Margaret looked back at Jan and frowned, obviously bewildered by this line of questioning.
“The wind’s rising from the east, but ’tain’t nothing much. The fishing fleet’s still putting out to sea.”
“No, they mustn’t – you must stop them,” Jan shouted with such fervour that Margaret made to turn and run.
“No, don’t go,” Jan took hold of Margaret’s sleeve, then let go, conscious of the alarm in Margaret’s face. “I don’t mean you any harm. We’re friends – remember? This ring’s a token of that friendship and I think you’re right, I think it has brought me to you.
“I’m here to warn you of the dreadful storm that will come tomorrow night, on St Lazarus’ Day. It’s going to destroy half of the city. The eastern side of Wickwich will be drowned beneath the sea. You’ve got to tell everyone to take their possessions and evacuate their homes.”
Margaret stood staring at Jan in disbelief. She began, slowly, to shake her head from side to side. “No, no, no,” she intoned quietly. “That cannot be. The sea wall’s just been reinforced, it can withstand the highest tide.”
“Not the one that’s coming tomorrow night. Five churches and their parishes will be washed away. St Michael, St Bartholomew, St …”
“No, no,” Margaret was shouting now. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying. It can’t be true.”
“But it is, it is true – believe me. The city’s doomed. Over the centuries it will be completely washed away. All that will be left are the ruins of this monastery and…”
“Ruins?” Margaret gazed up toward where Jan guessed the central tower once stood, square and solid against the sky.
“Yes, ruins,” Jan insisted, and swung her arm out over the rubbled remains of the wall. “See, noth… ouch!” She yelped with pain and drew back her hand, its knuckles grazed and bleeding. In the excitement of meeting Margaret she had temporarily forgotten about the phenomenon of the wall that was and was not there.
She put her knuckles to her lips and looked up at Margaret. She looked totally confused. Jan was obviously not acting in the way that a young medieval girl expected spirits of the dead or messengers from Heaven to behave. In fact, Jan sensed, she was about to burst out laughing.
“No, honestly,” Jan pleaded, her concern at losing the initiative amplified by her hurt pride, “I’m deadly serious. I’ve come from the future to warn you. You must let everyone in Wickwich know that their city’s doomed. Look, look…”
Jan had suddenly remembered the guidebook. She snatched it from her pocket and opened it outwards, straight at Margaret’s face. The pages displayed a series of photographs illustrating the gradual destruction of the last remaining church as, year on year and stone by stone, it slowly crumbled down the cliff face and was swallowed by the sea.
“All Saints,” Margaret whispered as she stared at the final photo of its solitary tower.
Jan flicked to another page. It showed the monastery as she could see it. Margaret looked away, toward the building, then stared back, straight at the page, her eyes and mouth wide open. Jan could see her disbelief and incredulity being demolished by this evidence as relentlessly and as remorselessly as if eroded by the sea itself. Jan turned another page.
“The Lazar…” Margaret gasped. She stepped backward, then stepped back again, then turned and ran. Jan stopped herself from running after. She did not need to. She had done it, she felt positive of that. She had convinced Margaret that the medieval city of Old Wickwich was in grave danger. Her warning could not save the town, but it might have saved the townsfolk’s lives. She must get back and check the books to see if anybody had been drowned, to see whether she had succeeded in fulfilling the task that, she was convinced, was the reason for the haunting.
For the second time that afternoon a motorbike roared by and broke the silence.
Jan did not stop running until she reached the gravel drive of her Aunt and Uncle’s house. Then, bent double, hands on knees, she gaped open-mouthed toward the ground and gasped for air, grasping lungfuls at a time. Eventually, she stood up and took a deep breath through her nose, this time not for oxygen but to calm herself before going into the house and telling Hal her tale – her amazing, incredible, bizarre, unbelievable tale.
But the breath wasn’t enough. It could not assuage the excitement that was bubbling through her blood. She sprang off down the drive and burst in through the front door without stopping. She reached the staircase in a single stride and ran up it three steps at the time. She darted down the corridor and threw herself into her cousin’s room.
“You’ve just seen Margaret,” Hal said calmly without turning from his screen.
His statement knocked the breath right out of Jan, what little there was left of it after her dash to be the one to break the news. Her mouth opened and closed several times before she could articulate the single word “What!” It was not so much a question as an exclamation. Hal took it to be the former.
“You’ve just seen Margaret.”
“But … but how on earth do you know that?”
“Through the miracle of new technology,” Hal turned and smiled cryptically at Jan. “You met her by the north corner of the west wall, just here.” His finger pointed at the exact spot, on the plan of the monastery displayed on his computer, where she had literally bumped into Margaret. “You chatted for about five minutes,” he resumed, turning back toward the screen, “and then she ran away, toward Old Wickwich.”
“But how?” Jan snapped, infuriated by her cousin’s teasing smugness. “How, how, how, how, how can you possibly know what happened?”
“Not ‘Why, why, why?’” Hal quipped, but realised straight away that this was not the time to be scoring points. He turned and smiled at Jan again, but this time kindly. “Your cursor, the cross on the screen – I followed it. You went down to St James’ church, then along there and back again … then up there and across here, then you went inside the monastery and stopped … just there.” He traced Jan’s journey with his finger.
“Then Margaret’s cursor appeared – the circle. She came down this way…” he moved his finger slowly down the screen, “and you came out to meet her. At one point your icons almost overlapped.”
Jan looked at Hal and then gaped at the screen in wonderment. It would have been in disbelief if she had not already experienced so many other inexplicable things that day. All this, she thought, just so that she could pass her message back in time. It was phenomenal.
“Come on then,” Hal interrupted her astonishment. “I’ve told you what happened here. What happened to you? What did you see?” he asked, then added, “Did you see her face?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ghastly, or what?”
“It was beautiful.”
“Eh?”
Jan described the girl she had seen to her cousin. He frowned and looked incredulous.
“No, no, that couldn’t have been her,” he said, “that’s not the girl I saw. Are you sure that it was Margaret?”
“Yes, I’m absolutely positive,” Jan confirmed. “But you’re right, it wasn’t the same Margaret that we saw yesterday. This one was far less sinister and unnerving. In fact it was she who seemed frightened of me, as though I was the ghost.
“But then, perhaps, in a way, I was,” Jan mused, tantalisingly, as she walked over to Hal’s bed and sat down, cross-legged with her back against the wall. She took her time making herself comfortable. It was now her turn to tease her cousin. She glanced over to him. He had swivelled round in his chair and was looking, quizzically, straight at her.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, there was something else. Something even stranger than everything else that’s been happening since I found the ring.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, something so weird I still can’t believe it really happened; so mind-bogglingly bizarre that I’m not sure that I can even trust my senses.” Jan was not very good at teasing and was beginning to overdo it.
“Really?” Hal exclaimed with exaggerated interest. “You must tell me about it some day.” He turned back to his computer.
“No, it really was amazing.” Jan’s excitement got the better of her and she leapt up and ran over to the screen. “You see that wall?” She pointed at the north wall on the monastery plan. “I could touch it!”
“That’s amazing?” Hal said, sardonically.
“No, I don’t mean the ruined rubble on the ground,” Jan explained, “I mean I could actually touch the original wall, the one that was there when the monastery was built. I could actually feel the wall that was in my dream and on your computer. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. I even grazed my knuckles on it.”
Jan showed the back of her right hand to Hal. He looked down at the broken skin and then up into his cousin’s face. From beneath a frown, his eyes looked hard into hers. He shook his head.
“You actually touched something that wasn’t there?” he asked, very slowly.
“It was there – once,” Jan pointed out.
“You mean you went through some kind of time warp?”
“Possibly – at least, my sense of touch did.”
Hal shook his head in disbelief, as though trying to dislodge the idea from his brain.
“No, no, no. That’s just too weird. I can understand how a virus might be able to affect what’s displayed on my computer screen or what we see or dream, but to change reality…”
“Just because it doesn’t fit in with your theory,” Jan interrupted.
“Who says it doesn’t,” retorted Hal. “I just need to think about it a bit more, that’s all. In any case, I’ve only got your word for it.”
Jan stood up, suddenly, to her full height and grabbed Hal roughly by the wrist. She was angry.
“Right, that’s it,” she shouted. “This isn’t a figment of my imagination, this is reality – don’t you see? It’s out there, in the real world – not in here or there.” Her finger flashed between her head and Hal’s computer.
“Come on. We’re going to the ruins – now.” Jan grabbed his arm and dragged him off his chair.
“Hey, hold on,” Hal protested, “I haven’t turned my computer off.”
“That’s OK,” Jan retorted as she pulled him through the door. “We won’t be away that long. It won’t take much time to make you believe me once we’re there.”
“Race you to the monastery.”
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” Jan called out after her cousin as he ran across the field toward the doorway in the west wall. “Mind the door,” she added, but he took no notice. Hal ran straight beneath the archway into the body of the church.
Jan felt her heart sink slightly. Perhaps the spell has been broken. Now that she had fulfilled her task and warned Margaret of the storm, perhaps the haunting was at an end. Or perhaps Hal was right. She flinched. Perhaps there is no door at all, except in her imagination. Or perhaps both doors were now wide open.
Although she was still a fair way off she could see her cousin through the arch. He was holding out his arms and moving forward very gingerly. Having not encountered anything after half a dozen steps he began to muck about and pretended to be sleepwalking. Suddenly he stopped.
“You’re right,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “There is something here. Wow! A wall! I’m touching a wall.” He ran his hands up and down an invisible surface in front of him.
“See, I told you,” Jan almost squealed in excitement and began running immediately, as fast as she could, toward her cousin. “You wouldn’t believe me when … ugh!”
Jan rebounded, as if off solid air, and fell, a crumpled heap, upon the ground before the entrance to the church. Hal stood absolutely still for a moment, mouth wide open, staring at his cousin as she rolled around in agony in front of him. Then he snapped out of his astonishment and ran over to her side.
“What happened? Did you trip? Hey, how did you do that to your face?”
There was a gash on her forehead and the early blooming of a bruise across the bridge of her nose. Blood trickled from her nostrils. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and stared in puzzlement and silence at her cousin.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Let’s see your eyes – check whether you’re concussed or not.”
Jan looked up. Hal could not see into her eyes at first – the sun was shining on the tears that had not yet rolled down her cheeks. He handed Jan his handkerchief. She gingerly mopped them up. Hal looked again then, having satisfied himself that her pupils were of equal size, repeated his initial question.
“What happened?”
“I ran into the door…”
“How did you manage that? It’s wide enough to drive a bus through.”
“Not the doorway, the door.”
“Eh?”
“I ran into the medieval door – the door you’ve just walked clean through.” Jan frowned, then winced. “How come you could feel the wall but not the door?”
Hal looked away guiltily.
“Er,” he began, as he stood up and turned to look back toward where he had been standing. “Um … There wasn’t a wall. I couldn’t feel a thing. I was just fooling around.”
Jan glared at him. He awaited an onslaught from her tongue, berating him for having not believed her and causing her to hurt herself. Instead her glare dissolved into a puzzled look.
“But why can’t you feel it? How come you can walk right through the door when I …, I…” Jan was lost for words.
“Um, perhaps it’s because there is no door to walk into,” Hal tentatively suggested. “Perhaps you simply tripped and fell.”
Jan’s glare returned with a vengeance.
“You don’t believe me, do you? You just can’t get your head round the fact that I’ve run into a phantom door – even though you saw it happen. You don’t even believe your own eyes.”
“I do,” countered Hal. “But all I saw was you fall over.”
“If you saw me bounce off an invisible door in your stupid virtual reality goggles you’d believe your eyes then, wouldn’t you? Why can’t you believe it when it really happens?”
“Because I know how it works on a computer – how the software makes the image on the screen,” Hal attempted to explain. “I can make the connection between the program code and what we see, how the one causes the other. But there’s no way I can understand how something can appear solid when it isn’t really there.”
“There you go again, ‘How, how, how?’ It’s ‘Why?’ that’s important. Why is all this happening to me?” The tears of pain that Jan had wiped away were replaced by those of anger and frustration. “All you ever think about is the mechanics,” she continued. “What about the motivation?”
“It’s mechanics that make the world go round,” Hal pointed out as he ran his fingers around the edges of the archway.
“Whose world?” Jan snapped.
“The world we all live on,” responded Hal.
“What about the world we all live in?”
Hal stared blankly at Jan for several seconds, then blinked in mock confusion.
“Nope,” he shook his head, “you’ve lost me there.”
Jan burst out laughing at Hal’s exaggerated expression of bewilderment.
“Come on,” she smiled, “give me a hand up.”
Hal helped her to her feet. She stood still for a moment, gently removing the traces of her nosebleed from her face, then looked at Hal and smiled again.
“Let’s be a bit more scientific about this, shall we?” she suggested. “Let’s investigate what it is that I can feel and you can’t. You never know, I might be able to work out the textures of the surfaces so you can fill in the walls on your computer.”
Her cousin laughed.
“We’ll still have to guess at the colours.”
“Yes,” Jan’s smile broadened. “Now, get out of the way. You’re standing exactly where the door is.”
“Whoops, sorry,” Hal said, and moved aside.
Jan reached forward, gingerly, until her fingers stopped and spread against an invisible flat surface.
“It’s wood, quite smooth,” she commented. “It feels new. What’s this? Ah, it’s a metal nail or something.” She ran her hands up and down the surface. “The door appears to be studded. Hey,” she wrapped her fingers around something at approximately shoulder height, “it’s an enormous metal ring.” Her fingers traced its circumference until they encountered something at the top. “What’s this – a carving? It feels like a face – hair? A mane. It’s a door knocker hanging from the jaws of a lion’s head.”
Hal stood gaping at his cousin, fascinated by her fingertips. They were flat and bloodless, as though pressing against glass.
“You really can feel something there, can’t you?”
Jan looked at Hal with a mixture of exasperation, astonishment and triumph.
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Now do you believe me?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so. But it is a bit hard to take in, you must admit.”
“Why? You seemed quite happy that your so-called ‘virus’ could affect our sense of sight. Why can’t you accept that it could also affect my sense of touch?”
“I don’t know,” Hal frowned. “It’s just, well, different, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t bruise yourself on an optical illusion, can you?”
“What about stigmata?” Jan asked suddenly.
“What about it?”
“It’s when religious people think so hard about Christ’s crucifixion that they make blood come from their hands and feet.”
“I do know what stigmata is,” Hal said indignantly, then snapped his fingers. “Yes, of course. You’ve got it in one, again. That’s exactly how the virus works. It’s making you think so hard that you’re back in medieval times; making you so convinced that you’ve run into a door, that it’s caused you to break out in a bruise.”
“And made my knuckles bleed?” Jan asked.
“Yes, that as well.”
Lazar Page 7
