by Alexia James
Janet knew they all had jobs to do. This was why she had stepped in to train up Brett, but she huffed anyway. Jeremy hadn’t been joking when he had said the company could not spare anyone to see to Brett’s needs. He had taken her at her word and left her to find and introduce herself to Brett.
She was annoyed with this apparent lack of courtesy, even as she acknowledged she had volunteered for this job knowing they were busy. Jeremy still could have found time to introduce her to his brother, though. She got out and slammed the door. Then had to open it again to pop the boot.
Jeremy had given her a credit card that apparently worked in any time zone from 2000 onwards, and Janet had been sorely tempted to add one or two items for herself to the list he had given her. They had decided that Brett would sleep in the farmhouse overnight and then, all being well with the auction, would stay there permanently even though completion of the sale would not take place for another month.
Janet surveyed the car boot filled with carriers containing clothes, sleeping bag, food and a cat basket, of all things. Fair enough, the man wanted a pet, but was it so essential to have these things on the first night? Jeremy had not bothered with any explanations, simply giving her the list and saying Brett would need it all this evening. She had driven back to Reading to do her shopping and from there it had been a hot uncomfortable drive to the farmhouse.
She wondered how she was going to lug all this junk to the house, and then simply decided she would take only one bag and get Brett to come back and help her carry the rest. With this happy thought, she chose what she saw as the useless bag: the cat stuff.
She had even added a shiny red collar with a little gold bell, for good measure. Snickering slightly, she locked the car and walked up the tree-lined dirt pathway. As the boarded up house came into sight, it occurred to her that Brett might have wanted the pet supplies for the cat she had seen with Jeremy.
She shook her head slightly. No, the cat had been a stray and was probably feral. Brett would have to be an impossible optimist to think he could keep the animal as a pet. But enough doubt remained that she began to wonder it might be fun after all to watch some dopey brother of Jeremy’s play at Dr. Doolittle.
She began to hum a happy tune as she neared the house. She swung the carrier bag gently, looking around to see if there was any sign of Brett. There was no way she was going back inside that creepy house on her own.
She hesitated a moment near the boarded up door. It was utterly deserted. The only sound came from the wind rushing gently through the long grasses of the nearby field. Then a man walked around the corner and started as he saw her. He smiled in welcome and came forward saying, “Janet, hello. I’m Brett Sanders.”
He held out a hand and Janet took it as she quickly revised her opinions of him. Like Jeremy, he was tall and dark, with the same dark chocolate coloured eyes. And more than that, there was a definite resemblance, but Brett had clearly been cut from a different mould than his younger brother.
His face was rougher and shadowed with stubble. Where Jeremy looked seraphic with an almost feline grace, Brett looked like the kind of man you would expect cast as an action hero in a film. He had a more elemental look, stockier in build than his brother, and less perfect in both feature and form.
“Hi, I’m glad I didn’t have to go looking for you inside that creepy place.” Janet held out the bag with a sunny smile as she spoke, “Here are your cat things. The rest of the stuff’s in the car.”
He took the bag from her and peered inside, “Excellent.” He lifted out the red collar and raised eyebrows at her.
“It’s not for that manky feral thing in there is it?”
Brett grinned at her. “Unfortunately, yes. You’re not a cat person then?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a feral cat person, at any rate.”
“I don’t think she’s feral. Just in need of a little affection. Did you see the kittens? I thought all girls loved kittens.”
“I think at the time I was a bit freaked to be endeared by kittens. I don’t really like dark creepy places.”
“Let’s get the tools and get started then.”
It did not take Brett long to prize off the boarding with the crowbar Janet had picked up. Brett set her to work with a claw hammer, carefully taking out any leftover nails from the wood.
Janet surveyed the grimy windows around the ground floor and said, “Are you sure we should be doing this? We haven’t even bid on the house yet, let alone get the offer accepted.”
Brett just smiled. “Once Jeremy sets his mind to something, nothing on this earth will stop him and with his time device, it’s entirely possible to manipulate the outcome. Besides, I’m not gonna spend the night on my own in some dark creepy house, so these boards have to go.”
Janet laughed and said, “It’s gonna be dark anyway later, I doubt there’s any power here, it would have been cut off ages ago.”
Janet had to admit it did look better inside without the boarding blacking out all the light, but it was still dusty and grimy everywhere. She began by sweeping up the broken glass from the kitchen floor, while Brett went in search of a fuse box.
Brett was not as Janet had thought he would be. Unlike Greg, he didn’t chatter, didn’t say anything much at all. A snap startled her out of her thoughts, with a flash that lit dusty cobwebs before dying with a slight pinking sound. As Brett came back in, she looked up and said, “Bulb just blew, we can pick up some more later.”
“This is going to be more fun than I’d thought. Everything is so quaint. I’ve only seen stuff like that fuse box in history books.”
“Don’t you have electric in 2112 then?”
“Sure, but everyone has their own generator run on hydrogen. The consumer units are a bit different as they’re not connected to a main grid or anything like that.”
“What no electric bills?”
“Hydro-tax.”
By seven, the kitchen was warm with sunlight and looking much cleaner. Brett had found the well Jeremy had told him was on the property. It was half hidden by long grass, but still in good condition. Using water drawn from its depths, they were able to wash down floors and windows.
Janet had taken a drive into the nearest superstore, realising that Jeremy had forgotten quite a few essentials on his list. She picked up a small barbeque set and a novelty fridge, supposedly meant for beer cans, but it would do at a pinch for a pint or two of milk and any other small items. Then, for good measure, she bought him a basic pay-as-you-go mobile.
Brett was immensely pleased with the items and declared that he would cook them all dinner on the barbeque later on when Greg was to arrive.
After what felt like endless work, Janet flaked out in the rough grass outside the back door. The sun beat down making her drowsy and it felt like it was still the middle of the afternoon.
Brett was setting up the barbeque. Arranging charcoal and firelighters carefully. She watched him as he went back around the side of the house, wondering why he would choose to live 100 years in the past of his own time.
Janet could not comprehend it. There was no way she would consent to live in 1908. She felt for Freya, wanting a man who may well expect her to do so. Still, apparently the plan now was for Freya to use the time doorway.
Her thoughts wandered to Brett. He was light on his feet for someone so stocky, and moved with the same grace as his brother. To Janet’s eyes, Brett was the nicer of the two. He appeared kinder than his younger brother.
She remembered how gentle he had been with the cat earlier on. She had not wanted to go near the animal, and Brett had left her to wait in the doorway while he took food and water in. She had crept slowly closer, fascinated by the gentleness of this large man. As it became clear that the cat was quite tame, he had held out a hand to her, drawing her down next to him so she could stroke the animal.
He had not once teased her over her misgivings about anything. Janet found this slightly odd. With Greg, she expected to get and give in
return as hard a time as possible. She liked Brett well enough, but he wasn’t fun like Greg, he was far more serious.
Leaning back on her elbows, she let her gaze wander over the sun-baked field; the dark velvet shadows under the woods set back from the house.
Her fingers found a round pebble, smooth and warm from the sun, while her restless gaze followed the heat images rising off the ground, and then tracked over the broken boundary fencing. It separated the long meadow grasses from an area around the property that was roughly 300 metres wide and mostly covered in dried short grass and mud. A few strands of green mixed in here and there gave evidence of the recent rains.
Her line of sight followed the fencing. It went around the front shoulder of some woodland and she idly wondered if the whole wood was fenced or if the boundary cut through the woodland at some point.
She sat up and looked about, noting the fields and other more distant woods. This front shoulder of woodland must be the location of Freya’s time doorway.
Well, well. It wouldn’t do to stumble upon it accidentally. Better to know the exact location of the thing, then she could choose how best to proceed.
If Brett was to live here on the understanding that he was to somehow prevent the use of the doorway by unknowing others, then fencing off the wood that contained it might be a good start. However, Janet was aware that Freya was antsy over the location of the thing being known and wasn’t about to give it up to anyone just yet.
Reconnoitre was the first order of the day. She got up and looked about for Brett. Presumably he was still inside. She tracked him down in the walled garden, eyeing the remains of what must once have been quite a pretty swing seat.
“I’m just going for a bit of a walk,” she said, “I won’t be above half an hour.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Oh, not far. Freya mentioned something about a river near here so I thought I might see if I can find it.”
Brett put his head on one side, “Want company?”
“I’d rather go alone,” she gave him a grin, “I need a while to get my head around all this stuff. I won’t be long.”
“Okay, see you in a bit.” Brett lifted a hand and went back to studying the swing seat.
Making her way around the back of the property, Janet followed the boundary fencing around the shoulder of woodland to where it cut through. It ran straight to the other side of the wood then turned a sharp left along a main road, back toward the house.
The fencing had all but rusted away here, bar a few posts and a length of wire. She followed its meandering line away from the road and back out of the woods, stopping when she could see the back wall of the farmhouse garden.
The fencing would eventually lead around the front of the house and in full circle back to where she had started. Turning left again, she followed the line of the woods this time. Not going into them, but walking back toward the shoulder of woodland that contained the time rip.
She looked around frequently, checking to make sure she was alone, then entered the woods just short of the shoulder. It was slow going as she didn’t want to miss the thing or go through it accidentally, as Freya had done the first time.
She almost looked past it and then frowned and looked again. It was extremely difficult to see, as though someone had stood an absolutely clean slice of fine glass upright in the wood. Except there were no reflections as with glass. Instead, light rippled ever so faintly through it.
From face on, it was mainly visible by its edges, the distortion identifiable more by the lack in the surrounding area than of itself, but from the side, it was practically invisible.
Janet walked carefully around the doorway in a circle, noting its exact position in relation to the other trees. She put out a hand and cautiously touched the surface of the rip. It was cool but not cold and other than the faint temperature change, didn’t feel as though she were touching anything at all. She pulled her hand back and stood for a moment, thinking it was time she returned to Brett.
“Amazing, Janet.”
Brett’s voice by her ear made Janet jump half out of her skin. “Where did you come from?”
Brett put out his hand, but she sidestepped away from him and he dropped it. “I followed you.” He half smiled at her cold look and continued, “I wasn’t going to let you wander around empty woodland alone, supposing you’d come across some nutter?”
Janet rolled her eyes and relaxed a little. “I guess I’ll excuse you, since you had my best interests at heart, but what are we to do now?”
“Go and scare the bejeebers out of Jeremy, of course.”
“Somehow I just knew you’d say something like that.” She shook her head. “Freya is not going to be happy with me. She told me the location of that thing in confidence, Brett.”
“And you did everything you could to keep that confidence. Let’s go and scare the hell out of him,” he said, eyes gleaming.
Janet shook her head. “How old are you?”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun. Jeremy has this thing about being a superhero, but I was always a better fighter. It’ll be a laugh to wind him up a bit, especially as he didn’t have the manners to introduce us to each other.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“We’re not really going through that are we?”
Brett reached out and this time she let him take her hand, “We’ll go together.”
“I suppose I may as well confess to Freya now as later.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll explain how it was.”
Janet shook her head, “I think I’ll do my own explaining, thanks.”
The air felt weird to walk through and on the other side, the wood looked more or less the same. Janet glanced around, puzzled. It was no wonder Freya hadn’t realised what had happened at first.
“Did it work then?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
“You’re not really going to fight him are you?”
Brett squeezed her hand, his dark eyes warm, “Brothers always beat each other up, and there will be no contest anyway. Now stick close to me and don’t make a sound,” he said, unconsciously echoing Jeremy’s earlier words.
As they crept slowly up to the house, it was obvious the time doorway had worked. Jeremy’s house looked neater in ways that went a lot further than clean windows and short grass.
Brett ducked down low and Janet crawled after him past the windows, keeping close to the house. He put his ear to the hinge of the kitchen door, listening intently, before slowly rising up enough to peek through the glass. He stood up, motioning Janet to do likewise.
She followed him into the quiet kitchen, heart pounding. Greg’s words of not taking Jeremy by surprise came unexpectedly to mind and Janet found herself genuinely spooked. Brett crept along the hallway, keeping close to the wall. He stopped just outside a doorway and motioned Janet to stay where she was.
The next few moments seemed to happen with incredible speed. Jeremy walked out the door, was instantly tackled by Brett, and the two went down in a mess of flying limbs. Janet backed up rapidly as Brett managed to pin Jeremy down for a few seconds before being thrown off.
Unfortunately, Brett began to laugh so hard he could not adequately defend himself and soon found himself in a headlock while Jeremy laughed back delightedly at his apparent victory.
“Brett, you idiot, I bet Greg put you up to this.” He turned to look up at Janet and said, “Where is he?”
Janet suppressed her own laughter, “Hey don’t look at me, this was entirely Brett’s idea. Greg is supposed to be meeting us at the house.” She looked pointedly at her watch, “About now.”
Brett extricated himself from Jeremy’s hold and turned to face him, “We found it, Jer; we found your time rip.”
A shocked gasp from the bottom of the stairs drew their attention. Freya stood for one moment, colour draining from her face, before she bolted past them to the kitchen door. Janet winced, but Jeremy was already moving. Brett pulled him back.
“Let me talk to her,” he said.
Jeremy hesitated a moment then nodded, watching his brother saunter out the door after Freya as if he had all the time in the world to catch up with her.
Janet watched Jeremy’s grim face and was profoundly grateful that she had Greg, a happy soul with no hero complex or hangs ups to deal with. The corny drama of the situation made her want to laugh and she sought for a way to lighten the mood.
“I’m surprised you let the silent cave man go after her,” she tried, “I’ve been trying to get him to open up a bit for the last three hours.”
Jeremy glanced across at her, his face softening with a slight grin. “I bet he knows far more about you now than you could say of him. He has a gift for getting people to talk.”
Janet grinned back at him, “The mood Freya’s been in lately I think he might get an earful.”
Greg flashed into the room then and Janet cast herself on him saying, “My hero!”
He looked down at her in surprise, “C’mon, Janet, I don’t have any more doughnuts, you ate the last one, I promise you.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “You two are well suited.”
It did not take Brett long to find Freya, she had raced up to the field boundary and then simply stopped and sat on the ground. The tall grasses of the meadow a backdrop to her figure. Brett walked over and sat next to her.
She looked small and forlorn, a lost little girl, until he looked at her face. She was wearing a thoughtful expression, half-rueful, half-amused.
“Janet didn’t tell me where it was,” he said, “she went to take a look and I followed her. She specifically asked me to leave her alone.”
Freya swiped a hand under her nose and looked up at him. “It’s all right, it doesn’t really matter now, anyway.” She sighed and seemed to gather her thoughts. “When I first met you, you swore you wouldn’t rat on me to Jeremy. You said we were best friends.”
Brett eyes widened and he laughed somewhat nervously. “Oh my God, what have I walked into. How have you already met me?”
“You helped me with something, um…” Freya suddenly grinned, “Actually, you said Jeremy was antsy over it all and you asked me not to tell him what you did, so I guess we’re even anyway.”
