

Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

By G J Lee

Copyright 2011 G J Lee

Discover more about the author at

Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1

There's Something Under My Bed

With a clatter of knives and forks my Dad tossed his cutlery onto his empty dinner plate. Then he folded his arms, leant back and stared at me.

"What the hell do you mean 'there's something under my bed?"

I didn't answer straight away. The words just wouldn't come. While Dad waited he impatiently uncrossed then re-crossed his arms, somehow managing to tip up his plate in the process, his knife and fork skittering across the table. With a grunt Dad shoved everything aside. Somewhere in the kitchen a clock ticked and outside the bin men were shouting to one another.

"On Tuesday night," I told him sheepishly, "I got up for a glass of milk."

Dad was unimpressed. He shrugged, looked at me blankly. I had to get on with it.

"Well, I got up because something frightened me."

I could see Dad wasn't impressed. "Frightened you?"

"Yes. It really did."

"Now tell me, Jay Webber," he asked me quietly, "what could possibly frighten a young adult at three in the morning?"

Dad was being sarcastic. I had to get to the point. I had to tell him the truth.

"Well..." I was a little embarrassed, "...it's been going on now for weeks, but on Tuesday night, it was the only time...you know...the only time it really frightened me."

"I understand that, but what, exactly, is it that's frightening?"

I picked some rice crispies off of the table-top and placed them back into my cereal bowl. "Well, I've started hearing people shouting."

"Shouting?"

"Yes."

"But from underneath your bed."

"Yes."

"Mmmm."

"There are!" I insisted. I had to try harder to convince Dad. I was losing him. "It's been going on for a while now, lots of people shouting lots of things. It's all mixed up and not very pleasant and, like I said, these voices are coming from underneath my bed, but it wasn't that bad because they seemed far away. But then, on Tuesday night, I was just lying there and listening to these voices, when suddenly..." I looked at Dad. He had his arms folded again and was frowning. But he was still listening so I carried on. "Suddenly they got really close and then this one voice...one voice...seemed right beside me, you know, up close, and it whispered...it whispered..." I stared down at the cereal bowl in front of me with its handful of remaining rice crispies. Isn't it funny how the snap, crackle and pop eventually stops. But I was avoiding telling him again. I had to get it done. Now! "It whispered...help me."

There was a long silence. I needed Dad to say something.

"Is that all it said?"

"Well, yes."

Then, with a scrape of his chair, Dad got up and turned to look out the kitchen window. It took him a while to answer. When he did he kept his eyes firmly on our back garden.

"Jay, I'll go and take a look. OK?"

"Now?"

"In a minute, Jay. Just give me a second."

Something told me that Dad needed a bit of space.

"I'll just go and watch some telly, Dad, OK?

"Yes. Fine. I'll call you when I need you."

"OK."
Chapter 2

"I'll go and check!"

We seem to forget how important stairs are. I mean, most buildings have at least one and they can lead, well, just about anywhere. Soon we were stood looking up at our own set of stairs. And Dad had brought a bread knife.

"You've gotta be prepared," he said with a smile. I just thought he was being sarcastic again. He must have been because he left it on the bottom of the stairs when he realised there was an unopened letter on the Welcome mat just inside the front door. I waited for Dad to toss the letter onto the hall table then I let him start climbing the stairs. I remember thinking how odd it was that I'd been playing and messing about in my bedroom like any normal Saturday morning. Until I told my Dad about the voices and noises, that is. Now my bedroom and the bed in it had become a monster's lair and I was scared. What would we find when we moved the bed? I know there was stuff under there, like my old transformers, socks and PC games, but what would we find when we moved all that? Dad didn't seem bothered though. He pushed open my bedroom door and made a comment on the state of it.

"Look at the state of it," he said and kicked a cushion that was lying quietly, minding its own business, on the floor. A cushion that was meant to be on the swivel chair by my desk. It was a bean-type thing and it whispered through the air and shushed against my bookcase, a bookcase that didn't have any books on it, just some comics, football magazines and more PC games.

Dad stood over my bed and put his hands on his hips. "When did we last change this bed?

I shrugged. "Can't remember."

"Well, we'd better do it soon or it'll eat you a..." Dad stopped and looked at me. He was smiling from one corner of his mouth like he knew he had said the wrong thing.

"Alive?" I filled-in for him.

"Well, who knows." He reached under the bed, grabbed its metal frame and pulled. The bed was heavy and the green carpet didn't help. So I grabbed the frame too and helped Dad pull the bed away from the wall towards the opposite wall. The bed left a trail of odds and ends. Things stuffed under there long forgotten. I knew that Dad was going to have a go at me.

"Look at it, Jay," he whined, "it's a tip under there. That's probably what the noise is. There's people trying to get out. Where is Kyle anyway?" Dad pretended to look around. "I haven't seen him lately."

Kyle is my best friend.

"Shut up, Dad!"

We made sure there was enough room to move around then Dad asked me to clear all the stuff off of the floor and put it on the bed. Then he went to fetch one of the old boxes from the garage. I picked up two wheels joined by an axel from an old skateboard I used to have and placed them on my bed with other stuff. Then I stopped. I picked them up again, studied them closely. Once they were red but because they had been used a lot they had become grey from concrete and tarmac. There were tiny little stones in the plastic. As I turned them in my hands the wheels clinked. One of them span smoothly.

It was then I thought of Mum and my eighth birthday. My birthday's in August so it was the summer holidays. It was raining. I remember not sleeping very well and being awake long before Dad came in to wake me up. He was frying some bacon and the smell burst in when Dad opened the door.

"Happy birthday, Jay! C'mon, I'm cooking some bacon."

I ran out to the kitchen still in my blue patterned piranhas (pyjamas – Dad calls them piranhas). The word 'presents' must have been written all over my face because Dad, holding the pan with the frying bacon, nodded towards the front room. I doubled back pretty smartly and shot into our lounge.

And there, on the mat in front of the fireplace, were three parcels. One was wrapped in last year's leftover Christmas paper. The other two were blue. One had a skateboard inside. I could tell.

I poked and prodded at the wrapping paper that snapped and crackled back. It took Mum and Dad ages to get themselves organised and get to the front room. When they eventually arrived I had a quick slurp of tea and then tore into my presents. I had another new PC game, a big wooden chess set...and a skateboard! The skateboard was black with cool words on it and it had the red wheels that I'd been talking about. I got up excitedly and was about to climb aboard but Dad said I'd 'ruin the carpet' and 'get outside'. But when I looked I realised that the rain was worse. I remembered that I couldn't use my skateboard until tea-time, when bits of sunshine reflected off the wet pavements like a huge torch. I didn't want to get my new skateboard too wet and dirty so I got on it outside our front door. I flapped my arms about to try and keep my balance and I quickly realised that skateboarding isn't easy. But I'd had a go and was pleased with going up our pavement a short distance, then back again. After a few trips I wiped the skateboard down with the sleeve of my jumper and took it carefully up to my room. I leant it beside my wardrobe, where it would live and where I could see it and keep an eye on it.

Brilliant. At last I had a skateboard. I would be so cool at school.

That was a good memory.

My Mum's in St Mary's hospital. She's not well.

I miss my Mum.

Then Dad came back with the box and began stuffing things in it and didn't seem bothered that there wasn't anything horrible under the bed. At one point I was sure I heard a distant crackle and a hiss like a hidden snake. But I couldn't be sure.

When we finished I looked at the bit of green carpet that had recently been under my bed. It was brighter and less worn than the carpet elsewhere in my bedroom. But I was disappointed. There would be no adventures with monsters this Saturday morning.

Dad came and stood beside me. "That carpet needs a good hoover. I'll change your sheets while I'm at it." Then he lifted the box from my bed and squeezed,' oohing' and 'aahing', out of my bedroom door and I was left alone with the new patch of green carpet thinking of Mum. I thought of how pretty she is, how she's got really long brown hair that always smells sweet and dark eyes that Dad says turn to cats' eyes whenever she's angry. My Mum is very slim despite having had a big fat baby. I think they mean me. Dad always says to people that I was 'nine pound odd, which is cheap for a baby." Yeah, Mum is pretty. I remember when they used to talk about the evening they met. Mum always says Dad was lucky to have met her but Dad always replies that his luck ran out of the pub door and came back in as Mum.

Later Dad took me for burger and chips and on the way back he said he'd book a doctor's appointment for me. I said I was fine but he insisted. He said that I might be dreaming the voices because of Mum and that I might need some tablets. That made me unhappy. I know that I didn't imagine the noises and voices. They were real. Still, I said that I'd go. Just to make Dad happy.
Chapter 3

The Front Room of Somebody Else

A dream. I think.

It's the room again. The front room with the old settee.

I'm sat cross-legged. I'm in the corner and on the floor with my back to the wall. Beside me, on my right, is what seems to be a dining table. A brown tablecloth brushes close to my face and there is a settee which is also a brown, a small two-seater with arm rests. It has white arm protectors that I know my Nan sometimes uses. Close to the sofa is a pair of net curtains that hides a wooden framed window and the grey street outside. Beside the settee is something silver on a tall black stand. On the wall facing me is a cream cabinet that has ornaments and china plates and cups arranged neatly. Near that is a fireplace with a dark, sooty mouth and the walls are covered in wallpaper, faded with time. A large picture shows a group of horses and red-cloaked horsemen gathered for the hunt. Dogs and handlers fuss around the edges. There are smaller pictures here and there. A mirror hung up somewhere else.

But what catches my eye is the portrait of what I guess was an important soldier from the past. I recognised the union jack hiding his stomach.

The scene is quiet and still.

The nets at the old sash window are stirred. Ever-so-slightly. There must be a draught from somewhere.

The room feels familiar.

I have visited it in my dreams more than once.

I sit alone then hear a door open. It makes a swishing sound. Although I can't see it, it must one of those doors that open sideways. By sliding. Then someone enters the room. I hear the soft clump of slippered feet on thin carpet and the ssh-ssh, ssh-ssh of trouser fabric rubbing as this person walks into view. I only see the back of him and the back of his head as he walks, from left to right, to stand over the black stand with the silver top. He wears grey trousers, a white shirt and a grey jumper without any arms. I also recognise that he has an old smoking pipe in his hand. The man taps it loudly on the silver top of the black stand. I suddenly realise that the silver thing is an ashtray. Then the man pulls a tin from his pocket and begins to patiently fill the bowl of the pipe with what I think is tobacco. He pushes the tobacco in neatly. He presses the tobacco into the bowl with his fingers. Every now and then he glances towards the window as if expecting someone and I watch as he moves behind the old settee to stand directly in front of the window. Looking out, he continues to fill the bowl of his pipe.

It occurs to me, alone and in my corner, that at any moment he may turn. Pipe in hand. He may notice me sat quietly beside his table. I feel scared. I'm intruding. I shouldn't be here. If the man sees me what will he say or do? I'm suddenly agitated and uncomfortable.

But the man doesn't see me.

He never does.

I watch him at the window for some time before he backs away from the net curtains. He continues to back away, past where I hide, still looking longingly towards the window. It's almost as if he doesn't want to look at me. But I know he's focussed on something beyond the cloudy grey of the net curtains. I still only see the back of him as he passes out of the room. I only hear the ssh-ssh, ssh-ssh of his trousers.

The sliding door closes behind him.

And I'm left with the settee, the old soldier on the wall, the sash window and whatever lies beyond.

It's usually then that I wake up. I'm never really sure. But I know I'm in bed and not in a stranger's front room anymore. I turn and pull the duvet further over my head to try and keep the warmth in.

That's when I hear them. The noises and voices from underneath my bed.

To begin with they are far away, faded like memories of being small or a baby. But then they get louder and more forceful.

They get nearer.

It sounds like a bundle of people muttering together. Like a small room tightly packed with people who don't really want to be there. Or a crowded bus stop. Sometimes I hear a distant shout or what seems like a sob. A cough here. A tut there. Then someone telling somebody else off and the other person crying. Someone else is calling out a name and someone else is singing. All this is coming to me from under my bed and getting nearer and nearer.

Suddenly, directly beside my ear, I feel the warm breath of a person. A girl. Close. Very close. Then, those words, still muffled but getting clearer, like a ship suddenly looming out of the mist.

'...help me...help me...please...'

As usual I turn on all the lights and make my frightened way down to the kitchen for a drink.
Chapter 4

The Little Girl

The following night I couldn't sleep.

I tried and tried but just couldn't. I read my book of ghosts for a while but reading about a ghostly innkeeper in a Somerset village got me thinking about the noises and voices and the dream of the old man. So I put the book down. Although I left my bedside lamp switched on I covered my head with my football duvet. Because I hadn't done much during the day it took me ages to finally doze. I thought about Mum for a while and settled on a few happy memories such as a caravan holiday in Cornwall we once had, and going to the fair at Easter. I remembered getting told off by a man for dropping my candy floss onto the dodgems and Dad telling him off for telling me off.

When I did fall sleep I was sat on the floor in the old man's room again, near the dining table with the thin table cloth brushing my face and the nets moving at the window. The mirrors and pictures were all there as before but the old man didn't appear. But I heard the voice of the girl. Not frightening, but soft and cute. I listened and the voice seemed to become clearer and I realised it was saying the same thing over and over in a sort of loop. It was slightly different than before.

I held myself still and listened hard.

It was two words.

I listened still harder.

And then I caught them like fish in a net.

"Help Him...Help Him...Help Him...Help Him..."

Then I was back in my bedroom and staring up at my white ceiling. I wasn't sure if I was awake or not. I know I was shocked and frightened. I thought that I was still dreaming so I lay completely still.

Slowly, I realised I was awake.

And I also realised that I wasn't alone.

I was listening to the pleading voice of the girl again. But what she had been saying was said differently now. Not quickly over and over, it was said slowly and with other words and with an accent.

"Help him. Please help him. Please."

And the words were close.

Very close.

I was confused and dizzy. I wasn't sure what was dream and what was for real. By now I had the duvet pulled over my head so I was surrounded by complete darkness. I listened to the girl that seemed so close, so close I could touch her.

"Can you help him? Can you? Please help."

What was going on? My dreams had been invaded by a little girl!

"Can you help him? Please can you? Please!"

Again I could feel her breath on me. Like before the voice seemed soft and young. Younger than me. I also recognised a kind of West Country accent. Like fishermen have or farmers in childrens' TV programmes.

"Can you? You must!"

At last I decided to be brave - I would come out from under my duvet!

Slowly I turned over and the duvet slid away from my head. Orange light from my bedside lamp made me squint but the voice must have seen me move as it suddenly stopped. The silence frightened me even more. The duvet was still covering the lower half of my face and I peered through narrowed eyes over the top of the parapet I had made.

My bedroom had suddenly become a place you wouldn't want to go to after dark. The weak, lucozade light from my bedside lamp had left the corners of my room in gloomy darkness so now the looming shadow of my wardrobe had changed into a thick oak tree, books and odds-and-ends strewn about the floor had suddenly become rats and giant spiders, and pictures hung up windows where faces would look in.

But I saw the little girl as I looked slowly towards the bottom of my bed. A little girl, sat patiently on my swivel chair, staring back at me.

I never realised what people really mean when they say 'my heart was in my mouth'. But I do now. Kevin from number 21 had made me jump one Halloween by leaping out on me in a cloak and skeleton mask and Kyle always made me scared when we visited the old derelict house on King's Street.

But this was different. Although I was ready to see something, I guess you can never be totally ready to actually see something. The shock was like an electric shock. I shouted out and covered my head again.

I hadn't been running but I found myself panting hard in the darkness under my duvet. I really wanted to shout to my Dad to come and help. This was just too scary. I was only eleven.

"I just want to talk to you," I heard her whisper and she said it so sweetly that my mouth closed and my panting slowed. Gradually I grew calmer and a little braver. Only gradually.

"Can you talk to me?" she said, "I won't hurt you."

I was scared so I'm not proud of what I said next. It just came out. I really didn't think about it.

"If you don't go away I'll...I'll get my Dad!"

I waited for a reply. I clearly heard the little girl at the end of my bed give a deep sigh.

"I will!" I Iistened for a response. "He'll be angry."

"Your Dad can't hear you silly," said the girl.

Under the duvet I didn't understand. "Why? Why can't he hear me?"

"Because I'm here," she answered.

This was weird but somehow I didn't feel frightened. "What makes you so special? That's stupid nonsense," I told her. There was a spark of anger now. Who did she think she was? Barging into my room, uninvited, telling me that my Dad can't hear me. I listened but the girl didn't answer.

"Hello? Why can't my Dad hear me? What have you done to him?"

What if she had murdered him in cold blood with a bread knife or something? Left him pale and dead. It happens. I've seen the news.

Outside my duvet the girl gave another sigh.

"Boys. Why are they so scared of girls? They act so brave all the time yet look at you. Hiding under your duvet. You look silly."

Out on the street and in broad daylight her accent would have been funny. But in the middle of the night it all seemed so stupid.

And I was still angry.

"If I come out will you go away?"

"I only want your help."

"OK. I'm coming out". My voice was a little bit shaky. "But you've got to tell me what you've done to my Dad and then leave."

"I suppose so".

I came out from under my football duvet. This time to stay. I sat up and squinted towards the end of my bed.

She was a girl. That was certain. Around about eight or nine years old. She was dressed in a skirt with socks pulled up tightly just below the knee. She wore a thick jumper and what looked like a cardigan. I say cardigan because I've seen Granddad wear one. She also wore a scarf and gloves. She was prettily plain with a dainty chin and thin lips. Her long hair was done into pig-tails and she seemed to have some sort of beret on her head. She was still sat on my swivel chair and she looked at me curiously, her head cocked to one side like a cat, hands placed respectfully on knees that were drawn together.

Now, the way the girl was dressed and held herself was odd. But odder still was her colour. The girl was completely grey. Hair, skin, clothes, shoes. All grey. I can only describe her colour as like looking at a bad picture on an old black and white television set. She shimmered slightly, as if she were some sort of projected image.

For a moment this is what I thought she was.

"But," I said without trying to upset the stranger too much, "you're..."

"Grey?"

"Yeah."

I also noticed that her voice didn't match up with the way her lips moved. It was like - what's the expression? - like she was out of sync. It reminded me of the delay you get sometimes when a digital TV channel isn't tuned in properly. Then the girl put a grey hand to her mouth and giggled.

"What are you laughing at?" I was getting annoyed again now.

"It's your pyjamas," she smirked. "They're funny."

I suddenly became aware that I was just lying there in my old Spiderman pyjamas in front of a stranger. I was immediately embarrassed. I quickly covered myself with the duvet again, brought it up to my neck.

"I want you to leave now," I told her.

The girl became upset at this and instantly stopped smiling. She looked down at the floor. The way girls do when they want you to know that they're sad and want you to change your mind. Of course I felt sorry for her. I'm a boy. Boys can't help it.

"You can only stay if you tell me who you are, how you got in and what you've done to my Dad."

I was getting braver by the second.

The girl smiled, her lips moved and then the words came. "Your Dad's fine." The words straggled my way. "He just can't hear us."

"Why? Have you covered his ears?"

Again the girl giggled. "No, he's fine, believe me. It's just that I can do that."

"Do what?"

The girl shrugged. "Things."

That's it! I decided she was a ghost.

"Are you a ghost?" I was really brave now.

"Sort of."

The stranger pulled a white handkerchief from the front pocket of her cardigan. She wiped her nose and replaced it. Then she looked hard at me.

"My name is Elizabeth Raynor, or "Lizzie" for short and Raynor with an 'O'. I live here in this house with you."

I don't mind saying I was speechless. Tonight was just getting better and better.

"What do you mean 'live here in this house with you'? Only me and my Dad live here..." Then I thought about what I'd just said. "...and Mum sometimes."

Elizabeth seemed to be expecting this. She looked up at the ceiling, seemed impatient. "I live here in this house with you but in a different time, silly!"

Now I was completely confused.

"A different time! How come?"

"Well, you know time," Lizzie said sarcastically, "you live in one and I live in another."

"So you're saying that you've travelled through time?"

"Yes," she answered.

Now this was just too far-fetched. I felt afraid again and cold. How was I to know who or what she was? I pulled my duvet close. I decided to be polite and maybe she'd go.

"So what are you doing here, Elizabeth?"

"Lizzie's fine."

"So what are you doing here, Lizzie."

"I've come for your help. You should have recognised my voice. I've been calling you for months now. You just didn't hear me."

This little slice of information suddenly made sense.

"My dreams. Have you been in my dreams?"

"Yes and I don't know. Sometimes it just works out like that. When we realise that someone could be listening we just keep trying to make them hear us and understand."

"Us? There's more of you?"

"Yes," said Lizzie, "a few."

"What, ghosts?"

"Who can be sure? We just felt that you were listening so we called out for help. Now here I am."

The way Lizzie was talking about time and ghosts and calling for help was so casual and normal that I just couldn't believe her.

"I'm sure this is a wind-up."

Lizzie seemed confused. "Wind-up? Like a clock you mean?"

I didn't answer. What was she going on about?. In my bedroom, in the middle of the night and saying these strange things. She was waiting for a reply but I couldn't think of what to say. I just wanted her to go.

"You want me to go, don't you?" Lizzie completely read my thoughts.

I nodded and Lizzie got up from the swivel chair by my computer. " I'll be on my way then." She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time." But I'll jolly well be back. Goodnight, Jay."

And Elizabeth Raynor, with an 'O,' climbed down invisible stairs and disappeared through my bedroom floor.
Chapter 5

Telling Bethany

The next morning I was tired and grumpy. Dad shouted that it was seven thirty. Like he always does. I heard him but I went back to sleep and don't remember anything else until Dad was stood over me, shaking my shoulder.

"Jay!" he said impatiently. "Jay! It's a-quarter-to-eight."

I mumble and moan in response and complain that I don't feel very well. But Dad's not having it and tells me that he'll wait until a-quarter-past to drive me the short distance into school.

That means I'll miss Beth.

Bethany Taylor-Hall is in my form at school and has long, straight blonde hair and she's pretty. We've been friends since we were small and we sometimes get accused of being boyfriend and girlfriend. I don't think I could be Beth's boyfriend because she's very bossy and very, very bright. Beth's in the top class for English, French and Science. She's taken to French like a duck to water. Beth also plays the violin in the school orchestra and had a lead role in last year's school play. So I guess you could say she's pretty switched on. Mum and Dad make jokes on our behalf. Jokes like Beth only hangs around with me and Kyle because she just 'wants to see how the other half live' and 'she's only mates with you two 'cause she feels sorry for you.' Stuff like that. Really, I don't see why Beth goes to our school. You see, Beth's parents are pretty posh. When me and Kyle went round there once her step-Dad asked us to take off our shoes. I didn't see why we had to do that because the downstairs had wooden floors. We had real smoothies whisked up with real fruit there and then. Me and Kyle are used to cheap coke or squash.

Kyle is probably my best friend. I say probably because he probably is. But sometimes he can be a pain and a big mouth. For example, he once told Kylie Smith that I fancied her and everybody knows that Kylie Smith hates my guts. Then another time he told the bus driver that I wasn't coming and I missed the bus to town. And he put sneezing powder on my Vicks inhaler when I had a cold. And he told everyone that I'd got caught kissing Mel Mulvey by his tutor. Nobody kisses Mel Mulvey. But then he lets me play on his new PC and his Mum cooks me tea and lets me stay over.

So I decide to get up. Stiffly and with eyes half closed like curtains during the evening. I pulled the rumpled bedclothes off me and groped my way towards my crimson school uniform draped over the chair in front of my PC desk. Then I remembered last night. I had made a decision to tell Bethany about my dream and Elizabeth Raynor. I needed to tell a friend. Someone my own age. I needed their opinion.

I needed Beth's opinion.

I got dressed and wobbled into the bathroom, splashed water onto my eyes and made a half-hearted attempt to clean my teeth. When I had finished I stood up to adjust myself in the mirror. I realised some toothpaste had found its way onto my tie. I tried to get it off with a flannel but only succeeded in leaving a damp patch on it. I could still see the toothpaste stain.

I gave up on the toothpaste. I collected the rest of my stuff from my bedroom and my lunch from the kitchen. I told Dad 'I was ok' and that 'I would walk.'

"I wish you could have told me earlier. I could have been in work by now."

I hurried along to school, kicking my way through the first of the fallen autumn leaves. Dad passed me in his white van. He papped his horn gently as he turned left out of our street and into another busy day. I was desperate to speak to Beth before we got into school. School was too noisy and busy to do any talking.

I passed pockets of kids from our school who shouted at me, wanting me to stop. But I ignored them and in the distance I could see Beth with her sister. They were moving fast. They were nearly at the school gates. I looked at my watch. It was almost half-past-eight! The first bell was about to go. I moved faster along Charlotte Street but then realised I had no chance so I slowed down and watched as Beth and her sister disappeared in through the school gates and were swallowed by the buildings. I really didn't want to go through the day without telling Beth about the little girl. I stopped and leaned against a parked car and let other late-arrivers pass me. Most of them were Year 11's so I didn't know them and they either smirked, smiled or ignored me. Others I did know and they told me to 'hurry up, Webster, you'll be late.' Of course my real surname isn't Webster. It's Webber. I still don't know why some people call me that.

The river of crimson passing by eventually becomes a stream, and then a trickle, and then a few drops. I look at my watch and know that the second bell has gone and I should be in registration. But I'm not going. Not today. For only the second time in my short life I'm too tired and miserable to cope with all the fuss and commotion of the school day.

So I head home.

I'm not a bad person. I don't find being dishonest easy, but as I walked home and kicked the leaves back the other way I couldn't stop thinking about Dad and how angry he'd be if he knew I had bunked-off school. I grew nervous because I kept on playing a movie inside my head. The movie where he comes home for dinner instead of staying at work and catches me on my PC or watching daytime TV and eating crisps. If he did come home early I decided to tell him that I had felt sick and had to come home. So I would slip into my piranhas when I got in. Just in case. Getting back into my pyjamas was a nice thought. I was happy with that.

Isn't it funny how different people inhabit your neighbourhood during different times of the day. Because all the kids from five to sixteen were safely out of the way, the streets were now dotted with mums and toddlers and prams and more pensioners than you could shake a stick at. I had to navigate a pair of gossiping Mums with buggies and chatting old ladies in my street alone. The pensioners glared at me suspiciously and I felt their eyes burning into my blazer as I opened our front gate. One of them had a West Highland Terrier on a lead that yapped as I passed. Now safely inside I could still hear it in the distance and it must have carried on barking for at least half-an-hour. The TV eventually drowned it out.

As soon as I had plonked myself in front of the telly and opened my first bag of crisps I began to feel guilty. I kept glancing out of the window like the man in my dream, expecting Dad at any moment. Nine turned to ten. Ten to eleven and eleven to twelve. To be honest I was bored and my mind kept on re-running the conversation with the little girl and the dream of the old-fashioned, middle-aged man. I kept seeing him loading his pipe and peering out from behind net curtains.

What did it all mean? Was it a dream? If it was a dream was it a message? I tried to remember what people had told me about why people have the same dream time after time. I had stayed over at Kyle's one wet and windy night and his family were telling ghost stories (why do people do this when it's dark and the weather's bad? As if things weren't bad enough). Kyle's Nan told us about her Nan's recurring dream. Kyle's Nan's Nan explained how her Nan dreamt that she was falling from a cliff. She wasn't worried about this as in dreams sometimes people aren't scared. But what was important was that, as she fell from this dream cliff, she kept noticing a white house perched on one side of this cliff. In the distance. It was a beautiful house with verandas and windows that glinted back the sunlight. So, night after night, Kyle's Nan's Nan dreamt that she was falling. Falling from the top of a cliff on a beautiful sunny day with a big white house in the distance. So the tale goes, Kyle's Nan's Nan went to see a gypsy looking for an answer. The gypsy told her that it was how she was going to die or, weirdly, how she'd died before. At the time I'd never heard of reincarnation so I was confused. But Kyle's Nan's Nan was satisfied with the gypsy's answer and she went about her life never having the dream again.

Funny thing was, when Kyle's Dad asked Kyle's Nan exactly how she had died, Kyle's Nan said that she had been hit by a horse and cart.

The telephone rang at twelve-forty exactly. I was scared to pick it up in case it was school or Dad and in the end it stopped. It rang again at twelve-forty-five. This time I picked it up.

"Hello?" I answered timidly.

"It's me!" It was Beth. "Where are you?"

"At home ill."

"Ill?"

"Yeah. Course."

Who was I kidding? You couldn't fool Beth.

"Are you ok?" Beth said, unconvinced.

"Sort of."

"I'm coming round."

"But you've got school."

"So have you. I'll be there in fifteen."

I had only just got dressed when the doorbell rang. I ran down the stairs two at a time. I kicked the post out of the way, post I had noticed but forgot to pick up.

"Alright?" said Beth, and she was in.

She flounced past me to stand in the middle of our front room. "C'm 'ere then. Let's have a look at you."

Dad sometimes called her an 'old mother hen' and sometimes he was right. Sheepishly, I did as I was told. Beth squinted at me when I got up close and used fingers to pull down the bottom of my eyes and peer in. I could smell shampoo on her. Strawberry or something.

"There's nothin' wrong with you." She plonked down into one of our chairs. "What's really wrong, Jay?" She leant forward and said quietly, "Is Donkers bullying you again?"

Donkers was a big Year 9 and as thick as a dinosaur. For a while he had ambushed me on my way home for no other reason than he thought we were great friends. It felt like a grizzly bear had taken a shine to me. One day he punched me hard on the nose and put me out of school for a week. Dad rang the school and Donkers had a talking to and was excluded for a day.

He hasn't spoken to me since.

"No. It's not Donkers."

Beth cocked her head curiously sideways. "Then what is it?"

I must have looked uncomfortable. Beth sensed this and shifted nearer.

"Jay, if something is worrying you then you know you should be telling me."

And she was right. So I did. The dream. The voices. But I left Lizzie out of it. When I'd finished Beth collapsed back into her chair with a puff of soft cushion. She stared at me.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Well, I felt stupid." It was my excuse and it was true.

"Have you taken a look under your bed?"

"No." Then I added, "Why, what do you expect to find? Narnia?"

Beth winced at this then thought for a bit. "I want to take a look."

"What?"

"Let's take a look!"

I didn't want to. Besides Beth had to get back to school.

"I really can't be bothered, Beth," I winged as I followed her upstairs to my room.

I was embarrassed as well really. My room was a bit of a mess and I couldn't remember if I had left some old pairs of pants on the floor. I hadn't as it turned out but there were socks and other boy stuff littering the place.

"It stinks in there!" said Beth. She had stopped at the doorway and was examining the chaos inside.

She was right. It did. My bedroom smelled of dirty clothes and sweat. The window was shut tightly and so the smell wasn't going anywhere. In fact it was worse because the window hadn't been opened for a while. At least a fortnight!

"Don't go in then," I said as I pushed past her." I know there's nothing here anyway."

Beth took a deep breath (or she might have held it. I can't be certain) and stepped into the abyss.

We quickly shoved the bed to one side and it was as I had last seen it. A patch of light green in a room of well-used carpet.

"Funny how this is less worn here," said Beth.

"Not really."

Beth shot me another stern look. Then we stood for a few moments wondering what to do next. A car passed by outside.

"I know, "said Beth," let's take a look under the carpet."

I wasn't sure about this. It could make a mess of it and what if Dad found out? I already felt guilty for not going to school.

"I'm not sure, Beth. It'll make a mess."

"Who's going to notice scaredy-cat? It's under your bed."

Beth shook her head and dropped to her hands and knees, feeling for the edge of the carpet by the skirting board. 'She must think I'm a right wimp' I thought.

I got down to help her.

It didn't take us long to find the edge. The old carpet came away easily and with a puff of fluffy dust and that musty, mouldy smell that you get from things that have been still or covered up. There was another thin layer of brown underneath which Beth called the underlay. That was tricky to get up. It seemed to be stuck to the floorboards. When we eventually managed to peel it back it left bits of itself clinging to the old wood. Surprisingly, the boards that were showing didn't seem that old and we could see the odd chip and the heads of the nails that had been driven in to hold them in place.

Still on our hands and knees me and Beth both looked at what we'd discovered.

"You're right," said Beth," there's nothing here." She got to her feet and brushed her uniform down. "I'd better get back to school."

"Hang on!" I protested, struggling up with stiff legs, "what about putting everything back?"

"Sorry. Gotta go!" And she was down the stairs. "I'll call you later!"

The front door slammed behind her.

"Thanks," I shouted back, too little and too late.

So I stood there, hands on hips, looking at the space beneath my bed and another car passed by outside. I wondered how things could seem so different during the day. In daylight it was just a carpet, floorboards and a bed.

Before I put the underlay and carpet back into position I knelt back down and ran my hand over the smooth wood wondering what was under the boards. I'd never seen under floorboards before.

I'd ask Dad.
Chapter 6

Just What is Real?

When Dad called me from the bottom of the stairs the next morning my eyes snapped open like football pitch floodlights. I scrambled to turn over in bed to examine the spot where I thought the girl had been the other night.

The swivel chair by my computer was facing my way. And it was empty.

I stared at the walls for what seemed like ages listening to Dad crashing around downstairs. I was certain that she had been real. As real as can be anyway.

After a while I saw Mum. Well, she wasn't really there. It was just a memory. She was sat on my swivel chair like - what was her name? – "Izzi?" "Busy?" "Lizzie", that was it. Like Lizzie had been the night before last. Mum wasn't small like Lizzie but she was deep in thought. Frowning. 'Growling' Dad called it. Mum was reading my attempt at maths homework. Couldn't make head-nor-tail of it. Had closed the tatty exercise book. The book I had scribbled all over. She had rubbed her brow with her free hand and gently shaken her head. She had been disappointed. Girls can be scary. Mum had scared me then because I hadn't known what to expect and I had been cross with myself because she was cross with me. Beth did that too. But I wasn't scared of Dad. I just wanted to prove him wrong.

But Mum sat on my swivel chair was only a thought. Not real. A moment in time. Caught and developed on the film inside my head.

I tried to picture what Mum was doing right now. Was she up and about? Was she enjoying a cup of tea, a read of the paper and the early morning sunshine? Or was she inside that big machine again or having some of those injections that made her sick?

Dad was bellowing from the bottom of the stairs.

"Jay! Are you better? Am I gonna have to phone in sick for the both of us?"

"No. I'm OK. I'm getting up now."

"Well get a bloody move on sunshine."

I miss my Mum.

The blue sky didn't stay long.

As I hurried to school light grey clouds whispered across the sun without me seeing. Just one or two at first but then more and more until there was very little sunshine at all.

All this happened in about ten minutes. I know. I timed it on my watch.

I met Kyle outside the newsagents on Barten Street as usual.

"Feeling better?" he asked me rummaging around in his bag for chocolate.

"Yeah, a little bit."

"Well, you better be fit 'cause we've got college sports all day."

This was brilliant news. This meant the different colleges at school would compete against each other in all different sorts of sports. But then I panicked.

"Have they picked me for football? Did they know I was coming back today?"

Kyle knew that I liked football.

"Yeah. Keiren picked you for defence."

"Defence? I hate being in bloody defence!"

"Tough."

Being in defence wasn't what I wanted. I was a natural goal-scorer. That I hadn't scored many goals this season was out of the question. But, like a shower in the morning, I was flooded with relief that I didn't have to sit through Maths or English.

As we walked to school Kyle kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye, looking at me like I might suddenly try and grab his lunch off him or something. Strange. After the other night I did feel kind of different. Like all this wasn't real.

Even the normal stuff.

I searched for Beth amongst the students as we approached the school gates but I couldn't see her.

It started to rain as soon as we had got changed into our kit. Kylie Smith and one of her friends walked by and told us the football was off. Her friend was a skinny girl with scraggly straw-coloured hair who was chewing gum like a tiger gnawing at an antelope leg. We didn't believe her and went outside anyway. No sooner had we caught sight of the green of the football field than we saw Mr Pegg. He was the head of PE.

"Baack! Baack!" He was shouting from a distance and flapping his arms at us. You would have thought we were some sort of ghostly football team coming to get him.

Everybody was thrown into confusion. This is always the case when plans are changed at school at the last moment and about twenty minutes later we were all sat waiting in teams of five beside the touchline in the sports hall. I would still get my game of football, even if it was five-a-side.

I waited across the road for Beth at the end of the day. I was craning my neck in an attempt to see her but she found me first.

"You looking for me," she said and dug her forefinger into my side.

"Aw!" She had surprised me and made me jump and hurt me at the same time. "That hurt. Bloody hell, Beth."

All Beth did was giggle. I was a bit annoyed. I didn't like being made fun of. Especially from a girl. She suddenly turned defensive and folded her arms across her chest. She looked stern.

"Grumpy. What's wrong with you?"

"That hurt," I said again feeling under my school shirt for scratches. "You've got sharp nails."

"God, you can be such a wimp sometimes." She turned to go, leaving me fumbling for my bag at my feet. I jogged the few yards to catch her up. My shirt was un-tucked, was poking out from under my school sweater.

"Hang on, Beth," I sighed as I got near. "I need to talk to you."

The change of subject and the fact that I needed something from her, her girlie advice, cleared the air. But we walked in silence for a few seconds as 3.15 life moved around us. Then we talked about school for a bit until we turned off of the main road and into a terraced side street. There was less traffic here. It was quieter. It had also taken me this long to organise my thoughts and work out exactly how I was going to tell Beth about my ghost. I wasn't sure how she'd react after the floorboard fiasco.

I needn't have worried. Beth, as always, beat me to it.

"I was wondering. Have you heard any of your voices lately?" she asked out of the blue.

"Well, yes. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Really?" She seemed really concerned.

"You see, there's been something else. Something else has happened."

In the end I just told her.

"I've seen a ghost."

Beth stopped but it took a couple of paces for me to slow down. I looked back at her. She had her head cocked slightly to one side and I saw the traces of a smile.

"You're kidding?"

"No. I'm not. The other night I woke up and found a little girl at the end of my bed who said she lived in my house and that she could travel through time and she spoke with an accent and..."

"You're not serious?" Beth started walking again.

"No, I mean yes. I am serious. She sat and talked to me for ages."

"What did she say?" Beth seemed to be taking all this really well. "Why did she want to speak to you?"

"She said her name was Elizabeth. Or Lizzie for short. She said she needed my help for something."

Beth stayed quiet as I told her how she said that she could do things like make my Dad not hear me if I shouted out and how she seemed to walk down through the floor when she left. It wasn't long before we came to the point where we would both go different ways. Beth would head to the quiet trees and leaves of Berkley. I would make my way through the graffiti in the park to the noise of Shad Hill. Again we stopped and Beth looked at me for ages. Her eyes moved from left to right as she searched mine.

"Jay. Are you OK?"

I wasn't expecting this.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Well, what did the doctor actually say?"

I knew what she meant. What she was driving at. I couldn't believe she thought I was making this up, that I was mental or something. I felt stupid and realised that what I had said must have sounded stupid too. If I didn't know it was true I wouldn't have believed it either.

"I haven't been to the doctor yet."

I was red with embarrassment and anger. Not at Beth but at myself for thinking she'd believe me.

"Look," I mumbled, "I know how it sounds. But it's true." I turned to go. "I'll probably see you tomorrow."

Then I hurried in the direction of my house with its voices and little girl ghost and I knew that Beth was already making a mental list of who to get in touch with and break the newest of news...

"Jay Webber is waay out in space."
Chapter 7

Dr Meen

Dad was sat in the kitchen with a mug of tea when I came in through the door.

"Don't take your coat off, Jay!" he told me, getting up from the table and finishing his tea at the same time.

"Why?"

"I've made an appointment with the doctor." Then he was coming down the hall towards me. "And it's at four so we've got ten to get there."

I was not happy. I hate doctors and dentists. In fact everyone I know hates doctors and dentists. But me and Dad have more reason than most to not like our doctor.

I think that it's at this point that I should explain why me and Dad live on our own without my Mum.

Well, my Mum has bowel cancer...and it's terminal. To be honest she hasn't long to live and at the moment she is lying asleep in a special part of St Mary's hospital. And I know it's not easy for Dad going to see Dr Meen. You see, the chairs in his surgery are probably the very chairs that Mum and Dad sat in through all the tests, the results, the chemo and, well...we just refer to the moment when the really bad news was broken to Mum and Dad as 'that day.' So there's a lot of history there. Between the four walls of Dr Meen's surgery, the idle bits of furniture, and between us four human beings.

As you can tell I was expecting to just put my feet up and watch TV and have a bit of tea. But this really made my day.

"Dad, do I have to?" I whined. "I feel fine."

Dad looked long and hard at me while he fetched his car keys down from a little hook which read 'keys.'

"Trust me, Jay."

I didn't bother to continue protesting. I simply didn't stand a chance.

The traffic was unusually light for the time of day, although it was still stop-start, stop-start. We made our slow way through the traffic lights and down the high street. Once Dad had to break sharply as a black cat ran across the road in front of us. Good or bad luck? Everybody seems to argue about this and our history teacher, Mr Butler, says it's definitely good luck.

I hope so.

So, we get to our doctor's waiting room and, as usual, we have to wait with a bunch of complete strangers. I hate having to do this. It's the same when we go to the dentist's. People will make sure they sit as far away from the next person as they can. Then they idly pick up a magazine or newspaper so they don't have to make eye contact or conversation with anybody. It really is awkward. At least today they had tuned into a local radio station, the music and pretend-happy voice of the DJ coming out at us from the tiny speakers, one in each corner of the waiting room. The music was crap but it gave us all something to focus on. Still, I squirmed for about fifteen minutes before our name was called. I skittered out quickly and well in front of Dad who loitered a bit just to say thank you to the pretty receptionist at the front desk.

Dr Meen has been our doctor forever. Apparently he was present when Mum gave birth to me. I'm really not sure why, it hasn't been explained to me, but he was and every time we come here, Mum or Dad (depending on who's taking me) will say 'he was in the ward when you were born you know' as if that makes him special in some way.

On first impressions Dr Meen seems anything but mean. He's pretty old (50ish or something? But then I'm a teenager so anyone over 20 is old). But on the other hand he's pretty stylish. I mean, for an oldie. He wears suits made out of that old type of fabric. Tweed or something. He's long and thin so he fits into them quite nicely, his face is brown with plenty of wrinkles and he has a shock of white hair which makes him look a bit unusual. Distinguished Mum calls him.

Doctor Meen smiled as we entered and he always remembers my name.

"Hello, Jay," he said. "And good afternoon, Mr Webber."

Hello doctor," Dad replied respectfully. He had been here often enough to know to sit in the chairs opposite Dr Meen without being asked.

His hands were clasped comfortably in his lap and he was sat behind his desk which was neat and tidy. On this desk was a photograph of himself wearing an long coat and an old hat. He was smiling crookedly with his arm around a woman that must have been his wife. A girl and boy also smiled out of the photo and into the room. His kids? Who knows.

Then I noticed the old fashioned hat and coat dangling from an old fashioned hat stand behind him. It was the same ones as in the photograph.

Dr Meen leaned forward and looked at me closely. 'And how are you then, Jay?"

"I'm OK," I answered sheepishly.

"Do you know," Dr Meen said in his easy, school-masterly way," do you know that I saw you being born?"

I shook my head.

"Well, I must confess, you've turned into a good looking lad."

This embarrassed me and I looked down as the doctor turned his attention to Dad.

"Well, what seems to be the trouble?"

It suddenly occurred to me that Dad was to going have to explain what he thought was wrong to Dr Meen without looking like an idiot. I was interested in how he was going to phrase it. Would the word 'mad' pop up at anytime? Or wacky? Or 'crazy'?

Dad, as always, surprised me.

"I think Jay is suffering from some form of anxiety disorder from Grace's hospitalisation, doctor." Dad said this as if he'd just come off the ward. "I think this might be showing itself through sleepless nights and bad dreams."

I looked up and at Dad. Was slightly startled by his tone.

"Really?" cooed the doctor. "Jay, could you tell me about these dreams?"

Dr Meen had picked up a pen and was now taking notes on a pad in front of him. He scribbled aimlessly for a bit but then stopped. He was obviously waiting for me to speak. I felt a bit silly and was troubled at where to start. The doctor looked at me over the rim of his glasses.

"Jay?"

I sighed. I might as well tell him the truth. I'd been wanting to tell someone and I'd nothing to lose.

"Well, I normally go to bed about ten..."

"Nine, Jay," Dad interrupted, embarrassed.

"No it's definitely ten, Dad," I said, because it was.

Dad shook his head. "It's nearer nine doctor."

"Ten, Dad."

The doctor waved his pen at the pair of us. "Carry on, Jay, if you will."

"I normally go to bed around..." I paused and looked at Dad, "...nine thirty, and things used to be fine up until about a month ago. Then one night, about a month ago, I think I had a dream. I dreamt that I was sat in what looked like a front room. It was an old fashioned front room with an old settee, fireplace and ornaments. It felt like I was sat on the floor in a corner because everything was higher than me. Then suddenly a man appeared in an old jumper and suit."

The doctor seemed interested at this. He looked up from his notepad.

"And what did this man look like?"

Even though I had had the dream more than once I thought long and hard but couldn't picture his face.

"I can't remember. But then he doesn't seem to notice that I'm there and he doesn't even look at me."

"So do you just sit in the corner and watch?"

"Yes."

The doctor scribbled down some notes. "Is this dream recurring, Jay?" the doctor asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, have you had it more than once."

"Yes. I've had the dream quite a few times."

"How many would you say?"

I thought about this. "About seven or eight."

The doctor wrote this down and it seemed interesting to him as he repeated 'seven or eight times' to himself as he wrote. After a while the doctor asked me if anything happened in the dream.

"No." I answered confidently. "I just watch this man potter around and walk out of the room again."

"Does he at any time acknowledge that you are there?"

"No."

"Mmm. Is there anything else?"

"Yes. The voices."

"The voices, eh," the doctor echoed. "Interesting. And what do the voices say, Jay?"

"They don't seem to be connected to the dream in any way. I mean, I seem to hear them in my sleep and when I'm awake."

"And just what do the voices say?"

"Well, I can't quite tell. There's a lot of whispering and moving about and some distant shouting that sometimes seems quite close. But no. I can't make out anything."

"You did say," Dad interrupted, "that you did hear something."

"Yes," I agreed.

"And what was that?" asked the doctor. His pen was poised.

"Help me."

"Interesting," the Doctor said again. "And your Dad says that you think the voices come from..."

"...under my bed."

Both Dad and Dr Meen looked hard at me and I flushed with embarrassment. After a while Dr Meen cleared his throat and asked me if there was anything else I'd like to tell him.

I thought about Elizabeth Raynor with an 'O' and then thought better of it. They'd lock me up and throw the key into the deepest part of the nearest river. So I kept quiet and stared at the photograph on the doctor's table and smiled at the old hat and coat. There was silence as Dr Meen thought about what I'd said. After a short while he laid his pen and notepad carefully on the table in front of him. He brought his hands together just below his chin and made a pyramid with his index fingers. For the first time I saw how long his fingers were. They reminded me of the legs of the big crabs you get in aquariums. The orange ones that you eat.

"You see, generally we do not expect symptoms like yours purely because of family matters. Voices in the night are out of my jurisdiction." He picked his pen up and wrote on his pad from long range. "What I shall do however is recommend that you come and see me in, say, two or three weeks' time." Then he looked up with eyes suddenly dark and unblinking.

Without thinking I looked away.

He laid his pen down and leaned back in his chair. "Yes, Mr Webber. We're going to have to keep a close eye on you."

When we left Dr Meen's surgery Dad bought us both fish and chips from The Happy Friar with a tub of curry sauce for us to share. We took them home and had them on our laps whilst watching TV. I couldn't be bothered to face the Science homework that I had. So when Dad asked me if I had any I lied and said that I hadn't. I was happy watching TV with Dad.

The dream and the noises and the voices were not mentioned once.

I was glad.

I went to bed dead on ten (I pointed this out to Dad) and read a comic for a bit. Dad came up at about ten thirty and told me that he was going to bed and that I should be asleep. So I switched my bedside light out with a loud click, turned over so I was facing the wall and covered my head with the duvet. In the darkness my mind wandered and I pictured the strange Dr Meen and the photograph on his desk.

In the distance a crackle. A snap. Very faintly the smell of burning. It smelt like tarmac being laid.

I sat up and turned my lamp back on.

Nothing.

Even the smell of burning had gone.
Chapter 8

Lizzie Again

During teatime the next day I pushed my fish fingers around my plate and mixed them up with the beans and mashed potato I hadn't eaten. Dad wasn't impressed.

"What's wrong with you now?" he asked, pointing his fork at my plate, "you normally like fish fingers."

I shrugged my shoulders and felt myself drawing in because of Dad's tone-of-voice. There was a long pause whilst Dad put away the last of his beans. He chewed once or twice, swallowed then clattered his cutlery onto his plate. This is so annoying. Why does Dad always have to make a ceremony of finishing every meal?

I felt his eyes on me. "C'mon, Jay, you've been right miserable these past few days." He collected our plates and moved towards the sink. He put the plates down then turned and leant against the worktops.

"Do you fancy a trip to the hospital tomorrow?"

'Now how do I answer that question?' I asked myself. The truth is I miss my Mum. Miss her more than anything. And I really did want to see her. But I hate hospitals. It's the smell of them. Clean and disinfected and full of sick people. And when you're caught looking at them you don't know how to react.

Example.

One of the times we went to visit Mum there was a man with a kind of hole in his throat. The nurses had to come and clean it every now and then and once I caught a glimpse of some slimy stuff on the big pads they used to clean it. But it was the gurgling noise that came from him that was the worst. When he breathed there was a horrible, wet, bubbling sound. It reminded me of a dirty plug hole. I seemed to remember an awful smell but I probably imagined that. But the gurgling I never forgot.

Funny though. All the time we were sat at Mum's bed we never once referred or talked about him. He was just there, a few feet away, laid on his back with his eyes loosely shut and mouth wide open.

Gurgling.

He was gone the next time we went, replaced by a little old lady reading a TV mag. I was glad.

So, I'm not that keen on hospitals. But I wanted to see my Mum. In the end I didn't have to answer because Dad made the decision for me.

"Yes," he said, turning on the hot water and spraying the dirty dishes in the sink with Apple Quake Fairy Liquid, "I'll take you to see your Mum tomorrow."

Later Dad went to see Mum himself. He goes most nights and he got back at about nine. I was glad because I couldn't stop thinking about Lizzie again and whether I dreamt her visit the other night and whether I'd dream about her again tonight. I was getting scared and wasn't looking forward to going to bed.

Dad got some beer from the fridge and we watched TV and he talked about how Mum was looking.

"She looks better today, "he said. "Fresher. She had had a good bath in the afternoon. Had washed her hair and even put a bit of make-up on. She was sat up reading a book when I got there."

"How long's her hair now?" I asked. Mum's last bought of chemotherapy had left her with none.

"Yeah, it's looking good. About an inch long all over now."

I was pleased. But I had to ask the question. "Who's she next to now then?"

Dad smiled when he replied. "No-one. The bed's empty."

Lizzie did come again during the night. I couldn't sleep and kept hearing things so I snapped my bedside lamp on. I laid tired and still scared, looking at the spot where she had sat two nights before.

I watched as first the top of her grey head appeared from the floor near my computer, then her whole head and shoulders, still in pig-tails and still wearing the beret-type hat. She looked exactly like she was climbing some stairs as she bounced upwards with every step. Finally she reached the top and smiled when she saw my wide eyes peering over the top of the duvet. The rest of her clothes were the same as the other night and she still shimmered in the same 'poor signal' way, still talked out-of-sync with her mouth.

She climbed quickly onto my swivel chair and took up the same position, hands on knees, smiling politely.

"Hello, Jay," she said as if visiting a strange boys' bedroom from another time in the middle of the night was the most natural thing in the world.

"Alright." My voice was muffled by the duvet.

"I told you I'd be back didn't I?" came out of her mouth before it moved.

"Yes you did."

"I can't hear you. You'll have to take the blanket from over your mouth."

I did as I was told.

"Now, what was it you said?"

I blinked. I was angry again. I was fed up with having to worry about voices and visits from little girls in the middle of the night. I wanted to go to sleep. I was knackered.

Lizzie sensed this.

"You're cross with me, aren't you Jay?" she said cautiously.

I sat up. "Yes, I am."

Lizzie looked hurt.

"Lizzie, what are you really and what do you really want?"

"I told you last night. I've come for your help."

I was getting used to her. Getting braver quicker.

"How can I help you, Lizzie? I'm only a boy. What if we asked my Dad? He's a bit noisy and makes a lot of bad decisions but he's a grown up and will know what to do."

I stopped as Lizzie put a finger to her mouth and smiled in mischief.

"Dad can't hear us again, can he?" I asked.

Lizzie shook her head. "That's the point, you see," Lizzie said, "grown-ups can't help."

I was confused. "Why?"

"Because, silly, they can't go through time like we can."

I was still confused. "Well, I'm not being funny, Lizzie, but I didn't think anybody could go through time. I thought it was only in films."

Now Lizzie looked confused. "What films?"

"You know, on TV, DVD and that."

Now Lizzie looked really confused. "TV? TTV? What's that?"

This wasn't making sense at all.

"You mean you don't know what a TV or DVD is?" I asked her.

But Lizzie looked hurt, as if I was making fun of her. "No I don't," she said quietly.

I couldn't believe it. Everybody and their dog had a TV and DVD player. But then that made sense if it was true what Lizzie was saying, that she came from another time. And her clothes! Although shimmering grey – the 'poor signal' effect – if you pasted colour onto them using your imagination then they did look old. They were like something from one of the old black and white movies that I sometimes saw in the afternoon when I was sick from school. And for the first time I had caught a glimpse of a necklace which Lizzie had on. She wore it outside her jumper and it hung down to her chest. It was sometimes covered by her scarf. But I recognised what was on the end. It was Jesus Christ on the cross. This was important because no-one at school ever wore anything like that.

Gran sometimes wore one though. And Mum had one very similar, placed safely in the jewellery box on her dressing table. I'm not sure who that used to belong too.

"Lizzie," I said seriously, "can you just tell me who you are, where you come from and what kind of help you want? You're in my bedroom in the middle of the night. If you want my help I'm going to need to know these things."

"Yes. Righto. So where do I start?"

"I know you're Elizabeth Raynor with an 'O'. But where do you come from?"

Lizzie sighed and smoothed down her skirt.

"I live here!"

"What do you mean you live here?"

"I live in this house but in 1946," Lizzie said matter-of-factly.

"1946? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I have a Dad called Albert and a Mum called Maureen and a sister called Pauline who's very pretty and a big brother who's...who's..."

Lizzie suddenly looked sad. Like a puddle, a frown spread across her face. She looked for somewhere to look, if you know what I mean. She didn't want to stare right at me. There was no window and it was night and the curtains were drawn so she had no choice but to look at me. Her grey eyes were wet. I pulled back my duvet protection and placed my bare feet on the carpet.

"A big brother who's what?" I asked.

"Who's missing!"

Lizzie spat these words out as if it was my fault. I thought I saw a tear. All in glorious black and white.

"Missing?"

"Yes. He's been missing these past two years."

"Where?" I asked. "Did he run away or something?"

Lizzie looked shocked. "Run away? You are silly. Of course he didn't run away." Then she became thoughtful again. "It was the war. He was reporting missing only a few days after us and the Yanks landed in France."

My brain tried to recall what I learnt about the war in history. I know there were planes and tanks, big ships and bombs. But that was about it.

"He had been sent home from Africa when I was six or seven. He had caught some shrapnel in the leg from flying in a bomber. His job was to shoot at Germans shooting at them, you see. He had been sent back a few months later, when he was better. It had been great having him home. Ernie could be so funny and all the girls loved him. He looked just like Clarke Gabel. Dad was glad he was home too as there was so much to be done. What with a war on an' that. Then came the day he got the letter. I remember the day so well. The 8th of January 1944. It was cold and just after Christmas and we all expected bad news. You know what it's like after Christmas. Dreary and grey with nothing to look forward too. We went to school but there was no heating so we had to wear scarves and gloves."

"Didn't your school just shut?"

"Don't be silly. We weren't to be beaten, you know. Even by the weather. Besides, Dad said education was important and we shouldn't let Adolf stop that."

"Well, I think that's stupid. You might have all caught the flu or something."

"Maybe," continued Lizzie. "Poor old Sydney Skelton did. His family was really poor and couldn't afford new clothes for him. He came to school in a tattered shirt and a grey old jumper that had holes in. His shorts were old and sometimes he had nothing on his feet."

I couldn't believe this. "No shoes? In January?"

"A lot of people had no shoes." Lizzie was suddenly in fierce defence of the people she knew. "It was hard. There was a war on."

I nodded but I still couldn't imagine going to school with ripped clothes, shorts and no shoes.

"Anyway, Sydney died of pneumonia. That was sad."

"I'm not surprised," I said but then realised that I was being selfish.

"I remember the day Ernie returned to his squadron. It was awful. Dad never liked to be showing emotion but I saw him really cry that day. Ernie had to catch an early train and was so upset about leaving us that he told us not to wave him off at the station. Mum and Dad held him tightly. Mum had been crying for most of the night. When Ernie left she nearly feinted. Father had to put her in the armchair."

Lizzie paused for a bit and her hand moved to the cross around her neck. Like Mum and Dad had held their son, Lizzie gripped it tightly.

"I couldn't stay in the house with all that upset. Me and Pauline had said our goodbyes. Pauline had gone upstairs to read to take her mind off things. But I had to see Ernie again. I had a bicycle but the back wheel was buckled after I tried riding it through a bomb site so I ran all the way to the station. It was a good way, and no error."

She stopped again. Stared into space. I waited for ages.

"Did you manage to catch him?" I asked eventually.

Elizabeth shook her head. "No. The train was crossing the bridge at the end of Station Road as I turned the corner. I just missed it."

Instantly I felt pity for her. I could picture little Lizzie stood alone in her hat and skirt looking lost, looking lonely, staring after the train that carried her brother off to fight the Germans.

I think that was the point that I began to really like her.

"And you haven't seen him since?"

Again Lizzie shook her head. "Father got a telegram about a year ago. It said that he didn't return from a mission and was reported missing."

There was quiet in the room again. I didn't like silence. I felt I had to say something to reassure Elizabeth.

"But he's not been killed."

"No, he hasn't," she said flatly.

"But, Lizzie, I still don't understand how I can help."

After I asked this question Lizzie looked hard at me, her eyes glimmering greyly from under their lids. "You really don't know do you?"

I was confused. "Know what?"

"That you could find him."

I smiled. This was just plain silly. "And how can I do that?"

But it was Elizabeth's turn to smile.

"You, Jay Webber, have special powers."
Chapter 9

Mum and the Hospital

To begin with I thought that what Lizzie had said – that I had 'special powers' – was a load of nonsense. But I was curious and I wondered what sort of 'special powers' she thought I had. Despite being tired again the next day, at school I tried concentrating on objects to see if I could shift them. Or make them burst into flames. Or blow up. I even concentrated on the back of Big Derrick's head in Technology but it failed to explode

Bethany was steering well clear of me. I caught glimpses of her in the murky distance talking with friends. Once I walked past the open door of Mr Collins' room. Bethany was sat quietly at the desk by the door and our eyes locked.

She became flustered. Embarrassed. She looked away quickly.

I was sad that our friendship had come to this. But then there was someone else on my mind. Someone that during the bright light of day I still couldn't believe existed.

Elizabeth Raynor.

I still didn't believe that she was from the past, that she wanted my help in finding her lost brother. But my mind kept drifting back to those 'special powers'. I just couldn't help myself and I had to keep trying to see if I had them.

Just in case.

At dinnertime the headmaster was eating in the canteen with three men and one woman. They were all in suits. Inspectors or something probably. I concentrated hard on the head's head in thin hope but nothing happened. He did sneeze though. I put that down to pure coincidence.

Kyle was off sick again so after school I found myself walking home alone. My mind was preoccupied with the evening's visit to St Mary's General Hospital to see Mum. I really missed Mum. I mean really missed her. I wanted to see her more but I was always scared of going to visit her. Just in case there were any changes in her condition when I got there. Could she have suddenly taken a turn for the worse? Would she be so ill that she wouldn't be able to talk? A coma even? Or, beyond horrible, would the bed be empty and Mum gone? Gone? Gone where? Even now I couldn't consider the D Word. You know. When people 'pass over'. Pass over? Pass to where? I really couldn't get to grips with the idea of going somewhere else. Just where do people go when they pass-on or pass-over or whatever they do? When they D?

When Mum was first taken ill I was given an appointment with the school councillor. Ms Murphy. Ms Murphy was middle aged and fat, had scruffy shoulder length hair and jangled with beaded jewellery. She also wore big specs that filled up the front of her face like a force-field. I asked her about the D Word and where people go when they pass-on or pass-over or whatever. She smiled and showed me her stained teeth and started going on about God. But I don't believe in God. Neither does Dad. If there was a God, I told Ms Murphy, then how come Mum was in so much pain when she had always been good? Ms Murphy said that 'was just the way of things'. But it didn't answer my question. I couldn't believe that people just stop being people. Or just stop being. Thinking about it didn't help much either. It just made any answer seem further and further away. Like being in a canoe and seeing where you came from far off. Until it was gone.

So I just stopped thinking about it.

The evening's visit to St Mary's General didn't get off to a good start. Dad drove his van in through an exit and had to stop as a black car was coming the other way. The man in the black car was obviously angry as he swung his car alongside Dad's window. The beginning of what he said was muffled. Both Dad's and the driver's windows were humming down.

"...the...oody ell do you think you're doin?"

"Sorry, mate," Dad replied, "I didn't realise..."

"This is an exit only," the man bellowed. The black car was an Audi and the middle-aged man dressed in a suit. His face was twisted and stressed. "Can't you read?" The man gestured up in the air somewhere.

"Hang on a minute," Dad said, "who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

"A bloody idiot!" said the angry man.

"I beg your pardon?" Dad was becoming angry himself now. I'd seen Dad get angry quite a few times. Sometimes with me. He wasn't a big man and he certainly wasn't a fighter, but when he got cross he meant business. He didn't like to be told he was a bloody idiot.

There was a little bit of a break as the man in the Audi suddenly realised that Dad wasn't going to back down.

"Watch where you're going next..." and 'time' disappeared. The man pulled away just as Dad reached for the handle on the inside of his door.

Dad watched him disappear over his shoulder. Through the crack of the opening he'd made.

"Did you hear that, Jay? Did you bloody well hear that?"

I was a bit embarrassed. Uncomfortable. I just stared straight ahead.

"Unbelievable," said Dad shaking his head. We reversed out and took the correct entrance into St Mary's General. "Unbelievable".

No. Not a good start.

I'm not that keen on hospitals. I don't like what has to go on in there. I don't like their smell and the people in them. I don't know why. Every time I've been to see Mum, and the one time I broke my toe, everybody was perfectly polite.

Like now for instance.

As soon as we get through the smokers and inside the wide and busy entrance a doctor (I think he was a doctor because he was wearing a white coat and had a one of those heartbeat listening devices around his neck) smiled and said 'hello young man' as he walked by. That was fine. But it's all the hurt people that makes me not like hospitals, the hurt on both inside and the outside. As I looked around the foyer a middle-aged woman with a plaster on her right leg hobbled crookedly towards us. A man dressed in a Chelsea football strip was being wheeled along in a wheelchair with a heavily bandaged foot stuck out in front of him. There a broken arm. Here a bandaged head.

Then we walked by the flowers and knickknacks placed outside the hospital shop. I knew this well. Dad usually bought Mum things that she needed from here. He sometimes bought us bars of chocolate, crisps and coke on the way out. Then we passed the small hospital café where a few people sat talking and drinking tea. There was one old man sat on his own, staring blankly into space.

That reminded me of another reason why I don't like hospitals.

On one of our earlier trips to see Mum, Dad treated us to a cake and a coke. We sat next to an older, grey-haired man. I guess it was his daughter that was holding his hand. She was very pretty with blonde hair tied into a pony-tail. She had big eyes, was wearing an expensive black coat. She reminded me of an older Beth. It was only after we sat down that we realised the man had been crying. His pretty daughter began to cry too. I found this uncomfortable. Me and Dad tried to make some conversation but we couldn't help listening and wondering what was happening. The old man had his head bowed so no-one could see that he was upset. He took sips of his tea from shaking hands. Every now and then his daughter would lean near him and whisper, 'Ssshhh. It's all over now. All finished now'.

We hurried our cake and drinks and left. Never mentioned it. But when I sometimes think about the D Word I remember this and try and understand what, exactly, was 'over'. What was all 'finished'? Not that I really wanted to know. Dad called the reason why people want to hear other people talking about the D Word, and even why they want to watch reality TV, is because of something called 'morbid curiosity'.

I think that's why.

We took the empty staircase to the level that Mum's was on. We always went up the stairs as there was usually a queue for the lift. Dad said people these days were lazy. Besides, we both needed the exercise. Mum's ward was Waltham Ward and the doctors and nurses on the ward had gotten used to us.

"Hello trouble," said the plump Karen as we turned a corner by a breakfast trolley and caught sight of the beds. "Here to see you Mum?"

"Yeah," I replied. Then Karen smiled at Dad.

"Hello, Mr Webber. You'll find she's in good spirits today."

Dad seemed reassured and smiled down at me. It wasn't that far to Mum's bed. She was expecting us. Had been looking out for us. She smiled when she saw us coming. It was a weak smile, but a smile non-the-less. She was laid on top of her bed in her thick white towelling dressing-gown. She was reading a book. I went straight to her and gave her a big hug. She smelt of coconuts. Mum had placed a hand behind my head and my mouth was by her ear.

"You smell nice," I said as we pulled away from each other.

"Yes." She turned to give Dad a hug and a kiss. "I've just had a bath."

Mum's brown hair was tied into a bun to dry and she had put some make-up on so she seemed to have more colour. I knew that underneath her skin was thin and pale. In fact, Mum was very thin. Thinner than usual. We knew that she was often off her food because of the treatment. The drugs. The cancer itself. But her eyes were still beautiful. Still dark. Dad said the cancer wasn't going to take that away. Yet she was looking ill. More so than the last time I had visited. And when she tried to place her book on the cabinet beside her bed Dad had to take over.

Me and Dad sat opposite each other on either side of Mum. Mum held Dad's hand in her thin fingers. Heaved a big sigh of pleasure.

"C'mon then the pair of you. What have you been up to?"

Dad told her about the angry man in the Audi and then went on to gossip about work. Dad was a partner in a small carpentry firm and had been for the last ten years. Times had been good but lately work had dropped off. For the first time in ages Dad planned to take a fortnight off. He didn't say when and Mum didn't ask. We all kind of knew when he might have to use that holiday. At the thought of the D Word my stomach felt heavy. Why does it do that? Sometimes it does it when I'm near Beth. How could it do it now? I don't know and I didn't ask. Dad had moved on to talk about the marriage of one of his workmates. I took the chance to look around.

The next bed was empty although there were flowers in a vase on the bedside cabinet. A plastic glass of orange squash. Half empty. There were six beds to a room and the bed by the window on Mum's side had the curtain drawn around it. On the opposite side of the room two of the three beds were occupied, both patients elderly. One a man and one a woman. A grey haired old lady was laid on top of her covers asleep, or at least resting her eyes and the man was sat in a chair beside his bed. He had a drip in his arm. A clear plastic bag half full of something like water was suspended from a sort of mobile contraption behind him. He was looking directly at me and didn't look away when our eyes met. He just kept staring like he was hypnotised or something. It was creepy. I looked away but felt him looking at me all the time I was there.

I hate hospitals.

We stayed for about forty minutes. I shared some chocolate with Mum and Dad then set about stealing some of the grapes from the bowl beside Mum's bed. Karen the nurse came in and talked briefly to us all, filled in a sheet on a clipboard hanging from the bed frame. When Karen left to do the same to the old man opposite, Mum started talking about how bored she was becoming with hospital life, moaned about one of the nurses who was rude. Then I saw a hidden signal pass between my parents and Dad asked me to give Mum a hug goodbye. To tell her that I'd see her next week. He gave me some money to get the cokes and cakes downstairs then I left them on their own, said goodbye to Karen the nurse on my way out of the ward.

"Goodbye trouble," and Karen smiled.

I ordered and paid for two cans of coke and two jam doughnuts. There wasn't much of a queue as lots of people had left and it wouldn't be long before visiting time was over. I balanced the food and drink on a plastic tray and wobbled back to a nearby table. I had taken the first bite from my jam doughnut when Dad joined me.

"Lovely." He sat down. "Good lad."

Dad looked a little pale and drawn but I didn't mention it or ask why. He'd tell me in his own time.

We finished our doughnuts and coke. I had sugar all around my mouth, a bit of jam on my cheek. This made Dad smile. He got up and got some serviettes to clean me up.

It wasn't until we were driving home that he finally talked about what was on his mind.

"How would you feel if Mum came home?"

I thought about this then nodded. "Yeah, yeah, that would be great."

Dad smiled.

It wasn't until later that I thought about what Dad had said. Why was she coming home? Was she better? Was she 'on the mend' as Dad would say? Mum home? Great. But for good? Had the chemo and the injections and the drugs worked?

For the first time in a long time I felt hopeful for the future. In my head it was suddenly spring.

For a short while I had forgotten all about Elizabeth Raynor.
Chapter 10

Lizzie and the new dream

It was Friday night.

On a Friday night I usually went to play football with Kyle and whoever else we could grab. But lately Kyle had become friends with a boy from another school – Jason Simons. He'd play football with Jason but I know the real reason he was hanging around with Jason is because he was infatuated with his older sister Monique.

I'd never seen Monique but he had told me a lot about her; how she plays in a girls' football team, doing well in the local girls' league; how she supports Manchester United; how she plays computer games 'with the boys;' how she went to see England play with her step-Dad; how she's such a laugh blah, blah, blah...

I wasn't jealous of his new friends and girlfriends but he didn't call. So I was sat in with Dad watching game shows and a drama that was slow and boring. After the visit to the hospital the night before Elizabeth had once again pushed herself to the front of my mind like the tide coming back in. She had visited only once this week and seemed preoccupied with her missing brother. She had also gone on once again about how I could help her because I had special powers. I was still completely confused about this. What special powers? And if I did have them (which seemed unlikely) how could they help?

Kyle still didn't call. It was getting late so I played on my computer for a while.

That's when I had a sudden feeling that the walls were closing in.

Well, not actually closing in, just a sense that my bedroom was suddenly getting smaller. My fingers hovered over the keyboard of my computer whilst on the monitor my character was annihilated by zombie demons. I flicked my eyes from left to right, not daring to move my head. In fact the feeling of being boxed in was horrible.

My hands began to shake.

"Dad!" I shouted without thinking. "Dad! Quick! Quick!"

Dad must have known by the sound of my voice that something was wrong. He took the stairs two at a time and, breathing heavily, he swung round my doorframe.

"Jay?" he spluttered, "What? What is it? What's wrong?"

I turned to Dad anxiously. He looked at me, saw my wide eyes and frightened look, slowly entered my bedroom, peering up and down and left to right.

"Jay?" His voice was deeper now. Serious. "Tell me what it is."

"I...I don't know," I said. And I was right. I didn't know.

Dad had been slightly hunched, ready to spring. But when he reached my chair he looked down at me. He tilted his head slightly to one side in a 'don't mess me around' look. Straightened up. He turned and took in the room. When he came to face me again his hands were on his hips.

"Well? What's wrong?"

"I felt...a bit weird." Pathetic wasn't it.

"You felt a bit weird," Dad said in a sarcastic way and turned slowly, taking in the room once more. "You felt a bit weird."

Now the feeling had gone I felt really guilty. Dad had a lot on his plate. He didn't need this.

"Well, Jay," he said, "be sure to call me if this weird feeling comes back." He left the room and clumped down the stairs.

Left alone I felt uneasy. What was that all about? I couldn't figure it out. I turned off my computer, checked the walls by placing my hands on their cold surfaces and looked up to where the walls joined the ceiling.

As if this held the answer.

It didn't.

I spent the rest of the evening downstairs with Dad who seemed to have forgotten the incident. He was drinking from a can of lager and laughing at a chat show on the TV. Not for the first time I didn't want to go to bed. The wall thing had upset me. But, as sometimes happened on a weekend, Dad had sunk quite a few cans of lager and was starting to talk nonsense. So I said goodnight and climbed the stairs. There was some concern on Dad's face when he said 'goodnight,' but it was clumsy because of the lager and his attention quickly returned to the TV.

That night I had a new dream.

It was night. I was laid on something hard. I was staring up at the peeling paint and old wooden beams of a strange ceiling. High up the white wall at the foot of my bed was a half open window that had bars on the outside. Through this window I could see the branches and leaves of a tree moving in the wind. Moving like a skeleton's arms. I swung my legs over the side of what I discovered were strips of wood for a bed, sat up. In front of me was a wall. I could lean forward and touch it. There was very little space at the other end of my bed, just enough room for a small pile of clothes, a pair of boots maybe, and some other bits and bobs. The walls were close. I could lean forward, lean back, lean left or right, and immediately touch the old, crumbling brick. My heart began to race and my breath came quickly.

Suddenly, to my left, a door! A small door. Low in the tatty wall, almost hidden by the shadows. I slipped off the hard bed and made a grab for the handle. I twisted and pushed and, although the door moved in its frame, it wouldn't open. I shook it. Banged on the inside.

'Hello?" I shouted. "Dad? Dad? Mum? Can you hear me?"

No answer.

Voices. I could hear voices. I put my ear to the cool wood. Listened. Yes. Definitely voices.

"Hello? Hello? Mum? Dad?"

I rattled the door. Listened again. This time I heard someone laughing. At me. Someone was laughing at me.

My breathing came even faster. My heart clanged metal on metal.

I was terrified. Trapped. I started to cry.

"Please don't laugh. Please let me out. Mum? Dad? Please..."

But the laughing went on and on.

Even when they heard me crying.

I was relieved when I woke up. Relieved that the tiny room didn't exist at all.

When I opened my eyes I realised I had a visitor.

Elizabeth was sat with her hands resting on knees drawn together, politely waiting. A wobbly grey.

"Hi," I sniffed, wiping moisture from my eyes. Lizzie had been staring at me. She was concerned.

She leaned forward. Frowned. "Are you alright, Jay?"

Again I sniffed and wiped my eyes clear on the duvet. I decided to be honest this time instead of being brave.

"Another dream, Lizzie. A scary one."

In a sudden movement Lizzie broke the invisible, unspoken line drawn across the middle of my bedroom. The invisible line she always seemed afraid to cross. Before I had time to speak another word Elizabeth had slipped quietly off the chair at my desk and covered the short distance to the side of my bed. She looked down at me.

"What was it, Jay? What did you dream?"

I was a bit taken aback and used my sheets to slide away from her. I'd never been this close to a ghost before.

"Jay, you don't understand," she said, really concerned now. "You must tell me what the dream was."

I noticed that Lizzie had taken hold of the cross around her neck again. I sat up and explained.

"I was in a small room and it was horrible. I could touch the four walls of the room it was so tiny." I tried to remember more. "It was old and there was a funny smell. A damp smell. The walls were crumbling. There was a small window high up that had bars on with a tree outside. I saw a door and tried to get out. But I couldn't."

The memory was painful. I felt that the people outside the door were familiar, familiar like Mum and Dad. But that was impossible.

I found this hard to explain. "T...there were people on the outside of the room. They were laughing...I couldn't get out...they wouldn't let me. I...I tried...but I couldn't..."

Lizzie knelt beside my bed and I just didn't notice. There was a heavy pain in my chest which I tried to rub away.

It wouldn't go. The memory of it was here to stay.

I was starting to cry again.

Through blurred eyes I saw Lizzie's right hand move toward my arm in a gesture of understanding. Like Beth has sometimes done. Girls are good at these things. But Lizzie drew back this hand. She probably didn't like the idea of touching a ghost either, even if I was a ghost from the future. But when I did look at her she showed real signs of sympathy.

"This could be important," she said quietly in her farmer's accent and to no-one in particular. "I think it's time."

"Time for what?" I sniffed, still holding my chest.

Lizzie stood up. "That you came with me, of course."

"Come with you where?" I was confused.

"Jay, it's time that you crossed over."

I held my breath, stopped rubbing my chest and looked at Elizabeth. I suddenly felt very scared.

"Crossed over?"

"Yes. To 1946."

She said this so matter-of-factly that I couldn't believe I had just heard it.

"Me? To 1946? Hang on a minute. I've got school."

Elizabeth knelt beside my bed again, all shimmering grey. Her lips moved and then the words came. "Jay, you could hold the secret to finding my brother Ernie. You're powers are getting stronger. I can feel it. You must come with me before it's too late."

"Too late?"

"I know he's still alive. I just know it. I have special powers too and I know he wants to come home. He just doesn't know how."

I thought about what had just been said. "And you want me to come with you?"

"Yes."

"To 1946?"

"Yes."

"Like, right away?"

"Yes, Jay."

I groaned and covered my head with my warm and familiar football duvet.
Chapter 11

Time Travelling

So, that was how I agreed to become a time traveller. Lizzie told me what I had to do and I agreed. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so soft with girls. I was just too easy going. A push-over. It was different with boys. I stood my ground. If I didn't want to do something, I said so. But with girls things became a little bit more complicated. I made a mental promise to be tougher with girls from now on. Especially with Lizzie and Beth. Dad had always said that girls were trouble and I was beginning to agree. I knew from experience how tricky some girls could be.

A girl from my art class had once said that she fancied me. Using her two giggling friends as messengers, we planned to meet on Saturday morning at the bus-stop into town. I waited and waited. It was raining and two buses had already passed. I hung around for an hour. I was just about to give up and walk home when I saw them pass by in a car. They were talking together, pointing and were still giggling. They didn't stop. Walking home I was embarrassed and angry, embarrassed that I had been made to look a prat, and angry at myself at having been fooled. I also couldn't believe that anyone could do that. It was cruel. Word got around school and I had to take weeks of mickey-taking. Everytime the three girls saw me they would whisper together and, you guessed it, giggle. Why all that laughing? I didn't find it funny. Beth and Kyle were brilliant, though. Beth even wanted to march up to them and give them a piece of her mind. But I persuaded her not too. I think Kyle learnt a lesson from me and stayed well away from girls after that. He didn't want to get burned like I did. Which is another reason why I couldn't believe he was falling for this Monique.

Kyle was stupid like that.

Lizzie suggested the following night, a Saturday, for my first visit to her house in 1946. And, like a fool, I had agreed.

As soon as Lizzie had faded away into my green bedroom carpet, I thought about what I had agreed to.

Almost right away I heard the cackle of the three girls from school.

But there was more to this than just being made to look an idiot. The whole friendship with Elizabeth Raynor, unbelievable from the start, had always seemed unreal. I had gone along expecting to wake up one morning to find everything had been a dream. Just like in the films. But now things were getting a bit more awkward and scary. This special-powers thing was becoming a menace and the dream of the man in the small room had frightened me in lots of ways. I didn't like what I had felt during the dream, and what it left me feeling afterwards wasn't nice either. It left me cold and clammy and sad. If dreams like these were part of my so-called special-powers, then I didn't want them.

I decided to confront Lizzie about this before I went anywhere.

I mean, could I really skip back six or seven decades? By doing what? Just how am I meant to follow Lizzie into 1946? I had never thought to ask.

Get a grip, Jay, for goodness sake.

All these thoughts were banging and clashing about like a shopping trolley on a busy day at the supermarket. I heard Dad go to the loo then clump back to bed. I slid back under my duvet and my bare feet felt the coldness of the bed down there. I liked that. I liked finding the cold spots with my feet. I reached up and turned off my bedside lamp.

Once more it seemed I had a dreamed enough for one night because I didn't have any more. When I eventually got to sleep, that is.

Kyle called on Saturday morning but I put him off. I was too tired for football and when I closed the front door I went back to bed.

Dad woke me up at 12.30. He had promised to go into work for the morning and wanted to see Mum in the afternoon. So he was busy.

"Jay? Jay? Are you up yet?"

Dad was standing at my bedroom door in paint-stained, dusty jeans and a green t-shirt. He smelled of oil and wood. I mumbled something in reply and opened my eyes.

"C'mon, Jay," insisted Dad, "if you're not well again tell me. But if you're OK let's have you up."

He sounded a bit angry. It was unusual for me to be in bed this late on a Saturday morning (or afternoon, for that matter). The interrupted sleep and the dreams were having an effect on me and Dad seemed worried when he saw me tiredly chomping on cereal at the kitchen table.

"Are you feeling alright, Jay?" he asked placing some clean nighties for Mum into a black sports bag.

"Yeah," I said around the side of a mouthful of rice crispies. "Just tired."

Dad thought for a minute then took a long hard look at me. "It seems the visit to the doctor didn't solve anything." He leant back against the worktop. "Is there anything else I should know about? Are you still having those dreams?"

I shook my head.

"Are you sure, Jay? Cuz if you're not we might think about those pills the doctor prescribed."

I swallowed the mouthful of soft, soggy rice I had placed in my mouth. Just for a moment, I thought about telling Dad the truth. But I thought about Lizzie's missing brother and how I could help. Even though it might all turn out to be some sort of set-up I couldn't let Lizzie down. Telling Dad would ruin the only chance Lizzie had of seeing her brother again. I thought about Mum and the dreaded D Word. If someone told me I could see my Mum again after she'd 'passed-on' then I would try everything in my power. I understood how Lizzie felt. She loved her brother and wanted him back and if I was an important piece of her jigsaw then I would help.

If I could.

So I shook my head and said that I was just worried about Mum, which was partly true.

Then Dad asked if I wanted to go with him to the hospital but I said no, it was OK. I wanted to have a kick around with Kyle.

That was a lie.

Still, Dad seemed reassured and patted me on the back before he left for the hospital.

"Everything'll be fine, son. You'll see."

I hope so.

I was in bed and in my piranhas when Lizzie arrived. I really didn't know what to expect so I'd decided to go to bed as normal just in case Lizzie was just another bad dream.

But she wasn't.

I didn't see her arrive and suddenly she was there, stood at the foot of my bed. I jumped out of my skin.

"Lizzie!" I said, my heart in my mouth, "you've made it."

Lizzie put her wobbly, grey hand to her mouth and giggled. "Sorry about that."

I sat up in bed. Lizzie seemed nervous and agitated. She didn't sit down on my computer chair as normal but stayed on her feet with her hands held together in front of her. There was an embarrassed silence. We both knew why but it was like an object we couldn't get past. Talking about this 'crossing-over' had suddenly become a hurdle. Lizzie looked at her feet as they shifted greyly and I looked stubbornly at my football duvet.

It was Lizzie who had the courage to speak first.

"Well, are you ready?" she asked slowly. She wasn't sure that I was and I had started to feel guilty for agreeing to do something I really didn't want to do. It was the girl thing again. I just couldn't say know, even when I know I should have. I decided that I needed some answers before I went anywhere and, first and foremost, I wanted to be honest. And that's why I said what I did.

"Lizzie. I'm scared."

Lizzie seemed to come to life after this.

"Oh, Jay," she said, moving to the side of my bed, "please don't be scared. There's nothing to be scared about. We need you, Jay. We need you more than ever."

Again Lizzie seemed to want to reach out and touch me. But she didn't. She just rested her arms on my football duvet.

"Please don't say you won't help," she said. "You promised."

"I know I did. But I need to know how I'm meant to help and..."

"And what?"

"Well, just how I'm I meant to cross-over into your world. And how do I know what to expect. I mean...does it hurt?"

Lizzie giggled again. Girls and giggling. I was sick of it. I was getting defensive.

"What? What's so funny?"

Lizzie saw that she was upsetting me and that she was putting my trust at risk. She stopped laughing.

"No. There's no pain. All you do is follow me and...hold my hand."

I flushed red. I don't know why. I just did.

"But what about when I get there? Where am I going? What will I have to do? And these special powers. What are they and how am I supposed to use them?"

Lizzie took the white hanki from her cardigan pocket and ran it across the bottom of her nose, replaced it and took hold of the Jesus Christ on the cross around her neck. "I'm sorry. I haven't explained properly have I? You've been dreaming a lot and, those voices you've been hearing, they were mine and my family. Well, not voices exactly. They were our thoughts. You haven't been hearing our voices. You've been hearing our thoughts. I knew you could hear us because I knew you were visiting us."

I stopped her. "I've never gone through time and visited anybody. How did you work that one out?"

Lizzie looked confused. "Work what out?"

I forgot. She didn't understand 21st century talk. "Sorry. I mean what do you mean 'visited you'? I've never visited you. How?"

"In your dreams. My Dad saw you."

"Saw me? Where?"

"In your dream you were sat on the floor by the dining table in our front room. Dad saw you."

I suddenly made the link between what Lizzie was trying to describe and the dream I kept having. The one with the old man I had told Dad and Dr Meen about. It made sense and explained why the room looked 'old'. I had visited 1946 in my dream. Amazing!

"Your Dad saw me?" I said to Lizzie. "But he never looked at me once. I never saw his face. How did he know?"

Lizzie shrugged.

"Dad just knows. He's got special powers too. He talks to the people who have crossed-over. I think you were still invisible. A ghost from the future. But he knew you were there. He could sense you. He can do things like that."

"So your Dad's psychic then?"

"I know what that means," replied Lizzie. "Yes. He is. Sometimes people come to the door and ask Dad to contact relatives that have passed-on."

I was really interested now. I loved that sort of stuff.

"And does he?" I asked her. "Does he contact the dead?"

"He does what he can." Then Lizzie looked at me sternly. "But they're not dead, Jay. Just 'passed over."

"Passed-over where?"

"To the next life, silly."

"But where's that?" I still wasn't getting the answers I wanted.

Lizzie just shrugged. "Who knows."

I thought about the D word and ghosts and things like that. "But I'm somebody from the future. I haven't passed-over yet. In fact, in your time, I don't even exist. So how come he got in touch with me and somehow got into my dreams? Or how did I get into his? Oh, I don't understand."

"I just know that Dad knew there was someone in this house who could help. Someone that had powers like us. And whether they come from the past, present or future doesn't really matter."

That made sense although I was still trying to digest all this information. She seemed to be saying that I was a psychic too. I was sure she was wrong. That she'd got the wrong person. But if I was psychic, if I did have 'special powers,' then how would I help?

So I asked Lizzie.

"That's easy," she said, "you already know where Ernie is."

"I do?"

"Yes. You've seen him in your dream."

"I have?"

"Yes."

I knew I had. I'd seen him in the small room with the window and the laughing people outside.

Lizzie rested her chin on arms already folded together on my bed. She looked up at me and there was silence while I thought things through.

After a bit she spoke. "So? Are you still coming?"

I expected this and I knew I would have to give it a go. To be honest I was sure that nothing would happen. I would hold Lizzie's hand or whatever and I would find that I couldn't go back in time and that would be that. I would stay firmly stuck in the future and that would be the end of the it all.

Time travel? Pretty unlikely.

I looked at Lizzie, shimmering grey by my bed.

"I'll give it a go."

A smile spread across Lizzie's face and I smiled weakly back. Lizzie got up from beside my bed and moved to the end of the room, where the stairs used to be. Or, in Lizzie's case, still were. I got out from under my duvet and stood shyly in my piranhas. Lizzie put a hand to her mouth and giggled. I looked down at myself. I looked ridiculous.

"Hadn't you better get dressed?"

So I got dressed while Lizzie turned her back. Pants, socks, jeans, T-shirt and trainers. I was horrified that Lizzie might turn around thinking I'd finished and catch me half-dressed. But she didn't and I had to tell her twice to turn around when I'd finished. She was still smirking and a bit embarrassed. But then she was younger than me. At one point I heard Dad go to the loo as he did at 2 AM most nights. Lizzie reminded me that, while she was there, it was impossible for Dad to hear us. She wanted to prove this by shouting 'help' at the top of her voice. But I said no. I didn't want to risk it.

When I felt I was ready I stood beside my bed. I was more than nervous. Lizzie was stood quietly at the other end of the room with her feet together and her hands held in front of her. For a short while we looked at each other. Then Lizzie smiled and held out her right hand for me to take. Once again this was the signal for me to blush as red as a Roman candle. I was still convinced that nothing would happen.

But what if it did? I still didn't know what to expect. I felt I needed to know so I stayed where I was. Lizzie's smile vanished and her welcoming hand dropped. She looked confused. I felt guilty again.

"What will happen?" I asked her politely. "Where will we go?"

"You'll feel nothing. All you'll do is walk down these set of stairs." She nodded at the floor. "Right to the bottom. You'll find yourself in my kitchen next door to the front room. You know the front room don't you?"

I nodded.

"Just don't let go until we're at the bottom."

This was it then. I walked forward and my eyes met Lizzie's. Her eyes were a pair of quivering black circles. They had no colour, just grey and black. And she didn't blink. Despite her age I trusted her. I wanted to help.

Still looking at me she took my left hand in her right. She felt soft and warm. I was surprised. I thought ghosts were meant to be cold.

Lizzie smiled. "C'mon then."

Slowly we moved towards my bedroom wall and I found myself suddenly staring down a set of steep stairs. Stairs? Where did they come from? I stopped Lizzie from going any further as I took them in. The stairs were covered in faded red carpet and the walls on either side had wooden hand-rails and were covered in white patterned wallpaper. Stranger still was that one leg of my computer table was resting on nothing. Just thin air. I looked nervously from the stairs to Lizzie then back again.

Lizzie tugged at my hand and softly murmured, "C'mon then." She must have known how scared I was. It was no use. I couldn't hide it.

I hesitated but then took a first step. Then a second step. Then a third. Nope. Lizzie was right. I felt nothing. I gripped Lizzie's small hand tighter and continued my slow journey down. As I did so there were other changes I recognised. First of all there was the smell. My bedroom had smelt reasonably clean (although it didn't always smell like that) but now there was a musty and damp smell that made me turn up my nose. A smell like old books or things brought down from the attic. The temperature also dropped and the sounds suddenly changed. But at this point I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

The biggest change though was in me.

As I approached a curve in the bottom of the flight of stairs I noticed that the hand and arm that was holding on tightly to Lizzie had become tracing paper grey. At the same time Lizzie herself had turned completely into colour and I noticed her as if for the first time. The beret on her head and her cardigan were both the same colour red. Her skirt was grey but her long socks white and her strapped shoes a kind of scuffed purple. Her pigtails were a light brown and her complexion much like my own. I was fascinated by her and by myself. I must have looked frightened as Lizzie told me not to worry, told me that fear was normal when crossing-over.

We reached the foot of the stairs and I stopped and stared through an opening into what seemed to be a kitchen. Before I took the final step down I looked back up into my room. But it had gone. All that stood at the top of the stairs now was an old white wooden door.

And the door was shut.

Lizzie still looked at me and held my hand. "Don't let go," she whispered and led me into the kitchen.

The kitchen wasn't that big. It was about as big as ours is now and it was light and creamy. But it was very different to ours in lots of ways. For instance there was a big fireplace on one wall that was obviously ready for use because there was paper and wood placed in it ready for lighting. There was a big, square white sink under a small window. To my right what seemed to be a big, blue cooker. There was some faded patterned rugs on the floor which covered a plastic surface. In the middle of the kitchen a table and four chairs. The table had a white tablecloth placed neatly over it with blue stripped crockery placed on top of that, things for making tea: a milk jug; a teapot with some sort of jumper on it; a sugar bowl as well as other bits and bobs. And hanging from the ceiling? What was that? A wooden rack was suspended up near the black electric cable with its bare light bulb. Another quick glance around the room and there was a cupboard door and a white cabinet that had a kind of worktop pulled down. There was a loaf of bread on it. And the air smelled of a mix of stale bread and fried bacon. Back in my time our kitchen usually smelt clean and fresh.

Although I might have been thinking of when Mum was home.

There didn't seem to be anybody about so I stood near the table and looked around. No doubt about it, the room was definitely a kitchen but it looked and smelled old. It was like nothing I'd ever seen or smelt before. Everything seemed so basic and clunky. My eye was drawn to a light switch, so sleek in our time, but here big, round and black. And there were cracks in the ceiling.

I'm was still assuming that we were in the past. It felt and looked like it, so I continued to believe it.

The suddenly I realised that I still held Lizzie's hand so I looked at her. She was now coloured-in as if by a magic crayon.

"Can I let go now?" I asked as politely as possible.

"Yes," Lizzie nodded, and giggled.

"What now?" I couldn't believe she was laughing at me. She could see what I was going through.

"It's just..."

"Just what?"

"Just that... when you talk... nothin' comes out 'til a second or two later. It looks funny." And she giggled again.

"Right. I'm letting go. Ready?"

"Yes."

"One, two, and..."

I thought I would explode away or disappear into dust or something, so letting go of Lizzie was harder than I thought. It took quite a bit of courage. But I did eventually, gradually, and not quite on three. Then I looked around again.

At the kitchen.

In 1946.

I tried to keep calm and cool, as if this sort of thing happened every day.

"So," I nodded slowly, still looking around, "this is your pad, huh?"

Lizzie glanced at me like I had suddenly sprouted an extra head. "I beg your pardon?"

I quickly corrected myself. "I mean, this is where you live, is it?"

Lizzie frowned at me. "Funny. You sounded American."

"Sorry." I did. I don't know why.

"Don't be sorry," said Lizzie in an even better American accent, heading towards a sliding door, "it's neat."

That made me smile.

With a rumble the sliding door moved along and I moved forward peering into the new room as I went.

It was then that I realised that there was nothing new to see. I had seen everything in that room before. It was the room with the net curtains, the brown sofa and the cream cabinets and plates, the paintings of the hunt, the portrait, the black stand and the ashtray on top.

It was the room from my dream.

This made me stop and catch my breath. I've had déjà vu before. You know, when you do something or see something and you get the feeling you've done it or seen it before. In fact, I've probably experienced it more than most. Some people I swear I've met before. Like the old man opposite Mum in the hospital. Why did he stare at me like that?

What was I thinking? My head was swimming and I felt dizzy. Learning that you were psychic, going back in time and having déjà vu all in a few hours was a lot to handle. Lizzie saw the look on my face. Suddenly I didn't want to be in 1946 anymore. And another thing. Would I ever get my colour back?

I decided I needed a glass of water and a sit down.

"I need to sit down."

Lizzie led me to the brown sofa with arm protectors like my gran used to have. She sat me down.

"And some water," I added, "I must have some water."

I realised that I sounded like a sailor, adrift at sea for a hundred days. Give or take. In other words I sounded like a bit of a wimp.

Lizzie went to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. I heard the stiff turning of one of the big silver taps and a heavy run of water into the kitchen sink. In the near-quiet I realised there were voices drifting in through an open window. The front room window. The window where the nets still moved and whispered together. I also heard the shouts of children nearby and the clip-clop of a horse's hooves in the distance.

Then Lizzie returned with some water in a teacup of white china. I took it from her and raised it to my lips with grey hands. Stopped. I looked up at Lizzie. "It won't poison me will it? I mean, it is drinking water?"

Lizzie giggled again. "Silly. Of course it is." This was said in a teacherly way. So much so that I knew what she was going to be when she was older.

The water tasted a little different, but it was cold and it was water.

"Ta," I thanked Lizzie as I passed back the cup.

"You should be grateful," she said, "it's my Mum's best china."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Lizzie then went over to the window. She moved one of the nets to one side and peered briefly out. I caught a glimpse of terraced houses opposite. Grey, old-style windows, nets and curtains. 1946. It was still hard to believe. Then Lizzie let the nets fall back and they fell back to whispering, blocking my view.

"Are you feeling better?"

I nodded. "What now?"

"I think," Lizzie said, her chest puffing with pride, "I think you should meet my father."

"Your Dad?" I was suddenly startled again. "Now? How? Why?"

"Don't be a scaredy-cat," Lizzie sniggered, "he won't hurt you."

Then a door in another room closed with a clunk and I knew that I had no choice.

I don't know why but I started to shake. If I still held the cup and saucer I would have rattled the cup off and onto the front room carpet. I followed the sound of muffled footsteps with my eyes. They were moving slowly beyond the front room wall, more or less the same way we had entered. So, any second now and the sliding door through to the kitchen would be heaved aside and I would be faced with Lizzie's Dad.

What do I say to him? How would I explain how I got here? He might phone the police. I could be taken away and...

I couldn't think about the consequences. It was too much. Why had I been persuaded to come here? And by a little girl?

These thoughts tumbled around and about my head like socks in a washing machine. It was too late now but why hadn't I thought about this earlier.

But then the slow clump of footfalls moved off into the kitchen and I was given a few moments to think. Lizzie moved beside me. She folded her arms across her chest, frowned then tutted loudly.

"I don't believe it. He's gone to make a cup of tea."

Before I could explain that I didn't mind not meeting her Dad, Lizzie had marched to the white sliding door and thrown it across and it clunked loudly against its stop. I heard a muffled voice from the kitchen and Lizzie said something in reply. Something I couldn't quite catch.

I was sat nervously fidgeting, still shaking, when Lizzie came back into the room. She was smiling. "He's coming in."

I stood up and looked at the space left by the sliding door. Now I was really scared. I don't know what I expected. I knew what Lizzie's Dad looked like from the back but I had never looked into his eyes. And he'd never looked into mine.

I certainly didn't expect the man that suddenly walked in from the kitchen.
Chapter 12

Meet Lizzie's Dad

The man stood in front of me was short and the first thing that I noticed was his smile. He had a big, genuine smile. He also had a long and pointed nose that was bent to one side, a thin face and a good head of greying hair. Mr Raynor had on the white shirt and the sleeveless jumper that I recognised. As he got nearer I realised that Mr Raynor had green eyes.

They reminded me of the eyes of a curious cat.

Mr Raynor moved quickly, came towards me and gripped the tops of my arms with strong hands. He looked at me with his cat green eyes and the smile of someone reunited with an old friend. There was a long moment of silence as he looked squarely at me. Still smiling.

Then he hugged me.

I didn't expect that and I didn't really know what to do or how to react. I just let my arms hang like rags from my sides and was even more embarrassed when he lifted me off the floor. Mr Raynor smelt musty, as if his clothes had spent a long time hung up in an old wardrobe. I was relieved when he let me go to hold my shoulders again. He was still smiling.

Eventually he spoke.

"You've finally come." He nodded slowly and his voice was high like he was pretending to be a girl. "Welcome."

After more seconds of smiling he took a step back and looked me up and down.

"Well, you're very...grey."

I nodded and he smiled again.

"Sorry," he said and stepped away from me, "but it's good to see you. I really never thought that you'd come. Sit down, sit down."

Mr Raynor waved at the chair I had been sitting on. So I sat down again. His voice had a soft west-country accent, not as obvious as Lizzie's. He stood in the middle of the front room and patted himself in search of something.

"Lizzie, have you seen my pipe?"

Lizzie had been stood off to one side but now she sprang into action.

"I think you left it on your tin in the kitchen," she said and went to get it.

Lizzie was back in an instant and gave an old square tin and the pipe to her Dad. Meanwhile Dad had sat on the sofa and when Lizzie gave him the tin he prized the top off. Then he took a small lump of tobacco and began stuffing it into the bowl of his pipe.

I had seen him do this in my dreams. Another wave of déjà-vu made me dizzy again. Mr Raynor began to talk.

"I'm so grateful that you came across," he said in his high voice, "Lizzie wasn't sure that she could convince you to come." Mr Raynor placed the tip of his pipe in his mouth. It was slightly to one side so he could keep talking. "How did you find it, lad?"

I blinked. I really didn't know how to respond. "W...well, it was OK really. I think."

Mr Raynor grunted, in a high way, and produced a box of matches from his trouser pocket. He struck one along its side and held the flame over the tobacco stuffed into his pipe bowl. Smoke started to come from the pipe and his mouth. Soon his face was framed by it.

"You see, the idea of time travel isn't new." He tookHe H the pipe from his mouth. "But its consequences don't bear thinking about."

I didn't understand what he was getting at. I needn't have worried. Mr Raynor explained.

"I mean," he said, leaning back, puffing on his pipe again, "what do you think the consequences of you being here are? You might answer that your Dad is missing you, a pet or a girlfriend. You might also say that you've made a new friend in Lizzie here or that you've met me. But think about the real consequences. Now that we've met we'll remember you and you'll remember us, probably forever. Or at least as long as you're alive. So might it be safe to say that you might make decisions, based on our friendship, tomorrow, next week, next year or even twenty years from now." Mr Raynor looked into space and puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. "Do you follow?"

I half nodded and half shook my head. I was confused. Totally. I looked to Lizzie for help. She just shook her head.

"My point is, Jack...'

'Jay," interrupted Lizzie.

"What?" said Dad quickly. Lizzie might just as well have shouted 'Boo!'

"Jay! His name's Jay! J-A-Y. Jay!'

"Oh, I see. Well, Jay, my point is that you haven't only just travelled through time. You've also created a set of events that will now be impossible to stop."

This frightened me. It sounded like the end of the world or something.

"Should I go back then?"

"Too late, too late."

Lizzie must have noticed how confused I was. She stepped in.

"Dad, stop scaring him. He's been through a lot." She looked over at me. "You've been though a lot haven't you, Jay?"

"Yeah," I replied, "I've never time travelled in my life."

Mr Raynor looked long and hard at me. I began to feel uncomfortable.

"What does 'yeah' mean?" he asked.

"Sorry. I meant 'yes,' Mr Raynor."

Mr Raynor grunted, realised his pipe had gone out and struck another match. More smoke. I hate cigarette smoke and I had nagged Dad until he gave up. But pipe smoke? It was really sweet and nice. I'd never smelt a pipe before. I liked it.

Lizzie went and sat next to her Dad in the same way she had sat on my computer stool, knees together. She made sure her white socks were pulled up tightly to just under her kneecaps and she unwound the scarf from her neck and took off her beret. Her hair was still in pig-tails.

"Dad," she said, "you can tell Jay your real name. We can trust him."

Mr Raynor looked shocked at his own rudeness.

"Oh dear. I'm so sorry, Jack...eh... Jay." Mr Raynor got off the sofa and stretched out his hand. "My name is Albert. Albert Raynor. Pleased to meet you."

I shyly shook his hand.

The next twenty minutes were weird. Lizzie made some tea and I had a cup and asked for three sugars. It seemed like they were running out of sugar as Mr Raynor, or Albert, only gave me half a spoonful. The tea was strong and there were bits in it that I didn't like. Lizzie explained that these were 'tea leaves'. They didn't look like leaves. They were small like bits of earth. Albert puffed on his pipe and talked about 'special powers' and a lot of stuff that I just couldn't figure out. I found myself listening to his high voice as he explained just how these powers are difficult to come to terms with and how lonely it can be being different. I was frightened then. I didn't want to be different like someone who has a disease. I didn't want to be sat at home alone or at the back of the class being laughed at. Then I remembered that I was already 'lonely', and suddenly what Mr Raynor was saying made sense. Kyle had abandoned me and gone off with new friends (and girlfriends) and Bethany had completely disowned me. I could picture the look in her eyes when I told her about the dreams and voices. She hadn't understood. She had suddenly discovered something that she didn't like in me. It had frightened her. She didn't want friends like me, friends that saw and heard strange things at night.

Anyway, who were my friends? I just didn't know anymore. But I was certain of one thing. I missed them and I missed home. It felt strange in this strange house with its strange smells. It felt very different. I had a dull ache in my chest, near my heart. Heartache, I suppose.

I was polite though. I didn't interrupt once. But more and more I thought of more familiar things. I thought about Dad, rice crispies, mashed potatoes made with milk and cheese and my warm football duvet with hard rain at my window.

But I had started to grow fond of Albert Raynor. He was odd, that was obvious, and he liked to talk. A lot. He liked to talk about stuff I didn't understand. I looked at Mr Raynor, with his sleeveless jumper, his pipe, his restless green eyes. He was clever, that was for sure, and I had a lot to learn. But, as he talked, my mind drifted and I thought of home.

Still, I snapped awake, Bang! Especially when he started to explain his own dreams.

His dreams of being me.

"I first saw as you about six months ago. I was stood at the window looking out when I felt I had to sit down. As soon as I did and I closed my eyes I was sat in a large room with rows of desks. There were children dressed in red jumpers and white shirts. There were large windows which let in a good deal of light all around the room and I was listening to a female teacher. She was teaching math I think."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If it was a maths lesson he was describing, Albert Raynor had been me in Ms Roots' class. The room was large and it was lit by big windows all the way around.

"That would be Curly Roots," I said to him.

"I beg your pardon," replied Albert. I think he was a little deaf.

"Curly Roots. She's my maths teacher," I said again, a little louder this time.

"Oh. I see." Albert seemed to forget this almost instantly. I missed school. I thought about how the building was still only a short walk away. Then I thought about the gap of decades and I had the pain in my chest again.

I needed to go but Albert was still talking.

"...and then I had tea with your Dad and had a vision of an old woman on a hospital ward..."

"My Mum!" I interrupted without really thinking about it.

"I beg your pardon," said Albert again.

"You saw me visiting my Mum. She's in hospital and she's not well." I looked hard at Mr Raynor. "And she's not old."

This had sounded like I was defending my Mum. In a way I was. She wasn't old. She was my Mum. I missed her and I thought of her smile and how she depended on me and Dad. It was then that I told the Raynors that I had to go back. Lizzie stood up and shot a concerned look at her Dad. Albert just sucked thoughtfully on his pipe.

I glanced from one to the other, stood up to go but Albert surprised me again.

"You miss her don't you?" he said slowly.

He was referring to my Mum. "Yes. I do."

Albert motioned with his pipe for me to sit down again. "Give me another second, young man."

I obediently sat down and Lizzie did the same. Together we watched Albert suck on a pipe that had now gone out.

"I served in the first war. They probably teach you about that at school." He stopped then added hastily, "or maybe they don't. But the friends I made in that first war I miss more than you can ever imagine. So, you see, I can sympathise with you, Jay. I really can. But you choose your friends, you see. Your family are chosen for you." Albert removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at me with those green eyes that reminded me of the cold winter sea. "And that's why by helping us you will also help your Mum, your Dad, and yourself."

I thought about this for a bit.

"Mr Raynor, I will help you find Ernie. I promise." I meant it. I would help. But I also wanted to get back home. One more thing though.

"Mr Raynor," I said, standing up again," just how will I help my family by helping yours?"

Albert also now stood up. "No man is an island, Jay," and he took the pipe from his mouth. "No man."

Albert stretched his back and walked to the net curtains at the window.

"See you then," I said as a goodbye. I felt a little awkward when Albert simply held up his hand in reply then used this hand to hold one of the nets away from the other so he could peer out into the street. I looked at Lizzie for some understanding but she just smiled and held out her hand for me to take. I took it without any questions or the feeling of embarrassment I had before.

I needed to go home.

We walked back out into the kitchen but before I turned towards the bottom of the stairs I took a last look at Lizzie's Dad. He was as I expected. As I'd seen him in my dreams.

Looking out of the window.

Waiting for somebody to come.

The door was still closed at the top of the stairs but Lizzie assured me that I'd pass right through it. Things would be exactly the same as I'd left it only a short time ago. Strange that it felt like I'd been with Lizzie forever.

She waved goodbye from the bottom of the stairs, telling me that I only needed her to cross over. Getting back to my time was easy.

And it was. It was that easy

As I got nearer the door at the top of the stairs it simply disintegrated. It was replaced by my green carpet and computer table.

In the distance though, far off, a crackle and splash like a cymbal and the burning smell again. It quickly disappeared and I forgot about it.

Climbing to the top of the stairs I saw my bedroom again and realised that everything was how I'd left it. Nothing had changed.

That was the weirdest thing.

And a small part of me, the tiniest little bit of me, wished it had.
Chapter 13

The Geek!

My head was a real mess for the next few days. After climbing the stairs from 1946 I had checked the floor of my room by my computer desk and chair and found no evidence of any sort of secret gateway. The green carpet was firmly down. I fluffed around on my hands and knees but couldn't find anything. I must have made such a noise getting back into bed that Dad opened the door to check on me. He peered around the door with eyes almost closed.

"What are you doin', Jay?" he asked in a voice cracked with sleep, "I can hear you next door."

In my confusion I had totally forgotten that, without Lizzie's help, Dad could hear me again.

"Sorry Dad. Just can't sleep."

"Well try. I've got work and you've got school. You're not staying off again." The door closed and I heard the squeak of bed springs from his room and then the soft click of Mum and Dad's red bedside lamp, the one they got as a wedding present from Aunt Colleen. I looked at my Manchester United clock and saw that it was 4 AM – on Sunday morning. I giggled to myself as Dad must have forgotten as he was still half asleep. Looking at the clock I realised that I still wasn't sure how time went about its business when I had been away. I couldn't remember what time I had left.

What I had said to Dad was true. I couldn't sleep. My mind was a mix of the Raynors and the smell of Albert's pipe. During the few hours that I tossed and turned I thought that I could smell its sweet smoke and I had to turn the light on and check that Albert hadn't followed me. I was still nervous. Now my bedroom had become a busy door to the past anybody or anything could turn up at any minute.

But then that wasn't strictly true. I knew that it was only Lizzie who had the power of time-travel. Albert was the one who could 'see' things with his mind. He was the psychic one, although Lizzie had these abilities as well. I turned over again and the bed springs squeaked impatiently. After listening out for Dad I began to think about the rest of the Raynor family. What powers would these have? Would they have any at all? And, as daylight began to colour the area around my small bedroom window, I wondered what they really wanted with me. I mean, the family seemed to have enough special powers to take on any superhero. So what did they want with me? According to the Raynors I was able to 'see' where Lizzie's eldest brother was. But why couldn't they and how could they pin all their hopes on just one dream?

I sighed, closed my eyes, and sleep came at last.

Then the alarm went off.

But thank God it was Sunday. I had left the alarm on in all the excitement. The clock clumped to the floor when I reached to turn it off. I listened for Dad for a couple of quick seconds, turned over, then, without really trying, was asleep again.

Dad woke me up at twelve to tell me that I should be up. He had been out to finish a job and was getting a roast dinner in the oven. Now I Iove roast dinners. So I scrambled around for my clothes and spent the next few hours moping about, helping Dad a bit and generally getting in his way. But deep down my mind was still full of Saturday night.

Although I had all of Sunday to recover, I spent much of Sunday night expecting a visit that didn't come. So, on Monday morning I really struggled to get up and get ready for school. Dad was making a lot of noise as usual, banging and crashing around the place. That didn't help. When I eventually got myself out of the front door and started the slow shuffle to school I noticed how tired I actually was. I yawned all the way to the shop where I normally met Kyle. When he didn't appear I yawned all the way to the front gates of school. A sharp breeze didn't help my stinging wet eyes. I kept thinking if Lizzie was doing the same thing. But in 1946. I tried imagining what it was like going to school at that time but I couldn't. So I concentrated on getting through the day.

Lessons were hard.

In tutor time I nearly drifted off to sleep and in Maths I had to fight hard to stay awake. Curly Roots also seemed tired today as she gave us some mental maths to do and fussed around her desk stapling together bits of paper together. In Design Technology I could escape the curious eye of Mr Steele and loiter and I did the same in IT. But after break and before dinner I had History and for the first time I felt completely awake. Mr Butler was my teacher. He was an old man in his fifties with short grey hair and glasses pushed to the end of his nose. Mr Butler had a posh voice and was always polite although some kids were rude in his classes and threw paper around. I could never understand that as he was an old man and was always kind to us. Mr Butler also had a passion for poetry and would read some out to the class. He could also make words rhyme when he was explaining something which kind of hypnotised you.

We had been learning about World War One for weeks now and, to be honest, I hadn't taken much notice. You see, I've never really liked History. The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norman conquests, blah-blah. They all seemed so long ago and not important. I mean, why study dead people? When was the last time I saw a Tudor walk down the high-street? Never. And probably never will. That's the problem. They're dead! A big difference to us. That's alive.

Mr Butler had brought in an old pair of binoculars that he said his Great Granddad had used during World War One. He let us all have a close look at them. The girls weren't that bothered but most of the boys crowded around so they could touch and look through them. They were a scratched black whilst the small and big ends were a dirty green with what Mr Butler told us was a brass rim to finish. I looked through them and they weren't that powerful. Mr Butler looked at us all over the rim of his specs and told us that they were 'field glasses', which he said meant battlefield binoculars.

"Old Jerry wouldn't have been that far away," he explained to us all when we were back in our seats, "probably less than fifty yards in some cases."

We knew what he meant. He had shown us old videos of black and white film taken during the war. It had looked unreal because the men moved faster than real life and it was in black and white. Some of us laughed because the 'speedy-up' made it look like old slapstick comedy which we had all seen in Drama. Even though we watched these bits of film it still looked like it had never happened. Because it wasn't in colour. I couldn't imagine what it was like for the soldiers because of this. But I was interested and I remembered that Lizzie's Dad had said he had fought in the 'first war'.

I didn't know what that was. I decided to ask.

Mr Butler had got out a DVD from a supermarket bag he usually used to carry things around in. He was struggling to open the case when he saw my raised hand.

"Yes, Mr Webber?"

It took a second to put together the question in my head. I wasn't usually one of those that was confident in asking questions in front of a class.

"What was the first war, sir?"

A couple of the boys near the back of the class sniggered. Mr Butler stopped wrestling with the plastic case and turned his attention to where the camouflaged laughter had sprung from.

"What's so funny?" he asked them directly. "It was a perfectly good question."

He turned his attention back to me, his voice clear and controlled. "The first war was this one, Mr Webber," he said tapping the case of the DVD, "World War One or, for our purposes, the First World War."

"Thanks. But sir," I asked again before he had a chance to re-engage the DVD case in mortal combat, "how did it start? I mean, why did the Germans want to fight us?"

"Another good question." Mr Butler seemed surprised at my sudden nerve. He then talked to the rest of the group.

"In fact this is a timeless question. A question that, in the struggle to find a decisive answer, has seen thousands of books written, academic debate that has lasted nearly a century and, perhaps, a second war." He paused then returned his attention to me. "So, as you can see, Mr Webber, your question is not only a good question but one that might not be answered satisfactorily. Indeed, it might only be an opinion."

So, I didn't really get an answer. But what we did get was a map of Europe and the countries all divided up into – what was it? – alliances. That was it. Alliances. That was fine but then someone got shot and the war started.

We still didn't know why. But a war had started at the back of the room. Big Derrick had started winding-up Mel Mulvey's brother by throwing a rubber at him and Kieren Mulvey had started to whine to Mr Butler.

Mr Butler calmly told Big Derrick to wait outside the room whilst he shut the blinds, dimmed the lights and put the DVD on for us to watch.

The DVD was about the start of the war. The posh voice went over the course of events again and I recognised some difficult names that Mr Butler had mentioned earlier. Austro-Hungary, alliances, Ferdinand, The Black Hand Gang (that was cool), assassination. But it still didn't make much sense. Still, I enjoyed the lines of grey soldiers; he cavalry; huge puffs of smoke spouting from the barrels of heavy guns; the dead men and horses in mud; the sad faces smoking cigarettes; the injured; the scared.

Briefly, something new.

In my imagination, without really thinking, I placed myself in the shoes of the men on the screen and tried to imagine what it was like in several feet of mud. I was a soldier, tired, hungry, missing family whilst the big bullets from the big guns crash around you. I tried to think of an excuse when the soldier in charge shouted at me to put my bayonet on the end of my gun because I was going to have to charge the enemy and fight.

I tried to think of an excuse. But I couldn't. Not really. Like when I don't want to get up for school you can't suddenly make up a mysterious illness. I remembered when I came home from school the other day as I couldn't face it because of the dreams. What if I had tried that during the first war? 'I'm sorry, sir, but I've just developed a bad cold' or 'I'm a bit miserable today sir' or 'I've a nut allergy' or 'no, not for me sir, those German bayonets look a bit sharp'. What would the officer in charge have said?

After the DVD I asked Mr Butler just that and he wrote on the whiteboard. In big black letters:

COWARD!

COURT MARTIAL

FIRING SQUAD

As it was the end of the lesson we were asked to spend the last few minutes to work the answer out for ourselves.

I got it right.

I was making my way towards the school gates at the end of the day when Donkers and a small kid I'd never seen before came up to me. Donkers was scary. He was fat and big and had a short haircut. He came from a rough estate nearby and he always smelt of body-odour and dirt.

Donkers leaned down and put his face close to mine.

"Your're such a geek," he breathed on me. I could smell cheese and onion crisps. "Since when have you been so interested in the bloody first world war?"

I shrugged in reply. "I dunno. Just am. I suppose."

Donkers put a fat, greasy hand over my mouth. "Well don't suppose. Just shud ap in future."

Then he used the hand over the mouth to push me back against the Art block wall. I banged the back of my head. Not much, but enough to hurt.

"See ya – geek!"

Smiling, they both turned and strolled towards the school gates, happy that they'd frightened the wits out of me.

With the back of my head throbbing and my stomach bubbling like a fish tank filter I looked around to see who had been watching.

I noticed that it was just about everybody.

I straightened myself, adjusted my back pack and made sheepishly for the school gates.
Chapter 14

Poetry and a Home Visit.

I had another flashback on Monday evening.

I'm usually out playing football down the playing fields when the weather is good. And the weather was good. A bright sun stayed up late and a busy breeze kicked anything loose and light along our pavement and wobbled the aerials on the roofs of houses. The breeze also gave sounds and smells a gentle lift to our house. I could hear the shouts of footballers from the park and I could smell the kebab shop on the high street. No-one phoned or called to ask me out and the meeting with Donkers and his mate was still on my mind. I've got to admit, Donkers terrified me. I was lucky to get away with just a lump on the back of my head. What if he'd decided to really teach me a lesson? I thought of all the smirking faces as I walked quickly away from the wall of the Art block. What if they'd seen me beg for mercy? The imaginary scene gave me a rush of embarrassment so I quickly shut the door on them. But I did feel lonely, like all the world was against me. Dad had gone off to hospital again to see Mum and even Mr and Mrs Sweet next door had gone on holiday. At this moment I'd have given anything to have sat on a sandy beach in the warm sun watching the calm blue ocean.

I wasn't though. I was stuck here, at home, with no real friends, family or anybody I could really talk to anymore.

Suddenly, I felt really sad.

That's when I smelled something familiar.

It came drifting sweetly over the rooftops like a wisp of memory and didn't so much fall away but circle once around me and then move on, over the garden fences and silent, parked cars to wherever it had come from.

It was the smell of Albert's pipe.

It made me smile and walk around our small patio in search of it. But it had gone and I'd thought it strange that nobody I knew smoked a pipe. In fact, I'd never smelt one before until I'd met Lizzie's Dad. The sudden smell of tobacco made me think that maybe Albert was somehow nearby. So I looked around the rest of the garden. I even poked about the house and my bedroom. When I found nothing I felt relieved but at the same time disappointed. I didn't think about it too much. I closed the back door, sat on the couch in the front room and turned on the television. Stupid to imagine the smell of a pipe could travel decades.

Then the vision came again.

The setting sun was still bright and strong and streaming in through our front room window. I had closed my eyelids to see the red bits on the back of them because that happens when the sun shines on your face.

I was in the small room once more, sat on the bed and staring at the small window high up on the wall. The tree was still there but now it was daylight and I could see a clear blue sky with crumbs of white cloud moving slowly across it. I could also hear birds singing outside. I felt a sudden urge to escape. To get away. I sat up and looked to my left, towards the small door.

I saw that it was open.

For a moment I didn't move. I couldn't believe that there was a chance of escape. Slowly I got off my hard bed and onto my hands and knees and cautiously moved towards it. I moved as if it might close at any moment. It didn't. So I softly popped my head out.

I saw what seemed to be a large kitchen. I also saw a stone floor with a wooden table and chairs and old wooden work surfaces. There were two windows in the room with small wilted plants on them and other old bits and bobs. There was the smell of stale cooking hanging in the air. And there was a door. An open door. As I looked I could see a breeze move the bushes outside.

And I could hear voices!

Why I felt scared, I don't know. But I felt the urge to dart back into my small hole and stay frightened on my familiar bed.

But I didn't. Slowly, stiffly, I got to my feet. My back ached but I gently stretched myself and moved to one of the cold, stone walls. I flattened myself against it. Listened again. The voices were unfamiliar. Foreign. They were talking together in low conversation. Every now and then there was an explosion of laughter. There was more than one voice and one was a woman. I needed to see the faces of the voices I didn't understand. I needed to see their expressions, expressions which might give me a clue to any decisions they might be making.

I moved towards the door.

I could just about feel the cool breeze on my face when the talking outside stopped. They were replaced by footsteps, drawing nearer. Suddenly I was terrified and again I felt the urge to run. Escape. Get away.

I frantically looked around.

But I was too late. A face had appeared at the door, the face of a young woman. She seemed friendly and she had shoulder length dark hair and wore some sort of headscarf. She had seen me, smiled at me. Although I didn't hear anything I saw her red lips say 'hello.'

Then a male voice, stern and sharp. Commanding. Questioning. The girl's smile vanished and she looked over one slender shoulder to see a man walking quickly towards us. The man didn't smile. He had short fair hair, was stocky and strong. He wore worn boots that clumped on the flagstones outside. He had a thick piece of wood in his hand. And another man came behind him, looking similarly angry.

The fear was choking me. I looked left and right then at the small door in the wall. The woman came nearer and held me by the shoulders and shook her head. 'No, no', I saw her say. Then the small man with the piece of wood shoved her aside and stood squarely in front of me.

He was shouting.

He was angry.

I looked from his face to the heavy wood in his hands.

Then back again.

I jumped awake and I must have shouted as I heard a voice. For a few seconds I had to think hard about where I was and who I was. Then reality flowed in like sweet syrup and I sat up. The TV was still on and some game show host was interviewing a contestant and there was clapping and people laughing. I found the remote control and turned it off.

In the silence I thought about what had just occurred. I knew that I hadn't been dreaming. I was looking through the eyes of someone else. I understood that now. But it had been horrible. I was sticky on my brow and when I put my hand up it came away wet from sweat. My back was damp and under my armpits. I hadn't sweated like this since I last played football. I realised that I was shaking a little and got up to get a drink of juice from the fridge. My legs were unsteady like I had run ten miles. And I felt panicked and anxious.

What was going on? Who was this person I was crawling into when I was asleep? Whoever it was I wish I didn't. The experience was a pretty horrific one. I felt what that person had been feeling. Saw what he saw (assuming it was a he). Had smelt what he smelt.

I didn't like it. Not one bit.

I felt a little better when Dad got home but Dad dragged in sadness and worry. Mum wasn't well. A relapse it's called, and she had been agitated and stressed. Dad said she had felt like life wasn't worth it and she was going to give it up. He made himself a limp ham sandwich but he didn't really feel like eating. He left half of it.

I left him watching TV and wandered out into the cold of the evening. It was dark now and the roofs of houses and trees were quiet shadows. The odd car moved smoothly, slowly by on the road outside of our house and in the distance a car alarm repeated its electronic cry for help over and over and over. When it stopped the silence was total but then the whine of an ambulance or police car or whatever replaced that. It seemed that whenever I came out to our garden during the evening there would be sirens of some sort. Human life was full of drama it seemed, and the busy streets beyond our little back garden made me think about Mum and the horrible D Word again.

I thought of Mum lying alone in hospital, sad, angry at how life was treating her.

Then I thought of Lizzie's Dad and how life was treating him.

It seemed to me that being an adult was full of pain and worry. The siren had passed on in the middle distance and had faded away and I wondered who it was going to help. Was it the police responding to the car alarm earlier or was it an ambulance, called to the aid of an injury? Someone old like the old man I'd seen in the hospital? Someone like Dad? Someone young like me? Would the ambulance, if it was an ambulance, be too late? Would it be unable to help like on the hospital programmes I sometimes watched on TV?

The D Word was always lurking, could pounce on anybody, anytime, at any minute. No-one was safe.

Not even my Mum.

And I'd always thought my Mum was always going to be there. Indestructible. Like super-heroes or God.

She wasn't. Neither was Dad and nor was I. In fact, nor would Kyle, Beth or Mr Butler. It seemed unbelievable but it was true. Even for Lizzie's family the D Word prowled like an eager substitute on the touchline, waiting for its part, wanting to get on with it.

That's when I felt a flood of fondness for the Raynors. They had chosen me to help them. Because I could. And if it meant bringing back someone who was close to them, someone that they missed and loved, then I would do everything I could to help.

I knew how they felt. I was losing someone I loved too.

Mum was out there somewhere in the night thinking of giving up the struggle. Like the assemblies at school said, life was precious.

A slip and it was gone.

I wanted to help someone keep it.

I only wish someone could help me.

I had Mr Butler for History again the next day. In his classroom I was sheepish and conscious of my new status as a geek. I sat myself away from the front. It was where I normally sat, in a kind of middle area, next to Tom Payne. This was a compromise for me. I wasn't a geek or teachers' pet, sat near the front. And I wasn't trying to hide my antics and to keep up my street-cred by sitting at the back. Mr Butler didn't seem to notice or mind.

We quickly recapped on what we had learned about the start of the First World War, or Great War as it was also called. It was still difficult to understand as some of the class were getting the two world wars mixed up. Still, empires, monarchies and alliances were all mentioned and then we settled to learning about the simple day to day life of ordinary soldiers fighting in the trenches against the Germans in France. This time Mr Butler showed us some large black and white photographs of the haunted faces of men staring sadly at the camera smoking what may have been their final cigarette; of dead soldiers trampled like dropped food into mud; of rotting horses lying on their sides; of more men digging out a big gun in more mud; of trees blown to bits, what was left of them sticking out of mud like twiglets; and lines of grubby soldiers leaning against the wall of a dug-out holding their rifles tightly, either sheltering from shells, or squeezing every last drop out of life in a few moments of quiet memory.

Before the order.

Before the order to go 'over-the-top'.

Then we watched more DVD clips but this time in colour. Apparently they had been 'coloured in' by modern technology. It made a big difference although the action and drama played out on the screen still moved faster than real life. Mr Butler said it was because of the old cameras and film they were using to do the recording. The class was silent and interested as they watched.

After this Mr Butler talked about the people the soldiers left at home, the families and friends, brothers and sisters, mums and dads. He showed some slides of black and white family photographs. To us they all looked older than old and a lot of us giggled and made some jokes. Mr Butler didn't mind though. He had a good sense of humour and he laughed along with us.

Secretly I was fascinated.

The photos showed men dressed in suits, often thin, holding cigarettes. They showed women, stout, sometimes pretty, with hair long or tied up into a large ball on their heads. The women wore long grey skirts with white blouses, boys wore caps with matching tunics and knee length shorts. There wasn't much smiling. I guess there wasn't much to smile about. Mr Butler talked about the letters families received from 'the front.' How the men found it hard to explain what was happening to them in France. How many of them went mad because of the shelling and what they had seen. Many just couldn't adjust to normal life.

When the war finished, that is.

Then Mr Butler passed around a poem. He read it while we followed. I kept it. Here it is.

"Jack fell as he'd have wished," the Mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

"The colonel writes so nicely." Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. "We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers." Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.

For a while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how "Jack," cold footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

I didn't get it at first but when Mr Butler explained the poem I felt a gush of sympathy and sadness for the old lady. I found myself imagining Mum as the 'woman with white hair,' sitting lonely, holding the folded letter.

I imagined myself as the dead soldier. Her 'glorious boy'.

I read the poem at home at teatime as I waited, and hoped, that Elizabeth Raynor would visit me again.

Lizzie didn't come.

Dr Meen did.

I was home alone when the doorbell rang. I could see a ghostly figure in a coat and hat through the glass of the front door. It made me cautious when I opened it. I peered through the crack. Dr Meen touched the brim of his hat in greeting.

"Good evening, young man," he said with a cobbled-together smile, "and how are you today?"

"Well, thanks." I've got to say I was a bit surprised. Doctor's didn't turn up unexpectedly. Did they?

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the doctor cleared his throat.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he said. Slowly.

I felt stupid. "Oh, sorry. Yeah. Come in."

I opened the door and the doctor entered our hallway. He stood looking around.

"Mmmm. Pleasant. Pleasant."

I didn't realise how tall the doctor actually was. He was well over six foot tall and his hat nearly touched our dusty hallway light lampshade. He was skinny too. His legs seemed to just stick out of the bottom of the coat like two poles in trousers. He also smelled of cheap aftershave.

But something wasn't right. I knew that he was a polite man and really old-fashioned. But what was he doing here? And the way he stood and was taking everything in. It was like he was looking, searching for something.

Was he checking that Dad was in?

Why? What was he planning to do?

These thoughts were stupid. It's that girl and these dreams. But I'd thought I'd check.

"Dad's out at the moment."

Dr Meen jumped a little as I spoke. It was as if he'd only just realised I was there.

"Oh. I see," he said, smiling again, "but it's you that I've come to speak to."

"Me?" I was surprised. It showed.

"Yes. You. Just a little chat. Shouldn't take long."

Suddenly a change. Dr Meen was insisting that we talk. He didn't ask politely. He left me no choice but to agree.

Dr Meen led the way into the kitchen. Seemed to know where it was. He shrugged off his coat and took off his hat. He gave them to me.

"Do you mind?"

"No."

I stood there not really knowing why he'd given them to me or what I should do with them. I decided to put them on the kitchen table.

"Let's sit and talk shall we?" Dr Meen gestured to one of the chairs placed round the kitchen table.

So we sat and talked and Dr Meen sat crossed-legged opposite me.

"These dreams, Jay," he said brushing the leg of one trouser, "I'm a little, shall we say, concerned." He looked at me. "Have there been any developments?"

I thought about this. Something wasn't quite right here. Something inside me was sounding alarm bells. Was it my special powers at work? It would have been a relief to tell someone everything, to 'get it all off of my chest.' But something was telling me to stop short, look around and take care.

So I shook my head. "No. No, everything's fine."

It seemed like it was an answer that Dr Meen didn't want to hear.

"Remember, Jay, I was present when you were born." He looked at me and dark brown eyes fastened onto mine steadily. "I probably know you better than you know yourself."

I looked away.

"Now then, these dreams. Are you positive nothing's changed?"

"No, Doctor. Nothing's changed. Everything's fine."

He looked at me long and hard. Seemed to look at me for evidence of lies. Then he nodded and got to his feet.

"May I see where these dreams occur?"

"My bedroom, you mean?"

"If that's where you dream, then yes." Then he caught my look of doubt. "Oh, and there's no need to worry, young man. I'm not in the habit of making advances towards young boys. If you don't mind I'll take a look on my own."

He didn't wait for a reply. He just went. I followed.

From the upstairs landing I saw Dr Meen look quickly around the room then focus directly on the spot where Lizzie's 1946 stairway would be. I watched as he walked over to it, watched as he knelt down and softly touch the carpet, watched as he got to his feet and studied the ceiling, as he placed his hands flat against the wall.

As he closed his eyes and listened.

I didn't want to see anymore. I came downstairs.

Just as Dad came in.

"Hello, Jay."

He came in and closed the door behind him, plonking his work bag on the floor.

"Everything OK?"

"Dad, Dr Meen is..."

"...Just taking a little peek at Jay's bedroom, Mr Webber."

The doctor was coming down the stairs, was halfway down. How I didn't hear him I don't know. "You know, dreams are fascinating, proof that our brain never really shuts down and, furthermore, proof of the existence of another form of reality."

Dad was surprised and confused. I was too.

I stood aside to let Dr Meen go by into the kitchen to collect his coat and hat. Dad looked at me and frowned. I shrugged.

The doctor already had his hat on and was buttoning up his coat when he came back up the hallway.

"Well, our little chat was most interesting, Jay. Most interesting." He looked from me to Dad. He smiled. "I'll bid you good day then gentlemen. Nice to see you again, Mr Webber. I'll be in touch."

With that he tapped the brim of his hat in goodbye and we stood aside to let him out. He closed the front door softly behind him.

Dad looked at me again. "Well that's was nice of him wasn't it. Right! What are we having for tea?"
Chapter 15

The Farmhouse

Lizzie didn't arrive the next night. Or the next. I started to think the whole thing was just another big dream. Those few days were dull and grey and I made my way to school through a drizzle that sort of matched my mood. Dad was constantly worried about Mum. One night I went to visit her and she seemed pleased to see me but she still looked weak and thin and had a faraway look in her eyes. It looked like she was looking beyond me and Dad, searching for someone who she had been told was coming.

Kyle and Beth still stayed clear of me. The only real thing I looked forward to was Mr Butler's history lessons where we carried on looking at the First World War and how it affected the whole of Britain. Well, not just Britain, but Europe and the world too.

According to Mr Butler an age of innocence had been lost and things were never the same again. I found myself chewing those words over and over as I made my weary way around the rest of that particular day - '...never the same again...never the same again...never the...same...again...'

Loitering around the house in the evenings was no fun. Dad was often at the hospital or was busy at work and sometimes I'd find myself cooking beans on toast, looking at the TV (not watching it) and wondering if I was becoming what they call 'mad'.

I caught flashes from the small room and the house with the woman and men. And it was just that – flashes. And not just sight and sound, either. For instance, I was slowly chewing on toast one morning and Dad had just gone out the front door to work when I felt a sharp draught. Because of where I was sat it was weird and unusual. All the windows and doors were shut. Dad always makes sure of that before he leaves for work and the air outside was still. I had a 'flash' of sitting on the hard bed in the small room looking longingly at the small door. It wasn't so much 'seeing.' It was more like a 'feeling.'

Another time I was sat working through shapes in Curly Roots' Maths class when I had a 'flash' of the woman's face in front of me. It wasn't horrible. She seemed to be talking to me and was smiling a lot and I found myself smiling down at my exercise book. The boy next to me, Ryan Terry, noticed something was wrong and leant over. He whispered in my ear.

"Have you just let one go?"

We both sniggered and Curly Roots, who had sat down to staple more bits of paper to one another, shot us a sharp look.

A few nights after this I was sat at my computer in my piranhas. Dad was banging and crashing his way through the days' dishes downstairs and I was looking at images taken from photographs during the First World War. The pictures were black and white and grainy and a lot of them were not what I was looking for. I wanted pictures of explosions and men fighting, of tanks and planes and big battleships, not farmhouses from (I looked closer at the monitor, at the explanation underneath) '...Bavaria'.

I clicked 'previous' and then I stopped.

Stopped dead.

I went cold.

One of the images I recognised. I clicked to enlarge and peered in at what should have been something unrecognisable.

In front of me was a photograph of a farmhouse. The picture was, like the others, old and black and white and grainy. It was also slightly blurred and out-of-focus. A low, rickety wall ran along from the left of the image to the weak stone walls of a building that seemed about to collapse. There was one wooden door, front and centre, and the place only seemed to have one floor. There were a couple of wooden windows and a smaller one at the side. The roof was flat with a tube sticking out of it. There were faint wisps of smoke coming from this tube so I assumed it was a chimney. Around the house were bushes and trees of different shapes and sizes and through them you could just make out a grey and flat landscape beyond.

My attention was drawn to the small window at the side of the house. It was small, nearly at the roof and darker grey blurs seemed to show bars outside. But I couldn't be sure. And, a few feet away from the barred window, a spindly tree.

I leaned back in my seat and let the feeling, of seeing something that you had long forgotten, wash over me like a warm shower. The idea of déjà-vu was familiar but this time it was really strong.

Bavaria? I couldn't have been there before.

Could I?

I stared at the screen for ages trying to sort out of all these weird emotions and strange feelings. I could make no sense of it. In the end I saved the photograph and have looked at it a lot since. I've drawn a quick sketch of it here.

On this same night Lizzie arrived.

She pocked her head out of my floor and tried to make me jump. She did but I didn't show it. Secretly I was glad to see her again. It proved that, for now at least, I wasn't going completely mental. She was wearing a dress with a cardigan that covered her bare shoulders but she still wore white socks pulled up to just below her knees. Her hair was still twisted into pig-tails. I could also see Jesus on the Cross in dull black and white at her neck. Lizzie skipped the last few steps to the foot of my bed.

"Hello, Jay," she said happily, taking her handkerchief from the front pocket of her cardigan. She wiped her nose, replaced it, then stood with hands clasped in front of her.

"Where've you been?" I asked her. Lizzie frowned as if hurt. "I thought everything was a dream."

"Well, I'm here now," she replied after a while. Then she smiled. "Fancy coming to my house?"

I didn't really want to go. Not now. Not right now. I wasn't prepared, unlike last time.

"I don't know, Lizzie," I whined, "it's late and I've got school in the morning."

"So have I."

I thought a bit more.

"My Dad really needs to see you. He says you've seen more."

I thought about this. "Yes, I have."

I thought about Mum, sad and ill. And I thought about all those families that had lost fathers and sons during the first war. And I thought about the lonely, white haired old woman in the poem left on the green carpet beside my bed. Then I thought about what I'd promised myself in the garden as the smell of Albert's pipe lingered and left. If it had ever lingered at all. I thought about all these things and when Lizzie looked up and told me that it was important I imagined Albert sat alone on the couch in the front room puffing thoughtfully, hopefully, at his pipe.

And I saw Albert glance at the nets and the window, literally willing Ernie home.

And knew that I had to go.
Chapter 16

Albert's Story

So I got dressed and followed Lizzie in the same way I had a few nights before. I held her hand and the staircase appeared.

And we stepped into 1946.

The lingering smell of damp was still there and the large kitchen with its clunky contraptions. And of course Lizzie beamed with colour as I retreated to a black and white copy of myself.

When Lizzie opened the door between the kitchen and the front room Albert was exactly how I had imagined he'd be only seconds before: he was sitting patiently and cross-legged on the sofa, with the tall ashtray to hand and puffing on his pipe. When I entered behind Lizzie he put out the match he'd been holding over the pipe's bowl and stood up. He shook my hand.

"Hello, Jay," he said in his squeaky, high-pitched voice, "it's really good of you to come again."

I smiled, a bit flushed around the cheeks. I was...what was the word? - bashful. I had never been this important in my whole life. It seemed, for the first time ever, I was needed by someone to do something. Whatever that was. But it felt good. I wasn't just a pain and getting under peoples feet anymore.

Albert gripped my hand tightly and looked at me sternly with those green cats' eyes and his bent nose.

"You know we need to talk, don't you?"

I looked to Lizzie and Lizzie nodded at me.

"I...I guess so," I said.

A smile slowly spread across Mr Raynor's face but he still held my hand and he still looked at me. It was like he was peering inside of me. Deep inside. In the same way someone would peer down an old well. It felt like he was checking that I meant what I said and that I was telling the truth.

But I was. So eventually he let my hand go and returned to the sofa. I sat at the other end and Lizzie sat with her legs tucked under her on the floor. You could see by the way she looked up at her Dad that she had real respect for her father. She waited quietly, patiently for him to speak. I thought about the relationship with my Dad and began to compare ours against Lizzie's and Albert's. I had to admit that I admired the two people in front of me now, their mutual understanding. That Dad would speak and daughter would listen. But ours was a good one too. More free. Dad had his problems. I knew that. But he was a good Dad and he loved my Mum.

That, in the end, is all that matters.

I suppose.

Albert started up his pipe again and pleasant smelling smoke wandered my way. There were a couple of seconds of some sort of silence and I heard a tap drip-dripping in the kitchen and the unfamiliar sounds of 1946 caught through the open window. Then, through the nets, I thought I saw someone pass by outside. It was just a shadow, really. A wisp. It was there. Then it was gone, forgotten as Albert started to talk.

"I know what you've seen, Jay. You've been having visions again. You have to understand that I can sometimes see what you can see. I think you've been looking through the eyes of my son, Jay. I believe that, at certain times during the day and at night, you become Ernie."

I frowned down at the sofa trying to work this through. I had already understood that I was experiencing the life of someone else but I hadn't really made any connection with Ernie. Albert was holding his pipe. He watched me closely.

"Your response?" he asked, almost like a teacher at school.

I didn't know what to say. But what I did say seemed a bit silly.

"Am I family then?"

Albert Raynor giggled like a little chipmunk. It made me smile.

"No, I'm afraid you're not family. At least not yet," and then he glanced at Lizzie smiling up at him, "but you must remember, on your last visit here, what I told you about men and islands? Do you remember?"

I kind of remembered something. Something about an island. In the end I shook my head and felt a bit embarrassed because I hadn't been paying attention. Suddenly it felt like I was being taught but without idiots like Donkers and his leery mates throwing stuff.

"Well, you have been having these dreams and visions and hearing these voices because you can. You have a gift. A gift that enables you to see, hear, smell and feel things beyond time and space. I'm sure that you are aware of that too. But what you have to remember, young Jay my friend, is that almost everybody has the ability to do this."

He paused for a puff of his pipe and allowed this idea to sink in.

"You see, and I'm convinced of this, that all human beings are connected in some way. No-one is alone. Everybody is everybody else's brother or sister. So, what happens to one person happens to everybody else. For example, if one person does a really bad thing then it's not just that one person who is to blame. Everybody has to share in the consequences of that person's action. So, effectively, we are all to blame. Likewise, if someone or a group of people do a good thing then we should all share in the celebration. Are you following me, Jay?"

I wasn't. Not really. But I said yes.

"So, to return to your original question, yes, in a way I think we are all brothers and sisters, all responsible for each others' actions." He paused but then added quickly, "To a degree of course."

Now, I was lost. It did sound like Mr Raynor was some kind of religious nut and it felt like we were all at church or something. So I told the truth.

"I...I'm not sure what you mean, Mr Raynor," I said nervously. "Can you explain some more?"

He smoked and thought. Green eyes looking closely at me.

"You know, it's hard to believe," Albert said slowly and his attention moved from my eyes to a space beyond me, "it's hard to believe what men have done to each other over the last thirty-odd years. They've bickered and argued, complaining I want this or I want that. They have blown each other to little bits, dropped millions of tons of bombs onto innocent children and starved, beaten and murdered millions."

Now his attention moved urgently to me and there was a wild look in his sea-green eyes.

"Do you know what they did only last year, to end the war with Japan?" Albert stood up and paced the room. He stood and faced the portrait of the grand old gentleman that I had noticed hung on the wall when I had first visited the front room in my dreams. "Do you know what they did, Jay? They dropped a bomb so powerful, so unthinkably powerful, that, in a moment, it destroyed a whole city. A whole city! Imagine that? Imagine the devastation? The horrible twisted waste of it all."

Albert had taken the pipe from his mouth and he was getting so worked up, so passionate, that I saw a bit of spit shoot out of his mouth and stick, like a little piece of dust, somewhere near the man in the picture's face. He didn't mean to and I might have laughed but the seriousness of what he was saying had made me try and think back to my history lessons with Mr Butler. I think what Lizzie's Dad was talking about was the atom bomb. I wasn't sure. I'd have to ask. But I didn't get the chance as Albert had raised his pipe hand into the air in some weird salute.

"GOOD OLD KING GEORGE!" he bellowed in a voice that made me jump. Lizzie still sat on the floor. She frowned at her Father's wild speech.

"We've been through so much, Jay. So much. Five years of bloody awful war. Friends and family gone, buildings bombed flat, no food, no new clothes. And still it goes on. There's no end to this God-awful madness. 'Mend and make do' they tell us now. 'Mend and made bloody do!' That's a laugh. What do they think we've been doing the past six years? It's an utter, utter mess. Now the army, the navy and the air force are coming home. Where are they going to live? What are they going to do? What are they going to eat?"

There was a small mirror on one wall and Albert was now looking at his trembling self as he fumbled at the buttons at the neck of his shirt.

"What was the bloody point?" he mumbled at his other self reflected in the glass. "What was the bloody point? What were we fighting for in the end?" Then Albert turned on us again. "Sin begets sin' a famous author once wrote. 'Sin begets sin.' And what do we read in the papers? What do we read the bloody Nazis had been doing? Just when we think no more blood can be squeezed from this world of ours..."

"No, Dad, please don't. Please."

That was Lizzie. Her little voice stopped her Dad like a sparrow hoping onto the cold steel of a railway line in the hope of stopping a freight train.

It sung out like sweet spring.

She did it. The little sparrow stopped the train.

Albert, for a moment, just a moment, looked at his daughter as if she was a stranger. As if she was someone who had just walked in off of the street and told him to be quiet. Then he cleared his throat and straightened himself. He returned to the sofa and set about lighting his pipe.

As Albert rummaged in his tobacco tin I looked at Lizzie. She had wiped her runny nose again with her white hanky taken from one of her pockets. But she also held onto the Jesus Christ on the Cross around her neck.

The silence lasted a while but we both knew that there was much more that Albert wanted to say. When finally he had relit his pipe and calmed himself he began again.

"Did I mention that I had served in the first war?" he said, much lower now. "Do you know what that is?"

I was glad of the opportunity to say something.

"Yes I do. That's the First World War."

Albert giggled in his chipmunk way. "The First World War!" he repeated, almost to himself. "I suppose that makes sense. Well, I was in the navy. A spotter on the big ships."

Albert's chest visibly puffed with pride as he said this and Lizzie tutted from where she was on the floor.

"Daaad," she whined.

"What?"

"Not again. Please."

"Well I was, "continued Albert, ignoring his daughter. Again he seemed to stare into space, but this time his face wore a thin smile. "HMS Indefatigable."

Now that confused me a lot. The HMS stood for something, but I didn't know what, although I knew it came before a ship's name. Just the British navy. Nobody else's. But the other word I didn't quite catch. I tried to hang onto it, roll it around inside my head and talk it out again. I couldn't.

"What, "I said, "what was the name of it again?"

"I beg your pardon?" replied Albert good-naturedly.

"Your ship, Dad," Lizzie interrupted impatiently. "He wants you to tell him its name again."

"Oh, I am sorry. Yes. HMS Indefatigable."

"In-def-at-ig-able," I repeated slowly. Then quicker. "Indefatigable." Then I looked at Albert all pleased with myself. "HMS Indefatigable."

"Well done, Jay," complimented Albert.

"Yes, well done," repeated Lizzie sarcastically from the floor.

"But what does In-def-at-ig-able mean?" I asked, curious now.

"It means big and indestructible." Albert's chest puffed out again and he reminded me of myself when talking about boy stuff. "She was a battlecruiser. A big ship. Big and powerful. Jerry didn't like her. Kept their eye on her they did. I've got a photograph somewhere."

I could tell that Albert was only pretending to search for the photograph. His pride always knew where it was. For moments like this. After rummaging half-heartedly in a drawer in the cabinet he went quickly to another drawer and instantly found it. He brought the small black and white photograph back to the sofa. Lizzie looked completely bored as she still sat on the floor pulling at the worn rug she was sitting on.

Albert handed me the crinkled bit of what seemed like card.

"There she is!" he nodded. "Isn't she a beauty?"

What I saw was a ship, that was for sure, sat on a calm sea. The ship itself looked long and grey and dirty with big pieces of metal and what looked like small pylons sticking up out of her. There were several funnels too, like I'd seen on pictures of the Titanic and I could see the guns, big ones on the front and others sticking out here and there.

"We were trying to draw the Germans out into the North Sea. Into a big battle. A big battle where old Jellicoe could destroy 'em with our big guns."

"Did they do it?" I asked, "I mean, was there a big battle?"

I heard the soft clack of Albert's teeth on his pipe. It wasn't lit. It had gone out. But Albert looked past me into the middle-distance where perhaps he saw the old ship again. His pride had gone and now he seemed sad and a long, long way away. It took Lizzie to break his silence.

"Tell him Dad."

"Nobody's really sure. You see there was a big battle. Men were killed and ships were sunk on both sides. But then we lost each other in the fog and both us and the Germans crept back to port. But it wasn't the mother of all battles it was meant to be. And it didn't decide the war, that's for certain. Make no mistake about that."

"And HMS Indefat-igable?" I carefully asked, "did she get hit by the Germans?"

"Yes, she did. She was sunk with the loss of over a thousand hands."

"Hands?" I repeated, "that's, uh, five hundred men," and I had an image of a thousand hands bobbing in a black and white ocean.

Lizzie giggled and Albert smiled. Briefly. But then all became serious again.

"No. One hand equals one man in the navy," corrected Albert.

"So a thousand men were killed!" I tried to picture a thousand men in my head. I couldn't.

"I'm afraid so. There were only three survivors."

"Wow!" I exclaimed, now really impressed. "So you're one of the three survivors?"

Albert's green eyes locked mine in a cold stare. Then he blinked slowly and looked away. It made me feel like I'd said something wrong. Maybe I had. I wasn't sure. I fidgeted nervously on the sofa.

"We had been refitted in Malta," said Albert quietly, "then our Captain, old Sowerby, had received orders to rejoin our fleet nearer home. So for home we sailed. There were rumours that the British might have to have a massive battle with the German navy. The war in France was going badly and the people at home here needed some good news for a change. We joined the rest of our brave boys near Scapa Flow, which is in Scotland, to await news from France and to find out when we could have a pop at Jerry." Albert looked down at the floor. I was certain he had tears bubbling in his eyes. "We thought we could win the war and bring the boys back home. We were young and confident. Brave. But so, so foolish."

Albert looked up again and if there had been tears they had dried away.

"It was cold in Scotland. The North is a ferocious place. Even in spring. It was the cold and the sharp winds that brought on my visions. I had my first one on one of our rare run-ashores. We were sat in a bar having a pint when I saw a flash at one of the windows. All I remember is being helped off the floor by the lads. But that night what I had seen whilst I had feinted came back to me." Albert shivered at this point. "The flash I saw at the pub window was the explosion to come. But I saw the dead and the maimed and the dying the next night... and the night after that...and the night after that. Night after night after night."

Now I shivered.

"I was a screaming wreck. I had started to upset the crew with my screams when my watch were trying to sleep. I just couldn't help it. The dreams were the worst you could imagine. In the end they said the safest place for me was in hospital. So off I went, even though I was accused of cowardice." Albert looked at me again. "I didn't want to die. But I was no coward."

At that moment I saw Mr Butler and what he'd written on the board that day.

COWARD!

COURT MARTIAL

FIRING SQUAD

I chewed on Albert's words then I realised what being taking off the ship actually meant.

"So you weren't on board during the battle. When she blew up?" I said as carefully as I could.

"No son. No, I wasn't. Because of my...gift...I had seen the end of the Indefatigable and nearly all her crew." He got up walked to the nets at the window. "They sailed the next day and the day after that she was hit. And her magazine went up, taking her down by the stern, to the bottom."

"Magazines?" I repeated (by now I really should have learned to keep my mouth shut), "paper you mean?"

"No, Jay. A magazine is where the ammunition is stored."

"Oh," was all I could think of to say.

"A pretty big flash I should imagine," Albert said almost to himself. "A pretty...big...flash."

There was quiet then. Albert, holding his pipe, looked beyond the nets and Lizzie still pulled at the frayed rug. I just sat and nodded. The silence lingered. Dragged on too long.

Eventually Lizzie broke it.

"I cup of tea I think," and she got up and skittered into the kitchen.
Chapter 17

And the others?

So Lizzie went to make a cup of tea and me and Albert made small talk.

We talked about my wobbly greyness and we laughed about it. I said that I didn't really notice it now and that I was getting used to it. Albert wanted to know about my time and I told him as much as I could. He was astounded at the motorways full of cars and computers. He wanted to know more about how there was enough to eat for everybody and that people could buy cheap clothes, wear them once then throw them away. He was curious about what we did in our spare time; that everyone had electricity and that most homes had two or more TV's (at least he knew what a TV was). But most of all, and it seemed weird to me, he wanted to know how Great Britain had got on after the war. I really couldn't answer that but I told him as much as I knew. He wanted to know about something called the 'empire. I had heard Mr Butler at school mention 'the empire' once or twice. But I wasn't sure what it was so I couldn't tell him much. Albert seemed worried about this so I said I'd find out how the 'empire' had got on.

I also told Albert about the farmhouse I recognised on the internet. After giving a quick explanation of what the internet actually was, I left Albert looking befuddled and told him that I was sure I'd been there. Then confused him even more when I told him I couldn't have as I'd never been to a foreign country. Albert explained that special powers often did this. He agreed there could be a link between Ernie and the farmhouse.

Lizzie's tea didn't taste very nice because it had no milk or sugar in it and there were those little bits that would cling to my tongue like little limpets. I had to pick them off. When I mentioned that I liked sugar and plenty of milk if I had tea (I preferred coke) Albert seemed embarrassed. He was also angry.

"I know you probably have plenty where you come from," he said strongly, "and I got to tell you that we expected a big change after six years of bloody war. I thought Atlee and Bevin would start things moving again but we're short of everything. There's no milk and sugar. Spuds are hard to get and the butchers have nothing in the window. It's worse than it was during the blitz. And it's getting worse, I tell you. A bag of coal is rarely seen and then costs an arm and a leg. I don't know what we're going to do when winter comes. I really don't."

Lizzie gave me a little bit of what she called evaporated milk, poured from a can. It made the tea taste worse so I left my tea on the floor by my feet.

"Yes," said Albert, "I really thought the war would be over by now. We might have beaten the Germans and the Japs but we're all still cold and hungry. And I can see no end. No end at all. We're not earning much and prices are sky high."

He said this whilst opening his tobacco tin to fill his pipe. Lizzie noticed this.

"Yes, but you can still afford half ounce of bacci for yourself," she said sarcastically.

I was surprised when Albert gave his daughter, who had returned to sit on the floor near him, a light slap on the back of the head. It wasn't that hard but it had been hard enough for Lizzie to rub the spot where it had connected.

"A man's got have some pleasure in life," Albert grumbled.

This was quickly forgotten when there was a commotion somewhere else in the house. There was the sound of feet and voices. I suddenly became very scared. Strangers! What would they make of me? I thought of making a run for the kitchen and the stairs but then realised that the voices were coming from that direction so my only escape was blocked. Lizzie must have sensed my panic as she got to her feet.

"It's fine, Jay. It's only Mum and Pauline. They won't hurt you." Then she walked to the kitchen door to meet them.

"Albert! Albert!" a woman's voice called, "Where the bleedin' 'ell are you?"

"In here, dear," shouted Albert in reply, "and stop shouting. We've company."

The shape that filled the doorway was short and stocky, a middle-aged woman who wore a kind of grey coat over a white top and brown dress. She also wore flat shoes. A round face balanced glasses on a small nose and a light patterned scarf was covering her brown hair. That face was now red and I realised Lizzie's Mum was out of breath and flustered.

"Albert, there's been..." she started but then stopped and she put her hand over her mouth when she saw me sat on her couch.

"Oh my!" she exclaimed. "Oh my!"

Albert and Lizzie were a bit embarrassed at this reaction and, after Lizzie had reassured her that I wasn't a ghost (well, not in the normal way) and that her husband hadn't summoned a spirit, Lizzie's Mum returned to her news.

"Another building's collapsed Albert," she said with her small brown eyes still on me. "They think there's some people trapped."

"Oh no!" Albert responded shaking his head and getting to his feet. "That's the second in a fortnight. I'd better go and help. Is it George Street again?"

"Yes. Number 15 or 16 I think."

I had heard of George Street. It's a few streets away from our house.

Albert had gone out of the room and I felt a bit embarrassed left alone with his wife as she kept looking me up and down like I'd just been dropped from a space ship. He was back sharpish though, shrugging on a matching long brown mack and cap.

"I'm sorry, Jay. I must go and help."

"What's happened?" I asked shyly.

"It's the bombs," Albert said.

"But I thought the war was over." And I did.

"Silly," interrupted Lizzie. "All the bombs have caused a lot of damage and some buildings are collapsing because of it."

"Yes," said Albert, "several people have died this month." He stood in the middle of the front room buttoning his coat. "For many the war still goes on, I'm afraid." Then he held out his hand to me and I shook it. "You'll need to come back. And soon." He looked at Lizzie when he said this. "We've got to find Ernie. He's alive. I know he's alive."

Then he walked from the room and, somewhere near, a door slammed as he left the house.

Then it was quiet again.

"I...I think I'd better go," I said to Lizzie and her Mum and I got up off the old sofa. "Nice to have met you, Mrs Raynor."

"Cheerio!" said Lizzie's Mum still hypnotised by my wobbly greyness. I had found myself getting used to it but suddenly I felt really conscious again. I thought of how odd I must look to people seeing me for the first time and I remembered how frightened I'd been when I first saw Lizzie in my bedroom.

Funny. It seemed so long ago now.

Lizzie took my hand and led me into the kitchen. I was glad to be away from the eyes of her Mum. But my heart sank again when she said, "Before you go I want you to meet my sister."

Pauline was beautiful. She was sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water. She was about to take a sip when she saw me and the glass stayed at her lips in surprise. The first thing I noticed about Pauline was her big, dark, cat-like eyes and pale skin. She had short brown hair that came to her shoulders and Pauline also wore a long coat with big buttons that were done up to her neck. Unlike her Mother she didn't stare too long. She blinked shyly down at the table after a second or two. Having a psychic for a father and a time-traveller for a sister meant Pauline was used to weird stuff. But it did seem she wasn't the least bit surprised because, when she looked up again, she smiled showing me white teeth as bright as new paint.

Pauline had a beautiful smile.

"Hullo," she said in a voice already deep even though she was only about sixteen. "What's your name?"

The way Pauline greeted me was perfectly natural and for a moment I forgot about my wobbly greyness.

"Jay," I said.

"He's the one I was telling you about," interrupted Lizzie. "You know. From the future."

Pauline took another small sip of water and peered at me with those big eyes. "Are you going to find Ernie for us?"

"I hope I can," I said. "I'm not sure how though."

"You must try your hardest."

"I will."

I found myself instantly obeying her, already thinking of ways to impress or please her. My promise to myself – to be stronger with girls – had been thrown right out the window.

"I...I've got to go home now," I said nervously, "but I'll see you soon."

Pauline just nodded.

Then I realised that Lizzie still held my hand and I snatched it away. Already Pauline's impression on me was obvious to Lizzie. She folded her arms across her chest and pouted.

"C'mon then, Jay," she said in cross sort of way, "we haven't got all night."

So I made my way out of the kitchen, back up the stairs and into my bedroom.

But I couldn't stop thinking of Pauline.
Chapter 18

What We Take for Granted

Back in my time it was the same old routine.

1) Tired. No, absolutely knackered.

2) Dad calls up stairs to get me up. Bangs and crashes out the door to work.

3) I mope around, get ready for school and try and have some breakfast.

4) Another boring day and Kyle and Bethany ignore me.

5) Donkers throws paper at me in Tech.

6) Back home and I'm Billy-no-mates watching tea-time TV.

Dad had gone to see Mum at the hospital. She was still very ill and fed-up with life, especially when the doctors told her that she might have to have more treatment. Poor Mum. I'll have to go with Dad to see her soon. She asks after me but doesn't want me to see her really poorly.

I miss my Mum.

I miss my Mum like Albert misses Ernie.

Dad looked really tired too and this morning I noticed five empty cans of lager on the kitchen surface. I know because I had to clear them off to pour my rice crispies into a bowl. I sat at the kitchen table. I was tired and I kept thinking about Albert's story. Shovelling spoonfuls of soggy crispies into my mouth without thinking I remembered HMS Indefatigable and the D Word. No matter what you did to try and forget about it or pretend it wasn't there it always came back. Like a scraggy cat or a frisby. The D Word sat and watched. Returning quietly. So quietly you just didn't know where it would land.

That's what the D Word felt like. It seemed you couldn't predict its movements and I didn't like that. I liked to know what we were having for tea or what time I was expected to go to bed. I liked order. Routine. Although I always say I don't. Mum is good with routines. She always tells me what time I was expected to go to bed, what time I should be up, what we'd be having for our tea. Dad wasn't like that though. I know he has a lot on his mind but we usually have what's in the freezer. Nothing's planned. Even at bedtime he usually falls asleep on the sofa. So I leave him, feet up on the footstool with the reflection from the TV dancing on his stretched figure like night time lights in a swimming pool.

As I picked the last of the cereal from the bowl I pictured Mum in my head. How she used to be. She would be sat beside me now at the kitchen table with her flowery silk dressing gown on. She would have rings under her eyes from sleep but she would still look pretty. In fact I would smell the sleep on her. You know, a mixture of stale breath and body muddled up with last night's shampoo and shower. It sounds strange but I miss that smell. Dad doesn't smell quite the same in the morning. I won't tell you what he smells like but Dad usually says this about himself.

'Blimey! I smell like death this morning!'

Oops. It's out!

I've thought the D Word.

Then I thought of my smelly Dad. How stupid I was being with the D Word. I laughed to myself but it was a nervous laugh.

At least I went to school with a smile.

Later and I was lying on the sofa watching TV when the front doorbell went.

It was Dr Meen again. I could see him in his long coat and hat staring hard at the door. Waiting for someone to answer. I didn't. I knew now that this was beyond weird so I hid underneath our front window and peered out over the window ledge at the doctor as he pressed the bell again. I watched when he stepped back and looked up at the front of the house. I ducked down as his eyes scanned the front room window. When I decided it was safe to look again he was still there. He pressed the doorbell once more. Long and hard.

"Go away," I whispered to myself. "Just go away!"

At last he did and I heard his shoes pass by the window. I gave it a full three minutes before I decided to look but, as I was just about to get up and make sure that the coast was clear, the doorbell went again.

It was Kyle.

Thank God for Kyle.

"Hiya Kyle," I said as I answered the door. I got him inside quick and closed the door sharpish.

"Hiya mate," he said in reply, like he used to do.

I was a bit surprised, what with Dr Meen and Kyle arriving on his heels. In fact having a visit by Kyle was probably stranger than having another visit by Dr Meen.

I didn't know what to say really. We shuffled our trainers on the hallway carpet then I asked him into kitchen.

"Is you Dad in?" he asked warily. Dad usually teased Kyle and Kyle didn't like this very much. A lot of adults are like that. Some teachers too. They think they are being funny and say things that make us embarrassed and flustered. Anyway, I shook my head. As soon as I did Kyle started rummaging in our fridge looking for coke. Pretty soon we were sat at the kitchen table, at the very same spot I sat this morning. But it was Kyle sat opposite me. Not Mum. We talked about school for a bit. About Donkers and about how Ms Smith fancies one of the PE teachers. Then Kyle mentioned my new status as a geek. I asked him what he meant and he explained it was because I was getting into history. Everybody was talking about it.

"I don't know," I squirmed. "I just like history, that's all."

Kyle giggled cheekily and slurped some coke. I didn't like that response. I thought that, in his own little way, Kyle was making fun of me too. Then conversation turned to his girlfriend Monique and Kyle looked all serious and flustered in the same way he does when Dad makes fun of him.

"Yeah, she's really nice," he said, tapping his coke can with his fingers. "She's a brilliant footballer and her step-Dad promised to take us to see England play a friendly against Romania in a few months."

"Sound."

"Yeah."

And then we ran out of things to say so Kyle drained his can of coke then said he'd better be getting home.

"We'll have to go for a kick around sometime," he said on his way out the door.

"Yeah. Sure."

But we didn't make any promises and when he'd gone I sat out in the back garden for a while and watched the birds perched on the aerials of the houses opposite. I tried to see if they were watching me. When I waved my arms at them they didn't budge so I assumed they weren't.

I went back into the kitchen and saw the red coke can Kyle had left on the kitchen table.

I picked it up and dropped it in the bin. Then I sat nervously in the front room, looking out for Dr Meen.

Not long after this I heard a crash and a thump from upstairs.

Oh no! What now?

I sat bolt upright on the sofa and I found that I was shaking and my heart was slamming around the inside of me like it was trying to get out. I fumbled for the TV remote control and turned it down. But not off. I cleverly thought any burglars would notice if the volume on the TV suddenly disappeared.

When I didn't hear anything else I started to explain the noise away. After this I somehow summoned some courage to tip-toe quietly to the bottom of our stairs. An evening sun had warmed the porch area through the glass of the front door. Leaning against the wall was Dad's black umbrella. He hardly ever used it but I thought it would be handy for self-defence so I picked it up. I felt its weight. Held it worriedly out in front of me.

I decided that I didn't really want to confront a burglar so I'd let them know that I was coming. That way they'd have a good chance of escape and nobody would get hurt. Least of all me.

"Kyle!" I tried but I had a frog in my throat and it came out as a timid gurgle. So I cleared my throat and tried again.

"Kyle!" Much better this time. "Kyle! Is that you messing about?"

No answer.

I was seriousIy doubting I'd heard anything now. No! I'd definitely heard something. Maybe a game or a DVD had fallen off one of my crowded shelves. Maybe Dad had come back and I hadn't noticed.

Or was it Dr Meen back for another check-up?

"Dad! Is that you? Dad!"

Nope. Nothing.

That was it then. Up I go. I gripped the brolly tightly and put my left foot on the first step.

Another crash. This time something fell heavily and I found myself back in the front room hiding behind the door. I heard nothing else then felt ashamed that I had run away so easily.

I decided to climb the stairs regardless.

I would be brave.

So I did. Slowly. Quietly. Putting one cushioned, stealthy foot in front of another. When I reached the last stair I could see into my room so I flattened myself against the wall and peered in.

And there was the grey, shimmering shape of Lizzie.

She was sat at my computer table using the keyboard to pretend to type. She had knocked some of my stuff onto the floor and odds and ends were scattered about her on the faded green carpet.

I relaxed and lowered my Dad's brolly. I headed into my room.

"Lizzie, what are you..."

Lizzie had obviously been completely unaware that I was anywhere near as she screamed at the top of her little voice. She jumped so high she sent the stool she was sat on crashing into the computer table. Other bits and bobs fell around her onto the carpet. She screamed so loud that I jumped and my heart started protesting again. I held out my hand to calm her.

"Whoah, whoah. It's OK. It's me."

Then I realised Lizzie had a pair of small headphones in her ears and she had been listening to some music I had left on earlier. She scrambled them off and threw them onto my bed.

"Careful with them," I said, "they're expensive."

But Lizzie was speechless with fright. I could have been anybody and she was probably more angry with herself than me.

"Jay," she gasped, "b...blimey. I thought...I thought you was...was someone else. Don't do that again."

"It's not my fault. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I was bored so I thought...I thought I'd come early." She was still in shock. Panting like a sprinter. She pointed to the pair of little black headphones she had tossed onto my football duvet. "What are those and what's that noise coming out of them?"

"Music."

Her breathing was coming slower now. "Music?" she repeated, staring horrified at the little black dots. "That's music?"

I could hear the small, tiny, tinny drum and bass sounds coming from them and I shrugged.

"Yeah, well, it is pretty crap though."

Then I smiled. I had a great idea. I looked at the clock on the wall and realised that Dad wouldn't be back for a while.

"Lizzie," I said.

"What?" She was pouting and stubborn now. Her pride had taken a blow.

I smiled wider. A mischievous smile. All thoughts of Dr Meen were now forgotten. "Wanna take a look at my house?"

Lizzie shrugged playfully. She was being difficult.

"Have you ever seen a television?"

Suddenly she was interested and excited. "I know what one of those is. Have you got one?"

"Yep," I replied proudly. "Right downstairs."

"What are we waiting for then?" And, quite naturally and without even thinking, I took Lizzie's hand and led the way.

It was fascinating watching Lizzie's grey features take in the new things around her. I had to remember that I probably looked as interested and as puzzled at the unusual things around when I visited 1946. If my bedroom wasn't treasure enough then the odd objects she saw placed around the house were stranger still. At first she wrinkled her nose and commented at the smell, as I might have done in her house, I suppose. I could smell nothing out-of-the-ordinary but I still worried that she might be referring to my 'boy' smell as Beth would put it.

Moving downstairs and Lizzie constantly 'oohed' and 'aahed' and gasped at the colours. I must admit things in my time certainly looked cleaner, newer, more modern. Well, they would, wouldn't they? At one point she picked up a copy of the Yellow Pages, running her small, colourless hands over its cover. She looked for a while at some family photographs in frames on the wall and seemed hypnotised by a shot of the family on a beach in Cornwall.

"So much colour," she said, and I pointed out Mum to her, looking young and brown and happy. Smiling across five years.

In the front room I showed her how to turn on the TV and again she jumped in surprise. The volume wasn't unusually loud but the 'effects' option was on and I can imagine how it must have sounded to someone only used to a radio. As the picture on the screen slowly unfolded Lizzie knelt down and put her hands on the screen and moved her face closer until it was only inches away. The images moved across her expression like light rain. She was completely absorbed. The way she reacted to the television reminded me of a toddler. When she finally stood up she looked at me with a huge smile on her grey face.

"You are so lucky."

I shrugged. I didn't think so.

Lizzie ran her hands over the radiators, examined a DVD and CD, turned the DVD player on, then off, then on again. Then she sat on the sofa then peered timidly at our open curtains. It was getting dark outside now and we could see some streetlights. Lizzie didn't go near the curtains. I think she was a little scared of what she'd see on the other side.

In the kitchen she bounced from surface to surface with the same expression of wonder. She opened drawers (they open slowly) and ran her hands over the toaster, cooker and peered at the food we had in the fridge. We needed to go shopping but Lizzie still thought our fridge had too much in it. I gave Lizzie some chocolate digestives which she loved and I made her a cup of tea. She made a fuss of the kettle and couldn't get her head around the idea of a teabag, although she didn't drink it all as she didn't like the taste.

She had another chocolate digestive though. And another. But then felt a bit sick so she left some.

I gave her some lemonade, which she seemed to be comfortable with and liked. Then she peered out of the back door into our garden. Light was fading fast and the sky over the rooftops was a light grey. We could still make out shapes and I had to explain what television aerials were for. She seemed to recognise a lot of what she saw outside. She said it hadn't changed that much. The odd garage or outside building she said was there in 1946. That made me think. All that time and very little change.

Lizzie was scared of being seen so we stayed just inside the back door. We talked about how Lizzie's Father was going to use me to find Ernie. Lizzie told me how Pauline was also sort of psychic, following the tradition of the family's 'special power' status. She had been able to contact the dead at an early age. Lizzie told me what she had been told. She had been told that when Pauline had been two or three she had an imaginary friend called Susan who went everywhere with the family. Susan was so real to the small Pauline that Mum and Dad had to lay a place for her at the dinner table, cook her food, say goodnight, even include her in conversation. Susan eventually faded into memory but was replaced by others and by six Pauline was openly contacting people who had 'passed on'. By eight she was holding séances for friends and family. It also seems that Pauline had the ability to climb into her astral self and 'fly' to faraway places. I quizzed Lizzie on this 'astral' thing and she explained that it was when you float out of your body. She used the example of people dying and the sensation of floating and looking down at themselves. The person who was 'near-death' would witness the frantic efforts to revive them below. To remember the experience the patients would have to have been saved. Many had and many had talked of this 'near-death' experience. The difference with Pauline was that she could do this when she wanted. The plan was that I join a séance in 1946 and Pauline will 'look through me' to find out where Ernie was. If he was alive that is. Lizzie told me that they all believed he was.

"What happens if we find out where he is?" I asked, now concerned about the whole idea of a séance. I'd heard some bad things.

"Dad will try and find him and bring him back."

"It's that easy?" I was doubtful.

Lizzie just looked sad and shrugged.

It was about this time that I went to look at the passageway and the front door. I don't know why. I just felt a little nervous about Dad coming back early. I put it down to my own 'special powers' or just plain luck but I was just in time to hear Dad's van revving into its parking space outside, its white shape gloopy seen through the frosted glass of the door.

I ran back into the kitchen.

"Lizzie!" I whispered urgently. "Lizzie!" I realised that she was still out the back so I ran to fetch her in. She was just outside the back door.

"Lizzie, quick! My Dad's back!"

"Oh no!"

"Yes. C'mon. You're going back to 1946!"

Her ghostly grey figure followed me in through the back door and into the kitchen. The hallway carpet was as far as we got. I saw a dark blob through the glass, moving quickly down the garden path to the front door. I looked at Lizzie and she looked worriedly up at me.

Quick! Think!

"Right," I said, reaching behind Lizzie and opening the door of the cupboard under the stairs. "Get in there!"

From out of the dark space underneath the stairs came the mixed up smell of old clothes, cleaner and damp. Lizzie looked frightened and didn't want to go in so I had to literally push her inside and squeeze the door shut behind her. I took a deep breath and stepped forward to greet Dad who had just turned the key to open the front door.

"Hiya son," he said when he saw me stood there in the passageway. He stopped to pick up letters from the small table just inside the door. When I didn't answer he put down his empty lunch box and unopened letters and stared worriedly at me.

"Are you OK?"

"Yep. Sure"

He didn't seem convinced. "No dreams or voices?"

"Nope. It's all cool." Then I thought I'd better act normal and ask about Mum. "How's Mum?"

Dad just looked sad then. Butterflies came alive inside me.

"She's OK," he sighed, "she's just taking it day by day."

Now I was worried and Lizzie's hideaway was pushed to one side for a moment.

"She is getting better, isn't she?" I asked. "I mean, the treatments working, yeah?"

Dad just shrugged. "Like I said, she's taking every day as it comes. We'll see tomorrow." Then he smiled weakly and moved past me into the kitchen. I didn't move. I stayed with my back pressed firmly against the cupboard door. Dad was fussing about in the kitchen.

"Who's here?" he suddenly asked wiping his lunchbox round with the damp dishcloth. The thumping of my heart chased all the butterflies away.

"What?"

"I said 'who's here?" He nodded towards one of the kitchen surfaces. "Someone's drinking lemonade. It's not you. You don't like lemonade."

I had to think quickly. "Oh...ah...yeah, Kyle called," I lied. "He's just gone."

"You're still friends then?" Dad asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "Why's that?"

A clump in the cupboard. Dad heard it too. He cocked his head to one side. What was she doing in there? I needed to get Dad out of the way so I could get Lizzie upstairs and back to her own time. Dad stopped what he was doing and turned to me.

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"That noise. I heard a bang."

"Oh that," I said. There was an idea forming. "I...it's probably next door's dog again."

That did the trick as Dad instantly grabbed the bait. "What's the bloody mutt doing now?" He waited a short while for an answer and, when I couldn't give him one, he made up his own mind.

"He's got under the fence again, hasn't he?" Then Dad thought a bit more. "Has he been at me lettuce?" Then Dad sprung at the back door. "If he's peed on me bloody lettuce again I'll..."

As Dad's voice trailed on up the garden I grabbed the handle on the cupboard door and pulled. Coats, damp and dark again.

"Lizzie!" I whispered with a real sense of urgency. "Lizzie, get out! Quick!"

Nothing. Just the smells of dust and damp.

And, almost gone, the burning smell again.

"Lizzie!"

Still nothing. I moved the coats to one side and peered into the gloom. Paint pots. An old hoover. A box where all the cleaning stuff was kept.

Of one thing I was sure. Lizzie Raynor had gone.
Chapter 19

The Empire

The following day I felt optimistic about everything. I was in a really good mood. I put it down to a bright morning sun and a good night's sleep. I also assumed that Lizzie's disappearing trick had been just that. The cupboard might have been something else in 1946 and Lizzie had just disappeared through it. Dad was a bit chatty before he went to work. It was just stuff to do with his day but it was good to hear him talk about it. It seemed that work was a right laugh. I couldn't wait to have my own job and money. At that particular moment I had a real yearning for being grown up. I suddenly became impatient with being a child and wanted to be older and mature and responsible.

Another couple of years at school seemed such a long time.

Without knowing it my mood had already started to nose-dive so I quickly focussed on school and avoided disaster.

I had remembered the conversation I had had with Albert and made a mental note to ask Mr Butler about the empire and how it had got on after the war. I didn't have history today so I followed Mr Butler's tracks at dinnertime by asking teachers where he was. The trail led to the staff room so I knocked on the door. I politely asked a tall and skinny teacher who I didn't recognise if Mr Butler was there. The tall, skinny teacher fetched him for me.

"Afternoon, Mr Webber," he said over the rim of his glasses. "And what can I do for you?"

I told him what I wanted to know, that I wanted to know how the empire had got on after the war. Mr Butler frowned and asked me which empire I was referring to as there were several.

"The English one," I guessed.

"Ah," he answered, "commonly referred to as the British Empire."

"Yes. That's the one."

Mr Butler was frowning as if I was pulling his leg or something. I suppose a teenager coming to you during dinnertime, asking questions about the British Empire, doesn't happen every day. A few teachers and students bumped into me as they passed in or out.

"I've twenty minutes or so to spare after school, Jay. Have you?"

"Yep. I'll be there."

"Good. See you then."

Just before dinner finished I was watching some sixth formers using a digital camera out on the fields when I felt woozy and had very quick flashes of the old stone farmhouse. They were just thoughts really but I definitely recognised the woman with the headscarf. I felt rather than saw the presence of the short man with the temper. I sort of heard him as well. He was shouting again. I couldn't tell if it was at me or not. All the inhabitants of the little cottage spoke in German or something. I wasn't that good at languages so I couldn't really work it out.

No sooner had it come than it had gone and I was sat alone and the sixth formers had moved on. Light rain was starting to fall.

On me and my half-eaten ham and tomato sandwiches.

After school I found Mr Butler picking bits of paper off his classroom floor. He saw me and stood up with a groan.

"Good timing, Mr Webber, you can help me pick these up," he said grimacing and holding the small of his back.

I put my bag down and started to help. "What happened?"

"These torn shreds, Mr Webber, are what Year 9 think of the Reformation."

I didn't know what the Reformation was so I just nodded.

After we had given the cleaning duties over to the cleaner we sat down at Mr Butler's desk. He had a computer with John F Kennedy as a screensaver and other history related bits and bobs were placed randomly around. There was a toy cannon with two plastic flags crossed over it. I know them to be the flags of the Union and the Confederacy from the American civil war. There was a model of a Victorian soldier and a medieval knight that doubled as a pen-holder as well as some DVD's. The top DVD I noticed was called Failsafe and it had grim old soldier types on the front and a nuclear explosion in the background. It looked like intense stuff. It also seemed that Mr Butler had a bad back as he kept pulling a face and rubbing the area near his kidneys.

"Right-O, Mr Webber, what's this about the empire?"

I couldn't tell the truth so I had to lie again. I was surprised how easy it was.

"Well, I heard my Granddad talking about it. It sounded interesting so I thought I'd ask you about it. You know, so I got it from an expert."

Mr Butler flushed a little at what I suppose was a compliment and breathed out making his lips vibrate. "Well, I'm no expert on the British Empire, but I'll tell you what I know." Then he stopped and lightly tapped the side of his face with a thoughtful finger. "But then you did mention that you were interested in the empire after the war."

"Yes, that's right."

"Well then, forgive me but wouldn't your Granddad be fully aware of its decline," he said and looked at me sideways still tapping his cheek.

I still have trouble telling lies and I must have gone a little red as I struggled to answer. It didn't matter as Mr Butler interrupted by starting to talk.

"No matter, no matter. The British Empire after hostilities between the warring nations cease. Interesting. Yes, very interesting."

And that's where I lost Mr Butler – on the crowded streets of what he called the Indian sub-continent.

But I came away with a book called End of Empire and a note Mr Butler wrote. It's at the back of this book. I think Mr Butler calls it the appendix. So it's in the appendix.

I didn't understand the note at all. I hoped Albert would.
Chapter 20

Another Vision

That night I experienced something horrible. Again I was in bed. Again I was trying to sleep and I might have managed it. If I did then that was the last bit of sleep I got that night.

I'd like to say that I had another dream.

It wasn't because I was awake.

I was in a small dark tunnel. At least I assumed that it was a tunnel as I couldn't see. What I understood though is that I felt trapped. Completely trapped. And I wanted to get out. My hands were held across my chest as there was no room to put them by my side. I was laid on my back with my head facing upwards. The inside of this tunnel felt smooth and damp and moist.

And I could smell blood. Don't ask me how I knew it was blood. I just did. It had a sweet, iron smell, something like how blood tastes. It was horrible. It made me gag. For a few seconds I lay there terrified and uncertain, blinking into the total darkness.

Then a voice. Or what sounded like a voice. Muffled. Low. Far away. Somehow it felt comforting. Soothing. With that voice the dark, damp space became less threatening.

Then the voice began to moan. A moan that quickly became a scream of pain. I squirmed in my prison but I couldn't move.

The screams carried on and I screamed back and struggled and struggled.

Suddenly movement.

The walls of the tunnel moved and twisted around me. I couldn't see them but I heard and smelt them. It all felt like some horrible ride at a fairground.

And the muffled voice above screamed.

And I screamed back

And drops of moisture that tasted like blood dropped into my open mouth.

And I began to move. Slowly at first. So slowly that I wasn't sure if I was really moving at all. But with all my twisting and turning and struggling and the walls of this tunnel alive with movement, I slid slowly downwards.

The speck of light at my feet seemed like a spot of gold paint at first. Became bigger and bigger, and me squirming and screaming harder and harder and the voice above bellowing in what seemed like agony. The light got nearer and the walls of the tunnel became so soft that I managed to turn myself around so I could see where I was going.

Then my head was free and I gulped fresh air, my eyes squinting into the light. With a squelch I was out of the tunnel and lying face down on something soft. Something that smelt of...

...old carpet and cat pee.

I turned my face upwards and rolled over to get away from the smell and to try and find out where I had come from. It was dark and I was surprised to see the shapes of some old coats hung on what seemed like nails hammered into a brick wall.

I sat up and looked about. I was in a very small space. A cupboard. Yes, it was definitely a cupboard. I could reach each corner from where I was sitting. It was not quite dark though as there was light coming from a dim bulb on the stump of a lamp left on the floor. The hanging coats I could touch although there didn't seem to be much else apart from a plate, a mug and a bucket placed near the shade-less lamp. If I leaned forward I could touch the plastic of the bucket. But I didn't. It looked like it was placed there for a reason. A reason I didn't want to think about.

And how did I feel?

It's not easy putting how I felt into words. I had to remember that this wasn't me and that I'd just been 'born' into the mind of someone else.

I have never felt this way before or since.

I, or this person I was inside of, was petrified and confused. It seemed like all the nightmares and fears ever had been poured into a giant bowl, mixed and somehow injected into shaking veins. I felt cold and hungry. I also wanted \- wanted more than anything - the heavy wooden door set in the wall to open so I could escape. But I was scared that if it should open it would let in something far worse than the spiders lurking in the corners of this horrible place.

I feared that the most. I feared what was moving about beyond the door. I feared the power of the people out there. What they could do to me and what they threatened they could do.

I realised that I was sobbing uncontrollably, sobs that were in no way meant for the ears of who or what was beyond the door. They were tears of despair. Of hope lost. A film with a terrible ending. I looked upwards and when the yellowed paint of the dim cupboard roof supplied no answers the tears and the sobs went on and on and on....

...and I woke up panting, clutching at my chest with a mixture of sweat and tears running their feint nails down the sides of my face and back. Relief flooded in and I scrambled for the light and turned it on and spent the rest of the night restless and wondering and afraid of the dark.
Chapter 21

Back to St Mary's

I had to take the next day off school. I was nervous and shaking and didn't want to eat. I stayed on the sofa watching daytime television as my bedroom was becoming a scary place for me to be in. I was jumpy. I didn't know what was what anymore. I didn't know to expect Lizzie, a bad dream or more visions from a different time or place. I looked in the mirror in the front room and realised that I looked tired and thin. Worse. To my horror I realised that I had developed two spots, one on the side of my nose and one on my chin. The one on my chin was angry red and the other one a proper whitehead. I pinched and poked at the one clinging to the side of my nose for a good five minutes and made the area around the spot sore and even redder. I attacked it so violently that it began to bleed. I gave up, washed my face and returned to the sofa and my duvet. I was totally miserable.

Dad popped in twice during the day to make sure I was OK. The first time was around midday and he ate his ham sandwiches with me. But I ate nothing. Then he reappeared at three with some tomato soup but I didn't feel like that either. Something was happening. I was feeling worried and agitated again.

After Dad left I tried to nap but every time I closed my eyes I found myself back in the cupboard, with the bucket, coats and cat pee. The feeling of terror, of loneliness, of fear, followed a second or two afterwards. Like thunder follows lightening. I snapped my eyes open and the vision and fear dwindled away. So I made sure I stayed awake. It was exhausting. I felt tired enough anyway.

At about five 'o' clock, just before Dad came home for the evening, I tumbled into some sort of trance and the dark and the smell and the fear came again. This time I was listening at the cupboard door, at the noises from the outside, and was certain I could hear low moans distantly. It pumped more distress into my already fragile system. I felt like a matchstick tower in a sharp wind. Another gust and I'd just collapse and crumble from pure terror.

I woke up, went back to the bathroom and plunged my face into a sink of freshly run cold water.

Dad was going to give the hospital a miss this evening but he wanted me to see Mum within the next few days. She wasn't any better and Dad said that she was missing me. I wanted to see Mum but, as you know, I wasn't keen on hospitals and was scared of what condition I'd find her in. I hadn't seen her in a while. Still, I agreed and we watched awful TV whilst Dad wolfed down sausage and mash. I just had a few spoonfuls of tomato soup.

Lizzie stayed away.

I had mixed feelings about this. I had grown fond of the little grey girl from 1946 and when she didn't visit I felt like I had said or done something wrong. Maybe. Or maybe Ernie had been found and they didn't need me anymore.

I hoped that this was it. But if it was then the visits by Lizzie and the trips to 1946 might come to an end. I had grown fond of the Raynors. They had been through a lot. The war, the shortages of food. I remembered the way Lizzie had wandered with wonder and astonishment through our house. Like a child in a toy shop. In fact that was exactly what it was like and I wondered how I would react if I visited a future decades away. I decided that I wouldn't want to. I was fascinated by my trips to rusty old 1946, where the absence of plastic, microwaves and TV made things so much simpler.

Grown-ups were always going on about how things were more honest and less confusing when they were children. I remembered Mum telling me about the evenings that she spent with her Gran and Granddad when she was seven or eight. Television and radio was a big part of her life and most people had them by then. But when Mum stayed at her Grandparents they didn't have a television so they listened to the radio. They talked and played simple board games brought out of dusty cupboards. Games like Draughts, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders. They would slurp hot cups of weak, sweet tea with sugar on toast and listen to the BBC World Service. Whatever that was. Her Gran and Granddad would tell her stories about the war that included their wider family. They even told her stories from the first war. One tale from the second war I remember. So the story goes an Uncle or Cousin or someone had refused to go to their shelter during a German air raid and a big bomb had crashed down through the chimney. The bomb completely destroyed the chimney and one side of the house. But it had landed, dusty and dangerous, in what was left of the fireplace. Apparently this Uncle or Cousin wrapped the bomb in a blanket. With help from another Uncle or Cousin or someone they managed to remove the bomb into the street. Funny that both Mum and me should remember this story. And even funnier that the Cousins or Uncles or whoever should wrap a bomb in a blanket.

Then I thought of Mum and I felt sad. I remembered what we were doing when she told me all this. It was Christmas. Me, Mum and Dad were stuffed round with turkey and my Dad's Mum and Dad, my Gran and Granddad, had just left. We had waved goodbye at the window as their little red car drove through the drizzle and cold wind that was Christmas tea-time. After their car had bumbled around the corner at the end of our street we returned with a tin of Quality Street chocolates to the TV. But we had had enough of television. Although Dad had grumbled, Mum turned the TV off and got some old board games that had been left in the bottom of an old cupboard somewhere upstairs. We played Tiddleywinks for a bit then had a game of Cluedo which I loved and for a long time afterwards I got my friends at primary school to come around and play. But the days grew longer and warmer and we spent more time in the park playing football. So the games were returned to the old cupboard somewhere upstairs and forgotten. They are probably still there now and I had a sudden impulse to go and dig them out. But I didn't. Although I felt sad at the memory I found that I was smiling, smiling at the thought of one damp Christmas afternoon.

The memory stayed for a bit, like heat held in an oven turned off. And I fell into a deep, long and much needed sleep.

The following day was a Saturday so I didn't have school but Dad suggested that I really should go with him to visit Mum. I smiled half-heartedly but agreed.

At St Mary's I was again intimidated by the train station busy-ness of it all, the broken limbs, bandaged arms and general feeling of human beings in trauma. In trauma because they're not working properly. Like broken machines. We hurried past the knickknack shop and the nearly empty cafeteria then made our way to Waltham Ward. This time we took the lift. We shared it with a man in a suit and a nurse with a tea-trolley. The china rattled madly as she got in and out of the lift. It seemed that Dad was in no mood to take the stairs. He was preoccupied, had something on his mind. He was reluctant to make small talk.

The plump Karen had been replaced by a female nurse. This nurse was thin and angry with big round glasses and feint white whiskers sprouting from her chin. No warm welcome from this one. She was abrupt and got straight to the point.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

Dad was in no mood either. "Mrs Webber. We've come to see her."

It seemed like she was looking for escaped prisoners or something as she looked us up and down and referred suspiciously to some bits of paper on a counter in front of her.

"And you are?"

Dad was impatient. "I'm her husband and this is her son."

Still not totally convinced the hairy nurse looked at us a moment longer. Then she beckoned Dad to follow her. They moved away and whispered together like snakes. The hairy nurse didn't smile and when she spoke she kept a serious face. When she'd finished speaking the nurse looked at Dad over the top of her specs, making sure he'd understood. Dad nodded. Surprisingly the nurse placed a gentle hand on his back. She stroked his jacket tenderly. They both turned to me at the same time. The nurse to smile weakly at me and return to her bits of paper on the counter and Dad to put a reassuring hand in the middle of my back. I wasn't sure if it was to start me off in the right direction.

Or something much worse, like a comforting hand.

Whatever it was I had to admit things didn't look good.

The short distance was an example of just why I didn't like hospitals. I caught a glimpse of a man being sick into a cardboard bowl from between drawn curtains. Next a woman asleep but with all sorts of tubes coming from her. These tubes were connected to a series of bleeping machines placed around her bed. She looked so pale that I had to keep looking just to make sure she hadn't given up and given in to the D Word.

I still wasn't sure when we arrived at Mum's bed.

After that I didn't particularly care.

To say that Mum looked ill would be an understatement. She did look ill. That was for sure. More than last time.

But I wasn't prepared for just how much.

Mum seemed to be asleep. She had her eyes closed in the same way as the woman I had just seen. And, again like the woman I had just seen, I had to look closely to see the hospital blankets drawn up to her chest move as she breathed. Mum had her arms stretched out beside her on top of the blankets. I couldn't believe how still more thin and pale they had become. Where once Mum's arms were golden brown, cuddly strong and smooth they now looked like pale sticks and her fingers long and crab-leg thin. In fact she hardly filled the bed at all. She had become a slight bump underneath the blankets.

We both stood looking at her and that gave me a chance to look a little closer at her face.

Her sweet smelling, long brown hair had gone. It was now very short, only an inch or so in length. And I couldn't believe just how clear the shapes of her bones were. I could now see her for what she was. In fact, what everybody was! Just thin skin strung out over a white frame. It reminded me of bed sheets put on a radiator to dry. You could see the shape of the metal poking through. In fact her skin was bed-sheet thin. It was grey with pale red blotches on her forehead and on her small neck. Even her once great black eyelashes had become pale.

I felt afraid.

I couldn't take my eyes off of what was left of my Mum.

Without thinking my right hand felt for the fabric of Dad's coat. Mum was so unfamiliar. So strange. I needed the reassurance of something that had kept its shape. Something solid. Something that hadn't changed. Would always stay the same.

Even if it was Dad's coat.

The truth was that the person lying in the bed in front of me looked like my Mum. But wasn't. It resembled my Mum. It resembled my Mum in the same way a shadow resembles the person who is casting it. That's where the phrase a shadow of their former self comes from, I suppose. I know Dad felt the same as we just kept standing and looking.

After a while I felt Dad's hand brush my back again. Adults weren't that different to us kids after all. Everybody needed somebody sometime in their lives.

And while we stood and watched hospital life talked and walked and bleeped on around us and I had a feeling that the people who should care didn't. My Mum was lying ill in front of us and life carried on. It didn't stop. But then I remembered the people I'd seen in the hospital, people with their own problems. I realised that, to them, we didn't matter. They were all having a little battle of their own. A battle with the dreaded D Word. All desperately wanting a little more of that fragile thing called life. And so I looked on at Mum and realised that life was fragile and it was special and I tried to work out what life actually was. How we got it. How it might go away. I thought of the Raynors again and their 'gifts' and how they were fighting to keep Ernie alive so they could all spend more time with him.

I frowned in thought. I realised that time was what we all wanted. More time. Extra time with the people we liked the most in life. I had a feeling that we were all living in one huge egg timer. Like the little grains of sand inside we were all slipping through to who knows where. Mum and Ernie Raynor were both struggling to stay in the top bit, helped by the people they knew and loved. As I looked around the hospital I saw some people that were slipping away into the bottom bit. Slipping away towards the D Word and into who knows where.

At that point I selfishly wanted Mum to wake up so we could go. And I felt really bad for having that thought. Inside my head I told myself off.

But it wouldn't go. I wanted to be away from all this pain and suffering, away from Mum and Dad. Decades away in fact.

I longed for my new friend Elizabeth Raynor.

It was then that Mum's cat-like eyes slowly opened and she saw us and smiled and what I knew to be my Mum was poured back into her like jelly into a mould.

"Hello you," she said to me weakly and held out a thin arm.

So we stayed for forty-five minutes exactly. And although that need to escape never left me, things got easier. Mum sat up and a little colour returned to her cheeks. She talked and smiled and even chuckled here and there.

Just like my Mum used to.

And I was glad Mum had replaced the stranger I had seen earlier. Dad held one of her hands constantly. It seemed like if he let go she would slip back into that pale sleep, towards the bottom bit of the egg-timer, towards who knows where and the D Word. I felt like I should hold onto Mum's other hand. Just to make sure. But I felt embarrassed at the thought so I didn't.

Before we left I had that feeling of someone looking at me. Of someone interested watching me closely. I had remembered the strange old man from the last visit and had cautiously looked out for him. Although his bed had shown signs of use he wasn't to be seen. But with that feeling of being watched I glanced around knowing full well what to expect.

And there he was.

He was lying flat on his back in his bed with covers pulled up to his stubbly chin. His head turned towards me. Wide eyes staring hard. In fact, throughout what was left of our visit he didn't move, just stared blankly. Unblinking. I didn't like it one bit and I got goose-pimples and now I really wanted to go.

Although I loved my Mum and wanted her home I wanted to get out and was glad when Dad fished in his pockets for some change so I could buy the cokes in the cafeteria. I gave Mum a cuddle goodbye. She smelt clean but no longer of strawberries or those shampoos, shower gels or perfumes that girls use.

Just clean.

So I left and looked back and Mum was smiling. She raised one weak arm in goodbye. Dad was smiling too.

And so was the old man in the bed. Warm. Playful. Familiar.

He was smiling at me.
Chapter 22

Dinner

On the way home in the car Dad told me that Mum would probably be home soon. I was really happy at this news. Dad didn't seem that thrilled though and, when I thought about it, Mum still looked very ill.

I couldn't shake off the feeling that something wasn't quite right.

Not far from our house I had flashes of the person in the cupboard. Traffic lights and brightly lit shop fronts disappeared behind explosions of brick and old wood. The bucket and an empty plate and mug came and went in the same way. Sudden. Fleeting. Then gone. Again came that awful feeling of aloneness and sheer terror that cut deep like a sharp knife leaving me scarred and breathing hard. Dad saw something was wrong and pulled the car over. I pretended that I was just carsick. I don't think he was fooled.

"I'm taking you to the doctor again," he said as he put the car in gear and pulled away.

Luckily the vision passed but Dad kept glancing at me to make sure that I was OK. Despite the cool evening I was hot and sweaty. My head felt as light as a balloon. When we got home I headed straight for the shower then took myself off to bed. Dad asked if I wanted something to eat but I couldn't face food. He looked worried and left my bedroom door open just in case I needed anything.

Then I was back in the cupboard.

Again I was looking at the bricks of the cupboard prison with the powdery cement in between; again the panic and the complete agony of being enclosed and afraid; again a voice from beyond the cupboard door. I was me, but inside the person trapped, straining to listen.

I, she, he, it, placed my ear gently to the splintered wood.

"There will be no more attempts at escape!"

I quickly withdrew my ear from the wood as if the door itself had uttered those words. Fingers were placed fearfully into my mouth. I tasted blood, earth and wood on those fingers and knew the nails and tips were torn from repeated attempts at breaking out.

"Is this clear? Freedom is impossible therefore you must understand what I say. Do not try to escape!"

The voice was cold, brutal. It wanted to make me understand, wanted me to understand that I was going to be here for a while.

"Do you understand?"

"Jay, wake up! Jay!"

"You will be shot!"

"Jay, please, wake up!"

And I sat up in bed panting, struggling, fighting for every breath and clutching at the hammer blows that smashed away inside my ribcage. Someone was holding me and I reached out for support and comfort, for protection from whatever was beyond the door. Still panting hard I looked and saw Lizzie's grey shape beside me. She had her arm around my shoulders. She was holding me up.

"It's fine now. Relax. Relax." The mouth moved and the words came.

I did as I was told. Slowly and with great effort. Like a heavy train stopping at a station my breathing became easier and easier and Lizzie fluffed up my pillows and lowered my head onto them. Soon the fear passed and I took a sip from a glass of water Dad had brought up earlier. It tasted like metal. It had been poured hours ago.

At the thought of Dad I glanced at my bedroom door knowing that it had been left open. I was surprised and shocked to see the lights of the hallway.

"It's fine," Lizzie soothed. "You know he can't hear us."

I wasn't convinced so I got up and closed the door myself then sat on my bed. Lizzie was stood in front of me, concerned and kind and playing with the Jesus on the Cross around her neck. Then she stretched out the same grey arm towards me.

"C'mon," she smiled. "Come with me."

So I took her small, pale hand and let her lead me across the carpet of my bedroom to the world that lay beneath those familiar floorboards.

All of the Raynors were at home when I got there. In the kitchen Lizzie's Mum Maureen was at the sink peeling potatoes. When she saw me enter with Lizzie in my piranhas I got the same reaction as last time – a long surprised stare. I stood uncomfortable and embarrassed beside Lizzie. Maureen wiped her hands on the white apron she was wearing then surprised me when she said, "Ello, Jay. Glad you've come."

Pauline was sat quietly at the kitchen table sowing something like a coat or jumper. I say sowing but I've never seen anybody sow before so I assumed she was. She had been following my entrance quietly and now my eyes met her great dark ones. I looked at them a little longer than I should have. I couldn't help it. Those eyes were like magnets. Today she wore a white top patterned with red flowers. It was open at the neck and I could see a Jesus on the Cross laying against the skin just below her neck.

She was beautiful.

There was silence for a bit and somewhere a clock ticked heavily. Maureen asked if I'd like a cup of tea. I was about to ask for a coke or something but I knew enough about 1946 to know that if coke was available then it probably wasn't in the shops. Or if it was they couldn't afford to buy it. So I said yes to the tea and when Mum nodded at a kitchen chair I gladly sat down. More to hide my piranhas than anything else.

Pauline continued to sow away but occasionally her eyes would look up at me and she would smile a smile that showed she knew everything about me. A smile that told me she knew that I thought she was beautiful. I suppose I was at her mercy. Already, like Mum, Beth and Lizzie, I was wrapped around her little finger.

What is it with me and girls?

I was so shy and in awe of this beautiful thing sat across from me that I couldn't think of anything to say. I just sat, sat looking anywhere but at those eyes that were like mirrors to how I really thought and felt about her.

"W...what are you doing?" I asked eventually with a frog that I never knew was in my throat. I coughed to clear it.

"Mending and making do," smiled Pauline in reply. Her voice was deep for her age. Pauline's accent was different too. Posh.

"What's 'mending and making do?" I was trying to hide my feelings by making conversation.

Pauline had just pulled the needle and thread through the fabric when she glanced about the room. Maureen was clattering cups onto saucers and Lizzie, now in full colour, had gone in search of Albert. When she looked back at me her smile had disappeared.

"It's exactly that – silly!" and she stuck the point of the needle through the thin sleeve of my pyjamas and into my arm.

"Ow!" I shouted as Pauline got up and flounced out of the kitchen, taking her sowing with her. Maureen looked across but continued to wipe the surfaces down with a white dishcloth and Lizzie was still out of the room. I was left rubbing my arm furiously. What was that all about? Was it something I said? Was it because I didn't know what 'mending and making do' was?

When Lizzie came back I thought about telling but then quickly decided not to. It would almost be like blabbing. I looked at my arm and noticed a small felt-tip pen dot of blood on the sleeve of my pyjamas. Lizzie had been right. Pauline was not what she seemed. She reminded me of some sort of royal, wild alley cat, drawing you in with her cool and superior good-looks then striking out with sharp claws without warning.

I decided to keep my distance.

Maureen placed our tea in front of us and I had just taken a sip and winced at its unfamiliar taste when Albert arrived. His pipe was in his mouth and there was the familiar ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh of his trousers as he strolled into the kitchen. He smiled warmly when he saw me and moved quickly to put his hand on my back and welcome me again.

"We're so glad that you could come again, Jay," he said, his pipe now in his hand. "There are things we need to discuss."

I nodded and took another sip of the not very nice tea. A tea-leaf was left stranded on my tongue and I had to pick it off.

"Come through to the sitting-room when you're ready," he added and walked back out through the sliding door.

Maureen carried on preparing dinner as me and Lizzie sipped at our tea. She seemed to begin to warm to me as she started talking about how bad the 'spuds' were this year; how sugar was expensive; how the neighbour's garden was 'like the Zambezi in there;' how she was reluctant to complain because this neighbour's daughter was still serving in the far east and the neighbour was 'as testy as a snake'.

I was glad Lizzie was next to me as I was wary of Pauline. I didn't want to be alone with her again. She scared me. Apart from this now Maureen was more chatty and open I had begun to feel comfortable and more at home. I thought about my proper home. In the same house but decades in the future. I measured the gap of pain and pleasure. In my time the pain of Mum's illness was being carried by Dad and me alone. I mean, we had each other but that's all we had. There was Gran and Granddad but they lived a long way away. They were Mum's parents and they had never had really got on with Dad. They visited Mum but rarely visited us two. If they did they really came to see me. Dad had had lots of rows with them because he said they were 'tight with money' and Granddad had affairs when he was younger. I found this hard to believe. I couldn't imagine my Granddad having an affair. I mean, he was old. Back then it hadn't occurred to me that he was young once. It did now though. I thought about all the older people that I knew and all their stories: Mum, Dad, Mr Butler, Albert and HMS Indefatigable.

And I knew that even I must eventually get old.

Maybe I'd tell stories of my own. Maybe I'd have kids and tell them about my 'special powers' and dreams and everything. Maybe I'd tell them about Lizzie and my time travelling into the past.

As silly as it seems I smiled at the thought. I felt warm and I kind of looked forward to it.

There was pain in the Raynors' house alright, but they had each other. They lived together and worked through it together. Back in my time I didn't know anyone who lived together like this. Sowing at the kitchen table and helping people trapped in collapsed buildings. Lizzie's grandparents even lived here before they had passed-on. That must have been a busy house. And all this and no TV! Nothing to distract Lizzie or Pauline from jobs they had to do. Things like PC games or I-pods, DVDs or the internet.

It felt good being somewhere with more than one person. It felt good in a simpler, less muddled way. In a less muddled world. It lightened the load and made things easier.

And there was something I had to get off my chest as me and Lizzie followed Albert into the front room. He was stood at the nets again, pipe in hand, and he smiled when he saw us and gestured towards the sofa.

"Sit down. Please."

So I sat on the sofa and Albert sat down too. Lizzie sat on the floor again, her back against the leg of the brown sofa near her father. She started to pick absent-mindedly at the fluff on the carpet.

I told them of the recent visions of being trapped in a small cupboard with a dim light, a bucket and what seemed like only bread and water to eat and drink. I told them how the dream, of what we all assumed was Ernie and the stone house, had stopped. Albert looked concerned and his sunny face became cloudy and overcast.

"I'm not sure what this new contact might be," pondered Albert. Then he looked at Lizzie. "Have you felt anything, Liz?"

Lizzie shook her head at the floor. "No, Dad."

Albert looked at the top of Lizzie's head. "Are you sure it couldn't mean..."

"No father!" interrupted Lizzie forcefully. "He's still alive. I know he is."

Albert nodded quietly and turned to me. "There's something I need to show you," he said in a low and serious voice. "Some days ago I telephoned the war office and, well, I've recently received this reply." Albert felt down beside the sofa and retrieved a thick piece of A4 paper that had been folded as a letter. I could see that it was headed paper and heavy with black type. It was important. "It says that Ernie Michael Raynor is still..." he let the paper drop open "...is still missing, presumed dead."

I didn't know what to say. So I said, "Does this...does this mean he's alive...or...or...you know?"

"He's alive!" barked Lizzie from the floor. "I'd know if he wasn't."

"This does say that he's merely missing presumed dead, "Albert said still looking hard at me. "So we mustn't give up hope and we must get things moving."

"Is this where the séance comes in?" I said this without thinking.

"Yes," answered Albert. "Yes it does."

"What do I need to do?"

"Just be here. We'll do the rest. But promise you'll be here. Without you we'll never find him. Never bring him home where he belongs." Albert put his hand on the top of Lizzie's head to make the point that the family, Lizzie especially, missed him badly.

"Of course I will," I told him. And that was true. I'd do anything to help them get Ernie back. Anyway, I'd promised.

"We're grateful," smiled Albert. "Very grateful."

Lizzie turned her face upwards and smiled at me. Her Dad smiled at the both of us. And the nets whispered gently at the window. And a heavy clock somewhere marked the seconds with a boot-stomp of a tick.

"Anyway, Jay," Albert said, breaking the silence, "did you manage to find out about the empire?"

I told Albert that I had remembered but that a confusing note from my history teacher was back in my bedroom. If it was OK with them I could go back, get dressed properly and bring the note with me. Albert seemed to fret over this and I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea.

"Would I threaten the order of space and time?" I asked Albert respectfully. "Could I cause a rupture between our two worlds or something?"

Albert frowned and Lizzie looked up at me curiously.

"As far as I know, young Mr Webber, you can nip between our two worlds as often as you like."

"Oh," I said, "it's just that you looked like it was a bad idea."

"A bad idea?" echoed Albert. "No, it's very much a good idea. It's simply that I'm worried about how our grand old empire has fared by your time. I'm just wondering if all this pain and hardship has been worth it."

So Lizzie took my hand and we took the stairs to my bedroom two at a time. All was quiet in the house and I even had time to check on Dad. He was sprawled on top of his bedclothes breathing heavily. So that's how I left him. I pulled on a pair of jeans, white trainers and a grey hoodie and collected Mr Butler's note from my computer table.

We were back in 1946 in no time at all.

After looking closely at my new clothes Maureen asked if I'd like to stay for dinner. 'They'd make a little go a long way,' she said. I felt bad because they had hardly any money or food. Lizzie squeezed my hand hard and insisted, so I said yes.

In the sitting-room I gave the note to Albert who examined it greedily. Lizzie took me to the back door. The back door in Lizzie's time was more or less where ours is now and opens out from the kitchen. So we passed through the kitchen to open a red door with frosted glass and a round, brown handle. The door stuck so Lizzie had to pull it hard and the whole thing wobbled on its hinges when it came free.

"Albert always says he's goin' to fix that," shouted Maureen from the big white stove, "but 'e never does. You think it might kill 'im, picking up a screwdriver."

I chuckled but Lizzie rolled her eyes and shrugged. "Dad doesn't do Mr Fixit."

"My Dad is good with his hands but he doesn't do D-I-Y either," I agreed.

Lizzie frowned. "D-I-Y?"

"Yeah. Do-It-Yourself."

"Oh".

It was dark outside and I was bright and grey in what was left of the dwindling afternoon. I examined my hands and arms with an open mouth. Lizzie secretly smiled and told me that it was seven in the evening. That meant 1946 was behind us by six hours. So, travelling to 1946 was a bit like going to Greece or Egypt.

Then I remembered the time Dad came home and nearly caught Lizzie in our house. She had been standing at this exact same spot but decades in the future. I was now standing at the back door decades before I was born. I suddenly got the feeling that this wasn't right. That I really shouldn't have the privilege of experiencing people and places way before I was even thought of. It wasn't natural. It felt like I was cheating somehow.

Looking out into the charcoal night I discovered that there was very little I could recognise from my time. The air was cold and heavy with what I knew to be smoke from coal fires. It was so heavy in fact that I could already smell soot on my hoodie. I could see long trails of the stuff drifting darkly out of chimneys that just weren't there in my time. As Lizzie had pointed out there were no ugly TV aerials so all the roofs of the houses were almost on the same level, yet all smaller somehow. There was also very little light. I could see a few windows glowing dimly and I could count the number of street lamps on one hand. Looking out beyond the immediate few houses I realised that the night was darker because of the lack of electric light. This meant I could see the few stars that had shown themselves this early. In my time street lighting had created a kind of barrier in the air. I remembered driving back from Gran and Grandad's late one night. Remembered how, from a distance, the town where we live looked like it was on fire with light. The clouds lit-up with what seemed like a billion bright torches. Here our town had accepted the dark blue of night. A dog barked close-by. There were always dogs and I wondered if it was a relative of the one who kept on burrowing under our fence, messing with Dad's lettuces. The whole night seemed a lot calmer. Quieter. In my time there was a big motorway a few miles distant. Constant with traffic. Twenty four hours a day. Here I noticed that the 'white noise' from this traffic was eerily absent. Because of this the dog's bark had sounded much louder. As did the flush of an outside toilet; a cough; a couple talking together somewhere; another dog; and some trees, that weren't there in my time, were busied by a breeze that smelt of coal.

And our garden? From what I could see it had been used to grow fruit and veg. I could pick out neat rows of low plants and, at the end of the garden, those tall canes that people use to grow broad beans.

It was all unfamiliar. It was an alien world.

"Your Dad does gardening though," I said to Lizzie, referring to the vegetables I could just about make out in the semi-darkness.

"We have to. Rationing doesn't stretch very far so everybody grows vegetables so we can get by."

I thought about all the things Albert and Mr Butler had said, about the waste and the hardships of war. "It must be really hard for you all," I said to show that I understood and that I was really grateful for the food Maureen was cooking me.

"Hard?" said Lizzie.

"Yeah, you know, with the war and that."

The brave little girl beside me looked out over the dark shapes of her – our – garden. For a moment she looked thoughtful and sad. "I don't remember a time when we weren't at war," she told me, "and we've meant to have won. But it's still going on. We're still growing vegetables, still wearing the same clothes, still going cold, still 'making do'. Everybody I know has lost a brother, a father, or a sister. Somebody." Out came her white handkerchief. She wiped her nose and, as quickly as it had appeared, it was put away. "Sometimes I'm glad." She looked up at me with eyes that had probably seen more than a ten year old should see. "Sometimes I get scared of peace."

A pause.

"Why is that?" she asked me.

I couldn't answer. Couldn't even begin to. But Maureen had called us from inside, told us that tea was nearly ready, told us to go and wash our hands. So even if I had an answer I didn't have the time.

We held our hands under the taps at the kitchen sink and dried them on a worn tea-towel. Then we went to fetch Albert from the front room. But Albert was sombre and stood in front of the portrait of the soldier with the union jack hung on the wall. The man in the painting seemed young and nervous and I wondered just who he was and why Albert was staring at him so thoughtfully. Albert smiled thinly when he saw us. We felt like we were interrupting something but he turned away from the painting on the wall and gathered up his pipe from the stand beside the sofa. He also took Mr Butler's note from the pocket of his trousers and came towards us with it held out in front of him.

"How much truth is in this?" he asked me urgently.

I shrugged. "Mr Butler's a good teacher," I said, "I trust him."

Albert stopped and seemed to falter for a moment. His eyes were far away and he slowly crushed the bit of paper in his hand. It crackled in protest and he let it fall into the fire place where it toppled down the side of the fresh wood and newspaper to lay at rest somewhere out of sight.

"Poor Winston," muttered Albert, almost to himself. "All this struggle. For what?" He had returned to stare at the portrait again.

"And what of the royal family?" Albert asked me. The question was so direct it startled me and I had to think about the stuff on TV and in school. Stuff that swam around me and that I didn't pay attention too because it wasn't important and I couldn't be bothered.

"I know we have a queen."

Albert raised his eyebrows in surprise. "A queen?" he repeated. "So the Windsors are still strong?"

I nodded but I didn't know who the 'Windsors were. I could see Albert concentrating as he did some math.

"This queen," he said. "Margaret or Elizabeth?"

"Elizabeth. I think?" I wasn't sure.

Albert nodded again still looking closely at the portrait. Under his breath I heard him say, "Poor Lizzie. Poor, poor Lizzie." Then he sighed. "Still, at least something remains of this bloody mess."

"Who is that?" I whispered to Lizzie who was shuffling impatiently beside me.

"That's my Dad."

"No, silly. The man in the painting. Who's the man in the painting?"

"It's the King."

We had boiled potatoes, carrots and cabbage for 'tea'.

There wasn't any meat and Maureen apologised. I felt really sorry for them all. I had a glass of the funny tasting water and Albert and Maureen poured tea from a teapot that was kept warm with a patterned tea-cosy. My knife and fork was big and old and the knife had a wooden handle. Maureen had made some thin gravy that helped give the food a bit of flavour but I didn't really like carrots and had never had boiled cabbage. There wasn't a lot of food so it was easy to finish but my face couldn't hide the fact that I found the meal plain and boring. But I said 'thanks' and Lizzie asked if we could leave the table and we did.

We returned to the back door, returned to blinking out over the back gardens of 1946. It was then that I had the urge to explore, to go out and go for a walk around the streets of Lizzie's time, streets so familiar to me but that were now ringing with the footsteps that were, in my time, long gone.

"Can we go out and go for a walk?" I asked Lizzie.

Lizzie looked me up and down. "But you're a ghost." she said rolling her eyes. "I'm not taking a ghost out for a walk." Then a cute and cunning smile drifted across her face. "I know..."

She was interrupted by Albert calling from inside so we closed the door that stuck to the kitchen floor. We returned to the pipe-perfumed front room.

Albert was clumsily holding a black box when we got there, was smiling mischievously. "C'mon you lot," he urged, "let's have you sat on the settee."

Lizzie groaned beside me.

"What's that?" I asked her.

"A camera," Lizzie said and rolled her eyes again.

A camera? It didn't look like any camera I'd seen. Again the design was clumsy but there were obvious clues that it might be a camera. There were two holes. One for looking through and the other one...(what was the word?)...the aperture. Pauline was still no-where to be found but Maureen wandered in from the kitchen wiping her hands on the worn tea-towel. So Lizzie took my hand again and we all arranged ourselves on the brown settee. I felt a little self-conscious. You know, that shyness you get when people you haven't known for a while insist on including you in something. Like most families, the Raynors have their 'photo ritual'.

The Webbers did too.

Either Mum would grip me tightly around the shoulders, me on the left, smiling madly, or Dad would set the timer and stand front and centre with his arms around us both. Here I was worried and patient while tea-towel was hidden, Maureen's apron discarded and hair straightened, Lizzie's pig-tails arranged so they fell forward over each shoulder (knees politely drawn together with her hands placed palm down), smiles practised. And all the while Albert experimented with distances and angles.

Eventually we struck a pose on the brown settee.

"Ready?" asked Albert slowly, squinting through a small hole in the top of the black box, "steady...smile and say cheese!"

Some things just never change.

So we all cried 'cheese!' and I managed an awkward smile. The photo reminded of my family and my Mum so, at the precise moment Albert wound a small handle at the side of the black box, I felt a stranger, an imposter. A pretender.

The feeling of not really belonging was strong.

But the photograph was a smiling success and it had seemed to cheer Albert up and take his mind off the business of the empire. He fiddled about with the black box some more and took some other camera bits and bobs into another room. Maureen recovered her tea-towel and retreated, grumbling about being 'left to do all the dishes', into the kitchen. This gave me the chance to talk to Lizzie about 'going out'.

"I thought we could dress you up," said Lizzie in typical girlie fashion. "You know, disguise you."

"How do you mean?" I asked and Lizzie sniggered at this.

"Well. Dad will have a spare hat and coat and Mum'll have some make-up. You know, foundation or something like it. We can colour you in." Lizzie smiled at the thought. "That'll be fun."

I didn't think so. It was getting late and I should've really been getting back home. But Lizzie said that I was home and it was quieter during the evening.

"Well, I suppose I do want to have a look at the streets where I live before I was born."

It like felt I might never get the opportunity again. I don't know why. I just had a feeling. I put it down to my 'special powers'.

But my 'special powers' were wrong.

I didn't know it then.

So I agreed.
Chapter 23

The Streets Where I Live

Albert and Maureen didn't like the idea.

"I don't like it," Albert said shaking his head, "even just to the end of the street and back."

"Neither do I," echoed his wife. "I mean, what if somebody sees through your disguise and the police catch you. We'll be the talk of Shad Hill. Make no mistake about that."

I could see their point. What if I was discovered? How would we explain away the fact that I come from the future. That both myself and Lizzie have been tripping through time whenever we feel like it. But I really wanted to have a look at our street in 1946. I couldn't tell you exactly why. Maybe it was that morbid curiosity thing again. Or maybe just something as simple as finding a connection with the past. One thing was certain, if Mum wasn't ill in hospital I don't think I would have felt this urge to go wandering the dark streets of 1946. Dealing with Mum's illness had been like walking in water. You try to carry on as normal but everything's slowed right down. The added pressure, the extra burden, means you struggle on, waiting for someone to rescue you, so things can return to the way it was. But no-one does. No-one is even near enough to help. Even though I was still young I could already plot the cycle of birth and the horrible D Word. How the past was very much alive in the people we know now. How the past makes us who we are today. I felt like I needed to connect with the past to show myself that I had an understanding of the world my great Grandparents and even my Grandparents would have been familiar with.

That somehow it would bring me closer to Mum.

I needed to go out. Just this once.

So I told Albert and Maureen exactly that. I told them how much I loved and missed my Mum. How the daily routine for Dad and me had become one of treading water, waiting for bad news. How I couldn't tell Mum how much I love and miss her. How she might never know. Taking a walk down our street before Mum had even opened her eyes to the sun and the rain would help me start to fix the wounds that words can't.

Albert nodded and puffed on his pipe and Maureen stared straight at me, twisting the worn tea-towel in her lap.

Lizzie simply pulled fluff from the carpet.

After I'd finished explaining Albert looked thoughtfully at Maureen but Maureen blinked this stare away, choosing to finish her kitchen duties. Albert sighed and turned to me.

"Do you like poetry, Jay?" he asked, taking his pipe from his mouth.

I shrugged. I told him about Mr Butler and his poem. I liked that because I understood the feelings of the character. Albert went to one of the drawers in the cabinet by the wall and produced a small book. It was dark blue with some gold writing on the front cover. He gently handed it to me.

"Read page sixty two," he said softly, "then put on that disguise of yours."

Lizzie looked at me and smiled and I smiled right back.

"And don't go too far."

On a later visit I copied the poem out. Here it is:

What shall we Know

What shall we know when the candle of Life

Slowly flickers, and then goes quickly out?

Will all the pain, will all the bitter strife

Persist, as one stage further in the rout?

What shall we know of Beauty left behind,

Will it perish in a moment's space?

This beauty of human form, shall we find

That it was of little concern, a place

For a more real spirit which will forget

The transient beauty in a lover's eyes,

The bodily forms of those we have met,

Shall these be dead, never again to rise,

When the candle flickers, will memory fail,

Will that be the end of this uncertain tale?

Like anything I read, I had to read it a second time, tracing the words on the page with my fingers. Albert had gone to stand at the window and Lizzie had skittered up stairs to find some make-up and an old coat. When I finished I closed the cover carefully and now ran my fingers over the shapes of the gold lettering, tracing them like a blind man would do. It grandly said Second World War Airforce Poetry. As with Mr Butler's poem, my mind was swimming with the words I had just read, trying to place them in an order which would make sense to me. I couldn't and Lizzie called me upstairs. But some words kept returning, like a determined wasp or a friendly cat.

...the bodily forms of those we have met, shall these be dead, never again to rise, when the candle flickers, will memory fail, will that be the end of this uncertain tale?

When I came back downstairs twenty minutes later Albert removed his pipe from his mouth in surprise and Maureen stood with an uncertain smile, still wringing the worn tea-towel. Lizzie made me do a twirl. And I did. Reluctantly.

Lizzie had found a heavy black coat from her Dad's wardrobe. Although I was tall for my age it was big on me, my hands hidden by the long sleeves and its bottom reaching down beyond my knees. It also smelt old and damp, like books taken down from the loft. Lizzie had also chosen an old cap from several that Albert didn't wear anymore. Back in my time I still saw some old men wear them. Grandad did sometimes. This one was grey with feint white stripes. It was big and smelled mouldy and old. But, like Lizzie said, 'it'll do'. The fabric of both the coat and the cap was heavy and itchy and uncomfortable to wear. Her Dad's old trousers were far too long and big at the waist so my jeans stayed on. My white trainers were a problem though and I had to go back to my bedroom again to grab my only pair of black shoes from my wardrobe. While I was there I made sure I looked at the time. I surprised to see that it was three in the morning. I was going to be knackered again tomorrow. Still, it was half-term soon, so I tried to forget about it.

Lizzie spent the most time on my face and hands, trying to hide the grey, ghostly colour that came with time-travel. Like Mum back in my time she had used a pad to put it on. And like Dad often said to Mum, 'she might have saved time by using a trowel. 'Lizzie's idea sort of worked. Not close-up of course and at a distance I still looked a little odd, but in the darkness we were convinced that I would get away with it.

"Just don't talk to anybody," Lizzie said.

As I shuffled uneasily towards the front door with my hands stuffed firmly in the pockets of the coat (there was an old handkerchief in there. I stuffed it under the sofa) I felt like some sort of spy. Even the Raynors couldn't stifle a snigger at my expense. Lizzie put on her coat, opened the front door and we were out, catapulted into Shad Hill, 1946.

It was totally dark by now and a chilly, blustery wind was attacking the smoke coming out of the chimneys. There was still very little street light and only a weak and yellow glow shone through the curtains of the front room windows of Lizzie's neighbours. It was also really quiet. No cars. No shouts. Nothing. Now I felt really nervous. As the front door clunked shut behind us I was showered with the feeling that this wasn't such a good idea after all.

"I'm not liking this," I said to Lizzie.

She put her arm through mine. "C'mon scardey-cat. We'll be back before you know it."

And so we walked along the uneven pavement and I kept my head down and my hands stuffed firmly in the pockets of the long coat. Lizzie had to take little clopping steps to keep up with my nervous pace.

Although the overall layout of my street was almost the same lots of things were different. Take something simple like the pavement. In my time you walked on big grey slabs, evenly laid and you could rely on them in the dark. I had only walked twenty or thirty yards when I stumbled onto hard earth with the top of what looked like a pipe sticking out. I stepped over this and off the pavement and into the road and quickly realised that it wasn't a road. Well, not in the modern sense. It was just a wide dusty track with no tarmac or road markings. Becoming braver by the second I started to peer out of my shell, looking up and around.

Just as a car turned the corner into our road and trundled towards us.

The glare from its headlights caught us like escaped prisoners and for a moment that's what we were. I retreated again into the big overcoat. Lizzie pulled on my arm and then we were walking and I chanced a look as the car drew nearer and then passed us. The car was heavy, all gleaming chrome and metal. It sounded heavier too, the engine working hard even though it was moving slowly. I saw the dark shape of a man in a hat smoking a cigarette at the steering wheel. He paid us no attention whatsoever and the steel monster wobbled on up the road leaving the air around us dripping with the smell of petrol. Further on it slowed and rumbled left onto the main road at the end of our street, the same one I had seen Dad turn into a million times in his white van on the way to work. There was no indication that the car was turning left but I did see the driver stick out an arm.

Relieved we walked to the point where the car had turned and stood looking left and right. There were a few more old street lights here and the road seemed to be made up of lots of stones and cobbles. Again there were no road markings and I noticed that there were gaps between some of the houses, looking like decayed teeth had been pulled out of a rotten mouth. I was dallying and Lizzie pulled me to her. We slowed. Then stopped.

We had reached the end of our street.

I noticed another gap between the houses, further down and across the other side of the road. The bricks and broken wooden window frames had simply been pushed back into the gap, left in a big pile and ignored.

"What's happened here?" I asked Lizzie already kind of knowing the answer.

"Bloody Germans," replied Lizzie.

"What, bombs?"

Lizzie nodded. She pointed at the pile of rubble. "Mrs Harcourt was killed in that one."

I was horrified. "What? Dead?" I said, realising the D word had slipped out without warning.

Lizzie looked at me with that you-really-are-stupid look again. "When you're killed, Jay, you normally end up dead."

"Yeah. Right."

Lizzie was suddenly serious again. "That was four years ago now. I would have been six."

We stood looking at the jumbled bits of crumbled living across the street and the wind gently reminded us that we should turn back.

"Brimson College."

Lizzie looked at me. "I beg your pardon?"

"My school, Brimson College. Is it still here? I mean, has it been built yet?"

"Pauline's school isn't far away, but it's not called Brimson College," said Lizzie. "It's called The King's School."

I rolled the name around my head. The King's School. The King's School. Then I said it out loud.

"The King's School."

It sounded so much grander than boring old Brimson College.

"Why?" asked Lizzie impatiently. "We have to be getting back. We promised Mum and Dad."

"I know, I know." It would be great to see my school. See how it used to be. "Lizzie, which way do we go to get to Pauline's school?"

Lizzie pointed in the opposite direction to the way we had started to go. "That way."

I felt a sudden rush of excitement and offered my arm to Lizzie.

Lizzie was suspicious. "Where are we going?"

"To school."

And we did. Head bowed and hands stuffed deep into pockets, past the occasional parked car, the odd, strangely dressed pedestrian, corner shops and singing from pubs, several bumpy cyclists and a noisy, smelly motorbike. I had to keep telling myself that all these things were just shadows of a time long gone and that they really didn't exist. That they were all like fallen, dead leaves, kicked up and into the air one last time.

Or were they?

I had seen sci-fi movies like this, where the idea that different moments in time can co-exist together like lanes on a motorway. A change of direction, a moment's indecision, and anybody could find themselves in King Harold's army or in a Victorian workhouse. So were all these very solid objects, people, concerns, feelings, were they all just shouts in the distance? Could I be witnessing something thrown up, for a brief, forgetful instant, then gone forever? Or were these things very solid and very real? Would Lizzie grow up to be a beautiful young woman? Would she live to find her brother again? And as we walked I stole a glance at Lizzie bouncing and smiling beside me. She would be an old woman, a pensioner, in my time. She might still be smiling, maybe showing false teeth. If she was still alive then that it wouldn't be just 'my time.' It wouldn't just be 'Lizzie's time.' It would be 'our time'

It seemed hard to believe that I could have passed her as an old woman on the street.

At that point my mind went wobbly and the math became really hard to do so I concentrated on the here and now.

We stopped briefly outside what I took to be a small newsagents shop. Beneath a window a large piece of paper had been jammed behind a crooked wire mesh showing the headlines of the day. I squinted to read as Lizzie stood beside me.

"What's this all about?" I asked her.

Lizzie stooped and read the sign slowly. "Nur-em-berg Nazis con-demned to death."

She stood up and I looked at her.

"Any ideas?" I said, mildly interested.

"No," she shrugged and moved off.

Turning into Charlotte Street (the street sign was still there in my time) I made out the shape of the school in the dark distance but our attention was drawn to two men wobbling and singing towards us. I looked at them from under my hat and saw that they were two soldiers. In the drakness I could make out that they both wore green uniforms and wore heavy boots that clicked heavily on the pavement. Lizzie hesitated. Any obvious decision to avoid them would probably only make them curious so I led Lizzie forward.

They had been drinking, that was for sure. And they both held onto each other for support. Both held cigarettes. Both were laughing, smiling happy and both were attempting to sing snippets of songs together. Now, let's be clear, these soldiers were young. Late teens maybe. In my time most people approaching a pair of drunk teenagers on a dark night might have crossed the street to avoid them. But we didn't and I needn't have worried. Surprisingly, they both removed the soft caps they had on. Then they parted and made a point of letting us pass between them.

"Good evening kind sir," one slurred and the other one giggled good-naturedly. "And, oh, good evening young lady."

"Hello," replied Lizzie sweetly.

The smell of alcohol and cigarettes was strong as we passed through them. But then we were clear and we crossed over the road and the soldiers straggled on. Laughing. Singing. Smoking.

"Phew," I said to Lizzie.

"That's disgraceful," she muttered.

"I thought they were nice."

"They were drunk!"

"But polite."

"I s'pose."

"Cause I tell you what, in my time anything could have happened."

I could tell Lizzie was thinking about this, was forming an idea of what the future might be like beyond what she's seen of our house. It wasn't good. I made a mental note to describe it to her, to even take her down our street sometime.

I smiled at the idea.

From a distance The King's School wasn't a bit like Brimson College. As far as I could see the school was just a collection of old stone buildings with slate roofs. There was also a small church on the grounds as a tall spire rose up darkly with a cross sat squarely on top. We stood by a grey stone wall that I suddenly realised was still outside the school in my time. Well, bits of it anyway. Because even now some parts of the wall had collapsed and there were gaps. I held out my hand and ran it over the rough stones as my mind tried to close the gap of decades. The wall was here now, had clearly been here for a very long time, and parts of it still stood in my time. Who knows how many people had walked by where I stood now. What the wall had seen.

I found this amazing

Lizzie was getting anxious and jittery. "C'mon, Jay. Mum and Dad will be worried." She had obviously picked up that I was having a moment. "Do you recognise any of this?"

"Just this wall," and I continued touching the past.

Lizzie was right. We had to go. I had seen what I wanted to see. I had reached out and held a part of me. But a long time ago.

So we turned away from The King's College and went back the way we had come, back under the weak light of the few street lamps, past the terraced houses shaded and dark, the flowers and shrubs of the semi-detached and the quiet shops. Lizzie had taken a short cut that I didn't recognise. It took us through a back alley that was just a dirt track covered in weeds and loose stones. An aeroplane droned way overhead and I stopped to look up into the night sky of 1946.

How I came to recognise the house I can't remember, but I know that I could see a lone street light some distance away flashing on and off, spluttering and coughing its thin yellow glow out towards us. This light could have been the trigger.

Without this faulty light I might never have come back.

Whatever the cause I suddenly felt the wash of fear I experienced when I was in the cupboard with the bucket and the coats and the lamp. It was horrible. I felt an urge to run. To get away. To escape. I remember putting out a hand to steady myself against somebody's back wall. Lizzie came to kneel worriedly beside me.

"Jay? Are you alright?"

I wasn't alright. I was being physically sick. Coughing up fluid and bile and some of the food I had earlier. I felt dreadful.

"G...get me a...away from here," I managed to say to Lizzie in between retching. Lizzie's Dad's hat fell to earth and rolled away.

Lizzie was concerned. "Jay, what's wrong? What's happened?"

All I could manage was a shake of my head. Lizzie was small but she was determined. She put one arm around me and helped me to some sort of upright position where I could at least attempt a shuffle.

Then the house came into view.

It seemed to struggle to its feet like some heavy beast to stare at me from over its back wall. It seemed like the two windows on the second floor studied me as I studied it. The lids of its eyes were half-closed, as if half asleep, but it knew I was there, was warning me to stay clear. The grey face surrounding the eyes was cracked, maybe a hundred years old, and where repair had been attempted they only seemed like running sores. I now stood completely upright. I was transfixed and hypnotised with the horror of what I thought I saw. Lizzie followed my stare.

"What is it?" Almost a whisper. "What's wrong?"

I could only manage a brief shake of my head. It felt like any sound would wake this monster further and would send it lumbering all claws and teeth after us. For now though it made no sound. There were no lights. No further clues to what it was thinking or about to do.

The feeling passed and the beast slowly returned to its quiet sleep.

Of course the house couldn't be alive, and it wasn't. But I thought it had. I had actually felt it was alive and watching me. Pretty soon afterwards I had flashes of the cupboard. These flashes passed through me like scissors through paper. I saw the bucket, the back of the door with the coats hung up, the dust and an old spider web seen by the light of the weak lamp light. Then it was gone again. Fluttering into distance like bats.

I took hold of Lizzie then, held her thin arm tightly, and led her running out of the back alley.

"Jay? Jay? Ow, you're hurting me!"

I had no idea where I was running too. All I knew was that I had to get out. To get away. Just get away before the feeling returned.

We erupted from the back alley and onto the street just before the turning into our road. There was nobody to witness my panic and Lizzie's shouts and whines. But as soon as we were out of that alley, were clear of the blinking light and the sleeping creature there, I felt what remained of the horrors tumble away like rocks thrown from a cliff edge. I slowed and caught my breath. Lizzie had broken free and was staring at me with wide-eyed concern.

"I think you should explain."

"I need to go home," I said guiltily. I couldn't really explain. Not now, anyway.

Lizzie didn't take my arm for what remained of our journey home. We walked in silence and I simply retreated back into my shell. I realised that I didn't have a hat. It had fallen off in the alley and there was just no way I was going back to get it.

Lizzie said she'd get it in the morning.

Not for the first time in the last few weeks I was troubled. What now? What does this mean?

I was starting to think that these 'special powers', these 'gifts', were becoming a curse.
Chapter 24

The Days Before the Séance – Part 1.

There was only two days of term left. The October half-term was coming up and I needed it. I needed to rest and make sense of everything.

No chance.

As the week went on I collected homework from English, Maths, Geography and Art. Even PE! I had plenty of things to keep me busy. As well as this, at home Dad was quietly concerned, his face lined with worry and I swear he looked greyer. He was starting to take days off work. Here and there. But everybody was OK about it. They understood.

But I didn't. I mean, not really.

It was clear that Mum was really sick and that Dad and all the doctors and nurses were worried about her. But nobody had actually talked to me about what was likely to happen. Nobody had sat me down and said 'Hey, little fella, your Mum's not going to make it I'm afraid.' Nobody had told me, honestly and frankly, that Mum was going to do the D thing. People were concerned. The teachers at school, grandparents and the few friends I had left after the 'geek' episode. But nobody had actually told me what was going to happen.

Over the last few days of school I kept seeing Bethany in the busy distance. I was only in the same class as her for one subject – PE – and that wasn't really the same class as the boys did their thing and the girls' netball or something. Beth was good at everything, up there soaring like a bird, making study and stuff look effortless. She was in the top sets for most subjects where I only hovered around the middle and lower sets like a wasp around a bin. I heard rumours that she was going out with a boy from Brooksfield. Brooksfield is a posh school a few miles away where they wear green uniforms with huge red crests stamped on them. Like they've been branded or something. Nobody knew what his name was but he was meant to be really good looking and clever. I wasn't jealous or anything. What I was angry about was that Beth had been ignoring me for weeks and I still didn't really understand why. If it was because I was a geek then she wasn't the person I thought she was.

Maybe Mum and Dad were right after all. She liked a 'bit of rough' and when I became clever she disowned me.

I wasn't 'rough' enough for her anymore.

I also heard something else that made me sad. Kyle was moving and leaving Brimson College. We had been good friends. We had gone to primary school together. Now he was moving away to God knows where.

I caught him up leaving school one day and asked him about it. He told me it was all true and he'd be moving and leaving school a few weeks after half-term. Then somebody called him. Somebody holding a football and who had already swapped his school top for a Manchester United jersey. Somebody who wanted him on their side in a game against some Year 9's on the playing fields.

"See yu', Jay."

"See yu'."

I walked home alone feeling like I was growing up too fast. I felt like I should be still playing with my soldiers or with Lego on my bedroom floor. Not spending all my time worrying about the D Word.

But then, I didn't really feel like playing games.

The next day I spent my dinnertime in the library trying to find out what séance actually meant. Like everybody else I had a rough idea and had heard the horror stories of Ouija boards and the rest of it. But I wanted some facts. Here's some:

SÉANCE

A séance is a meeting of people who hope to communicate in some way with the dead. The word is French for 'sitting'.

The most common kind of séance is led by a medium, through whom spirits speak or manifest paranormal phenomena. In these two cases the medium will go into a trance first. Communication can happen without the medium first achieving a trance-like state, however. Sometimes she may simply 'listen' to voices from the spirits and then repeat the content of them.

"Hey, geeky!"

I turned and Donkers was at the library window with an equally stupid friend. The librarian looked up then returned to whatever she was doing.

I closed my books on the paranormal, returned them to their places on the shelves and left the library.

A few days after the episode with Lizzie in 1946 I plucked up enough courage to try and find the house I had seen. The one that had sent me out of my head for no particular reason. It couldn't be far from our house although I can't remember ever seeing it. It must have been demolished but I still wanted to find the spot.

It was obvious now that what we all assumed to be Ernie's dream had ended. I had talked this through with Lizzie. She looked worried. She did ask me if I was having any other sort of messages. Maybe experiencing something stronger. I gave her some basic facts, that I was in another person's body and trapped again (why couldn't I dream something nice?). I kept a lot of the facts about the cupboard to myself. I just couldn't put what I was seeing and feeling into words. I told Lizzie it was another 'bad dream'.

There were a lot of new houses near us. Well, I say new but they were probably twenty or thirty years old. So, late one afternoon, I decided to try and find 'that house'. I chose our school as the starting point and stood stroking the part of the stone wall that still remained, remembering doing the same thing, but in 1946. I also noticed how quiet school was in early evening. It was chilly and there were lots of leaves around and I saw adults pulling up in cheap cars in the staff car park. They were unloading books and walking towards the parts of the school that were used for evening classes. Funny how we kids think the school is ours, and ours only and will defend its name like old knights. In reality it was just a building, something to be used, even when we weren't there.

So I left the adults to their schoolwork and trudged more or less the same route that me and Lizzie might have taken a few nights (in fact decades) ago. The streets were very different; the cars, the noises, the plastic and glass; the thumping car stereos and the blustery passing of buses and big lorries. There seemed to be more people too.

I must have passed twenty people on my journey to where I thought the alley might be and not one of them talked.

I was right to be doubtful. The back-alley was gone. I got my bearings from another street opposite and mumbled stupidly to myself trying to work out where it was. Where it might have been there was now a garage that belonged to the house next to it, a garage with a corrugated blue door. I looked closer and saw that it was a new garage as the bricks were a rich red and the mortar between them grey.

Then, a suspicious face at the window.

I did have a hoodie on I suppose.

I was stumped. Everything was different now. All traces of the old alley and the houses that stood off it were gone. These new houses had been designed for a different time with different people who lived and behaved differently. Had different ideas. Like our street some things were still recognisable. Still something like they were. But you couldn't stop change, I suppose. And the change I saw around me, in buildings and on streets, only made me think about my own life and how I was changing.

So I returned home and sat and drank coca-cola whilst watching TV. I thought about the horror of the cupboard and the house that had once been. Even now I couldn't imagine the place simply torn down and smashed to dusty pieces by one of those big iron balls.

In my head the house had strained and wobbled to standing, shook itself down and lumbered, snarling defiantly, off to somewhere new.

Friday came. Everybody was excited. It was Where What You Like Day in aid of a local charity, and a lot of the girls came in fancy dress. Some of the older boys wore make-up and painted their nails. But I wasn't in the mood. I felt like a cloudy day and didn't want to bring any unwanted attention to myself. So I just wore my hoodie. Jeans. White trainers.

I was glad when the bell went for the end of the day, was glad to leave the chatter and the noise behind me, was happy to hear the shouts of boys and the screams of emotional girls recede into grey afternoon distance, was relieved and disappointed that I hadn't spoken to Beth or Kyle. But the further away from school I got, the happier I felt and, in the end, I rushed through the last of the elderly dog-walkers who were abandoning the streets to the oncoming crimson wave.

Older people I looked at long and hard now. I often wondered if one of them could be Lizzie. Surely she would recognise me. Would know where I lived if she still lived nearby.

That's if the D Word hadn't taken her.

On this Friday night Lizzie visited. Once again she sat near the end of my bed with her grey legs drawn together and hands placed on bony knees. I noticed that she was twisting and turning her Jesus Christ on the Cross anxiously with her right hand.

"You look sad," she said and then wiped her nose with her white handkerchief.

"Do I?"

"I wouldn't have said if I didn't think so."

"I s'pose."

The truth was that, deep down, I was sad. Things just weren't what they were a few months ago. Lizzie was waiting for me to talk, to explain why I was miserable. But I couldn't. I just sat up in my bed staring stupidly into space.

"You can tell me if you want," Lizzie said after a long silence.

I ran a hand through my hair. "I dunno, Lizzie. It's just things are changing and I can't stop them. I just want things back the way they were."

Then Lizzie smiled. It was a wise smile. A genuine smile. A smile that showed me that she understood. That she felt exactly the same. It was also a smile that knew that things could never be the same again.

"So do I, Jay," she whispered. "So do I".

I looked at her pale eyes and squinted in interest. Lizzie looked down at her grey shoes.

"Funny, I never thought I'd say this, but I want the war back." She looked looked up and caught my befuddled expression. "I mean, I don't want the fighting and the bombing back exactly. Well, not really. What I do want, more than anything, is my brother back and Mum and Dad to be the way they were. I know it sounds strange but I miss the air-raids and the nightly trips to the shelter. When Ernie was home the German bombs didn't seem to matter. We were all together. Pauline wasn't such a cow then neither and it seemed everybody was mucking in and sharing. At some point we all got fed up with traipsing down to the shelter. Dad couldn't get us out of bed. So he built an Anderson in the garden."

"Our garden," I corrected her.

"That's right, our garden". She paused then, soaking up the memory. "Yes, they were the best times. The siren would sound and up we'd get, all tired and crotchety, and walk down the garden and into the shelter. It was nippy in the winter but in the summer it was snug and warm. We'd have a candle in there and Dad would have already made a flask of tea and brought some broken biscuits."

Again Lizzie paused and was so deep in thought I was sure I caught the flicker of the shelter candle across her face and the taste of tea and broken biscuits on her lips.

"What did you do all night?"

"Well, we'd read a bit, try and sleep or Dad would sometimes read out loud or tell family stories".

"Family stories?"

"Yes. You know? Funny things that have happened from when Dad was small or when Mum and Dad were first married".

I felt like she wanted to tell me some so I asked if she could remember.

"Well," Lizzie replied, smoothing her skirt and making herself comfortable, "the funniest story is when Dad told us about what his younger brother, my Uncle Tom, got up to when they were small. He was a little swine apparently and was always misbehaving. Dad said that families couldn't afford proper holidays back then so any sort of break was good. Another member of the family had a little wooden chalet in the country that they used to let the rest of the family use. It was just a shack really. But sometimes it used to get cold and there was an old fire to keep everybody warm. So the story goes, one nippy afternoon Tom locked everybody in the shed and then stuffed the small chimney with grass. Tom let the chalet fill with smoke before he decided to let them all out." Lizzie chuckled and I couldn't help giggling as well. "Another time Tom pinched his Dad's motorbike and sidecar and drove it all over the place. Dad said he still remembers everybody chasing Tom and the motorbike around a field shouting and trying to stop him."

We both smiled and she stopped for a moment. Thought some more.

"What's a motorbike and sidecar?" I asked.

Lizzie frowned as she always did when something I said or did seemed strange to her. "It's a motorbike with a metal box with wheels attached to it for another passenger".

"Oh yeah. I've seen one."

"Then why ask?"

"Sorry".

"The funniest though is when I think about Uncle Tom shooting a bow and arrow through a newspaper and onto his Dad's nose."

"What?" I was a little shocked. "A real bow and arrow? Into his Dad's nose?"

Lizzie sniggered. "No, silly. It was one of those toy ones with the suckers on the end of the arrows." Lizzie brought her right hand up to imitate pulling back the string of the bow and the arrow. The left arm imitated holding the bow itself and she squinted her left eye to take imaginary aim. "He took careful aim at the newspaper, guessed where his Dad's nose would be and ping!! – bullseye!"

Lizzie laughed at the image. I did to. Uncle Tom's Dad slowly laying his ripped newspaper on his lap and the arrow stuck to his nose, still quivering. It was then that I saw a side of Lizzie that I had always known was there, a mischievous, naughty side that might one day get her into trouble. Like her Uncle Tom.

When the giggling stopped and the funny images blurred and disappeared I noticed Lizzie had become sad and thoughtful again. "Sometimes," she said looking up at me, "sometimes I know things will never be the same again. And that makes me sad."

I nodded. I knew what she meant.

The springs of Dad's bed squeaked as he turned over next door and I froze out of habit. Then I realised we were in our own little bubble of a bedroom.

"So", Lizzie said slapping her grey kneecaps, "what about this séance?"

"OK," I replied cautiously, "just tell me when and where."
Chapter 25

The Days Before the Séance – Part 2.

The supply teacher had had a tough lesson. Students were out of their seats and so many paper aeroplanes had been thrown it had seemed like the Battle of Britain. Eventually she got us sat down with a high pitched whine that might have been 'sit down or else you'll be here after three 'O'clock'. At least that's what we thought she'd said. But we couldn't take any chances so we sauntered reluctantly back to our seats.

Yep. You read this right. I was out of my seat. I was throwing the paper aeroplanes that thwacked me on the back of the head. They were coming right back where they came from. I was shouting and I was ignoring the teacher.

Yes, Jay, 'the geek' was misbehaving. Even I couldn't believe it.

It seemed like everything was changing.

When Mrs Prim or Flim or Skim or whatever had us all where she wanted she let rip. 'I've never seen such behaviour...I'm going to take your names...I shall report you all...' Usual teacher stuff. But we all sat quietly and listened because we wanted to go home.

We watched the wonky orange hands on the cheap white clock on the wall creep painfully slowly to three PM.

"...I shall be telephoning parents..."

Just a little longer.

"...don't think for a minute I won't...'

Nearly there.

"...send letters home..."

C'mon. Please, c'mon.

The bell rang like the greatest sound ever and we all charged for the door, every boy and girl to themselves.

Half term.

Finally half term.

Everyone was buzzing and excited. Two Year 10's, who I knew, had arranged to have a fight. They met on a patch of grass at the back of the school. But it was only a scuffle. Some words through gritted teeth. A push and a shove and it was all over. The small audience that had gathered moaned and groaned but there was no blood.

There were more pushes and shoves as the crimson hordes moved through the school gates and out into freedom. Mr Butler was on duty and nodded a farewell as I passed. I politely nodded back then looked around to make sure no one had seen. No one had.

I looked left and right for Kyle and Beth and caught sight of them both, through traffic and half term chaos.. But they were smiling with students I didn't recognise. So I turned away and headed home.

With nothing better to do I counted my footsteps until, once again, the noise of school faded away. I stopped and walked back six paces, the way I had come, to see if I could hear the shouts and screams of the kids again. But I couldn't. I just heard cars and the clickety-clack of a train and someone talking to a pet in a garden nearby.

"Did you enjoy them? Did you? Good girl! Good girl?"

It made me cringe.

The sun had come out and it was fairly warm for October. There was no wind. Only a few brown leaves. So it felt like spring. I really liked spring. The weather got better in spring. The nights got lighter and sleeves got shorter. I liked daffodils too, although I would never admit it. They were like a signal. A yellow sign that God was out and about with his paint brush and had started filling in the colour.

God again. Thinking about God. Like I had with Ms Murphy that day. I remember thinking that there wasn't a God because of what was happening to Mum. Then, thinking about God 'colouring in,' I wasn't so sure. Somebody was responsible, surely. So I stopped and shielded my eyes from the full power of this massive fire in the sky. A massive fire! Up there! In the sky! The more I thought about it the more I just didn't believe it.

To say I was confused was, what was it? An underestimate. No. An understatement. That's it! I mean, who made all this? How can all of this happen? And what if I wasn't here? Would it all just go on as normal? When Mum disappears, we'll have to carry on. The sun won't go out and the clouds stop moving just because my Mum has...

That word again.

The D Word.

But with it came that feeling. Once more the room and the bucket and I was trapped and somebody – something! – was beyond the door. Somebody or something I didn't want to see. Full of anger and hate.

"You will do as I say"'

Suddenly the sun hid behind a cloud as if even that great fire in the sky was afraid. I shook the image away by running home, my bag banging hard against my back. But it didn't go away. I was the prisoner being taunted. Being ordered not to escape. To do as I was told.

Or else!

And now a phrase, whispered so it wouldn't be heard, forced up through the prisoner's dry throat and cracked lips.

'...there's...something...beneath...'

I talked this over with Lizzie and told her what had been whispered. I told her that it seemed like someone was trying to tell me something. Tried to give me clues to where they were.

Quickly our eyes met then just as quickly they blinked away. We had just had the same thought.

I knew.

The house in the alley.
Chapter 26

The Séance

Lizzie came to collect me at midnight exactly on a windy Sunday night/Monday morning. She smiled her reassuring grey smile and held out her hand. Inside five minutes I was sat amongst the family in the now familiar kitchen in 1946.

The Raynors had dressed smartly for the occasion. Maureen had a green dress on, wide at the bottom, with a pair of brown shoes and heels. Pauline looked gorgeous in a cream jumper and black trousers. Albert wore a brown suit that had seen better days. All the girls wore a necklace and I noticed Maureen's cross for the first time.

Inside all was still and quiet.

But I knew the nets moved at the front room window, hiding the shadows moved beyond them.

Listening.

Albert was in a serious mood. His pipe had been stored away and he sat quietly looking at us, but not really at us. if that makes sense. His green eyes would peer into the kitchen towards the back door as if he expected someone else to arrive. It seems that my life was just getting freakier and freakier. It was getting all too much. I was just a kid, after all.

But I sat and waited, and Maureen, Pauline and Lizzie did the same. And if Albert was expecting someone, they never came. Eventually his green eyes rolled back in our direction.

"I don't like what we're about to do," he said slowly, "I don't fully understand the forces at work in the ether and it's dangerous." Albert paused and looked at us. One by one. "But I don't think we've got a choice. If Ernie's alive, I want him home where he belongs".

"So do I," said Lizzie.

Then he turned to me. "Jay, you must do as you are asked. Whatever you see or hear do not be alarmed. Just follow what I do. Do you understand?"

I nodded that I understood.

"Good". He looked at his wife. "Maureen dear, lead the way".

Maureen led the four of us through the sliding door and into what was once the front room as the front room as I knew it had undergone a strange transformation.

It was dark, that was for sure, and it reminded me of a haunted house Mum and Dad used to take me to at the local fairground. The fairground used to set up twice a year in a park not so far away from where we live. The haunted house was gloomy and full of luminous skeletons (or 'skelingtons', as Dad would say) and the odd severed head. There was insane laughing and a brushing against the face which could only have been a spider's web. This is what the Raynors' front room reminded me of now. The room smelt musty and as we moved inside I realised that there was a small lamp on in one corner, its glare smothered by a tea towel. Furniture had been moved and a table placed in the centre of the room, draped in a crisp white tablecloth.

As we took our places around the table I couldn't help glancing at the darker corners of the room. The places where things might be hiding. Waiting. Watching. I'm not sure if it was just nerves but I already had a sense of being watched and I wondered if this was down to my 'special powers'. I looked towards the window where things moved beyond but the nets at the window had been covered with a dark red blanket. This shut out any light and the sash windows were closed.

I suddenly felt very, very frightened.

I looked around for reassurance but it seemed that everyone felt the same as they avoided looking directly at me. All except Lizzie who gave me a limp smile. Even King Edward V looked sinister.

Albert tucked his chair in close to the table and we all copied him. A moment's silence then Albert coughed to clear his throat. He nodded then addressed us all quietly, softly, like folding tissue.

"We all know what we're here for, to find out where Ernie is, and to bring him home. But I've got to tell you all that this séance is the last resort. It's dangerous and who knows where it will lead. But we all know that our friend from the future here (Albert nodded towards me) seems to have been in some sort of contact with Ernie. We're not certain – nothing's certain in this life – but it would be an obvious assumption to make. The assumption is that Ernie is trying to tell us where he is." Again Albert looked around the table at us all, his head moving slowly and his green eyes shining like the beam from a lighthouse. "And believe me when I say that we will find him!"

Silence again after that. Pauline moved herself still closer to the table. She ran a hand down the back of her skirt to make sure it was flat against the chair. Maureen had closed her eyes in concentration or preparation or whatever. Lizzie looked straight at her Father.

And then it hit me. Seeing Lizzie looking at her Father with such a look of trust I suddenly realised just how much Lizzie believed her Dad. She believed him without question. Believed him when he said Ernie was still alive; believed that he, with my help, really would find her Brother; believed him when he said he would bring her Brother back home. This was another important difference between us all. I thought my Dad was a bit of a joke and I know most of my friends thought the same of their Dad's too. Somehow I couldn't picture Lizzie making fun of her Dad in the same way we did ours. Lizzie respected her parents and I respected her because she did. This bothered me. My Dad tried hard, he was funny and I'm sure he loved me and Mum. But life had chipped away at his edges and he wasn't the man he once was. When I was little. Then he was a smiling giant. Always right. Always there. Mum too.

But life was chipping away at that as well. Well, not life as such.

It was the D Word that was doing the chipping away.

"Righto," said Albert placing his hands on the table, "in for a penny..."

"...in for a pound," I said shakily.

Albert shot me a surprised 'do you still use that saying in your time' look before returning his focus to the table.

Pauline, straight-backed beside me, closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Annie? Are you there?"

Her voice cut through the gloom and the whispering silence like sharp scissors through paper and I glanced around the room to see the reaction of the others.

"Annie, darlin',"she asked the room again, "if you are present please make a knock or a noise or use your energy to let us all know that you have come through the ether."

"Who's Annie?" I whispered to Albert.

He leant towards me to keep his voice low. "It's Pauline's spirit guide. We've all got one. You should have one too."

This was news to me and I found this idea hard to get my head around.

But, in a strange sort of way, I liked it. It meant that you'd never be alone.

Pauline seemed to be finding it difficult to contact Annie. She huffed and puffed and became impatient but there was no sign of this so-called spirit guide.

"If there are any spirits in this room, anybody who would like to contact us, please do so now. Please answer yes or no."

Albert had closed his eyes and was deep in concentration. Maureen had her chin on her chest. Lizzie was looking at me and she nodded for me to do the same, to close my eyes and concentrate. I couldn't do it. I couldn't close my eyes all the way. I was too scared something would leap out at me from the dark corners. So I pretended, leaving my eyes half-open so I could still see what was going on. Through the blur of squinted eyes I saw that Lizzie was satisfied. She closed her own eyes and began to concentrate on whatever the others were concentrating on.

We all waited but nothing happened.

"If anybody from the other side would like to get in touch with any of us here," asked Pauline, "please let us know."

No answer. No yes's or no's and, as the seconds stretched on, I was convinced there wasn't going to be. So I closed my eyes.

All the way.

It was then that I felt the table move.

My eyes snapped open again and I looked suspiciously from Raynor to Raynor, all the time thinking 'c'mon you lot, stop messing about.' I realised there was no way anybody was moving, or wanted to move, that table. It was impossible that anybody was pushing it. I watched as the table wobbled and shook. I was completely fascinated. I couldn't take my eyes off it. It shook for a full minute but then the shaking stopped and I felt rather than heard Pauline take a deep breath of disappointment.

"Who is there?" she asked the space in front of her. "Who are you?"

The table didn't move.

"C'mon darlin', come through. Use our energy if you like. You can touch me. I don't mind. In fact, use any one of us".

I was startled at the thought of being touched by a spirit. But I didn't say anything.

There was no reply. Nothing.

I was kind of glad.

After a few more requests by Pauline the family began to stir and open their eyes. 'That's it,' I thought, 'game over.' Everybody looked frustrated and disappointed. Pauline thought for a moment then held up a hand for me to take.

"Don't worry", she said to me, "it doesn't mean anything".

And it didn't as Maureen had taken her other hand and Lizzie held onto Maureen's hand. Albert held out his hand for me to take (I felt a bit weird and uncomfortable holding Albert's hand and I thought I saw Lizzie smirk) and Lizzie took his other hand. So we were a circle and all holding hands.

"Somebody does want to get through," said Pauline to her Father, "I'm certain. I think they want to communicate through me".

Albert was stern. "Pauline, that's dangerous. You know it is."

Pauline shrugged and I felt her warm, smooth hand move in mine. "It'll be fine. I won't let any trouble makers in. Besides, we don't have a choice, Daddy, do we?"

"But we'll stop if it becomes too dangerous," said Albert sternly. "I'll make sure we do."

Pauline nodded.

Communicate through Pauline? Too dangerous? Trouble-makers? Somebody, something, wants to contact us? This was eerie territory. But I held onto Albert's hand and soon I forgot my embarrassment as Pauline gently spoke again.

"Who are you? Who is it? Who wants to speak?"

Three thumps. Feint. From one corner of the room. My heart scrambled up into my throat and I let go both hands to swing round to look towards the sound.

"Jay!" hissed Albert, "give us your hands".

With my heart banging in my chest like a trapped cannonball I slowly turned back around to hold hands again, always spying out of the corner of my eye.

"Who are you? Who is it? What do you want? Have you a message for us? I know you find it difficult darlin', but use our energy to come through the ether. That's it. Annie, if you're there, show them how if you can. That's it! That's it darlin'."

A pause for a moment but then my attention was caught by Albert. Like the others he had had his eyes closed and his chin had sagged to his chest. Suddenly his eyes opened and he looked towards his daughter. I could feel Pauline's grip tightening as if she was scared to let go.

Pauline eyes were still closed although now she didn't have a choice.

Something was keeping them closed for her.

Her pretty features seemed to have sagged as whatever had taken control of her eyes had taken control of her body. It was her mouth that showed us all that something had taken control. Her mouth was moving almost like she was whispering, but whispering at a hundred miles an hour. And in the darkness we could hear the soft whispers come from her and it reminded me of the voices I used to hear at night, in the darkness of my bedroom, back in my own time. The whispers became louder. Pauline's mouth worked harder and harder and I looked around at everybody looking wide-eyed at Pauline. It seemed to go on for a long time but then suddenly stopped and Pauline's head slumped forward onto her chest.

Then more strange sounds came from her. A grunt. Then a small laugh. A whine. I was about to say something to Albert when Pauline's head slowly came up again. Although her eyelids were still closed she stared blankly at the opposite wall.

"Hello?" she said.

The voice sounded so unlike Pauline that I looked to the corner where the thumps had come from just in case a stranger had got in and was now talking. My heart was set off again. I was fidgety and nervous.

"Hello?"

The voice coming from Pauline was deep and old and cracked. An old man's voice. A voice of authority.

"Well, answer me," it growled. "What do you want?"

We all looked to Albert to respond.

"We're looking for information." said Albert weakly. "We need to find..."

"Find, find, find", the voice boomed, cutting Albert off. "Who do you want to find?"

I've got to admit, I was petrified. The voice wasn't Pauline's and there was no way she could be putting it on and no way that it was coming from something recorded. The voice was a nasty voice. A cruel voice. And I didn't like it coming from Pauline.

Albert hesitated. He was uncertain.

"Well?" the voice insisted.

"My son. I'm looking for my son."

A cackling, gargling laugh in response and Pauline's head sagged forward again, her chin resting somewhere near her necklace.

Silence. The man inside Pauline had gone.

I was relieved. I held on tightly to Pauline's hand wondering what would happen next.

I didn't have to wait long. When Pauline's head came up this time it was sudden, making us all jump. I felt her shaking slightly and her hand became cooler, almost cold.

"Jim? Jim? Is thaat you Jim?" This time a woman's voice. Gentle. Concerned. A farmer's accent. A bit like Lizzie's. "Can 'e tell me if Jim's with 'e?"

Albert answered straight away this time as the voice did seem like she was genuinely looking for someone. "No, there's no Jim here. I'm sorry."

"Oh", the voice replied, disappointed, and I felt sorry for whoever it was. "On'y I've lost 'im see."

"Yes, I've lost my son. A man called Ernie Raynor."

"Oh!"

Then the voice faded away to wherever it came from and Pauline's head flopped forward again.

Then immediately came back up.

We heard from a twelve year old boy looking for his brother and a soldier wondering why it was suddenly dark and from someone who just cried. Boy or girl, we couldn't tell. I looked at the way Albert dealt with all this human misery and found a new kind of warmth for him. He didn't grow impatient or irritated. Didn't get angry or cross. He just answered the questions with kind understanding. I felt upset at all these people – D'd or alive I couldn't be sure – all searching for people they had lost or loved. Looking for answers. Explanations. Old friends. Relatives. Briefly we heard from a woman who had lived in our house not so long ago. I say 'lived' as she said she had taken a tumble down the stairs and laid on the hallway carpet for hours before she 'passed over'. That was sad and I looked towards Lizzie. 'Why had nobody come?' I thought. 'Where were her friends and relatives?' We never found out. Like the others the voice trailed away, disappearing back to wherever it came from like smoke on a windy day.

We would never look at that hall and the stairs in the same way again.

Suddenly, a flash. It passed in front of my eyes like a tree seen from a window of a car travelling at 100mph. I knew instantly what it was.

It was Ernie's little prison.

I must have looked shocked as Albert's hand tightened in mine. He leant towards me.

"Jay? What is it?"

"I felt...I mean...I saw something."

"Who? What?" Albert was hopeful.

"It was Ernie. I saw Ernie in his room."

Albert nodded. "Try again." Then he talked to everybody. "We must try again."

Another flash and I jumped. Then another. And another and another until my own eyes were closed and I was in Ernie's room. High up and in one corner. I was floating and Ernie sensed me. He was sat on his small bed. I saw him glance up towards the window with its bars and the tree outside before looking up at me. When he did his eyes opened. In surprise? In horror? I couldn't be sure. Both probably. I mean, I wasn't sure how I looked to him but I know how I would have reacted after suddenly seeing a boy, dressed from the 21st century, floating in one corner of my room.

I would have freaked.

But Ernie stayed calm. I guess he was used to the unusual. He was a Raynor after all

The conversation was weird and the sensation was dreamlike. Unreal. It reminded me of when I had been ill once, struggling up through the felt of a dream to where things were concrete and real, then sinking again, sinking, sinking, and becoming used to existing in floating soft focus.

Me and Ernie talked and our voices echoed as if we were talking through traffic cones. This is what we said.

Ernie – Who the hell are you?

Me – A friend. Quick we haven't got time.

Ernie – Have you come to get me out?

Me – Sort of. Ernie, you've got to tell me where you are.

Ernie – Righto! (he looked confused) I've got to tell you where I am?

Me – Yes.

Ernie – But what if I don't know.

Me – That might be problem.

Ernie – Well, I am a prisoner.

Me – Yes, I know...

Then suddenly I was back in the room in 1946 and Albert was staring right at me. He opened his mouth to speak but just as suddenly I was floating in Ernie's cell again.

Me – I'm not sure what's happening. We've gotta be quick. Have you any idea where you are?

Ernie – (thinking hard) The Germans handed us over to the Russians, I can't be sure... Is the war over?

Me – C'mon, Ernie, I'm fading.

Ernie – Well, we were moved east into Poland, I think. And I do remember passing a small town miles and miles away when they brought me here...

Albert. Looking at me. Holding a pencil. The pencil hovering over a bit of scrap paper...

Me – Quickly!

Ernie – It's hard to pronounce. Gro...gro...

...and that was it. I was back for good, slumped tiredly in my chair, watching Albert still holding the pencil over the little scrap of paper.
Chapter 27

Rosie in Prison

The séance didn't end there.

Before I had a chance to say anything the feeling came again. The feeling of lonely terror that I'd associated with the cupboard. It came on like a wave in a storm and I grabbed at my chest in panic.

"Jay?" said Albert dropping the pencil. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't speak. I was breathing heavily and was anxious that the séance had somehow set something off. There was the flash again. The tree again at 100mph. Whizzing by. Then I was in the cupboard with the bucket. The coats. The lamp. And I was sat almost on top of the girl locked in there.

There was a girl in there!

I didn't have much time to take her in before she saw me and her face turned into one of complete surprise. She screamed and scrambled as far away from me as possible, which wasn't far. Then she curled up into a frightened ball, covering her face with grubby hands.

"P...please go," she whimpered. "I h...haven't done any...anything wrong."

Again I had the sensation of floating, of being in a dream with the traffic cone echo.

"Don't be frightened," I found myself saying. "I can help."

Just quite how I would help I wasn't sure, but I know she needed it. The girl was younger than me and was dressed in the remains of a red dress. It was now filthy dirty and had been ripped and what had once been a frilly white neck now hung down off a thin piece of cotton. Her legs were smeared with the filth from the old carpet and floor. Although dirty hands and dirty nails still covered her face I could see her shoulder length brown hair was greasy and matted.

This is how the conversation went.

Me – Please tell me your name.

Girl – (was peeping through her fingers now, shaking)

Me – How long have you been here?

Girl – Don't know.

Me – Have you any idea where this is?

Girl – No! Now go away!

Me – I've been here before. There's a man keeping you in here, isn't there?

Girl – How do you know?

It seemed that I was gaining her trust as the gaps between her fingers had become wider and I could see her scared eyes. She had stopped shaking.

Me – I had a dream and I was you. I heard a man shouting at you. You were really scared.

Girl –

Me – What's your name?

Girl –

Me – C'mon, you must have a name.

Girl – 'osie.

Me – Parden?

Girl – Rosie.

Me – Rosie? That's a nice name.

Rosie –

Me – Have you any idea where you are Rosie?

Rosie – (shakes her head)

Me – Rosie, you need to give me some clue – any clue – to where this is.

Rosie – Are you a ghost?

Me – Sort of. But not really.

Rosie - How do I know you're telling the truth? How can you help?

Rosie's hands had now dropped to her chest showing me a face streaked with muck and grime. A small mouth and dark, tired and terrified eyes. I very quickly told Rosie what was happening but I don't think she understood. Then I was facing Albert again. I didn't have much experience at this sort of thing but I knew I didn't have much time.

A flash and I was back facing Rosie.

Rosie – Where did you go? What's happening?

Me – Rosie, listen. Have you any clue to where this house is?

Rosie – No, I...I...

Me – Rosie, you must give me a clue if you want to get out of here.

Rosie – Well, there's noises that come from underneath the floor.

Me – Noises?

Rosie – There's a big space underneath. I think I hear banging and humming and things moving about...and people talking...in a language I don't understand.

Albert...

Rosie...

Albert...
Chapter 28

Back to the House in the Alley.

"Well," asked Albert after I'd opened my eyes and felt well enough to talk, "what do we do about Rosie?"

I was thrown with how he knew who Rosie was. Then I guessed he must have heard me talk or something. Who knows what's possible with the Raynors.

"I don't know," I replied, breathing heavily. I didn't. Rosie could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world. But something nagged at me, my new 'special powers' probably, and I looked across the table at Lizzie.

"That house we saw that time. You know, the one in the alley."

Lizzie nodded.

"What's underneath?"

"Underneath?"

I looked to Albert now.

"Yes, underneath. Is there anything around that area? Anything underground?"

Albert didn't know which house I was going on about so Lizzie told him. Albert 'mmm'd' in thought and suggested, while he thought some more, that we should finish and get the sitting room 'ship-shape' again.

It was while he was taking down the blanket at the window that he suddenly remembered something. "There is a shelter nearby," he said slowly, laying the blanket on the back of the sofa.

"A shelter?"

"Yes. An air raid shelter. You know, to shelter from the bombs."

I knew.

"I suppose it's not used now. Not since the V2's stopped coming over." He looked thoughtfully at me. "Do you think she might be in there?"

I took a deep breath. "I don't know".

I did know that I had to do something. I didn't like the idea of going back to that house, and actually going in it was out of the question. But the image of this frightened little girl called Rosie trapped in a cupboard with a bucket haunted me and as the minutes went by and I thought about going home a feeling of guilt fussed about me like wasps round a bin. I took Lizzie to one side. She knew already what I was going to say. I described just what I had seen when I had been transported into Rosie's prison. Lizzie looked worried and anxious.

"We've got to do something. I can't just let her stay in their forever. Besides, there's someone – something \- evil on the other side of that cupboard door. If there's a chance she's in that house, and a chance we can get her out, then we've got to go and look."

Lizzie looked at me then. A strange look. A kind of look that I wasn't used to off of girls. It was a lingering sort of half-smile.

And it made my stomach burn and tumble.

I wasn't used to that either.

"I'll get your coat and hat," she said, then added, "And make up?"

I shook my head. I couldn't be bothered with all that now.

Lizzie smiled again. "It didn't suit you anyway".

Albert and Maureen protested but we ignored them and slipped out the back door. I felt bad about that. Pauline just sat sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Unconcerned. And I saw Lizzie's parents standing at the back door looking after us as we disappeared into the night. The long black coat flapped about me as we hurried along and the cap that I'd used as a disguise on our first trip kept slipping off and onto the cracked pavements and I had to keep stopping to pick it up.

It was dark and quiet but things hadn't changed much from last time. The ground underneath my feet was as uneven as before and I still didn't recognise any of the buildings. A black cat, inky dark like a full-stop, did cross our path at one point. It just stopped and glared. Not a good omen. Its eyes shining like, well, cats' eyes. Then in a single leap it disappeared over a crumbling garden wall. I was still unsure whether it was good or bad luck to have a black cat cross your path.

I decided it was good luck.

It didn't take long to reach the entrance to the back alley and already I was feeling the effects of the house. I had started to feel sick again and once I quietly gagged. I stopped and knelt down beside another back wall and stared ahead. The street light that I remembered had somehow triggered the whole experience last time was now dark and silent. But it was still sinister. I looked beyond the light and further down the back lane.

That's when I saw him.

A tall, shadow of a man with hands tucked into the pockets of a long black coat, wearing a hat, a hat that was slightly tipped to one side. A dark man, watching us both with a patient curiosity that meant he wasn't here by accident.

He meant to watch us. Had known we were going to be there.

As I watched him he quietly watched us.

I looked to Lizzie and whispered to her to kneel down beside me. When she did I told her who or what was watching and nodded in the direction of the mysterious man. But he'd gone. He had dissolved into the night in much the same way the cat had done.

Now I was unsure. "He was there!" I mumbled to Lizzie. "A man in a coat and a hat! I know he was." I couldn't see Lizzie's reaction in the darkness.

"The police?" she asked.

"I don't know what policemen look like in your time."

"Tall hats and a dark blue uniform?"

"Oh!" I answered, realising that not much had changed for the police. "No then. It wasn't a policeman."

I couldn't be sure but I dreaded discovery by the police as much as anything else. How would I explain my ghostly greyness and my time-travelling special powers to a policeman from 1946? Worse. If I was carted off to a police station how would I ever get home? I really didn't want to think about it.

Then Lizzie tugged at my long coat sleeve.

"C'mon! Let's get this done."

We stood up and moved further along the alley, over earth and stumbling stones until we were close to the house and I could see its old roof and its grey and cracked forehead. To me it had a forehead because this is how I remembered the house.

As a gnarled, cruel, ancient face.

Like a face you didn't want to see.

And, like a face you didn't want to see, I avoided its eyes. Those half-closed yet all-seeing eyes.

I felt terrible and was gagging and coughing, was almost sick. I ducked behind the garden wall. I just didn't want to look and, to be honest, I'm not sure I wanted to go near it. In fact there was probably no way I could without throwing up.

I couldn't let Lizzie go on her own.

Could I?

What would she think of me? Suddenly I was worried that Lizzie would see me for what I really was. Not someone 'special' with 'special powers' from the 21st century, but a geek and a coward who was unpopular and had no friends.

I needn't have worried.

"Are you feeling well enough to go in there?" Lizzie whispered, touching the sleeve of my overcoat.

I must have looked ill. Despite my grey face. I just about managed to shake my head before another wave of sickness and trapped terror came over me. That and a flash of the back of the cupboard door, coats, a bucket and a dim lamp bulb. The image quickly passed but the feeling stayed.

"You look terrible," said Lizzie (although I never bothered to ask how she figured that out). "You stay and keep a look out. I'll have a peek through the downstairs window. To see what I can see."

I grabbed Lizzie's small arm.

"No!" I garbled. "It's too dangerous."

"I'm not going in silly," she replied and brushed away my arm. "No fear of that, and make no mistake." She turned and looked around the corner of the garden wall, towards the house. "You just keep sentry and, if you see anything, shout like bloody hell".

That was funny. I even managed a bit of a smile.

Lizzie was about to move off when the street light that had been silently watching developments suddenly came on and flooded the area in a yellow light like old skin. We both grabbed at each other and watched together as the light spluttered and began to flash weakly on and off. On and off. Splutter splat. On and off.

We crouched, frightened and alarmed for a few more seconds before Lizzie made off. She motioned for me to back away from the light so nobody could see us.

"Besides," she added as she disappeared towards the house, "you look like you've seen a ghost!"

I meant to follow her but I couldn't, just couldn't. So I did as I was told and moved to safety back along the alley, out of sight of the peering eyes of the house and the pool of revealing lamplight.

So I was left alone. I don't mind telling you I was scared. Scared to death. I kept listening for Lizzie coming back but I heard nothing for a while, just the sounds of 1946. These sounds were completely different to the sounds heard on a night in the 21st century. I was hypnotised by the splutter splat, on and off of the back-alley light and couldn't help but stare at the spot where the man in the long coat had been. I stared as if expecting him back at any moment. He didn't come back and I kept thinking about what I would do if he did.

For the first time since I began this adventure to 1946 I started to wish I was home and warm and in bed. I started to wish that I'd never met Lizzie and her family and that I didn't have any 'special powers.' I wished that I'd never found out about Ernie and Rosie and heard the voices in the night. Several times I thought I saw the man in the coat and the hat in shadows some way off and I found myself squinting into the distance with those strange worm-like shapes that move in front of your eyes playing endless tricks on me.

A car passed, clunking noisily off into the distance, and I thought I saw the cat's eyes again. Then I realised I needed a wee.

"C'mon, Lizzie." Impatiently, urgently to myself.

"C'mon!"

Then I heard her. Stumbling over earth and stones towards me.

"Quickly, Jay!" she whispered loudly, almost shouted, as she reached me. "Run! RUN!"

I ran.

I didn't look back.

I ran thumping over loose brick and earth, using old walls as a guide, as support when I fell or for cover and for cornering. I leapt ditches and crooked drains, pieces of wood and what, in the dark, looked like a dead rats.

I ran.

Not looking back.

I clumped through stumps of stunted grass, kicked old cans from under my feet, avoided lights, strangers, cars and cats.

I ran.

I followed the little girl up ahead. In the distance. I followed her flapping coat and clapping shoes.

I never once took my eyes off her.

Breathing hard and trying to control my panic, I realised with a flood of relief that we were nearly home. Lizzie had already slowed down and I finally caught up with her. Side-by-side and not talking we jogged up the lane that led to the Raynors' back door. It was only when we reached it, when Lizzie had put her small thumb on the latch that worked the rusty lever, that I risked a glance back the dark way we had run.

I wish I hadn't.

For, stood at the far end of the back lane and framed by garden walls and slippery alley brick, was the shadowy man in the hat and the long coat.
Chapter 29

Grim Reality

We tumbled in through the back door, breathless and panting, all legs and pushing arms. Albert and Maureen were stood in front of us in no time.

"What's goin' on?" demanded Maureen. She looked cross and stern with hands on hips. "What 'ave you been up too?"

As we stood there struggling to get our breath back I noticed that Albert was angry too. He stood staring and scowling, his bottom lip quivering as he tried to control his temper.

But he said nothing.

As our breathing became easier we both knew that we were in Lizzie's parents' bad books. We gave each other a 'now we're in for it' sort of look.

"Well?" said Maureen again, "what have you got to say for yourselves?"

Albert turned to his wife. "It's fine, Maureen," he said, clearly, calmly, "I'll deal with this." He turned to his Daughter. "Lizzie, go with your Mother please."

In my time this request would have been followed by moans, groans and 'do I have too's?' and 'It's not fairs!' But the tone in Albert's voice left nothing to discuss and no room for debate.

Lizzie did as she was told.

When Mother and Daughter had gone into the front room Albert turned to me.

"Jay," he said in a low voice that made me fidget with shame, "I'm disappointed. I don't know what young people behave like in your time, but when you're here you do as you are told." Albert looked at me. His stare was as hard as flint. "Now, I think it's time you went home, young lad, don't you?"

I did.

"I'll let Lizzie know that you'll see her soon."

I took off the borrowed cap and shrugged off the coat, placing them on the kitchen table. I'd had never felt so ashamed in my whole short life. Never. Albert was such a kind, nice, gentle man.

I felt really, really guilty.

I made my sheepish way towards the hall and the stairs that led to the 21st century.

"Jay!"

I stopped and turned my head back towards Albert.

"Thank you for tonight."

"You're welcome, Mr Raynor," I replied, my heart lightening a little.

You're welcome?

Now that's something I wouldn't have been caught dead saying in my time.

The next day I couldn't get the séance out of my head.

I hung around the house dead-tired because of lack of sleep. Dad had woken me up with his usual noise in the kitchen as he got ready for work. It was then that I begin to think and, although I had the opportunity to go back to sleep, somehow I couldn't quite manage it.

There was a lot to keep me awake.

To begin with the voices that I had seen come from Pauline during the séance played on my mind. The desperate dead, if that's what they were, hunting for some sort of comfort and understanding. Picking through the crumbs of what they had once been. I didn't – couldn't – work out exactly what these people were or where they were coming from. Just where they existed, and how, I couldn't even begin to imagine.

Then there was that new sensation of floating in rooms and talking to people over long distances. When I remembered how Ernie looked when he first realised that there was something watching him I suddenly felt a rush of terror myself. I even sought out the far corners of my room just to make sure I didn't have an unwelcome visitor. It must have been weird for Ernie. Unlike Ernie, there was nothing in my room and I thought about how quickly he had recovered from the shock and how we had talked. I was still disappointed that I hadn't got a place name and I felt bad for the Raynors. I had become a real part of their family, had become fond of them and had almost come to see Lizzie and Pauline as the sisters I never had. That made Albert and Maureen some sort of parents and Ernie almost a Brother. So I felt their disappointment when I couldn't tell them where he was. When I closed my eyes I still saw that disappointment on the long face of Albert, sat at the séance table, pencil held in his hand, ready to write down any clues as I returned from my visit to Ernie's room.

It didn't happen and I felt bad.

Then there was Rosie.

How Rosie and the house in the alley had become important I simply didn't have a clue. I lay in my bed looking at the weak morning sun trying to find its way around my bedroom curtains and I thought of Rosie still trapped in the cupboard in 1946. Just for a moment I thought I already knew Rosie. She seemed familiar and I felt that I recognised her voice and sad eyes. But I knew that was impossible. The house, and probably Rosie too, were long gone. It was hard to imagine that the story of Rosie and the cupboard had come to an end way before I was born. The problem was I didn't know how it had ended. In my mind Rosie was still trapped and it was up to all of us to get her away from what was keeping her locked up in that dirty cupboard in that horrible place.

And the feeling – that I knew her from somewhere else – wouldn't go away.

Finally, there was the faceless stranger in the long coat and the hat. He had never strayed far away from any thoughts I might have had that morning. He lurked in the shadows of my mind in much the same way as he had done in 1946. Watching. Silently watching. Waiting. Thinking. Even though I couldn't see his face it did feel that he was looking at me now.

And somehow I thought I recognised him too.

Was this another burden of having these 'special powers'? Was this what a psychic or medium or fortune-teller or whatever had to put up with, the constant company of the whispering dead? If it was I didn't like the idea. I didn't want to be close to anything that felt so bad.

Because that's what I believed the man in the coat and hat to be.

Bad.

I got up at about nine 'o' clock. I realised that however hard I tried to forget about everything that had happened it only made it worse.

Somehow it all felt like a gathering storm.

I opened my curtains and watched the little specks of dust swim in the October sunlight through tired eyes. Like thinking about the man in the hat, rubbing my eyes only made them sore so I went downstairs into the kitchen and picked up the note that Dad had left for me on the kitchen work top. I read his scribbly handwriting, blinking away sleep.

Morning sunshine.

When U get up can you take some money

from the drawer in the front room and

get 2 pints of milk and a loaf of bread.

I want you 2 come and C Mum tonight.

She's missing you.

She'll probably be home soon.

We'll get fish n chips after

OK

See U bout 5

Dad
Chapter 30

The Last of St Mary's

The doubt came again.

That gnawing, nagging doubt.

What would I find left of Mum when I got to St Mary's hospital? I remembered the last visit and wanted her to be better.

I wanted that more than anything. More than Ernie home or Rosie released.

Does that seem selfish?

I don't care. I miss my Mum.

So it was the same dreary journey to the hospital. I watched the waiters and shop assistants and chefs; the bankers; the pub landlords and butchers; the taxi drivers, the bus drivers and teachers. I watched them all from the safety of my Dad's van. They were holding their coats closed against an autumn wind getting stronger and stronger. Hair was thrown about and out of hair bands and from underneath hats. Scarves unravelled. For everybody the route home was made faster and faster.

Before the rain came.

And it did come. Lightly at first, spitting down the windows of the van. Then it got harder, running down our backs as we sprinted for the hospital doors. The toes of one of my socks was suddenly damp and I realised there was a hole in my shoe.

All this and I hate hospitals.

I hate hospitals because the D Word lurks along corridors, lurks in rooms alive with pipes and the bleep of machines and the ghostly white of doctors and nurses. In fact, all these trained staff and expensive equipment and still the D Word sneaks up to take people away. For the first time my 'special powers' allowed me to 'feel' other things. I could 'feel' the strained emotions of the people still moving along the corridors and rooms of St Mary's.

The people that had passed over but found it hard to let go.

There were loads of them, wandering, grey, transparent shapes crying and moaning, all looking for help. For reasons why they were still where they were. I didn't like it one bit. Maybe that's why I never liked hospitals in the first place. I ignored them but they still sensed me and came my way. So I made the decision to huddle up inside my hoodie and I kept my eyes firmly on the floor.

Apart from this it seemed like nothing had changed since the last time I visited Mum. The smokers still gathered outside, the injured still hobbled by and the flowers were still on display outside the hospital shop. Still there were sad faces; the staircase; the clean smells and Karen the plump nurse.

"Hello trouble," she said, as she always did when I came to see Mum.

"Hello."

"She's expecting you," Karen said to Dad with a smile.

When we entered Waltham Ward I looked cautiously for Mum. When I saw her sat up in bed I looked for the old man. This was the old man who stared at me constantly whenever I was visiting Mum. Right now he was sat up, like Mum, smiling at me as I entered. He was dressed in blue piranhas, had thin and sharp features and a final wisp of grey hair stuck up and to one side.

He smiled on and on. Showing no teeth at all.

Madness. It seemed that everyone was smiling when there was nothing really to smile about.

I kept my distance and edged my way towards Mum. All the time I thought I recognised something familiar about the old man. You know, that something other than the way he looked. His personality or whatever.

That something beneath.

Curiously he seemed pleased to see me.

Mum was too.

I was glad to see that Mum's hair had grown a little and that her arms were covered. I was glad that she had put a tiny bit of weight on and, most important of all, that she was still smiling.

"Hello you," she said, then sat up further and gave me a much stronger cuddle than last time. She also smelt like my Mum used too.

Relief like a warm shower.

Although Mum was still very weak the 'cat' did seem to be back in her 'cats' eyes'. She asked me about school and stuff like that. She seemed disappointed when I said that Kyle didn't come round anymore.

"That's a shame," she said in a voice low and cracked. "What about Bethany?"

I said that she stayed away too.

"What have you done to upset them all?"

"Nothing."

Mum seemed to think about this a little and I wondered if Mum even remembered what Beth looked like. I mean, it had been ages since she had seen her. But Mum liked Bethany. I think it was because of where she lived and the way she looked and sounded. You know, posh.

Mum coughed weakly. Then, as sure as kittens is kittens, she said, "That's a shame too. I liked Bethany. Oh well. Never mind."

In a way Mum was right. I felt lonely. Not just lonely for company but I was carrying this secret – this massive secret – that I couldn't share with anyone here in my time.

It was a huge burden.

We carried on making small talk. Just for a second I thought about telling Mum about Lizzie and 1946. Crazy, I know, but it almost came out. Mum was like me. She'd understand and maybe even want to meet Lizzie. Even her parents. That sounded too much like marriage and it was at that point that I decided against telling Mum. If I told Mum about travelling through time I would have to tell her everything. And that included telling her about the Raynors' 'special powers.' And my own. That would have sounded just too mad. They'd lock me up behind rusty doors, I was sure.

So I didn't say anything.

I just talked about football and what I was doing over half-term, which wasn't much. I kept glancing towards the smiling old man in the bed opposite.

He was more interested than ever.

Dad had gone to talk to Karen the nurse. I chanced another sly look towards the grinning old man, then Dad started to make his way back. He noticed that I was looking in his direction so he motioned to me to come over with a flap of his hand.

"Mum, Dad wants me a minute."

"OK darling."

I smiled. That sounded familiar. Then I walked quickly over to Dad, my trainers squeaking then squelching on the tiled floor, keeping as far away from the old man as possible.

Dad gently took my arm.

"Jay, me and Karen would like a talk with you. OK?"

"Yeah. Course."

"In the nurses' office. Alright?"

"Yep."

So Dad led the way in through an open door and into a small room. I suddenly felt worried. Dad hadn't sounded right. His voice had sounded shaky and fragile. Like it was about to break.

I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

The room had a couple of computers on desks that were shoved against three walls. On these desks were lots of bits of paper, some loose, some stapled or held together by paper clips. The walls were also dotted with bits of paper. Notices. Reminders. Pushed back from the desks were two swivel chairs but scattered about the room were some wooden ones and in one sat Karen the nurse.

Karen was smiling. But it wasn't a happy smile, a welcoming smile or a 'good to see you' smile. It wasn't a crazy smile or a cheery smile or a smile of delight. I'd seen this kind of smile on the faces of lots of people. Almost all of them here at St Mary's.

It was a sympathetic smile.

A smile of pity.

I liked this less and less and my heart was banging to get out again. Karen motioned for me to sit next to her and she collected up some magazines from the chair that she wanted me to sit on. She placed the magazines on a nearby desk. I still remember the top one. It was Country Life. Why I remember this, I just can't tell you, because I don't know.

Strange some of the silly things that you remember.

That I knew something was coming is not what I mean. I didn't know exactly what was going to be said. My 'special powers' aren't that good. But all the signs pointed to bad news. The room was heavy with it, like boiling clouds before a summer storm. All I could do was sit on the soft seat of the wooden chair, the one next to Karen the nurse. The one that she had gently patted.

So I sat. Sat and stared at the cover of Country Life which was just away a bit, on the desk where Karen had carefully placed it, and wondered what was going to be said. I heard Dad close the door of the room and pull up a chair close by.

It was Karen who spoke first.

"Jay, me and your Dad," she said softly beside me, "me and your Dad have had a chat and we both think you should know something about your Mum."

A pause. I could hear Dad's breathing.

"Well, there's no easy way to say this Jay, so I'll say it. Me and your Dad want you to know that your Mum...well... your Mum is... is dying."

There it was. Out at last. The dreaded D Word.

All I saw was Country Life.

There were fidgety, shuffling noises from Dad and I knew that they were both exchanging glances. I didn't look up from the cover of Country Life.

When Dad spoke his voice was shaky and still fragile. "Jay? Do you understand? You Mum...is going...is going to die."

There it was again.

More time passed then Karen spoke. "I know this must be hard for you Jay, but is there anything you'd like to say?"

There was nothing to be said. The words your Mum is dying hadn't yet sunk in. It was like I had a deflector shield around me, like the space ships in sci-fi films, and the words your Mum is dying were just bounced away.

"Jay?" said Dad again.

I shook my head at Country Life.

"No!" I said clearly. "No, I've got nothing to say."

"There's something else," continued Karen. "Your Dad also wanted you to know that your Mum is coming home soon. In fact she's going to be home with you the day after tomorrow."

A bit of good news, but it felt like an hour's sunshine in a winter of rain. Then a question – an important question – popped into my head like money into a slot machine.

"How long..." I said, fumbling with the words, "...how long... has she...got...?"

"Two weeks," replied the nurse.

Two weeks.

I kept my eyes on Country Life like I expected it to move. I didn't want to look at Karen and I definitely didn't want to look at Dad. He would have red rimmed eyes from crying. I could tell.

After a while I said, "Is that everything?"

"Yes. Yes it is," said Karen.

"Then can I go back to my Mum?"

"Yes. Yes of course."

"After all, we haven't got long left."

So I got up, opened the door of the little room and said goodbye to a part of my life I left in there amongst the paper clips, notices and odds bits of furniture. I went and sat beside my Mum who smiled a weak smile. I looked for the mad old man and he was still smiling too.

Still all these smiles with all this bad news. How can they keep smiling knowing what they know?

Then I got it. Got it like I had been run over by a high-speed train.

Death is scary, but - what's the word? - it's...it's inevitable. That's it! It's inevitable. You can't stop it. It's a part of life. You've just got to accept it and roll with it.

Simple really.

So I smiled.

Yep. I smiled right back.
Chapter 31

Autumn

Later we sat in the hospital café. Dad slurped from a mug of tea as I sipped from a can of coke and I remembered the pretty daughter and the old man that I'd seen comforting each other in this very spot. It felt so long ago now. So long ago and so weird. Now here we were, my Dad and I, going through the same ritual in more or less the same circumstances. I glanced around just to make sure nobody was near. That nobody was listening because of morbid curiosity. But there was no-one.

Strangely, Dad was in a good mood. He was talking about doing this and that with Mum when she got home and I remember thinking that Mum was very ill and dying and that lots of the things he suggested just wouldn't happen. Although Dad seemed better now - relieved that the news was out - I knew he was kidding himself. Mum wouldn't be able to go very far at all. In fact, the back garden would be about it.

Still, I nodded and drank my Coca-Cola but all the time the pennies were dropping further into the belly of the machine and I thought on and on about what had been said in the little office on Waltham Ward.

Although we chatted about Mum and how Dad still planned to take his 'holiday' from work, we drove back through weather that suited our real mood – drizzly grey and windy. When I got home I went straight to my room and lay on my back on my bed. I stared blankly up at the faded white paint of my bedroom ceiling. I tried to imagine a life without Mum and how some things would never, ever be the same again. Good times jostled to show themselves like a queue to get in somewhere. There were so many that I couldn't settle on any one in particular.

Then this thought. The thought that, after Mum had gone, never again would I call a person 'Mum.'

This thought cut through the good times. Put a match to them. Closed the doors on the queue.

That's when I buried my head in my pillow and cried.

Much later I tip-toed downstairs where I found Dad asleep in front of the television. There were several empty cans of lager on the carpet and an empty bottle of wine. I turned the telly off but left a lamp on for when he woke up. I looked at Dad for a bit from the doorway and tried to imagine how he looked when he was younger. Not with the help of old photographs, but how he really looked when he first met Mum that day in the pub. I tried to imagine if they looked at each other in the way that two people do when they first meet and like each other. I tried to imagine if Dad ever thought things would end up the way they have.

Probably not.

So I made a peanut butter sandwich, poured myself a glass of milk and went back to bed.

But I couldn't sleep.

I kept hearing the wind at the window and, thinking it was Lizzie, I sat up in my piranhas like an expectant dog wanting its dinner. Only it wasn't Lizzie. It was just the wind.

Every time I thought of Mum I felt the tears start. So, needing to keep thoughts of Mum away, I turned out my bedroom lights and went to the window and pulled back the curtains. There were streaks of rain across the window so I got down on my knees and peered out onto the dark street below.

Unlike in 1946 there was street lighting on either side of our road. I could see that it was raining only by looking directly at the yellow lamps, rocking slightly in the strong wind. Only then could I see the long lines of rain coming down. All was quiet and dark. Houses opposite had their curtains drawn against autumn and I could see the dim glow of lights in front rooms and bedrooms. I wondered what people were doing behind them. Eating late night snacks and watching telly probably. I kept comparing our street to how it was in 1946, with its rough pavements and bomb damage. Things had changed.

Change.

I thought about that word. Six letters that mean so much.

Change.

I thought about the word some more then I came to the conclusion that the word itself didn't really get to the bottom of what it's trying to describe. I mean, change is - what's the word I used at the hospital? - inevitable. That's right? Isn't it? Like summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. You can't stop change. Not one bit. I remembered how flummoxed I was when I saw all those smiles earlier in the day. I realised now that there are some people who know that after bad times come good times. There is pain and pleasure. Happy and sad. Life and death.

Life and death.

That was it. Some people just had it all sussed out and they know that you can't stop the inevitable. People like Mr Butler, the Raynors, the old man in the hospital. My Mum. They just kept smiling and carrying on.

I saw my own reflection in the rain soaked window and found that I was smiling. Why, when I should have been crying, I can't tell you. But for the moment it felt good.

It was just for a moment.

Because that's when I saw the man in the long coat and the hat.

He was stood with his hands in his coat pockets a little way along and in the shadows on the opposite side of the street.

He was looking straight up at me.

I leapt to my feet and away from the window in terror and closed the curtains against him.

For a long time I paced my room with my heart racing, not knowing what to do. With all my lights on I thought about going down to Dad. But what would I say? He wouldn't understand and he had too much to worry about anyway. So I carried on worrying and fretting.

At last I plucked up enough courage to turn out the lights and to take a peek through a crack in my bedroom curtains made with shaking hands.

When I did I found that he had gone.

Still I couldn't sleep. I tried to contact Lizzie by closing my eyes, concentrating hard and sending some sort of silent message to her. It didn't work. No-one came so I was left alone and frightened. I spent a lot of time at the window, peering out into the night, to see if the man in the coat and hat had reappeared. The rest of the time I spent tossing and turning in bed and jumping at the tinniest of sounds.

Although I didn't see the man in the hat, when I eventually managed to struggle into some sort of restless doze, he was there waiting, in my dreams. I saw him silently walking towards me with hands tucked deep into his coat pockets. He walked like he was in no hurry. It seemed like whatever I did he knew I couldn't get away. As he drew nearer I realised that his hat, always slightly tipped to one side, created a deep shadow that hid his features. All I could see was blackness. Black like tar or tyres. On he came, nearer and nearer. And of course I couldn't run. If I tried there was that sensation of running in slow motion through mud and when I knew it was no use he drew closer and towered above me. Still his face was covered in that deep and dark midnight shadow that showed me nothing and gave no clues.

He stopped and I smelt something decaying. Left to rot. Like chicken left in a bin during summer. I gagged. And as I gagged he spoke. Spoke with low, thick long words that took time to come out like gloopy oil.

"You haven't visited lately."

I couldn't answer but he spoke as if I had.

"He's dead of course."

Through my horror I wondered who was dead. Then, strangely, I thought I recognised his voice.

"Who?" said the man in shadow, beginning to answer his own question. "Ernie, that's who. He's dead, killed ...with a single, sharp stab through the eye. It was..." and he coughed to clear his throat, "...the only way."

I still couldn't answer but I still felt the terror. He bent down and still I saw no nose, no eyes, lips, teeth. But the smell of cheap aftershave replaced the waft of rotting dead things.

I was sure I recognised his voice but it was disguised like the sound on a film in slow motion.

"Rosie?"

I hadn't asked about Rosie.

"What about the little wretch? She was snooping so...we locked her away where nobody can find her. Those beneath... will take her young life too. When it's time!"

The dark blob of a face moved ever closer and I fell in. Falling. Tumbling ever downwards. And as I fell he spoke. Closer than ever.

"You'll be next. You. And that girl. We'll keep you so the secret won't get out."

And at last this horribly familiar voice grew weaker. Fainter. Until it was heard as if over fields at night.

"Their secret...must not...be discovered. Not long...now..."

When I woke it was morning. My bedclothes were in a heap beside me and I was drenched in sweat.

And over me, wiping her nose nervously with her handkerchief, stood the grey shape of Elizabeth Raynor.
Chapter 32

What We Both Saw and Heard

"What was that?" said Lizzie

"What was what?"

"You said something. What was it?"

I sat up in bed amongst my heap of bedclothes and tried hard to remember. Then I saw the face of Ernie Raynor and his mouth was moving silently. I tried to repeat what he was trying to tell me. My mouth flapped like a goldfish. Slowly, like mist clearing, words started to form.

"Gr...gr...gr..."

Lizzie's grey and white eyes widened. "Jay? Are you not well? Is something wrong?"

"Gr...Gros..."

"Jay?"

"Gross tichow," was suddenly spat out towards Lizzie. The words were fading fast. I don't know why, and Ernie had disappeared from my mind's eye, so I found a blunt pencil and tried to spell the word out on the back of an old birthday card. I spelt it like this:

gros ticow

poland

When I'd finished, Lizzie sat on my bed and looked at the piece of white card. Then she looked at me.

"I've got a weird feeling this is important," I said and I told her what I'd seen.

"I don't understand," said Lizzie. "A man in a hat and cloak and a place we can't pronounce!" A pause as she thought it through. "Unless..."

Lizzie grabbed the card and jumped to her feet.

"I'm just going to 1946. Won't be a tick."

When Lizzie returned we talked about my dream and the familiar man in the hat and coat. I was getting used to dreaming now but it didn't make what I'd experienced earlier any easier. I told Lizzie what I dreamed he'd said about Rosie and us. But I left out the bit about Ernie.

I just couldn't tell her. Besides, there was no proof that he was dead.

Not yet.

Lizzie was instantly on edge.

"We have to be careful," she said, looking around the room suspiciously. "You saw at the séance how nasty the dead can get when they don't get their own way. I don't like it. It seems like you're being followed by this man in the hat."

"Yeah, you're right," I agreed. "We have to be careful. But if Rosie is in that house I want to get her out."

Lizzie was sparked into conversation as she remembered something. "I've been meaning to talk to you about what I saw and heard the night we went to the spooky house."

"OK."

"Well, after I left you I crept up to the bottom windows and peered in. There were people in the house because there were lights on but I couldn't see anybody in any of the rooms. So I decided to go round the side of the house. There were a few bushes and weeds there but I managed it. There was a window open. When I looked in I saw that it was the kitchen. And that's when I saw the men in suits. Right posh looking they were, sat around the kitchen in ties and hats. All cross-legged and smoking.

"Ciggies?"

"No. Cigarettes."

"Oh!"

I thought about this.

"But is that unusual?"

"Unusual?"

"Yeah. I mean, I know they were wearing posh suits," I said, "but men sat around smoking? There's quite a bit of that about I reckon, despite the smoking ban."

"Smoking ban?"

"Never mind. Do you get what I'm trying to say?"

"Sort of," frowned Lizzie. "But the smoking and the suits aren't the real reason I'm telling you this. It was what they were saying."

"What were they saying?" I asked.

"I don't know. They were talking like foreigners."

"What type of foreigners?"

"Well, I'm not sure," squirmed Lizzie, thinking hard, "and I've only heard it on the wireless, but... I reckon...it was, well, German."

Lizzie went on to tell me how she watched them smoking and talking and laughing in the kitchen of the house in the alley. How they all spoke in German. How the few Germans in her area had been rounded up and put to work in camps years ago, at the outbreak of war.

So having Germans in Lizzie's neighbourhood in 1946 was very unusual.

"There was something else I remember. When they were talking I heard one of them say the word Fuh-rer."

I'd heard that and I knew it meant something bad. I frowned. Lizzie must have seen me thinking and tried to explain. "Well, the Jerries called Adolf Hitler 'The Fuhrer' during the war."

This made sense. Mr Butler had explained all this in history and I knew who the 'Jerries' were. "Maybe all the Germans have been released now," I said in explanation, "and are all coming back. The war is over isn't it?"

Lizzie considered this. "Yes, but...but it just didn't make any sense."

A pause.

"But what scared you so much?" I asked Lizzie. "You still haven't told me."

"Well, I'm stood on tippy-toe watching these Jerries smoking and talking when I slip and give a little squeak of surprise. Before I can count a second one of the men has grabbed my hand, the one that's still holding onto the window ledge. It was the hand of an old man. A man all veiny and yellow. He had big gold rings on and hard nails. He was strong. Look!" Lizzie showed me the red marks that were still clear on one of her wrists. "I struggled and squirmed but the man still held on and was shouting in German. I don't know how, but I managed to get free and I scrambled across the weeds and bricks back to you. All I could hear was 'Halt! Halt!' and all I could think of was to get away and to get to you and back home." She looked up at me and those little black eyes reminded of a hurt and lost puppy. "I thought I was going to be captured by the Germans."

I got out of bed and stood up stiffly in my piranhas.

"There's nothing else for it. We've got to rescue Rosie, and soon. Lizzie, we need a plan!"
Chapter 33

Rescuing Rosie

So that night we sat and planned how we'd rescue Rosie from her prison.

We needed to be quick. Like Ernie, I'd stopped dreaming of Rosie and I was a bit worried that we were too late. I was worried that the man in the hat and coat had already done what he'd said he'd do.

We had no time to lose.

"Hang on! Why don't we just go to the 1946 police?" I asked.

Lizzie explained that the Raynors had a reputation in the area for being different. Weird. Almost witch-like. She said at school she was regularly called 'Gypsy' and that some of the kids would ask where her broom was or her cat. Once, some cruel girls had threatened to put her head down the toilet pan to prove if she was a witch. I was completely sorry for her and I knew how she felt. I told Lizzie my problems, being called a 'geek' (I had to explain this) and, lately, trying to fit in by throwing paper aeroplanes around the classroom and trying to be cool. It wasn't the Jay I knew and Lizzie told me off for it

"Dad says it's weak if you do what everybody else is doing. That's how the Nazis started and then the war."

I didn't know what she meant exactly. When I said I could have helped by doing nothing and ignoring what was going on around me, Lizzie had to make a point.

"No! That's not enough. You can't just sit and do nothing. You have to do something. You have to help'.

And I remembered the first words I'd heard Lizzie speak. The words 'help us,' way back in my dreams. And I realised that I had helped, that I was doing something now.

To help.

For the first time in a long while I felt a rush of pride and it flooded my system like the sugar of twenty bars of chocolate.

Chock-full of fresh confidence it was a good time to plan an escape.

One of the main problems was how to rescue Rosie and not get anybody else involved. It was tricky and meant a lot of thinking, but we managed a rough plan. It was jotted down on the other half of the old birthday card.

1-late at night j to knock at door of house and pretend to be a ghost

2-the germans run away scard

3-we find rosi and escape

Was this too simple? Often the best ideas are the simplest and, after two hours, it was all we had. I was tired.

The daring raid was planned for the night after next. Lizzie left for the stairs and 1946 and I tried to get to sleep.

I couldn't.

I didn't.

And I didn't dream.

Mum came home at dinnertime the next day. She was brought home in an ambulance and Dad was waiting for her on the doorstep. I watched from the front room window as she got stiffly out of the ambulance and gave Dad a hug. Then Dad and the ambulance man helped Mum in through the front door where she saw me and opened her arms.

"Hello you."

"Hello Mum."

She held me weakly for a bit then mumbled something about 'a sit down' and wobbled into the front room and collapsed on the sofa.

"Put the kettle on," she said as if she'd only popped down the shops.

Dad told me to go out and get her bags and then the ambulance man waved us all goodbye and that was that. Mum was home.

We sat and talked. Mum looked pale and frail but her hair had grown some more which was good.

"It's sooo good to be home," she said, stretching her slippered feet out. "And it's tidy too!" Mum was looking around.

So we all had a cup of tea and Dad brought in some chocolate biscuits but Mum wasn't hungry. Mum explained how the staff at the hospital gave her a good send off, buying her flowers and things.

"I'll miss the people," she told us, "but I won't miss St Mary's."

"Neither will we!" said me and Dad at the same time.

We all laughed.

Later I went to my room but then crept out to the top of the stairs and listened to Mum and Dad talking in the front room. Their voices rumbled on. Comforting. Familiar. It was great having Mum home. It would mean that Dad wouldn't be out most nights and I wouldn't have to go to that horrible hospital again.

But I didn't like what lay ahead for all of us. It felt like thunder in the distance. Still way off but always there. Lurking and threatening, getting ready to get louder.

And I still didn't understand what, actually, was going to happen. I knew that Mum was going to die but I hadn't experienced death before. What happened and how will people react? How would I react when the time comes? What would we do when Mum isn't around anymore?

No. I didn't have a clue and I didn't want to think about it. Dad had sat me down and talked to me about how we should be around Mum, but all he'd said was 'just enjoy the time' and 'try and act normal'. How could we act normal? What was 'normal' anyway? I just didn't know anymore.

It felt like I was growing up.

It was going to be tough.

I was pacing up and down the faded green carpet of my bedroom when Lizzie arrived. She didn't bother to climb all the way up the stairs from 1946. Half way up Lizzie just held out her hand for me to take.

"C'mon. We can't waste another second."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"I'll tell you in a minute."

As Lizzie led me down the stairs and into her time I couldn't help but think about the old woman who had spoken through Pauline during the séance. The woman that had lain at the bottom of the stairs until somebody had found her. I thought I saw her lying there but her figure was so vague that I couldn't be sure. Then Lizzie started to talk and the image vanished. She told me that the area near the old house had been fenced off and signs put up.

"What do they say?"

"Don't know," Lizzie answered. "Haven't been close enough to read them."

I frowned at her and Lizzie looked at the floor guiltily. "I'm scared of that place. It gives me the willies."

"I know how you feel," I answered. And I did. The place gave me the willies too.

We were at the bottom of her stairs and nearly into the kitchen when I grabbed Lizzie's thin arm. "What have you told your Mum and Dad?"

"Mum's out visiting Gran, and she'll be back soon, but Dad...Dad's..."

Something was wrong.

"What's wrong, Lizzie? What's wrong with Albert?"

There were little pools of tears in her eyes now. She wiped them away quickly. "He's gone to fetch Ernie, Jay. I showed him that bit of paper with the names on from your dream. Like you said it's in Poland or somewhere and Dad seemed to feel it was a message somehow and that Ernie is alive and being kept a prisoner. He just packed a bag, kissed us all goodbye...and left."

Lizzie's head dropped as she remembered the scene.

"Just...left?" I repeated, finding it hard to believe that Albert came to this decision so soon.

Lizzie nodded at the floor.

I felt embarrassed doing it but I placed one of my grey hands on Lizzie's back and patted her softly.

"Lizzie, it'll be OK." For a second Albert's sudden decision made sense. "He might just find him. Now I know that all this was meant to happen."

"But it's dangerous," Lizzie said sharply. "He'll get hurt or killed."

"The war's over isn't it? Yes? He'll be fine."

I was proud of my job at reassuring Lizzie as her head lifted. But I was conscious that my hand was still resting on Lizzie's back. I took it off.

"Right," started Lizzie with a sniff. She was back in the here and now, "I think it's better that Mum doesn't know you're here. You're going to have to hide in the toilet until it's time to go I'm afraid."

I wrinkled my nose. I knew that all houses like Lizzie's only had an outside toilet. It was cold and I'd seen that they used old newspaper for toilet roll. Now it was Lizzie's turn to look embarrassed. It was almost like she knew what I was thinking.

Living in Shad Hill I remembered Beth and how she sometimes made me feel. I once overheard her saying that 'even rats wear tin hats on Shad Hill.' So I decided to make it clear to Lizzie that it was OK and that it didn't matter.

"Righteo!" she said, shrugging in reply. But I knew it did matter. That she'd seen the luxuries of the 21st century and felt like a poor relative. Like someone from the third world.

I felt really, really guilty.

Lizzie led me through the familiar kitchen where I put on the hat and coat and then followed her out into the back yard. It was dark already and I felt as well as heard the difference of decades. In the gloom Lizzie used the latch to open the wooden door of the outside toilet. It was cold, with bare plastered walls. Hung up on one of them was a tin bath. And there was the newspaper. It was hanging from and old piece of wire attached to a rusty cistern dripping with moisture.

"Why can't we go to the house now?" I asked Lizzie

I was making things worse but I didn't want to spend an hour or so in there.

"We can't go now, Jay. There's too many people around."

"I suppose so."

I had no choice but to make myself comfortable on the toilet in the outside lavatory and listen to the sounds of a 1946 evening through damp walls. Luckily the hat and coat helped keep me warm. The drip of water in the cistern made me think of the ticking of a clock and how precious seconds slip away. Time was everything it seemed. Time was the circus master. The boss. The big man. Time made everybody and everything dance to the old tune he played.

And you can't help but listen because the tune is played for you.

I liked that. I planned to write it down.

There were other noises while I waited. There was the hoot of a steam train in the distance; an old aeroplane passing overhead; someone shouting; again the odd car, all grinding and gears. Then I thought of Albert and how he just 'made off'. Because of what? Because of something a teenage boy from the 21st century had seen? I felt bad then. What if I'd got it all wrong? But something inside of me told me it wasn't wrong. Anyway, if I was right about Rosie then I'd probably be right about Ernie too.

We'd soon see.

In the shadows of the outside toilet I crossed my grey fingers.

Lizzie had mentioned her 'Gran.' I began to wonder what her gran was like, how old she was, was she married, that sort of thing. I worked out that she would probably have been alive during The Great War. That was incredible! It was still hard to believe that I was actually in 1946. If I wasn't sure this wasn't a dream, I'd be certain it was.

Lizzie took an age to come back but when she did she was in a hurry. "Quick! Mum's coming back. It's now or never."

So not for the first time we set off out of the garden gate and up the back lane towards the house where we thought Rosie was being kept prisoner by the Germans.

We didn't meet anybody on our journey except for the black cat. I started to think that this was more than just coincidence. I didn't say anything to Lizzie.

As we drew nearer the house I started to feel ill. Lizzie felt it too, but it didn't seem as powerful as the feeling I had. I felt dizzy, sick and the feeling of terror – and of being trapped – crashed in on me like a bomb through a roof.

"How are you feeling?" asked Lizzie.

"Not so good," I answered, "but I'll be OK."

We turned into the back alley and I glanced back to see the black cats' eyes glisten brightly in the dark distance, carefully watching. Always watching. Soon we had to duck down behind the crumbling wall that surrounded the old house.

I swallowed hard. I was feeling terrible. "OK," I whispered to Lizzie, "what, exactly, is the plan?"

Lizzie thought about this. "Well...um...you pretend to be a ghost and...um...frighten 'em off."

"Well, yeah, but how do I do that? Just flap my arms about like a chicken trying to fly?"

"S'pose so."

I was nervous and agitated. "Yeah, like that's going to work."

I saw Lizzie's bottom lip come out and her face start to show signs of a mood.

"Why do you talk to me like that?" she said and folded her arms across her chest.

I sighed. "Look, we need a slightly better plan than that one. OK?"

Lizzie was still looking hard at the rubble of the alley floor. "If you're so smart, you think of a plan!"

So I thought and an answer came quicker than I'd expected. "Right. Lizzie? Are you listening? OK? Good. You go up to the house and knock on the door. When somebody answers you tell them that you're being followed and you need help. Tell them you think it's some sort of ghost. When whoever has answered the door comes out, I'll appear and I'll try and draw them off." Lizzie was looking at me blankly. "You know, lead them away, get them to follow me. That might give you time to get inside and find where Rosie is."

"What if they won't let me in? And what about if there's a lock on Rosie's door?" Lizzie looked suddenly terrified. "What if I can't even find her?"

She was right. Maybe this was a bad idea. But the dreams, visions and the awful feelings I had wouldn't let me just walk away. I needed to sleep without waking up feeling I hadn't. And besides, like Lizzie and her Dad had said, we needed to help and not just ignore stuff, hoping that it would disappear.

"Well," I replied after some thought, "if you can't find anything in there make your excuses and leave."

"Oh well," said Lizzie getting to her feet, "here goes then." She brushed herself down and straightened up. "Ready Mr Ghost?"

Suddenly I admired her. Admired her bravery. She was going to give it a go. Lots of boys would have scampered home scared by now. But not Lizzie. Lizzie was a fighter.

"I'm ready," I nodded. "As soon as I start so see you pointing in this direction, I'll put a good act on and hopefully one or two of them will follow and let you get in."

"Jay," said Lizzie, suddenly doubtful, "if this girl Rosie's in there, what's to stop them keeping me and locking me up?"

She was bright too. She had a point.

"Lizzie, if it comes to that then I'll call the police."

At this Lizzie smiled slightly and her courage flooded back. She stood to mock attention and made a clumsy salute. "Ay,ay, sir!"

And she was off. Skittering and stumbling across the broken bricks, mounds of earth and patches of grass, to the front door of the big house.
Chapter 34

What Did You Expect?

Still feeling sick and wobbly I watched Lizzie reach the house and stand in front of the heavy front door. There Lizzie nervously reached up for a knocker stuck in the middle of the wood of the door, knocking it twice. Then she stepped back and waited.

No-one answered.

She glanced back in my direction and was just moving forward to try again when the door swung open. In front of her stood a woman in a long, black dress and shoes with heels. She was tall and slim and blonde hair was tied up into a tight bun. Although I couldn't see the detail because of the distance, her sharp features were beautiful and the glint of expensive jewellery showed glamour.

In front of her Lizzie suddenly looked very small.

A few seconds and words were exchanged. Although I shouldn't have been I was surprised when Lizzie pointed in my direction. The woman in black followed her gesture and looked straight towards me. Instinct made me duck down out of sight but then I quickly realised what I should be doing. I looked over the wall again and Lizzie was still pointing and talking but black dress woman was unsure. She was still stood holding the door.

So I got up and did my best ghost impression.

First of all I walked to the edge of the wall and carefully onto the uneven grounds of the house. I walked in a kind of slow motion so as not to stumble. A ghost that lost its footing just wouldn't have cut it. So I walked forwards, waving my arms about, even giving off a few groans for good measure. I saw the woman cower slightly, using the door as protection. Then I heard her shout back into the house and two suited men appeared. They looked just as Lizzie had described. Now everybody was pointing at me and talking and I saw Lizzie disappear between the jumble of people at the door. It was then that I changed direction, going back the way I had come, but a little quicker this time. As soon as I was out of sight I dropped behind the wall and peeked through the gnarled branches of a bush that grew on the other side.

It hadn't worked. The trio were still talking and pointing but hadn't moved. Soon they began to argue loudly. I could just catch little pockets of what they said but didn't understand a word of it. Like Lizzie had said, it was in German.

Moments passed and they grew calmer and I recognised that they had lost the bait. They were doubting what they'd seen but they still weren't sure enough to go back inside.

I had to do something. I stood up again, making sure they could see my head above the wall, and moaned loudly. This set them pointing and talking again so I carried on.

And it worked.

The two suited men moved away from the house and began to walk carefully towards me. I kept the lid on the impulse to run. I needed to get this just right, so I kept moaning until the two men had got halfway to me and then I slowly disappeared, ducking and running to hide in a gap left by an open back gate in a house I'd seen earlier.

I watched and waited. Panting. My heart smashing blood to my ears so loudly that's all I could hear.

But no-one appeared.

I knelt and peeked around the rotten wooden backdoor frame for what seemed like minutes.

Nope. No-one.

Then I heard loose stones beside me and I was grabbed roughly and a hand was clamped tightly over my mouth and I was fighting for air. I struggled hard but whoever held me was strong and wouldn't let go. I was terrified. My eyes were wide like frightened dinner plates. Then a face appeared in front of mine and I smelt expensive aftershave.

"Vell, vell, vell," said the face slowly and in a heavy German accent. "I sink, Hanz, zat ve av captured this...giest."

The face staring at me was brown, had a square jaw and was centred around two blue eyes that were clear even in the darkness. They looked directly at me. Unblinking and cruel.

"Vat shall ve do vith zis gespenster, Hanz?" said the face as whoever Hanz was held me tightly from behind. So tightly that I couldn't move and almost couldn't breathe.

The face in front of me answered for Hanz.

"I zink ve should lock him up, ya?"

Hanz mumbled something in reply and in German.

The face moved even closer and I smelt garlic.

"You vill come quietly, ya? If no..." and the face drew a line across his throat with his index finger.

His message was clear. Hanz was big and strong and still had a hand clamped over my mouth. He picked me completely off of the floor and, after The Face had made sure the coast was clear, carried me after him and back into the grounds of the old house. The nearer I got to the house the worse I felt. I was terrified. I felt too ill to try and fight to escape. I watched as the house drew nearer and nearer. The Face kept a subtle eye out for somebody who might see us and give the game away.

Sooner than I expected we were up the front steps and inside the cool house. The Face quietly shut and bolted the door after us. Hanz still held me and the face moved close again.

"Remember our talk, ya?" and he drew the line again, imitating throat and knife.

I nodded. Anything to get away from Hanz.

The Face nodded sharply to Hanz and I was dropped onto a cold stone floor where I lay for a moment. I leaned my back against one of the walls and drew my legs up to my chest for protection. The Face said something to Hanz and Hanz motioned for me to get up.

"Hier oben," Hanz ordered and I guess he meant follow me or something as he beckoned to me with his finger.

So I followed Hanz through one of the hallways of the big house. Everything was old and full of decoration I didn't recognise. Probably put up decades before I was born. What was I thinking of? Probably even before Gran and Granddad were born! Most of it was limp and faded, the wallpaper damp and hanging down in a hundred places, and the furniture was old, antique and dusty. Not used. Just there. Old and thick electric cables fed bare bulbs that showed all of this in a gloopy yellow light.

I followed the stocky shape of Hanz to a door where he stopped. He turned a key in its old lock and he put a sinister finger to his thick lips in an order to be quiet.

"SSShhhh," he growled at me. "Ruhe!"

Again I nodded. Then Hanz opened the door further and, with one hand, shoved me in.

It only took a second for me to hit the far wall and I held myself there listening to the key turning in a door already closed.

Wherever I was it was dark but there was some light from a lamp on one wall. And the smell! Like...like...cat pee.

Then I realised where I was. I'd been here before.

"Jay! Thank goodness!"

And a small figure wrapped her thin arms around me in relief.

It was Lizzie.

In the gloom Lizzie grabbed my face with both hands and examined me for injury. "What did they do? Did they hurt you,Jay? Oh, you've a nasty bruise"

"Have I?" I replied shakily. "It'll be OK. I'm fine. Thanks."

I was reluctant to sit down because of the smell and there wasn't much room, but I had too. I was still feeling terrible and I was shaking with fright. As I sunk onto the carpet Lizzie knelt with me.

"Jay," she said softly, "there's someone you should meet."

I knew who it was instantly.

"Rosie!" I stuttered.

Rosie was as I remembered her during the séance – face buried behind dirty hands and trying to put as much space between her and what she assumed to be a ghost.

Lizzie was doing her best to keep her calm. "It's fine, Rosie. He's not a ghost. I promise."

"But," stammered the girl, "I've seen him before. He's been here before!"

So I was right after all. Rosie did exist. And her prison. I was shocked at how odd and accurate I had been. It took me a good while to come around. Lizzie was trying to convince her that we were friends but Rosie still buried her face in her hands and wouldn't come out.

I was surprised when Lizzie tried a firmer tactic. "C'mon, Rosie," she said impatiently, "we're all scared. So chin up, there's a good girl."

I was even more surprised to see it work. Rosie slowly removed her dirty hands to reveal the same grime-soaked face I'd recognised during the séance. I squinted at her. I couldn't help it. I was sure I'd seen her before. Way before the night of the séance.

"I...w...want so much to...to go home," Rosie managed to blurt out. Then she shook with silent sobs and Lizzie surprised me yet again by holding her, allowing Rosie to bury her head in her shoulder, smoothing her matted hair.

"Sssshhh," she cooed, "it's fine now. We're here to help you. You're safe."

Lizzie looked over Rosie's shoulder at me. She gave me the kind of look that said 'we are going to be OK. Aren't we?"

The doubt and fear I felt must have been as clear as an aeroplane dragging big letters behind it across the sky.

It didn't take long for us all to gather our wits and start to talk. We both told similar stories.

"They seemed to know who I was," Lizzie said. "As soon as I snuck in a big Jerry grabbed me and put me in here. They even knew my name!"

Rosie's story was different. When she finally began to trust us she told us how she had been collecting for the local St John's Ambulance Service.

"I didn't think anybody lived in this house," she explained in a weak voice that was cracked by weeks of little food or water, "and the front door was open. So I sneaked in. We always thought the house was haunted because the lights used to go on and off during the night time. But we never saw anybody." For a long time Rosie had avoided my eyes. Now she looked at me and she was so familiar I just stared right back. "But there was somebody here, wasn't there?" she said. "There were Germans here. They grabbed me and locked me up. They're just like Dad said they were – big and rough and nasty. They keep teasing me, telling me they're coming to get me and that they're going to feed me to their big dogs."

I remembered hearing something like that in my visions and dreams.

"How long," I asked her gently, "how long do you think you've been here Rosie?"

"Don't know," she shrugged. "Might be weeks. Could be months." Then she started crying again. "I want to go home..."

So the brave and brilliant Lizzie held and soothed the prisoner and I thought about what had gone wrong. When I asked Lizzie she shook her head like someone way beyond her years.

"I'm ten and you're just about a teenager. What did you expect?"

She was right.
Chapter 35

Incarceration

So we were trapped like birds in a cage.

The light from the wall lamp was meagre and sometimes it spluttered and coughed, nearly going out. When the light did this we three prisoners would hold our breath. There were spiders and things in there with us and we didn't like the idea of being in total darkness with them. Sometimes we heard voices and movement far off. We tried calling out, pleading and knocking.

But no-one came.

The cupboard was tiny. We couldn't stretch our legs out and we could only stand up with a stoop. So in the end we didn't bother. I had started to get a sore bum and I'd only been in the cupboard for a matter of hours. Poor Rosie must have been in a lot of pain.

Going to the loo was a problem. All we had between us was the bucket. As yet no-one had used it although Rosie had had a wee before we arrived. It sounds horrible but I never knew how important a bit of privacy was when going to the loo. I know we were all holding it in until we would be bursting.

The stench was the worst thing though. The carpet was old and it seems that someone might have kept an animal of some sort in there at one point as the whole place stank of wee. Yet after a while we sort of got used to the smell. If we kept talking and ignored the stink we found we forgot it. But if we thought about it the smell came back.

So we tried not to think about it.

Rosie told us that she lived about ten minutes away. Number 23 Dorset Street. She told us her Dad worked for the local council and Mum looked after four kids, including Rosie. But then she remembered an older brother had been killed in 'action' in Holland two years ago. Rosie said Mum was still upset even now. The memory made Rosie cry again but both Lizzie and me were becoming cross with her for crying like this. We were all in this together now and these outbursts didn't help. All Lizzie managed this time was a pat on the leg.

"Rosie!" I said sharply when Rosie started the waterworks again. She had started talking to us about another brother and I was trying to change the subject. "Rosie, when do we get fed?"

"Parden?" she said weakly, sneaking the word out around her sobs.

"I said, do they feed us?"

Rosie sniffed and Lizzie remembered the handkerchief she carried. Lizzie found it and passed it to Rosie who blew her nose loudly then offered the damp material back to Lizzie. Lizzie told her to keep it.

"They b...bring me something every now...now and then," she said in a self-pitying way that made me roll my eyes at Lizzie.

It has to be said that the sick feeling had passed away and I was now dry and thirsty and getting hungry. For hours my stomach had been gurgling and grumbling like a blocked plug-hole. The cure for hunger was to think about home and family. I only had to think about Dad worrying at home and a feeling of homesickness was thrown over the hunger pangs like a dust sheet over a sofa. After a while though it slipped off and the embarrassing noises continued.

Sometimes Rosie caught me looking at her. I couldn't help it. I had seen her somewhere before. But I couldn't have? Could I? When she caught me looking at her a third time Rosie pouted and moved closer to Lizzie. I had to really try hard not to look at her. I concentrated on the bucket instead.

As time slowly passed I started to think about Mum more and more and I would get angry, angry that I was being held in here, in a cupboard in 1946, whilst Mum was on the sofa at home. She was probably worried even sicker by now. Time with my Mum had become precious and I needed to get back to her. But then it was my own stupid fault. Why did we think we could rescue Rosie without the help of grown-ups and the police? Unfortunately, life just wasn't like the movies. Life was more cruel and unexpected.

I tried not to think about what might happen to us.

A good while later we stirred to the sounds of approaching footsteps and a key turning heavily in the old lock. The door creaked open and weak hallway light silhouetted a shape stood in the doorway. Although the light wasn't particularly bright the three of us shielded our eyes to try and see who stood over us.

"Hello, Jay," said a familiar, educated voice in greeting. "It's good to see you again."

I squinted still further and then I recognised the tall thin man in the hat and long coat.

It was Dr Meen.
Chapter 36

The New Order

How could this be? Surely this isn't possible? How could my doctor be here? In 1946?

Suddenly everything shifted and clicked into place like a jigsaw or the tracks of a train set. Seeing Dr Meen stood in silhouette I realised that he was the faceless man in my dreams. That he was the watching stranger on my last visit to 1946. Now I understood why he was so anxious to see me in my own time.

But why? What was going on?

As my eyes adjusted to the light I could see that Dr Meen was smiling crookedly down at me. "And of course a very good day to your new friends," he added, as if it mattered. Dr Meen then knelt down and removed his hat showing white hair. He peered in at the room and tutted. "Such a terrible place to be," he said slowly, unconvincingly and with pretend concern. "And such a horrible smell."

He stood up. He wasn't alone. Hanz and The Face were stood just behind him.

"Would it be at all possible to give the two girls something to eat?" Dr Meen asked The Face in a tone that was asking yet at the same time telling. The Face said something to Hanz and Hanz shuffled off down the hallway. The doctor looked at down at me, still smiling crookedly.

"Jay," he said, "if you don't mind, I'd like you to follow me." He held out a long and slender hand for me to take. But I refused the offer of his hand and ducked under it and out of the cupboard and into the hallway, all stiff and aching.

"What about Rosie and Lizzie?" I asked, straightening up.

"Mmm," he considered for no more than a second before he waved the thought away. "They'll be fine for the moment." Then he turned to me. "It's you I'd like to talk to." And he pushed the cupboard door shut again and turned the key. He gave the key to The Face then turned to look at me.

"My, you are a good looking lad." Then, after a moment's pause. "Forgive me, you must be ravenous. Please follow me."

I did as I was told but I wasn't going to let it go. I rushed to keep up with his long strides. "You can't just leave them in there," I pointed out. "They'll catch something."

"Yes, there's always that chance," replied Dr Meen in that couldn't care less way.

"Well, let them out then!" I demanded bravely, stopping in defiance.

Dr Meen halted and there was a pause before he came back to where I stood. He towered over me and that crooked grin still played on his lips like a sharks' smile.

"Such devotion," he said absent-mindedly. Then he gripped my cheeks with his long, left hand. "Now," he snarled and his smile disappeared, "you going to do as you're told, old boy. Is that clear?"

I couldn't speak but mumbled 'yes' the best I could. Then, just as suddenly, Dr Meen's smile returned.

He patted the side of my face lightly.

"Good."

Then he turned on his heels and I had no choice but to follow.

Dr Meen led me into a bare room on the first floor, bare only for two old wooden chairs, a small wooden table and an ashtray. Heavy blue curtains were drawn at the window. Dr Meen unbuttoned his coat and placed it over the back of one of the chairs. His hat he placed carefully on the table beside the ashtray. He was dressed in the same tweed suit I remembered from the surgery. He motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs. I sat down but Dr Meen continued to stand. He lit a cigarette.

"Of course," he said, "I saw you being born, you know."

"You've said," I replied, still attempting some sort of bravery.

The doctor looked hard and long at me and took a puff of his cigarette. "Yes," he chuckled, "I have, haven't I." Then he came and sat down on the wooden chair opposite, crossing his legs. "I suppose you're wondering what I'm doing in 1946?" he asked me, reading my thoughts.

I was frightened but I was angry. I was angry enough to try and show him that I wasn't afraid and that I knew he'd been watching me.

"Just what are you up to Doctor?" I said flatly. "I know you've been watching me and getting inside my head."

"Yes," he agreed letting the ash drop from his cigarette. "All necessary, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"Well, let me put it to you bluntly, old boy." He put out his cigarette then looked me straight in the eye. "You and your girlfriend have become a liability."

"A what?" I didn't understand.

"A risk," he said simply.

I couldn't believe it. "How could a couple of kids be a risk to anything?" I asked him.

"Well, seeing we've a little while, I'll explain." He lit yet another cigarette, then he uncrossed then re-crossed his spider-like legs and ignored Hanz when he came in with some thin sandwiches. I took a bite just to settle my stomach, but I wasn't hungry now.

"My Grandfather was – and still is - a politician, you see. A famous politician. And he went a long way towards changing the world, how the people of the world perceive each other and how we live. Yes, he was a mighty man, rising to dizzy heights. But it hadn't always been that way. Oh no." The Doctor leaned towards me and dropped his voice to a whisper. "You see, he comes from the lower orders. The working classes, if you like. And he is despised by a lot of people who had been born into money. They thought he'd never live up to anything, you see. But he has. He showed them all. He became a great man. Respected and loved by his people. At an early age he realised that he had 'special powers' like you and me, and he saw all the evil in the world and he wanted to get rid of it so the world would be a peaceful place again. With an iron will and the consent of his people he started on a great crusade to cut out this evil once and for all." At this point Dr Meen became serious and looked off into space. "Nevertheless, there were those close to him who were to betray him. There were those who were to steal his glory. The Fathers punished them in their own good time and delivered our great leader safely to us, where his great crusade continues."

The cigarette clamped between Dr Meen's fingers was strong and great clouds of smoke were drifting around him like mist at a mountain top. He looked at me, saw I was still frowning and gave me another crooked smile.

"Still non-the-wiser, I see." Then he continued. "Well, where you – or should I say we – come in is simple, dear boy. With all our psychic and time skip capabilities combined my Grandfather can be great again."

Although I understood that our 'special powers' would be attractive to this 'great leader', I really wanted to know exactly how me and Lizzie were expected to help.

So I asked him.

"How is perfectly clear, dear boy," he replied. "We help my Grandfather escape to our time: the bustling twenty-first century."

I didn't like it.

"Escape?" I said curiously. "What do you mean 'escape'?"

Dr Meen looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. "Is that what I said? I do apologise. What I really meant to say was 'relocate."

This sounded even worse.

"And your good self and that girlfriend of yours..." he added, but I stopped him before he could go any further.

"She's not my girlfriend!"

Dr Meen looked irritated. He considered me with sly snakes' eyes. I had to be careful.

"You and that friend of yours will be invaluable. Firstly, you. You will be able to 'see' any problems across time and space. A rare talent."

"And Lizzie?"

"Your friend will help the time-skip. The crossover into your time. Exactly what she does to get you here."

I thought about all this. It seems that Dr Meen knew that I had special powers since day one, had been following and watching me. He had, in fact, been planning to use them all along.

"So you knew," I said. "You knew all along that I had special powers."

"Oh indeed," he answered with that crooked smile. "It's like I said, I was there when you were born."

I was dumbfounded.

The idea that this man in front of me – a man who my family had trusted - had been plotting my future use since the day I was born made my head spin.

When I finally asked him how he knew that I had special powers before I was born Dr Meen explained how The Fathers knew everything. Had directed him to me.

"Who are The Fathers?" I asked slowly.

Dr Meen just smiled his crooked smile and finished yet another cigarette. "Whatever you'd like them to be."

What kind of answer was that?

Then, thinking about it, it was clever. It was clever because it meant I didn't have another question. It left me frowning and hanging there thinking.

I'd come to a dead end.

So I asked him what this 'great man' was planning to do in the 21st century. This seemed to get the doctor excited and he stared off into space again as he explained.

"He will extend his power and influence to our time where he will obtain the necessary tools to bring his crusade to a satisfactory conclusion. He will sweep aside the evil, the incompetent, the weak. He will lead us all like knights of old into a new Eden, a golden age with a new order, where only the strongest will be allowed to flourish. He will lead us, in essence, to total victory!"

I stepped around the fantastic spires and towers of a perfect future and asked him about Rosie.

"What about her?"

"What will happen to her?"

Dr Meen shook his head. "The little wretch has no place in our future. She will be killed."

Just like that, it seemed.

He was sounding like a madman. I needed to get away, to go home or at least back to my friends.

But there was no means of escape. There was nowhere to run.

So we both sat in silence while Dr Meen blinked towards the future he had built in his head and finished yet another cigarette.
Chapter 37

Back to the Cupboard

When Hanz and another man I hadn't seen before put me back in the cupboard I wished I'd eaten more sandwiches as my stomach moaned noisily. Both Rosie and Lizzie had eaten some food. Lizzie had been given sandwiches but Rosie hadn't, so they had had to share. I wondered why this was. Why was Rosie being punished so harshly for the fairly innocent crime of being nosey? Why did Dr Meen hate her so much that he wanted her killed?

With nothing much else to do but sit I felt myself looking long and hard at Rosie again. She had used Lizzie's handkerchief to wipe away some of the dirt and grime and now I saw that she had a doll-like complexion. She had rosey cheeks that she said she had when she was born. That's why she was called Rosie. Her eyes were like dark pools of ink and when I looked at them I saw the dim light from the lamp reflected in them.

I had seen those eyes before. I was sure now.

"Is there another reason why those men are keeping you here?" I asked Rosie after a while.

Rosie frowned and the shadows of her eyebrows met like bats at midnight.

"Jay!" interrupted Lizzie but I was scared for Rosie. So I asked her again.

"Think, Rosie. Is there any other reason why you might be here?"

"Jay!" said Lizzie again in such a I know something you don't tone that I turned to look at her, not a foot away.

Lizzie sighed. "Rosie is a Jew, Jay."

"So?" I replied, turning down the corners of my mouth and shrugging.

"Well," continued Lizzie, "during the war the Germans didn't like the Jews." Lizzie looked at the space above my head and concentrated. "Just a minute. That's not right." Lizzie thought some more. "Dad also told me that not all Germans hated the Jews. Just the Nazis."

"I've heard of them," I said, nodding.

"I think they killed loads of Jews and, because of that, the Allies have just taken the Nazi bosses to court or something." Lizzie then gave me a look that I can't really describe. Then she said, "But no-one talks about it much," and returned to pulling stitching from her shoes.

There was nothing to be said. So we said nothing.

Time passed slowly.

Every now and then we had to use the bucket to go to the loo and we covered our eyes so as not to embarrass the person who was going. Luckily it wasn't that often as we weren't getting a lot to eat or drink. We heard people moving about the house. Distantly. Like mice. Despite our shouts no-one came. We started to notch what we thought was hours on the wood of the door with an old bent nail we found nearby. We were recording time but we couldn't be sure if it was accurate or not. We worked out that just once a day Hanz and another big man in a suit gave us food and emptied our bucket. Usually the food was sandwiches and water - two sandwiches and two cups of cloudy water to be exact. The men gave the food and drink to me and Lizzie whilst Rosie just cowered away and covered her face with her hands.

We shared our food and drink with her.

When we got tired we tried to doze against the crumbly walls or the door. When it was quiet we could not only hear noises from outside but from underneath as well. If we listened hard we could hear banging and scraping, like something big was burrowing or building below us. It didn't get any closer and sometimes it stopped. We could also hear a constant hum like electricity pylons. This never went away. Was constantly there. After a while though, we found that we had got used to it as we had to concentrate hard to hear it. But the humming didn't stop and the digging only stopped for a while. Then it would start again.

There was no doubt about it, there was something beneath us.

We talked and eventually found out that Rosie had come to England from Holland before the war had started and that her Mum and Dad at 23 Dorset Street were not really her Mum and Dad. They were her Aunt and Uncle. It was true about her brother though. He had been killed in Europe during the war. Because he was a Jew Rosie wasn't sure if he was a soldier or a prisoner before he'd died.

I couldn't understand it. I'd heard of the Nazis and we had looked at World War Two in Mr Butler's history classes but I still couldn't believe one type of human is better than another. This is what the Nazis believed, said Lizzie, that they were better because they were white and German. Lizzie said she didn't know how many Jews had died during the war. Maybe dozens! Who knows? I closed my eyes and pictured the tanks and ships and guns we had seen in class, all in black and white. It did seem so old. Like it never really existed at all.

I knew it did. I had come face to face with what we all believed was a real life German Nazi.

In colour it was much more believable.

Suddenly I was scared again and wanted to go home. Up until now we had got away with our 'time skips' and everything had been an adventure. Now I couldn't see a way out of this and things had become 'real.' Real like the bits you don't see in films.

For example, after a day and a half Rosie's legs started to hurt for no reason whatsoever. Neither me or Lizzie offered her help. We just occupied ourselves with picking plaster from walls and timber from the old door. Then Lizzie got crotchety because she had a runny nose again and Rosie had used her hanky to clean her face up with so it was dirty. She didn't talk for what I marked up as two hours.

We had started to fall out and the mood had become tense. So we kept picking, poking and scraping at the walls of our cell.

Then a big bit of old grey plaster fell off the wall and landed in my lap and covered my clothes in dust.

I looked at the mess and thought. Then I looked at Lizzie and, like in the cartoons, we both saw the penny drop.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Lizzie?"

"Yes," she said looking from the plaster to me and back again. "I am."

So I got the nail and scraped at the wall again. After a while another bit of plaster came loose. This had the shape of Africa and I was able to lift it off carefully. But it had taken a lot of scraping to get loose and my fingers were sore and were starting to bleed. So I stopped and it was quiet again. Quiet apart from the distant sound of what sounded like shovels and picks and that electric hum.

"This is stupid!" exploded Lizzie after a while.

"What's stupid?" I asked, looking up. Rosie sat up too just as Lizzie made a grab for the nail.

"Why didn't we think of this earlier," she said. "It's my turn. We should work in shifts. You rest and I'll scrape, and so on."

"Cool!" I nodded.

"I wish it was," said Lizzie scrabbling past me, "as far as I'm mattered it's bloody hot in here!"

So that's how we started to think about escape. After a few hours we had got about four or five red bricks exposed. I had another go and found that the concrete or cement or whatever between them was dusty. I also found that, after a bit of scraping and digging, we could make holes around them. Then Rosie took a turn but she struggled so Lizzie had another go. By the time the food arrived we had made holes around some of the bricks and had even found another nail.

We had hope.

If only we could just make the brickwork weak enough to push out and a hole big enough to crawl through then we would have a chance.

What we would do after that I didn't have a clue.
Chapter 38

A Visitor

Now time was measured by how many cross words we had and by the scraping of a rusty nail. So we were all feeling pretty grubby when the food came.

Hanz passed in a plate with four bits of roughly cut bread and two mugs of cloudy water. He passed them to me, sneered at us all, looked long and hard at the cowering Rosie and then slammed and locked the door. He didn't see the small pile of plaster that had grown in one far corner of the cupboard. Way back in the shadows.

It was while me and Lizzie were scraping at the cement between the bricks that Rosie gasped loudly beside us. I looked slowly at Lizzie and she looked slowly at me. Then, at the same time, we turned our heads to find out what Rosie had found so horrifying.

What we saw made us both drop our nails in the sheer shock of the unexpected.

In front of us, and hanging in mid-air just under the wood of the stairs which made up the roof of the cupboard, was Albert.

But Albert was different in lots of ways.

For a start he was completely grey, from head to foot, like white paint after years of smoking. He was also floating and had his arms and legs outstretched so as to keep his balance. He could have been sky diving. The look on his face was comical, a mixture of surprise and fright. In fact he probably looked as I did when I first found myself in Albert's position, in Ernie's cell.

As we watched Albert's gaze focussed on us and he smiled. But it was a brief smile. Quickly his expression became serious. By now we had both realised what was happening although Rosie was whimpering and covering her face with her hands again.

"It's fine," Lizzie told her impatiently. "It's my Dad!"

Rosie instantly stopped and looked.

Lizzie – Dad, It's so good to see you.

Albert – I've been so worried about you both. I've been having these horrible dreams.

Lizzie – Can you help us? Can you get us out?

Albert – Lizzie, I'm so sorry but I'm a long way away and I know you're in trouble but I can't quite make out where you are.

Lizzie – We're not far from home...

Albert – Lizzie, I know but we haven't much time. I'm being watched as we speak. We're all in danger.

Lizzie was becoming emotional at seeing her Dad. Although her voice stayed strong and steady a tear leaked quietly down her cheek. I watched as Albert drifted and spoke, his lips slightly out-of-sync with his voice, a voice that sounded like it was coming to us through a tube.

Lizzie – What kind of danger?

Albert – There is a threat to all humanity across all times.

Lizzie – What do you mean?

Albert – Everything – all that we know – is in danger of being sucked into a new dark age. A new evil is threatening freedom in our time, in Jay's time and the time in between, before and beyond. You must find out exactly what it is and get away.

Me – Can't we just get away?

Albert – I'd like to say yes with all my heart, but all my supernatural senses tell me there is a mortal danger to all time. I feel this danger is directly under the streets where we live. It must be stopped. You must find out what it is and escape.

Lizzie – We're trying. What is this evil? Tell us.

Albert – I haven't much time. It's...

Then Albert faded and disappeared, the spot where he had been floating dark.

Fit only for spiders.
Chapter 39

Something Beneath

Another day of scraping passed.

Then both nails became blunt and one snapped.

What we had done though was to pick away an area of old grey plaster big enough to squeeze through. We had also managed to scrape away some of the old cement between the bricks. A lot of the cement was just so hard that it couldn't be moved but I decided that the small area might now be weak enough to bash through. So I laid on my back as flat as I could in the small space and kicked out with my legs.

The wall vibrated with a thud but the bricks didn't budge.

I tried again.

And again.

Nothing.

"That's enough," whispered Lizzie urgently. "They'll hear us."

She was right. If I carried on kicking I might bring the whole household down on us. What we needed was something hard that I could swing. Something like a hammer.

And that was pretty unlikely.

But I know now that chances appear in different forms and one came not long afterwards.

We heard the feet of several people moving towards the cupboard door. The key turning in its lock. The door creaking open. Then we were bathed in the soft yellow glow from the hallway light.

The Face, Hanz, and behind them Dr Meen.

"Ous!" shouted Hanz.

The three of us blinked back at him, confused and afraid.

"Ous!" he shouted again.

Still we didn't move.

Then Dr Meen stepped forward. "I believe he means you're all to get out."

Although apprehensive we started to clamber up through stiff legs and sore bums to our feet. But Hanz stepped forward and reached into the cupboard. He placed a heavy hand on Rosie's scalp before she could get up.

"No!" he told her. "Noch nicht!"

Again Dr Meen translated.

"He means 'not yet'. You're to stay," he said. "Sorry."

Me and Lizzie glanced back at poor Rosie as the door was closed on her again. Despite our differences I felt a huge surge of pity for her and anger towards the men who kept her locked up. Before we could say anything that might give her a few moments of freedom The Face had pushed me forward and Hanz had grabbed Lizzie by one of her thin arms.

I felt the door was closing on an old friend.

We both felt like we'd abandoned Rosie. As we were led away from the cupboard with our hearts stretching out to the little girl left alone her terrible prison, we were shown through a door in one of the old corridors and down wooden steps that opened out into a cold, dimly lit cellar. The walls and concrete floor was damp and there were a few boxes scattered about. But there wasn't much else. We followed the tall and surprisingly nimble Dr Meen and every time I slowed The Face pushed me roughly in the small of my back. Hanz held Lizzie tightly and dragged her along.

We marched through the cellar and into a passageway. This passageway had been cut from the earth as the walls and ceiling were being held up by timbers. Between these timbers large squares of wood had been used to stop the soil from crumbling in. The passageway was short and had an earthy smell to it that reminded me of our back garden in the 21st century.

Soon we stopped before a heavy steel door with large rivets around its edge and across its middle. There was no getting through that in a hurry. The people behind it were either keeping something in or keeping something out.

Or both!

With one of his long fingers Dr Meen pressed a button set on a metal plate beside the door and waited. There must have been some sort of viewing hole through which Dr Meen was identified as pretty quickly the door unlocked with a clunk and was swung open by another man dressed in an old-fashioned tweed suit. I was prodded in through the opening.

Before we had stepped through the iron door I had noticed that the electric hum was getting louder. It seemed to pulse in and out, in and out. As soon as we had got inside the next bit of the tunnel it became much clearer. I also recognised a crackle every so often. Like sparklers. Now we were walking on grey concrete lit by a series of light bulbs joined by a heavy electric cable.

I could sense a wide space ahead.

"Where are you taking us?" I called ahead to Dr Meen who was a few paces in front.

"Not now dear boy," he answered, dismissing my question with a flourish of fingers. At the same time I felt another finger poke me forward.

Suddenly we descended a short flight of concrete steps, ducked through a small doorway and found ourselves in a large open area about the size of a football pitch. Dr Meen stopped to look and lit a cigarette. The rest of us fetched up slightly behind him. The Face gripped my arm still tighter as me and Lizzie exchanged surprised glances at what we saw before us.

I didn't know what an air-raid shelter looked like but I'm guessing that what we were seeing was once the shelter that Lizzie's Dad had told us about. I'm guessing that it was once a shelter because part of the floors and walls had been bricked up. There were posters up here and there telling us that 'careless talk costs lives' and the 'walls have ears'. There were signs of building and digging. We could see mounds of earth piled up in places with spades, picks and other tools leaning against objects like workers on a break. The concrete roof directly above us was low but it had been heightened further away from us and powerful electric lights hung on long cables like strands of liquorice. These lights illuminated a lower area that had bunks along the far wall and a number of tables at which people sat, smoked and talked. In fact there was a bubble of conversation that must have come from at least twenty mouths, men and women, many of them dressed smartly in suits or dresses and here and there the sparkle of jewellery. As we listened we heard a mixture of languages, English, German and others that I wasn't so sure about. But they all chatted happily together and every now and then a burst of laughter. Hanging over everything there was a smell of damp underground, cigarette smoke, all mixed in with a sudden smell of burning. The burning smell was familiar. It was the same whiff of something smouldering I had when travelling through time. It reminded me of when Mum did the ironing.

It suddenly became clear where the burning smell came from for, dominating the whole scene in front of us, at the far end of the football pitch, was the focus of every ones attention.

A huge round ball sat against the far wall, its top disappearing into the damp roof, its bottom joining up at some point below the concrete floor. It was taller than the shelter itself. If I described it as a large marble I would be pretty accurate as the smooth surface of this ball was alive with all the colours that you could think of. Reds. Ambers. Yellows. Blues. And these colours weren't just still or static. They constantly shifted and moved creating patterns of colour that became so hypnotic that you couldn't take your eyes off of them. At one point the marble's whole surface became one of ocean blue that reminded me of the pictures I'd seen of planet earth taken from space and the continents became a twisting kaleidoscope of golds, ruby reds and deep purples. Then just as quickly the object changed colour again and what we were looking at was something completely different.

It almost seemed alive.

I looked at Dr Meen, casually smoking a cigarette. He was smiling, mesmerised by the colours swirling and mixing together. Hanz still held onto Lizzie's arm but both were staring wide eyed as if at some giant snakes' eye enchanting you before it struck.

Then suddenly a slash and crash of treacle coloured sparks reaching out like fingers of lightening from several places along its surface. Some people sat at the tables nearby clapped and whooped but then fell quiet again. Then that familiar singeing, burning, electrical smell wafted towards us on drifting slithers of smoke. Eventually the smoke rose to lie along the concrete roof like thin whispers.

And all the while that pulsing, powerful hum of energy.

Dr Meen, who was stood slightly in front of us, now turned and talked.

"I suppose you're wondering what this beautiful object is," he asked us, still holding the cigarette, "and why you're here."

We heard the doctor but we were still fascinated by the movement of colour on the surface of the ball. There a turquoise continent. Here something that resembled a face. Always changing. Moving on.

"This, ladies and gentlemen," continued Dr Meen despite not having our full attention, "is the Junction Sphere," and he swept his arm towards it. "Or the J-Sphere for short." He smiled and nodded, pleased with his own introduction but then quickly grew serious again when nobody said anything. "Any...questions...at all?" he asked us.

Silence.

"Anything...no?"

Lizzie was the first to speak. "Yes. What does it do?"

"Ah yes," said Dr Meen, suddenly animated again, "what does it do? Good question. Good question." Then the doctor crouched and looked at Lizzie, extending a bony finger up towards the furthest point of the J-Sphere, where it disappeared into patchy concrete. "See the top of the sphere? Lizzie, where do you think it goes?"

Dr Meen's wrinkles moved around his brown face in a mischievous smile.

Lizzie shrugged. "Don't know."

Dr Meen straightened. "That, my dear, is directly under your house and it reaches its furthest point at the top of your stairs." He turned to look directly at me, waiting for the penny-to-drop. "In fact, to be more precise, that is where 1946 ends and the 21st century begins."
Chapter 40

Masterplan

It was obvious that the Junction Sphere was some kind of time-travelling device. Yet why was it here? Now? And under Lizzie's house? What was its purpose?

I was about to ask. I needn't have bothered. Lizzie beat me to it.

"What's it doing under our house?"

I realised that the people sat around the widened area of the old shelter had noticed us for the first time. I even saw several of them look long and hard at me and my drum-skin colour then turn away with shocked expressions. They turned away and whispered behind hands to the person next to them. Conversation dribbled away then stopped.

Dr Meen suddenly had an audience. He threw his cigarette away and turned to the side so as to address both us and the people waiting patiently at the tables.

"Our time here is over," he began slowly, with hands held behind his back. "It is now important that we establish a new order, a new beginning, in a new era. This 'new' era is far more liberal. It is an era of huge technological advances, advances far beyond the simple imaginations gathered here." Dr Meen smiled at his little joke and there was a small splash of laughter. "The Fathers, in their wisdom, have given us the Junction Sphere, a device not only wondrous to look at, but infinite in its uses. Look at how it moves and pulses, its energy ready to be tamed and used by the 20th centuries' greatest men and greatest movements." Then the doctor's long hand stretched out to rest on Lizzie's shoulder before pulling her forward to stand beside him. Together they faced the interested crowd. "But forgive me. Let me introduce you to one of our many helpers in this quest." Dr Meen stepped away from her. "Let me introduce Miss Elizabeth Raynor."

There was a polite ripple of applause and Lizzie looked at me, completely befuddled, then at Dr Meen.

"It's Raynor with an 'O," she told him quietly.

For a moment Dr Meen was slightly put out. But he chose to ignore her. "Yes, of course," he blurted. Then he held up an arm to signal silence and the applause died away.

"Of course, Elizabeth is, to a certain extent, unaware of her abilities, certainly her abilities to help us all on our journey to fulfil our goals and ambitions. It would be fair to say that Lizzie has, like many of you gathered here today, special powers, powers that will be captured, tamed and used, by us, for the greater good."

I didn't like the way this was going. It seemed that Dr Meen had known about our abilities all along, only waiting for right time to use us.

Because that's what he intended to do. To use us.

Then he turned to me and smiled that alligator smile. He beckoned me forward. I did as I was told.

"Now," he continued, "let me introduce you to someone dear to me. Don't be put off by his colour. What we had always believed was the colour of ghosts is merely a symptom of time-travel. The privileged among us who will travel in the J-Sphere will ultimately exist in beautiful grey." There was more murmuring from the crowd. "Nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you a young man fresh from the gleaming future of the 21st century – Master Jay Webber."

There was enthusiastic applause and even Dr Meen stepped back and clapped his long hands together. After a while the doctor held up his hands for silence.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you don't need me to tell you that, with these two young people delivered safely into our hands, our time is now near." At that Dr Meen stood bolt upright, clicked his heels and bowed his head slightly.

"To the Fathers and the Fuhrer!"

I was surprised to see the whole assembly rise, raise glasses and echo Dr Meen. Although one or two were out of time, most repeated the words as one and the same.

"To the Fathers and the Fuhrer!"

Those three words echoed around the shelter eerily then the assembly returned to their seats and a bubble of excited conversation was sparked.

Dr Meen turned to us and spread his arms. "You see, they love you!" he exclaimed with a wicked smile. "You are celebrities!"

"But I still don't understand," Lizzie said again. "Just who is going to travel to Jay's time? And why?"

Dr Meen moved close to us, still smiling, and spoke quietly. As if passing on a secret.

"Oh, it's jolly simple, young lady," he said. "We're going to travel into the 21st century and rule the world." He paused for effect, picked a cigarette from a packet found in his coat pocket. "Then we'll travel back here to 1946 – and rewrite history."
Chapter 41

The Fathers

Dr Meen led us both to a table as the conversation in the shelter returned. The Face and Hanz stood close by with folded arms and stern expressions.

The J-Sphere sparked and cracked.

Strangers smiled and raised their glasses as they passed close and I felt lonely and a long, long way from home. So we sat in silence whilst Dr Meen smoked another cigarette. Lizzie, meanwhile, started to get impatient.

"So why aren't you a different colour?" she asked Dr Meen in an attempt to break the nervousness we both felt.

Dr Meen looked long at Lizzie as if fishing for an answer. Finally he responded. "Because I've been sent here by The Fathers."

Lizzie frowned. I knew what was coming.

"Who," she asked quietly, "are The Fathers?"

The Doctor dropped the butt of his cigarette to the cracked concrete floor where it ejected sparks of its own.

"My, my. You are inquisitive aren't you?" He paused and sighed. "The Fathers, young lady, are nothing and everything. Good and evil. War and peace. Love and hate. Beauty and beast. Light and dark. Night and day. Birth and death, etcetera, etcetera..."

Lizzie continued to frown. "That doesn't explain anything."

A smirk spread across Dr Meen's creased and brown features. He shifted in his seat. "No," he said, "I don't suppose it does."

Lizzie tried again. "Are they good or bad?"

The doctor thought about this then continued. "Neither, necessarily. You see, The Fathers exist inside us and around us. The Fathers give meaning to the whole universe which, in turn, can be found inside something as miniscule as a tiny atom. They dictate cause-and-effect and they control our every thought and movement. They are the reason behind your special powers and why we find it so easy to time-skip. They are with us constantly but have neither form nor shape. In short, The Fathers are everywhere."

Lizzie didn't seem any the wiser. "What's an atom?" she asked.

"Ah," said Dr Meen, "such an innocent child." Then he leant his elbows firmly on the table in front of us and leant forward. "Hiroshima? Nagasaki?"

Lizzie continued to frown at him. Dr Meen leaned back in his chair again.

"You see, in Jay's parents' and grandparents' time," he said to Lizzie, "the world almost destroyed itself because of the discovery of the atom, something you can't even see. We plan to make sure that threat never existed."

The conversation ended there because before Lizzie could ask another question there was a sudden change in the atmosphere in the shelter. People had started to get to their feet and the chatter around us had risen to an excited babble.

Dr Meen stood up, scraping his chair on the concrete of the floor. His narrowed eyes followed the looks of the others, towards the far end of the shelter. I had to stand on tip-toe as the men and women stood around us were older and taller. And, as I strained to see what everybody was interested in, I caught the shortest glance of a small, frail old man and a young blonde woman. They were arm in arm and moving slowly towards a small door. She was smiling, waving and happy. He was stooped and shuffling, struggling along with a wooden walking stick.

I looked around again at the delighted faces and the raised glasses and I wondered what all the fuss was about.
Chapter 42

The Great Escape

Soon we were back in the cupboard and scraping at the cement between the bricks, trying to make as little noise as possible. I was using the only blunt nail that was left but Lizzie had swiped a knife from one of the tables and was using it to get right in underneath the bricks. We all thought that, pretty soon, if I tried one of those kicks again some of the old bricks would be loose enough to be pushed through and out the other side. It would make a hole just large enough for us to wriggle through. Where we would escape too was another matter. But we had to get out and get help.

So we scraped and prodded and dug.

And someone else did the same in a distant part of the underground shelter.

And the Junction Sphere hummed quietly far off like some contented bee. I mean, it wasn't threatening or anything. The constant hum made us feel that there was at least something beyond our cupboard. Something human, however twisted. To us it acted in the same way the glow of an old-fashioned electric fire makes a dark winter room cosy. Or the sound of a fridge in the kitchen lets you know that there's food within easy reach.

At some point Lizzie stopped scraping and gazed long and hard at the dirty carpet. I could see that she was deep in thought so I stopped too. Rosie, who had been trying to clean the brick dust that we had loosened from the already filthy floor, also stopped.

For a while all we could hear was the hum of the J-Sphere and the thud as building or demolition or whatever continued. It sounded like a distant giant taking a distant walk.

"I recognise that man from somewhere," Lizzie said quietly.

"What man?" asked Rosie.

"The old man Jay and I saw in the shelter. The one with the walking stick."

Me and Lizzie had described our little trip to the shelter to Rosie who had listened but not really understood.

"Where...have...I...seen...him...?" she said slowly to herself, softly tapping the knife she held against the carpet in thought.

Then, quite suddenly, her head snapped up and her eyes met mine. "But it can't be," she exclaimed, more to herself than anybody else. It seemed that Lizzie didn't want to believe the man we had seen was who she thought it was.

"Who can't it be?" I asked her, to help her out.

"But he died at the end of the war. Killed himself and his girlfriend."

"Who did?"

A pause. Then: "Adolf Hitler".

Did I just hear that? I wasn't sure. So I asked again. "Who?"

"Hitler. Adolf Hitler".

A longer pause as the J-Sphere hummed and the giant strolled on.

Obviously I'd heard of Adolf Hitler. I mean, who hasn't. He was the nastiest piece of work that had ever existed. Although Mr Butler said it was open to debate, I'd seen films and heard about what he'd done and what he'd started.

He was evil alright.

"Are you seriously suggesting," I said to Lizzie, "that that old man was...was..." - I couldn't even say it - "Adolf Hitler?"

Lizzie was still looking at me. "Yes." She said this quietly. She still didn't believe it herself.

"Impossible!" I blurted out. I looked away. Looked back at her again. "Isn't it?"

"Well it all makes sense," she replied, still tapping the knife. "He tried to take over the world and failed, something like Dr Meen was saying. But now with the J-Sphere and the help of these Fathers, who knows what might happen."

I shook my head. I still didn't think it was possible. But then I remembered the theories that we had talked about in history – conspiracy theories or something – and how famous people could have faked their deaths just to escape being famous. I remembered Dad reading out an article in a newspaper where somebody had seen Elvis Presley at a football match and some people think 9/11 and the existence of aliens is a cover up. All conspiracy theories.

My point is it could be true.

Couldn't it?

Now we returned to our only means of escape with a new energy, determined to get out and tell people about what might be going on here, right under their noses. As we worked all three of us were lost in our own thoughts. About what we had said and what we thought it might mean. Not just to us but to millions of people now and in the future.

It didn't take long before we had three bricks wobbling and moving about.

Soon we could move five or six and it was then that we realised that, if we wanted, we could push some of the bricks through. But we didn't. What we did was stop. When our plan to rescue Rosie had gone wrong we had learned some valuable lessons. We had to wait. We had to think. We had to plan.

"How long ago was it, you know, when we were with Dr Meen in the shelter?" I asked Lizzie.

Lizzie shrugged. "Not sure. Four or five hours ago?"

"Did you see any light from outside?"

Lizzie shook her head. "No. I didn't."

I leant my head back against the rough bricks that we had been working on. The sounds of scraping and digging and the hum of the J-Sphere were all I could hear. "Then we need to wait and get some rest. It might be day now. We can't escape during the day."

"Why?" Lizzie asked.

"Well...because...well...you just can't. Have you never heard of escaping under cover of darkness and all that? They'll see us in daylight. There are films. I've seen 'em."

"Well, why don't we make sure it's dark," said Lizzie.

"How?"

Lizzie nodded at the wall behind me. "Take one of the bricks out and have a look."

So we identified the brick that we thought would be the easiest to remove. Then me and Lizzie worked together with the knife and the blunt nail to try and work it towards us rather than let the brick fall out into the passageway where it would attract attention. Our fingers were numb, fingernails were cracked and split and it took a lot of work but eventually we started to lever the brick away. Part of it began to crumble and I began to worry that we would never get the brick back unnoticed.

When it finally came away we realised there was some weak plaster remaining on the other side so we couldn't actually see anything. I decided to use the blunt nail to jab a small hole through. It's true that I did make a hole just big enough to see out.

We could see the dimly lit hallway running away to a blank wall at the far end. There were two doors set on either side. The door on the right was shut but the other door was open and we could see a heavy pair of dark curtains pulled tightly together. Still, we could just make out fingers of light softening the edges of the thick material.

We decided to wait.

Trying to put the brick back wasn't easy then Rosie surprised us by suggesting that we break the brick up and put back just enough to cover the hole. That would make it much easier to watch what was going on outside in the passageway. To be honest there wasn't much traffic out there. While we waited - and when we weren't watching – we heard the clump of shoes passing by outside and we all got nervous about someone noticing the little bit of mess we must have made on the hallway floor. But no-one came and when we peeked out through the hole we saw nothing. Just an empty corridor and two doors. One shut.

Later we realised that the light around the curtains seen through the open door had got brighter. This meant that it must have been early morning or something when we had first looked. It seemed that the sun was shining.

So we waited and I imagined blue sky and warm sun on my face.

The three of us were now really hungry, tired, thirsty, and we all needed a good bath. Rosie more than anybody. She really couldn't remember how long she had been a prisoner. We tried to get some sleep but I started thinking of Mum, Dad, Kyle and Beth and wondering if I should be back at school yet. It seemed like I'd been away from them for ever.

Then I thought of Beth again, and looked at Rosie. Thought about Beth again, looked around the room then glanced slyly at Rosie. Strange. If Rosie had blonde hair...

Then I thought about the Aunt and Uncle Rosie had talked about. Surely somebody had missed her? Surely somebody had called the police? When I looked at her she seemed so sad and lonely. It was like she didn't have a friend in the world.

I'd never seen her smile once.

Then I thought of Maureen and Pauline and how they must be beside themselves with worry. Just where were the police? Why hadn't anybody arrived to rescue us, like in the films? Then that thought again, that life wasn't like the films. People died, were cruel to each other and loads of other nasty stuff. Often they got away with it.

Like Adolf Hitler.

I had an idea of what he had been responsible for. World wars. Massacres. General cruelty. If that was him out there then he'd got away with all that. He hadn't suffered the consequences. In fact, he had not learned his lessons. He was out there planning to do it all again.

And I thought of what Albert had said about everybody being responsible for each other's actions. That everybody is connected. That if one person does a bad thing then we're all to blame. And I knew that he'd been right. Hitler wasn't doing what he was doing on his own. He had The Face and Hanz and Dr Meen to help him and there were dozens of people out there raising their glasses and saluting him.

So we had to stop him. It was up to us. We couldn't leave it to somebody else. We couldn't just stand by and watch.

We had to help. We had to do something!

Lizzie was dozing, her head hanging loose to one side. I gently shook her awake.

"Lizzie! Wake up!"

She was awake in an instant. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

"It's fine," I said to sooth her, "but we need to go. Now!"

So we got ready to go. I loosened the small piece of brick and peered out into the hallway.

Nothing. Empty. I looked in the direction of the open door and the window then replaced the bit of brick. In frustration I leant back against the wall.

"What's the matter?" Lizzie asked, concerned.

"The door," I sighed, "it's closed. I can't see the window so I can't tell if it's day or night."

A tense silence followed but Lizzie broke it by saying what I suppose we were all thinking. "Well, we have to go now. We have no choice. By the looks of it things were getting pretty hairy down there in the shelter. I don't think it'll be long before somebody makes use of that sphere thing."

"Yeah," I agreed. "You're right."

Then Rosie said something that we didn't quite hear.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Lizzie.

"It must be destroyed."

I glanced at Lizzie then back at Rosie. "You mean the J-Sphere?" I said.

Rosie nodded. "Yes. It must be destroyed. It must be destroyed now!"

"We know, but we have to get help to do it," Lizzie told her. "We can't do it on our own. We're children."

"We can and we must," Rosie replied, staring into space.

And that's when I really saw Beth in Rosie. That hypnotic, determined look on her face and Beth might just have been sat opposite me, organising and making plans.

But for now I agreed with Lizzie. "Rosie, we have to get out first. OK?"

No reply.

We had to go. We couldn't wait any longer. I laid on my back and raised my legs.

"Right, as soon as I make a hole big enough we make for the front door quietly." We had already discussed this but I had to make sure. "If the door is locked then we make for the nearest window. Clear?"

"Clear!" Lizzie echoed.

"Clear!" mumbled Rosie.

"Ready?" I added.

"Ready!" said Lizzie.

"Ready!" repeated Rosie half-heartedly.

I gritted my teeth and brought my feet down on the middle of the wall.

Thud!

The wall vibrated and some dust fell to the carpet but the wall held firm.

So I tried again.

Thud!

And again.

This time several of the bricks moved outwards.

I stopped and we all listened to the sounds of scraping and digging and the hum of the J-Sphere in the distance. With a bit of luck our attempts at escape would be mistaken for the work on widening the shelter.

So I kicked the wall three times – hard! This time the bricks we had managed to loosen were pushed out and fell with a thud into the hallway. We had no time to lose. The three of us scrambled forward and started to loosen dusty bricks with our sore hands. It didn't take us long to create a hole wide enough to squeeze through. I let Lizzie go first. Then Rosie. Then me. Before long we were all stood up in the hallway, the mess we had made collected around our feet.

We listened.

Still nothing.

I grabbed Rosie's arm. "C'mon. Let's get out of here!"

Our little group moved slowly, quietly down the dim hallway, turning into the part of the house that would lead us to the front door. All the time we looked and listened as we expected to be discovered at any minute. Some doors were open. Some were closed. As the big front door came into view we could see the kitchen just beyond it. The kitchen held the window where Lizzie was grabbed on that first visit. It seemed the kitchen was popular with the people who inhabited this old house as, even now, we could hear the bubble of soft conversation, sometimes interrupted by a bark of laughter.

Like soldiers on a secret mission we knelt down to talk, making sure we were screened from the kitchen by the hallway wall.

I could see our escape. We were so close I could literally taste freedom on my lips.

"Right," I whispered to the two girls, "stay here. I'll check the front door." And before they had a chance to argue I tip-toed to the front door.

As I drew nearer I kept an eye on whoever was in the kitchen. I saw the back of who I believed to be Hanz. He was talking to a woman. I couldn't see the woman. She was out of sight. When I reached the door I made a grab for the latch. The latch opened but when I tried to open the door it stayed closed. Looking for reasons I realised that there was a key hole further down and I could see that it was locked through the gap between the door and the frame.

I needed a key.

I was quickly back to Lizzie and Rosie, whispering the bad news. We all agreed to try the nearest door, get into a room then get out of the window. There was one nearby but, again, the door was locked. In fact every door on this level was closed and locked. There was no way out. We retraced our steps to the small hole in the cupboard wall and knelt and whispered.

"What now?" I asked Lizzie urgently.

Lizzie shook her head. "I really don't know."

This was bad news.

Then Rosie spoke again, quietly, as if what she suggested might be ignored. "The J-Sphere."

We both looked at Rosie.

"We know it leads directly to your time," she said, "so why don't we use it to get there."

It was a good idea. The only one so far. But there was a problem.

"You do realise," I told them both, "that there's all sorts of things that might happen. We've got to get to it first and then The Sphere might be destroyed after we use it or whatever and...well...if that happened you might both be stuck in my time."

Rosie and Lizzie looked away as they both thought about this.

"I can bring us back," Lizzie said enthusiastically. "You know I can travel through time."

Knowing where the J-Sphere was positioned – going up through the Raynors' stairs and into my bedroom – I doubted this now. I told Lizzie that it had probably been the Sphere allowing her travel between times all along.

"I don't see any other way," said Lizzie shaking her head. "I think Rosie's right. The J-Sphere is the only way out."

At that Rosie tugged at my sleeve. "We need to destroy it now. We haven't got the time to get help."

"I know, Beth," I told Rosie, "I know."

"What? Who did you call me?"

"No-one. Nothing

Remembering the way was difficult but eventually I recognised the old door set in one of the walls. We all held our breaths as I tried the handle.

To our relief it turned so I opened it slightly. Just a crack.

The door opened, creaking like a coffin lid, and a chill, damp breeze rose up and touched our faces. Immediately the hammering, digging and the hum of the J-Sphere became louder. I closed the door and gave Lizzie a worried look. She gave me a 'do we have a choice' kind of shrug, so I opened it once more and we all slipped through the crack and tip-toed into the cold darkness below.

Our shoes clunked on the wooden stairs and I had to ask myself, with all the noise and mess that we were making, how no-one had discovered us by now. When Rosie closed the coffin lid door behind us we were plunged into almost complete darkness. Like worried birds for a moment we stopped and listened to the noises below and our own anxious breathing.

I was terrified, I can tell you.

Then I felt one of Lizzie's fingers prod me forward. I crept slowly. Carefully. Quietly. And we made our way down the wooden stairs.

Reaching the bottom I led the way through the cellar and out into passageways that smelled damp and earthy like graves. We headed towards where I thought the metal door had been. At one point Rosie got really scared and stopped. I forgot that this was her first trip into the shelter. Lizzie whispered something to reassure her and we were moving again, listening to the hammering and the digging and the hum of the J-Sphere with every step.

Suddenly the metal door leading into the shelter came into sight. I remember thinking that this was going to take some thinking about when, just as suddenly, the door swung open and a man and a woman stepped through, closing the door with a clang that echoed down the corridor. I pressed myself against the beams holding up the crumbling walls.

"Somewhere to hide," I whispered in a panic. "Now!"

We looked around us but there was nothing, just walls of damp soil. Then I remembered the dark corners of the cellar. I waved Rosie and Lizzie back the way we had come. Scrambling back to the cellar we looked for somewhere to hide. The boxes I had noticed before were still there and, further back still, there were some larger wooden ones. We made our way quietly around the smaller boxes and tucked ourselves in behind these big, heavy crates. When we crouched down we realised that the concrete floor was wet and smelled like old drains but I was confident we wouldn't be seen. That didn't stop my heart from racing again though. As the couple shuffled into the cellar I thought its thumping was bound to be heard. The three of us managed to control our breathing and listened hard, wishing the couple would pass by quickly.

But they didn't.

We heard them stop and talk quietly in German. The man seemed upset about something. His words were shaky, emotional, concerned. The woman was different. She was reassuring, soothing, seemed caring. We could hear their shoes dragging noisily over loose bits of concrete as they talked. Although we wished them gone they stayed for so long that I risked a peek. Slowly, carefully, I raised my head until my eyes were peering over the metal lip of the wooden crate.

I could see the man and woman clearly in the dim light. He was stooped, with one hand clasping his other arm behind his back. His free hand held onto the walking stick. She was looking down at a small bunch of purple flowers held delicately in her hands. She reminded me of a little girl talking to her Father or Grandfather. I did recognise them though. They were the man and woman we had seen saluted earlier. As I watched the woman reached up and touched the man's face in such a caring way that I knew they must be in love. He seemed to nestle into the touch in the same way a pet might to its favourite stroke. Again she muttered something to him, quietly like falling leaves, and he nodded in reply. Then his head turned slowly in my direction and I had to duck down, pretty sure that he hadn't seen me.

This was the man that Lizzie thought had looked like Hitler. My curiosity got the better of me. I had to look again.

So I did.

And my head rose slowly over the edge of the box like the silent periscope of a submarine.

I didn't expect to see the man only feet away. He was literally staring directly at me.

I ducked down. This time I was positive that he had seen me. The blood flooded around my system and pounded around my ears. How the hell did he get so close without any of us hearing him? Surely he must have seen my luminous grey in the darkness? I would have been lit up like a Christmas tree.

I brought my knees up tightly and waited for the hand on my shoulder and the voices of discovery.
Chapter 43

Back to the Junction Sphere

But nothing happened.

I counted the long seconds of silence, all the time expecting to see the man who Lizzie thought was Hitler standing over me. Instead I heard the soft click of his walking stick on the damp concrete floor as he walked back to the young woman, dragging one leg like before.

I never saw his face again. When I finally found the courage to look the woman was leading him by his good hand towards the wooden steps and the click-click-click of his walking stick. When they reached the steps they began to climb slowly, noisily. When we heard the door at the top of the stairs open, then shut, we knew it was time to move.

I was first up, then Lizzie, then Rosie, all of us breathing a huge sigh of relief. As Rosie got to her feet she dislodged the top of one of the boxes we had been hiding behind. A lid that was already loose. It jumped up and came down with a loud crack.

We all held our breaths and listened for voices or running footsteps.

But no-one came.

"Sorry!" whispered Rosie guiltily and it was then that I saw something glisten inside the box. The lid had come down awkwardly and left a big gap. Although it was almost pitch black I peered in further. It looked like something dull and black had somehow caught whatever weak light made it down here.

I reached in and felt cold, hard metal. I moved the lid clear and got a firm hold of the heavy object within. With a series of soft clicks the metal object came away from others similar inside.

I lifted it clear.

It was a machine gun.

I looked at it with the kind of fascination that boys have with guns. Then I looked doubtfully at Lizzie, then at Rosie.

"Brilliant!" I heard Lizzie say in the gloom.

I wasn't so sure. I held it up and turned it towards the light like it was something that had been buried for a thousand years.

"Is it loaded?" asked Lizzie.

"I dunno!" I said. "Hang on while I fire it to find out."

"Very funny. Better bring it with us though."

I agreed.

Rosie had delved into the box and had found what I recognised to be a hand grenade and a pistol. Lizzie took the pistol and I told Rosie to put the grenade in her pocket.

"Watch the handle bit on top," I told her.

"I know," she replied, stuffing the grenade into the pocket of her dress. "It's called the pin. I'm not stupid."

I found the machine gun difficult to carry. For one it was heavy. In the films they make carrying a machine gun look so cool and easy but it was difficult as it didn't have a strap. Another problem was actually using the thing. I was pretty certain that I would if I had to but actually killing a person was a different matter. I didn't want to think about that. Anyway, the gun probably wasn't loaded and I wasn't going to risk discovery by finding out.

So we were back on track, Lizzie clutching the pistol with both hands, Rosie making sure her grenade was safely still in her dress pocket.

And I had the machine gun tucked into my hip.

We stopped. Up ahead we saw the steel door that led into the wider shelter and, beyond it, there would be the Junction Sphere.

"What do we do now?" asked Lizzie urgently.

We had tucked ourselves against the earth wall again and out of sight of anybody who might be looking through the hole that I knew was in the door.

"I'm not sure," I answered.

We knelt down and thought.

There was no way of forcing the door open. It was just too strong. There was almost certainly someone guarding the door on the other side. That was another problem.

"There's only one thing for it," said Lizzie after we had been thinking for a while. "We're going to have to bluff our way through."

"Bluff?" I coughed. "How?"

"Your oldest trick in the book."

"My oldest trick?"

"Yes. The ghost trick."

This seemed like a good idea but, like when we first used it as a diversion, it was a good idea that went bad. So I told Lizzie what I thought.

"Can you think of anything better?"

To be honest, I couldn't. And neither could Rosie who still clutched the grenade in the pocket of her dress like the nasty surprise it was.

We decided that I'd wave my arms about in the same lame, ghost-like way that I had done before. When someone came to investigate we would nip in through the door and if things got awkward we could use our weapons to persuade the guards. If things got really bad then, well, again I didn't want to think about that.

Lizzie and Rosie positioned themselves just out of sight, beside the opening. I swallowed hard and stood up about three or four feet in front of the heavy metal door. I waved my arms around like I was drowning at sea and even managed some 'boos'.

It seemed like I was doing this for ages. When nothing happened I dropped my arms and stared hopelessly at the girls and shrugged.

"Keep going, keep going!" ordered Lizzie, irritated that I'd given up so easily.

It was just as I was raising my arms again that we heard a bolt being drawn back on the other side. As planned I ducked down out of sight and joined the girls, picking up the machine gun from beside Lizzie.

With a horrible, grinding creak of dry metal the door opened slowly outwards. After a few seconds we could hear two men whispering nervously together in German. I gripped the gun tightly. Then a suited leg stepped cautiously into the tunnel. This was slowly followed by another. Then the man himself. Like most of the people down here he was dressed in a 1940's suit with a hat. What I was more concerned about though was the pistol the man held out in front of him. Nervous blood banged and clattered around my ears once again and I asked myself how much more of this I could take.

But, so far, it was working. The man nimbly crept out of the door way, letting the muzzle of his pistol lead him. He didn't see us, flattened against the earth wall right beside the door. The man had moved quite a way into the tunnel – and I was about to give the signal to sneak inside – when The Face appeared. I knew it was him because of his broad shoulders and square jaw. Looking up at him he looked massive and I instantly asked myself what he was capable of doing to someone.

That was something else I didn't want to think about.

Luck stayed with us. The Face didn't have a gun and followed the man in the hat warily out into the tunnel. He was three or four steps inside and I was just about to move when he must have caught something out of the corner of his eye.

The Face's head turned and he looked directly at us.

From somewhere courage sprang up inside me. I looked him square in the eyes and raised the muzzle of the machine gun.

What happened next was totally unexpected. A look of surprise passed over The Face's huge features when he saw that I held a machine gun. He raised both his hands. Meanwhile, the other man was unaware of what was happening behind him and carried on up the dark tunnel. Not believing my luck I got to my feet and told Lizzie and Rosie to get through the door. They scuttled in through the opening and all the time I covered The Face with the muzzle of the gun. As soon as the girls were both inside the door I joined them. I didn't take my eyes off The Face. I was scared stiff that at any moment he'd take a lunge at me. After all I was just a scrawny teenager. But he didn't. There was a moment of panic as I fumbled with the gun and the handle of the door and I could see The Face looking for an opportunity to make a move. The opportunity passed when, with a screech of metal on metal and a hollow clang, I managed to close the heavy door. Now we were on the inside I couldn't resist a peek through the small spy-hole that was clear on this side. I saw The Face shout at the man who had disappeared up the tunnel and they both rushed towards the other side of the door. I heard them struggling faintly as they tried to open it. I backed away and joined Lizzie and Rosie.

That's it. We were trapped and there was only two possible ways out - through the Junction Sphere or as a prisoner again.

A third way was far worse.

We all understood that and we looked at each other uncertainly. We didn't even know how the J-Sphere worked or even if we could use it to escape. It was a long shot and we really didn't have a choice.

We were near the main part of the shelter now and all was still apart for the heavy humming of the Sphere. I held a finger to my lips as a signal for quiet but the noise from the Sphere itself covered our footsteps. Like before, we heard the bang and crash of its power long before we saw it. On hearing this Rosie cowered against one of the concrete walls. Fingers held fearfully to her mouth. We insisted that she be brave.

The shelter itself was deserted. It seemed that everybody had gone to bed and left chairs scattered and tables empty, but The Junction Sphere still held the same kind of fascination it did the first time we saw it. Colours moved freely over its surface and you couldn't help but gaze in wonder at the huge ball of ever-changing light. It displayed all the colours of the rainbow and every one in between. As we watched a shower of sparks like sudden summer flowers shot out and fell to the floor of the shelter. Red and orange globs of power. Then they bounced away like tennis balls. We stood watching for long seconds before we forced ourselves out of our trance and into action.

"What now?" muttered Lizzie.

I gripped the cold metal of the machine gun for reassurance. "Let's go take a look."

The sheer power of the Sphere was obvious and although I had never stood directly under an electricity pylon I guessed that this is what it might be like. The drone vibrating down through the floor and up through our feet felt like a train at full speed passing close by. As soon as I thought we were close enough I held out my hand for us to stop. We just didn't know what sort of energy we were dealing with.

"How do you think it works?" Lizzie's question was an obvious one and it was exactly what I was thinking.

I looked around for something to throw at it. The people who came down here to gaze at the Sphere were tidy as the tables were clear and wiped clean. There was really nothing around to throw. I laid the machine gun on the floor of the shelter then walked to the nearest chair. It was an old wooden one and heavy but if I got close enough I could just about manage to lob it at the Sphere to see what happens. It was a basic experiment but we just didn't have a clue how this dangerous but beautiful looking object worked at all.

Both Lizzie and Rosie saw what I was up to and moved back to a safe distance. With difficulty I brought the chair up to shoulder height and then counted to three then I heaved the thing at the outside of the Sphere. Instantly there was a huge bang and splatter of sparks as the chair clumped against the outside of the Sphere and fell back to the shelter floor. The three of us ducked away to what we thought was a safe distance and watched as the Sphere's colours then changed to moody, muddy browns, greens and glittery blacks. Only slowly did it return to the happy colours of before.

"It's almost alive!" I said and, as silly as it sounds, it did seem like the J-Sphere was able to protect itself. Like any living thing it hadn't liked something thrown at it. It had blocked it and had shown its anger with those dark and grumpy colours.

Suddenly, a single, slow hand clap.

"Splendid! Splendid! Well done!"

And Dr Meen slid out of the shadows and into the glow of the Junction-Sphere.
Chapter 44

Struggle

His smile was the same as before, threatening and at the same time charming. If a spider could smile, this would be it. He walked towards us and the snap of his applause sounded eerie in the empty shelter. I picked the machine gun up from where I had left it and steadied it at the hip. Lizzie raised her pistol and I could see Rosie holding the grenade through her dirty dress.

"Yes, very well done," continued Dr Meen, taking notice of the weapons for the first time. He stopped a short distance away and there was a slight pause as the doctor sized the situation up. "And of course, you are quite right. The Sphere is alive." Dr Meen turned his attention to the Sphere. He looked over it thoughtfully, admiring its beauty. "It acts like any living organism, you see. If it feels threatened then it protects itself. Just like you or I."

Dr Meen's words were unsettling. He looked at our weapons.

"Clearly," he continued, looking us up and down, "there is no love in the room and you three, like the Sphere, are feeling somewhat threatened." There was a running of feet now as The Face and the man who had been guarding the metal door with him arrived and positioned themselves near the doctor.

"But you see I'm not the one you should be afraid of." The threat was obvious as The Face's square jaw and big brown features contorted into something like a smile. Dr Meen smiled right back. "You see, if you were aware of what my friends here are capable of then you would show them the greatest respect and, of course, fear." Dr Meen pretended that I'd said something. "What was that? You haven't heard that, when Ernst was fighting the Russians in the war, he was renowned for his ability to extract information from captured soldiers? No? You didn't know that he would extract nails, teeth and toes with no feeling of pity or emotion? You didn't know?" Like two predators they grinned at each other. "Well, now you do. So I suggest you place those stolen weapons carefully on the floor."

It wasn't a request. It was a demand. I glanced at Lizzie and I saw the look of fear and uncertainty in her eyes and she must have saw mine too. She shook her head at me.

"L...look," I stammered, my panic as obvious as the gun I was holding, "we just want to...to go home."

That sounded awful. Like a real wimp. But I didn't care. It was true. I'd had enough and just wanted to go home where everything was ordered and in its right place. Not for the first time I'd had enough of special powers and time-travelling. The mocking smile on the faces of the three men in front of us told a different story.

We weren't going anywhere.

"Of course," said Dr Meen, imitating sudden understanding, "I see now. Yes, I do see. You want to use this brilliant object to go home? Is that it? Well, I'm afraid you need some sort of knowledge of how this wonderful machine operates before you use it and, I'm afraid, you have none. So let's all let bygones be bygones and then we can all go back to bed." Dr Meen spread his arms out in a 'let's be friends' sort of way. His thin fingers spread out like huge twiglets. "What do you say?"

For a moment I believed him. I wanted to believe that nothing horrible was going to happen. I wanted to believe that we could put down our weapons and shake hands. I wanted to believe that we could all go have some Coca-cola and something to eat together and wanted to believe there was a shower and a warm bed at the end of all this. I fought the urge to give in and trust Dr Meen. He must have smelled weakness as Dr Meen gave The Face a nod and, still grinning, the German took a few big steps towards us.

"No!" Lizzie shouted suddenly, pointing the pistol firmly at The Face. "Don't come any nearer!"

The machine gun had grown heavy in my arms and I had been holding it lazily, especially because I wanted more than anything to put the thing down. For the umpteenth time Lizzie's spirit had shown itself.

It infected me.

The muzzle of the machine gun came up and I gripped the weapon tightly against my hip.

The Face stopped and his smile dropped away.

Dr Meen wasn't impressed as his arms dropped to his sides and his expression took on a more serious look. He suddenly seemed very disappointed. "Oh," he said quietly. "I see." A pause. "Then I have no choice...no choice...but to let you go."

It took a couple of seconds for what Dr Meen had just said to sink in. Me and Lizzie exchanged befuddled glances. "You are...going to let...us go?" I asked the doctor cautiously. I couldn't quite believe it and my hopes soared.

"I'm disappointed that we couldn't...cooperate...but, well, there you are." He looked at the two men stood waiting for orders. "Ernst, stand aside. Let them go."

The Face's eyes looked from Dr Meen, to us, then back again. It was as if he also couldn't believe what he'd just heard. After a few moments Ernst took two paces backwards as a signal that he was going to do as he was told.

"Oh," added the doctor suddenly, "I almost forgot. You will, of course, give the Jew to us."

My fingers fiddled nervously with the trigger of the machine gun. I knew it was too good to be true. For the briefest of moments I thought about leaving Rosie behind, her freedom for ours. But I remembered what Lizzie's Father had to say about helping and doing and not just allowing things to happen.

There was no way Rosie was staying. She was coming with us and I'm sure that Lizzie was thinking the same thing. It goes without saying. We had special powers.

"No," she told the doctor. "There's just no way."

And that was the coolest thing I'd ever heard.

Doctor Meen smiled and took a step back. "Of course, you know why she can't go with you?" He chuckled when I stared blankly at him. "Oh, you poor thing. You can't know who she is. Well, Master Webber, let me tell you." The doctor gestured towards where Rosie stood frowning and scared in this big space. "Rosie is the Grandmother of no other than your good friend Bethany Taylor-Hall."

What had I just heard? I couldn't be certain. So I asked. "What did you say?"

"Your friend, Bethany," explained doctor Meen again impatiently, "that's her Grandmother."

My head swam and I felt dizzy with this new information. But at the same time it all made sense. She was so like Beth it was weird and I was so confused and baffled that I turned to look at her with my mouth wide open. The only problem was the machine gun turned with me.

"Jay!" shouted Lizzie, "watch where you're pointing that gun."

I blinked then, came back to my senses, returned my attention to the doctor who was now bored, tired of the kids in front of him.

"So, it's just impossible that she can return with you. If Rosie were to meet her Grand-daughter, well, it's simply hopeless to predict the consequences for time and space."

I didn't get that. I felt my brain puff and pant as it worked at the math. Rosie just stood clutching the grenade. She was completely confused.

"So, my little time-traveller," said doctor Meen slowly, "the Jew stays with us."

Me, Lizzie and Rosie said nothing. There was nothing to say.

"Well," said the doctor, "I guess we might call this check," and he looked impatiently around at us all; "For the time being." Then he rubbed his long chin thoughtfully. "However, to pass the time, so to speak, we should return to the tiny matter of The Sphere. Were you wanting advice on its use? I assume you were."

I nodded. We did. If we had the chance to make a dash for it, I hadn't the foggiest idea how it would take us to my bedroom in the 21st Century.

"Well, it's very simple. You show the Sphere that you are not a threat by walking casually towards it...like this."

Dr Meen strode towards the Junction Sphere and, with a crackle and an orange glow that seemed to ignite his whole body, he promptly disappeared. Again me and Lizzie exchanged glances.

Rosie came closer, suspicious, curious. "Just who's Grandmother am I?"

I didn't have time to answer. Dr Meen had gone. Vanished!

Into The Junction Sphere!

What happened next happened fast and confused us all. People started to appear inside the shelter. I recognised Hanz but the others that came with him had obviously been woken up and had come to see what was going on. This made us all edgy and we had started to back away from the Sphere, to a safe distance, when there was a loud crackle and hiss like cold water on a hot pan.

And with a flash of orange Dr Meen rushed out of the Sphere and made for Lizzie.

It was such a surprise, seemed so unreal, that none of us had time to react before Dr Meen reached Lizzie, knocking the pistol clean out of her hands. It slid across the wet floor and out of reach. Before I could do anything Dr Meen had one of his long arms clamped around Lizzie's throat. In the other he held a knife that glinted sharply. He must have had the knife all along. At the same time as Dr Meen's attack The Face had made a lunge for the floor of the shelter and the pistol.

Without thinking I squeezed the trigger of the machine gun.

For a second the shelter was full of flash and thunder as the gun responded and I was sent hobbling backwards. Although the short burst of bullets was sent far and wide, The Face stopped a short distance from the pistol on the floor. He held up his hands and retreated to where he'd come from.

Lizzie struggled but Dr Meen brought the knife up to touch the skin on her neck.

"Stop struggling!" he bellowed into her ear. And Lizzie, given the fright of her life, did as she was told. I could see the knife pushing in the skin of her neck and leaving a red mark as he shifted around to face me and Rosie.

"Now, young man," he said viciously, all the time holding Lizzie in a tight, spidery squeeze. "Check-mate, I believe."
Chapter 45

The Dead and the Dying

It felt like the game was up. Dr Meen was threatening to kill Lizzie, The Face was itching to pounce and more and more people were arriving in the shelter.

And what's more Dr Meen was right. I didn't have many alternatives now he held a knife to Lizzie's throat and I didn't know what to do. The situation was spiralling out of control. I glanced from face to face, looking for an answer. Rosie was petrified. Lizzie too. And everybody else just wanted revenge, to get their hands on the three kids that were threatening a golden future and a new order.

It was then that, for no reason whatsoever, I thought of Albert. In that same instant I heard his voice, far off like mountains but crystal clear.

Jay, you must destroy the Sphere!

I looked around expecting to see Lizzie's father, but he was no-where to be seen. Of course he wasn't. Like I kept telling myself, this wasn't a film. There would be no happy ending.

Then the voice came again.

Jay, the Sphere must be destroyed!

Then, what Albert wanted me to do, the importance of it, hit me like a falling car. Surely it's not up to us to destroy this thing? A bunch of kids? Surely?

Hanz joined The Face or Ernst or whatever he was called and they sidled towards the gun. It could have been a comedy and I might have laughed if Dr Meen didn't hold a knife to the soft throat of Lizzie, the girl who only wanted to help. And all the time the shelter became louder with the voices of the curious, becoming agitated and angry, echoing like children in a cave.

Rosie came close and it was at that moment that Lizzie's eyes looked for mine. They locked together for an instant and I remembered the first time we had seen each other. When she had come to ask for my help.

How did it come to this?

But Lizzie's eyes had changed. The fear had left them and now they were narrowed, determined, and something passed between us, all of us, including Albert who wasn't even here.

I realised the 'special powers' we shared had shown me the horrible answer.

I felt the cold weight of the gun in my hands, pressing hard against my hip, and I knew it was loaded and that I could use it.

With confidence.

Once again I thought of Albert and all that he'd said about fairness and honour and about how killing isn't the answer. About how, if one person dies, somehow, we all suffer.

We are all to blame.

I thought about nothing else as I watched Lizzie bite hard into Dr Meen's hand, the hand that held the knife. I watched as Dr Meen shouted in pain and gripped the struggling girl even tighter. I watched as the knife plunged deeper and it was then that I pulled hard on the trigger of the machine gun. There were flashes and the shelter was filled with the weapons' horrible bark. Everybody ducked, following their instincts, the need to survive, and for a few seconds it left only me and Rosie as witnesses to what I'd done.

I remember at the time thinking that the bullets I had fired had missed both Lizzie and Dr Meen because all I saw was their clothing move in odd ways. Little did I know that what I was watching was the bullets tear into coats and skirts and then on into both of them. I remember how it all happened in slow motion; the looks of pain and surprise on their faces; Dr Meen's slow stumble backwards; the drop to his knees and the blood that had started to spread out and stain the clothes under his coat as if someone had taken a felt –tip pen to them. His eyes were wide in disbelief. Lizzie's eyes were still locked on mine as she also fell to the floor, but sitting up with her legs stretched out. All I could focus on was Lizzie's look of wonder and shock. She glanced down at herself but, unlike the doctor now stretched out on his back behind her, there was no blood.

There was no blood!

A rush of hope. The hope that the bullets had actually missed. I ran forwards and knelt beside her but Lizzie didn't move. She just smiled weakly at me and I laid the dark weapon on the concrete floor.

"Lizzie...I..." The words wouldn't come, were stuck somewhere down in my throat like hair down a plug-hole, and I slipped an arm around her shoulders. Lizzie relaxed into me and time stood still as I cradled the little girl from 1946 and the people around us stood and looked on.

"Lizzie." This time the words climbed out. "I'm sorry. I had no choice."

It was true. The knife wound in her throat was deep and bleeding heavily but I still wasn't sure if I'd hit Lizzie. There was still no blood from a bullet. The J-Sphere cracked and popped behind us and Lizzie whispered something as I searched for a wound.

"Lizzie, what is it?" I asked her, leaning closer. "What do you want?"

"Necklace...my necklace..."

Avoiding the blood from the wound in her neck I found the chain of her Jesus on the Cross and pulled it out carefully and held the cross in my hands just below her chin. Lizzie reached up and closed a small, pale fist around it. She held it there. She looked at me. She smiled.

I hated myself and I felt physically sick at what I'd nearly done.

"Lizzie..." I tried again but I knew an apology would never be enough so I looked around to try and find something to stop the flow of blood from Lizzie's neck. I caught sight of her handkerchief, dropped beside her in the struggle. So I picked it up and held it to her neck.

And as the white handkerchief became soaked with blood I noticed a single, clean bullet wound. Small. In the centre of her chest.

I was old enough to know the bullet had gone straight into her heart.
Chapter 46

The Shadows

I had never seen, let alone touched, a person that was dying before. But I could feel Lizzie's life slipping slowly away. Although there was still the whisper of a smile on her lips her eyelids were becoming heavier and now she stared past me as if she saw something over my shoulder. All I wanted to do was erase the last few minutes, record over it like an old programme off the TV. Anything to stop the pain in my chest.

I felt, rather than saw, the presence of Albert. I needed to say something. Explain. Give reasons.

"Albert," I shouted up towards the roof of the shelter. "I'm so, so sorry."

I knew he'd heard. Had listened. Had understood. But there was a pause before the answer came, low and sad.

You had to do it. Nothing you could have done can change that now.

I felt like lying down beside Lizzie and giving up. I couldn't go on after this.

Jay, you must destroy the Sphere.

I shook my head as Lizzie's hand moved to mine, holding it weakly. And then her whole body felt like a rag-doll and I knew I had killed Lizzie Raynor.

Jay, look to Rosie!

With an almighty effort I let what was left of Lizzie slip to the floor but I didn't look to Rosie. Instead I looked straight ahead and saw The Face stood holding Lizzie's pistol. Hanz was checking Dr Meen but the doctor had long since stopped breathing and moving. Only then did I look to Rosie who had in fact been stood beside me all along. I looked at what she held. And what she held in her hands on arms straight out had kept everyone in the shelter from seeking revenge.

It was the grenade.

Rosie was supporting it with one small hand while a finger of the other was hooked around the ring of the pin, threatening anyone who might come too close. I saw this timid little girl and I saw Lizzie's bravery in Rosie, glimpsed her Grand-daughter in her, and I knew I couldn't just give up and abandon her.

I picked up the machine gun.

I got to my feet.

It was a stand-off. The Face was grinding his teeth in anticipation with the pistol held down at his side. He just wanted to bring it up and fire, to get his hands on us. And behind him others were moving about, coming closer, impatient to see an end to this.

With my right hand I held the machine gun and with the other I held Rosie's shoulders. Brought her closer. Rosie still held the grenade like some sort of weird gift and I pointed the gun at The Face and Hanz. Then me and Rosie started to move, like a drunk crab, sideways towards the Junction Sphere.

I could see shapes moving all around now. Strangers determined to stop our escape. Shadows moving quickly like shapes in mist.

Suddenly a huge gust of wind lifted Rosie's hair and grabbed at our clothes. The gun in my hand was dropped and, although I still held onto Rosie, I went down on one knee. The sudden storm of air had taken everyone else by surprise and it blew on as I struggled to my feet. It was at that point that I realised the shadows moving beyond The Face and Hanz weren't shadows at all. They were real, living things.

They were moving closer.

Slowly I realised that these shapes weren't just moving closer, they were actually appearing out of the air in front of us. Becoming clearer. Sharper. These living objects swirled around on the gusts of air that battered us all, moving between people who were as fascinated as we were, creating a low moaning that drowned out the hum of the J-Sphere. The sound was horrible. It was like the wailing of a thousand people condemned to death. The sound rooted me to the spot. I couldn't move. So we watched as a terrific wind forced us away from the Sphere and the forms moved amongst the startled watchers in the shelter.

Steadily moving nearer and nearer to me and Rosie.

Amazed and horrified I picked out blurred heads without bodies. Eyes wide and mouths open in a constant scream, rushing here and there. I saw running legs and beckoning hands attached to arms without any owner. I saw half-eaten dogs and cats scampering across the floor. I saw the crazy movement of the legs of spiders. The wriggling of snakes. Rats tails. Abandoned babies. Sobbing mothers. Squashed frogs. Beetles. Ants. What I was seeing was every nightmare that you could imagine. All liquidised into one hurling, swirling mass.

I saw Hanz stand, look towards the churning cloud of bad dreams and stretch out his arms in a Jesus on the Cross sort of way and the word 'fathers' was just caught on the storm that was booming and moving amongst us. His screams were quickly cut short as he disappeared, buried under a dozen or more of his worst nightmares. Scratching. Tearing. Eating.

Smothered.

So this was The Fathers. Who, or what, they were I couldn't begin to think about. A storm of nightmares for sure. But why were they here and what sort of evil would show itself in this way? What terrible force would taunt and tear apart the people who celebrated their existence, expected their help, worshipped them?

I wondered if Dr Meen knew exactly who The Fathers were.

I saw the blood and the bits of Hanz that the shapes had left behind and I gripped Rosie tightly and dragged her into the wind and towards the tumbling colours of the J-Sphere.

The Sphere had turned to golds, dark reds and sparkly blacks and I knew that this living thing felt threatened, was disturbed by what was happening around it. I was full of doubt about our escape into the Sphere. Could we do what Dr Meen had done? If we did, what would we find on the inside and beyond? We had no time to think about that as the moaning was building and the wind was becoming even stronger.

As we drew close to the Sphere, showers of warm sparks covered us and lit Rosie's face like a bedside lamp. They showed terrified eyes looking to mine for explanations. Reassurance.

I couldn't explain and I couldn't reassure her.

We just had to get on with it.

So we paused, took a deep breath and plunged into the The Junction Sphere.
Chapter 47

Inside the Junction Sphere

What I didn't expect was nothing at all. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. There was a bright flash of orange as we passed through the outer wall but, apart from that, we found ourselves on the inside of the J-Sphere.

Or, to be more precise, we were stood in my kitchen in the 21st century.

I couldn't believe it. It had seemed like a million years since I had last been here. I looked around. There was no mess. Nothing was out of place. It was clear that it was dark outside as the kitchen was gloomy and Dad had left a light on under one of the kitchen cabinets and there was a half-finished mug of tea on the kitchen table. I still held onto a bemused, confused Rosie still holding the grenade out in front of her.

I pushed her arms down and made sure that she held the grenade tightly.

Suddenly current events came crowding in and I looked back the way we had come. Behind us stood the patio doors, but instead of glass and plastic the doors had become a multi-coloured wall. Moving. Swaying. It reminded me of the surface of the sea but stood up on its end. We stood watching for a little while, hypnotised by its gentle swaying. For a moment we completely forgot what we were supposed to do. How we were meant to somehow destroy this thing. But it was so beautiful, so unique. Was it that important to kill it?

The answer came quickly.

The wall began to bulge at a point near its middle. Pretty soon a football sized balloon had appeared. As we watched the bulge got bigger and bigger. I raised the machine gun and stepped away. Rosie skittered behind the kitchen table. Then the balloon burst sending orange sparks bounding into the kitchen leaving a large head poking through. It had no eyes. No mouth. No nose or ears. Just waved pointlessly like one of those weeds at the bottom of the ocean. Suddenly, another head. Something like the wing of a bat. The squeal of a pig.

This was becoming too crazy. My horror turned quickly to disgust. I aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. The big balloon head bled red blood from the holes I made in it and it disappeared but others were trying to get in as half a pig appeared. Several more heads. Arms. Legs. I'm sure a saw a nurse holding a clipboard and heard the steady bleep of a hospital monitor.

The voice of Beth – 'I wouldn't be paid to live on shoddy Shad Hill!'

And Kyle, waving goodbye.

All my worst fears mixed together, moulded into one.

"Rosie!" I shouted in panic. "The grenade! Now!"

Rosie was huddled and terrified under the kitchen cabinet and her eyes, frightened, mouse-like, were pleading with me to make it all stop.

That's when I saw a tentacle, as thick as my body, snaking towards her ankle. Before I could shout a warning it had her, had curled around the area above her shoe. It was pulling her back towards the J-Sphere and what lay beyond.

I pointed the gun at the slapping, green thing that belonged to who knows what, well clear of Rosie's leg, and pulled the trigger.

Click!

Nothing. A jam maybe. I tried again.

Click!

Click!

The gun was empty. I let the gun drop to the kitchen floor. Despite what was coming through the Sphere I rushed to Rosie and scrabbled to find the grenade.

"Rosie," I spluttered, "where's the grenade. Where's the bloody grenade?"

Then I had it. Nearly dropped it. Held it tightly and ducked back out from under the kitchen table. The moaning was getting louder and louder and I really didn't want to look too closely at what was coming through the wall of what had become black and orange and ruby reds. I just wanted to get rid of them. To make them stop. I held up the grenade. I'd seen them used in films. You just put a finger in the ring and pull the pin.

Don't you?

In films that is.

Just pull the pin.

So that's what I did.

It came away after a hefty tug and for a second or two I was jammed with fear and unable to move. I had to get rid of it so I lobbed it at the wall of nightmares, back into the Junction-Sphere and back to where it had been made.
Chapter 48

Turn and Turn About

The grenade sailed lazily through the air, hit the skin of the Sphere and plopped to the kitchen floor. Why didn't it go in? Maybe the Sphere thought it was a threat? The Junction Sphere didn't like threats, and who could blame it. I had no time to stop and think. I scrambled back to where Rosie was trying to free herself from the tentacle, got under the table with her and forced her head to the floor. I pressed myself as close to her as I could and waited. I was panting like a racehorse.

The hum of the Sphere and the moaning and screaming carried on for far longer than I wanted. Then a loud crump which I felt rather than heard and a small draught and bits and pieces of whatever dropped onto my back. Long seconds passed, seconds where I checked myself for pain and movement. I asked Rosie if she was OK.

"Get it off!"

The tentacle! I looked down the length of Rosie's small body to the end of her leg. With relief I realised that it had gone, but so had Rosie's sock and shoe. I looked further, towards the wall of the J-Sphere, and noticed the wall of colour moving violently. The calm sea that I had noticed earlier had now become rough and choppy.

It also looked dangerous. It looked like the Sphere was going to be the next thing to explode.

There had been a change. The moaning had stopped and the hum of the J-Sphere itself was going up and down, up and down, like some piece of failing electrical equipment. As I watched, one by one the things that had been trying to get through to the 21st Century struggled back to where they had come from and all that we were left with was the broken sound of the Sphere and a dark black and rough sea.

Something was about to happen, that was for sure.

Then the hum of the Sphere started to rise and the dark wall became so ferocious I thought that it was going to actually burst in. I covered my ears as the sound reached a pitch that was almost deafening. Rosie did the same and she shook with fright beside me.

I hid my face again. Didn't want to see what was coming. What was going to happen. How we were going to die. The whoosh of the Sphere's wall and the wailing seemed to carry on for ever.

Suddenly, silence.

Absolute silence.

So much silence it was hard to hear anything. Slowly my hearing adjusted to the silence and, after a while I heard the tick of the kitchen clock and the hum of the fridge.

"What's that?" asked Rosie.

"What's what?" I said, lifting myself away from her.

"That humming."

"Oh. It's just the fridge. Just the fridge."

A pause. Breathing. Clock. Fridge.

"Is it gone?" Rosie asked. Her voice was muffled. Her head was still held close to the kitchen floor.

"I think so."

"Shall we look?"

"Yeah."

So we looked. The black wall, the things that had been trying to get in, the tentacle, the horrible noises, they had all gone!

We both crawled out from under the kitchen table expecting to brush away little bits of whatever that had fallen on us when the J-Sphere had exploded. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. Just our patio doors. It was still dark outside and we both looked at our reflection in the glass. Rosie gasped when she saw herself framed by the white of the doors.

"Oh no! I'm dead! I'm a ghost!"

Rosie had turned into that sort of ghostly grey that I was so familiar with.

It took a while to settle her down, to tell her what had happened and to remind her why she had turned grey. I poured her a glass of water and we sat alone in the gloomy kitchen and the fridge eventually switched itself off and we watched shadows created by the small light underneath the kitchen cabinets.

"Will they come back? asked Rosie, still hypnotised by her reflection in the patio doors.

I shrugged. "Dunno." I was exhausted. "Hope not."

Then I heard the clump clump clump of slippered feet on the stairs and me and Rosie got back under the kitchen table. It was Dad. We watched him coughing his way to the fridge, watched him get a drink and swear as he stubbed his toe on one of the kitchen chairs. Then we watched him stand listening for a while. Finally, with another up-in-the-middle-of-the-night type cough, he clumped back to bed.

"Who was that?" asked Rosie.

"My Dad."

"He's got a bad cough."

"Mmm."

We listened to the night noises of the kitchen for a bit.

"Do you know," I said after a while, "you're a really good friend of mine's Grandmother?"

"I know. I've heard."

For what we hoped would be the last time that night we clambered out from underneath the kitchen table.

"So this is your house?" said Rosie, "where you live?"

"Yeah," I replied, digging my hands into the pockets of my coat. "I'm back where I started, at least."

"Turn and turn about."

I didn't know what that meant but I liked the sound of it, so I agreed. "Yeah. Turn and turn about."

We had a drink of coke then I made us a ham sandwich with mayonnaise each and we took it up to my bedroom. We were both knackered and we would deal with what the morning brought in the morning. Before I went upstairs I went to the front room door and checked on Mum. She was wrapped up in her blanket on her made-up bed, breathing peacefully.

In my bedroom I checked the green carpet at the point where the stairs from 1946 had once been, jabbing at the area with my foot.

But I found nothing. Just grubby green carpet.

It was just like the stairs – and the Junction Sphere \- had never been there at all.
Chapter 49

The Police, Someone Found, Someone Lost

At this point I'm hoping you're asking yourselves what happened next? I mean, I know that you know that I've had an incredible adventure and that I've seen some horrific things. All this and I end up with a little grey girl from 1946 as well! If that's not enough, she's Bethany Taylor-Hall's Grandmother! I mean, the name didn't even sound Jewish.

Now, how did I explain that one?

The truth is I didn't.

Although we were wired and tired from our experiences we both found it difficult to get any rest. To make matters worse, when we finally struggled to fidgety sleep, Dad burst in.

It was 7.30.

The look on his face was one of complete shock and horror. Rosie was terrified and Dad just couldn't get over her colour, the way she was dressed and the state we were both in. Obviously I didn't tell Dad the whole truth. I mean, who'd believe that I'd been travelling backwards and forwards through time and managed to stop another invasion by Adolf Hitler? Not many people. And certainly not my Dad. So I told him the simple truth, that Rosie was a ghost or something and belonged in 1946.

Dad didn't buy it. In fact he called the police and Rosie was taken away by two men in plain clothes and a policewoman. At this point I was worried that I might get charged for abduction or worse.

The day after Rosie was taken by the police I was taken in for questioning.

The police weren't as nasty as I've seen on the TV. In fact they were quite polite. The middle-aged man asking me questions bought me a can of coke and some chocolate and told me that I'd nothing to worry about, told me that Rosie had told them everything. This worried me silly but I stuck to the story that I'd told Dad, that Rosie was some sort of ghost from 1946. The middle-aged man nodded as I spoke but he didn't write anything down. Later I was given an examination by a doctor. When he'd finished he mumbled to several plain clothes policemen whilst looking over the tops of bits of paper at me. If I didn't trust doctors before I certainly didn't now.

Later Dad came to collect me and that was the last I saw of the police station.

After a few days I was allowed to visit Rosie in St Mary's hospital. I never thought I'd see that place again. You know how I feel about hospitals. But Rosie was being kept in isolation and the rooms that she had were comfortable and Rosie seemed happy. She had been thoroughly checked by the doctors and nurses, questioned by important men and women in suits and had even been filmed. Rosie said she was amazed by all the gadgets in the 21st Century, fascinated by all the bleeps and buzzes, the bright lights at night, the machines, the endless cars passing underneath her window, the speed of it all.

I couldn't see it.

By the way, Rosie did tell me that she had told them everything – cupboards, Germans, J-Sphere – the whole lot. Why they didn't question me again I'll never understand.

Maybe the police and the men in suits and ties knew enough already.

It was a few days after that visit that Dad had a telephone call from the hospital. The woman on the other end wanted to speak to me. A soft voice said that Rosie was asking for me and would I like to visit her again. Because of what had happened I often spent a lot of time alone in my bedroom. Kyle had moved and Rosie's Grand-daughter was busy with boys. If Rosie was to visit for a bit, I really didn't know how we were going to keep them apart. I was worried about the consequences for the future and I didn't want to think about it.

But, the truth was, Rosie had become important to me.

So I said yes to the woman with the soft voice.

Lately I had been thinking about Lizzie and the Raynor family back in 1946. There had been no contact from them at all. It was as if some wire had been cut. Our lines dead. There had been the odd dream and some garbled words heard late at night but I put that down to my 'special powers'. These things were no surprise now. But I heard nothing that remotely sounded like the voices of the family I had got to know so well.

It was on that second visit to Rosie that I suddenly started to think about the old man who had been on Waltham Ward when we had come to visit Mum in hospital, the old man who had always seemed fascinated by me, who kept staring and smiling, smiling and staring. I don't know why but I had a sudden urge to go and see him and to check if he was OK.

I told Dad that I wanted to go and say hello to Karen the nurse and left him and Rosie watching TV. Waltham Ward was easy to find and Karen wasn't on duty. This time a male nurse looked up from the paperwork he was filling in.

"Can I help you son?"

I was feeling nervous and I didn't understand why. I was peering curiously around the ward as I answered him. "I've come to visit and old man."

When I looked at the nurse he had a smile. "Well, take your pick. There's hundreds of them in 'ere!"

I smiled back but it didn't help that gnawing, nagging feeling. It was like that nervous excitement you get before you go on stage in front of people.

"It's someone in particular," I said, "someone who used to be in a bed..." - I pointed to where he used to be - "...over there."

The nurse squinted through thick rimmed glasses to where I had pointed. In the old man's bed now was a middle-aged woman, fast asleep with her mouth wide open and the magazine she had been reading dropped to her chest. The nurse looked at me and turned down the corners of his mouth. "Whoever he was he's not here now."

I was lucky. The nurse saw how confused and anxious I was so he asked me to sit next to him at his little counter and explain. I told him about Mum, her illness and the names of the other nurses that I knew. But I lied about the reasons for wanting to know the old man's name. I just said he was friendly and always had a smile which was true. The nurse's name was Peter. As I listened to him talk I realised that he had a slight accent.

"Polish," Peter explained. "I was born in Poland. Been over here for...let's see...something like ten years."

"Have you heard of a place called Gros-Tychow?" I asked Peter, out of the blue.

"In Poland?"

"Yeah."

Peter shrugged. "Can't say I have. Why?"

"It doesn't matter. Just a thought." Then, thinking about Rosie and the strange new world she found herself in, I asked Peter what his home was like.

"Well, I can't remember much about Poland now," he answered whilst looking at the list of previous patients on Waltham Ward. "I guess I miss my family though. You know, aunts and uncles."

I didn't know how much you could miss someone. Well, not really. I missed Kyle and Beth and other friends – and I really missed Lizzie – but I didn't know what it was to really miss someone, in that 'grown-up' way.

Then my mind zoomed forward in time and I tried to imagine a world without my Mum. This was someone who I was really going to miss and, no matter how I tried, I couldn't imagine a world without her.

I gave up trying. The real thing would happen soon enough. So I just nodded at Peter and pretended to scan the list of names and the comments different nurses and doctors had made in different boxes next to their names. Then a female nurse fetched up at the counter, said hello to me and Peter.

"A new friend?" she asked with a smile, and Peter explained.

"You're in luck, young man," said the female nurse coming round to our side of the counter and pulling up a chair, "because you don't remember me. But I remember you."

I looked at her in surprise. The female nurse was thin, had quite a few wrinkles which made her look older than Mum or Dad. She had streaked hair tied into a pony-tail, wore studs in her ears that sparkled and round framed glasses that reflected the hospital lights. She had a name-tag that read Judy.

"You're Mrs Webster's little boy, aren't you."

It wasn't a question. Judy knew exactly who I was so I nodded. "Yes. I am. It's Webber, though. Jay Webber."

Judy adjusted her glasses and looked closely at the list of names in front of Peter. "How is your mum?"

"OK," I lied because I knew, like Judy knew, that she wasn't well at all.

Judy didn't dwell on Mum's illness, she just moved on. That's good because if there's one thing I hate it's people who are too over-sympathetic. It makes me uncomfortable because I don't really want to talk about Mum's illness and the D Word.

"So, you must be looking," Judy mumbled slowly to herself as a ringed finger followed the names down the page, "...to find..."

Faded pink nail varnish tapped on the black ink of two words that made up a name and I strained forward to read.

And there it was.

In black and white.

ERNEST RAYNOR
Chapter 50

If Only I'd Known...

Peter and Judy were both really concerned when I left Waltham Ward. On seeing Ernie's name there in front of me I felt dizzy. Sick. And my face turned the colour that I was used to in 1946. After lots of 'are you OK's?' and 'are you sure you're OK's?' I wobbled out from behind the little counter and made my rickety way back to Dad and Rosie.

They were still watching TV when I flopped in one of the chairs around Rosie's bed and was quiet and staring on the journey home. Dad asked if I was OK so I nodded quietly and watched winter passing by the car window.

I couldn't believe it. Was the Ernie Raynor who had spent so much time in hospital opposite my Mum the Ernie Raynor from 1946? Was he the one and the same? Well, if he was then my 'special powers' – my help – had saved him. What's more Albert's journey had brought his son back home safely. Surely, it must be. He must have recognised me and that's why he used to smile so much.

But how? The only time Ernie saw me was as a ghost in the room where he was being held prisoner.

As rain began to silently spray the windscreen of our car and Dad turned the wipers on I made a promise to myself to go back to Waltham Ward ASAP and ask some more questions.

As it turned out I wasn't able to get back to St Mary's for three days. School was busy and Dad needed help with Mum. She was looking thin and weak now but she kept smiling. And I kept smiling back. But deep-down I was endlessly worried, a worry that just wouldn't go away, gnawing at my insides like a caterpillar on a leaf.

I caught the bus to the hospital and I was lucky to find Judy talking to a doctor. She smiled politely, finished the conversation she was having and leant over the counter towards me.

"Hello again," she said brightly. "Come back for some more?"

I said 'yes' and that I needed to speak to her again. Judy seemed a bit anxious as she checked the time on her watch with a clock on the wall and looked up and down the ward. Then she looked at me. "OK. But we'll have to make it quick."

I scuttled behind the counter. Judy had pulled up a seat so I pulled one up next to her.

"Right then," Judy asked me quietly, "what do you want to know?"

"Well, is there anything else that you can tell me about Mr Raynor?"

"You mean the old man you came in asking about the other day?"

"Yes!"

"OK," said Judy thoughtfully, and it was then that I knew something was wrong, "but what do you want to know?"

I felt awkward now. Guilty. Like I was doing something wrong. "How about an address or something?"

Suddenly, like a cloud passing in front of the sun, Judy's expression turned from happy helpful to one of sympathy. Her eyes widened and her head cocked slightly to one side.

I hated that look.

"Oh," she said slowly like Mum does when I cut myself, "I'm sorry, but Mr Raynor...Mr Raynor died some weeks ago now."

I must have looked shocked. I was.

"Died?"

Judy nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

I looked around as the dizziness and the sick feeling returned. Judy put a concerned hand on my arm, asked me if I was OK and got me a plastic cup of water.

I knew we'd been here before.

Judy sat with me for a bit, asked me if I was relative or something, stuff like that. Obviously I said no to everything. After a bit I felt better so Judy sat back in her chair and looked long and hard at me. "You know, I can't make you out."

I sipped at my water. It tasted like plastic. "Why?"

"Well, all this concern for someone you didn't really know."

I felt Judy's eyes searching mine for answers, the truth, not the half-lies I lived on these days.

I shrugged. "Just felt I should have spent more time getting to know him, I s'pose."

Judy nodded slowly as if she understood.

"Did he have any family or a funeral or anything?" I asked fishing for clues and to change the subject.

Now Judy shook her head. "Don't know. All I know is he died on the ward on my week off. Natural causes I think. He wasn't well anyway."

Recalling something, Judy sat up. "I just remembered. There's a small box in the office with a few bits and bobs he left behind. Nobody's collected them as yet. I shouldn't do this but we could have a quick peek."

This was a result.

"And I mean quick," Judy added sternly. "As much as I like talking to you, there's sick people to see to."

Judy disappeared in the direction of the 'bad news room' – the room where the nurse and Dad had told me about Mum – then came back with a shoebox. She sat down and placed the box in front of us and gently removed the lid.

We peered inside.

An old watch, scratched;

An empty wallet;

£2.64 pence;

A handkerchief;

A faded with time, gold Jesus on the Cross;

A black and white photograph, creased, torn at one edge.

Judy carefully pulled out the photograph and we looked closely.

I couldn't believe what we saw.

Smiling out of it, in withered black and white, were three people, gathered around an old sofa in a long forgotten front room.

Those three people were Maureen, Lizzie and a very grey me.

Judy the nurse was as dumfounded as I was. Looked me up and down. Rubbed her eyes. I thought on my feet. Told her that the grey teenager in the photo was a long lost cousin of mine and Ernie Raynor was, in fact, a relative. Judy agreed the likeness of my long lost cousin was uncanny. When I asked her if I could have the photograph Judy promised that she'd keep it and, if no-one came to collect it within a month or so, then she would gladly give it to me.

I left Waltham Ward feeling happier than I had in a long time. Ernie had survived, had been brought safely home and had somehow found himself owning the photograph Albert had taken of us all, way back in 1946. My help and my 'special powers' had found him after all.

I had done something. I hadn't just stood by.

I had done something because I could.

When the bus dropped me off I made a quick detour to the site where I thought the 'German' house and the shelter would have been. Again the garage with the corrugated blue door, the new red bricks and the suspicious movement of front room curtains. I sat on someone's garden wall for a while and thought about what was. What had been. I thought about myself and Lizzie's first trip out onto the cold and dark streets of 1946. I thought about running away from Dr Meen over broken stones, through a very different world from the one I found myself in now. I thought about being captured and Beth's Grandmother and the horrible cupboard. I thought about the New Order and the Junction-Sphere and I shivered as I remembered The Fathers and what might have happened if Dr Meen's plan had allowed all this evil loose on the 21st Century. As I sat thinking an old lady passed by carrying an old shopping bag. She kept her eyes on the pavement as she passed and, when she was a bit away, just for a moment, I felt like shouting out 'Lizzie!'

Just in case.

I mean, what stranger things could happen?

But I didn't and eventually I walked the short distance home.

And it was then that I knew that I was wrong. Stranger things were possible. Stranger than I could ever imagine.

My Mum was dead.
Chapter 51

The Worst Feeling of All

It was cold and crisp and clear on the day of my Mum's funeral. It was so cold that I blew steam from my mouth, pretending to be a train from one of those old films. I stood in our back garden and looked out over the roofs of our neighbourhood and remembered how different the houses of 1946 were. Then, a commotion at the front. Large cars were pulling up. Doors closed respectfully, gently.

Dad appeared at the back door, told me that 'they were here', straightened his black tie and, without thinking about it, I straightened my black tie too.

Looking back over the rooftops of where we lived before heading inside I caught a familiar smell on the cold air, something sweet. A smell that reminded of the past.

Albert's pipe.

As quickly as it had arrived, it passed. But it made me smile.

Then I headed straight towards the worst feeling of all.

The worst feeling was knowing my Mum was leaving the house for the last time.

The worst feeling was because nobody was smiling except for an aunt who talked nervously, smoked a lot, and reminded everyone how good-looking Mum was when she was younger.

The worst feeling was because of the looks that passed between people. Or didn't for that matter. I noticed that everybody avoided that straight look in the eye. They were afraid to show the world just how upset they were.

The worst feeling was the belief that you were weak because you wanted to cry.

The worst feeling was seeing tears in my Dad's eyes.

The worst feeling was travelling slowly in the hearse, watching an old man stop and take off his hat, and not being able to thank him.

The worst feeling was knowing my mum was in the thick wooden coffin in the back.

The worst feeling was the echoes of shuffling feet in the church and the sad hymns.

The worst feeling was that I would never see my Mum again.

Dad had asked me if I wanted to say something about Mum at the funeral. At first I was really scared. Then I passed a letter to Mr Butler from Dad asking him if he would like to attend the funeral. Dad knew that Mr Butler had been a good friend to me during a tough time at school. So I told Mr Butler what Dad had said. Mr Butler offered to help me with a reading or short poem.

We decided on a short poem.

So, as people coughed into their gloves in a church warmed by a sun sending laser-beam light through the windows, me and my Dad walked nervously to the front of the pews. I remembered how Mr Butler had a clear, kind voice that made people listen.

So I made it my mission to try and copy him.

I reached into my trouser pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper, unfurled it and looked at all the sad faces.

"I'm really nervous," I said, my voice shaking and echoing off the pillars and the pews, "but I...I want people to feel happy when they remember my Mum. Be happy and not be sad. So, my teacher Mr Butler helped me write this poem. I hope you like it."

I cleared my throat and smiled awkwardly at Mr Butler who was sat near the back of the church. He nodded for me to start.

"I'm not very good at saying goodbyes

I don't like waving from a train or

Telling lies

When I say 'I'll see you again',

Maybe next month, or maybe next year,

Because I know it'll probably be years.

So I'll say goodnight instead,

As if she were just going to bed,

But it's still the worst feeling of all,

Like losing an arm or being

Too small.

It's worse than that, much, much worse

Than I ever thought.

So, for the sake of time, I'll keep this short.

Goodnight Mum, and sleep tight,

When I think of you I feel like

A thumping heart and a million smiles.

You were the best Mum by a million miles."

For the first time in my life I got a round of applause and, despite the circumstances, I allowed myself a little smile.

Not a million. Just one.

Mum wouldn't have liked us being too sad.

Then we all watched helplessly as Mum's coffin slid slowly away from us, disappearing behind curtains that closed shakily, like it was the end of a play or something.

But then it was the end.

I suppose.
Chapter 52

And After?

A few days later Rosie came home to stay. Dad had agreed to accept her into what was left of our family. The police and everybody else who were interested in Rosie never told me what they thought she was or where they thought she came from.

I think they already knew.

Rosie not only reminded me of Beth who, as luck would have it, had fallen in with a new group of friends. She also reminded me of Lizzie, and I liked it that way. And, as the months went by, Rosie got used to the 21st Century and the phrases and habits of a different age slowly disappeared.

Like a big rubber, time eventually erases everything.

I guess.

We often talked of our time as prisoners of Dr Meen and what we thought The Fathers were. I was frightened to think they were out there somewhere – in time and space – waiting to be used. But then Rosie saw them differently. She said that The Fathers could be used for good too, not just for evil. That it was Dr Meen and the others that were using them for evil so that's how The Fathers showed themselves. She said you only had to look at beautiful things and beautiful people to see The Fathers.

So they were here already. All around us.

And always had been.

I shivered at the thought. But then, in time, got used to the idea.

Although my 'special powers' wouldn't let me rest I never heard from the Raynors again. As the memory of all that had happened began to fade I wondered if we had really experienced anything at all.

I felt like it was all some bad dream.

Of course I had the photograph to remind me that it did happen. That it wasn't all just a trick of the past.

Nobody ever came to collect Ernie's belongings at St Mary's and that made me sad. I began to wonder what had happened to Albert, Maureen and Pauline. The idea that Pauline might still be alive made me want to go out and find her. Then I remembered just how old she would be now and how bad-tempered she was

I wondered if I could look at her in the same way I did then.

At least I had the photograph.

I stayed up late one night and watched a documentary on how some people think Adolf Hitler is still alive. Apparently a man saw him at a football match. I had school in the morning and was sat with Rosie rubbing my eyes over my rice crispie bowl when Dad asked me if I was tired because of the voices under my bed again.

"No Dad," I answered with something like a smile. "Not this time."

LOCAL PSYCHIC LOCATES

MISSING BOY

by

Colin Small

A well respected medium has today been hailed by the local police as a hero.

Jay Webber, 20, who recently moved from Shad Hill with his Father and younger Sister, was introduced to the local constabulary by one of his regular customers. Jay Webber has been helping the bereaved contact dead relatives in and around Shad Hill for a number of years. However, when Detective Constable Beasley recruited him to find missing teenager Joshua Timson-Brown, Mr Webber politely accepted.

'We had tried everything', remarked DC Beasley, 'and we had heard how other forces in other areas have been using psychics to aid their own enquiries. So we thought 'what have we got to lose? Let's give it a whirl!'

With the aid of a number of 'spirit-guides' – spirits that act as a 'bridge' to the 'other side' – Mr Webber began his own unique investigation. Apparently, his main guide Elizabeth, who had been a teacher in life, showed Mr Webber where Joshua Timson-Brown was hiding in a dream. Mr Webber himself remarked that 'sometimes all you hear is voices. But luckily, thanks to Lizzie, I was also able to get a feeling for the whereabouts of Joshua'.

Joshua Timson-Brown was found safe and well by a small team of police officers on Friday night, although the reason for his sudden disappearance was still a mystery.

In another bizarre twist to this supernatural tale it has been rumoured that Joshua 'ran away' because his house held a 'ghostly stairway' to another world, along which people from the past would climb to visit him.

Of course the paper cannot substantiate these claims and any of the above comments are to be attributed to hearsay only.

APPENDIX

The list referred to in the chapter 'The Empire.'

ALTHOUGH BRITAIN HELP DEFEAT NAZI GERMANY, SHE IS BROKEN AND BANKRUPT BY THE EFFORT

IN INDIA, AND ALTHOUGH THOUSANDS HAD DIED IN DEFENSE OF THEIR BRITISH RULERS DURING THE WAR, MAHATMA GHANDI MOBILISES INDIAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AGAINST THE BRITISH

ALL OVER THE WORLD BRITISH RULE IS QUESTIONED AND, DURING THE 1950S, 60S AND 70S, DOZENS OF SMALLER COUNTRIES DEMAND THEIR INDEPENDENCE FROM BRITAIN AND GET IT

THE ONCE PROUD BRITISH NAVY GETS SMALLER. NO LONGER DOES THE SUN ALWAYS SHINE ON THE EMPIRE. AMERICA TAKES BRITAIN'S PLACE AS WORLD POLICEMAN

BRITAIN BECOMES EMBARRASSINGLY RELIANT ON AMERCAN INVESTMENT, PROTECTION AND CULTURE

THE EMPIRE, ONCE SEEN AS A FORCE FOR REASON, CIVILISATION AND GOOD, IS NOW SEEN AS NO BETTER THAN HITLER'S GERMANY. IN A MODERN WORLD WITH NEW IDEALS IT IS POKED FUN AT BY A NEW MONEY-MOTIVATED GENERATION AND THE MEMORY OF THE EMPIRE IS LEFT TO DUSTY, OUT-DATED BOOKS

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