The Day Before Tomorrow (10 page)

He had been trudging along aimlessly for several hours without any clear idea of where he was headed for, and it was now getting dark.  Time to find a place for the night, it was snowing, and he needed to find some shelter.  He spotted a lonely looking house about a half hour’s walk away. Even at this distance, it looked empty.  It was a fairly large house, yet there was no car in front and no lights on, despite the dusk.  Probably the owners had packed up and left; he was still quite close to the front lines.  It would do anyway.  He hitched up his pack and headed for it.

* * *

If you asked somebody where they would hide a box that contained something of vital importance, the sensible man would tell you that he was not going to tell you where he would hide it.  And if he will not tell you where he has hidden it, has he, in fact, hidden it at all.  And if it’s not hidden, is there even a box at all?  After all, it was a rhetorical box that you asked about in the first place, wasn’t it …?

‘But we
know
there’s a box Talbot,’ said Crispin impatiently.  ‘Don’t be so silly.  If you want to get all metaphorical, do it on your own time.  In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful? If we
don’t
find it, it’s
my
head on the chopping block, and trust me, I can take all of you down with me.’

‘But surely hope resides in the hearts of men,’ said Talbot. 

‘Oh, well, if you want to believe all that hippie claptrap …’ said Crispin.

~Chapter Fourteen ~

D
enny weighed the knife in his hand.  It was heavy, but it did not feel so to him.  It felt as if it were a part of him almost – as if it were growing out of his hand.  He drew the blade from its sheath and looked at it.  There were swirling patterns in the metal, moving in and out of each other with a horrible liquidity, never still for an instant.  The metal looked as if it were alive. Yet, when Denny gingerly touched the blade, it felt solid enough, cold and hard just like any other blade.  It was only when he looked at it that he got the strange feeling that it was writhing under his hand. 

He sheathed it again and looked curiously at Jamie.  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. 

Jamie told him, and added, ‘why do you care?  It’s just an old knife.’ 

‘It’s called an Athame,’ Denny told him and wondered how he knew.  He put it into his pack.  Jamie never even thought to feel resentful about this; it had never felt like it belonged to him anyway. 

Supper, it seemed, was to be abandoned.  Jamie was a little resentful about
this
.  You were supposed to
feed
prisoners of war! It was in the Geneva Convention or something; he was sure of it.

 Denny packed up their stuff and extinguished the fire without saying a word.  They went back to the jeep to sleep. 

It was the early hours of the morning and Jamie was fast asleep, but Denny could not sleep.  Eventually he succumbed to his wakefulness – knowing that the more he tried to fight it, the worse it would get – and climbed out of the jeep.  He knew what the problem was – it was the Athame, it was preying on his mind.  He sat down a few yards from the jeep and opened his pack. 

It belonged to him somehow, he could feel it.  He withdrew the alarming blade and stared at it, hoping that it would jog his memory.  But although the usual memories of another life were seeping through his mind, he could not get anything specific about the Athame.  The vague feeling that it belonged to him was coming from the blade itself and not his mind.  This was quite contrary to the usual manner of inanimate objects that stir feelings of familiarity, where the memory is usually quite specific, and it is the feeling behind it that is vague.  It was almost as if the damn thing was alive.  Or, at least, had a mind – a consciousness – of its own.   

Denny gazed at it in frustration.  This thing had answers; he knew it did, if only he could remember … 

In his head, he heard a voice from the past – which past?  – saying.  ‘If you want to know something – ask.’ It was something that Mrs. Allen, a teacher of his, had been fond of saying, and yet he was sure that it was not her voice. 

Denny put the blade back in the sheath and laid it down, sighing.  If only he knew the question.

* * *

‘So,’ said Tamar, ‘if it wasn’t a wish that did it, and I don’t think it was, because I remember … well anyway, putting that idea aside for now, and just to cover all the options –   what else could have changed the past like that and altered all our memories?’  She looked interrogatively at Cindy, who looked back at her in slight panic.

‘Oh come on,’ snapped Tamar.  ‘You must have
some
ideas.  Just off the top of your head now.  Throw some ideas at me.’  Tamar was understandably desperate to prove that she was not a Djinn – Anything but that – and she was willing to cling to any other ideas that presented themselves. 

‘I can’t,’ Cindy protested.  ‘Look I just don’t
know
what could have done it, if not a Djinn. Maybe a god. No, not even a god has that kind of power.’ 

‘Look it doesn’t matter
who
, at this stage.  Just assume that somebody
did
have the power.  How would it be done?’ 

‘I really don’t … okay
without
wishing?  Time travel perhaps, but even gods can’t do that. Or the Djinn either.’ 

‘So, who can?’

‘Nobody! That’s what I’m telling you.’ 

‘Okay, so what else, how else could it have been done, some sort of spell?’ 

‘Well, technically I suppose, but no witch or sorcerer has that kind of power.  It would have to be a hell of a big spell, complicated too.  It’s a powerful magic that could mess about with people’s fates like that.  I’ve never heard of anything like that being done, or anyone who could do it.’ 

‘But technically it
is
possible.’  Tamar said.  ‘Wait, go back a bit.’ She thumped the table.  ‘What did you just say before?’

‘What?’

‘You mentioned The Fates,’

‘I meant …’

‘Yes, I know, but what about it?  The Three Fates, are they … do they …?’ 

Cindy looked blank.  ‘I’m not sure what …’

‘The FATES!’ Tamar was getting exasperated.  ‘Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.  The Maiden, the Mother and the Crone.  The weavers of the tapestry of life.’ 

‘Oh,
them
!’ said Cindy in some relief.  ‘They wouldn’t do it, I mean I suppose they could, but they
wouldn’t
!  Definitely, definitely not, no.’ her voice was becoming uncertain. 

Tamar looked intently at her.  ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure!’ said Cindy.

‘
How
sure?’

‘Well, not all that sure, actually,’

* * *

The house was not locked up. This made Stiles a little uneasy, but it did not seem as if the lock had been broken.  Perhaps the people who had lived here had left in a hurry.  He was by now absolutely certain that the house had been abandoned.  Nobody left their doors unlocked around here anymore – if they ever had – too many soldiers about.  That was what was worrying him now.  That someone may have got here before him with the same idea and an unwillingness to share. 

He opened the door cautiously and sniffed the air.  Stale and dusty, no sign there that the place was occupied.  He listened next, and heard not a sound.  He wandered through the rooms; there was nobody here.  Perhaps someone had been here and moved on.  In the living room, he tried the light switch; the room blazed with a sudden light, and then went dark again with a popping sound.  ‘Bulb gone,’ he thought, but at least the place still had electricity.  He moved to the window and closed the curtains before trying a lamp.  Now the room was filled with a soft yellow glow, which made it look almost homely. 

He found the controls for the gas fire and set it merrily blazing away.  He had not been so warm and comfortable in months.  Once he had warmed up a little he decided to explore the house.  It seemed pretty ordinary, if rather large and posh by Stiles’s usual standards.  Wide hallway with coat rack and telephone table and a huge staircase.  Nice, if somewhat old fashioned, furniture in the living and dining rooms.  Old fashioned diamond pattern bay windows, the real kind that twinkled as you walked past them, because of the separate panes.  The kitchen was fitted out with all mod cons cleverly hidden to make it look like an old Victorian kitchen with a genuine old-fashioned top of the range electric Range oven.  Stiles laughed (as people do at the pretensions of others). There was also a library and a room with a snooker table in it.  Upstairs the bedroom doors ran along one side of the long landing; at the end, the bathroom door stood open, so he went in.  This was set up in the same way as the kitchen; modern conveniences cleverly disguised as old-fashioned inconveniences, and a bathtub so large he could have taken a swim in it.  Pity there would not be any hot water.  What he would not give for a hot bath. 

He decided to go downstairs and put the boiler on, since the gas was obviously still on, as testified to by the fire in the living room.  He would find some food and have a bath in about an hour, and then he would find a bed and get some sleep. 

He felt like Goldilocks.  First looking for food and then poking his head into the bedrooms to see which one he fancied.  He just hoped that the Three Bears did not come home. 

And he was almost certain that he was not going mad at all, not insane in any way, nor was he completely bonkers, no.  Just because he had gone AWOL on the word of a dream or vision of a beautiful woman who he was certain he knew from somewhere (although he was sure he had never seen her before in his life).  Just because he was suffering from delusions and
déjà
vu
at the same time.  And just because he was bivouacking in a large house in the middle of Nowhere (a little known village in South Western China, spelled, he believed ‘No’Wer’) and now appeared to be thinking in fairy tales.  And all this without having a single drink.  That did not mean he was going mad.  He was absolutely certain of that – not all that certain actually – little bit worried about that one perhaps – maybe slightly bonkers – completely round the twist?  – Absolutely certain!  Not mad at all – I think.

While his bath was running, he wandered down to the library to grab a book.  One caught his eye almost immediately – “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”.  Something to sneer at.  It was almost as if somebody had known.  He was not altogether surprised when, as he slid the book out, the entire bookcase panel creaked around on its axis revealing the almost mandatory secret passage.  Now this would be too much for the curiosity of a normal person – who would at least have probably remembered to go and turn the bathwater off first – but Stiles was a policeman.  It was practically his job to be curious, and not at all out of his tiny mind – no not a bit.

The passageway was delightfully ghoulish; the most hardened gothic investigator would not have been disappointed.  It was lit with flaming torches that flickered eerily and lit up eldritch shapes in the shadows.  The walls were cold and damp and gave off a greenish glow.  Cobwebs fluttered in an unearthly breeze, insects scuttled under his feet, and there was a funny smell.  Stiles gave a shiver of delicious fear; this was fun.  At the end of the passage was a lighted archway, and through that, he found a large hall, more like a gigantic cavern really, but it was all marble and gilt.  All around the edges were more archways, lit, as it were, from within.  The hall itself was not lit, but it could be seen quite clearly by the lights from these alcoves, for that is what they were.  In each one, Stiles noticed, was a plinth as if for a statue.  Some of the plinths were still adorned by statues, but most of them had nothing on them but a pile of dust. 

Stiles moved forward curiously and peered at the stone plinth below a pile of greyish dust which lay atop a broken off marble foot.  It read APOLLO.  He moved to the next one.  The plinth again was empty apart from the pile of dust. This one read ARTEMIS.  He looked around for a plinth with a statue on it, perhaps there might be some clue there as to what all this meant.  He was attracted to a very elegant statue of a tall woman.  The name on the plinth read HECATÉ.  And beside her was another empty plinth, which proclaimed that the previous tenant had been called HADES.  On the other side of him, was the deserted plinth of ZEUS, a huge one this, more than twice the size of the others and in the side of the plinth, there seemed to be a small doorway or hatch.  By now Stiles was getting the idea.  These were the ancient gods.  As he wandered around, he saw plinths for HERA and APHRODITE, ARES and DIONYSUS and ATHENE.  On the other side of the hall, he found THOR and LOKI, ODIN and FREYA.  And in the middle,  RA and ANUBIS and ISIS and OSIRIS.  But why were they all destroyed?  Well, almost all of them.

PSYCHE still stood gracefully on her plinth, as did the Muses – Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, all together on one large plinth in a dancing circle – and the Fates and also POSEIDON, and of course HECATÉ.  He was drawn back to this particular statue to take a closer look. He had a feeling that he had seen it before. 

It was nearly a minute before he recognized her, and when he did, he almost fell over from the shock.  He felt like he needed a drink. 

~ Chapter Sixteen ~

T
albot had wondered if perhaps Zeus had set the box among the stars.  It had been a habit of his to do this with things – and even people – that he did not know what else to do with. 

‘A bad habit,’ said Crispin, but it was an inspired thought, he said. Until it turned out that it was wrong, whereupon it magically became: ‘A bloody stupid idea that only an idiot like you would come up with. Almost as daft as that other idea you had, “a metaphorical box, my modem.”

Talbot had expanded this idea into quite an intricate theory that came under the heading of, as Crispin pointed out, “clutching at straws”.