the holidays are over.’
George gave her a wink. He’d known Katie since she was a baby.
Dolores had been watching out for Katie, but she wasn’t happy to see the packages. ‘MORE, I can’t believe there’s MORE,’ she grumbled. ‘Not even the baby Jesus deserves this much stuff.’
‘Maybe we’ll have to move,’ Katie said thoughtfully, as she placed
the packages under the laden tree. ‘I don’t think Mimi has enough room in her wardrobe for this stash. But look on the bright side. It might all be tax-deductible. I mean, it is part of Mimi’s job . . . being fawned over . . . and she has to wear all these clothes . . .’
Dolores sniffed. ‘I don’t see her wearing A LOT of clothes up there on stage. It’s get’n shameful, at her age. Just a few spangle beads and feathers . . .’ Katie sat down by the tree, making room for the new gifts. One tumbled into her lap. The card on top said Katie Berger-Jones-Burg: written in the most elaborate penmanship, all swirls and curls. As Katie stared down at the package in her lap, her Christmas cheer evaporated and tears sprang to her eyes. Katie Berger-Jones-Burg: the name of a girl with a much-married mother. A girl who receives every gift but the one she really needs.
‘Well, that’s one fancy gift,’ Dolores said. Katie dabbed at her eyes with the winter scarf still around her neck. She picked up the box and examined it more closely. ‘I think it’s come far,’ she said. ‘It’s got that funny travelling smell – kind of burnt, kind of electric. It smells like your clothes when they’ve been on an aeroplane too long.’
Dolores harrumphed. ‘My clothes don’t fly around on aeroplanes. My clothes stay right in the Bronx where they belong. We’re not budging from New York. We’re staying right here in the USA.’
‘But where did you come from?’ Katie asked Dolores. ‘I mean, most Americans come from somewhere else. Your parents or grandparents must have chosen America, and come here from another country.’
Dolores put her hands on her hips and looked at Katie with disbelief.
‘Choose! We didn’t choose. Haven’t you ever looked at the colour of my skin, child? We were dragged here, captured in some raid on a village, some African war. We came as slaves. Choose! No one chooses to be a slave.’
Having had her say, Dolores swept into the kitchen for a bout of ironing and television. Katie felt even more miserable. All she really had was Dolores, and now she’d made her angry. ‘So much for happy holidays,’ she said to herself.
The strange package in her lap was wrapped in thick cream paper, beautifully marbled in crimson and blue. The large curving bow shimmered like spun gold. ‘It really is beautiful,’ Katie murmured. Mimi had promised to be home for Christmas, but who could tell with Mimi? Why not open a present now. Just one; this one pretty package. Katie gave the bow a tug.
Nothing happened. She pulled again, harder. Still, the bow would not give way. Katie tried sliding the bow off the package. She got scissors out of Mimi’s ‘writing desk’. But the bow would not budge. Who would send her such a stubborn package? Strange, but the envelope with her name slipped easily from under the ribbon. Carefully, she opened it. Inside, in the same elaborate script it said:
Where is the book?
So the card asked questions. Katie knew she should be surprised. But somehow it seemed the most natural thing a card could do. The real question was: what book? Katie had hundreds of books. She read and read; for her it was a means of escape. Thick paperbacks, cloth-bound hardbacks, the occasional leather-bound fancy ones – but they were always real books. Mimi found this very eccentric. Almost every book in the house was in Katie’s bedroom, and the majority of these were under her high, Victorian canopy bed. Placing the package back under the tree, she ran to her room and crawled under the bed.
Since early childhood, this had been her refuge. Somehow it was safe under the bed. She kept her treasures in a cardboard box: a broken Swiss army knife her father once gave her, some dried flowers from a rare walk in the country . . . Mostly though, it was the books. She scanned the titles: Beowulf, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Girl, Interrupted, Germ Theory and Disease, Dealing with Death, The History of Milk . . . her reading tastes were nothing if not diverse.
And then it came to her with great clarity. There, shoved under Wuthering Heights, was the book. A very old and possibly very dangerous book. Professor Diuman had lent it to her, way before he had attacked Mimi and ended up in a loony bin. She could smell the book almost before she could see it. The same strange, burnt, musky smell, just like the package under the tree. ‘Tempus Fugit, Libertati Viam Facere’ was written on the cover page. She’d looked it up in her Latin textbook: ‘Time Flies, Making a Road to Freedom’.
Grabbing the book, she took it back to the tree. Still, the package would not open. She placed it on the book, she tapped the package with the book, and she read aloud, in Latin, from the book. Nothing. Katie was about to toss the gift back under the tree, when the card caught her eye. It was the same swirling script, only the message had changed:
. . . and the walking stick.
Always a puzzle, and so annoying, that walking stick. The police had taken it as evidence in Professor Diuman’s attack. Then they’d lost it. But months later the walking stick appeared at 89th Street, a knobbly package addressed to Katie. She had her suspicions that someone other than the police had sent it back to her. Dashing to her closet, Katie rummaged through the debris until she found it. A long ebony cane with a silver tip. She ran her hands over it, her fingers caressing the strange symbols carved deep into the wood. She had a hundred questions about the walking stick, but she knew one thing for certain – it was the answer to the package.
This time she didn’t run back but slowly approached the tree. Seating herself with crossed legs, she placed the book in her lap and the package on top. Taking up the walking stick, she gently tapped the bundle. The ribbon slipped away and she could easily open the wrapping. Inside was a simple wooden box containing a Christmas ornament: a glass globe. Katie felt a rush of disappointment. It was pretty and it was interesting, but it didn’t seem to warrant the Alakazam of ancient books and magical wands.
Katie looked at it carefully. Actually, it was a snow globe. Inside was a family scene of Christmas in Victorian times. The father, mother, sons and daughters were clustered around a Christmas tree, their long hooped skirts and velvet jackets fitting for the time of year. Katie peered more closely. There was so much detail. A fire crackled in the fireplace and on the mantle a large clock was surrounded by evergreen branches. Deep-red curtains hung around windows that were filled with painted snow. A small brass plaque was attached to the base of the globe. It read: CHRISTMAS, 1860.
Dolores bustled back from the kitchen; she could never stay angry with Katie. ‘I brought you some hot chocolate, honey,’ she said, setting it down on the coffee table. ‘Now that’s a dainty little thing,’ she added, peering at the glass globe. ‘Let’s shake it up and make it snow.’ Obediently Katie shook the globe, but it wouldn’t snow.
‘How strange,’ Dolores said. But Katie had figured it out: this globe wouldn’t snow with the shake of a hand, because it wasn’t a normal snow globe. It wasn’t even a gift. The snow globe had something to tell her: like a message in a bottle, washed to shore from sea. It needed the book and the walking stick in order to tell its story. Tap, tap, tap – Katie could feel it in some inner recess of her mind. ‘Tempus Liberatati,’ she whispered. ‘. . . No . . . Tempus Vaim . . . damn . . . no . . . Tempus Fugit, Libertati Viam Facere.’ She finally got it right and tapped on globe. ‘The words,’ she tried to explain to an increasingly worried Dolores. ‘It’s always the words.’
She found herself muttering, almost involuntarily, ‘their time, our time, passing time, all time, no time, out of time’. All was still. The pretty Victorian family was frozen in time, quietly celebrating in their safe world of glass. And then the snow began to fall. She could see it, through the window in the snow globe. Not the plastic flakes, put in a ball of water and glycerine by a Chinese manufacturer. These were not ‘Made in China’ flakes. These were real.
The snow continued to fall and now the figures stirred as well. At first all did seem merry. The fire crackled, the candles twinkled on the tree. Then the clock began to whirl, the hands moving faster and faster. The windows flashed from light to dark – from snow to rain to sun. Leaves splattered against the panes and th
en again, the steady fall of snow.
The little brass plaque on the base of the snow globe changed as well. It now read: CHRISTIMAS, 1861. A year had passed within the globe. The miniature family had been filled with Christmas spirit, but now grew more sombre. The father sat down, then lay flat on the sofa. He seemed to be in pain. The mother kneeled beside him, holding his hand. A young man came through the door – where had the door come from? – and one of the daughters ran towards him, her shining brown hair streaming behind her. The two were soon deep in conversation, heads together. With growing unease, Katie realized she knew these people. She held the globe closer; so close that she could see the worry lines between the girl’s serious grey eyes.
Some sort of debate was going on. The two young people turned – could Katie really hear the rustle of the girl’s long skirt? They walked towards Katie, towards the edge of the globe. They pressed against the curve of the glass and looked up. Katie was startled as their eyes met hers. They could see her. Their tiny hands were against the clear glass and Katie could distinguish the pattern of their palms.
‘What the . . . Mary, Mother of Jesus,’ Dolores gasped, just over Katie’s shoulder. But Katie barely heard her. Slowly and gently, she placed the snow globe on the coffee table, and learning forward, careful not to fog the glass, she rested the tips of her index fingers against the glass – touching their tiny hands with her own large ones. The girl in the globe looked up. Her pupils dilated and her grey eyes turned to black. A voice called. Not the girl’s voice. It was alluring, with a soft low hiss. It called her name ‘Katie . . . Katie . . . the time has come to play your part.’ She leaned forward, drawn to the voice.
Katie could hear Dolores, shouting behind her, but it was too late. Someone was yanking her forward, pulling her into a world that was inky, dark and wild. Something wrapped around her, cloaking her with energy both enslaving and empowering. An intoxicating pulse ran through her veins. ‘Katie,’ the voice demanded.
The Chronicles of the Tempus Page 48