by Edward Hogan
“Hey, mate,” said a guy dressed as a tinfoil RoboCop. “You dropped this.” He held out the hoodie.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. I turned away. The security guard looked at me for a moment, but then the tribute band started up with “Welcome to the Jungle,” someone screamed with excitement, and the guard was distracted.
It was a near miss, and — despairing of ever finding Ryan — I slunk out of the mass of people. The bonfire was in a clearing a few hundred meters from the main crowd, and I stood nearby for a moment, looking forlornly at the map.
Then I looked up, and the man was there.
For a moment, I thought he was in costume. The long coat, the blood running down the neck, the angular hairstyle. He could’ve been from the eighties film The Lost Boys. I’d already seen a few people working that look. Absently he glanced over in my direction, and then he turned away. I’d almost forgotten I was wearing the mask. He didn’t know who I was. I knew that Lexi had told me it wouldn’t make any difference what I did to him; he’d still be there (wherever there was) when the clocks went back and struck one for the second time. But that hardly mattered. My first thought was just to hurt him. I picked up a sharp piece of wood that someone had tried to throw onto the bonfire. But then I calmed myself. Maybe if I followed him, he’d take me to where Lexi was, and I could be there for the extra hour.
But I kept the piece of wood, just in case.
I walked away, toward some trees where I would have cover to watch him. I could feel the chemical charge of excitement coursing through my body. When I was safely shaded by the trees, I took off the helmet. The heat of the bonfire had been overwhelming, and I needed to breathe.
Without the obstruction, I now had clear sight of the man. His arms were folded, and half of his coat shone slick in the firelight. I had never hated anyone so much in my life. I wondered why he hadn’t just vanished, like Lexi. Luck, for once, was on my side, and if I could keep hold of my temper, there was a chance I could do something.
After a few minutes, he began to walk. I kept close to the trees and followed. He was slinking about at the edge of the crowd, and it seemed to me that he was about to leave the event. He didn’t rush, and he didn’t seem to notice that I was following. I crept closer to him, away from the trees. Even the way he moved was sickening, like a fly crawling on your food. I knew he might turn around at any moment, so I put down the piece of wood and put my mask back on.
That’s when they found me. Jack, Thorpey, and Lewis, the boys from the swimming pool. They were dressed as the Ghostbusters.
“Look who it is. Darth Fat-boy,” said Thorpey.
“That’s not very good, Thorpey,” said Jack. He turned to me. I could see a hint of fear in his eyes, the memory of the invisible force that had pulled him into the water. “We’ve been looking for you, Dan,” he said.
I glanced over to where I’d last seen the man, but he was gone. He couldn’t have got far, but I needed to work fast if I was going to find him again. “Just give me a couple of hours, OK? Then you can do what you want with me.”
Thorpey and Lewis laughed. Jack shook his head. “You’re not in any position to call the shots. You belong to us. And there won’t be any of your water tricks this time.”
“I don’t need water to do that,” I said.
He stared at me for moment. “You’re bluffing,” he said.
I dropped the helmet and reached down for the piece of wood, but Lewis got there first. He took a swipe at me but missed. I turned and ran toward the trees. I had my keys in my pocket. Dad had shown me how to carry my keys between my fingers and use them as a weapon if I felt under threat. I searched through my pockets now. Lewis caught me and kicked my legs away. I fell, with my hands in my pockets, unable to break the impact. My chin snapped forward and smacked the ground. I was out cold.
The first thing I saw when I woke up was the huge clock above the stage. It was one thirty. For a moment, I panicked. Had the clocks been turned back already? Was it one thirty for the second time? Had I been unconscious that long? No. Onstage the master of ceremonies was riling up the crowd. “It’s half past one, ladies and gentleman, so the clocks go back in half an hour. It’s just more time to rock! Our next act is a bit special. All the way from Dublin, it’s Ireland’s very best Michael Jackson tribute band . . . Triller!” A huge cheer went up.
So I’d only been out for fifteen minutes, but it didn’t make much difference. The man was gone, and I’d never find him now. The idiot boys had stolen my map. I had half an hour until Lexi woke up, seven possible pine forests to cover, and no one to follow. I had no energy and no hope. It was all over.
The noise of the crowd was too much for me. I wanted to be alone, so I walked out past the bonfire, into the dark woods, and out to the lake. I went to the clearing where Lexi had set up camp, and I sat by the water for a while. Maybe they’ll never find me, I thought. Maybe I’ll just stay here until Monday, so I can see her again. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen.
I bent down and put my face into the water. It was grainy and cold, welcome against my sore skin. I breathed out slowly, felt the air leave my lungs. I felt like staying underwater until I passed out. But there, at the end of my breath, was a vision. It wasn’t Lexi in the Dome, or Lexi sitting in the tree, or Lexi in her makeshift Indian headdress. In fact, it wasn’t Lexi at all. It was Chrissy. She was kneeling behind me with her hands over my eyes, as she had done that day at the volleyball court. “Our lives,” she said, as she had said back then. “Our lives are written on our bodies.”
I raised my head from the water, sucked in a deep breath, and thought about those words. Then the flashbacks came to me: Lexi’s body, as it was moments before she disappeared in the steam room. The cuts on her legs were like icicles, and they were sparkling. They were sparkling with sandy red dust. The grains had shimmered and glinted when she moved. There was only one place in Leisure World with red dust: the all-weather playing fields. As the realization hit home, my whole body convulsed with pain. The gash on my leg returned, my ankle expanded with swelling, and I felt the gouge in my side open up, the blood weeping. My sneakers and my legs were covered in sandy red dust.
I looked down at my watch. The minute hand ticked backward one stroke.
I came out of the forest by a bike stand. By the law of averages, I knew one of the bikes had to be unlocked. I pulled at the mountain bikes and the BMXs, but the first one to come away from its mooring was a Shopper. I didn’t have time to worry about looks. I rode onward, slowly, painfully, the wounds making every turn of the pedals agony.
I stared down at my injuries with wonder. They were my future. I knew, at least, that I would make it to the forest. But I didn’t know if I would be too late to save Lexi. And I didn’t know if I would survive those wounds.
As I neared the all-weather fields, all I could see was the whites of the goalposts. The floodlights, of course, had been turned off. I was freezing cold, and the pain was too much now. I couldn’t ride in a straight line, and eventually I fell off the bike and lay on the ground. I was exhausted. The wheel of the Shopper skated around, the dynamo clicked, and the bike light flickered and then went out. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the muffled chant of the festival crowd, counting down: “Five, four, three, two, one . . .”
The power surged through me, and I scrambled to my feet. The wounds were gone, and my watch began to tick forward. It was one o’clock, again. I sprinted toward the all-weather fields. The extra hour had begun.
I saw the man before I saw Lexi. He was standing at the edge of the all-weather fields, and his frosted breath was spiraling into the air. The temperature had suddenly plummeted, and I could see an icy sheen on the bark of the trees; the whole place was tingling with cold. The big freeze, I thought. Of course.
The man hurled a pair of keys into the forest, wiped his hands, and walked around the outside of the playing surface, keeping to the grass so his footprints wouldn’t show up in the red
sand. I reached the complex just as he pulled a penlight out of his pocket and shone it at Lexi. She was lying on the field, wearing the blue dress and black leggings I’d read about in the newspaper article. She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the light. He walked over, took her by the hair and the arms, and dragged her toward the pine forest. I thought of the welts on her scalp. I was a hundred meters away. Maybe more. Had I arrived a few minutes earlier, things could have been different.
I called out. “Lexi!”
My voice echoed back from the surfaces of that strange cold plain. The natural and the artificial.
As he reached the trees, he turned and looked at me.
His movements quickened; he picked her up and put her over his shoulder, and soon they were in the trees, out of sight, but already I felt powerful as I ran toward them across the red gravel. Lexi had told me that the actions of that hour played out the same every time, that she was powerless to change them. But I had changed them already. I had made the man turn around.
By the time I got to the first pines, there was no sign of them. I called her name again.
“I’m coming,” I said. I kept running, but then I stopped, listening for the sound of footsteps crunching on the frozen ground. I thought I heard the sound of breaking twigs to my left, so I turned and ran in that direction.
I was right. Up ahead in the dark, their movements were hard to distinguish. I could see that she was struggling on the ground, and he was kneeling over her, ripping her clothes. I thought I saw the punch that caused her black eye.
I increased my speed but tripped on a root. I felt my ankle turn over. Sprained at least. It was the strangest feeling, because I had seen the damage before. I got up and limped on.
“Stop,” I tried to shout, but I was so tired, so cold, that I barely made a sound. I knew what was coming. He pulled off her leggings, but as he did so, she kicked him and stood. I was close enough to see the desperation on her face. This was the moment she had talked about, when she escaped him for a few seconds, but she wasn’t fast enough to get away. Go, Lexi, I thought. Go faster.
But she didn’t. She stopped. She had seen me, and the future was changing. It seemed to take her a moment to recognize me. “Daniel? No. Go away. Get out of here, please!”
“Run, Lexi!” I said.
She looked at me and then at the man, who was groggily rising to his knees. And she ran.
I got to him a few seconds later and thrust a knee into his face. He fell back, but he pulled me down with him. I didn’t see him reach for the knife, but I felt him lunge at me. I rolled away, and the knife slid down my shin, opening that familiar gash. I screamed and flung out a fist, catching him in the mouth. We wrestled, but his strength was awesome. He pinned my arms with his knees, leaving his knife hand free. Lexi was right. He was too strong.
I felt his breath on me, as Lexi had felt it. The stinging mint and the whiskey behind it. His face looked pale in the moonlight, his lips full. I noticed the length of his eyelashes as he stared down at me.
“I wouldn’t want to be you,” I said.
He frowned and lifted the knife. She must have got away, I thought. I’ve saved her. He sank the knife into my stomach, and I felt the red-hot pain deep in my gut. For a moment, it didn’t seem to matter, but then I saw that Lexi had returned. She was meters away. She came back because she cared about me. We cared about each other, and that — it seemed — was our downfall.
“Daniel, no!” she screamed. He pulled out the knife and turned, got to his feet, and left me behind. He was gaining on her before they were even out of my sight. I knew he was bound to catch her.
I was in a bad way; there was a metallic taste in my mouth, and I could barely feel my legs. The cold from the ground crept into my skin. But the adrenaline had kicked in, and I was able to stand. I limped deeper into the woods. I could hear them up ahead, hear her breathing and the cries of panic between. I’m going to see it, I thought. I’m going to see him kill her. I couldn’t bear that. I heard a sudden swipe and crack, and the sound of a body hitting the ground. I felt the force of the blow echoing through the woods. There was no more panic in me, just a huge sadness; a sad acceptance that this was what men were like. I ran in the direction of the sound. Soon, through the trees, I could see a dark figure standing with a body at his feet. I kept running toward him, this standing figure. It was my father.
I had prior experience with hallucinations, of course. And that was when I didn’t have a hole in my stomach. But there was no doubt that this was my dad. I knew the shape of him even in the dark. As I staggered closer, his features became clear. He was holding a seven-iron golf club, and the man lay writhing at his feet. “Daniel?” he said.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
I could see that he was shaking. He looked down at the man. “I was looking for you, Daniel. But then this guy comes bolting out of nowhere, chasing the —”
“Where is she?” I shouted.
“Who? The girl?”
“Where is she?” I was screaming, delirious, spinning around looking for Lexi.
“She ran off. Look, she’s OK. He’s not going anywhere, is he?” Dad said, pointing to the man, who was flat out now. Twitching slightly. A sticky blackness in his hair. It was too dark for Dad to see my wounds. “Why is it so bloody cold?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I heard rustling in the woods, and I set off after the sound. “Daniel, come back, for God’s sake!” Dad said.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, but then I stopped and turned. “How can you see them?”
“You what?”
“How could you see them? Him. And Lexi.”
“Well,” he said, “the moon’s quite strong, and you soon get used to the dark.”
“No, I mean . . .” I thought of what Lexi had said, about a special sensitivity. About good mindsight. Surely not, I thought. “Forget it,” I said. “Just stay there. With him.” There would be time for questions later.
“Daniel, wait,” Dad said. But I didn’t wait. I ran.
I was crying, but I didn’t know what the emotion was. I’d never felt it before. I looked down at my watch. It was 1:47. I was getting weaker, but I didn’t care. Soon enough I could see her up ahead, leaping over the stumps and the ferns, dodging between the tree trunks, her blue dress shimmering. I tried to call her name, but I couldn’t get the breath to do it.
She was laughing. I chased her as I had done that night when we jumped the fences. And — like that night — I never caught up.
A few minutes later, we left the pine forest and were surrounded by beeches and oaks, the ancient trees of the old forest. We circled the lake, and eventually I arrived at the clearing I had come to know so well.
When I got there, she was nowhere to be seen. I looked around at the burnt-out cooking pit and the red sand that had fallen from my shoes before.
“Lexi!” I called. I looked up and saw her in the tree, walking carefully, arms out, along the solid branch that overhung the water. She turned to me.
“Thank you, Danny boy,” she said.
She sprang from the branch and sliced through the surface of the water, almost without a sound. I watched for a moment, but when she didn’t reappear, I dived in after her. For a few moments, everything was dark and swirling with loose soil. I fought to keep the rank water out of my nose and mouth, and then I began to settle. The old rhythm returned. I felt my body sinking.
One. And.
Two. And.
Three. And.
I opened my eyes, and I knew I was deep. The water was luminous and green. Blood corkscrewed up from the wound in my stomach, like smoke. The blood looked dark and slick in the green water.
I could see her. She was far deeper than me, far deeper than I believed the lake to be. She sculled with long, slow strokes down toward the bottom, where the light was changing color. Eventually, as I got closer, I could see the source of the colored light: it was Lexi’s front door, sunk into the earth. She was mov
ing through the beams of luminous water, toward it. I could see the shadows of figures behind the glass, the red glass and the blue.
I couldn’t go any deeper. My breath was almost gone. I stopped swimming and allowed the water to pull me up. When I broke the surface, I could hear the giant clock smacking out the hour. It was, finally, two a.m.
The frost was gone from the forest floor. Dad was close to where I had left him, but he looked scared.
“Daniel, you’ve got to stay with me now, OK? I can’t have you running off again.”
He took me by the shoulders and examined me. “What’s that?” he said, looking down at my bloodstained T-shirt. “Are you cut? Did he cut you?”
“No,” I said. I lifted the T-shirt to reveal the smooth, unblemished skin beneath. All the wounds were gone, and I knew they were gone for good. “It must be his blood, or something.”
“Where’s the lass?” he said.
“Couldn’t find her,” I said.
“There’s something weird going on here. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing. It’s —”
“That fella I hit,” Dad said. He looked disturbed, afraid to say it. “He’s gone.”
I nodded.
“No, Daniel. You don’t understand. He didn’t get up and run off. He just, well. It’s stupid. He just . . .”
“Vanished.”
“Aye,” Dad said. He glanced about him at the stern uniformity of the pine trunks. “I tell you what. I’m not happy with this. I’m not happy with this, at all.”
“Did he disappear around two o’clock? When the gongs sounded, over at the festival?” I asked.
“Dead-on,” Dad said.
“Dead-on,” I said quietly. “Listen, Dad. It’s best if you don’t mention any of this to the people from Leisure World.”
“It’s too late. I’ve already called them.”
I was tired of running away, and it didn’t matter to me what some fool from a sports camp said about my mental health. Dad was a bit more wary of speaking to the officials, after what he had done, but I think part of him just wanted to get back to civilization. We saw the white beams of their flashlights raking the forest well before we emerged onto the all-weather fields. The Leisure World vans were soon joined by a couple of police cars, and we were taken into a small room in the huge administrative building. It was a strange place to be at two thirty in the morning, with the ghostly emptiness of an office at night.
