Lazar (17 page)

Hal sat in front of his computer, oblivious to
the familiar drone of its disk drive and the distant rumble of the summer
storm. He stared hard at the screen. Jan’s icon had just reached the Lazar.

It looked so unreal in the dim light of the
waning moon and the thin beam of her torch. Jan smiled. It certainly looked far
less real than its virtual counterpart on Hal’s computer – and she knew
that if she reached out to touch it, it would be the virtual reality that she
would feel beneath her fingers, not the real one that existed now.

 
She
reached out and touched it. The ring on her finger shone softly in the torchlight.
Jan withdrew her hand from the invisible surface and slowly removed her half of
Margaret’s ring.

Hal sat up straight and stared hard at his
screen. Jan’s icon had vanished, and with it the plan of the Lazar. In a matter
of seconds it came back again, then blinked on and off a couple of times before
returning to its original display. Hal smiled as he hunched over his keyboard
once more and resumed his midnight vigil.

Although it had lost much of its novelty for Jan,
the experience was still as incredible as ever. The sense of wonderment that
had overwhelmed her the previous day, at the monastery, returned once more to
take her breath away. It was amazing. The ancient chapel simply came and went,
into and out of existence, as she slipped the ring on and off her finger.

It was as easy – and as unbelievable
– as that. No noise. No blinding light. Just the coming and going of a
sensation. Without the ring her eyes and sense of touch were in agreement,
unanimously confirming that she was in the here and now. But with the ring back
on, her fingers told of another place, in another time.

It was as though she existed in two worlds at the
same time and yet centuries apart.

Or was she two existences come together in one
place? Two people in one body?

The realisation crawled over Jan with chilling
clarity. She was not experiencing the past at all: it was Margaret, using her
sense of touch to make contact with the world she had inhabited. The ghost had
hijacked one of Jan’s sensations. Her sense of touch was no longer hers at all.
It was Margaret’s. And the dreams – the nightmares she had had – they
were Margaret’s too.

And the desire to follow in the footsteps of
those dreams?

The chill hit the pit of Jan’s stomach with such
ferocity that it caused her to shudder uncontrollably. It was not she who
wanted to exorcise the haunting. It was Margaret. It was Margaret that had made
her set out upon this journey simply by making her want to. Jan shuddered
again. She was no more that a pawn in some supernatural game of chess.

Jan tried to turn, there and then. But she could
not.

Whatever it was that was driving her was driving
from the very heart of her.

She took a long, deep breath, cleared her mind
and … snatched the ring off her finger.

Hal blinked in surprise, then frowned in
confusion. His screen had gone blank. Jan’s icon had vanished again.

Jan held her breath for a moment before letting
out a sigh.

Nothing around her had changed. Not to look at,
at least. She reached out and touched the wall. Her fingers felt the pitted,
weathered surface she could just about see in the weak light of the moon. What
about inside her? Had anything changed there?

She could not tell; her thoughts were in too much
turmoil.

She turned and took a step toward her Uncle’s
house. Then another. Then a third. Then stopped.

No – there was still something there, deep inside,
preventing her from walking away; from abandoning her quest. Something that was
nagging her to complete her rendezvous at midnight. What was it?

Jan stood in silence, searching every corner of
her consciousness. After several seconds of reflection she eventually smiled in
recognition. She knew that stubborn desire that was compelling her to turn
again. She had known it all her life – and it was definitely her own. It
was her insatiable curiosity.

If she went back to her bedroom she would never
know what it was she had not seen at the climax of her nightmare. She would
never know the cause of this peculiar haunting. And she would never see the “
towers rise
up through the waves, all ghostly like, at midnight”
.

For all she knew, she was the only person ever to
have had the opportunity to witness such events. Maybe she was the only person
that ever would. It was her duty to proceed.

And in any case, she was in control. This was her
century, not Margaret’s, and she would have the final say in everything. It was
she who could decide precisely when to take the ring off and when to put it
back on again.

And it would not be just yet.

The screen on Hal’s computer shimmered blankly.

What was Jan playing at? She had already
experimented with taking the ring on and off, as they had agreed. Why on earth
had she taken it off again?

Hal’s hand reached out, instinctively, and
clicked a button on his mouse. The screen flickered momentarily, but nothing
changed. It was still empty. Hal narrowed his eyes and rehearsed the
instructions he had selected on his computer. “Zoom out”. Why hadn’t it worked?
He selected the instruction again.

Yes! There was something there – at the top
of the screen. Hal leant forward. It was part of a map of old Wickwich. Hal
looked more closely. The map was expanding even as he stared at it. Something
was moving slowly, in a straight line, down the screen, leaving a detailed web
of streets and houses in its wake.

Hal zoomed in upon the object. As he had thought,
it was Jan’s icon.

No it wasn’t.
It
was Margaret’s.

Jan marched determinedly down the lane toward the
sea. Her right hand was clenched tightly in a fist around the ring.

A clap of thunder stunned the heavens. Seven
seconds earlier a jagged flash had sliced the sky. Jan blinked. But she didn’t
take her eyes off the horizon. Even when she strode right past the dark and
hollow monastery, she did not turn from staring dead ahead. Even with the sea
breeze blowing straight into her face.

At the end of the lane Jan found the gap in the
hedge that she had created during her previous excursions. Bending down and
covering her eyes to protect them against any unseen twigs, she squeezed
through and out on to the brink of the ditch that marked the perimeter of
medieval Wickwich.