Stephen Lawhead - The Skin Map

“I don’t know about you, but where I went to school anybody walking around with a name like Cosimo was just asking to get his head dunked in the toilet.”

“Pity.” The elder gentleman sniffed. “Sad, really. Names are very important.”

“It’s a matter of taste, surely.”

“Nothing of the sort,” replied the elder Cosimo. “People get named all sorts of things-that I will concede. Whimsy, ignorance, sudden inspiration-all play a part. But if anyone guessed how monumentally important it was, the process would be taken a lot more seriously. Did you know-there are tribes in the jungles of Borneo that refuse to name an infant until it is four years old? See, the child must develop enough to demonstrate the attributes it will carry into adulthood. The child is then named for those attributes. It’s a way of reinforcing desirable qualities and making sure they don’t disappear from the tribe.”

“But… Cosimo?”

“A fine name. Nothing wrong with it.” He gave his young relation a glance of stern appraisal. “Well, I suppose you have a point.”

“I do?”

“We cannot both be called Cosimo, after all. As we will be spending a lot more time together from now on, it would make it far too tedious and confusing.” He tapped the table with his fingertips. “Very well, then. Kit it shall be.”

Although he was unable to say why, Kit felt a slight uplift of relief at having won the point. “You still haven’t said what any of this has to do with me.”

“It’s a family matter, you might say. Here I am, your dear grandpapa”-the old man winked at Kit and flashed a disarming smile-“and I need your help with a project I’ve been working on for quite some time. You’re all the family I’ve got.”

Kit considered this, but in spite of everything, he could still scarcely credit that he had any residual familial ties to the relic sitting across the table from him. His expression betrayed his disbelief. The elder man leaned forward and grasped Kit’s hands in his own.

Speaking in a hoarse and persistent whisper, he said earnestly, “See here, young Cosimo-excuse me, Kit. It will be the adventure of a lifetime-of several lifetimes. In fact, it will change you forever.” The old gentleman paused, still holding the younger man’s hands and fixing him with a mad stare. “I need you, my boy, and I’ve gone to a very great deal of trouble to find you. What do you say?”

“No.” Kit shook his head, as if waking from a dream. He pulled his hands free, then ran them through his hair, then clutched his tankard. “This is crazy. It’s some kind of hallucination-that’s what it is. Take me back. I want to go home.”

Cosimo the Elder sighed. “All right,” he agreed, “if that is what you wish.”

Kit sighed with relief. “You mean it?”

“Of course, dear boy. I’ll take you back.”

“Fine.”

“Only, funny thing-I think you’ll find there is no going back. Still, if that’s what you want. Drink up, and let’s be off.”

Kit pushed aside his tankard and stood. “I’m ready now.”

The old man rose and, digging two coins out of his coat pocket, flipped them to the serving girl and promised to come back next time he was passing through. They walked out onto the dockyards and returned to the narrow alley between two warehouses. “Here you are. Just continue on the trackway and you’ll be home in a trice.”

“Thanks.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Kit started down the alley.

As he passed into the shadow between the two buildings, he heard the old gentleman call behind him, “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Fat chance, thought Kit, hurrying into the shadows. He cast a glance over his shoulder, but already the alleyway entrance was dim and far away. A wind gusted through the alley and the shadows deepened; clouds gathered overhead and it began to rain-sharp, stinging little pellets-and above the sound of the swiftly gathering storm, the clear, distant voice of his great-grandfather shouting, “Farewell, my son. Until we meet again!”

Kit emerged from Stane Way soaked to the skin and completely disoriented. He felt as if he had just taken a trip through an automatic car wash without the car. He staggered forward, dashing water from his eyes-almost colliding with a mum pushing a pram. “Sorry!” he sputtered. The mother glared at him as she hurried on. Kit gazed around at the street lined with tall buildings and heaving with traffic. He was back.

Relief rippled through him. It worked, he thought. I’m home!

Then, without warning, he felt a sudden rush of nausea. He clamped a hand over his mouth, lurched to the nearest gutter, and threw up.

“Very nice,” muttered a teenage girl passing by just then. She and her friend gave him a wide berth and hurried on. “Get a life, creep!”

I’m trying, thought Kit. He spat and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Gradually, the seasick sensation subsided and he started making his unsteady way back to his flat to change his clothes. Halfway there, he abandoned this plan, turned around, and headed for Clapton, where Mina was waiting for him; his clothes could dry on the way.

Walking along familiar streets in the sober light of day, it was almost possible to convince himself that the whole impossible series of events owed more to some sort of weird delirium than actual, physical happenstance. Did not the strangeness of the situation have about it the very peculiar quality of a dream? It truly did, he argued. And was it not common knowledge that hallucinations were often extraordinarily vivid? Obviously, the episode was a hallucination brought on by acute unhappiness, triggered by fatigue, and fuelled by frustration. And yet…

And yet, it had none of the surreal hallucinatory quality of a dream. The ground in that place had felt as solid beneath his feet, the sun as warm on his face, the scent of the air as redolent of the sea-all that and more had felt just as real as the waking world he had always known, just as concrete as the hard-paved London street on which he now stood. What was dreamlike about that?

What else could it be? He had read about alternate worlds and such. But wasn’t that all just the overinflated musings of theoretical physicists with way too much time and funding on their hands? In any case, people simply did not go popping from one place to another easy as you please and back again. No, it had to be some sort of mental aberration-admittedly of an extremely robust kind. Hysteria, maybe. Or, hypnosis. Maybe old Cosimo had hypnotized him, made him fantasize the seaside village and all the rest. As he considered this, another, darker, prospect suggested itself for his consideration: schizophrenia.

While Kit refused to seriously entertain that possibility, he nevertheless was forced to admit that those suffering from that mental aberration often saw and held conversations with people who were not physically present, and they had difficulty recognising their surroundings. And it was true that schizophrenia often manifested itself in young men of his age, striking without warning and resulting in just the sort of dislocation and disorientation he had experienced.

Whatever the explanation would turn out to be, the less said about his so-called travels the better. Nothing good would come of blabbing about what had happened. That much was clear. He would, he vowed, die on the rack with red-hot pokers in his eyes before confessing it to anyone.

Upon reaching the nearest Underground station, he swiped his Oyster at the turnstile and received the dreaded “Seek Assistance” sign once again. Rather than repeat his former escapade, he dutifully purchased a ticket from one of the machines, pushed through the turnstile, and headed down the steps to the platform. When the train came whooshing up, he climbed on, took a seat, and uneventfully rode the rest of the way to Clapton, where he proceeded straightaway to Wilhelmina’s flat, firmly resolved to forget the whole strange interlude, put it behind him; to never, ever breathe a word about it to another living soul. This resolve carried him all the way to his girlfriend’s tower-block apartment building and her front door.