Fir Lodge

by Sean McMahon

  FIR

  LODGE

  SEAN MCMAHON

  ©2018 Sean McMahon.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means whatsoever without prior permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used in a fictitious manner. The one exception is Fir Lodge itself, which the author has been given express permission to reference within these pages by written agreement from the owner of the lodge.

  Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, or referenced satirically.

  Author’s note: utilising the abilities of a Restarter to alter the timeline to amend author-ownership is strictly prohibited.

  For more information, visit:

  www.restarterlodge.com

  Cover by Sam Moore © 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1985333208

  ISBN-10: 1985333201

  Dedicated to The Gang, the real-life heroes, who forever inspire me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Restarting the Past

  165th Restart – Saturday Evening, 8:39pm

  With less than twenty-three minutes of guaranteed existence left, there was no margin for error.

  “Glass breaks, watch for the balloon, move the yellow ball, then the red,” thought Kara, “but not too much.”

  She had spent no less than seven Saturdays finding the perfect angle so that Jon would finally pot the yellow pool-ball that would spark the chain of follow-up shots which, in turn, would ultimately have him facing the right way, at just the right time. It had taken another two Saturdays before that, learning to move them at just the right speed, so he wouldn’t notice her meddling. Then, what felt like countless weekends memorising the order he would work through the remaining yellow balls left on the table, gently moving the bright-red, spherical obstacles out of his way.

  In the early days, it had taken far more effort and concentration to remember the correct sequence. A minor problem greatly exacerbated by the fact that pool wasn’t her game to begin with.

  But this was far from the early days, and with a wry smirk, she was once again reminded of a thought she couldn’t help but entertain; that given enough time, she could have truly perfected the double into the centre pocket.

  Hal shot her a playful scowl, as he jumped the final four steps of the staircase.

  ‘The irony still isn’t lost on me either,’ remarked Hal, ‘but if you could nudge the cue-ball like, yesterday, that would be–’

  ‘Already done,’ said Kara, ‘less talking, more hot-tub-tripping maybe?’ but he was already gone. ‘Such a backseat Restarter,’ she mumbled, to no one in particular.

  ‘I heard that!’ shouted Hal, as he made his way into position, waiting patiently to carry out his next task.

  It was a dance now. They moved with an elegant precision that could only come from countless hours of practise and repetition. Moving in time with the music, that Hal had selected before he had descended the stairs, which was now echoing throughout the lodge, Glenn Miller’s “In the mood” was today’s soundtrack of bad-assery. They’d admitted to each other a long time ago that, despite its twee undertones, they were glad that Jon had added music from his annual RAF ball to the group playlist. Music was everything to them these days, not least because of the way it inexplicably blasted through the muffling-fog unlike anything else they’d encountered. Hal theorised that this was due to the ebb and flow of the reverberations and varying changes in decibel levels. Kara, on the other hand, didn’t care why.

  Things were already changing, and Hal and Kara had to adapt their plan in subtle ways. The champagne flute that always broke, now never did, meaning Hal now had to knock over a wine bottle every time, just to keep their plan in motion. As if to highlight the point, a cork flew past Kara’s field of view, but was plucked from the air before it could reach its target.

  ‘Right on time Pete,’ said Kara, as Peter walked past her, and then out of sight.

  Their friends were in disarray, as they reacted to the smashed bottle of wine that Hal had dutifully knocked over. Daisy, meanwhile, was busy having to duck under and around the helium-filled roadblocks that had sprung up in front of her face, eventually losing her balance and spilling the contents of the glass she was clutching all over Stacey. All of these things culminated to serve one, singular purpose; to cause a temporary pile-up of people, to prevent anyone from accessing the communal stairway that led to the lower-level.

  It had taken them both a long time to perfect these seemingly simple alterations to the timeline. If their friends had descended the stairs sooner, it would have sent events a few degrees off course, and they’d be right back where they started. Literally. Just one of the many pieces of the ever-shifting puzzle that she and Hal were attempting to manipulate, in order to acquire the precious seconds that they needed so that they–

  “Stop thinking and keep working Kara!” she said to herself sternly.

  Of all the hindrances the fog presented, the thing she hated the most was how it caused her mind to wander. Even in its distilled state, the fog was not to be taken lightly; her charge would only keep its effects at bay for so long. Hal reasoned that this was due to–

  Kara was thrust back into the present, her tangential thoughts cut short, as the hot tub in the rear communal-area of the lodge became silent, the rhythmic hum instantly replaced by the all-too-familiar whinging of Robert. His groans were notably more muffled than last time; another by-product of the ever-present fog, which Hal regularly joked was potentially an ethereal manifestation of Robert’s sardonic wit.

  ‘Kara! You still with me?’ said Hal, running back into the hallway from the rear garden.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. It’s–’

  ‘I know. The music, remember? Anchor yourself!’ said Hal. ‘Last chance,’ he added with a wink, ‘it’s still not too late, we could just kill Robert instead?’

  Kara rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her smile.

  Taking advantage of the fact that Will and Jon were facing away from him, due to Kara’s repositioning of the pool balls changing the way the game would play out, Hal walked through the open double front doors. He turned around, gently closing them behind him, the latch catching softly with a barely audible “click”.

  Will was displaying his frustration over not being able to sink a shot that was, as Jon was taking great pleasure in reminding him, a shot that “even Kara could make.” With a sullen look on his face, Will remained completely oblivious to the fact that the cause of his failure was a direct result of Kara’s unseen intervention.

  As Jon aligned his follow-up shot, Will leant against the doorframe of the side entrance, resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be getting to have another go anytime soon. It was at this moment that Alex appeared, but with Will now blocking the doorway, he was unable to enter the lodge. Not wishing to disturb the flow of the game, Alex reached into his pocket, lighting a cigarette instead.

  By Hal and Kara’s design, this resulted in Alex being just within Robert’s line of sight, and earshot.

  ‘Can you hit the trip switch Alex?’ shouted Robert. ‘Tub’s gone off again!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ shouted a voice that sounded both immediately familiar to Kara, and completely alien to Hal. ‘I’ll sort it.’

  It was one thing hearing a recording of his own voice, which made Hal cringe at the best of times. It was another thing entirely, hearing your own voice emanating from a duplicated version of your own voice-box.

  “This is it,” thought Hal, now an outsider looking in, both li
terally and figuratively, as he stood on the driveway, beyond the front doors of Fir Lodge. Hal mouthed the words “For Rohan” through the glass to Kara, and she replied as she always did, every time Hal fired off a reference she didn’t understand, from a film or television show she hadn’t seen; with a look that heavily implied I still don’t know what that means, which she rounded off with a half-hearted salute.

  And then, in a moment between moments, he arrived.

  As the physical embodiment of the cause, and potential solution, to all of this presented himself, they both felt a chill that made the hairs on their arms and the back of their necks stand up, a sensation only made possible by their current, retained charge. Their stomachs lurched, as they experienced the feeling of time slowing for just a fraction of a second, coupled with a sudden, understandable sense of dread.

  Jerry was standing there as he always did; in the dark, just beyond the now-closed front doors, directly in front of Hal, whom Jerry barely acknowledged. Standing on the gravel with welcoming eyes, Jerry yawned idly, and then coughed to get someone’s attention. Without Kara’s past-self there to notice him, and the doors blocking his access, it was Jon that caught sight of him first.

  Jon walked slowly towards the front entrance, and opened one of the glass-panelled doors, curious to see what their unexpected visitor wanted.

  No longer impeded, Jerry strutted his way past Jon, and into the lodge, completely ignoring the common courtesy of formal greetings, and made his way to the pool table.

  Kara tapped the pleat of her skirt impatiently, counting down the twenty-two seconds until, finally, right on cue, an identical copy of herself casually walked down the stairs, and stood directly in front of her.

  Kara’s doppelganger called out for Hal, who arrived as intended, a minute later than he should have done, joining her in the hallway, his reflection in the glass of the front door not actually a reflection at all.

  To the casual, untrained Restarter, it would have been reasonable to speculate that the true cause of their unease was in direct correlation with the paradigm shift caused by Kara and Hal themselves, who had just walked into a room they were already occupying. But the truth behind their fear was that the arrival of Jerry meant one of two things; that in just over twenty-two minutes, they would either both be erased from the current timeline, unceremoniously sent back to where this all began, forced to start their plan over from scratch…or, alternatively, the terrifying possibility that there would be no more second chances at all, and they would simply be erased entirely, forever.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Arrival

  Friday Afternoon, 12:04pm

  After a two-hour drive, Robert was relieved to finally see the sign for Pentney Lakes. Situated amidst 275 acres of beautiful woodland and unbelievably picturesque lakes in Norfolk, he was looking forward to seeing where they’d be staying for the long weekend.

  His wife, Daisy, was meticulously directing him through the quiet wilderness, reciting Rachel’s detailed directions from the email on her phone. Following her final instruction, Robert turned left onto the driveway of the property, the shingle dispersing beneath his tyres with a satisfying crunch.

  He pulled up, parking to the left-hand side of Jasmine’s car, just as Kara, Hal, and Jasmine herself were yanking their cases and bags of shopping from the boot, and taking them into the lodge.

  Robert had been bringing up the rear of the convoy, observing Jasmine’s scrappy implementation of vehicular manoeuvring, whilst Peter and Fearne had knocked back the beers and vodka jelly shots respectively, in the back seats. Will and Stacey were parked directly in front of him and, as convoy leaders, they were indulging in the privileges their head-start had afforded them, cracking open their first bottle of wine on the front balcony.

  As Robert killed the engine, he noticed his passenger-side wing mirror had been knocked inwards. He knew for sure that this was a tell-tale sign that Daisy had clearly had another near miss with a parked vehicle, and made a mental note to readjust the mirror on Sunday.

  “Not long now…” he thought, with the reinvigorated thrill that inevitably follows a two-hour drive, knowing you have a bottle of twelve-year-old whisky in the boot of your car.

  His good mood was accentuated by the knowledge that Daisy had agreed to drive home at the end of the long weekend. They’d left their daughter with Robert’s parents for the duration of their trip and, with a second child on the way, he knew this would be his last chance to fully let loose for a while. It was something that he by no means resented, but fully intended to embrace wholeheartedly.

  Robert bounced out from behind the wheel, his stocky, muscular frame causing the car to groan as he did so, and took the opportunity to stretch out his back, being sure to add extra emphasis to the sigh he made, to ensure that he really hit home the fact to his wife that he had done his husbandly duties and deserved, without recompense, to get utterly shit-faced.

  ‘Don’t forget the cases,’ said Daisy, as she made her way into the cabin.

  ‘No problem babe,’ he said, running his hand through his number-three-all-over brown hair, and continuing his seemingly never-ending inventory of chores for the afternoon.

  Rachel and Jon, who were the masterminds behind the gang’s weekend away, had arrived long before their guests, and were busy showing everyone to their rooms, ensuring drinks were readily available, if not already free-flowing.

  Jon worked as a high-ranking officer for the Royal Air Force, doing “important” work that the rest of the group didn’t ask him too much about. Not because they weren’t interested, but because he wasn’t really at liberty to divulge as much about the finer details as he would have liked. Thanks to the nature of his work, Jon was in great physical shape, his athletic and toned frame perfectly in proportion with his six-foot height, his black hair kept to an easily maintained short length, yet effortlessly smart at all times.

  Rachel, meanwhile, worked as a Technological Support Officer for a small firm, a gig she took up so that she could move in with Jon, which finally allowed for her to cut out the two-hour round-trip to Newark that she was making every weekend to see him. A warm-hearted, slim woman with a bubbly personality, the mood of the natural-brunette could often be gauged by her fluctuating choice of hair-colour, which was sometimes red, sometimes dark-purple, and sometimes black altogether.

  The excuse, not that they ever needed one, for the weekend of serious drinking and tomfoolery, was to celebrate Rachel’s thirtieth birthday. The gang had known each other for over a decade (some longer than that), and their relationships had transcended beyond the moniker of mere “mates”. They were the family they had chosen, and their bond was unbreakable, even if Robert regularly played it down, by always referring to everyone as “at best, acquaintances.” A long-running, unfunny joke which had stemmed from the fact that the majority of them had predominately met through work many years prior. Most of them had moved onwards and upwards to other careers, despite the joke itself refusing to die.

  Hal, Kara, and Jasmine were the oldest, reaching the giddying heights of their mid-thirties, with only Jasmine seemingly being at peace with that fact. They were also the only three whose partners could not attend.

  Jasmine’s partner, David, was currently at a remote location in a humble village on the outskirts of Essex, trying to find the final fish on his checklist of what he described as being “a 17-piece puzzle” at the fishing lakes near to their home town.

  Hal’s other half, Jess, was looking after their three-year-old fur baby, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier named Shelby. Despite their efforts, they were unable to secure a dog-sitter, and they were not keen on placing their precious rescue dog into a kennels for the weekend. After weeks of searching for alternatives, they were forced to admit defeat, with Jess agreeing to take one for the team by sitting this one out.

  Kara, meanwhile, had only recently got the ball rolling with her boyfriend Greg, and as the lodge was already filled to capacity, they’d mutually de
cided to do their own thing.

  Will and Stacey had scored a home-run by dropping their three-year-old (and considerably more human) little girl with their parents. A fraction taller than Hal, with sweeping brown hair and a physique that Will referred to as his “textbook dad-bod”, Will was legendary for the drunken persona he often adopted when he embraced intoxication, much to the chagrin of his incredibly-tolerant wife, Stacey. Only Hal had ever come close to reaching the same level of infamy within the group dynamic whilst drunk, but Will would always be king.

  However, Hal and Will were determined not to be the ones to ruin Rachel’s thirtieth, and were secretly planning on reining it in this time around. Though this was exactly what they always said, usually about fourteen seconds before one of them ruined an evening by drinking just a shot too much, and tipping themselves over the edge.

  Hal entered through the large double doors to the lodge, as Rachel appeared and greeted him, and he noticed her hair was a vibrant red, indicating she was fired up and in party-mode.

  Every single one of Hal’s friends brought something special and different to the group. But for Hal, Rachel was unique in that she always seemed to know what he was thinking. They often joked that they were two sides of the same coin, and that she was his female-counterpart. Not only did she possess the same sense of humour that he did, she could tell just by the look on his face what he was thinking in any given situation. They had met through work and, by an extreme instance of good-fortune, she and Michaela, who would be arriving the next day, were there for him when his last long-term relationship ended in a blaze of predictably-average failure. That disaster, however, was the best thing that had ever happened to him, as it led to him forming friendships he would never have found. He couldn’t bring himself to imagine an alternate-timeline version of his life, one without these people in it...