Lazar

by Lawrence Heath

  Jan frowned and looked down at the maps.

  “I was wrong, yesterday, when I thought this haunting, or whatever it is, was about me passing a message back through time to Margaret. The whole reason for all this is for a message to come back the other way – from her to me. This is what Margaret wanted to tell me,” Jan waved the sheets of paper in front of Hal’s nose, “and she wanted to tell me in time for tonight.”

  “In time for what?”

  “In time for when the city rises from the sea?” Jan suggested, then shrugged. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

  “How?”

  “Not ‘why?’” Jan said, half to herself, then stood up again. She glanced briefly at one of the maps then stared hard at something in the distance, toward the sea.

  “The church in my dream – this one, near the city gates.” Jan pointed at the map, for Hal to see, without taking her eyes off the distant skyline. “It must be that one, over there.” She stretched out her arm toward a point on the horizon. It was the ruined tower that had captured her imagination when she first arrived in Wickwich.

  “Right,” Jan said decisively, and set off down the nave in the direction of the sea. “Let’s go and find out just how much of the route in my nightmare still exists on dry land today.”

  “Mind you don’t bump into anything,” Hal warned as he ran to catch her up. “Let’s climb out over the south wall. We know there’s nothing there to stop you.”

  They clambered over.

  “Where now?” Hal asked. “You’ve got the map.”

  “Over there.” Jan pointed at a high, wind-twisted hedgerow along the east side of the field. “If we go over to that corner there’s a gap between those trees. If I’ve got my bearings right, that’s where the West Gate used to stand. It’s where I first met Margaret.”

  They both set off across the field. Hal stepped out very briskly and Jan had to almost run to keep up with him.

  “I don’t think your mother believed you,” she said breathlessly, “when you told her that she was right and that ‘we really ought to get out into the fresh air more’, starting now.”

  “She certainly looked surprised,” Hal smiled broadly. “It just seemed a whole lot easier than telling her we were going out to touch some invisible buildings.

  “Actually,” he added, “we will be able to see them when we get back home. I left the computer running so that the CAD program could convert the plans into three-dimensions while we’re out.”

  Just then they reached the corner of the field and Hal ran straight on through the gap between the trees.

  “Be careful,” Jan called out, “its very steep on the other side.”

  The ensuing yell and the sound of breaking foliage indicated that her warning came too late. Jan held on to a tree trunk and looked down into the ditch at her cousin, sitting at the bottom, brushing grass off his trouser leg.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, nothing broken.” Hal got to his feet and continued brushing himself. “How are you going to get down?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Jan called down to her cousin. “I’ve just had an idea.”

  She moved carefully sideways, feeling her way with her left foot until she appeared satisfied that she had reached firm ground. She then edged the toe of her right shoe forward, slightly beyond the surface of the slope, as though feeling for the edge of something.

  “Yes,” Jan cried out, exultantly. Hal watched, fascinated, as his cousin let go of the branch she was holding on to and took a short step forward and down. Gaining in confidence she took another, then another, then descended at a graceful pace as though sweeping down a flight of stairs. When she reached the bottom she ran halfway up, turned and ran back down.

  “Don’t tell me,” Hal insisted. “It’s a medieval staircase.”

  “Yes.” Jan was kneeling at the bottom of the slope she had just descended, running her hands over the surface of the earth, or, more precisely, just above it. “I thought there must be steps here. This is where Margaret came down to meet me. They must have been carved into the side of the dyke.

  “I can’t feel the whole of every step – modern reality seems to take precedence over the medieval past – but where the soil’s eroded I can feel the stairs as solid as anything.”

  Hal leant over and brushed his hand across the topsoil unimpeded by any phantom flight of stairs. He had only just stood up again when Jan suddenly rushed past him and ascended the slope two invisible steps at a time.

  “I’ve had an idea,” she shouted back over her shoulder. When she reached the top she sidled to her left until she bumped into a barrier that neither she nor Hal could see. “It’s a fence or wall or something,” she explained to her cousin down below. “I’ll just go back a bit to see if I can get round it.”

  She disappeared behind a clump of trees. A few seconds later she reappeared, a little further along the top of the dyke, standing precariously at the very edge. Hal moved quickly along the bottom of the ditch and positioned himself directly beneath her.

  “Be careful,” he called out, “unless, of course, there’s another invisible staircase I’m not aware of.”

  “There isn’t a staircase,” Jan looked down, “but there is a bridge.”

  “What?”

  “I can feel the bridge over the dyke that leads to the West Gate. I’m just going to take a step forward to see if it will take my weight…”

  “Don’t be stupid, of course it won’t.”

  Jan tentatively put her right foot forward into thin air. “Don’t worry, you can catch me if I fall.”

  “Hah! I’m not sure I’d be able to.”

  Within an instant, he found out. All he could do was buckle under the weight of Jan as she fell straight down on top of him. He doubled up and collapsed beneath her, and, while she rolled away completely unharmed by her fall, Hal writhed about in agony on the ground.

  “Good heavens, Hal! What happened?”

  “We went outside into the fresh air.” Hal smiled glumly at his mother as Jan helped him down on to the settee. “I told you it was dangerous out there.”

  “But how…?”

  “It’s my fault,” Jan explained. “I fell on top of him when I tried to climb something. He was right underneath.”

  “Yeah, I fell awkwardly and twisted my ankle – it might be broken.”

  “Oh, Hal! What on earth were you doing, Jan?” Jan’s aunt looked accusingly at her niece. “What did I tell you this morning after your accident yesterday?”

  “It’s not Jan’s fault,” Hal came to his cousin’s defence. “And in any case, Jan’s been a hero. She’s carried me all the way back here on her own.”

  “You should have phoned,” Hal’s mother snapped. It sounded more like a reprimand than a suggestion.

  “We tried, but there wasn’t any signal.”

  “I see. In that case thank you, Jan. But, really – I told you to act your age.”

  “Well, if you’d not made the suggestion…” Hal retorted provocatively. “After all, you can’t hurt yourself playing games on a computer.”

  Jan frowned at her cousin. She could sense that Hal’s teasing was annoying her aunt.

  “Since you have brought up the subject of your computer,” Hal’s mother said testily, “you left it on when you went out. You’re always doing it. I turned it off. I wouldn’t mind if you helped pay…”

  “Turned it off?” Hal leapt to his feet, then collapsed back on to the settee. “Ow!”

  His mother’s expression changed immediately from annoyance to concern.

  “Jan, bring that footstool over and help Hal to get comfortable,” she instructed. “I’ll go and phone for the doctor.”

  They both stared at the images of Old Wickwich on the screen – Hal intrigued as to how his computer was able to simulate the lost medieval city in such detail; Jan transfixed as the landscape of her nightmare took on shape and form before her eyes.

  The screen went
blank. Hal shot a questioning glance at Jan.

  “That’s where the town appeared to disappear under the sea,” she confirmed. “I couldn’t see what was in the water. I only sensed it was something awful.”

  “Good!” Hal exclaimed, apparently not hearing the second half of what Jan said. “It doesn’t look as though Mum damaged anything when she turned it off.”

  “I’m so pleased.” The mild sarcasm in Jan’s voice was far too subtle for her cousin’s ear. He was busy trying to make himself comfortable at his desk in preparation for a long session at his computer, using both hands to lift his heavily bandaged left ankle on to a stool.

  “Let me help,” Jan offered.

  “Out of interest,” she continued, as she moved the stool a little closer to the desk, “can you find out from your computer what time your mother switched it off?”

  “Yeah, probably. Why?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering…”

  Hal was already tapping away on his keyboard and clicking away with his mouse.

  “There you are. The file manager shows that the CAD files were last accessed at ten thirty-seven precisely – I can give you that to one hundredth of a second if you like.”

  “No, ten thirty-seven will do fine.” A broad smile of vindication broke out on Jan’s face. “That is precisely the time I tried to cross over the bridge.”

  “What? You don’t think…?”

  “I most certainly do. I reckon I can only touch and feel ‘medieval’ Wickwich when your computer’s turned on.” Jan stood up and began to wave her arms as she warmed to her theory. “That’s why when I tried to help you out of the dyke on the way home I couldn’t find the steps I’d come down earlier. And if your mother hadn’t turned your computer off I would have been able to walk right across the ‘medieval’ bridge and into Wickwich.”

  “But how…” Hal began, but realised his mistake immediately. “But why?”

  “Why indeed,” Jan acknowledged with a smile. “As I was saying this morning, there’s something really important about this route from St James’ chapel to the sea; something Margaret wants us to find out.”

  “And you think it’s something to do with whatever it was in the sea?” Hal half suggested and half asked.

  “Yes.” Jan frowned again. This time she looked apprehensive. “Yes, whatever it was absolutely terrified her – if they were Margaret’s emotions I was experiencing in my dream. So much so that her spirit hasn’t been able to rest for all these centuries.”

  “You reckon it killed her?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps that’s what I’ve got to find out.”

  “But how are you going to do that? Have another dream?”

  “No.” Jan pulled herself up to her full height with sudden determination. “I’m going to see just how far I can walk down the streets of ‘medieval’ Wickwich. I’m going to see if I can make it to the sea.”

  The air was as heavy as a hammer and the clouds on the horizon black as anvils. The atmosphere was far more sultry than it had been that morning and Jan was feeling very hot and sticky. Having to fight her way through a hedgerow hadn’t helped. But now she was there, standing at the top of the embankment, looking across the dyke toward the site of the West Gate.

  Jan knelt down on one knee and leant forward, holding out her right hand and probing with her fingers, as though gently feeling her way through the air.

  Yes. There it was – only visible through her sense of touch – the medieval bridge. She could feel it. She could run the palms of her hands across its gently undulating surface of weathered, well-worn planks of solid timber. She leant out a little further until she began to topple over. She automatically put out both her hands as she fell forward. And then stopped – right there, suspended in midair. She stared down through her fingers at the steep sides of the ditch beneath her. This was amazing.

  Jan jumped to her feet and lifted her left foot slightly off the ground. She looked into the dyke. Now that she was standing, the bottom of the earthwork appeared to be a lot, lot further down, and she hesitated for several seconds before taking her first tentative step forward into empty space. It took her weight.

  Instinctively, like a tightrope walker, she stretched her arms out either side as she took her right foot off the solid earth of the embankment and stepped forward on to – nothing. At least, nothing she could see. But she could feel it beneath her feet, flat and firm and tangible. She took another step. Then another. She let her arms drop to her sides. She was standing in the middle of the bridge, halfway across the ancient ditch and several metres above it.

  She stood still for a considerable time, savouring the sensation of … what, precisely, was the sensation she was feeling? Was it floating? No. If she had been floating she would not have been able to choose the direction in which she wished to go simply by walking to the end and back again. She did so, just to demonstrate her point. Neither was she hanging in thin air. That would have implied suspension, whereas she could most definitely feel the bridge beneath her feet, supporting her in the way that bridges always do. She jumped up and down to prove that this was so as well. She even did a cartwheel.

  In fact, there was nothing special about the sensation at all – at least as regards her sense of touch. It was simply that it emphatically contradicted everything her eyes were telling her. She was not experiencing a new sensation, she was missing an old one.

  Jan reached for her back pocket.

  “I must get a photo of this,” she said to herself as she opened the camera app on her smartphone. She moved her legs slightly apart and then took several pictures of the ground between, and some distance beneath, them. She lay down on her back and held her phone out in front of her to get a photograph of her head and shoulders hovering in midair.

  She then sat up and carefully shuffled over to the edge of the invisible bridge, where she twisted round and dangled her legs over the side. As she sat there in the dappled sunlight, her gently swinging feet the only sign of movement, she inspected the photos on her smartphone one by one.

  “If only Hal was here,” she thought, “he could have got a shot of me from below.”

  As much as she was delighting in the phenomenon of sky-walking, it all seemed pretty pointless if there was no one there to witness her aerial acrobatics.

  Pointless? How could she be so selfish, Jan chastised herself. This supernatural medieval world had not been created for her amusement. It had been brought into being for a specific purpose, and she was supposed to be investigating what that purpose was.

  Jan took one last look along the length of the ancient earthwork, glanced down at the undergrowth way beneath her feet, then got up and walked determinedly to where the West Gate had once stood – and should be standing once again, at least as far as her sense of touch was concerned. Not that she had the chance to test this out. The far side of the dyke was so densely populated by more recent impediments to progress – a thick hedgerow, a rusted barbed-wire fence and the bole of a fallen tree – that Jan did not get the opportunity to reach out and try to feel the contours of the gateway. All her efforts had to be concentrated on simply moving straight ahead.

  On the far side of the broken fence was a small wood. After the exertion of negotiating the barbed wire and the brambles its cool shade was very welcome. Jan leant her back against a tree and pulled a crumpled map from her pocket. She stared at it for several seconds before turning it the right way up. If she had got her bearings right there should be a building not that far from where she stood.

  Jan stepped forward and began to raise her arms, and immediately felt something right in front of her. She turned her hands around so that she could press her palms against the invisible surface. It was hard and warm and rough, and she could feel small particles of dirt rubbing off on to her fingertips as she began to run them gently across the unseen wall. It appeared to be made of dried mud and straw. She moved sideways, trying to find a window or a door, but the surface disappeared into
a tree.

  With her arms outstretched Jan continued to feel her way down the long lost street, picking her way between the visible foliage of the present and the invisible buildings of the past. Her progress was extremely slow, and sometimes perilous, either bumping into the corner of an unseen house or walking into stinging nettles while engrossed in the sensations of touching and tapping and holding and handling things she could not see.

  Eventually the wood began to clear and the facades of the buildings became easier to detect. But they lost their fascination as soon as Jan espied the monolithic object standing stark against the sky beyond the trees. She walked toward it as quickly as she dared and came out of the wood on to a narrow strip of land high above the sea. She could hear the distant sound of waves smashing into surf upon the shingle beach below. Seagulls scuttered overhead.

  Jan stopped and stared. The scene was dominated by a massive ruined tower – the tower she had seen when she first arrived at Wickwich, the tower of the church in last night’s nightmare. It stood alone, completely desolate, at the top of a sandstone cliff, precariously close to the edge of the precipice.

  The elements had pitted themselves against its walls for centuries – the winds had slashed its fabric and the sea-spray had rubbed salt into its wounds. Jan looked up, past the gouged-out windows to the crumbling crenellations at the top. They bit into the sky like broken teeth.

  She looked down at the foot of the tower. It was encircled by a fence of rusted iron railings; presumably erected to stop people approaching such an unstable structure. It did not work in Jan’s case. She climbed over the barrier in a matter of seconds and was soon standing right up against the ruined edifice. She put out her hands to touch it.

  As with the walls of the monastery, Jan could not quite make contact with its visible surface. Her fingers stopped just short of it, their tips a centimetre from the gritty, weather-beaten masonry. She moved sideways, to her left, feeling her way toward a jagged line of battered stone that jutted from the corner by the sea. That must be where the tower had once been joined to the missing church. She stretched out her arm and, sure enough, there was the west wall, exactly where she had predicted.