The floor gripped at my feet as I moved over its stickiness. I wove through the chatting groups in search of Caroline and a replenishment of coke. The table, once neat, now had puddles of sticky liquids, many half-full and empty bottles, and plates of nearly finished food dumped everywhere. One had a large slice of Mum’s pudding in the centre, surrounded by pristine china. The only problem – a cigarette had crash landed in the meringue layer. I found a more-or-less clean beaker and topped up with nearly fizzy coke. Caroline wasn’t in the room.
As I made my way out, a couple of people said, “Great drumming.” I smiled but felt all lopsided. I hadn’t meant to just dump Caroline, who’d clearly wanted to talk. Maybe she’d gone home. Not often a pretty girl wanted to talk to me and I’d gone off to produce a riff on some drums.
I worked my way up the stairs once more, past the cityscapes with their languid ladies in glorious black and white. One room had the door wide open and I could see people sitting inside. I hovered by the entrance, sipping my coke and scanning the room for Bishops. I didn’t spot Charles, but glimpsed Caroline talking with Sebastian and another boy I didn’t recognise. Near the fireplace, complete with roaring log fire, sat a woman. Her long legs were tucked to one side of her armchair and she wore a black dress with silver markings on the shoulder. Her hair, blonde, had been beaten and burnished into brilliance and cascaded in curls down to her shoulders. She extended a slim white arm towards Lucian. He leant over and said something to her, revealing Juliette standing beside him.
I wondered if I had the nerve to go over to Caroline. I didn’t really know Seb and thought I might get a chilly reception. I took a breath and entered.
“Rhory!”
Juliette beckoned from near the fireplace.
“Rhory, you should meet Victoria. She’s Seb and Jolyon’s auntie. She’s the policewoman here tonight.”
The blonde lady extended her hand to me now. A black ring, set in silver, flashed. I took her hand and she smiled, looking deep into my eyes.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Rhory. I should point out I’m no policewoman. More of a friendly adult just here to be on hand if needed. I thought I’d be watching TV quietly but I’ve had great fun talking to your sister. I can see why Lucian is besotted.”
Lucian struck a pose of refined coolness, his lips slightly pursed. His hand moved to Juliette’s waist.
“I think that Lucian just wants help with his English essays, actually,” said Juliette, arching her eyebrows and pulling away from Mr Boy-Band.
“Come on, Jules, we need to set up next door. It’s just the right sort of night to explore the other side,” said Lucian. I’d no idea what he meant. Juliette half-winked at me as she went past.
At the door, Lucian turned, and said, “We may need you in a bit, Rhory.”
I was no wiser as to what they were up to or why I might be needed. I really wanted to have a quiet chat with Caroline. Seb had left the room with Lucian, and Caroline now sat in an armchair on her own, flipping through the pages of a magazine.
I crossed over and said, “Hi!”
She looked up from her magazine but didn’t say anything.
“I got waylaid earlier,” I said. “Do you know they have a full drum set upstairs?”
Caroline shook her head.
“I just had to have a go. I’ve not had my hands on a proper set of drums for about two years. Mum just wouldn’t let me have all that kit in the bedroom. They’ve even got a kettle drum up there.”
“I didn’t know you played the drums.”
“I’ve only got bongo drums at home. They’re a great way of releasing tension after a tough day at school.”
Caroline nodded, and smiled slightly. I took this as a sign of peace and sat down cross-legged at the side of her chair.
“You saw me as well, didn’t you?”
“No.” I looked up at her. “I searched for you downstairs and in the kitchen. I didn’t realise you’d come upstairs.”
Caroline poked me in the shoulder. She leaned forward. “In the tower room. I saw you in my dream, but I think you saw me too.”
I shook my head slightly. I didn’t know how to respond. I really didn’t know anything about Caroline.
“I think it’s real. I mean the tower. I think it’s real, and I think I know where it is. I’m just not sure about when. I mean when I’ve been there, always in a kind of dream, I’ve never thought to ask what year it was. It’s more like I’m part of someone else’s life that they’re living, and I can see what they’re doing as though I’m them.”
Caroline looked at me and her eyes seemed to be watching from far, far away. I felt that Ariane held me in her gaze in the upstairs lounge of the big house. A log shifted in the fireplace and a spray of sparks danced above the fireguard. The blonde lady with the black earrings stared at us. I felt an icicle drop inside my stomach.
Caroline poked my shoulder once more. “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “I don’t know how I got there. One moment I was crossing the park and the next I found myself in that tower room. You … well not you, but a girl who looked very like you, who looks very like you, sat at that strange table.”
Caroline smiled. “At least I’m not going crazy. Or if I am, I’m not on my own.” She closed the magazine and leant over to put it on a pile of other glossy journals on the table next to her.
“I hear her voice sometimes. Ariane’s voice.” She turned back to me and touched my shoulder. “Believe it or not, Rhory, she spoke to me when I first saw you, and my dad gave you a lift. But I knew before that. I knew when Natasha told me about you.”
Everything in the room felt less and less real. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a cat moving. I looked around and caught the gaze of the blonde lady by the fire.
“Rhory, they’re going to want you to do something. It’ll put you in danger. It’ll put all of us in danger.”
I looked back at Caroline and again sensed it was Ariane who spoke.
“Can I borrow this handsome fellow for a moment?” Lucian stood just behind me with his most winning smile directed at Caroline. “Juliette asked me to fetch you. We need your special skills.”
Lucian extended his hand down and helped me to my feet. “I’ll only take him for a few minutes, then you can have him back.”
Caroline leaned back in the armchair. Her eyes were fixed on Lucian, her mouth a tight line. She shook her head, but Lucian had me by the arm and chatted coaxingly in my ear.
Ouija Board
The bed in the room next door rested flush against the far wall, allowing a low oval table of polished wood to dominate the centre of the room. Arranged near it were various cushions. Candles dotted around the room provided the only illumination and the shadows of the young people gathered there danced on the wallpaper. Above the unlit fireplace a panther grasped the branch of a bleached-white wood tree, and surveyed the room through yellow eyes. Not a picture I would choose to have in my bedroom.
On the table, letters from a Scrabble lay in two neat half-circles, in alphabetical order. In the gaps between the plastic letters two pieces of paper stated ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
“You could sit here if you want, Rhory,” said Lucian, indicating a cushion on the far side of the table.
“That makes sense,” said Jolyon. “He can be next to me.”
“I’ll just sit here then,” said Juliette. She took up a place at the narrower end of the oval table. Lucian sat down next and a girl I had not seen before took the final cushion.
“So how do we do this then?” said Lucian. “What’s the form, Magda?”
The girl sitting opposite to Juliette looked around at each of us. Her thick dark hair did not obey the usual rules and extended from her head in odd directions. She had a short black skirt covering thick stretch pants, also black. Her feet were bare, and in the candlelight her toenails also looked like small black talons. She had a silver ring round one of the big toes. A pendant hung from a sil
ver chain at her neck, and a stone was clasped by four tiny silver hands. The candlelight caused the stone to flicker and glow with a dull purplish light.
“It’s simple really. One of us asks a question, and then we wait. If we are lucky a spirit will guide our fingers, and the answer will be spelt out,” said Magda.
She reached under the table and placed a crystal tumbler upside-down in the middle, between all the letters. “Now,” she said, “we all put our right fingertip onto the base of the glass.”
We did this and shifted our position on the cushions until we felt comfortable.
“All right,” said Magda. “I will ask the first few questions and we’ll see what happens.”
She turned to another girl, with long brown hair, sitting nearby on the edge of the bed, and instructed her to write down the letters that the glass moved to.
“None of you are to push the glass. Understand? If you push the glass towards a particular letter we will all feel it. We will know someone is cheating. It’s best just to keep your finger very light and let the spirit do the moving.”
I’d no idea what she was talking about and felt quite nervous. Juliette grinned, her eyes on Lucian. She didn’t look across at me.
“First question. Are you there?” Magda paused. “Do you wish to speak to us?”
The tumbler started moving. I knew I wasn’t pushing it. I even eased the pressure of my finger almost off the glass. The glass still moved. It drifted around within the plastic letters and then, turbo-charged, it shot across towards one of the bits of paper.
“YES!” several people said at once.
“Great,” said Magda. “Good evening, and thank you for talking to us.”
I wondered if everyone was having a joke at my expense. Had Juliette and Lucian set this all up?
Someone behind me said, “Why don’t we ask which horse is going to win the Derby?”
“No, they don’t answer questions like that. We have to ask questions that are important to us. Then we will get proper answers,” said Lucian.
“Okay,” said Seb. “Who was it who really killed President Kennedy?”
Magda looked at him, her face betraying nothing. The glass started to move slowly at first, and then zigzagged between letters so quickly it was hard for the girl writing down each one not to make a mistake.
The boy, interested in winning at a betting shop, leaned over the table and said each letter in turn. “T–H–A–D–I–S–B–E–Y–O–N…”
It happened so fast, I couldn’t work out if it made sense or was just gibberish. The glass stopped moving.
“Cool,” said the girl on the bed. “Seriously cool.” She tapped her pencil on the pad where she had scribbled down the letters. “Look, it says ‘Thad is beyond’.”
“Thad? Who is Thad?” said a voice behind me.
“I think,” said Magda, “that you wrote down D instead of T. They sound really similar.”
The glass started to move again spelling out more letters Y–O–U–R–P–A…
When it came to a standstill, the girl with the notebook sat for a few moments, her hair hiding her face. She looked up.
“Now it says, ‘That is beyond your pay grade’! That’s kind of creepy isn’t it?”
The betting boy said, “Come on, do you expect us to believe that? One of you is pushing the glass around.”
“No! No one is pushing the glass around,” said Juliette, looking quite indignant.
“We are just resting the tip of our fingers so lightly on the top of the glass, no one could be pushing it,” said Julian.
Magda raised her left hand and looked around at the people standing near us. Her eyes were cold and she frowned slightly. “Come on, guys, this is serious. If you don’t believe it that’s fine. But don’t hang around here spoiling the atmosphere. We’ve made a great connection and I don’t wish to lose it. If you want to stay watching that’s fine. Just keep quiet. All right?”
Somebody left the room, but those who stayed just nodded. Magda was one of those people you didn’t contradict. I shifted my position on my cushion, to deal with my aching knees.
Magda then asked a question that sent a jolt of fear into my stomach. “What is meant by pathways of time?”
The tumbler started to move rapidly, and Juliette spelt out the letters the glass touched. I felt as though the edges of my body were being rubbed out by some giant eraser. I no longer belonged completely in the bedroom. I was slowly dissolving. The table, the letters and the glass moving around became somewhere far and distant. I stood before a small hill with trees off to my right and rough pastureland on my left. My finger kept moving on the top of the glass and I could hear Juliette’s voice from a great distance. But I could no longer remember what that was all about. I needed to climb to the top of the low hill. Above my head clouds raced over the night sky, revealing and obscuring the moon.
The Three Women
My feet scraped on gravel. I followed the track towards the hill. Something snorted. Behind me the field I’d been standing in gave way to scrub and low trees, but I could make out nothing in the darkness. Again, a huff of breath from further back on the track. I crouched down. The moon came out from behind a cloud and a metallic glint revealed something approaching. I sensed, rather than saw, a figure on a dark horse. The man, his face partially hidden by a dark hood, rode up to me with his sword drawn. Blond hair shone in the moonlight. A face I knew half-smiled at me.
“Julian,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
The moonlight had shown enough of his face, and I was looking at a person who appeared the exact double of the Julian who was back in Hammerford. The man threw back his hood. His hair, longer than Julian’s, moved in the breeze. On the right side of his head he had a long thin plait dropping over his cheek. He didn’t speak, but pointed with his sword towards the top of the hill. The other, younger, Julian said something indistinct and far away and I couldn’t make out the words.
I had feelings, but I couldn’t tell what they were. My body floated rather than walked to the top of the hill. The horse snorted again and whinnied. A little way down the hill, the track I stood on led to a crossroads. Three figures stood where the two roads met, staring up at me.
I could feel something in my stomach being dragged towards them. They each carried a lantern which cast a flickering light on them, and on the ground around them. As I drew closer, they began a strange dance, with their backs towards each other, forming a small circle facing outwards.
Icy, paralysing fear worked a jagged path through me when I recognised Magda, and also the blonde woman I’d seen earlier that evening. All three women were dressed in long flowing pale robes that swayed in the moonlight. The third woman, bigger than the other two, had her back to me, but as they moved, her face, crowned with thick, dark-red hair, came into view. The last time I’d seen her I’d been in ancient Egypt, and she’d been trying to destroy me. If her eyes could speak they would have said ‘Gotcha’. Her mouth formed a tight line of triumph. I felt the damp heat of the horse’s breath as it drifted past me.
Some distance from the women, a leafless tree scarred by an ancient lightning strike stood out in the moonlight and watched over the women, a brooding presence of sepulchral white. A silvery feline shape I’d come across before flowed along one of the skeleton-like branches of the dead tree. The eyes of this mercurial cat held the same cruel joy that I could see in the faces of the three dancing women. The cat stretched and let out a mewling cry that sucked all the strength out of me. I knew if I reached the crossroads I was lost. Part of me would never truly return to that room somewhere in another universe, where I sat with my sister and her friends.
The three women stopped dancing and beckoned to me. Their eyes, hidden from the moonlight, were sockets of deep gloom. I fell slowly towards them.
“She’s collapsed.”
A great distance from me, my fingertip rested on cold glass. People shouting squeezed into my awareness and then melted away
.
The three women frowned and the cat, as big as a small leopard, jumped down from the tree. The man on the horse trotted forward and I felt something hard jab me under my right shoulder blade.
“She’s just lying on the floor. She fell over and is twitching.”
Three women gestured more urgently and the fat lady looked as though she might explode with fury.
“Just turn and walk away.”
I knew that voice. A girl I liked.
“Walk back up the hill, ignore everything else.”
Warmth and a little feeling flowed back into my limbs, and I turned to face the horse. Julian, if it was Julian, no longer looked solid. His sword had become a pale vapour glowing slightly in the moonlight. The horse resolved itself into shadows and nothingness. I walked right through the spot where he had been sitting so proudly only moments before. The cries of the women behind me clutched once more at my stomach and curled snakelike around my throat.
“Keep walking,” said Caroline.
Now I recognised the voice. Charles’s sister, who’d not wanted me to go with Julian.
I strode up the hill and the sounds of the women behind me became faint and plaintive.
I’d never seen Juliette look so frightened. She stood, holding the glass clutched tight in her hands, staring at Magda. Julian looked at me, a slight smile on his face and his eyebrows raised with an unspoken question.
Magda lurched to her feet, jarring the table and knocking the plastic Scrabble letters all over the place.
“You’re not serious.” She said this pointing at Juliette, while her eyes swept the room, ending up resting on me like searchlights in a prison yard.
“What’s happened?” said the longhaired girl on the bed.
Someone silhouetted in the doorway responded, “A girl has collapsed. She’s lying on the floor next door. She’s twitching and shaking.”
Time Knot Page 7
