by Mark Morris
Sometimes I used the heart for fun – to meet people, to be present at historical events (and sometimes to be absent from historical events). I saw the Beatles’ first gig at Litherland Town Hall on 5th January 1961, with Pete Best on drums. I saw the Sex Pistols’ last gig at Winterland in San Francisco on January 14th 1978, at the end of which Johnny Rotten slumped on the stage and uttered the now immortal line, ‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’
Just under a year earlier, in February 1977, I toasted my own birth. I wasn’t present, of course, though Kate was with me on the night I was born. We stood outside the hospital and I told her what was happening inside, and then we popped over to a nearby boozer to wet the baby’s head.
Kate, needless to say, had a nomadic childhood, and although she didn’t accompany me on all my little jaunts (it would have become too disorientating and disruptive for her), she did adapt quickly to the various time periods we found ourselves in. She learned so much too. With the extra mental stimulation that was part and parcel of her upbringing, she not only quickly shrugged off the learning difficulties she’d been born with, but soon superseded her classmates in terms of intelligence and maturity. When I finally installed her in 2010s London, so that she could aid my younger self during his difficult early days after procuring the heart, she was more than ready. Through my careful manipulation – a process far too complex and, frankly, boring to go into here – she had already inveigled her way into Benny’s affections. As far as he was concerned her name was Clover Monroe, and she was a vicar’s daughter from Kent.
Like I say, it was complicated. If I had time I’d draw you a flow chart – but thankfully I don’t.
As for Lyn, she became what I’d always hoped she’d become before the Dark Man got to her: the love of my life, and a fantastic mother to Kate. With the help of the heart, she was able to finally and irrevocably cast out her demons, and regain her mental and physical health.
She left hospital and came home to live with Kate and me in Ranskill Gardens in June 2013, just before her thirty-third birthday. When I became Barnaby McCallum she and Kate both travelled back in time with me, and then Lyn decided she liked it so much that she subsequently hardly ever accompanied me on my trips back to the future. Instead she stayed (most of the time with Kate, apart from on those occasions when I had to take Kate with me in order to play the vicar’s daughter and inveigle her way into Benny’s affections) in the house – and the time period – in which we’d made our home. We lived out our lives together through the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and we were as happy as I think three, and then two people can be (though even when Clover flew the nest in order to establish her life in the 2010s, I made sure she popped back frequently to visit Lyn). Although I was away quite a bit – sometimes for months at a time – as far as Lyn was concerned we were barely apart, as wherever I went I always made sure that I timed my return to only a few minutes after I’d left. She died in 1992 at the age of eighty-two, and although it broke my heart, it comforted me to think that somewhere in London was a twelve-year-old Lyn, with seventy years of mostly happy life in front of her.
As for Candice and Hope, I’ve used the heart to stay in their lives beyond this point, to be as good a dad as I can manage to one and a surrogate uncle to the other. They’re both great girls, and although they’ve suffered the usual bumps and bruises that most of us endure on this rocky road through life, they were both doing okay the last time I saw them.
And that’s about it, I think. That pretty much brings us full circle.
Life is a funny old thing, especially when you live it outside the restrictions of linear time. You achieve a kind of immortality – or, looking at it another way, you die over and over.
It’s getting late now, edging towards 11 p.m. It’s quiet outside on Bellwater Drive, and the house – aside from this lamp I’m using to write by – is dark. My younger self, who I know is sick with worry after what he thinks is the abduction of his (our) youngest daughter, will be leaving Incognito in a few minutes. In less than an hour he’ll be here to steal the obsidian heart, in the hope that he can use it to procure Kate’s release.
Soon I’ll go downstairs, place the heart under the glass dome on the sideboard, and then sit quietly in my chair in the shadows and wait for him to arrive.
Thinking of how distraught he’ll be after he kills me makes me feel bad, but at the same time, despite knowing what he has to go through, I can’t help feeling envious of him. In the years to come he’ll encounter horror, and heartbreak, and terrible hardship, and more than his share of crippling physical pain, but he’ll also experience wonder beyond his imagining, and excitement, and unbounded happiness, and deep, abiding love.
Life is an adventure. It is there to be lived and relished. And although mine is almost over now, at the same time, through him, I know it will go on.
Because time is forever.
And stories never end.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this trilogy (and in particular working out all the time travel shenanigans) has been a long, complex and mind-warping endeavour, and thanks must go to my wife Nel Whatmore and my two gorgeous children David and Polly for their incredible love, support and sympathy, to my agent John Jarrold and my editor Cath Trechman for their suggestions and enthusiasm (Cath is, without doubt, the best and most insightful editor I have ever had the pleasure to work with), and to my father-in-law Trevor Whatmore and his friends at Toc H in Walsall for their information, suggestions and advice regarding the First World War. Thanks again too to Johnny Mains for lending me his book-lined study to write in for a few days, to Christopher Golden (and family) and Jim Moore for looking after me during my recent trip to the USA, and to everyone at NECon for making me feel so welcome. There are literally dozens and dozens of other people who have helped in so many different ways during the writing of this trilogy, who are far too numerous to name – thank you all. And finally, thank you to those readers who have contacted me via Facebook and Twitter to express their enthusiasm and excitement for the ongoing adventures (now ended) of Alex Locke and Clover Monroe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Morris has written over twenty-five novels, among which are Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. He is also the author of two short story collections, Close to the Bone and Long Shadows, Nightmare Light, and several novellas. His short fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays by genre luminaries for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award, its follow-up Cinema Futura, and two volumes of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories. His script work includes audio dramas for Big Finish Productions’ Doctor Who and Jago & Litefoot ranges, and also for Bafflegab’s Hammer Chillers series, and his recently published work includes an updated novelisation of the 1971 Hammer movie Vampire Circus, the official movie tie-in novelisation of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and the Shirley Jackson Award nominated novella It Sustains for Earthling Publications.
Follow him on Twitter @MarkMorris10
www.markmorrisfiction.com
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