by Martin Dukes
Remembering previous experiences, Alex resumed his place in line, picked up his vacuum flask and batteries and gave his head a good shake. A minute or so later Alex was groggy from shaking his head and beginning to feel the first stirrings of panic.
“It’s okay,” he told himself. “This might take a little time. Patience is the thing.”
And it might have been, but whereas yesterday Alex had been too busy to feel even the beginnings of anxiety, here there was nothing much to do and lots of time to dwell on the consequences of being stuck outside of time. He stamped his feet. He paced up and down the shop impatiently.
“Come on, come on,” he said.
By what might have been an hour later, Alex was nearly sick with fear. His purchases were disregarded on the floor. For a short time he took to jumping up and down, clutching his head.
“Oh, no!” he said. “Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Stop saying everything twice for God’s sake…What on earth am I going to do now?”
His voice echoed hollow in the eerily silent shop. “What am I going to do? Oh Jesus, help! What am I going to do?”
He felt a catch in his throat and a tremor in his lower lip that he arrested only by biting it. A hot tear escaped from his right eye and trickled down his cheek, rapidly followed by one from his left. He blinked his vision clear for a moment and then surrendered himself to despair, head sunk on chest, his body racked by long gasping sobs. There is only so long a boy can realistically blubber for. Because his watch had stopped at 2.23 and so had all the other clocks in Wardworths it was impossible to tell how long Alex managed it. It seemed like a long time though. Much of it he spent clutching the column of rock that so closely resembled his mum, caught in the act of reaching into her bag for her purse. There was a disagreeably damp patch on her jacket by the time the tide of Alex’s emotion had ebbed away. At length he wiped nose and eyes on a conveniently placed T towel, glancing around glumly for inspiration. None came. Muttering anxiously to himself, he threaded his way out of Wardworths through an open door and into the High Street. A stationary traffic jam had formed behind a lorry unloading a pallet of fizzy drinks. A cyclist in skin tight shorts balanced precariously atop his spindly machine as Alex hurried past. A Big Issue seller with a dog on a rope took an interminable swig from a brown plastic bottle. Walking fast, running at times, Alex made his way towards the police station on the ring road. Alex had great faith in the powers of the police. Perhaps amidst all this rigidity the servants of the law maintained a patient vigil. He was soon disappointed. The outer door was shut, and it took all Alex’s strength and determination to force it open.
It was no use, of course. The fat desk sergeant was frozen in the act of opening a filing cabinet. A woman and child stood immobile by the counter, the child clutching a packet of crisps. Alex took in the situation at a glance and beat on his forehead with his clenched fists. He returned to the pavement outside, where he noticed for the first time that an accident was about to happen close by. A small fast car, pursued by a police car with flashing lights, was about to hit two girls crossing the ring road. Caught up in their own chatter, they were dashing out into a gap between cars. They had already crossed two lanes and were emerging into the third. They were never going to make it. The taller of the two girls was glancing up as the car hurtled towards them, an expression of horror frozen on her face. The other was still oblivious to the peril, her head turned away from the oncoming car.
Alex had problems of his own, but even so he stumbled to a halt, momentarily transfixed by this tableau. Not that there was anything he could do. Even if time sprang into action again he would never be able to warn them in time. Turning his back on this compelling spectacle with some difficulty, he set off back towards Wardworths. Bizarrely, as he threaded his way along a passage that led back to the High Street, the world stuttered briefly into action around him. Pedestrians resumed their paces, pigeons continued their flight, and behind him on the ring road there was a screech and a sickening crunch, followed by the continuous sounding of a car horn. Then time froze once more, this time with a strange finality that filled Alex’s heart with dread.
Nothing much had changed in Wardworths. Alex’s mum had got as far as pulling her purse from her bag. The girl on the till had turned her head a little. That was all. Alex threw himself down at his mum’s feet and wept a little more. Weeping bitter tears continued to achieve absolutely nothing, as Alex eventually had to concede. Time, as measured by conventional means, was completely frozen. Time, as measured by Alex’s stomach hurried on. He was hungry and this organ was not one for keeping its needs to itself, even in times of crisis. His watch appeared, like all other visible clocks, to have stopped working, and this despite having had a new battery installed in it that same morning. Nevertheless, it was quite clear to Alex that it was around about tea time. In the circumstances Alex thought it would be acceptable to help himself to food. Surely most rational adults would concede that being stuck in time counted as an emergency. When he got back to reality he would pay for anything he had to take now.
Alex helped himself to a sandwich and a soft drink from Boots. He sat outside to consume these in the open space with the little fountain that his father said brought eternal disgrace upon the town of his birth. Installed in the nineteen sixties it consisted of a number of stainless steel tubes from which were suspended what looked like a few glass light shades. A meagre trickle of motionless water splashed onto the concrete base. Alex regarded this with interest. Tiny droplets of water were suspended in the air like beads of glass. On the whole he was a resilient boy and already practical matters were starting to drive panic and despair out of his mind. Doubtless he would eventually get back into reality. Until that time he just had to bide his time and look after himself. Nor should he stray too far from his mum. Questions were going to be asked if the world got moving again and he was suddenly found to be at home, or up at the park. He didn’t suppose he would quickly starve, given the amount of readily available food in Cardenbridge. Once he had fetched himself an apple for his conscience’s sake and a really large bar of chocolate for the rest of him, Alex began to recover some of his composure. He set off back towards the ring road to see what sort of accident had happened, feeling a twinge of apprehension as he returned along the passage past the pet shop and the cheap jeweller’s. At the end of the passage several bystanders were caught in the act of swivelling to watch some sudden event. An elderly woman’s jaw hung slackly, horror frozen in dull old eyes. Cautiously, Alex followed her gaze and stepped out into the road. The car that was being chased had smashed into a concrete lamp post. It was a mess, the front crumpled almost beyond recognition. Whoever was in it was going to be a mess too. One of the two girls was sprawled in the road, her arms extended to break her fall. It was clear that she had narrowly avoided being hit. Presumably the car had swerved at the last moment, left the road and smashed into the lamp post. Of the other girl there was no sign. Alex felt a little queasy as he surveyed the scene. He approached the ruined car but hesitated to look inside. There was what might have been blood splashed on the windscreen. Alex backed away.
He resolved to go home. There were bound to be awkward questions asked if time sprang into motion again but he couldn’t hang about in the town centre indefinitely. At least at home he could make himself comfortable. The walk would take him no more than twenty minutes if he maintained a brisk pace. Fortifying his resolve with chocolate, Alex set off through the eerily silent streets of his home town. At first the pavements were crowded with frozen shoppers and it was vaguely irksome to have to weave between them but soon he was walking along the ring road where there were lots of stationary cars but only one pedestrian, at least in this section, a workman frozen in the act of unloading his van. When it was time to cross the ring road he used the pedestrian underpass. Partly this stemmed from force of habit, partly from concern that he would be run over if time suddenly restarted when he was half way across. As he emerged from the underpass a shad
ow passed over him. This was such an unexpected event he flinched, twisted and craned his neck upwards.
“Whoa!” he said.
Although the world around him remained firmly immobile, a large dark object was passing above, silhouetted by the afternoon sun. Alex shielded his eyes. The object was moving smoothly but unhurriedly at a height of about twenty metres. Alex could perhaps have kept up with it at a sprint. Not that he did. He occupied himself trying to reconcile in his mind the two notions of seals and flying in the air. Seals, he assured himself, were aquatic creatures and lacked the capacity for flight. So biologists believed. Nor were seals as large as this. The tail was the wrong shape too. So was it a seal? It was almost impossible to tell now, as the rapidly diminishing object slid towards the gap between the spire of St John’s and the multi-storey car park.
“No way,” he said, as though this would somehow help to cast out illogicality. “No way,” he said again, shaking his head for emphasis. Alex stepped up on a low wall for a moment and watched with interest as the object vanished behind the spire.
It occurred to Alex that his journey home would be enlivened by a little experimentation. In a world where seals (or things like seals) could get away with zooming about in the air all the usual rules of behaviour were suspended. Simply because it pleased him to do so, Alex began clambering and walking over the bonnets, roofs and boots of the cars parked on Merrick Street. He whistled and sang as he did so, challenging the uncanny silence of the street. He found the effect satisfactory rather than otherwise and grinned at the thought of what Henry would make of it, or Nathan, or any others of his friends if they could see him now. But they couldn’t, because they were trapped in 2.23pm and he was free as a bird, in a world where time was all his own. But what if he was trapped here forever? He stopped, slid down from the windscreen of a four by four and fought back tears once more.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” he said, like a mantra, running his hands through his hair. “What am I going to do?”
A part of Alex, a part somewhat distanced from the rest of him, recognised that he was subject to worrying mood swings just now.
He had to get home. Suddenly, his room, his bed, his duvet seemed like sanctuary in a world that had gone mad. He began to run, eyes dim with suppressed tears, nose suddenly streaming, through streets that were strange yet familiar. As a boy who took no particular pleasure in running and who had feigned illness on more than one occasion to avoid it at school, Alex found himself gasping, staggering, clutching at a searing stitch in his side, well before reaching home. Turning into Carlton Avenue he found himself suddenly face to face with another boy, a boy who had been stooping to gather up a sheaf of papers. This boy was very definitely not frozen. Alex lurched to a halt, panting, blinking, taking in a deep breath into his aching lungs and holding it, holding it. The boy let a few sheets slip from his grasp once more. They fluttered around his feet. The boy recovered first.
“What’s the hurry?” he asked after a long moment in which they merely stared at each other.
“Hi,” said Alex warily. He gestured vaguely. “I was er…running.”
“Yes,” agreed the boy, picking up some more sheets of paper but without taking his eyes off Alex. “I can see that.”
He was a little shorter than Alex but carrying a lot more weight. A shock of curly hair topped off a head that tapered somewhat from neck to crown. He had a soft round face and round glasses too, that glinted as he straightened up.
Alex sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve in a manner that would have distressed his mum.
“How is it you’re not…you know….like everyone else?” he finished lamely.
“You’re new here aren’t you?” said the boy, approaching Alex. “I never saw you before. I thought I knew everyone here. That’s weird. I never saw anyone new before. Where were you going?”
“Home.”
“Uh, huh.” The boy blinked and pursed his lips, curiosity apparently satisfied. “Well. See you around then.”
Holding the papers tight to his chest he set off briskly towards the town centre, with a backward glance of what might have been apology.
Alex stood for a moment and watched him go. Then the various thoughts that had been competing for prominence in his mind fell suddenly into order.
“Hey!” he shouted after the boy’s retreating back. “What do you mean, new?”
The boy seemed not to have heard. Alex hurried after him and caught up just as he was crossing the bottom of Akeman Road.
“Wait a mo’,” he said, catching at the boy’s sleeve. There were a great many questions jostling for attention in his head but the one that popped out sounded rather lame. “What’s going on?”
The boy regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.
“That’s a big question,” he conceded, glancing first at Alex and then in the direction he had been walking. “I’m guessing things seem a bit odd to you. I suppose I’d better fill you in. Look, do you mind if we talk as we walk ‘coz I’m in a bit of a hurry…My name’s Will, by the way.”
“Alex,” said Alex, shaking the rather pudgy hand that was extended to him.
In the distance, beyond the flats by the ring road, another airborne seal could now be made out, gliding smoothly towards them.
“What is that?” he asked, nodding at the creature as it approached before disappearing behind the row of Victorian houses at the top of Hampden Hill.
The other boy turned, regarded it dispassionately and shrugged. “Dugong I think. Could have been a manatee though. I didn’t get a good look at it. I’ve not been keeping track today. Too much on, you see.”
“Aren’t they supposed to be water creatures?” asked Alex, reasonably enough.
“Ordinarily yes,” agreed the boy. “But not here. They fly. Oh dear. It must all be a bit confusing for you.”
“Well, yes. You could say that,” said Alex. It was an enormous relief to find someone apparently normal in circumstances that were anything but.
“I was just going to the park to find Ganymede,” said the boy. “He’s the guy in charge around here. I guess you’d better check in with him if you’ve just arrived.”
Together, they set off back along the ring road, retracing Alex’s route past the stationary police car. Its rear was raised up as the officers inside slammed on the brakes. There was a cloud of dust. Two black lines of scuffed, skidded rubber extended behind its wheels.
“Nasty accident,” commented Alex, nodding at the scene as they passed, moving in and out of the other motionless pedestrians.
“Yes. I suppose it is,” agreed Will. “I hardly notice it any more. It’s just…you know…part of the furniture.”
“Right,” said Alex, thoughtfully. “Have you been here long then? Isn’t everything about to get going again any minute now.”
Will laughed. He pushed his glasses up his nose, which reminded Alex of Henry.
“I shouldn’t think so. Once you’re here you’re here. And as for time. Well, ’Sticia is not in time, exactly.”
“What’s ‘Sticia?” asked Alex.
“This is Intersticia,” said Will, waving vaguely at the frozen world around them. “Except mostly it’s just called ‘Sticia. What does Ganymede say?....Oh yes…It’s like an old fashioned film. You know how a strip of film looks like a row of pictures with tiny black spaces in between? Yes? Each picture is a little snapshot of a moment in time. When we see a film at the cinema the pictures get shown to us so quickly it fools our eye into thinking we’re seeing continuous movement. You know what I mean? Hmm?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah,” he said cautiously.
“Well Intersticia is like the space between instants, the world that exists in the little black strip between frames.”
It sounded unlikely, but then Alex found himself in no position to argue. The little that he knew of physics, the simple certainties of existence, were suddenly called into question.
“Well there must be millions of them t
hen,” he observed. “Billions even.”
“More than that,” continued Will as they rounded the corner into Cheltenham Road. “There are an infinite number of them; as many as there are instants in time. They all have names too. One of the Angels told me what this one was called once. It took him ages to say it. The last tiny part of it sounded a bit like Hammersmith, so that’s what we call it. ‘The Hammersmith Intersticial.’” He had a little chuckle to himself about this, while Alex considered the content of Will’s last couple of sentences. There was a lot to go at.
“Whose we?” asked Alex, making a start.
“Oh, you know…..There’s about seventy of us. Mostly the whole crowd sucks. Lots of oldsters. Some of them completely barking.” He tapped his temple meaningfully.
“I haven’t seen anyone except you yet,” said Alex, glancing behind him as they passed the Red Lion.
“Yeah, well, ‘Sticia isn’t exactly Piccadilly Circus,” acknowledged Will. “And most of us tend to stay out of the middle of town. Too many stiffs about.” He smothered another giggle. “Sorry. I shouldn’t say that. ‘Staticons’ we’re supposed to call them, but Paulo calls them ‘stiffs’. Quite funny actually, don’t you think?”