Stephen Lawhead: The Skin Map

Her disbelief angered him and he was seized by a powerful compulsion to make her understand. In that instant, he realised he simply could not carry the weight of the experience on his own. Nothing else mattered but that she should know he was telling the truth-as if getting another human being to acknowledge what had happened to him would make it more believable to himself.

Gripped by this conviction, he leapt to his feet. “I’ll do better than that,” he declared. “I’ll show you.”

“Yeah, right.” She yawned. “Pull the other one-it’s got bells on.”

“No, really. I’ll show you.” He crossed the room and lifted her green blazer from the coat stand. “Here, take this. It’s likely to be raining when we get there.”

“Might as well. The day is shot anyway.” She yawned again, rose lethargically, and padded after him. “Where are we going again?”

“You’ll see.”

A quick tube journey followed, and soon the two were marching along Grafton Street in search of Stane Way. “It’s just along here,” Kit assured her.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Mina said. “As if I didn’t have better things to do.”

“You don’t, honest,” he said, her reluctance forcing him to become a cheerleader for the expedition. “This’ll be fun, I promise.”

“Quit saying that-because so far it isn’t.”

“C’mon, Mina,” he cajoled. “Just think-you’ll get to see some fetching landscape, have a nice cream tea somewhere, and a walk in the fresh sea air. You’ll like it. It’ll be fun.”

By way of reply she scowled and gave him a smack on the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“I warned you,” she said, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. “Anyway, I don’t want to go to the seaside, thanks all the same.”

“You’ve got to see this.”

“So is he going to be there?”

“Who?”

“The bloody pope!”

“You mean my great-grandfather?”

“Who else?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Then again, maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“If I said I believed you,” Mina ventured, “would we have to go through with this?”

“You make it sound like an ordeal,” he countered. “This’ll be”-he saw her eyes glint dangerously, and abruptly changed tack-“an education.”

They walked on. A few hundred yards later, Kit spied the street sign for Stane Way. “Look! This is where it happened-or hereabouts.” He stepped to the mouth of the alley and started down the long, shadowed street. “This way, and don’t worry-it’s not as bad as it looks.”

They walked a short way, the shadows deepening around them.

“My, this is a lovely spot.” Mina stepped over a plastic carrier bag spilling sandwich boxes and crisp packets onto the pavement. “Why haven’t you brought me here before?”

“Just keep walking.”

“You’re gonna make this up to me, boy,” Mina warned. “And it’s gonna take more than a cup of tea and a microwaved scone.”

Kit was striding down the middle of the alleyway with big, exaggerated steps. She followed, imitating his walk-more from boredom than conviction. “I don’t know if it will work,” he called back to her. “I was closer to the other end when it happened.”

“When what happened, exactly?”

“This fierce little storm boiled up out of nowhere, and-”

“What?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the sound of the wind just then gusting down the alleyway.

“I said,” he shouted back, “a storm came along-”

“Like this one, you mean?” she hollered, shouting at the top of her lungs.

He stopped. The storm! Black clouds roiled above them, a wild wind screamed through the gap between the buildings, and it started to rain. “This way!” he yelled. “Do you feel it?”

“What?” cried Wilhelmina, trying to hear and be heard above the uncanny shriek of the gale.

“Follow me!” he shouted. “Stay close! You don’t want to get lost.”

He started running to get out of the rain and felt the ground give beneath him in a fluid, shifty way-like jogging on the floor of a bouncy castle. In the same instant, his vision blurred and he felt himself falling: no great distance, as it turned out, merely the space between a stair tread and the floor.

Dashing water from his eyes with the heels of his hands, he shouted. “Over here!”

Receiving no reply, he turned to the alley behind him. Wilhelmina was nowhere to be seen.

The storm howled away into the heavens, leaving Kit wet, nauseated, and with a head that felt two sizes too big. He wiped drool from his chin with a sodden sleeve and waited, listening to the sound of the rapidly diminishing storm.

“Mina!” he called after a moment.

No answer.

He called her name again and started walking back the way he had come, searching for a doorway, an alcove, any cubbyhole however small where she might have sought shelter. He found nothing but blank brick walls on either side and, upon reaching the end of the alley, was forced to conclude that she was not there.

Of all the things that might have happened, this was one he had not anticipated: that he would make the jump to the other place, as he now thought of it, and she would remain in the real world. The thought of her wending her soggy way home, cursing his name aloud to the four winds, made him frustrated and angry-almost as angry as he had been before, when she didn’t believe him. She believed him now, perhaps. Having seen him vanish before her eyes, what else could she think but that he had been telling the truth all along?

On the other hand, he had abandoned her in a filthy alley in King’s Cross. That could cancel out whatever he might have gained in the truth-telling stakes. Who knew? With Wilhelmina, one could never tell.

But it came to him that the remedy was perfectly obvious: he would go back.

Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and gathered his feet under him for another run. Just as he was about to launch himself into the deep-shadowed darkness of the alley, he heard someone call his name. Turning once more toward the alley entrance, he saw the now familiar figure of the old man who claimed to be his great-grandfather.

“Hello, Kit,” called Cosimo, hastening to meet him. He was dressed, as before, in a long dark coat and a broad-brimmed felt hat pulled low on his head. “I knew you’d come back,” he said as he came to stand before his great-grandson. “Am I to take it that you’ve changed your mind? Settled your affairs, made your farewells, and now you’re ready to lend a willing hand to a most vital enterprise that requires your particular good self?”

“Okay, okay,” conceded the younger man. “Whatever.”

“Stop evading the question. Are you ready to join me?”

“Yeah, well there’s a little problem with that. This girl I know-my girlfriend, Mina-is waiting for me back home. In Stane Way, actually. We were supposed to come here together and-”

“What?”

“I was just going to show her, but she didn’t make the jump.”

“Make the jump?” echoed Cosimo, his brows lowering in a scowl. “What did you do, Kit?”

“Nothing!” protested Kit. “I was just going to show her. She didn’t believe me, so I wanted to show her the ley line, you know. Well, the same thing happened as last time, and I ended up here, but she got left on the other side.”

“Stupid boy!” roared Cosimo. “How could you do something so utterly asinine?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” replied Kit lamely. “Anyway, there’s no reason to assume the worst. Nothing happened.”