Simon Clark - The Fall

It was as if every man and woman was attached to the place by a long, long piece of elastic that allowed them so far before pulling tight and jerking them back into their seats.

Following the Oh! there was a moment or so of stunned silence as they absorbed what had happened to them. Then a rising buzz of talk, shot through with glaring threads of panic.

He felt a hand grip his forearm.

He turned to see Zita staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

‘Sam, it’s gone and done it again, hasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘There’s no question about it…’ He glanced round. ‘But the only question is: how far have we gone back this time?’

He heard a moan beside him.

Sitting there, dazed, glassy-eyed, was Lee Burton in his Dracula costume. He looked as if he was just coming round from one hell of a knockout punch.

Sam looked for any sign of the massive injuries that Lee had suffered. The doctor’s description had been vivid enough to give Sam a good idea of what he must have looked like. Just hours ago – or so it seemed – Lee had lain in casualty, with tubes running into his arm, nostrils and mouth. Lumpy dressings stained with blood from the bullet wounds were taped to his torso. His left arm had been severed at the elbow. The heart-monitor would have shown the erratic lines of a heart heading into a one-way pattern of defibrillation with the bleeps chattering out faster and faster until there was that one long terminal Bleeeeeeeeee…

But here he was again. Intact.

The white shirt without so much as a drop of blood marking it.

And Lee was looking down dazedly at his two hands resting there in his lap.

Without a shadow of a doubt the mechanism that had dragged them back through time had brought them back whole. Just as they had been when they’d first walked into the amphitheatre at midday, June 23 rd.

Sam quickly examined the knee of his chinos. They were a light tan colour. Earlier, he’d noticed dirty marks there about the size of a penny. It might have been drips from a coffee cup in the café. Now they were gone.

Quickly, he checked his watch. It showed a now-erroneous time and date. 1 pm, June 23 rd.

Maybe this was the hereafter? Maybe they’d go round and round on some kind of temporal fairground ride for ever and a day. Never getting any older, never dying; hell, never even seeing their clothes wear out.

Sam looked down at the centre of the amphitheatre. Jud Campbell was standing there, looking round at the audience, his gold waistcoat neatly buttoned and as immaculate as the first time Sam had seen it. He had one arm slightly raised, his index finger pointing. Sam saw he was counting the audience again. He seemed in control of himself, and when he saw Sam and Zita he waved at them to join him.

‘So it’s happened again,’ Jud said, calmly enough, as Sam and Zita joined him beside the stone altar.

Zita said, ‘But what we don’t know is when are we now.’

‘Hopefully back where we started,’ Sam said. ‘Back to the afternoon of June 23 rd.’

‘You really think so?’ Jud raised his eyebrows doubtfully.

‘I don’t think so, Jud. I just hope so, that’s all. But I reckon we need another run into town so we can buy a newspaper all over again.’

‘The weather looks the same,’ Zita said. ‘Clear and sunny. At least we haven’t been dropped into the middle of winter.’

‘So we’re still in the summer,’ Sam said.

‘But which summer?’

Sam felt suddenly cold, despite the heat of the sun. Which summer, indeed? What if all this went even more haywire?

What if they were whisked so far back they saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex come stomping over the hill, looking for brunch?

Sam licked his dry lips and closed off those distinctly unnerving thoughts. ‘The upside to all this is that we’re being brought back in one piece. In fact, whatever brings us back also repairs any damage we might have suffered before the last time jump. Do you see Lee Burton up there? There’s not a mark on him. He looks pretty shook up, though.’

‘Hell,’ Zita said, ‘from what we heard in the hospital he’d been reduced to a pile of raw mincemeat; it was only a matter of time before they pulled the plug on the life-support machine.’

Sam gave a watery smile. ‘If this freaky game is the guy upstairs’ doing then at least he doesn’t want to lose any of his players.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jud said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Call it monomania, but I count everything. When I wash my socks I count them, when I peel potatoes I count them. And I always count the people in my audience. When I first counted this lot there were 52. Now there are 51.’

‘We’ve lost one?’

‘Looks like it. And if my memory isn’t playing any strange tricks, I think it was a gentleman who sat just there at the foot of the steps.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Sam said. ‘He was old and carried a walking stick?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I remember because he was fiddling with a hearing aid before the talk.’

Zita looked at Sam. ‘That old boy in the car park. He carried a stick and he was complaining that his hearing aid wasn’t working properly. Remember?’

‘I remember. And I’d wager any money that the two were one and the same. I’d also wager that it was the same old boy the ice-cream vendor saw walk into the river to commit suicide.’

‘So don’t do anything too reckless,’ Jud said. ‘It seems at the moment that the rules of the game are that if we’re hurt we come through the next time jump in one piece and as good as new.’

‘But if we’re killed we’re out of the game,’ Zita added.

‘Well, at least it’s good to know some of the rules.’ Sam watched the audience once more filing out of the amphitheatre. ‘But is this some kind of game? And if it is, what’s the object of it?’

‘And how do we win?’

Sam headed across the amphitheatre’s stage.

‘Where are you going,’ Zita asked.

‘I’m going down to the river to talk to our Mr Carswell.’

‘That bastard. What on Earth for?’

‘Right,’ Sam said. ‘He’s a bastard. But he’s one hell of a smart bastard. Maybe he’s got his own ideas about what’s happening.’

‘1978.’

That was how Carswell greeted Sam Baker as he walked briskly towards the boat.

‘Permission to come on board?’ Sam called, but didn’t wait for an invitation before running up the gangplank to the deck, where Carswell stood with his drink in hand.

‘It looks as if you’re coming anyway, Mr Baker.’

Sam glanced back to see Zita following. Jud was hurrying back to his own boat to find his wife.

‘The year of Our Lord, 1978,’ Carswell repeated in such a light-hearted way that Sam thought Dear God, the bastard is actually enjoying this .

‘Shit,’ Zita breathed. ‘That means we’ve gone back more than 20 years.’

Carswell looked at the drink in the glass. ‘More than 20 years and the tonic still hasn’t lost its fizz. Remarkable, hmm?’

‘Damn remarkable,’ Sam agreed with feeling. ‘What are your thoughts about all this?’

‘Time travel?’ He took a drink and appeared to relish the taste with such pleasure that it could have been the elixir of life.

‘Well, what occurs to me immediately,’ Carswell continued, ‘is that in a vehicle-repair shop in the East End of London, not far from where the shining commercial palaces of Canary Wharf will be built in a few years, is one 20-year-old youth with oily hands and blond hair like this – only much thicker – draining the sump of some rich man’s motor while dreaming of bigger and better things.’