by Tim Heath
Robert spent the morning climbing up the mountain road, charmed by the place again and delighted to see it still looking just like he’d last seen it, nothing seemingly changed. He’d picked up some necessary tools that sat in his backpack, its weight now digging into his shoulders and starting to cut off the circulation to his arms. Robert also had his computer, and so far had made an effort not to look up details of what, for most people, had happened in the past but for him only a few days ago. But he did want to see how things had worked out for Jessica and Tommy, figuring that while things were progressing, he would get the chance to check.
Sixty minutes later, having made his way past Vers-Cort, Robert found the same abandoned building, now in an even worse state. Apparently, at some point, it had since been damaged by a fire, and Robert worked his way into the dense trees and came finally to the shed that housed the final Wentworth Door, the first one of the lot. The thrill that rushed through him as he broke open the rotting but still strong wooden doors was electric, and standing before him, far more significant than his Door had been, sat Austin Wentworth’s very original version. Robert stood there relieved yet speechless, caught up by this significant moment in the peace of the Swiss Mountains. Robert noticed the metalwork on this Door was thicker, making it appear denser, but aside from that and a couple of other minor differences, both Doors seemed to be the same.
He pulled a flask of hot tea from the front of his bag, and after drinking that, collecting his thoughts in the process, he focused on getting things up to speed as quickly as possible, knowing that for every moment he wasn’t back through the Door, there was danger that something might happen to him at this end.
Robert had been in the mountains for one week, and things finally seemed to be taking shape. He’d stayed low, relying on only making a few trips into the village to get food, going at times when the fewest number of people would be around. The fact that everyone seemingly now understood English was one of the most revealing points as to how things had changed over the years.
Taking a break in the constant mess that surrounded him, Robert reflected on what he’d read about Jessica and Tommy. Jessica must have made it out of the house as she was mentioned sometime later being in Cornwall, though there was no report of a child being with her; Robert could only imagine the worst as there would be no way ever actually to know. As much as he had checked though, there was no sign of Tommy who had apparently not made it through that fateful day. Either his wounds or the missiles had got him, if indeed it hadn’t been the soldiers. Not that it mattered anymore, Robert kept reminding himself, but he used their memory to keep himself focused and pressing on, no longer doing it all because it was his job, but doing it for them, for Tommy and Jessica.
The following day he had all he needed to start the Door up. The process was significantly helped because of his involvement in getting the previous Door working, in what now seemed like a different life, another time. And it had indeed been that in many regards, because nothing remained for him in what had once been his own time, and his own life. Robert had held onto what he’d said to Jessica as he left, that maybe he would settle down and make his home back there in the past. The thought sounded right in his heart. Having loved and lost, Robert could meet someone and marry, changing the world again for the better at the same time. That is what he hoped anyway, and now that he was ready, there was no need to wait around anymore. The time was now, and Robert was finally prepared to start up the machine. He would leave it a couple of hours before heading back, wanting some cover of darkness to minimise the risk of being spotted by anyone out walking, who might, therefore, stumble across his little operation.
Two hours later, the machine was racing with power, Robert having tapped into the local power-lines two days before as the machine’s thirst for electricity was quite alarming. The same hazy screen covered the Door as on all previous occasions, a low pitched tone heard, followed by an intermittent high pitched noise, which he always imagined would have the neighbourhood dogs awake.
Unlike the other Door though, from his side, there seemed more depth to it than before, and by looking into the Door, there was further to go through it to pass the threshold. Taking one last look around, as if in his heart Robert was saying goodbye to what would remain the future, he stepped forward, never indeed intending to return other than to maybe hand over Nigel to the authorities. Robert turned back to the Door and stepped through the mist that seemed to form. In reality, it was just part of the complicated science behind the breakthrough invention of Austin Wentworth, the least known but undoubtedly greatest genius of the three brothers. Robert had never indeed been able to track down where he was buried, the guy seemingly disappearing from the face of the earth, maybe his mind leading him to some unknown death, possibly going the same way as his older brother on the lake just up the road.
Having gone over the threshold, Robert found this Door to be entirely different from the others. It was almost a small room within itself, some three metres from the Door he’d just come through and the exit in front of him. Some form of metal panelling covered the walls, significant square sections of the same metal with which the framework of the Door itself was constructed. Test results had never entirely been able to confirm its precise make-up, such was the complexity of the Door’s design. Carrying straight on, Robert came out through the other side, the light streaming in through the windows, snow obvious on the nearby mountains.
It had worked, which was a relief to Robert, and he looked out onto the strange new world that awaited him, now further back than anyone had ever gone. He was now the man with the head start, and yet nothing in him desired to go the way Nigel had so tragically gone. The trees looked much the same, though noticeably thinner and smaller in places, identifying the reality that he was in fact back in time.
The small sheds still looked old and rundown, though as he got near to what had previously been the old abandoned asylum, he saw a light on inside. Wanting to keep well clear of it, he backtracked a little, to take a significant diversion to avoid being spotted.
Still standing only about forty metres from the shed that housed the Door, he was startled to hear a crash of metal coming from inside. He turned in surprise, expecting to see maybe someone having gone over to it, but no one was obvious. He’d assumed it would have shut itself down already, as with the other Door, when once he’d gone through it, it had switched off.
Walking back over towards the shed again, Robert was surprised to see the Door still open, the mist still visible. Glancing into the haze Robert was uncertain of what he could spot, but walking in was alarmed to see that a metal section of the covered corridor wall lay on the floor. Going over to pick it up, he noticed that there was a hole in there not much bigger than a few feet wide. There was also quite a smell, and it was while taking a closer look that things started to sink into place in his mind. Lying on the floor was a scruffy-looking battered old notebook, and reaching in to pick it up, Robert noticed straightaway the same handwriting as on all those other pieces of paper he’d seen, that same distinctive scribble that he knew was Austin Wentworth’s style.
The room started to shake, the mist becoming a little clearer, and Robert sensed it wouldn’t hold for much longer, so grabbing the notebook he went back the way he’d come, puzzled by what had just happened.
He walked a little way from the hut. The Door had now shut down and returned to its usual state, and Robert had covered it with the sheets that lay on the floor. Robert then ran down into the village, and sitting on a small patch of grass, he opened the last page in the notepad, and a pencil fell out. The date scribbled at the top of the page was a little earlier than he imagined, which he could check later, but it detailed, just like a diary, what Austin was doing and thinking. At the front of the notebook were all the drawings and locations that Robert had found reference to earlier, and the diary section only started quite late on, each day dated correctly, and only fifteen days in total from start to finish, each
day one after the other.
Robert glanced down out of curiosity noting that in the first entry Austin mentioned going into the Door and hiding. He flicked through the pages until he came to the last entry, which just said:
March 15th, 1969
Finally, I hear the sounds of movement that I have waited for all these days. I feel therefore my waiting is over. I write this not for me but for you now reading this. I myself am long gone, eager to live out my days in the time you have come from. You do not have to worry about my returning, as I do not wish ever to go back to a time such as this.
I am now going to explore your world just as you have no doubt come back to put things right in my world. My brothers did not understand what I was planning, and indeed their imitations have no doubt led to problems. I regret what I did to Christopher, but that will remain between us. This invention was only ever meant to be used once, but they couldn’t help but open it up to trouble by doing what they did. At the front of this notebook, you’ll find where they were working and therefore where their Doors will no doubt be. If my mind is correct, I guess it was through one of them that you have already come, though only now through this Door can you put right any wrong.
The Door will not work again, and therefore the knowledge of the science now remains with me only. Though those other Doors might physically stay, they will never take people as far back as you. I suggest that once you have finished what you came back to do, you destroy them.
You’ve now started the machine so I’d best stop writing. Once you are out the other side, I will leave this hole that has been my resting place these last fifteen days. How many years or decades it is in fact that I have been here I have been unable to calculate.
Remember me fondly. We may meet one day, who knows?
Yours gratefully, Austin Wentworth.
It was the most fantastic thing Robert had ever read, the words of a man way beyond anyone, his mind able to almost see into the future. Robert sat there stunned, just trying to figure it out, but struggling. Had this been what Austin had planned for the Door all along? Though the details were hard to know for sure, Robert realised that through an aspect of science only Austin had mastered, Austin Wentworth had made a vortex between the two points in time. And though for Austin it had just been fifteen days, decades had passed for everyone else. Now Austin was in the time that had once been Robert’s world, a time that would now always remain the future it seemed as far as Robert was concerned.
The other thing that got Robert was that if the date was real, then he had nearly sixteen years to wait for Nigel’s appearance, and not the ten he had at first thought. He got up slowly, making his way down to the main road, the going a lot easier down the mountain than when he’d come up it a week before.
An hour later, while sitting in a small coffee shop that overlooked Lake Geneva, he thought to himself how out there, beyond the borders of Switzerland and France, there was the young child, maybe even still a toddler, Jessica Ponter, and the schoolboy Tommy Lawrence. Robert lived in a world now of famous names, leaders of the future who he would get to rub shoulders with, if he chose.
Robert spent the rest of the day just sitting there, taking it all in, reading every word of Austin’s treasured notebook. Each word was the word of a genius, for it was clear to Robert having studied all the most celebrated scientists to have ever lived, that none of them had ever thought so far beyond their time as had Austin Wentworth. Robert wondered about what he’d written, pondered what Austin would be doing in the future, questioned whether one day they would indeed meet. The opportunities for such a mind in the modern world would be endless, it seemed. Some of the theories Austin had touched upon in his fifteen days of waiting would have all the potential for success given the more significant technology and options open to Austin in a world of computer science.
Robert had time, therefore, and he liked that part of Switzerland very much. Maybe he would base himself there for some time, or should he travel some more? Robert knew the date, time and now location of where Nigel would be, and though he would check it out in person way before then, Robert was sure that Austin exactly knew what he had written to be accurate.
Just then, into the café, walked a girl who would turn any man’s head and she certainly caught Robert’s attention, and he smiled at her and went over to introduce himself. In her heavy French accent, she said her name was Eleanor––Robert was captured instantly, spending the rest of the evening just talking, falling for her as the night went on.
Nearly sixteen years later in England.
Robert sat nervously in the car, Eleanor next to him, looking as beautiful as the first day Robert had met her. Two girls sat talking in the back, Aimee the oldest at nearly ten, her younger sister Mia just having turned five.
“How long do we have to wait here, Dad?” Aimee said in French.
“Just about twenty minutes, sweetie, I promise,” Robert answered in English.
“And then, Daddy, can I go to Jessica’s, as you promised?” Mia chipped in.
“Yes, Mia darling, you can.”
It had just gone twenty past six in the early evening on a sunny early September day. Robert had waited for this day a long time, and knowing it was nearly time, said a quick goodbye to his girls, telling them he wouldn’t be a minute and getting out of the car, he walked down the road.
The street was quiet, the building across the road painted yellow, so that it reflected the bright morning sun. Next to it stood the town’s cinema, the film shown at the top saying, “ET,” which was a testament to the part of the city in which the moviehouse sat. Always a little behind the times, there had been a long-running battle to get the film shown, so much so that this was its first run, some three years after it came out. What brought Robert there on that day was that this was where Christopher’s Door had been located, Christopher having once used the workshop at the bottom of the block of flats opposite the cinema, something that like most places around there now sat empty.
Robert glanced down at his watch, now showing 6:23 pm. Robert made his way into the empty workshop, gaining access through a door in the side passage. Finding himself in the dimly lit insides, Robert stood there in the dark, waiting for the Door to light up.
Only one minute later that forgotten sound returned, the Door kicking out a mist before the figure of a young man was seen coming through it. He looked about twenty or twenty-one, clean shaven, though even then had the eyes of someone who’d done too many evil things in his time. He glanced around back at the Door as the noise stopped and the mist disappeared.
“I did it!” he said to himself, before taking a step forward.
“I’ve been expecting you!” came Robert’s voice from the darkness. Such was Nigel’s surprise that he almost leapt backwards. Robert stepped forward, a silenced gun raised.
“Who the hell are you?” Nigel said in disgust, looking at the man standing before him, apparently in his mid-forties, though dressed smartly, an air of authority about him.
“I’m your worst nightmare!” Robert said, a smile on his face as he came forward, the gun never taken off Nigel.
“I don’t understand?” Nigel said.
“I don’t think anyone will, but I’ve been waiting a long time for you. Not that it hasn’t been worth it.”
He thought of Eleanor, his beautiful wife waiting for him in the car, along with his two beautiful girls who had done so much healing within him. Robert could now relive childhood through them, the youth he’d never had. They’d stayed in Switzerland for seven years, just a few miles from Vers-Cort before moving to England where the girls entered school. They lived not far from Mia’s best friend, another girl her age, named Jessica. Aimee and especially now young Jessica and Mia showed an excellent flair for acting, and it was Robert who suggested they all went to acting school together, offering his time to help them out, working as a kind of mentor and agent for them. Somehow he knew that things were going to work out just fine.
; “Anyway, we both know what you’ve just done.”
“How?” Nigel replied, still puzzled, his young mind not working quite as quickly as it once had.
“Oh, it’ll make a great story one day. Maybe I’ll write it all down, who knows?”
Robert paused for a second, having thought about this moment for so many years, but there was just no other way around it. There was no other option, no way out that would make any sense or allow Robert to keep his life back there. Nigel needed to be stopped. Robert looked deep into those evil eyes one last time and with a squeeze of his finger, the gun barely making a sound, two shots fired, catching Nigel in the chest so that he fell backwards with a crash onto the floor and lay there still, silence now returning to the old workshop. Robert cleaned the gun, deciding just to leave things all there, to walk away and never think again about what happened. Carefully shutting the doors behind him, the emotion now rushing from Robert in one final burst, tears rolling down his face as they had never done before, Robert took a moment to compose himself, before returning to the car, to his girls, his family, his life.
The Last Prophet
Book 1 in the Shadow Man series
1
Present Day
A high pitched noise broke through his thinking. Distant voices, though he couldn't make out any of it. He had no idea where he was. His head hurt. There was darkness but light, bright light, burst through his eyelids as he slowly opened them, blinking.