Time and Again (6 page)

‘Stay behind after school,' Mr Samuels told them, ‘and we'll sort out this business then.'

When the teacher announced the spelling
test, only one pupil was not caught by surprise. Sitting alone, Luke had slowly come to realise what must have happened – however weird it was – and used the situation to his own advantage. Knowing which words had come up in the test before, he checked in a dictionary and tried to commit them to memory.

Mr Samuels was astonished by Luke's result. The boy had only two words wrong and he was not near enough to anybody to have copied them. ‘This is remarkable, Luke,' he said. ‘It shows what you are capable of when you put your mind to it. Perhaps you should sit by yourself more often.'

Luke's grin became even wider when Chris had to admit that he had spelt only half of the words right.

‘A pity it's not had the same effect on you, Christopher,' said Mr Samuels, frowning at him over his spectacles.

Later on, in the book corner, when the teacher had finished reading the time-travel story, he asked the class a question:

‘How many of you would like to travel back in time, if you had the chance?'

Most of the hands went up, including Luke's, which was the highest.

‘Right, Luke,' said Mr Samuels, pleased to see some enthusiasm from him for a change. ‘And just where might you like to go back to?'

‘Not bothered,' Luke said, grinning. ‘Anywhere but here.'

The children laughed, but the teacher was not amused.

‘And do you think that time travel might ever be possible?' he persisted.

‘It already is,' Luke claimed and he brandished the Timewatch in the air, much to the twins' horror. ‘And I'll prove it – look!'

Click
!

Unfortunately for Luke, he did not know that the same hour could not be repeated twice. He had made a great show of pressing the red button, but nothing happened. He clicked it again – and again – but they were still all sitting together in the book corner, staring at him as if he were mad.

‘Yes, Luke, very theatrical,' the teacher drawled, unimpressed by the boy's antics. ‘Perhaps we can talk about that nonsense
after school, too.'

Luke slumped back against a bookcase, his face almost as red as the button on the Timewatch.

‘So how are we going to get the watch back off Luke?' Becky voiced the question that Chris had wrestled with all the way home, after his ticking off by Mr Samuels, but he was still no nearer an answer.

‘Dunno,' he muttered. ‘He won't just give it back, that's for sure. He laughed at me when I asked for it outside school, and then he ran off.'

‘What did Sammy say about the watch?'

‘Not a lot. He didn't even ask to see it, fortunately,' Chris explained. ‘He wanted to know whose it was and when Luke told him he'd borrowed it from his grandad for the day, that was it. He just told him not to bring it back into school.'

‘I wonder when Luke will use the watch
again,' Becky said. ‘And what he'll do?'

‘First bit's easy – as soon as he can,' Chris replied. ‘But as for what he'll get up to – your guess is as good as mine.'

‘Right, come on. Let's go and find him,' she said, whistling for Tan to join them. ‘Wherever he is.'

Luke was still at home, in fact, almost the last place the twins thought of checking. They were sure that he would be out and about, looking for mischief.

Luke had so far resisted the urge to try the red button again, suspecting that, if it worked, he might find himself suffering a repeat of his lecture from Mr Samuels. Nor did he dare press any of the other buttons around the perimeter of the watch, just in case.

‘Too risky. Anything might happen,' he muttered. ‘I'll wait a bit longer.'

Luke watched television for a while till he grew bored and then went into the garden to kick a ball about. It was only when a stray shot flew over the fence and broke a window in next-door's greenhouse that he decided to act – especially as their neighbour had come storming out of the house.

Click
!

After a moment's blurred vision and dizziness, it seemed as though the world around him had undergone an instant scene change. He found himself back in the market square, where he had briefly been at four o'clock on his way home – exactly one hour ago.

‘Well, at least that window's still in one piece, I guess,' he mused.

Luke sat on the stone steps of the statue that dominated the centre of the busy market square, wondering what to do next. That particular problem was solved by the arrival of Butch, but it only led to a far more serious one.

‘What was all that nonsense in class with the watch?' asked Butch, slumping down alongside him. ‘You made yourself look a right idiot.'

Luke pulled a face. He took the watch from his coat pocket and dangled it from the chain, swinging it back and forth in front of Butch's face as if trying to hypnotise him. ‘Can you keep a secret?' he demanded.

Butch grinned. ‘Sure.'

‘Well, if you click the red button, this watch really does send you back in time.'

‘Oh, yeah?' said Butch, humouring him. ‘How far?'

‘One hour.'

‘One hour!' chortled Butch, unimpressed. ‘Is that the best you can do – one measly hour?'

‘Well, it's a start,' said Luke with a shrug. ‘Once I get the hang of it, bet I'll be able to go back weeks – or even years.'

‘Rubbish!' Butch snorted. ‘Give it here.' He snatched the watch and began jabbing at the red button repeatedly. ‘Nothing's happened, has it?' he scoffed. ‘Nothing's changed at all.'

But something
had
happened. The button had stuck down. Butch tossed the watch back to Luke and stood up to leave.

‘You've gone and broke it,' Luke wailed, desperately trying to free the button.

‘Tough! I'm off.'

Butch left the market and bumped into the twins just beyond the square.

‘You haven't seen Luke by any chance, have you?' asked Chris.

‘Funny you should say that,' Butch replied, bending to fuss Tan. ‘I've just been with him at the statue. The wally was still trying to make out that watch is some kind of time machine!'

‘Does he have it with him?' asked Becky.

‘Yeah – not much use now, though,' Butch chuckled. ‘It's bust.'

‘Bust!' exclaimed Chris.

‘The red button's jammed,' he told them with a laugh, moving off. ‘Serves him right, if you ask me. See ya!'

The twins looked at each other in alarm and hurried into the square. There was no sign of Luke, but they could tell where he'd been.

A fruit stall had been tipped up, causing apples and oranges to topple all over the ground, and another trader was complaining loudly that a boy had just dashed by and grabbed a handful of computer disks off his stall.

‘Must be Luke,' said Chris. ‘Where do you reckon he's gone now?'

‘Let's try the fields,' Becky suggested. ‘He might have run off there.'

To their dismay, the fields were deserted, but they extended the search along by the river until they passed a clump of trees. Chris was about to throw a stick for Tan to fetch when Becky gave a cry.

‘There he is!' She was pointing towards the railway line and Chris spotted Luke, too. He was climbing over the fence on the opposite side of the track and then disappeared into an
area of woodland. Chris seized Tan's collar to attach her lead while Becky set off on the chase, sprinting through the long grass and leaving them both well behind.

As Becky neared the railway, she saw what Luke had done and hesitated, turning to shout back to her brother. ‘He's put a big branch on the line.'

Hardly were the words out of her mouth when they heard the loud siren of a train, a warning to anybody who might be near where the footpath crossed the single line. Trains along this stretch of track were few and far between, but Luke must have known that one was due.

Only someone of Becky's speed and agility would have been able to reach the crossing before the train. She vauleted the stile over the fence and scrunched to a halt in the gravel by the track, her heart pounding. With the train closing rapidly upon her, its noise filling her senses, she grabbed hold of the heavy branch and pulled…

Chris was still too far away to help and the long, rattling line of trucks blocked his view of the crossing point, drowning Tan's barks and his own desperate cries.

‘Becky!' he screamed. ‘Becky!'

Chris stared in horror over the stile as the wagons clanked by, hardly daring to think of what he might see when they had all gone past.

The sight was the one he dreaded. His sister was sprawled against the opposite fence, face down, lying very still.

‘Becky!' he cried again.

To his huge relief, she slowly rolled over and sat up, her face smeared with dirt.

‘I'm OK,' she croaked and then managed a lopsided grin. ‘What kept you, little brother?'

Chris shook his head in bewilderment at her nerve. ‘That was a stupid thing to go and do,' he told her when he and Tan had crossed the track. ‘You could've got yourself killed.'

Becky scrambled to her feet, if only to escape further face-licking from Tan. ‘I know. I realise that now – sorry,' she said, feeling a little weak at the knees. ‘Just acted on impulse.'

‘It wasn't even a passenger train.'

‘Might have been,' she retorted. ‘At least I saved the driver from getting hurt, if the train
had
been derailed.'

‘True enough,' Chris admitted. ‘Right, so let's get hold of Luke before he tries anything else like that.'

‘Why would he
do
such a thing?' Becky said as they set off towards the wood where Luke had made his escape. ‘It doesn't make any sense – even for him.'

There was no escape for Luke, however, from his living nightmare. With the red button jammed, he had found himself trapped in a time loop, having to keep repeating the same hour, if not the same actions. Every time the little gold arrow completed a circuit of the dial, it began to move slowly round all over again.

By the third such loop, Luke was becoming
so desperate that he had even felt tempted to stand on the line in front of the train. He panicked, though, when he heard Becky's shout and hauled the branch onto it instead.

Luke had already vented his anger and frustration in many ways. Returning to school, he scratched Mr Samuels's car with a nail, stole a football from the sports store – which he soon lost by kicking it up onto the roof – tipped over waste bins and smashed several classroom windows.

‘Catch me if you can!' he yelled when the caretaker appeared on the scene – and then ran off, just in case the man gave chase.

The twins were finding Luke elusive, too, picking up his haphazard trail of vandalism in and around the village. They had no idea that he was continually on rewind and kept returning to various places…

…like the woodland, where he snapped lots of newly planted saplings…

…like the farm, where he let pigs and hens out into the yard…

…like the recreation ground, where he used school chalk to scrawl some graffiti on the wall of the changing hut…

LUKE WOZ ERE – AGEN!!!

…and like the new housing estate, where he damaged doors, flowers, trees, cars and more windows…

Finally, even Luke tired of breaking things. He went to sit by the river for a while to have a bit of a think.

‘Perhaps none of it really happened,' he mused, trying to comfort himself that each extra hour served to erase what he had done before. ‘Just so long as I don't get nabbed before I get out of this mess – if I ever do.'

Luke began to throw stones into the water, using a group of ducks as targets, and failed to hear the twins sneak up behind him.