He took a deep breath, narrowed his lips and blew the remaining traces of dirt and dust from the book cover. He traced his forefinger around the perimeter of the clockface symbol and the words below it, all of which were embossed into the leather and finished with glistening metallic red and gold ink.
As he looked at the book, a nagging feeling that had been growing slowly inside him came to the surface.
Why does everything that’s happened today feel as if it’s part of some elaborate plan? And that Abigayle and I are just pawns?
He didn’t believe in coincidence. Fate, maybe, when things fell in his favour, but not coincidence. He’d seen a lot of unbelievable things in the past few hours, but he refused to believe that somehow Frenz Belingi had known that Will was going to walk into his shop that day and that the two men with their weapons would follow. That he would then return and open the safe. And on top of that, that he would then be arrested and placed in this very cell. The very cell he needed to be in, in order to find the book he now held in his hand.
He was being moved around like a piece on a gameboard. This was almost literally the case since he’d been in police custody: he’d been marched from one place to the next, passed from one officer to another and moved from room to room, until he had ended up here, exactly where he needed to be. He didn’t like any of it. But perhaps he didn’t need to like it so long as whatever was going on helped bring Abigayle back.
He had his doubts that whatever forces had been pulling the strings also had the same motivations as him, but what choice did he really have? He was locked in a jail cell, faced with a possible murder charge and the disappearance of his fiancée. He did the math in his head and it all added up to one thing: press forwards and get answers about what this thing on his wrist really was.
Will shook the brewing existential crisis free from his mind and refocused on the task at hand.
He opened the book. His hands were visibly trembling as he did so. The dry leather of the cover creaked and crackled as it swung open, years of disuse being broken loose. The pages of the book were yellowed and worn but were made from quality paper stock. The ink of a handwritten note inside the front cover was slightly frayed but legible. It read:
“Chpt. 1, sec 9, sub-sec 40. Sincerely, N.O.”
One, nine, four, zero. Those numbers again. And N.O., who could that be referring to?
Will reread the note three times over, to make sure there wasn’t some kind of code hidden in the elegant handwritten text. When he was satisfied he wasn’t missing anything, he began flicking through the pages until he reached the correct section of the book.
He arrived on page twenty-seven. At the top of the page, in small text, was the chapter title: “Chapter One – Best Practice and Safe Operation.” On the opposite page he found section nine, titled: “Safety Protocols and Input Conventions.” Below that, there was a short paragraph of text followed by a line diagram of a watch with a striking resemblance to the one currently wrapped around Will’s wrist. The diagram appeared to highlight various features of the watch, each feature numbered and annotated with in-depth descriptions.
Whenever the book referenced the watch, it was always referred to as ‘the Timepiece’ and was typed in bold text.
When he’d reached the end of section nine, sixteen and a half pages farther into the book, a mouthful of air escaped his lips in an exasperated fashion. Barely any of it made any sense to him, and the parts that did didn’t seem to offer any further clues to why any of this was happening. All he had learned was how to set the time, which already appeared to be correct anyway.
When he flicked back to the start of the chapter, he saw it. He rolled his eyes and looked up to the ceiling, frustrated with himself that he had missed it the first time. Stamped into the margin next to the opening paragraph of text for section nine was the same circular many-handed clockface symbol.
He quickly fumbled around for his wallet.
Had it been taken from me when I was arrested?
He felt a surge of relief as his hand passed over the square outline of his wallet in his pocket. He fished it out and shuffled through the random cards and bits of paper that seemed to accumulate inside it. After a moment of searching, he located what he was looking for.
Will held the book flat across his knee and placed the cypher from Frenz Belingi’s shop over the paragraph of text nearest the symbol. He slid the cypher down the page until the symbol on it and the page aligned. With this done, once again a message was revealed:
Seven Septum MCMXL
He settled down on the mattress and took his time over the message. Fortunately, Will had studied Latin for a semester in college years earlier, so the last part of the message was clear and entirely unsurprising. MCMXL was 1940 in Roman numerals. The first word was also obvious, but the second word had him stumped momentarily. Septum, he knew, was Latin for the number seven.
So, it’s a date: 7, 7, 1940, or 7th July 1940.
He returned to the book, buzzing with excitement and thumbed through to the contents pages until he found what he was looking for. The latter part of Chapter One covered the process of setting the time, day, month and year on the watch. From his studying of the book, he now knew that the outer ring of digits on the watch face was used to set the minutes and hours – the hours were in twenty-four segments. The desired day was set by using the ring inside the outermost ring, and this ranged from one to thirty-one. The ring inside this was for setting the month and ran from one to twelve.
The innermost ring was used for setting years, and this was the most perplexing. While the surrounding rings required aligning the corresponding hand with the desired number, the innermost ring featured a tripled-ended hand, which rotated in unison. Each of the three hands was differently coloured and had tiny letters etched into them. The blue hand featured the letters AD, the red hand had BC and the green hand had a circle. Each hand was slightly misaligned from the next, preventing all three hands from lining up exactly with any one digit of the innermost ring. This ring ranged from zero to nine. According to the instructions, this input worked in a similar way to the dial on a safe. You were to begin by setting your first digit in either AD or BC; this would determine the time period desired. After setting the first digit with either the blue or red hands, the remaining digits for the year would be entered with the green hand in sequence. Each digit in the innermost ring would briefly light up in the colour of the hand used to confirm entry. Once the year had been entered, the final instruction dealt with disabling the failsafe, which required sliding the crown along a small G-shaped track on the side of the Timepiece. Once the crown had reached the tail of the G, the Timepiece was primed, and the crown needed only to be depressed inwards like a button to activate it. As Will held the Timepiece, he could see that the crown was in the failsafe position.
If only the Timepiece was in this position when Abigayle had held the watch.
Will read through the steps three more times and when he was comfortable with the process, he rolled his sleeve back, revealing the Timepiece on his right wrist. It looked even more extraordinary now than when he had first laid eyes on it. The crystal glass of the lens appeared even more crisp and clear, the brass case glistened and sparkled like new, the dials and crown moved smooth and sure. It was as if the Timepiece itself had come to life, glowering with anticipation for the action to come.
He carefully and methodically entered the date into the Timepiece by rotating each dial, which produced a satisfying tick with each numeric alteration, discernible only through the tips of Will’s fingers. He took his time, checking every number twice before committing its entry. He placed his thumb and forefinger around the crown and prepared to slide it away from the failsafe position. As he started to slide it over the top curve of the G, he stopped suddenly.
Something wasn’t right.
He moved his hand away from the Timepiece and returned to the message in the small book.
Why use septum?
He thought for a moment before the answer came to him from some seldom used corner of his memory.
Of course, it’s not a number at all, it’s a month!
Will recalled that the word septum was not only Latin for the number seven but was also the root from which the word September was derived. He recollected how, in the original Roman calendar, there were only ten months and September was the seventh month rather than the ninth. It wasn’t until later that January and February were added, bringing the total to twelve as we have today.
So, it’s not 7, 7, 1940; it’s 7, 9, 1940. 7th September 1940.
Will carefully made the adjustment to the month input.
He wasn’t sure what to expect when he pressed the button. He had hoped that he would press it and reappear in that strange room that he and Abigayle had seen before she disappeared. He hoped he would find her there and could bring her home. Then he would destroy the watch so the two of them could get on with their lives.
He stood up from the bed and slid the Timekeeper’s Guidebook into his back trouser pocket. He looked at the Timepiece once more, double- and triple-checking his time input, and then placed his index finger over the activation button. He closed his eyes and began to breathe in and out rapidly, as if he was about to dive underwater.
Just as he was about to depress the button, he heard tyres screech past his window and come to a stop close to the entrance of the police station, somewhere above him. He climbed back up onto the bed and levered himself up by the window bars as he had done earlier. Squinting into the dimly lit police car park outside, he could just about make out two men as they climbed out of a car that was idling by the kerb. One tall, one short. Both wearing tweed jackets and flat caps. Both walking into the police station.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
May 15th, 1984, 01:16
Even in the low lighting outside his cell window, Will could tell instantly that he was looking at the same men who had pushed their way past him as he left Frenz Belingi’s shop for the first time the previous day. The taller of the two men began to shift his gaze towards Will, who instinctively dropped down from the window and out of sight.
He came crashing down onto the bed with all his weight. The thin mattress and the old, worn bed frame gave way and Will’s feet burst through to the floor. Rusted springs sprung in all directions, deflecting off the walls and in between bars. As he landed, he stumbled backwards, catching the back of his calves on the remains of the bed frame and falling to the ground. The whole event seemed to happen in slow motion, but it cut through the silence in a calamitous cacophony. There was no way that everyone in the building – including the two new arrivals – hadn’t heard the commotion.
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
Will quickly picked himself up and dusted himself down. To his right, he could hear a voice echoing down the stairs from above. The voice was aggressive and moving closer. Before long the voice was accompanied by footsteps that grew louder and louder on the stairs. Someone had obviously heard his fall and wasn’t too pleased with having to come down into the cells to investigate.
One of the officers, he thought, but it could just as easily be the two gunmen, on their way to finish the job. It was hard to believe that they would walk into a police station and stroll into secure areas just like that. Could they have friends inside the police force? Or maybe the two men were police officers themselves?
Refocusing on the task at hand, he checked his right wrist again and ensured that the Timepiece hadn’t been affected by the fall. He rechecked the time he’d entered, and it was exactly as the hidden message had instructed.
He was having trouble coming to terms with what the Timepiece was, not quite willing to accept what all the evidence seemed to be pointing to.
Be serious, Will, it’s not a time machine. Because time machines don’t exist.
He was pretty certain of that. But then he’d been certain that rooms couldn’t transform around him and whisk his wife-to-be away before his very eyes. If this were a time machine and he really was about to travel to 1940, he had no idea what he would find there but decided that whatever it was, it couldn’t be any worse than being at the noisy end of a gun.
Will gripped hold of the crown and completed the movement, tracing around the G, disabling the safety mechanism. He clamped his eyes shut, took another series of rapid deep breaths and pressed the crown inwards, just like a button. It moved with a satisfying click.
September 7th, 1940, 01:18
A few seconds passed without incident and Will allowed his eyes to crack open ever so slightly. Then he felt it: the same surge of energy and sensation of warmth that had spread through him when he and Abigayle had first used the Timepiece in her flat. A visible, rippling sphere pulsed out from his wrist and began tracing across the walls, floor and ceiling of his small jail cell. The chipped and peeling green-grey paint on the wall to Will’s right appeared to repair itself in front of his eyes, gaining more of the green hue that had been lost over time. It now looked smooth, newly painted. The bars behind and to his left were no longer rusted and bent; they too looked almost like new.
The most striking change occurred directly in front of Will, as the sphere passed over the concrete block wall. It didn’t just change in appearance; it disappeared altogether. In its place was another set of bars, identical to those in front and behind him. Beyond the bars, the room stretched outwards, doubling its current length. More rows of bars stacked up, adding another four or five cells.
When Abigayle’s flat had transformed, it had all happened so fast and so unexpectedly that Will didn’t take any time to fully process it. Thinking back, it all felt like a lucid dream. Now, though, he was able to appreciate the effect. This time it wasn’t just the visual change that struck him; all his senses now seemed to be heightened in some way. Once the sphere had expanded off into the distance and out of sight, he found the smell of this new place was strikingly different. A faint whiff of burning timber hung in the air among the gloom and the dust. The room felt colder, and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and arms. There was a breeze passing through the windows of his cell, which he noticed no longer had glass panes set inside them. The vertical bars were also no longer there; instead, there was a set of wooden shutters constructed with neat latticework over a sturdy wooden frame. They were swinging back and forth as the wind circulated outside. Will reached out and touched the bars in front of him: they were cold and hard and very much real. This was no illusion.
He looked down at the Timepiece, which was humming and vibrating at an almost imperceptibly high frequency. He moved his hand close to it and already could feel the warmth emanating from it. So far, the leather strapping was insulating his arm from the heat.
As Will’s eyes adjusted to his new surroundings, he looked down at the painted lettering on the floor outside his cell. It now clearly indicated E-5. Looking to his right, across the cell that had miraculously appeared, he could see that it was marked E-4.
He caught some sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. A figure sat up from the bed that was against the wall and below the window to his right. The figure swung its legs over the end of the bed and planted them evenly on the floor. The figure rose from the bed and began walking over to the bars between the two cells.
The figure stepped into the light, and Will was all at once reassured and shocked to see a familiar face. The man looked younger than the last time he’d seen him. His eyes were bright and full of life. His hair and beard were darker, showing no sign of grey. His teeth were straight and brilliantly white in his smiling mouth. His ebony skin was smooth and unblemished. He looked exactly like the man pictured on the ID card Will had found in the safe.
Will was standing face to face with the shop owner, Frenz Belingi.
CHAPTER TWELVE
September 7th, 1940, 01:19
Will backed away from the bars. The two men both stood for a long moment, just staring at each other, assessing what might happen next.
Sizing each other up. Until now, Will had refused to believe what the Timepiece really was, despite all he’d seen. Now that he found himself in the presence of not only a dead man – but a far younger version of one – he could no longer deny it. Crazy as it all seemed.
So, this is a time machine. And now I’m a time traveller. Neat.
Will was still staring at Frenz Belingi when the latter broke the silence. ‘You look lost, my friend. What are you doing here?’ His smile had disappeared.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ Will said.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘I…I think so, yeah.’
‘You aren’t supposed to be here. I was told to expect a woman.’
‘Look, buddy, if you were expecting some kind of late-night liaison, then you’re shit out of luck, okay?’
Frenz bristled slightly, then said, ‘No, my friend, you misunderstand me. Tell me, how did you come to be here, now?’
‘It was you. You brought me here with your goddammed cryptic messages!’ Will said, adrenaline pumping through his veins.
The man paused and stepped away from the bars, frowning in concentrated thought. His hands were on his hips and he was shaking his head lightly. Eventually he turned back to the bars and said, ‘My name is Frenz Belingi.’ He spoke with the same smooth manner and light Caribbean accent as his older counterpart had.
‘I know,’ Will said. ‘We’ve already met. Well, you were much older and –’
‘Of course, of course. And you are?’
‘William Wells, out of Le Claire, Iowa. Nice to meet you.’
‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wells, despite the circumstances.’
The Timepiece and the Girl Who Went Astray: A thrilling new time travel adventure Page 8
