Simon Clark - The Fall

Before Sam could fully take it in, Jud’s huge arm swung up, catching the skinhead a tremendous blow on the chin. Instead of a crack Sam heard a loud pop. The skinhead shot backwards to land flat out on the pool table.

Sam took the opportunity to plant a punch on the nose of the skinhead in front of him, who’d watched open-mouthed as his friend had become airborne.

The punch knocked the kid back, but not down. He looked back viciously at Sam.

Sam realised the contest would be reduced to a grim slugging match, but he still hadn’t appreciated Jud’s sheer muscle power. The man was wading into the skinhead gang. Just one of his punches was enough to floor any of the thugs.

Soon they were retreating to the back of the bar in confusion – and in more than a little pain, with a few wiping bloody noses. Jud pushed their retreat harder, picking up stragglers like they were rag dolls and throwing them at their mates.

‘Get out!’ he roared. ‘Get out! And if I see your ugly faces round here again I’ll tear them off and stuff them down your bloody throats!’

Realising they were no match for the raging bull of a man, they ran for the door at the back of the bar. Finding it locked, they rushed forward frantically once again.

Like panicked cattle they were thinking only of running away, but catching Jud off balance they shoved him backwards over an upended table.

He fell awkwardly.

Sam immediately saw the man’s face screw up in pain. One of the skinheads who was last in the mad scramble to escape saw that the man who’d made mincemeat of the gang was at least temporarily disabled. As Jud lay flat on his back in a pool of spilt beer, clutching the upper part of his thigh while grimacing in pain, the skinhead grabbed a glass from another table, then doubled back.

Sam saw that the skinhead’s intention was to smash the glass into Jud’s face.

In one second Sam had crossed the floor of the bar. As the skinhead raised the glass, Sam shoulder-charged the youth right in the middle of his back.

With a startled ‘ Uph! ’ the youth went crashing forward, landing face down in a mess of upturned chairs, the glass smashing in his own hand.

Sam saw blood pouring freely from a cut in the palm of the youth’s hand.

‘Oh, bastard, bastard, bastard,’ groaned the skinhead, climbing to his feet. Then, clutching his bloody hand to his chest, he decided enough was enough and ran for the door.

The young Jud lay on his back. Despite the pain, he said through gritted teeth, ‘Thanks for that.’

‘The least I could do, Jud,’ Sam said gently. ‘Thanks for saving our necks back there.’

‘Christ… they can be little toe-rags at times. Thing is… thing is, they’ll grow up to be good men one day. Ack… I reckon I’ve busted my leg. Hurts like shit…’

‘Take it easy,’ Sam said kindly. ‘Lee, pass me the towel from the bar. No, one of the dry ones. Thanks.’ He took the towel and rolled it into a pillow before placing it carefully under Jud’s head. ‘We’ll get you an ambulance, Jud.’

‘Hell, I think I need one. First time in my life as well. I’m usually pretty resilient when…’ Jud broke off and looked up, narrowing his eyes. ‘Wait a minute… How do you know my name?’

‘Don’t worry about that now, let’s get you fixed.’

‘Christ, I hope I’ll be able to walk again.’

‘Don’t worry, buddy, I know you will.’

Again Jud gave him what could only be described as an old-fashioned look. ‘Are you sure I don’t know you?’

‘Not yet, Jud. Not yet.’ Then Sam scanned the bar. ‘Oh, no. Where the hell did Ryan run off to?’

Lee shrugged. ‘He just legged it when the fighting started.’

‘Christ, and after we saved his nuts, too. That guy’s got a yellow streak up his back that’s wider than an eight-lane freeway. You stay here with Jud, I’ll phone for an ambulance.’

The bar staff had disappeared sharpish when the fight began so Sam climbed over the bar, found a phone, dialled 911, clicked his tongue as he remembered the right number, then dialled 999.

Ten minutes later, as Jud was stretchered into the back of an ambulance, Sam and Lee walked back to the car, where Zita fumed impatiently. There was no sign of Ryan Keith. He’d done a bunk, Sam guessed. At least the gang had done him no serious harm.

The older version of Jud, wiser, greyer, a little heavier around the jaw, stood leaning back against the car.

He smiled broadly at Sam before slapping his leg.

‘I always know when it’s going to rain, because this starts to ache again.’

‘You son of a gun, you remembered, didn’t you?’ Sam said, smiling. ‘You remembered we’d met before.’

‘I did.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘What could I say? That you’d get into a fight in the Gryphon Hotel? That I – or at least a younger version of me – would be there to give you a hand?’

‘Something like that would have been fine by me. You know, it was scary back there.’

‘Sure it was. But what do you suggest? That I try and change history?’

‘Why not?’

‘The repercussions could have been enormous.’

‘Those hoodlums could have killed us.’

‘But it turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?’

Zita flicked back her plaited hair. ‘Are you letting me in on this secret, boyos? Just what on Earth happened back there in the hotel?’

‘Tell her on the way to the library, Lee.’ Sam said. ‘It’s time we started to try and find out just exactly what’s happening to us.’

The library didn’t close until eight. But by ten to the hour library staff were jingling keys and asking the public to make their way to the exits.

Long before then Sam had to concede, at least privately, that there was little in the books that could help them. Scientists were hard-pressed to describe adequately the nature of time. Even the great Professor Carl Sagan conceded in a science book aimed at the ordinary reader, ‘Time is one of those concepts that is profoundly resistant to simple definition.’

Certainly there was nothing that could explain why 50 or so people had come adrift in time. And why they were slipping farther and farther back into history.

As they returned to the car in the library car park Jud said, ‘You know, the more I weigh up what’s happened to us, the more I think about the time-slips of folklore.’

‘Folklore?’ Zita echoed as she thumbed the remote, unlocking the doors of the Range Rover. ‘You’re not going to say we’ve been bewitched by fairies or the wicked witch of the west?’

‘Right now, I’ll grab any half-decent explanation with both hands and hang on tight.’ Sam opened the door. ‘Even fairy stories, because I feel as if I’ll go completely nuts if we don’t get to the bottom of this.’

‘Same here.’ Lee unbuttoned the collar of the white frilly shirt. ‘I went into town today with the intention of getting drunk. And it still seems a good idea right now.’

When they were in the car, Sam turned in the front passenger seat and said, ‘Okay, Jud, if you’ve got a theory, I’m all ears.’

Jud composed his thoughts for a moment. In a playground behind the car park children shouted and laughed on the swings; a girl chased a black dog with a bright yellow frisbee in its mouth.

‘Folklore is riddled with time-slip cases. In the past they’ve been treated the same as ghost stories. You must have heard plenty of them. You know, a couple driving through the countryside become lost. They find an old inn, stay there, and are surprised to see the other occupants are wearing old-fashioned clothes and there’s no electricity, only gas lighting. Later the couple will try and find the inn again, only to learn that it burnt down 50 years earlier. One of the most famous examples is the case of Charlotte Moberley and Eleanor Jourdain, who visited Versailles while on holiday in 1901. There they saw people in old-fashioned clothes and saw buildings they subsequently discovered no longer existed. Later Miss Jourdain wrote that as she entered the grounds at Versailles she experienced an “eerie feeling” as if she’d “crossed a line and was suddenly in a circle of influence”. There are some people who’ve concluded the two ladies somehow found themselves centuries back in time when Versailles was a royal palace.’