Ancient Echoes (4 page)

As Jack described his visions of the running couple and their bizarre landscape, he kept to the actual detail of what he’d experienced, not embroidering, aware that Angela was sitting, watching him with censorious intentness. She was clutching the slim file of notes she’d compiled on her friend and was nervous, her palms leaving moist prints on the red plastic binder.

‘Greyface, in a cloak of scalps and feathers, and Greenface, bright with mother of pearl.’ Garth repeated the words as he absorbed the image. He lit a cigar, then thought better of it, grinding the tip against the sole of his patterned boot. ‘Any chance of another beer? I feel I need it.’

Jack’s mother smiled and went quickly to the kitchen.

As Garth sipped from the bottle, still contemplative, Angela opened her file and spread it on the garden table. The sun had vanished but it was a bright twilight and Jack’s colourful sketches of the bull-runners were clear against the lined paper.

Angela said, ‘Jack has been sketching the running couple for seven years, now. These are a selection of his drawings. Mrs Chatwin has lots more, from Jack’s infant years.’

Rachel agreed. ‘I have dozens. Jack started to draw oddities from about the age of five, mostly these two people, and prehistoric beasts attacking them. We always thought he’d have a career in drawing comics. If you’d like to see them …’

‘Please. I’m fascinated.’

When Rachel returned with the sheaf of childish paintings and crayon drawings, Garth turned the pages, studying each representation with great care. ‘Greyface and Greenface,’ he repeated, running his fingers gently over the crude, increasingly sophisticated pictures. This one looks like a mountain pass. And this … it’s swamp, I would think. These look like Mangroves.’

Jack agreed. ‘I never seem to see them in the same place. It’s like I get a glimpse when their world comes close to ours, just a glimpse, and maybe years have passed in their world.’

‘Where
is
their world, I wonder?’

Angela was prepared for this moment and said quickly, ‘I have some suggestions.’

She pulled the file towards her, watching Garth nervously. ‘I’ve been keeping a record of Jack’s experience, as he describes it, and as I can witness it. I’ve listed a few possibilities – I can outline them for you, if you like.’

‘Please!’ Garth agreed. ‘As I said, I’m fascinated.’

The girl drew a deep breath, pushed back her tumble of hair as she scanned the first page of the file, then began, suddenly seeming years older than her age of fifteen.

‘The first, most rational explanation for what Jack is experiencing is temporal lobe hallucination. This is quite common, and can be brought about by tumour, dysfunction akin to epilepsy, drugs, alcohol abuse or physical trauma. Jack doesn’t take drugs, as far as we know.’

She said this pointedly and Jack answered irritably, ‘I don’t do drugs!’

‘Jack doesn’t take drugs, as you’ve just heard. And he hasn’t suffered physical trauma. A tumour would have long since shown itself or killed him, and so we’re left with a possible dysfunction, an inherited trait.

‘We really
shouldn’t
dismiss temporal lobe epilepsy: people who suffer from it have extremely realistic encounters with the imaginary, especially its sounds and smells. However:

‘When the encounter occurs with Jack, there is a physical, and witnessable phenomenon associated with it. We call it the
shimmering.
It’s like a skim of oil on water, reflective and occasional, but it covers his skin. Smells come from it, and distant sounds. His body could produce the odours – a form of psychosomatic-controlled excretion – but it’s hard to explain how the sense of
sound
could be coming from his
skin.’

She turned the page and drew breath, again pushing her hair back from her face as she read quickly through the next set of notes.

Garth had been staring at her in increasing astonishment. Now he exchanged a long look with Jack, raising his eyebrows
on an otherwise blank face. Jack smiled. The man looked back at Angela, then folded his arms and settled into his seat, awaiting the next instalment.

Angela went on, ‘The second rational possibility is that Jack is simply daydreaming. Quite literally Day Dreaming. His unconscious mind, a hurly-burly of images, memories, fears and shadows, is slipping through to his conscious mind during his waking hours, rather than just during sleep. This is so common that it is hardly worth mentioning, except that it may be occurring far more powerfully in Jack.

‘And there is research to show that the
dying
brain
creates
images from memory/imagination – these seem very real to people experiencing ‘near-death’. Oxygen starvation seems to be the trigger, coupled with sensory input reduction. Jack’s sensory input is certainly reduced during his ‘Visions’, and his breathing is very shallow. Is he having mini-near-death experiences?’

Jack’s mother Rachel looked horrified.

‘Again,’ Angela said emphatically. ‘The
shimmering
is the phenomenon that puts these explanations into doubt.

‘So now we come to the paranormal,’ she said after taking a deep breath.

‘Oh good,’ said Garth, with a sidelong glance at the silent boy. ‘I like the paranormal. I use it a great deal.’

‘A parallel world!’ Angela said, stabbing a slim finger at the first of four numbered notes. She looked at the older man thoughtfully. ‘If quantum theory is correct, then the possibility that there are innumerable worlds running alongside ours, but existing in one of innumerable, inaccessible dimensions, is very strong. When the boundaries between such worlds come close, then a certain spillage might occur, like two rivers running very close to each other, and intermingling during a flood season …’

‘I get the idea,’ Garth said.

‘The channel for interactive parallel worlds might be the physical fabric of the external world, or the non-physical fabric
of the mind. Question, then: is Jack experiencing a parallel world through his own unconscious mind?’

‘Hell of a question!’ Garth muttered.

‘And if so, where
is
that world? Is it Earth? Or is it an alien world, whose own dimensions are running very close to our own, linked to our own by a wormhole effect?

‘Is it the past?’ she continued. ‘Is it the future? Or is it a totally
imagined
world that has been given reality by the mind imagining it?’

There were a few seconds of silence. Garth realized that Angela had finished her report and was watching him expectantly. ‘I think I’ll have that cigar, now,’ he murmured, and fumbled for a half-corona, lighting up as he reached for the folder, turning it towards him, reading quickly, then checking back through the pages, lingering on each sketch, each paragraph of observation, glancing at the columns of dates.

‘This is very impressive. What are the dates?’

‘Jack’s visions. His encounters with Greyface and Greenface. As near as I can get them.’

In the seven years Jack had known Angela, he’d had twenty encounters with the bull-runners, and her record was accurate. Before that, Rachel Chatwin’s letters to her own mother were a fair indication of when the ‘fits’ had occurred. Rachel herself had experienced something strange, a frightening vision of being pursued by huge, red-furred wolves, during the birth of her son.

Angela stared across the table at Jack. ‘I suppose it has to be from the past. If the faces are on the fresco, then you’re picking up the ghosts of the hidden city.’

Without looking at her, still staring at the notes in her folder, Garth said, ‘Who says all lost cities come from the past?’

Angela reacted with a pulled face of surprise. ‘What?’

Garth patted the journal. ‘May I borrow this? I’ll take good care of it.’

‘OK. But I want it back. Jack is my life’s work, although he doesn’t know it yet.’

‘Thank you. I’d like to keep the other sketches, Rachel. If that’s OK?’

Jack’s mother was more than willing.

‘Anything! If it helps us understand what’s happening inside this strange head!’ She ruffled Jack’s brown hair and the boy pulled away in embarrassment.

Garth said, ‘I’ll look after them, I promise. I’ll bring them back in a week or so.’

‘What about Glanum?’ Jack said. ‘The excavation.’

‘What about it?’

‘You were going to tell me how you found it. Is it a Roman city?’

‘There’s some Roman in it, certainly. And some Greek. And Byzantine. And Celtic. Bronze Age, Persian … It’s an odd place. You get the idea? It doesn’t fit at all with what you might be expecting. As you’ll find out when you come and visit.’

The man leaned across to Jack. ‘What does the fifth of May 1965 mean to you?’

Jack almost laughed. ‘It’s when I was born.’

‘I know. I just saw it on Angela’s list of dates. Do you know what that date means to me?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the day I dowsed Glanum for the first time.’ He leaned close to Jack. ‘Now ain’t that peculiar?’

Jack was confused. Exburgh’s hidden city hadn’t come to light until nine years ago, in 1971, its discovery due to John Garth, who had been looking in the backstreets and on building sites for five years or more. The man talked in riddles. Garth stood and shrugged into his coat, fixing his hat and working the envelope of sketches into Angela’s folder. He glanced at Jack, half amused. ‘I said “dowsed” it … “sensed” it. Not “found” it. I was a long way away at the time – on your birthday. Thank you for the cheese, the bacon, and the beers, Rachel,’ he said to Jack’s mother. ‘It was good to meet you. I expect I’ll see you again. Angela? You’re an inspiration. And now I’m to take you home.’

‘I’d like to talk to Jack for a while …’

‘I promised your father …’

Rachel said, ‘I’ll run her home. It’s OK.’

Agreeing to that, Garth shook Jack’s hand. ‘Come down to the Hercules pit tomorrow. The excavation behind the shopping centre. I need you there. Can you get a morning off school? No?’ He frowned. ‘Then come after school. To the church. St John’s. I’ll be waiting for you. To give you a guided tour of a very ancient echo. Yes?’

‘I’ll be there. Thanks.’

‘Don’t let me down.’

Without being asked, Angela followed Jack up to his room. As he fussed with his computer – a very simple model compared to Simon’s – she closed the door. He was conscious of his discarded clothes, the piles of superhero comics, the posters of his favourite Heavy Metal bands above his narrow bed. Was she looking round? She’d been here before. Oddly, he felt uncomfortable with her in his private space this time. He wondered – as he pretended to do things on the keyboard – whether she was feeling critical of the chaos she could see around her.

‘Jack?’

‘What?’

‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’ When he turned she was leaning against the door, arms crossed. She was biting her lip, watching him carefully. She walked over to him, still defensive, and lowered her gaze for a moment. Then she looked back at him and said firmly, ‘Don’t lie to me. Promise not to lie. To
me
.’

‘I don’t lie,’ he muttered irritably, trying to turn away.

She reached for his arm. ‘You lie all the time. But it’s OK. I know you like telling the stories. I shouldn’t have been so annoyed. They’re good stories. I just want you to promise –
me
– promise me that you’ll only tell
me
the
truth.’

‘Yeah. OK.’

‘
Promise
it!’

‘I
promise
,’ he said, again irritably. He was shaking. The look in her large eyes was very earnest, but he could smell soap and her breath, which was warm and sweet. He was getting aroused, and he flushed as he realized it but was helpless to control his body, and he knew that he was beginning to show through the loose cotton trousers of his track suit. Angela aroused him. He’d heard through one of her friends that she’d like to be his girlfriend, but was as shy as Jack himself when it came to making such arrangements, something that amused the bolder members of the school’s tribes. He’d also heard that she thought he lied too much for his own good. This recognition from her that it was all right to tell elaborate stories was almost an invitation.

He suddenly realized she was shaking, but not with nerves, with suppressed laughter. ‘Is that where you keep your Heavy Metal?’ she said, glancing quickly down, then went bright red, a hand to her mouth as she tried to control her amusement. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say.

Jack twisted away, face burning, but she reached out and grabbed his arm again, stepping suddenly close, putting both arms round him. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, and chanced a kiss, which was soft and nervous, very dry. ‘It’s OK, Jack. I really like you. The stories, that stuff you do, it’s just like earning a living, isn’t it? It’s OK.’

‘I know it is.’ He licked his lips. He held her awkwardly, aware of the straining and longing below his waist. When they kissed for the second time it was soft and moist, the tentative then more adventurous probing of her tongue like a shock. She suddenly pushed against him and he tried to pull away, aware of the hardness of her breasts through her thin jumper. She tugged him back by the waistband of his track suit, breaking the kiss to whisper, ‘Let me feel it. Don’t pull back.’

Damn! His knees were shaking.
She’d
lost her shyness,
he
felt he was about to faint. He tightened his embrace, more for support than love, and Angela seemed to sink into him, kissing him again, a surprisingly confident hand suddenly reaching between their bodies to press against his groin.

He opened his eyes in delighted shock. She was already watching him as her fingers explored the Heavy Metal. And behind her, the door opened and his mother glanced in, made a profuse apology and backed out, but already the kiss was broken as each of them had leapt apart with the sudden surprise of the woman’s voice.

Angela smiled mischievously. ‘Don’t tell me any lies,’ she said as she ran quickly from the room. ‘Remember – I’ll be keeping my eye on you.’

John Garth was waiting for him on the steps of the greystone church, St John the Divine. He was pacing up and down, clearly impatient. Jack felt guilty for being late, but he had spent most of the day with Angela, either talking with her in the seclusion of the sports huts, or passing silly notes to her in class. He was basking in the excitement of the relationship that was now beginning to blossom. The touch and smell of her skin had become exquisitely sensuous.