The Wraiths of War

by Mark Morris

  ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘and I’m not making fun of you. Think of this as… a hypothesis?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You mean as something that’s daft, but that we pretend is true? That we take seriously even though we know it’s barmy?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just because… well, because sometimes it’s good to think outside the box.’

  ‘What box?’

  I waved a hand. ‘I’m not talking about a real box. What I mean is… think of the world as having boundaries. Within those boundaries is everything we know about, everything we accept.’

  ‘Everything that’s true and real?’

  ‘Everything we accept as being true and real. The sum of all human knowledge.’

  ‘All right,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Now imagine there are things we don’t know about. Things we haven’t learned yet. And they exist outside these boundaries – not because they’re not real, or because they’re daft or childish, but simply because we don’t know about them yet.’

  ‘Like finding a way of travelling into the future?’

  ‘Or the past, yes.’

  He sighed indulgently. ‘All right. But I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’ Abruptly he laughed. ‘Sometimes, I think you’re half-cracked.’ I grinned, was about to agree with him, and then had a sudden thought. I put my hand in my jacket pocket, aware that my heart was beating hard. ‘I want to show you something,’ I said. ‘To illustrate my point.’

  He looked at me uncomprehendingly, but shrugged as if to say: Go ahead.

  I glanced around me, ever wary, and withdrew the obsidian heart. Frank took a nonchalant sip of his pint, but to me it felt like a charged moment. Keeping the heart below the level of the edge of the table, out of sight of prying eyes, I extended my arm towards him and opened my palm.

  ‘Here,’ I said, ‘take it.’

  He glanced down, his expression dubious. In the gloom of the pub it must have looked as if I was offering him a lump of coal.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Take it,’ I repeated. ‘Have a look.’

  He gave a little shake of his head, but then sighed and took the heart from my hand. I tensed as he lifted it in front of his face so he could peer at it more closely, and subtly tried to adjust my position so that I was shielding it from sight.

  If I expected anything to happen, for the heart to respond to Frank in some significant way, or for him to respond to it, I was disappointed. He simply stared at it in bafflement, moving it from side to side. ‘What is it?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  He glanced at me, as if uncertain whether I was trying to catch him out. ‘It’s a heart, ain’t it? Carved out of ebony or something.’ He hefted it in his hand. ‘It’s a nice piece.’

  My own heart was thumping harder now. I was half-surprised the vibrations weren’t causing pint glasses to rattle on tables, curious eyes to turn in our direction. My mouth felt dry and I licked my lips. I said, ‘Imagine that’s your time machine, Frank. Imagine that with that you could go anywhere, backwards or forwards. That you just had to think yourself there and there you’d be. Where would you go?’

  He looked at the heart and scowled. ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘Isn’t there anywhere you want to go? Anything you want to see?’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

  ‘Think about it now.’

  ‘Why?’

  I sat back, smiled, tried to take the intensity out of the situation, to make it into more of a game. ‘Call it… an intellectual exercise.’

  ‘The only exercise I want to do is lift me arm with a pint glass in it.’

  I sighed, on the point of giving up. Then I had a brainwave. ‘What about the War?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you want to end it if you could? Stop it before it had even started?’

  For a moment I thought he was going to say no. He looked almost sulky, like a schoolboy who’d been asked whether he wanted to cancel his birthday party. Then he said, ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘So what if, using the heart, you could travel back in time and… I don’t know… stop Gavrilo Princip from shooting Franz Ferdinand? Would you do it?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he said, and then grudgingly, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But what if, by stopping Princip, there was the possibility you’d be opening the door to something worse?’

  Now he was looking confused. Hastily I said, ‘Hang on, let me put it another way. What if someone said to you that if you didn’t stop Princip there’d be a terrible war, the worst war this world had ever seen? What if they said that was a definite? What if they said the war would last for four years, and twenty million people would die, but then it would be over and the world would carry on? And what if they said that by stopping Princip you could stop that war? But that if you did that there was the possibility – not a definite thing this time, but a possibility – that something even worse would happen?’

  Frank was now looking at me wide-eyed. It was as if I’d half-mesmerised him. ‘What could be worse than twenty million people dying in a war?’

  ‘I don’t know. The whole world being wiped out maybe. What if, by stopping Princip, you might upset some… some cosmic balance—’

  ‘God, do you mean?’

  ‘Well… yes, if it makes it easier, think of it as God. What if, by stopping Princip, there was a chance, just a chance, that you could upset God enough to make him destroy the world?’

  Frank was scowling, though not out of irritation this time; now he seemed to be genuinely contemplating the moral dilemma I’d set him.

  ‘So I can leave things be,’ he said, ‘let Princip kill this Franz feller, knowing there’ll be a war and twenty million people will die, but the world will be all right again afterwards. Or I can stop this Princip, and stop the war, and save those twenty million lives – but by doing that it might upset some… what was it you said?’

  ‘Cosmic balance.’

  ‘That’s it. It might upset some cosmic balance, which would end us all.’

  ‘That’s the crux of it,’ I said. ‘Which would you choose? The terrible thing that was definite? Or the even worse thing that might or might not happen?’

  Frank looked at me, then at the heart again. Then he placed the heart on the table, between our pint glasses.

  ‘I’d stop the definite thing and take my chances,’ he said.

  I looked at him, surprised – but then realised I’d have been surprised whatever his answer.

  ‘Would you? Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t cope with maybes. If you always think about what might happen, then you’d never do anything, would you? But if I can stop something that I know’s going to be bad, I’ll stop it. Every time.’

  I put the heart back into my pocket, then picked up my pint and took a swig. I must have looked thoughtful, because Frank said, ‘So? What about you?’

  ‘The same,’ I said automatically. ‘I’d do the same.’

  That night I used the heart.

  FOUR

  CHANGING HISTORY

  The transition was smooth, the after-effects comprising of nothing but a slight tingling in my arms and legs, a few moments of light-headedness and mild nausea. I stood swaying in the darkened room, a room I was acutely familiar with, and for which I suddenly experienced an almost overwhelming ache of nostalgia.

  It was this, combined with the now relatively mild effects of time travel, that caused me to grope my way to the squashy old settee and sit down. The springs creaked as the depression in the seat cushion welcomed back my familiar weight. It had been months since I’d sat here, although I guess as far as the flat (and the settee) were concerned, it had been only a matter of hours.

  In front of me was the toy chest, which served as a coffee table, with Kate’s Toy Story colouring book on top of it. At the sight of it the rush of nostalgia, which had made me
feel jittery, was unceremoniously swept aside by a more powerful torrent of emotions – longing, loss, hope, excitement, fear. Last time I’d seen this room it had been trashed, the sofa I was sitting on shredded and overturned, the colouring book torn to pieces. But I’d now travelled back to a time before that had happened, to a time before the Wolves of London had been after me – or at least before I’d known that they were. If the heart had brought me to where I wanted to be, this was October 1st 2012. The reason the flat was empty was because my past self was currently on his way to meet Benny Magee at the Hair of the Dog, and Kate was across the hallway in the flat belonging to my neighbours – neighbours who my past self knew as Adam and Paula Sherwood, but whose real names were Linley and Maude Sherwood, and who had been brought here from Victorian London, presumably by the Dark Man, to abduct my daughter.

  Although the sight of Kate’s colouring book had set me off, it was the thought that she was probably, at this moment, no more than a couple of dozen metres away from me that caused me to literally shake with emotion. Ever since waking up in 2097 and discovering not only that I could use the heart to take me where and when I wanted to go (an ability I had only recently mastered), but also that the heart would now transport me to my chosen destination without also ripping me apart in the process, I’d been thinking about going back in time and preventing Kate’s abduction. No, scratch that; I hadn’t been thinking about it – I’d been obsessing over the idea.

  The only thing that had prevented me from heading back here straight away was my fear that by changing history I would somehow make things even worse. I’d experienced the knock-on effects of altering events before, in the form of visions, which had been ‘shown’ to me possibly by the heart. In that instance I’d seen visions of what might happen if I failed to use the heart to meet Frank, or to pay off Candice’s boyfriend’s debt. In this case, though, it was different. Now my concern was what might happen if I used the heart to alter what to me was already established history.

  Maybe nothing. Or maybe things would change not for the worse, but for the better. It could be that time was malleable, constantly in flux, and that altering history didn’t necessarily always equal disaster.

  Whatever the outcome, though, I knew deep down that I had to try it. I think I’d decided that even before my conversation with Frank in The Globe a few hours (and almost a century) earlier, but his words had served only to make up my already made-up mind. Before speaking to Frank I’d been teetering on the brink, bracing myself for the jump. His words had simply given me the extra push I needed.

  I took several deep breaths in the hope it would stop my legs from shaking, and then I stood up. If the heart had brought me to the time of day I’d wanted to arrive – and judging by the darkening sky outside it had – it would now be just after 5 p.m. In truth, I had no idea what time Kate’s abduction had taken place, but I knew it couldn’t have happened during the school day, otherwise the school would have contacted me. It was possible that the Sherwoods, having cleared out their flat while I was at work, had picked up Kate and their own son, Hamish, at 3:30 p.m. and driven straight to wherever it was they’d disappeared to with my daughter. But if they had done that, then I’d just use the heart to try again; I’d use it to allow me to pick Kate up from school myself if needs be.

  What, though, if that brought the Wolves down not just on me, but on the both of us? What if Kate was with me when they attacked?

  No. I wouldn’t allow myself to harbour doubts. I thought back to what Frank had said earlier: I can’t cope with maybes. If you always think about what might happen, then you’d never do anything, would you?

  ‘Who dares wins,’ I muttered, and felt my lips twitch in a shaky smile at the dumb bravado of the phrase as I walked out of the room and across the short hallway of the flat. I fumbled at the catch of the main door with numb fingers, then tugged the door open and stepped on to the landing.

  I half-expected to see the Sherwoods’ door standing open, and them to be tiptoeing down the stairs, a suitcase in each hand. But the door of their flat was closed. I walked across to it and listened.

  Muffled sounds, too vague to be called thumps or scrapes, suggested occupation, movement.

  Gotcha, I thought, and raised a hand to thump on their door, imagining how shocked Paula’s face would be when she opened it.

  I couldn’t believe it was really going to be this easy. Or was I being naive? Perhaps I should have come prepared for violence? I was about to thrust my raised fist forward when a hand grabbed my wrist from behind and tugged me off-balance. I stumbled backwards with a grunt of pain, then twisted to face my assailant, instinctively swinging my left arm round in a clumsy attempt at a punch. But my attacker anticipated the movement and stepped smartly aside, yanking my raised arm back even further. I cried out in pain, and my attacker’s free hand immediately clamped over my mouth.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up,’ a familiar voice hissed in my ear. ‘Do you want to ruin everything?’

  My momentum spun me all the way round until I was facing my assailant. My eyes widened.

  It was me.

  An older version, of course, though I only knew that because I knew I hadn’t yet done what he was now doing. He looked pretty much the same as me, which I guess meant he could have been anything from a few weeks to a few years older. I stopped struggling.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  He nodded back towards the door of my flat. ‘We’ll chat in here. Come on, quick, before it’s too late.’

  I glared at him, then sighed. ‘Jesus Christ. Why are things never straightforward? What do you know that I don’t?’

  He let go of me and raised a hand towards the open door of my flat, like an estate agent inviting a prospective buyer to lead the way. I trudged ahead of him, rotating my right shoulder in its socket.

  ‘That bloody hurt, you know,’ I hissed. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still giving you gyp.’

  My future self rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus, I’d forgotten what a wimp I used to be.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I still found it odd talking to myself – arguing with myself especially. The oddest thing was that I knew exactly what my ‘opponent’s’ limits were. To me, because he was me, he was entirely predictable. I knew he wasn’t going to suddenly pull out a gun and shoot me – or hurt me in any way, come to that.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ I asked once we were back in the flat and he had closed the door behind us. ‘Why can’t I just stop them from taking Kate now and have done with it? Is it because you’re scared of what’ll happen to you?’

  He went into the front room, turned the light on and looked around.

  He picked up Kate’s colouring book, then quickly put it down again. ‘Good times, eh?’ he said. ‘Simpler times.’

  ‘Are you still—’ I started to ask, but he raised a hand.

  ‘Don’t waste time asking. But to answer your previous question – the one about what I know that you don’t… what I know is that I remember being you, and I remember what I told myself when I was you. And I now know that it makes sense, which is why you shouldn’t do what you’re thinking of doing.’

  I shook my head. ‘What the fuck are you on about?’

  He raised his hands, as if about to conduct an orchestra. ‘Just go with me on this. It’s like a time-loop thing, like a snake swallowing its own tail. It’s best not to think about it too deeply, because it’ll just end up tying your head in knots.’

  I sighed. ‘All right. Just say what you need to say.’

  His hands were still raised, but now he pinched the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together, as if trying to squeeze what he wanted to say in between them, trying to make it as simple and as manageable as possible.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a level of control over the heart now, right? You can use it to take you where you want to go, and the nanites inside you mean you won’t end up in h
ospital or worse?’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘So there are better ways of doing things than just bludgeoning in like this and hoping for the best. Safer ways. With what you can do with the heart now – or maybe I should say, with what the heart can do for you – there’s no need to use a hammer to crack a walnut.’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  My future self sighed. ‘You can change the past without actually changing it. Think about that. Think about it hard.’ He tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘Use your noggin, Alex. But remember this: you don’t have to be a victim any more.’

  FIVE

  BASIC TRAINING

  Although my eyes were closed I was far from asleep. In fact, lying on my hard wooden bed beneath my thin, scratchy blanket I was beginning to think I might never sleep again. Not only was the hut so cold and draughty that I’d taken to wearing my long johns and woolly socks at night, but I was surrounded by such a cacophony of creaks, groans and snores that I felt as though my skull was vibrating with the din.

  If the restless sleepers had formed an orchestra, then Howard Dankforth, who slept in the bed directly opposite mine, our feet separated by no more than the narrow aisle that ran down the centre of the hut, would have been its lead trombone. A big lad, six foot two and eighteen stone, he’d become known within the battalion as ‘Bone Saw’, because his snoring sounded like the electric teeth of that particular implement grinding its way through someone’s leg.

  It was February 5th 1915, and we’d been billeted in our hastily erected barracks – comprising a series of large wooden huts, each of which housed two dozen men – for just short of a week. Before this the three thousand or so of us who had travelled down from London to Dartmouth on a series of packed, rickety trains for basic training had been billeted with the local population, squeezed in wherever there was space. To reduce feelings of homesickness, disorientation and alienation, men from certain areas had been kept together in what were known as ‘Pals Battalions’. If you were best mates with someone, the army had even gone out of their way to house you together where possible. Since receiving our call-up papers in mid-October, Frank and I had been sharing digs in the home of Alfred and Edith White, a couple in their late fifties, who had a thirty-odd year old daughter called Elsie and two sons in their twenties, James and William. Alfred was the village undertaker, the latest in a proud family line stretching back to the mid 1700s. His boys had already gone off to war and were currently on manoeuvres in France. Alfred, a wiry, heavily moustached man, was of the opinion that the War would be over by the spring, whereupon his sons would come home and take up where they’d left off – helping with the family business with a view to eventually taking over when he retired. Such was his optimism I didn’t want to disillusion him.