Paralysis Paradox (Time Travel Through Past Lives Adventure Series Book 1) (8 page)

‘What on earth have you been up to, son?’

‘There was a fire at Swanshurst Farm. Last night. Guess I got a bit too close to it.’

‘You must have got bloody close to it to get covered in soot like that, Charlie,’ he said as he washed his razor and wiped it carefully on his towel.

I lathered my face with soap and scrubbed. ‘It was windy, Pa. There was smoke and ash blowing all over the place.’

I tried to appear as nonchalant as possible and hope he’d leave it at that. Ma had other ideas, however. She appeared at the back door like an angry bumblebee—small and round and buzzing furiously.

‘Look at my bedding, you wretched boy!’ she shrieked. ‘I’ve a good mind to make you wash all this yourself!’ She thrust the sheets, filthy with soot and brown marks that could have been mud or dried blood, under my nose, and turned to Pa indignantly.

‘What do you say, William? Look at these sheets!’

‘You can forget your day off next Sunday, Charlie. You’ll spend it at home doing whatever jobs your mother needs you for.’

Satisfied, Ma walked off. I was secretly relieved. I may be losing my precious time off, but if there were no more awkward questions it was worth it. I finished washing and threw the dirty water away, watching the evidence of my night’s activities disappear down the drain. I was exhausted and had a nagging pain in my back, no doubt a pulled muscle or a bruise from all that clambering around at the farmhouse. I could have done with another hour or two in bed, but unlike Vicky I never had the luxury of a lie-in.

I dressed in my work clothes and then sat next to Pa in the warm kitchen, eating the bread and dripping Ma made me for breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, but there was a hard day’s work ahead of me and I would need my strength. I still felt weary. I knew I should be on my way to work by now—it was my job to open up the workshop and Pa would be having a go at me any moment—but I felt consumed by a strange lethargy. The pain in my back was getting worse, and it was an effort not to let it show. The last thing I wanted was my parents knowing I’d somehow injured myself at the farm. Getting up, I kissed Ma in the hope that this would mollify her, and put my coat on gingerly. I glanced in the mirror to check my appearance. It wasn’t Charlie’s reflection I saw staring back, but Richard’s.

The next thing I knew, I was falling back.

‘All right, son?’ said my father as he caught me, not in time to stop me falling, but time enough to soften the impact as he lowered me to the slate floor.

I managed to sit up and winced in agony as searing pains stabbed through my back. Nausea overtook me, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Ma was standing anxiously beside me.

‘He’s ill! He’s not going to work, just look at him.’

‘He doesn’t do the work, he doesn’t get paid. I’m not treating him different from anyone else. You know that,’ argued my father.

I shook my head and stood up. ‘I’m fine, stop your fuss,’ I said and turned to look back in the mirror, fear twisting my guts.

Richard was gone. I breathed out, heavily. The pain was starting to subside. My mother had dipped a cloth in cold water and was dabbing my forehead.

‘You’re worrying me, Charlie. There’s scarlet fever going round the village.’ Her face creased with anxiety. ‘William, I think he should stay at home today.’

‘I’m fine, Ma. Just a bit tired. I’ll be right as rain in a mo.’

I could have gone with the truth as I saw it. I had been stabbed in another life, and somehow the pain was seeping into this, but silence was better. Pa didn’t answer. He finished his cup of tea, slammed it down on the table and picked up his hat. ‘I’m going to work. If he wants mollycoddling, he can lose a day’s wages.’

I smiled weakly at Ma as I followed him outside. As usual, Arthur was leaning against our front gate, smoking. There was something comforting in that: despite our adventure of the night before and his strange behaviour, our usual ritual was still in force. We used to walk to school together, and now we could still walk much of our journey to work together. We worked close by and would usually part at the centre of town, just by the parish church.

‘You’re late,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Good thing I’m feeling a bit slow myself this morning and waited.’

‘Sorry, I had a bit of a funny turn.’

‘Funny turn? What, like my grandmother when she gets confused and goes out in the street in her smalls looking for my long dead grandfather?’

We both laughed.

‘Not quite,’ I said, not keen to elaborate. ‘Just didn’t feel too well for a moment.’

We walked along in silence, past Mac’s house, the curtains of his window still drawn. I wondered how Evan, Walter, and George were this morning. Would they all be feeling sick and guilty, or would they be stoic like Arthur? The streets were just waking up; women were out sweeping their doorsteps, and the smell of wood smoke hung in the air as fires and ranges were stoked against the cold autumnal day. Fresh horseshit steamed on the road, and I wished I could get a ride to work; the effort of keeping up with Arthur was draining me already.

I needed to talk to him about the previous night, and about his strange behaviour, but I didn’t know how. Part of me wanted to gloss over it, pretend it hadn’t really happened, but it was gnawing at me and I knew I had to confront him for my own peace of mind. He lit another cigarette; I pulled my coat around me—protection from the cold and what else? Arthur?

He had always been strong, hard, and quick to fight, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister about both his and Walter’s actions last night. I wanted to ask him about what he had been doing inside the Swanshurst farmhouse while we were outside, as the other soldiers had never returned from the ensuing inferno. I helped carry the soldier that nearly bit off Evan’s finger and drop him into there, but only to help cover up after Walter had blown the guy’s brains out! I tried to bring it up.

‘What was all that between you and Evan at the farm?’ I finally asked.

‘You have to admit he’s a complete lard head; doesn’t have any sense of danger one minute and then behaves like a girl another. All that crying on the roof.’

Hadn’t Arthur been in the farmhouse while Evan was on the roof? ‘Why did you bring him along? I assumed he was a friend of yours.’

‘A friend?’ He laughed incredulously. ‘No friend of mine, mate! More like some pal of Mac’s.’ He took a long draw on his cigarette. ‘You know they’re both after your girl, don’t you?’

I tensed. He was talking about Catherine. She wasn’t my girl, although I wished she was. In my head, she was. And I hadn’t known that Evan and Mac were interested in her. In fact I wasn’t aware that Evan even knew her.

‘She’d never look at them—they’re beneath her social station.’

‘As are you,’ said Arthur, looking at me sideways.

‘Well, she isn’t my girl, so that doesn’t matter, does it?’ I retorted, trying to hide my annoyance.

It was true, Catherine and I always enjoyed each other’s company, sneaking off for walks when her parents were busy, although that happened less now that I was working. But she was the doctor’s daughter and he would never allow her to walk out seriously with the likes of me, an apprentice wheelwright. When the time came for her to marry, he would have his eyes set on a professional, educated man. That hurt.

‘Never mind, mate,’ Arthur said, slapping me on the back. I winced. ‘You found your skull, didn’t you?’

This conversation was going off in tangents that I didn’t like. ‘Last night, after we had parted ways, you found me and called the skull Henry. Why?’ I asked, looking at him.

His muffler hid half of his face, but I could swear he was smiling. ‘Don’t you remember, when you were small you kept insisting you had a brother called Henry? And your ma was the Queen! Till Mr Robertson threatened to thrash you for your daydreams and lies. You soon stopped then.’

Arthur thought this funny, but I still remembered the humiliation of being hauled up in front of the class by Mr Robertson, the schoolmaster, and told that unless I stopped these ‘foolish flights of fancy’ forthwith he’d give me six of the best. I must have been about five at the time. Ma thought my stories were harmless till I started telling her that she couldn’t be my real mother because my real mother was the Queen. At that point she too tired of my tales.

‘Come on, Your Royal Highness,’ he began, before looking up. ‘Bloody hell, what’s that?’

A deep rumble was coming from above us, increasing in volume and pitch. We looked up to see a huge, silver grey shape in the sky moving steadily towards us like an airborne torpedo. Slowly, it obliterated the weak sun, casting an immense dark shadow over us, the rumble of its engines vibrating my innards.

I knew what it was, as I had seen footage of these early airships on video in my Vicky life and my father had showed me photos of his trips on the Queen Victoria II (QV II). He would regularly fly between London, New York, and Moscow on these cruise ships of the sky, although they were white, shaped as if they’d been slightly squashed and used air turbines, instead of propellers.

‘It’s an airship...’ I began, shouting to make my voice heard, but I could not finish. Something was wrong. Flames were bursting from within. Everyone had come out to take a look, whether in wonder or fear I didn’t know—all I knew was that they had to get indoors. Now.

‘Get back!’ I screamed, ‘Get away from it!’

I ran towards the nearest group of people and tried to drag them to the safety of their houses. They looked at me with trepidation, but I didn’t have time to explain. Some went in; others refused. I stared at them stupidly.

‘Do you want to die? Arthur! Help me get everyone inside!’

Arthur grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook me. Pain seared through my back but I paid no attention to it.

‘Calm down, Charlie!’ he shouted. ‘What’s the matter?’

The airship was a ball of fire now and I had
visions of Kings Heath
laid waste below. I had to get everyone away! I broke away from his grip and turned, to my horror seeing a group of children who’d come out of the schoolroom with their schoolmaster. I ran towards them, taking their arms and attempting to shepherd them into the school, but the schoolmaster pushed me back. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear above the din of the engines. He simply didn’t understand the danger they were in. Tears of frustration pricked my eyelids—it was like being in some hideous dream where you’re watching a disaster unfold before your eyes but are powerless to do anything about it.

The airship was now directly above us, barely missing the rows of chimneys, and on a collision course with the church steeple. At any moment there would be a massive explosion. I crouched down and wrapped my hands around my head, waiting for the force to hit me, but instead I was picked up bodily and hauled into the church. I was going to be sick. The door slammed shut, and my arms were pried away from my head. I opened my eyes to see Evan and a policeman looking at me, concern etched on their faces.

‘You’re all right, son,’ the policeman said, ‘it’s all perfectly safe. It’s the Mayfly, our very own Zeppelin out on its maiden voyage.’

‘But the flames!’ I cried, ‘It’s about to explode! We’ll—’

‘There are no flames, son. It’s not going to explode. Look!’ He pulled me over to a window and made me look through it. The Mayfly was drifting away, sunlight flashing off its steel body, but no flames. People were outside cheering as it moved overhead. What had I seen?

‘I don’t understand!’ I started, but Evan took over.

‘It’s all right, officer. He’s a friend of mine. I’ll look after him.’

The policeman looked doubtful, but clearly had better things to do so left us to it.

We sat for a moment in the silence of the church. Light was filtering through the stained glass windows, casting a red glow on the stone floor below.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Arthur gone?’

‘I’m painting the vestry,’ he said. ‘Going to be here all week.’ He looked around. ‘I don’t know where Arthur is.’

‘I think I’m going mad: first the dreams about the skull and now I’m seeing things. I swore I could see that airship burning, you know!’ My head was bowed as I rubbed my sore back.

‘Charlie? I need you to listen; we won’t have long. I want you to take deep breaths, and really focus on exactly what you saw. They are just images, memories perhaps, but they cannot hurt you now.’

‘Memories?’ I looked up at Evan suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, how can I have seen an airship before?’

‘I don’t know, so close your eyes, and remember, but know that you are safe here.’

I closed my eyes and from my mind’s perspective watched the airship approaching a huge metal tower and then start to sink as flames consumed its skin, leaving behind a crumbling shell. Hundreds of people screamed and ran, and I watched their flesh disintegrate, revealing macabre skeletons left behind. Amongst this death, I was drawn to a room lit in the flickering orange and red hues, of the fires around it. The interior details of the room were difficult to see, but I had a sense of medieval grandeur, of low ceilings, dark wooden panelling and a huge, locked door. Young men were standing and then shuffling, holding hands and praying, staring intently at a skull, which seemed to hover. The more I tried to concentrate, the less sure I became. Now I saw the same men, but they had aged. For a split second the room changed too—it was suffused with a cold blue light and the walls seemed to be made of some sort of dull grey metal. And then back to the original, medieval room. The men were now holding a human head, cutting the face away,
scraping the flesh
from the bone, one minute fresh and almost alive, the next rotten and mottled with decomposition. Blood seeped over their hands and clothing. And now the head was a skull, stained red from fresh blood. It was the dream from before, but it was becoming clearer.