The Queen of Yesterday

by Rob Kinsman

  “We’re in danger here. I think Thomas Knight also crossed over. He’s been pursuing us.”

  “So he’s also from Narnia?”

  “Nocturnia,” corrected Nick. “He killed your neighbour. He attacked me and was looking for you. He’s a part of this; how can you doubt it?”

  Zoe tactfully decided not to dwell on the fact that she only had his word for any of this.

  “I accept that he might be dangerous, but shouldn’t we just tell the police?”

  “Half the people on the planet already want to kill you, and Thomas Knight has millions of adoring followers. Who do you think they’re going to believe?” He let his words sink in before adding, “You could flush him out, though.”

  “How?” she said, like the masochist she was.

  “If we go to him we won’t stand a chance, but we could make him come to us. Get him to meet us somewhere where we can control things.”

  “And then do what? Kill him?”

  Nick had the glint of the fanatic in his eyes, and Zoe didn’t like it one bit.

  “I thought we could ask him if I’m right,” he said quietly.

  Every rational fibre of Zoe’s being told her this was a crazy idea, doomed to failure.

  But…

  If Nick was telling the truth, then at least she’d know. Maybe then the madness that had overtaken her life would make sense, even if she had no idea what to do about it.

  “You’ll be safe,” said Nick. “I’ll be there to keep an eye on you.”

  Zoe didn’t tell him that this was what worried her the most.

  She finally agreed, but only on the condition that they did things her way. Nick listened patiently as she stated her terms. Her main demand was that she wanted to go home first. This life she’d recently found herself living, forever running from one place to the next, was draining all the colour from her world. She wanted to see her family again, however mentally disturbed they were. She wanted to see her parents’ house, the village she’d grown up in.

  She wanted to see it all again before she died.

  Of course, a major part of her plan was to avoid the dying bit, but if they really were being hunted then she wanted a chance to say goodbye to the world she remembered.

  “And I want you to meet Skyhawk,” she said.

  “The one with the questions? Still no.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “You go and see him if you want.” Nick sat back in his chair and stretched his arms, making a show of being unconcerned. “But if you do, you won’t hear from me again.”

  “I don’t believe you. You need me.”

  “Try me.”

  The flicker of doubt across Zoe’s face gave the game away.

  “So that’s all settled then,” smiled Nick.

  They left the offices by the rear fire exit, which Nick effortlessly navigated them to. Zoe guessed it must have been how he got in the building in the first place. The next stage was to find some suitable transport, and Nick proved alarmingly proficient at hot-wiring cars. Surprisingly, the one he chose was so decrepit even bacteria would be ashamed to be seen in it.

  “Classy cars draw attention,” he explained, with the confidence of someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about his tax return.

  “How come you do it?” asked Zoe as they pulled away from London. “Steal other people’s lives. What’s wrong with your own?”

  The silence which followed lasted so long that Zoe thought he was deliberately refusing to answer. She was just about to abandon it as a lost cause when he finally piped up.

  “I used to think I just did it because I liked it. It made me feel alive. The fear of getting caught was part of the fun.” The side of his lip curled up into a contented smile. “But now I know the truth. Those memories, the life I’ve led, it’s just an illusion. None of it ever happened.”

  “We happened. I met you the other week. We ate Mexican food and saw a film about child abuse.”

  “Maybe meeting each other was the first thing that really happened here,” said Nick. “When we entered this dream our new lives, and all our memories, could have been here waiting here for us. The clothes we wear, the way we talk, it’s all just a part of this fantasy you created.” His eyes clouded over. “It was supposed to be a safe place where we could be together.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  Nick had no answer for that. He turned on the car radio, ending the conversation.

  He’s going mad. He has to be.

  They made good time, listening to music as they headed through the flat landscape of East Anglia. When they finally pulled into the village, Zoe announced a tweak to the plan.

  “No way,” said Nick. “It’s too risky.”

  “Compared to advertising myself to a murderous butcher?”

  Perhaps because he’d won out over the issue of meeting Skyhawk, who was probably realising he’d been stood up at about this very time, Nick indulged her. He took a sharp left, heading towards Zoe’s parents’ house.

  “Keep your head down,” he said.

  He slowed the car as they passed the end of the road. Zoe peered out, needing to see it for herself. As predicted, there was a swarm of reporters who’d made camp outside the house in case Zoe was stupid enough to come back here. At least her mother seemed to be enjoying herself – Ruth was going around topping up the squatters’ mugs of coffee while the neighbours looked jealously on.

  She must be in her element.

  Once they’d passed across the end of the road, Nick sped away. Zoe relaxed back into the seat. Some tiny part of her had still been clinging onto the belief that it was all just a fuss over nothing, that of course nobody cared who she was or what she’d done. The last traces of hope that she would one day sink comfortably back into her old life finally evaporated.

  They drove further into the village. Nick dropped Zoe off outside the church, then went to park the car out of sight. It was unlikely to be recognised somewhere this remote, the nearest police station was over twenty miles away, but better safe than sorry. The worst thing they could do would be to leave it right outside the place they were planning on making camp. In Zoe’s mind, DNA from the scene of the car’s last known location was already being cross-referenced with a real-time database of traffic cameras and spy satellites. Nick assured her that it was much more likely that, assuming anyone had even noticed it was missing, the police would still be trying to work out which form to fill in.

  The church door was unlocked. Zoe let herself in and called out a greeting. Her voice echoed around the ancient walls, but nobody came. She sat patiently on a pew. For a moment she contemplated offering up a prayer to a God, any God. Maybe she was being punished for her atheist years, but a sneaky prayer might be a first step on the road to recovery.

  Nick arrived, banishing these thoughts to idle speculation. They didn’t talk, there seemed nothing left to say.

  Eventually the church door opened again, the distraction snapping Zoe out of her black mood. The vicar saw Nick first.

  “I’m sorry, I just popped out,” he said, guiltily waving a packet of cigarettes. “I didn’t know I’d have visitors.”

  “Hello Arthur,” said Zoe.

  It would be generous to say that Arthur looked pleased to hear her.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Zoe explained her plan to him, which basically involved hiding out in the church and using Arthur to send a message to her parents. No-one would think anything of the local vicar turning up round a parishioner’s house.

  “What’s going on?” said Arthur, looking old and tired. “Are you in trouble?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Arthur wearily agreed to help, charitably accepting Zoe’s claim that she couldn’t really explain why any of this was necessary. As he prepared to leave, Nick approached him in what Zoe viewed as an unnecessarily threatening manner, chest puffed up, his posture intimidating.

  Christ, what’s he playing at?
r />   “One other thing,” said Nick. “Don’t mention me. To anyone. Clear?”

  “Of course.” Arthur spoke with the forced naivety of Reverend Green explaining that he had no idea what the lead piping was doing in the drawing room.

  Zoe waited until he had padded out the door before she spoke her mind.

  “You didn’t need to talk to him like that,” she hissed. “He is helping us.”

  As was becoming his habit, Nick didn’t answer. Instead he sloped off to a dark corner to sit and wait for the vicar’s return.

  “I saw your mother, she’ll be here,” Arthur informed them when he reappeared twenty minutes later.

  “Thank you.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ve some parish business to attend to.”

  He went to his office without waiting for their permission.

  Forty slow minutes later the door creaked open and Ruth came in. Zoe rushed over and hugged her. Ruth was taken aback by this breach of protocol: mother and daughter had kept physical contact to a minimum since the day Zoe had come home from school with measles. When curious aunts and uncles, who tended to embrace Zoe with hugs that would squeeze the wind from a rhino, asked about their lack of physical contact Ruth had always assured them that you ‘could never be too careful’. Back in the here and now, mother gave daughter a cursory pat on the shoulder blade and pulled away. Given their history, this could probably be seen as progress.

  “Dad didn’t come?” Zoe wasn’t surprised, but still... In the circumstances she’d thought he might be able to tear himself away from the sauce for at least a short while.

  “Your father was already in the pub. I thought it was best to leave him there, to avoid suspicion.”

  Zoe couldn’t tell if this was a kind lie or not.

  “Good thought, well done,” said Nick.

  Ruth’s eyes flicked up and down the handsome stranger.

  “Are you my daughter’s boyfriend?” There seemed a little more disbelief in her voice than was strictly necessary. Nick waved a lazy hand at her, not wanting to go into the complexities of their relationship.

  “I want to do an interview, mum. To tell people what I know about the dream. Which is nothing.”

  The plan, such as it was, was to use the interview to give a strong hint about where Zoe could be found. Then they would dig themselves in and wait for Thomas Knight to come to them. Finally, one way or another, there would be a reckoning.

  “I knew you’d see sense eventually,” said Ruth. “We’ve had a lot of offers.”

  “We’ll choose the interviewer ourselves,” said Nick.

  “Oh.” Ruth seemed to shrink a little. “Well, if there’s anything I can do.”

  They’d agreed in advance that Ruth wasn’t going to be allowed to interfere. Letting her set things up would just introduce a whole new ego which needed controlling.

  “Sorry mum.”

  It was Nick, whose senses were more attuned to these things, who first sensed the danger. Ruth’s smile was a bit too fixed, her disappointment too forced. Moments after the realisation clicked Nick had hold of Zoe’s arm and was leading her towards the door.

  “What are you doing? Let me go.”

  “She’s sold us out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He pulled open the church door, but they were too late. A flashbulb blinded them before their eyes had a chance to adjust after the gloom of the chapel. As the scene outside gradually faded into focus, Nick pounced on the reporter without thinking. He wrestled the camera free and smashed it on the floor. When the reporter protested, Nick looked fully ready to murder him where he stood. There were a couple of other people beginning to gravitate towards the church, their own cameras poised. Zoe forcibly dragged Nick away, pulling him back indoors.

  In the chapel Ruth was brushing down her skirt, trying to look as dignified as possible. Zoe advanced on her, while Nick piled wooden pews against the door.

  “How could you?”

  “I only told a couple of the ones I like.” Ruth was trying too hard to sound reasonable. “They’ve been so charming. And you just said you wanted to do an interview.”

  “Not here! Not now!”

  The chances were that every dream-obsessed Loony within striking distance was now on their way here. Zoe had originally insisted that they didn’t make their stand anywhere that could endanger her parents, although the way she felt about her mother right now she might be willing to let that one slide.

  “Why couldn’t you just wait?” she pleaded.

  Ruth looked more angry than apologetic.

  “You don’t give me many chances to be proud of you, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.” Even Nick slowed when he heard this. “Don’t look at me like that! Finally, Zoe. You’re someone important.”

  That hurt. A lot.

  Arthur soon popped up from the back office to see what all the noise was about. His immediate, and understandable, question was why there was a barricade against the front door of his church. The fact that the three people who knew were all refusing to speak to each other didn’t help.

  “Um, sorry to interrupt,” said Arthur. “Are we hostages?”

  “No!” said Zoe.

  “But I’m not opening the door,” elaborated Nick. “Are we clear?”

  “Um, yes. Crystal,” stammered Arthur, not at all clear. “I’ll, ah, just carry on with the paperwork then.”

  Nick strode ahead of him, disappearing into the small office. He emerged a few moments later with the telephone.

  “Just so you don’t get any ideas,” he said.

  “He doesn’t mean that in a hostage way,” clarified Zoe. “Just remember that.” When we’re in court…

  After another half hour of brooding, Nick seemed to brighten.

  “Ok, we can do this. We’re not going to get you away unnoticed, so we’ll just have to make our stand as best we can. You can be sure that he’s already on his way, so we’ll have to find some way of turning things to our advantage.”

  “Who are you talking about?” asked Ruth.

  Zoe didn’t grace her with a reply. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d betrayed them that hurt, it was that it had been so predictable. Zoe took Nick aside.

  “Let mum and Arthur go,” she whispered.

  “They’ll be alright. It’s us he’s after. The others are insignificant.”

  “Not to me!”

  “Your mother started the ball rolling, things are going to have to play out in this village.” Zoe kept staring at him, furious. Nick lowered his voice, adopting a tone of calm and reason. “I can prepare a trap for him, but I need to get away first. It’s you they’re all watching, I can set things up while you distract them. So here’s what we do. I want you to go out and talk to the press. Just give them a statement and head back to your house. They’ll follow, and I’ll get a chance to slip away.”

  “I’m going to level with you.” Zoe stepped closer to him. “I can see how that’s a very good plan for you. From my end, it’s not quite so rosy.”

  “Have you got a better one?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s decided.”

  It didn’t take long until they heard a helicopter circling overhead, which added to the sense that they were under siege for something which wasn’t even a crime. Weary, Zoe sloped off into the small back office. Arthur was going through the church’s paperwork as if this were just a normal day.

  “I’m sorry to drag you into this.”

  Arthur put down his pen and turned to her.

  “Do you think your friend is dangerous?”

  Zoe thought about this for a while, before realising she had no idea. “I think he’s ill.”

  “So why are you doing what he tells you?”

  “I don’t know what else to do.” She said, with a pathetic shrug. “I never asked for any of this. The world has gone mad.”

  “Quite,” said Arthur, warm and kind despite everything. “Would you like a biscu
it?”

  He waved a packet of digestives in front of her. She took one.

  “Thanks.” She bit into it. “You seem very calm about everything,”

  Arthur fished out a biscuit for himself.

  “I’m trying to make my peace with the world. This event has made everyone question what they believe in.”

  “Even you.”

  It wasn’t a question. His eyes clouded over.

  “I look at the world around me where once I saw God, and now I see nothing.” Arthur’s eyes settled on her. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “I’m not looking for your sympathy. I just want to be sure you know what you’re doing. When I look at that man I see a void. No love, no hate. Nothing. That’s what makes him dangerous. Nobody should trust a man who doesn’t believe in anything.”

  When Zoe returned to the main chapel, Nick was still agitated. The more she looked, the more she could see the madness within him straining to break free.

  “What were you talking about?” he demanded. “With the vicar.”

  “God. He’s a big fan, read all his books.”

  Nick’s attention drifted, as if he’d forgotten that he’d just asked a question.

  “It’s nearly time,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t we both try and get away. Meet him on our own terms, like we’d originally planned.”

  Nick stabbed his finger towards Ruth with unnecessary fury.

  “She made sure we can’t do that.” Ruth was sitting with her head bowed, examining the church’s broken floor tiles. She tensed as she felt the heat of his anger, but didn’t look up. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.” Zoe’s voice was weak and broken. She coughed and repeated herself. “I’m ready.”

  After Nick had cleared his makeshift barricade, Zoe started to pull the door open. The click of camera shutters was deafening, as was the torrent of questions.

  Zoe slipped through the crack in the door, ready to face the crowd. It seemed to stretch for as far as she could see, filling the graveyard around the church. It wasn’t just reporters and media people, half the village had turned out. Several banners for Waking Dream poked out above the crowd. The people, whatever their affiliation, were all seekers after a truth they hoped Zoe could give them. They stood on top of graves, some of them were leaning against headstones. The sight of it, the sheer disrespect, sickened Zoe.