Paralysis Paradox (Time Travel Through Past Lives Adventure Series Book 1) (10 page)

I am not sure when she stopped speaking or when she let go, as the warmth becomes an acid that burns my every morsel. Part of me longs for when life seemed distant, but my mind focuses on the voices that form that babbling brook. I imagine the water soothing my body.

The ice cold comes a long while later and is different to how I expected. Imagining sunshine makes no impact, there is nothing to be done, no sensation to fight, and I just accept that I cannot move at all and am frozen through. This seems easier, but at times I wonder if this feeling is in fact death, and I have already failed to get through this potion’s ultimate trial. But then I realise that this is the final warning and that my own mind is trying to trick me into leaving. My body feels nothing now; it has been burnt through and then frozen, and I use that as a comfort. What body would feel a thing after both of these? My body is dead, now must be the time to let go!

All traces of light and noise fade away as I feel myself being pulled down, down into a place of intense darkness. I have no power here to speak or move, yet I feel no fear—I am being pulled along at enormous speed as though through a tunnel. I do not feel the wind, as one might do when travelling quickly, it is simply a sensation of being sucked along. I see a pinpoint of light which gradually becomes ever more dazzling, and suddenly I emerge into a place that is suffused by a blinding brightness, yet behind me I feel a surging river of sounds. Ahead stands a small hump-backed bridge. The sounds turn to familiar voices, luring me like sirens from a raging sea.

‘Having a funny turn?’ asks Arthur, belligerently, goading me in death as he does in life.

Up on the bridge ahead I can see Yvette; beside her my brother, Alfred; and my mother too. My mother from my Vicky life.

‘You did this, brother. It is on your head!’ says Henry.

Above the bridge are countless spherical objects, like silvery planets, only darting about in waves like a swarm of starlings. Their presence seems ominous, scary even.

‘Life after death!’ cackles Konrad.

I look toward the three standing upon the bridge and acknowledge our love, but I desire life too much, despite their siren call. I let the river of sound swallow and sweep me back.

And so I hold on to this life as if it were my last.

Stop! Reset!

I was observing the scene through a lens. I knew this because it was in colour and had depth, but I could tell it was a faked depth. Almost reality, but not quite. Here I was again in this repetitive nightmare. I knew this scene well, watching mankind perish in numbers beyond comprehension, all those souls, all those consciousnesses, hopes and desires—each one dashed.

People with every right to a life that was now being cut short. It sickened me, wearied me. Bah! Perhaps we are all but droplets in a brook, powerless to prevent our fall. I would not play out this dream anymore. I was no longer curious to investigate the suffering, for I had seen enough. I no longer felt empowered to stop it, as I knew I could not. I hovered overhead, disengaged.

‘Go! Go! Go!’

The distant voice echoed around me, but I ignored it and continued viewing from afar. At one point, I noticed the dome of a mosque explode while all the buildings around it remained undamaged. Why was that? Had it been deliberately targeted?

I sensed the motors around me whirl into action, speeding up in order to catapult me into the fray. So I stopped the questions, ceased all thought, and tried to close my eyes until I realised that I had no eyelids to close. My eyes were the lens. I waited. And then the voice came again:

‘Stop! Reset!’

Boarding School, 1996

A sudden cold draft of air from an opening car door jolted me awake. My mouth was dry, and when I rubbed it with my hand I felt flecks of dribble on my chin. Had Tom seen me sleeping with my mouth open? How embarrassing. My head was fuzzy, but otherwise I was OK—no vestiges of pain. Richard’s life actually felt like it truly was 828 years ago.

Tom’s face was uncomfortably close; almost close enough to kiss, which was a bit of a shock.

‘Come on, Miss Vicky, wake up!’ he said.

He was kneeling over me in the back of the car with his hands on my shoulders. Behind him I could see a frowning Miss Harper, the games mistress, who was rubbing her arms in an attempt to keep warm in the freezing night air. I roused myself slowly, taking my time, enjoying watching the old bitch shiver and stamp her feet. Making sure to do up each and every coat button before leaving the car, I walked silently behind her, with Tom bringing up the rear with my suitcases.

It was not even ten, and already the school dorm block was in darkness. Normal lights-out time in the upper school dorm was ten, but our housemistress had decided that at certain times she would call lights-out sooner. Apparently she’d noticed that some girls looked tired, and she’d naively thought this method would encourage them to sleep more, whilst in fact it simply meant that those girls could creep out and into the woods sooner. If I were to believe all the rumours, these girls did everything there—held wild orgies with boys from the town, smoked illicit substances, drank vodka like it was milk. In truth it was more likely to be the odd fag and a snog with some spotty youth who couldn’t get it anywhere else. They’d invited me once, but it wasn’t my thing. I preferred to stay in and read about computing or physics. They thought I was square, but I knew they were just a bunch of silly kids who thought they were cooler than they really were.

I said goodbye to Tom as I opened the door to my dorm. The lights may have been out, but rustling, coughing, and the odd giggle indicated that no one had gone to sleep yet. Finding my cubicle, I shut the door and unlatched my suitcase so as not to wake anyone later. All the dorms had had separate partitions built around the beds. We all shared the same high ceiling, and if you stood on your bed and jumped, you could catch a glimpse into the next cubicle. It was privacy enough, I suppose.

Opening the window, I climbed straight out and jumped onto the felt-covered roof below. Sometimes, certain girls would wait there and demand entrance or exit fees that you had to pay with cigarettes or owed favours. If you didn’t pay up, they threatened to tell Miss Harper, who had her own way of punishing you. It usually involved being made to do some sort of physical exercise just with her, which of course entailed you changing first, and she would watch, smirking as you took your top off. But not tonight—tonight I was safe. It was too close to the start of term, and it was too cold for anyone to hang out there for long.

Dropping down to the ground below, I crept along to the library toilets, climbed through an unlatched window and then into the library itself. At one end was a stained glass window that had been whitewashed over. In daylight you could see some of the colours shine through the lower panes, as the girls reading nearby would routinely peel off the paint. How typical of the school to hide something so beautiful. I guess they would say it had religious overtones or smacked of the bourgeois art that we needed to be protected from.

Arriving at the librarian’s desk, I switched on her new PC. The disk whirled and the colour screen flickered to life. No green screen, like on my Tupolev PC; this was much better—real state-of-the-art stuff. I’d noticed the previous term that whilst we pupils might spend ages collecting and searching through microfiche, the librarian could search these same records in seconds. All the microfiche had been scanned in, and this computer used text recognition to find the information. It booted up, and I opened the library program and brought up the list of new titles. I searched for
physics
,
space
,
computer
. A few papers came up, but nothing of interest. Then suddenly, I had a brainwave. Instead of searching for the normal scientific stuff I enjoyed, I could use this opportunity to look for something that would tell me more about my other lives. Nervously, I typed in
Prince Richard
, but nothing at all came up. I tried
King Henry
. Works by Shakespeare appeared. Lots about the Tudors and Henry VIII. That was too late. Nothing about my Henry. What about Charlie? He was never likely to have become famous, but what about
Swanshurst Farm
? No, nothing.

Then I thought of the Mad Hatter and wondered how much of what he had told me was true. I typed in
bouncing bomb
and got several hits. Perhaps he wasn’t as mad as I’d thought. I whittled my search down to two books that looked the most useful and noted where they were on the shelves. I was about to go and get them when I had one final idea—what about Richard’s parents? Slowly, so as not to misspell it, I typed in
Eleanor of Aquitaine
. Bingo: a biography of hers! Shivers ran down my spine as I realised that I could find out if I had died in that vineyard. I could find out what happened to my mother and what my brother Henry was like as a king. Locating the books, I carefully checked them out in my name, making sure to change the date to the last day of the previous term.

I could feel my legs shaking with nerves as I climbed back out through the toilet window and made my way to the flat roof, hauling myself up to it using the drainpipe and a window ledge, then up again through my window and into the sanctuary of my little cubicle. All fingers and thumbs, I climbed under the bedcovers without bothering to get undressed and switched on my torch. Hungrily, I skimmed through each of my books.

I put the book on Eleanor to one side, forcing myself to focus for the moment on the bouncing bomb books, as that was more relevant to me right now. I could concentrate on finding out more about my Richard life later, when I had calmed down.

I had a book on the ‘Dambusters’, which recounted the tale of a doomed squadron of bombers who dropped these devices only to be
blown up
by them. It seemed the British were so desperate that these pilots flew the missions anyway. I tried to imagine what it must have been like—knowing that you were undertaking a mission that would probably kill you. How much had the Mad Hatter known about it? Had he known any of those men? The other book was a biography of the bomb’s inventor, one Barnes Wallis. It seemed odd to write a book about someone who invented a doomed device. Stranger still, it was written in Spanish. That wasn’t a problem, I could read Spanish quite well, but as I flicked through it, I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think of was finding out what happened to Richard.

Stuffing the books in my bedside cupboard, I opened the biography of Eleanor. It was a big volume, and the text was dense. Turning to the index at the back, I scanned through for references to Richard. Nothing! I couldn’t understand it—it was as though he had never existed. Surely there would have been a mention of him, even if he had died in childhood? In consternation, I looked up Henry. There was plenty about him. It turned out he died
protecting
my mother, before he ever ruled. My heart constricted and for a moment I had to stop, trying to take in what I had read.

The book said it was my tiny brother John who had succeeded my father and had claimed the throne at an early age. After what he’d done to Yvette, I was in fact glad that Henry didn’t become king. My baby brother reigned over such a period of prolonged peace, and was considered so fair, that he was called ‘John the Just’. I made a note to pay him far more attention, should I ever return to health in that life.

I lay back on my bed and tried to calm myself. Pulling the covers up under my chin, I stared up at the dark ceiling above and listened to the regular breathing of the sleeping girls around me. Never had I felt so sick or frightened in my Vicky life. Bouncing bombs might be real and the Mad Hatter not so mad, but perhaps I was the mad one, living events that were yesterday as if they were tomorrow.

New Pond, 1911

‘Come on, roll over, there’s a good lad,’ came a voice from some faraway place.

Where was I? I flinched as someone touched my wound.

‘It’s rather infected. Can you tell me how you did it, Charlie? It might help with how I treat it.’

‘I was stabbed, when I was Richard,’ I whispered.

‘Who’s Richard? Did he do this to you?’

‘Did the potion work?’ The words fell ungoverned from my lips.

‘The boy’s delirious,’ said the doctor to someone else in the room. ‘I’ll clean the wound thoroughly and wrap it in some bandages soaked in a carbolic solution. You’ll have to keep an eye on him for a while.’

Slowly, reality crept in. I heard him rummage around in his bag and prepare something.

‘Charlie, this is going to hurt I’m afraid, but I need to clean your wound. Bite down on this.’

He shoved a leather belt in my mouth, and the strong taste helped bring me fully back into the present. Obediently, I bit down. Pain sliced through me as though I’d been stabbed with a burning poker. Involuntarily, I cried out, and the belt dropped onto the bed. The doctor stuffed it back into my mouth, and dizziness overwhelmed me.

‘Just another minute, and then we’ll be done.’

Prepared now for the pain, I bit down again as hard as I could, tears pricking my eyes.

‘There now, that wasn’t so bad,’ the doctor spoke in a monotone. ‘I’ll just bandage it, and you’ll be back to normal in no time.’ He hummed as he worked, and slowly I started to feel a little better. I wondered what Catherine must be thinking and I was sorry I’d alarmed her so. I could tell that his humming was designed to stop me talking.