The Pages of Time Read online

  The Pages of Time

  Damian Knight

  Copyright © 2015 Max Thomas Porter

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters portrayed and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For Francesca

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I: A Clean Slate

  Chapter II: Rewind

  Chapter III: The Funeral

  Chapter IV: Mastery and Control

  Chapter V: Unintended Consequences

  Chapter VI: Retribution and Remorse

  Chapter VII: End Game

  Chapter VIII: After Effects

  Chapter I

  A Clean Slate

  1

  Present Day

  Sam woke with a start. It was dark outside the window of the plane, and for a moment he thought he must have slept through a whole day before remembering they were passing through different time zones. His mum was asleep next to him and had placed a blanket over his legs. A map on the overhead screen showed that they were approaching the west coast of Ireland, several hundred miles south of Iceland.

  The cabin crew were in the middle of serving dinner. Sam hadn’t eaten anything since the evening before and gratefully accepted a tray covered by a clear plastic lid. He demolished the lamb stew, bread roll and fruit salad without pausing between mouthfuls.

  Suddenly a deep tremor rocked the plane, causing Sam’s tray to slide off the foldout table and clatter to the floor. His mum jolted awake, blinked at him and then squeezed his hand.

  The speaker system crackled into life: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. It’s likely we’ll experience pockets of heavy turbulence.’

  The stewards and stewardesses stowed their trolleys and strapped themselves into chairs at the front of the cabin. The plane shuddered again. Sam could see the wing bending savagely up and down through the window. ‘Is it supposed to do that?’ he asked his mum.

  She looked out and forced a smile. ‘Of course, sweetie. Passenger jets are designed to withstand much worse than this.’

  The plane seemed to drop for a second and then regained stability. A series of shocked gasps rebounded about the cabin. Sam tasted lamb stew on the back of his tongue and fumbled in the seat pocket for a sick bag. There was none. He put a hand over his mouth and tried the pocket of his mum’s seat. His fingers brushed against something hard and plastic. He pulled it out: it was the smart phone belonging to the man who’d been taken ill in back in Newark, and all of a sudden it started to ring.

  Sam glanced across at his mum, his nausea forgotten. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘How can there be any signal up here?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, sweetie. You know I’m useless when it comes to that sort of thing. Are you going to answer it?’

  He swiped the screen and held the phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’

  There were three short beeps and then an electronic voice said, ‘Trigger activated.’

  A loud buzzing sound seemed to come from everywhere at once and the lights went out. Someone nearby screamed. The engines spluttered once, twice and failed.

  The last thing Sam could remember was a whistling sound that grew louder and louder as the plane fell.

  2

  Three weeks earlier

  It began on a damp evening in August, a month when it should have been sunny and warm. Until the phone call, a seemingly insignificant event that would ultimately alter every aspect of Sam’s existence, nothing much was out of the ordinary. He had been sitting in his room, playing online games with Lewis when the internet connection went down. A couple of seconds later the house phone rang in the hall and, assuming it was his friend, Sam picked up.

  ‘Rebecca,’ a voice with an American accent said, ‘it’s Doug. Have you got a minute?’

  Doug was Sam’s mum’s boss at the bank. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he said, annoyed that anyone could confuse them, and took the handset downstairs.

  His mum was leaning over a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table, still in her work clothes, a glass of red wine in her hand. She gave Sam a tired smile and said she’d take the call in the living room.

  Sam’s dad was draining pasta at the sink. ‘Food’s ready,’ he said through a swirl of steam. ‘Can you get your sister?’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sam sighed and stamped upstairs. Chrissie’s room, which was much bigger than his own, was at the top of their house, located in the converted attic space. He knocked on the door, called her name and, when no answer came, poked his head inside. The room appeared empty at first glance, so he took a step into the Forbidden Realm. At the far end a window overlooked the back garden, across which heavy black drapes were drawn. A pair of scuffed military boots stuck out the bottom.

  ‘Chrissie?’ Sam called again.

  The drapes bulged and parted to reveal his sister’s face.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, runt?’ Chrissie glared at him from behind thick black eyeliner. ‘I thought I told you never, ever, under any circumstances come into my room.’

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Sam asked, knowing full well. ‘Are you smoking?’

  She crossed the distance between them in four long strides and grabbed him in a headlock. Chrissie was three years older, and although Sam had grown quite a bit in the last year, she still had an inch over him. He tried to yell, but the sleeve of her baggy cardigan caught in his mouth.

  ‘You breathe a word to Mum and Dad and I’ll kill you, I swear it,’ she said.

  He was beginning to feel dizzy, his face hot with blood. Chrissie’s studded metal bracelet dug into the skin of his neck.

  ‘All right,’ he wheezed.

  She tightened her grip. ‘What’s that? Can’t hear you.’

  ‘All right, I promise. Just let me go.’

  ‘Promise what?’

  ‘I won’t tell Mum and Dad. Please Chrissie, let go. I can’t breathe.’

  She released him at last. Sam stood hunched for a few seconds, gasping for air.

  ‘What did you want anyway?’ Chrissie asked.

  ‘I only came to tell you dinner’s ready.’

  She placed a hand on her hip, tilted her head to one side and eyed him with contempt. ‘Fine then, I’ll be down in a minute. Now get out of my room!’

  He turned and left, rubbing his neck and muttering curses as he clumped down the stairs. As a rule, Sam tried to have as little as possible to do with his sister. It hadn’t always been that way; when he was very young, he’d idolised Chrissie and would have done anything to win her approval. He had happily allowed her and her friends to dress him up and use him as a prop in their games. Unfortunately for Sam, Chrissie’s interest in playing families and shopkeepers hadn’t lasted long. As the make-believe took a darker twist, he soon found himself the victim of police brutality or hit-and-run incidents. On one occasion many years back, he was held hostage in the cellar, tied to their dad’s tool shelf with the lights off. After three hours in darkness, imagining giant spiders crawling along the underside of the floorboards overhead, Sam had wet himself and begun to cry. The lights had come on again and Chrissie entered wearing a balaclava. She’d informed him that her ransom demands hadn’t been met and she would therefore have to send a ‘clear message’, at which point she produced a pair of pliers from the pocket of her dungare
es and ordered Sam to put his little finger between the teeth. Not really believing she would do it, he’d complied. At the time the doctors had said Sam might lose the finger, but the wound had healed remarkably well and now, over ten years later, only a thin white scar on the ridge of his knuckle served as a reminder of the incident.

  Back in the kitchen, Sam’s dad was dishing out food and making a mess. Sam slumped at the table and used his fork to push a piece of pasta around the rim of his plate. After a few minutes Chrissie joined them, reeking of mouthwash and spray deodorant. She slid into a chair on the far side of the table and started chewing at her chipped black nail polish. Finally, their mum returned. Instead of sitting at the table, she remained standing by the door, a manic grin stretched across her face.

  ‘What is it?’ Sam asked when it became obvious that was what she was waiting for.

  ‘That was Doug on the phone.’ She beamed at each of them in turn. ‘Do you remember the promotion I went for last month?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sam lied. She often talked about work, but he rarely paid any attention.

  ‘Well, I can hardly believe it. The competition was so intense, but Doug said the whole board was impressed with the way I handled the Madsen case and...’ drum roll ‘…it turns out I got it!’

  ‘Sweetheart, that’s fantastic,’ his dad said.

  Although Sam’s parents tried to hide it, money had been tight for a while now and he’d overheard several hushed conversations containing phrases such as, ‘final demand’, ‘missed payment’ and ‘tighten our belts’.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ his mum said. ‘At last a bit of recognition for all the extra work I’ve been taking on. It’d mean a pay rise too.’

  ‘Well done,’ Sam said, imagining new trainers and the latest games console.

  ‘There’s something else.’ The corners of her mouth dropped slightly. ‘The new position isn’t at the London branch. If I take it we’ll have to relocate near the head office in New York.’

  ‘New York as in America?’ Sam asked.

  ‘It’s the only one I know of.’

  He stared at her silly grin and was about to complain when Chrissie beat him to it. She jumped up, sending her chair skittering back, and planted her fists on the table. ‘Impossible, no way!’

  ‘Chrissie—’ their mum began, trying to sound soothing and calm.

  Chrissie was shouting now. ‘Don’t waste your breath. God, I hate you sometimes! All you ever think about is yourself.’

  Mum looked upset and, as always, Dad jumped in to present a united parental front. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you’re upset, Chrissie, but we can talk about this. It’s a family decision.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about, I’m not leaving Lance and there’s nothing you can do to make me. I’m almost twenty years old and, in case you lot hadn’t noticed, I can do whatever I want. If you want to move halfway around the world then that’s your problem. I’m staying here, simple as.’

  Lance was Chrissie’s boyfriend. They’d met the summer before when Chrissie spent two months travelling in India after her A-levels (one of the happiest and most harassment-free times of Sam’s life), but she’d only introduced him to the family a couple of months ago. Although their mother didn’t approve, Sam liked him; Lance was way more relaxed than his sister.

  Chrissie marched from the room. A couple of seconds later the front door slammed, sending shock waves reverberating through the walls. Sam sat looking at his parents, knowing there was nothing he could say that would match his sister’s outburst.

  His dad cleared his throat and smiled weakly. ‘Well, son, what do you say? You’re with us, aren’t you?’

  3

  Lewis was woken at six in the morning by the pipes in his bedroom wall clunking and his father’s tuneless singing in the bathroom next door. He groaned, pulled the pillow over his head and was just dozing off again when the door flew open and he was presented with the unattractive sight of his father wearing only a hand towel that stretched almost but not quite the whole way around his waist.

  ‘Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,’ his father said, scratching a hairy shoulder.

  Lewis groaned again, rolled over and tried to bury himself under the covers. His father responded by grabbing the duvet by the corner and yanking it from the bed, leaving Lewis squirming like a new-born calf. He then removed the damp towel from his waist, twisted it into a coil and whipped it across Lewis’s bare back. Lewis yelped and jumped out of bed. His father stood facing him, feet planted apart to display his nakedness.

  ‘Jesus, Dad, what’s wrong with you? Put some clothes on.’ Lewis snatched the duvet from the floor and collapsed back on his mattress.

  His father turned to leave, flabby white buttocks wobbling with each step. He stopped in the doorway, farted loudly and said, ‘Happy birthday,’ before slamming the door behind him.

  At close to midday, Lewis woke of his own accord. He showered, checked his reflection for increased facial hair density and returned to his room to dress before going downstairs. There was a pink envelope on the kitchen table with his name on it. It contained a card with a picture of a girl in a floral dress and a badge with the words Super Sweet Sixteen. Lewis opened the card and a fifty-pound note drifted to the tabletop. The printed message read, ‘To a wonderful daughter, wishing you a superlicious birthday!’

  He folded the money, slid it into his pocket and threw the badge in the bin. On his way out, he stuck his head around the living room door. His mother was on the sofa, watching cartoons with Connor, his little brother.

  ‘I’m going to get my results now, Mum,’ Lewis said. ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘Luck’s got nothing to do with it,’ she said without taking her eyes from the television, ‘not with brains as big as yours.’

  Connor drew a sleeve under his runny nose, succeeding only in smearing snot across his cheek, and gave Lewis a gap-toothed smile.

  * * * * *

  Lewis tried ringing Sam on the way to school, but his call went straight to voicemail. Apart from a few students milling around the gates, it was eerily quiet. He waited for a bit, but Sam didn’t show, so eventually he went in on his own. It was strange being there without his uniform, and Lewis felt a bit like an intruder as he walked down the empty corridors lined with stripped display boards, his footsteps echoing loudly around him.

  A line of tables had been erected in the hall, the scene of many a mind-numbing assembly. Lewis approached the second table from the left, where Mr Dewey, his history teacher, was sitting behind a tented piece of paper on which the letters D, E, and F had been scrawled in marker pen.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Lewis said. ‘Having a nice holiday?’

  Mr Dewey looked like he’d just got in from an all-night drinking session. His wiry hair jutted out at different angles, except for the left side where it lay flat to his head. ‘Might be if I didn’t have to be here with you ‘orrible lot,’ he said, regarding Lewis with bleary eyes. ‘Name and candidate number, if you please.’

  ‘Lewis Fisher, 8739.’

  Mr Dewey flicked through a box of envelopes on the table, backed up, plucked one out and handed it to him. Lewis turned the envelope over and traced the flap with his fingertip. During the last few weeks he’d had to listen to his father bleat on and on about how Lewis would be the first member of the family to go to university, and now, all of a sudden, he didn’t think he wanted to know.

  ‘Are you going to open that thing, Fisher, or were you planning on proposing marriage to it?’

  Lewis gulped. ‘No, sir…I mean yes.’

  He turned his back and walked away. It was probably like pulling off a plaster: best done quickly. After a deep breath, he ripped the envelope and pulled out the slip inside.

  The column of perfect A’s and A*’s was blemished in the middle: Geography – B, Spanish – C.

  Lewis had never got a B in his life, let alone a C. There must have been some mistake. The school office had probably placed another
student’s grade sheet in the envelope marked with his name. But no, there in the top corner were Lewis’s name and candidate number, as real as the pain from a punch in the nose. He scrunched the slip up and stuffed it in his pocket, already imagining the look on his father’s face when he found out.

  ‘Hi Lewis, how’d it go?’

  Lewis turned to find Tania, the girl he sat next to in Maths, standing directly behind him. ‘Yeah, pretty much as expected,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Straight A’s too!’ Tania grinned, the thick lenses of her glasses magnifying her eyes to enormous proportions. ‘And I was so unbelievably nervous, but I’ll definitely get into St. Mary’s now. My parents are going to be so unbelievably proud. Where were you thinking of going next year?’

  ‘Fraser Golding.’

  Tania blinked her bushbaby eyes. ‘Fraser Golding College? Really? I always thought you’d end up somewhere a bit more…academic.’

  ‘Thought I’d stay local,’ Lewis said. ‘Plus, I’ve got friends going there. Listen, Tania, you haven’t seen Sam, have you?’

  ‘I think he was out back a while ago,’ she said. ‘You never know, he might still be there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and turned to leave.

  As Lewis hurried from the hall, his phone began to ring. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen: it was his father. Without answering, he silenced the call, slid the phone back into his pocket and shoved open the door that led onto the school’s only playing field.

  Sam was sitting on the steps directly outside, and had to dive out of the way to dodge the swinging door.

  ‘What’re you doing out here?’ Lewis asked. ‘We were supposed to meet out front, remember?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Sam said, standing to dust himself off. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Whatever, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Happy birthday, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lewis said. ‘So, have you picked up your results yet?’

  Sam pulled an envelope from his pocket and waved it absently in the air.