Echoes

by Iain McLaughlin

  Emily moved to the next picture. Another familiar face looked sadly back at her. ‘And Mary.’ She hurried on along the line of pictures. ‘I think these are all images of the trapped women.’

  Lechasseur picked up his speed to keep pace with her. ‘So the two empty frames would be for …’ He pointed to Tess and Joan.

  ‘Yes,’ Emily agreed. ‘I think so.’ She peered at the next picture, that of a woman in full ancient Roman regalia, her hair intricately curled up on top of her head. Only a slight crook in the nose where it had been broken and a haunted look in the eyes stopped her from being jaw-droppingly beautiful. Next to that picture hung another frame, but this one was different again from the rest. It hung down to floor level and there was no picture inside, yet it wasn’t blank either. Instead, there was a dull grey sheen that reflected only a small fraction of the light that hit it, casting a dull glow that reached just a few inches from its surface.

  ‘What do you make of this?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Not much of a mirror,’ Lechasseur answered absently. ‘It even makes me look good.’

  ‘As if you don’t think you’re the most striking man in London,’ Emily scolded.

  ‘Striking?’ Honoré sounded offended. ‘I was thinking handsome at least. Possibly even dashing.’ He ran his finger along the edge of the frame, but was unable to get any kind of purchase behind the wood. He waved his hand in front of the dimly reflective surface. A murky blob waved back.

  Emily sniffed. ‘Dashing? Not exactly the word I would have …’ Lechasseur’s yell cut Emily’s reply abruptly short. ‘Honoré? What is it?’

  ‘More of a who it is,’ Lechasseur said, stepping away from the mirror. ‘I’m looking in a mirror, but that sure isn’t me.’

  A small boy was in the mirror. No more than five or six years old, he had an untidy mop of hair, so dark it was almost black, and bright, clear blue eyes. He wore a grey shirt and black britches that looked like they had seen better days – and several previous owners. His black shoes were similarly worn, and showed signs of having been mended by someone who was less than expert at the task. There was something Victorian about him, and Lechasseur was reminded of the movie about Oliver Twist that Emily had recently dragged him along to.

  ‘I’ve seen him before,’ Emily said. ‘He was the boy I glimpsed on the stairs in Joan’s house.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Lechasseur replied. ‘I think I caught sight of him in the cellar at an opium den.’

  ‘He gets around, doesn’t he?’ Emily eyed the boy suspiciously. ‘And I won’t ask what you were doing in an opium den, Honoré.’

  Lechasseur peered at the figure closely. He knew what Emily was thinking. Was this the same boy – the boy that was not really a boy – that they had encountered before, in 1950? He couldn’t be sure.

  Inside the mirror, the boy’s eyes swivelled and locked onto the small group staring at him – and then he began to walk towards them. He grew larger inside the picture, and the background faded into the far distance until he was life-sized. He raised a hand and held it flat, as if touching his palm to the other side of the mirror. Then he calmly stepped through into the room.

  Chapter Eight

  • Miss Patience. Miss Patience.

  • Go away, Mary. I have nothing to say to you.

  • I had to tell them, miss. I had to …

  • You had to do as you were told and know your place.

  • I know my place isn’t here, miss. This isn’t a place for anybody. I want to get out of here.

  • Back to my husband’s bed?

  • No.

  • Do you think your bastard will make you lady of the manor?

  • No. I know what the Squire will do if he finds me. But I’ll take my chances. I know the house. I can find my way out.

  • Then what?

  • I got family. They’ll look after me and the baby.

  • They will disown you and throw you into the street.

  • Not everybody has the same morals as you gentlefolk.

  • Mind yourself, girl.

  • Why? We’ve been here forever, and you treat me like your husband treats the dogs. Worse, even.

  • I treat as is your place. A slut who used her body to try to take my position from me.

  • You think I wanted that pig anywhere near me? Do you think I enjoyed what he did? I didn’t have no choice. Not any more than you did.

  • Do not compare your predicament to mine.

  • Why not. I didn’t want to be in his bed, but I didn’t want to be on the streets either. I didn’t want my family thrown out of their cottage because your husband was their landlord. I didn’t want to be pregnant, and I didn’t want to be pregnant for however long we’ve been here and knowing every minute that I’d never see my baby. I didn’t want the beatings he gave me when it took his fancy, either. I didn’t want any of it. Did you think of that? Did you?

  • I have nothing more to say, Mary.

  • Fine.

  The room fell absolutely quiet as the boy stepped through the frame of the picture and coolly looked at the four people gathered around it, scrutinising them, almost if he were weighing their reactions to him. He looked at each one in turn, but held his gaze on Tess just a little longer than the others and offered her the hint of a slightly shy grin. This didn’t go unnoticed, particularly by Tess, who moved until she was partway blocked from the boy’s view behind Joan, and then nudged at the older woman until they were both watching from behind Lechasseur’s shoulder.

  ‘Are you afraid of me?’ the boy asked. His voice was quiet but clear and had just a hint of London to it. ‘You mustn’t be afraid of me,’ he went on. ‘I shan’t hurt any of you, I promise.’

  The statement worried Emily. If the boy – assuming he really was a boy, and given their recent experiences she was not at all convinced – was promising not to hurt them, the clear inference was that he could do so if he chose. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  The lad sniffed, and scrunched up his face a little. ‘That’s a difficult question.’

  ‘Why?’ Emily continued.

  ‘That’s a difficult question too.’

  Emily sighed. ‘Do you know who we are?’ she persevered, determined to get an answer of some kind from the boy.

  ‘Oh, yes. I know all of you.’ The boy was pleased to have an answer finally, and gave it eagerly, speaking quickly, his voice rising with excitement. ‘Some of you better than others.’

  Lechasseur tilted his hat back on his head as he appraised the boy. ‘I’m going to assume you’re not just a little kid, right? What are you?’ he asked bluntly. ‘Are you the same creature we met before?’

  Lechasseur’s brusque tone made Joan Barton bristle. She had spent her entire adult life caring for children, and this stranger’s manner with the boy clashed with her instincts to protect the child. ‘Don’t frighten the lad,’ she said, before leaning towards the boy so that her head was almost on a level with his. ‘Are you a special little boy?’ she asked kindly.

  A quizzical look danced across the boy’s features. ‘That’s what you called your son, isn’t it? You called him your special little boy.’

  Joan pulled back, as if the boy had slapped her. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘Was he special?’ the boy continued, clearly oblivious to the discomfort he had caused the woman.

  ‘He was special to me,’ Joan answered.

  ‘Is that why you were so unhappy when he died?’ Again the question was asked blandly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you sadder when he died than when your other children died?’

  Joan’s voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘No.’

  The boy persisted. ‘Was one child worth more than the others? Did he mean more than the others? Was he more important?’

  ‘No.’
r />   ‘Would you have swapped them for him?’ He sounded genuinely intrigued by the idea. ‘How many of their lives would you have given for his?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Joan demanded.

  But the boy was clearly fascinated by his subject. ‘Or would you have let him die to save them? Is six better than one?’

  ‘Stop asking me these things.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Emily had seen enough. She moved until she stood between the boy and Joan. ‘Stop it right now.’

  ‘Don’t be angry.’ The boy’s voice was almost a whine. ‘I need to ask questions so that I can know things.’

  ‘If we answer your questions, will you answer ours?’ Emily asked.

  ‘I might,’ the boy answered cagily. ‘But me first. I want to ask first.’

  ‘All right,’ Emily agreed warily. ‘What do you want to know?’

  The boy’s brow puckered into a frown. ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered. ‘I was really just wondering if you would let me go first.’

  ‘Will you tell me something?’ she said, trying to avoid the tone she would take if she was talking to a child.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ the boy asked suddenly.

  ‘Where do I come from?’ Emily parroted.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy nodded. ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Well,’ Emily said thoughtfully. ‘London.’

  ‘No,’ the boy answered impatiently. ‘No, you don’t. Where do you really come from?’

  ‘Do you mean what year?’ Emily prodded cagily.

  The lad stamped his foot. ‘No, I do not mean what year. I didn’t ask what year, did I?’ he snapped petulantly. ‘I asked you where you came from. Where is a place. When is a time, and I didn’t ask when, I asked where.’ His chin jutted forward and his bottom lip stuck out defiantly. ‘So, where are you from?’ he repeated.

  Emily was surprised to find that she wasn’t certain what to say. In the time since she had arrived in London, Emily had developed any number of flippant lines to explain her mysterious past. Somehow, none of them seemed appropriate here. Nor did simple denial. This boy – or whatever he was – knew more about Emily than he had let on, she was sure of that. Did he, she wondered, know anything about who she really was – or at least who she had once been? Emily squared her shoulders. ‘I’m not certain of where I come from,’ she said honestly. ‘I have no memory of my life before I arrived in London in 1949.’ She waited for a reaction.

  The boy simply nodded. ‘It must be terrible not to know who you are,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Emily responded. ‘I know who I am now, I just don’t know who I was before.’ Even though she knew she shouldn’t ask the question, Emily couldn’t stop herself from adding, ‘Do you know anything about my past?’

  ‘Depends what you call past,’ the boy shrugged. ‘If you go back to 1950, this will be your past, but then the past will be the future.’ He giggled. ‘And that’s silly.’

  Honoré laughed, humourlessly. ‘I’ve been saying that since we started this time travel business.’

  The boy tilted his head to look up at Lechasseur, and for the first time, Emily could see that the boy had a dusting of freckles across his face. ‘I know what happened to you when you were a soldier,’ the boy said, as plainly as if he was discussing what Lechasseur had eaten for breakfast. ‘I know about the explosion.’

  Lechasseur bristled. The movement was subtle, but Emily knew him well enough by now to recognise when he was becoming defensive. ‘Do you?’ Lechasseur replied, his voice not as even as he would have wished.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The boy’s head nodded. ‘I know lots about you. About the things you did when you were young – when you were a boy. The things you did when you were growing up, meeting girls …’

  Emily interrupted. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about us.’ Too much for her liking. ‘Why don’t you tell us who you are?’

  ‘My name, you mean?’ the boy blinked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t have a name,’ he answered.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Tess moved from behind Joan. She had seen plenty of things in her life – and in the past short while – to terrify her, but she found that she wasn’t afraid of this little boy, no matter how he had come to be here. She had seen boys like him on the streets all of her days – all bluster and bravado but, at heart, desperate to be hugged by their mum. ‘Everybody’s got a name,’ she said in a friendly voice.

  ‘I don’t,’ the boy answered. ‘I don’t need one.’

  ‘Then what will we call you?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Why do you have to call me anything?’

  Emily’s mouth flexed in a puzzled little grimace. ‘Because it’s easier to have a name we can call you. It’s what we’re used to.’

  ‘What do you want to call me?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘It’s not for us to decide.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ Tess interrupted. ‘It’s for your mum to do that.’

  ‘But you’re not an ordinary little boy, are you?’ asked Emily.

  The boy beamed, as little boys do when praised for being clever or funny or special.

  ‘No,’ continued Emily, thoughtfully. ‘So why do you look like one?’

  The boy scowled disappointedly at Emily. ‘You’re very pretty, but you’re not nearly as clever as I thought you were. You’ve had all the answers put in front of you, and you haven’t worked it out yet. I should send you back and let someone else come.’

  ‘No,’ Emily all but yelped, then she calmed herself. ‘I mean, no. I want to work this out.’

  ‘All right,’ the boy agreed. ‘But if you don’t get it right soon,’ he added petulantly, ‘I’ll send you back to where you came from.’

  ‘Right now, 1950’s looking pretty welcoming to me,’ Lechasseur muttered.

  The boy looked disappointed with Lechasseur. ‘No,’ he said sourly. ‘That’s not where I saw you.’

  Emily looked sharply at Honoré. ‘It is the same creature we saw with Barnaby. It must be!’

  ‘The creature the Cabal had trapped,’ Lechasseur said. ‘But we freed it,’ he protested.

  Emily turned her gaze back to the child in front of them. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she asked. ‘It was you that was trapped by the cult, wasn’t it?’

  The boy leaped up and down on the spot and clapped his hands with excitement. ‘I knew you’d work it out,’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d work it out, and I knew you’d be able to help me.’

  Lechasseur was taken off guard slightly. ‘How can we help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you need our help?’

  Emily picked up the questioning. ‘We know how powerful you are. We saw that the last time we met.’

  Lechasseur nodded. ‘Tracking down people who were time sensitive so that they could be killed.’

  The boy shifted uneasily. ‘They made me do that. I didn’t want to. Really.’ He sounded almost pleading.

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Joan said kindly, and Emily wondered if the older woman really understood that what seemed to be a cheeky young boy was really something very different. Whether she did or not, Emily marvelled at the woman’s ability to put aside the pain the boy had caused and offer him kindness in return.

  ‘But you did have the ability to bring all these other people here,’ Emily stated.

  ‘Assuming they’re real,’ Lechasseur offered. ‘And not some kind of scam he’s pulling.’

  ‘I hadn’t considered that,’ Emily admitted.

  ‘Hey,’ Tess protested. ‘What d’you mean, “if we’re real”? Course we’re bloody real, aren’t we, Joan?’

  ‘Of course we’re real,’ Joan said quickly. ‘And don’t swear, Tess. I’ve told you before.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Tess apologised automatically. ‘
But he was saying we wasn’t real,’ she continued. ‘And we are real. As real as him.’

  ‘I know.’ Joan squeezed Tess’s arm reassuringly. ‘He was just thinking out loud, weren’t you, Mr Lechasseur?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Honoré admitted.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘Well,’ Tess said sourly. ‘Think quieter next time.’

  Emily tried to pull the conversation back on track. ‘If we’ve confirmed that everyone is real,’ she said to the boy, ‘maybe you’d tell us why they’re here.’

  The boy smirked. ‘Can’t you work it out?’

  ‘Because they were unhappy? Because something bad had happened to them?’

  ‘That’s it,’ the boy nodded. ‘They were all sad or unhappy. They’d all had something really bad happen to them, or something really bad was going to happen to them. Some of them were going to be killed or to kill themselves.’

  ‘So you brought them here?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘To protect them?’ Emily asked.

  Again a nod.

  ‘But why only women? Why no men?’

  ‘It was men who made me hunt those people. Men hurt me, and men were hurting those women. Men always hurt people. They always have.’ Small blue eyes turned to Lechasseur. ‘Even him. He killed people in his war. I could stop men hurting those women and …’ The voice cut off abruptly, a slightly guilty look appearing on the boy’s face.

  ‘And?’ Emily pressed. ‘And what?’

  ‘And I thought one of them might be able to help me.’

  ‘But they couldn’t?’

  Another nod.

  ‘So you brought us here, too?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But if you’re powerful enough to bring all of us here, and create all of this,’ Emily waved a hand around the room, ‘why do you need us to help you?’

  ‘And what exactly do you want us to help you do?’ Lechasseur asked suspiciously.

  ‘I can’t move,’ the boy said. ‘I should be able to move through time. I should be able to be anywhere in time or space, but I can’t.’ The boy was becoming agitated and upset, with frustration and anger creeping into his voice. ‘There are worlds you can’t imagine out there. Worlds of water, worlds that are all gas, some that are ice. Some of the worlds have people on them. People who talk in songs and by thought and by colour. Some of them are kind, and others only want to kill. I’ve seen them wipe out planets, blow planets up even, but I’ve also seen art and beauty and amazing animals.’ The boy looked desperately at Emily. ‘I was trapped in 1921,’ he pleaded. ‘And when I escaped, I was only able to reach as far forward as 1995. Now I’m trapped here. I can reach out to other times in the past, but can’t go to them.’ Again his voice caught with frustration. ‘I can almost feel them, but they’re just out of reach.’