Time and Again

by Rob Childs

  Chris was taken aback. ‘Sorry?’ he said, catching his twin’s eye. He hadn’t even been listening to the science-fiction story about people travelling through time and space. He simply wanted to leave the room.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Er…’ he faltered. ‘No, I’m sure it is.’

  ‘You’re sure it is?’ repeated Mr Samuels. ‘And why are you so sure?’

  Becky shot Chris a warning look, fearing what he might blurt out, but she needn’t have worried. Chris was too concerned about what Luke might be doing to want to be delayed by a long discussion.

  ‘Well, I just think it must be,’ he said. ‘I mean…’

  Chris never had the chance to say what he might have meant. ‘Ow!’ he winced, glaring at Luke, who had kicked him on the knee beneath their table. ‘Pack it in, will you?’

  For once, Luke wasn’t smirking. His face had turned deathly pale.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Chris grunted, not really concerned.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luke murmured. ‘Everything’s gone weird – well weird…’

  ‘You’re well weird to start with,’ Chris told him and returned to his project work.

  Luke flicked a pencil at him. ‘Look, Jacko, I want to know what’s going on here. Don’t mess me around.’

  Chris stared at him. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

  Luke held out the Timewatch. ‘I’m on about this thing.’

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ Chris gasped. ‘Give it back.’

  ‘Not till you tell me what’s going on,’ he refused. ‘I just pressed this red button and then suddenly found myself back here. It’s only two o’clock – but it should be nearly home time now.’

  Chris could understand Luke’s confusion. He’d felt the same way himself the first time he had used the Timewatch, but he had no sympathy for him.

  ‘That’s twice you’ve pinched that watch,’ he hissed, making a grab for it.

  Luke was too quick and there was a scuffle as Chris leant over the table and tried to take it back by force.

  ‘Stop it, you two, at once!’ shouted Mr Samuels. ‘Come here.’

  Tempted though Chris was, as he desperately wanted the watch, he did not admit the cause of their latest dispute. The last thing he needed was for his teacher to know about the watch as well. If Mr Samuels discovered its special powers, Chris would probably never see it again. Both boys remained silent and finally, in frustration, the teacher sent them to sit in opposite corners of the room.

  ‘Stay behind after school,’ Mr Samuels told them, ‘and we’ll sort out this business then.’

  When the teacher announced the spelling test, only one pupil was not caught by surprise. Sitting alone, Luke had slowly come to realise what must have happened – however weird it was – and used the situation to his own advantage. Knowing which words had come up in the test before, he checked in a dictionary and tried to commit them to memory.

  Mr Samuels was astonished by Luke’s result. The boy had only two words wrong and he was not near enough to anybody to have copied them. ‘This is remarkable, Luke,’ he said. ‘It shows what you are capable of when you put your mind to it. Perhaps you should sit by yourself more often.’

  Luke’s grin became even wider when Chris had to admit that he had spelt only half of the words right.

  ‘A pity it’s not had the same effect on you, Christopher,’ said Mr Samuels, frowning at him over his spectacles.

  Later on, in the book corner, when the teacher had finished reading the time-travel story, he asked the class a question:

  ‘How many of you would like to travel back in time, if you had the chance?’

  Most of the hands went up, including Luke’s, which was the highest.

  ‘Right, Luke,’ said Mr Samuels, pleased to see some enthusiasm from him for a change. ‘And just where might you like to go back to?’

  ‘Not bothered,’ Luke said, grinning. ‘Anywhere but here.’

  The children laughed, but the teacher was not amused.

  ‘And do you think that time travel might ever be possible?’ he persisted.

  ‘It already is,’ Luke claimed and he brandished the Timewatch in the air, much to the twins’ horror. ‘And I’ll prove it – look!’

  Click!

  Unfortunately for Luke, he did not know that the same hour could not be repeated twice. He had made a great show of pressing the red button, but nothing happened. He clicked it again – and again – but they were still all sitting together in the book corner, staring at him as if he were mad.

  ‘Yes, Luke, very theatrical,’ the teacher drawled, unimpressed by the boy’s antics. ‘Perhaps we can talk about that nonsense after school, too.’

  Luke slumped back against a bookcase, his face almost as red as the button on the Timewatch.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Out of Time

  ‘So how are we going to get the watch back off Luke?’ Becky voiced the question that Chris had wrestled with all the way home, after his ticking off by Mr Samuels, but he was still no nearer an answer.

  ‘Dunno,’ he muttered. ‘He won’t just give it back, that’s for sure. He laughed at me when I asked for it outside school, and then he ran off.’

  ‘What did Sammy say about the watch?’

  ‘Not a lot. He didn’t even ask to see it, fortunately,’ Chris explained. ‘He wanted to know whose it was and when Luke told him he’d borrowed it from his grandad for the day, that was it. He just told him not to bring it back into school.’

  ‘I wonder when Luke will use the watch again,’ Becky said. ‘And what he’ll do?’

  ‘First bit’s easy – as soon as he can,’ Chris replied. ‘But as for what he’ll get up to – your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Right, come on. Let’s go and find him,’ she said, whistling for Tan to join them. ‘Wherever he is.’

  Luke was still at home, in fact, almost the last place the twins thought of checking. They were sure that he would be out and about, looking for mischief.

  Luke had so far resisted the urge to try the red button again, suspecting that, if it worked, he might find himself suffering a repeat of his lecture from Mr Samuels. Nor did he dare press any of the other buttons around the perimeter of the watch, just in case.

  ‘Too risky. Anything might happen,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll wait a bit longer.’

  Luke watched television for a while till he grew bored and then went into the garden to kick a ball about. It was only when a stray shot flew over the fence and broke a window in next-door’s greenhouse that he decided to act – especially as their neighbour had come storming out of the house.

  Click!

  After a moment’s blurred vision and dizziness, it seemed as though the world around him had undergone an instant scene change. He found himself back in the market square, where he had briefly been at four o’clock on his way home – exactly one hour ago.

  ‘Well, at least that window’s still in one piece, I guess,’ he mused.

  Luke sat on the stone steps of the statue that dominated the centre of the busy market square, wondering what to do next. That particular problem was solved by the arrival of Butch, but it only led to a far more serious one.

  ‘What was all that nonsense in class with the watch?’ asked Butch, slumping down alongside him. ‘You made yourself look a right idiot.’

  Luke pulled a face. He took the watch from his coat pocket and dangled it from the chain, swinging it back and forth in front of Butch’s face as if trying to hypnotise him. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he demanded.

  Butch grinned. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, if you click the red button, this watch really does send you back in time.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ said Butch, humouring him. ‘How far?’

  ‘One hour.’

  ‘One hour!’ chortled Butch, unimpressed. ‘Is that the best you can do – one measly hour?’

  ‘Well, it’s a start,’ said Luke with
a shrug. ‘Once I get the hang of it, bet I’ll be able to go back weeks – or even years.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Butch snorted. ‘Give it here.’ He snatched the watch and began jabbing at the red button repeatedly. ‘Nothing’s happened, has it?’ he scoffed. ‘Nothing’s changed at all.’

  But something had happened. The button had stuck down. Butch tossed the watch back to Luke and stood up to leave.

  ‘You’ve gone and broke it,’ Luke wailed, desperately trying to free the button.

  ‘Tough! I’m off.’

  Butch left the market and bumped into the twins just beyond the square.

  ‘You haven’t seen Luke by any chance, have you?’ asked Chris.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ Butch replied, bending to fuss Tan. ‘I’ve just been with him at the statue. The wally was still trying to make out that watch is some kind of time machine!’

  ‘Does he have it with him?’ asked Becky.

  ‘Yeah – not much use now, though,’ Butch chuckled. ‘It’s bust.’

  ‘Bust!’ exclaimed Chris.

  ‘The red button’s jammed,’ he told them with a laugh, moving off. ‘Serves him right, if you ask me. See ya!’

  The twins looked at each other in alarm and hurried into the square. There was no sign of Luke, but they could tell where he’d been.

  A fruit stall had been tipped up, causing apples and oranges to topple all over the ground, and another trader was complaining loudly that a boy had just dashed by and grabbed a handful of computer disks off his stall.

  ‘Must be Luke,’ said Chris. ‘Where do you reckon he’s gone now?’

  ‘Let’s try the fields,’ Becky suggested. ‘He might have run off there.’

  To their dismay, the fields were deserted, but they extended the search along by the river until they passed a clump of trees. Chris was about to throw a stick for Tan to fetch when Becky gave a cry.

  ‘There he is!’ She was pointing towards the railway line and Chris spotted Luke, too. He was climbing over the fence on the opposite side of the track and then disappeared into an area of woodland. Chris seized Tan’s collar to attach her lead while Becky set off on the chase, sprinting through the long grass and leaving them both well behind.

  As Becky neared the railway, she saw what Luke had done and hesitated, turning to shout back to her brother. ‘He’s put a big branch on the line.’

  Hardly were the words out of her mouth when they heard the loud siren of a train, a warning to anybody who might be near where the footpath crossed the single line. Trains along this stretch of track were few and far between, but Luke must have known that one was due.

  Only someone of Becky’s speed and agility would have been able to reach the crossing before the train. She vauleted the stile over the fence and scrunched to a halt in the gravel by the track, her heart pounding. With the train closing rapidly upon her, its noise filling her senses, she grabbed hold of the heavy branch and pulled…

  Chris was still too far away to help and the long, rattling line of trucks blocked his view of the crossing point, drowning Tan’s barks and his own desperate cries.

  ‘Becky!’ he screamed. ‘Becky!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Time Loop

  Chris stared in horror over the stile as the wagons clanked by, hardly daring to think of what he might see when they had all gone past.

  The sight was the one he dreaded. His sister was sprawled against the opposite fence, face down, lying very still.

  ‘Becky!’ he cried again.

  To his huge relief, she slowly rolled over and sat up, her face smeared with dirt.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she croaked and then managed a lopsided grin. ‘What kept you, little brother?’

  Chris shook his head in bewilderment at her nerve. ‘That was a stupid thing to go and do,’ he told her when he and Tan had crossed the track. ‘You could’ve got yourself killed.’

  Becky scrambled to her feet, if only to escape further face-licking from Tan. ‘I know. I realise that now – sorry,’ she said, feeling a little weak at the knees. ‘Just acted on impulse.’

  ‘It wasn’t even a passenger train.’

  ‘Might have been,’ she retorted. ‘At least I saved the driver from getting hurt, if the train had been derailed.’

  ‘True enough,’ Chris admitted. ‘Right, so let’s get hold of Luke before he tries anything else like that.’

  ‘Why would he do such a thing?’ Becky said as they set off towards the wood where Luke had made his escape. ‘It doesn’t make any sense – even for him.’

  There was no escape for Luke, however, from his living nightmare. With the red button jammed, he had found himself trapped in a time loop, having to keep repeating the same hour, if not the same actions. Every time the little gold arrow completed a circuit of the dial, it began to move slowly round all over again.

  By the third such loop, Luke was becoming so desperate that he had even felt tempted to stand on the line in front of the train. He panicked, though, when he heard Becky’s shout and hauled the branch onto it instead.

  Luke had already vented his anger and frustration in many ways. Returning to school, he scratched Mr Samuels’s car with a nail, stole a football from the sports store – which he soon lost by kicking it up onto the roof – tipped over waste bins and smashed several classroom windows.

  ‘Catch me if you can!’ he yelled when the caretaker appeared on the scene – and then ran off, just in case the man gave chase.

  The twins were finding Luke elusive, too, picking up his haphazard trail of vandalism in and around the village. They had no idea that he was continually on rewind and kept returning to various places…

  …like the woodland, where he snapped lots of newly planted saplings…

  …like the farm, where he let pigs and hens out into the yard…

  …like the recreation ground, where he used school chalk to scrawl some graffiti on the wall of the changing hut…

  LUKE WOZ ERE – AGEN!!!

  …and like the new housing estate, where he damaged doors, flowers, trees, cars and more windows…

  Finally, even Luke tired of breaking things. He went to sit by the river for a while to have a bit of a think.

  ‘Perhaps none of it really happened,’ he mused, trying to comfort himself that each extra hour served to erase what he had done before. ‘Just so long as I don’t get nabbed before I get out of this mess – if I ever do.’

  Luke began to throw stones into the water, using a group of ducks as targets, and failed to hear the twins sneak up behind him.

  ‘Got you at last!’ Chris cried out, making Luke jump to his feet in alarm.

  ‘What you doing here?’ he grunted, in a vain effort to act cool.

  ‘More like what were you doing back there on the railway line?’ said Becky. ‘You almost caused a train crash.’

  Luke shrugged. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Yeah, saw you play the big hero. What do you want?’

  ‘The watch,’ she stated simply.

  Luke shrugged again. ‘It’s bust.’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ said Chris. ‘Butch told us. But we still want it back.’

  Luke took the watch from his coat pocket and glared at it. ‘Thanks to Butch, I’m stuck in a kind of time warp – y’know, like in that story old Sammy was reading to us,’ he said, struggling now to hold back his tears in front of the twins. ‘There’s no way out. I’m just going round in circles.’

  In a fit of temper, Luke chucked the watch at a duck on the bank, but his aim was wild and the watch flew into the river. ‘You want it – you fetch it!’ he cried.

  At the word fetch Tan darted away, as if after a stick, and plunged into the shallow water.

  ‘Good girl!’ Becky encouraged her when the dog seemed to be on the point of giving up the search. ‘Fetch. Where is it?’

  A few moments later, Tan’s head bobbed beneath the surface and reappeared with the watch dangling from her mouth
by the chain.

  ‘Good girl!’ Becky praised her again. ‘Come!’

  Tan doggie paddled to the bank, climbed out and shook herself vigorously – spraying Luke with water – before dropping the watch at Chris’s feet.

  Chris picked it up and peered at the tiny, glowing arrow. ‘Must be waterproof. It still seems to be working,’ he said, then pressed the red button, which refused to budge. ‘Even if this isn’t.’

  ‘What time do you reach before you slip back?’ Becky asked Luke.

  ‘Five o’clock,’ he muttered.

  Becky glanced at her wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly that now,’ she told Chris. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Dunno exactly – but we’ve got to do something.’

  He seemed to come to a decision and went to the water’s edge, knelt down and scooped up a large stone from the river bed.

  Luke suddenly realised what Chris had in mind. ‘No! Don’t, Jacko!’ he yelled. ‘You don’t know what…’

  Too late. Chris’s hand came down hard, slamming the stone onto the Timewatch and breaking its glass front. The gold arrow buckled and the red button snapped back up into place.

  ‘You nutter, Jacko!’ Luke cried. ‘Look what you’ve gone and done!’

  ‘Just shut up and wait!’ Chris told him. ‘Then we’ll see what I’ve done.’

  The three of them seemed to be holding their breath and Tan wandered away to start rolling in the grass to dry her fur. After what seemed an age, the church clock began to strike the hour. They almost counted the bongs out loud.

  ‘Right, that’s five,’ Chris said. ‘So I reckon if anything was going to happen, Luke, you’d have been back in the market square again by now. You’re free at last.’

  Luke let out a sigh of relief. ‘Thought about smashing the watch myself, but I didn’t dare,’ he admitted.

  ‘I don’t think I’d have dared either, if it’d been me,’ Chris replied honestly. ‘It just seemed the only thing to do.’

  They stared at the broken watch on the ground.

  ‘So what do we do with it now?’ Luke asked. ‘Chuck it back in the water?’