Chapter Two
“I’ve died.”
That was Jack’s first thought, unsurprisingly, considering he was looking down on himself in a hospital bed, and also taking into account that the last thing he remembered was the rapid approach of an avalanche of limestone. He shrugged. “Well, that didn’t hurt a bit.”
“You’re not dead,” said a second voice—not his own, not even one of the voices that occasionally popped into his head.
“I’m not?” Right, well, that made things a bit more complicated.
“But he is,” the voice added helpfully.
Jack didn’t need to look to see whose voice it was, because he immediately recognised it as belonging to the strange, tall man he thought had probably been into the fish and chip shop a short while ago. How long ago was it? An hour? A day? It seemed like just a few minutes.
“If I’m not dead, who is he?” Jack asked, still unable to take his eyes off the other Jack lying in the bed.
Soft footsteps approached from behind and stopped to his right. “He is you, so technically, you are dead, if that helps answer your question.”
“Sort of.” Jack had already decided on an explanation that made much more sense. He wasn’t a twin. No. He was a triplet, and this was obviously his identical triplet. He wasn’t sure how Hannah came into the equation. Or maybe he was only a twin and they’d swapped Hannah for his poor dead brother?
“I know what you’re thinking.” The man placed one of his enormous hands on Jack’s shoulder—ostensibly, a gesture intended to comfort him, although the crushing sensation on his spine wasn’t at all comforting and also meant he couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he repeated, “and the answer is ‘no’. He isn’t your twin brother. He is you and also he is not you. In this place, he is, and you shouldn’t be here. Quite how you are is what I need to consider next.”
Jack scratched his head. “But this is my local hospital, isn’t it? Surely, I got here by ambulance? Or are you saying that I should’ve died and not him?” He nodded at the impostor on the bed.
“That’s not really what I meant, but it will take far too long to explain, and we need to leave, now, before the doctor returns to certify him—you—as dead.”
The soothing hand resting on his shoulder increased its pressure enough to steer Jack away from the bed and out of the cubicle. The man pulled the curtain closed behind them, and Jack finally turned to face him.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, barely able to keep the anger, not to mention terror, from his voice.
“Jericho,” the man replied, striding ahead at such a pace that Jack had to jog to keep up and quickly ran out of breath, so he didn’t probe for any more information. He wasn’t sure he was going to like what he heard, anyway.
They marched through the hospital reception, past several ambulances already stopped and disembarking casualties, each one driving away at speed to make way for the next. The car park was full to capacity, beyond it the terrifying view of the cliffs, drastically altered from how Jack last recalled them.
“Oh, my!” he uttered, stopping dead in his tracks to watch another few hundred tons of landmark topple slowly down towards to sea. The backsplash was visible from where he was standing, and the hospital was easily a mile from the coast. “What’s happening?” he asked, but there was no response.
Jericho was some distance ahead of him and pointing a remote-control key fob at one of the cars. The lights on a four-by-four flashed, and Jack sprinted over and climbed into the passenger seat. Jericho indicated he should put on his seat belt, waiting only a second before he drove off at speed, commanding silence until they were a long way from the hospital and headed in the opposite direction to the collapsing cliffs.
It was only then that Jack realised something was very different, aside from the fact that his usually over-sensitive ‘stranger danger’ sirens hadn’t gone off. No, this was something that maybe wouldn’t be particularly odd anywhere else other than in his hometown, where it rained all year round. Because right now, it was warm and sunny, not a cloud in view, not a drop of rain, and only the slightest hint of a breeze.
Everything else was precisely how it should be, or, at least, the cliffs shouldn’t be falling down, but that was only unusual in its intensity. Limestone was brittle, and it wasn’t the first time he’d seen huge chunks of it fall away. The whole area was marked with warning signs, and he was used to it. In fact, it was about the only exciting thing that ever happened.
They were still travelling at speed, a little hairy on some of those bends coming down from the coast, and Jack kept looking behind him, the cliffs soon a small, distant object. He had no idea where he was going, or why he had got into a car with a man he barely knew, but he didn’t quite know what else to do. Either he’d just met his dead twin, or his dead doppelganger, or worse still, himself.
Before that, this man had appeared in the fish and chip shop, a tourist—he’d said so himself—and a stranger, but still someone upon whom Jack would already trust his life. If he had a life, or an explanation for any of this weirdness, because in spite of the urgent getaway, Jericho was calm. He obviously knew a lot more about what was going on than Jack did.
“About back then in the hospital,” Jack ventured, still glancing behind him from time to time. “You said that he was me. How is that possible?”
“Think of it as a cracked mirror,” Jericho suggested. He indicated left as he turned the corner, brakes screeching, and headed upwards and inland. “Imagine that he, the deceased you, is who you see in the mirror. Two separate apparitions of the same person, in the same place at the same time.”
“Right. With you so far.”
“That’s all.”
“But surely a reflection is two-dimensional, whereas I am most definitely not.”
“On this side of the mirror. You’re quite right. However, should the mirror break—which, in this case, is a most fitting analogy—then the other you, along with everything else before you, is no longer a flat reflection.”
Jack drew breath to speak but couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he switched to watching out of the window, focusing on birds defying a scarecrow as they swooped close by and collected seeds directly behind the tractor sowing them. This bit of countryside was relatively familiar, being the route they took for their family holidays, and it appeared the same as always. Jack relaxed a little. He wanted to know where they were going but not enough to break the silence. He’d never travelled in a four-by-four, and it was very comfortable, absorbing minor bumps in the road with no trouble at all. The sun was warm on his skin, and soon he was struggling to keep his eyes open, even though he estimated it was only mid-afternoon.
***
“This isn’t funny anymore.” Jack sat up and took in yet more new surroundings, which consisted of a king-size bed in a vast, sparsely furnished room. He recalled falling asleep in the car but had no memory of making his way to a bed. And it was going dark or getting light; the dull lilac glow coming in through a window said so, which meant that, once again, the passage of time—or place, or whatever the hell this was—had taken him by surprise. He reached over to the table beside the bed and turned on the small lamp. It didn’t help a great deal, but he could at least now see where the door was and also that he was in what appeared to be a modern house. The French doors were built into an imposing archway so as to look older, but they were constructed of UPVC; the walls were smooth and square, and the ceiling was so low he could almost have reached up and touched it from where he was.
Enough already. He flung back the duvet, slowly swung his legs off the bed and eased to his feet, the resultant dizzy spell making him stagger and wonder if he’d been kidnapped and drugged. It would explain a lot, and he’d have bet good money he was locked in. To test his theory, he carefully negotiated around the bed to the French doors and tried the handle.
“Hm.” Unlocked, so that more or less ruled out the abduction and drugging story, not that he could think of a single reason why someone would want to kidnap him. He pushed the door open and stepped out onto the small balcony. The view took his breath away. From what he could see, he was in a magnificent house set in miles and miles of woodland and greenery, with not another house in sight, nor roads, nor any other signs of civilisation. Jack forced himself to breathe slowly, not panicked so much as completely disorientated.
Everywhere else he had been on this strangest of days had at least been familiar to him, but now he was in unknown territory. The house cast a long shadow before him, so he had to be facing east, which put the coastline somewhere far in front of him…assuming it was evening. It certainly felt like evening; sunset rather than sunrise.
He was also famished and realised he hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, or maybe even yesterday morning. It was impossible to be sure, and he recalled having this feeling once before, on the school trip to the caves when he had whacked his head, lost consciousness and then slept through the vast majority of his concussion, missing a whole day in the process. Whether it was another concussion he couldn’t be sure, but what he did know was he was hungry enough to surpass his normal fear of the unknown and go in search of food. Fortunately, he didn’t have to go too far.
Jericho was waiting at the door to the room, smiling warmly and now minus the overcoat but still wearing that ridiculous hat.
“I’m pleased to see you up and about of your own accord. The fatigue is to be expected, based on my own experiences. I’ve prepared a small meal for us both, if you’d care to follow me.” He turned and walked away without waiting for a response.
The assumption of compliance irritated Jack, and if it weren’t for the promise of food, he’d have stayed right where he was. Instead, he followed at a distance, taking in the house, its contemporary décor, the expensive furnishings visible through slightly open doors—plush, enormous beds, antique ottomans and dressers, like the ones in the room in which he had awoken. At the top of the stairs, there was a vast, glazed cabinet filled with shiny trinkets, to each attached a creamy, handwritten label.
Evidently, Jericho was a man of some means, and quite eccentric. An academic, maybe? Educated, certainly, if the fine art and sculptures were anything to go by. However, that in no way explained what he’d been doing in a grotty old fish and chip shop, when, surely, he could have afforded to go anywhere he wanted? ‘To get out of the wind and rain’, he’d said. If it hadn’t been particularly convincing at the time, it was even less so now.
They descended a winding flight of stairs and crossed a copious hallway that was entirely devoid of furnishings of any sort. To the right was a solid oak exterior door and what appeared to be a closet. Jericho beckoned Jack to follow him through another door, into what turned out to be a significant yet cosy kitchen. Jack inhaled deeply, the air so thick with the aromas of warm bread and coffee he could almost chew it. His belly gave an embarrassingly loud grumble, and he turned away, pretending to survey the room to cover himself.
“You like the old place, then?” Jericho asked.
“Err. Yeah.” Jack’s head was still fuzzy. “It’s very nice, although it’s not that old, is it?”
“Indeed, no. I had it built a few years ago, when I finally won the battle for my inheritance.”
“It’s very big for just one person,” Jack said, fishing for information. This man could be a crazy axe-murdering serial killer or anything, although he was a crazy axe murderer with food, so Jack was happy to play along for the time being.
“It is much too big for one person.” Jericho nodded to emphasise his agreement. He opened the door on a Victorian-style range and extracted a loaf tin. Modern as the house was, he seemed to like his olde-worlde stuff. “But then, readiness for all possibilities is my preference. Tonight, for instance, I have the pleasure of your company.” He emptied the loaf onto a wooden board and took it to the table in the centre of the room. “Please, Jack. Make yourself at home, for it might be that for a while.”
Jack did as he was told and sat down on the opposite side of the table to his host, who poured fresh coffee into two cups and handed one over. Only then did Jericho’s words register.
“Hang on. You expect me to stay here? What’s going on, please? Where the hell am I? Who exactly are you? And why do I feel like I’ve had no sleep for days?”
Jericho laughed, not mockingly as such, but there was an element of teasing in his tone. “All in good time, my friend. All in good time. Now you must eat.” He tore a piece off the loaf of bread and pushed the rest across to Jack, who followed his lead.
“Just one question for now?”
“All right.”
“Am I in some kind of parallel dimension?”
Jericho put his bread down and sat back in his chair, as if trying to decide whether to answer or not. Jack watched and waited, neither of which precluded shoving a chunk of bread into his mouth and swallowing it without chewing it first.
“Well?” he prompted, wishing he hadn’t scoffed the bread so quickly. He was sure it was going to burn a hole through his chest at any second. A glass of water appeared in front of him, and he glugged gratefully but swiftly, determined to get his answer. He stared hard at Jericho until he relented with a kind of hand shrug.
“An intriguing description, in that it is relatively accurate, but not what one would anticipate.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that most people in your situation would not interpret it thus, but I suppose that you are more or less correct. Certainly a close proximity, if not exactly parallel.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” Jack said. “At least I know I’m not going nuts. Not yet, anyway.” He pulled off another piece of bread, this time chewing it. It was still too hot to fully enjoy, but delicious nonetheless, and there was little else he could do in this unknown place—apparently not even his own reality, although it was only his fascination with science fiction that was keeping him the right side of madness. He sliced some cheese off the large block of cheddar in the middle of the table and crammed it, along with more bread, into his mouth.
“I must admit,” he mumbled around the food, “I didn’t expect a coma to be like some kind of enhanced dream. I mean, it’s got everything, hasn’t it? Full colour, beautiful weather. Even the bread’s hot.”
“A coma, you say.” Jericho’s expression was one of amusement.
“I get crushed by an enormous boulder, fall into a coma—maybe they sedated me to keep me unconscious, you know? To give my body time to heal.”
“An interesting premise.” Jericho smiled, smoothing his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “And somewhat more credible, I envisage.”
“So what, actually, is your role in all of this?” Jack helped himself to more cheese. “I mean, in the real world you’re obviously my doctor or something, but I’m going to go with this whole dream thing for a while. It’s fun.”
“Believe me, Jack, this is the real world.”
“Yeah, OK. So, you’re some loony scientist whose heinous experiments have ripped a hole in the space-time continuum.”
“Ha, no. I am merely a professor whose curiosity got the better of him. That is not to say I am wholly responsible for what you are experiencing. On the contrary, my studies are of humanity, anthropological in nature. When I uncovered this anomaly—for want of a better word—I was simply attempting to investigate the ancient people of this area. My visit to your establishment some weeks ago was the first time we met, for it was the first time I happened upon the ‘gateway’—again, the best word I can locate.”
“Some weeks ago?” Jack flippantly waved the cheese knife in the air as he contemplated this information. “I thought we met only yesterday, but…I suppose I could’ve been unconscious that long.”
“In your version, it was yesterday, but not so, or not here. I imagine the second time, in the hospital, you experienced very soon after that?”
Jack nodded.
“When, in fact, that happened a little less than a fortnight since, and you have been in a state of delirium the entire time, which appears to occur as a result of passing between the two versions. My experience was much the same.”
“So you’re saying I’ve been ‘here’, as you call it, for more than two weeks?”
“That is correct.”
“Interesting.” Jack sat back in his chair, suddenly very full of food and feeling more than a little tired. “Tell me this, then, Doctor Jericho—”
“I haven’t been called that for some time.”
Jack ignored him. “If I’ve been unconscious—”
“You haven’t.”
“All right. If I’ve been conscious and residing in this parallel dimension of yours for two weeks—”
“Closer to a month.”
“Two weeks, a month, what does it matter?” The interruptions were getting on Jack’s nerves. “If I’ve been here all this time, where’s the bushy beard?”
“Bushy beard?” Jericho frowned. “Ah! I see.” He rose from his chair, chuckling. “Follow me.”
He beckoned and, for reasons he could not fathom, Jack once again followed Jericho, out into the hallway and across to the closet. The creaking hinges as the door opened made Jack shudder and suck his lips against his teeth. Jericho moved aside and gestured at the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Jack stepped forward with a huff, making clear he thought it all ridiculous and unnecessary, until he saw his reflection.
“Oh,” he said.
“It’s very becoming.”
“I look like a hobo.” Jack sighed, taking in his scruffy appearance. And scrawny. He’d definitely lost weight, but that was nothing compared to the extensive facial hair he appeared to have accumulated.
Jericho closed the closet door and returned to the kitchen. Jack trailed behind, looking back at the door in disbelief. So it wasn’t some sort of coma or dream, then. He really was in an alternate reality.
“This gateway, as you called it. How did I end up on the other side of it?”
“That, I can’t explain,” Jericho admitted ruefully. He poured more coffee for Jack, and then for himself.
“Well, is it anything to do with what’s happening to the cliffs? I’ve lived here, there, wherever it is, all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I believe so, yes. If not the cliffs themselves, somewhere very close by.”
Jack got the feeling that was only the half of it, but he thought he’d already figured where the gateway was. All this time, he’d been blaming the bad weather for the lack of customers when they were disappearing through some kind of gateway into another version of his shop, which also explained the reappearing sausage: in one reality, Jericho had entered the shop; in the other, he had not.
“So, if there’s two of me, or, at least, there isn’t anymore, where is the other you? Is there another you?”
“Yes, although we met only the once in passing.” Jericho paused a moment and focused vaguely on the empty space above the table between them, then added, “Which is possibly as well.”
“Why?” Given that Jack’s knowledge of science fiction was his only frame of reference, he had an idea of why but thought it best to check that it was, as he and Captain Jean-Luc Picard suspected, something to do with avoiding temporal paradoxes, or whatever they might be called in the real world.
“What if he is far more successful than I?” Jericho asked, rhetorically. “How disappointing it would be to discover one’s alter ego is a shining star in his field, or worse still, has managed to find a wife and create a family.”
That was not the answer Jack had anticipated. In fact, it was far simpler than damaging timelines in some unintended way or interfering with the past. It was telling, that in a universe of infinite possibilities, Jack had naïvely assumed the other Jack would be just like him: a loser working in a fish and chip shop on the most desolate windswept corner of the country.
And yet, the more he thought about it, the more unlikely it became. Jericho had suggested this reality was alternate rather than parallel. From what Jack had seen so far, it was more an opposite to the world he thought he knew, and the weather, for one, was very much in agreement. When they had left the hospital…whenever it was, it had been sunny and pleasant with friendly sheep-like clouds breaking up the expanse of blue. A clear dusk sky had met him at the French doors, rather than the normal greyish black that even he could see was best obscured by the net curtains his mother was so fond of.
So it appeared Jericho was right. This was the reverse side of Jack’s world, in which case, the other him was undoubtedly a roaring social success with a girlfriend and a great job and basically everything else he had coveted in his twenty-one years.
“Do you know anything about the other me?” he asked, although he hadn’t intended to. “What he did for a living, for example?”
“No,” Jericho replied too quickly. For a few seconds, he seemed at a loss for words. “I’m afraid I do not. Have you finished eating?”
The moment of hesitation may have been imagined, but the change of subject definitely wasn’t. It had all been too much for one day, anyway, and Jack was happy to let it go, even though he was now absolutely certain there was much more to this and his new acquaintance wasn’t telling.
“I can see you’re exhausted,” Jericho said, once again right on cue, almost as if they’d done this before and he knew all the lines. “I must be candid and tell you I brought you here with the intention you should remain until such point as it is safe enough for you to go back.”
Jack was too tired to consider beyond the basic logic or protest. If his life had been in any danger, Jericho would have made his move already. Wearily, Jack nodded his agreement to the suggestion—it may well have been a direct order, but he didn’t care. He needed to sleep, and any further explaining or trying to unravel what had happened could wait until tomorrow.
He allowed Jericho to take the lead up the stairs and to the room Jack had left barely an hour previously, where he climbed into the bed without bothering to undress and was asleep before he had time to think about whether his parents would be missing him, should they happen to notice he was gone. Somehow he doubted they would.
No comments:
Post a Comment