The Power of Forgetting (16 page)

‘Thank you….
for being here,’ I say. I can feel that darkness swirling in some
other room in my mind. I force the door shut, and focus on my
parents.

‘Thanks for
believing we can do this…. we are all part of this line of
consequence. And I know you all wanted to be part of what we are
doing here. Please accept my…. apologies; we must keep the team
small. Sorry… but know this; everyone who wants to stop the Bank
Collective from controlling our destiny is valued beyond anything
else. We are here not to make history…. but to save it. And I….’
here I felt my throat constrict, ‘….am glad that everyone has come
willingly. Sam will read the roll now.’ I stepped back and bowed my
head, partly to block out the faces of all these friends. I
couldn’t bear it. But they came towards me in ones and twos, with a
word or a touch on my shoulder or (in Ellen’s case) a tight
hug.

Lastly my
father stepped forward. He turned to the rest of them, his arm
around my shoulders.

‘Will you
listen to me?’ he said softly. They all turned to him.

‘Yes,’ he said,
‘It is time. We have nothing to fight for except our friends. And
by that we have infinitely more. I have seen it…. the sky ablaze
and all the world’s history poisoned. I know what this man…this
Rimmington; this Mr Alexander can do. There are many parallels…so
many worlds that could be valued and saved. But we can save only
one. Our own….’

They all were
still for a moment then began to go about their business. There are
final checks to do.

‘We’ll go in.’
Marcia touches my hand and smiles as she passes me, and Laura
follows her with a glance at Leo, saying something with her eyes to
him.

In the pools of
soft light, we stood as evening falls so quietly today, with no
breath of wind. And there is a little time before we will be called
inside. He turned to me then, and placed his hands on my shoulders
as before; and softly, so softly said to me; ‘Jared; my son.
Remember….’

I was then in a
dream so vivid I thought it was real: I was standing in a dark
place, and I saw the sky ablaze. I saw dark shapes searing through
the twilight. I saw the sunrise and there was smoke. There were
many falling from the sky. They burned the grass. And as the
sunlight crossed the landscape I saw many dead and dying. I was in
the middle of a war zone. And I was terribly afraid. The sound was
dreadful. And the smell of burning seared my lungs. But then in the
sunrise I saw a glinting and a bright light, brighter than the sun
itself. And in the sound of battle I heard another sound. At that
moment a solider stumbled towards me, his eyes round with pain or
fear; I didn’t know which. Just in front of me there was a swirling
of violet light and a circle of rippling waves flowing on the
surface of everything. I could not see it clearly. Because there
were knives of light springing towards me like spears. “Child!
Run!” the soldier ran past me and into the forest behind. But I
could not move, rooted to the spot sheer terror. There were people
in the clouds…. silvery people spinning and dodging beings of black
and red that smoked with trailing ribbons of oily blackness. I had
the sense to drop to the ground, as two of these combatants fell
from the sky to within 20 feet of me. They were fighting with
swords dodging this way and that churning up the ground and
sweeping with arcs of ringing metal that scrapped and clanged so
loud. And then there was a mighty roar of a voice. It was calling
them in. Suddenly they began to fall like leaves around me; the
dark people rushing for the door way in space; trying to escape. I
heard another voice “Hold! Do not follow…. Hold now!”. The silvery
people appeared to chase them all until they were forced to run
through the door way. I looked again. It began to close. There were
two or three stragglers racing on drunken wings of smoke and coals
to escape through. I ducked as the two who were fighting circled
round each other again. The door way was getting smaller and
smaller. The silver people had seen me; and were pointing across
the gap between the trees. They came forward building a circle
around the two who were fighting. I heard the sound of rushing
water…. like voices but I could not work out the words. They were
trying to talk to me. They circled round tighter and tighter. Quite
suddenly the swirling doorway shrank to the size of a dinner plate
then popped out of existence. The sun rose over the tree tops. The
silvery soldier’s wing tips brushed my face; the one fighting the
dark creature. He glanced towards me. And at that moment the dark
thing plunged his sword into the silver man who had fought him. He
dropped to his knees… in his last breath he said: “my sisters, my
brothers…. look to the child!”

He lay still on
the grass, and brightness surrounded him. And then in a blaze of
pure gold his essence dissolved. The others, looking beaten up from
the battle, surrounded the dark man in an unbroken circle. I was
inside the circle also. The silvery people were edging closer. They
were nearly touching me. Their intention I supposed to move so that
their ring of bodies was between me and the dark one. But this one
had other plans. He came towards me speaking softly. He looked then
less like a terrible soldier with a black sword and more like an
old man with a crooked stick. I heard another voice. But I did not
understand what he was saying…one of the silver men stepped into
the circle. But this was actually a woman…a beautiful angel, with a
ragged arm bloodied from the fight. “Leave the circle.” she said to
me. But I was terrified and my legs were like jelly. The dark man
was doddering towards me…. He spoke too, it sounded odd but I could
understand; “they are trying to kill me! I’m out numbered; I’m
afraid…. That was self-defence!” he bent towards me. Then at a rush
two of the silver people tried to grab him….

All of a sudden
he ran towards me, and disappeared. I was sat on the grass then;
and everything went muffled as if the sound had been switched off;
like putting your head underwater. I bent forward nauseated and
crying with pain and fright. The silver girl bent near me. “This
boy is a traveller.’ she said. The others were putting away their
swords. “Don’t frighten him.” said another.

“How did you
get here?” the silvery girl asked me. I looked up at her. She was
pretty with blue eyes and wavy long hair that was tied with red
rope away from her face.

Don’t tell her
anything… the voice inside said. I just stared. There was a sound
and suddenly I heard running feet. All these people were alert and
looking about. The moment she turned I scrambled away and ran as
hard as I could into the forest, in the same direction as the
soldier. There were dead people in the forest, and blood stained
the ground. I just ran until my lungs felt they would burst. At
last I collapsed into a grassy hollow and waited, and prayed. For
the longest time nothing happened. I was thirsty and crawled out of
the hollow and down a little banking to a small stream. I drank and
drank. Then crawled back into the bushes and hid.

Well done….

“Who’s there” I
said out loud. But now the forest had fallen into silence. Not a
sound, no breath of wind. It was eerie and lonely. Then I felt
sick. I was about to crawl back to the river again; but was
afflicted with a terrible purging vomit. I retched until there was
nothing left. I covered the mess with dead leaves and went back to
the water. I sipped a little and waited. I cried and then fell
silent until the sun left the sky. And under some leaves near the
water…. much, much later the lady found me; a seemingly ordinary
girl in a green tunic and long skirts. She dipped a cloth in the
stream and wiped my face. Then she picked me up and carried me to a
dark place that smelled of herbs. I was dazed and sleepy. There
were aromatic scents of exotic things, like flowers. I don’t know
how I got home. But later it faded out, until it was gone. My
mother tended me. And in my mind, she and the lady in the green
dress were mixed together so that memory could not tell where one
ended and the other began. And I clung to her and cried a lot. A
little while later those keys were put in place. I could not travel
in time. And I was anxious to forget all of that until it became
clear there was something else wrong apart from just a bad
experience. That thing….it could find no exit door. Its escape
route had been closed. It did what it would do in that situation;
find a suitable place to hide.

I turned away
from the buggy stood there now in quiet empty space. I turned and
buried my face in Leo’s coat. Everyone else had gone into the mess
tent.

‘The power of
forgetting,’ said Leo then, ‘has hidden this. But now we see.’

‘I can’t go
with them!’

‘It will not
come out in this place. You have to find the place that it wants to
escape to. Then it will leave you.’

‘That
thing…hitched a ride inside me. It’s been in there all this
time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you
get it out?’ I blasted at him crying now, ‘I was a little kid! I
didn’t know.’

‘You were a
child.’ Leo is very still, and isn’t angered by my outburst, ‘and
now you are a man. Your mind is your own Jared. You have to choose
now. If it was forcibly ejected by us; it would come back worse:
probably angry. You have resisted this….it is nearly time.’

‘Father…. I’m
breaking apart. I can’t live with this anymore!’

‘The time will
be soon then.’ Leo doesn’t move. He just looks down at me.

‘How?’

‘You have to
choose what will fill your heart; and then you will be free. An
empty heart can be filled again with worse things. And I would say
that it is better to rid something from you once and for all than
to expect to be worse off later.’

‘Yes…’

‘Do not worry.
It cannot hear you; or see you. And it does not know you. It just
rages in its prison often.’

‘Prison?’

‘Yes. You are
the jailor. Release this thing somewhere away from people so they
cannot be hurt by this.’

‘Yes…’ I look
up at him.

‘Dry the tears
child. The morning will still come.’ Leo talks to me just as he did
all those years ago. And perhaps I understand that it is better to
be a jailor, than be in a prison oneself. I wonder if Hanson saw
this monster; and that was why he went white as a sheet. I wonder
too, what he does remember from my visit.

‘Time to have
supper.’ Leo says, ‘Then…’

‘It will be
time to go.’ I turn as Marcia comes towards us.

‘Leo? Will you
have a drink with us?’ she asks him.

‘Yes. Yes,
today I will.’ He bows his head to enter the tent. I follow him in
to join all my friends there. Marcia takes me by the hand and leads
me to the place they have set for me.

I fastened the
clips on my jacket. The last one was giving me trouble. I was
watching the last few other people leave and fade into the night.
So when the crossing took place, there would only be a skeleton
crew who would then seal up the camp. We must set a relay
transmitter as soon as we got to the other side, so that George and
the technicians could track our progress. The team was small: eight
only. A secondary team was to be ready to go through the anomaly.
This would be led by Dieter.

I was trembling
nervously with anticipation. I had seen Davey a few moments before;
he didn’t look very happy. I supposed that it was something like.
He paced up and down a few times and then went outside to check the
supplies were all present and correct. They were. I knew it was a
way of distracting himself from something else. I was too taken up
by my own fears, to try to analyse. I finally got that clip
fastened, and went outside to meet the others.

Oliver was
perfectly still, weight balanced on both feet. The others stood in
a semicircle moving slightly. Janey fidgeted with her tag, I saw
how she twirled the chain in her fingers and made it spin round and
round. We still wore them, a sign of our slavery to the quest.
Reality was a slight thing for us now, pursued through doorways and
across unchartered landscapes. I felt that crushing unrequitable
sinking in my stomach again; I knew I still loved her more than
anything I could name… except for my beloved Eve. I was horribly
confused on account of Janey. Alex had refused to repeat what Janey
had said to him in any more detail. It troubled me more than I
wanted and expected it too. Some memories are harder to shake off
than others. Now I had remembered my testing as a child….; I
wondered what else was lurking in the undergrowth so to speak,
ready to pounce and knock the air out of my chest. I shook myself
to get rid of that lingering depression and went forward.

We gathered
closer as the evening mist sneaked around. George and Sam were
waiting down below. We turned and descended in single file treading
carefully on the little rocky path. I glanced back just for a
moment to see the last tail lights of what I wanted to believe was
my mother’s car, as they left the turn in and receded along that
country road, dissolving into the distance.

There was a
foreboding in my heart of something dark and twisted. As the others
left; did those forces of nature that had bled my energy so
consistently have yet more surprizes in store?

We all gathered
for one last roll call. Jules was waiting at the edge of the tapes
to supervise the transition through the doorway. When we had passed
through, Sam would take the other two back into the village, and
ply them I supposed, with drink until closing time.

‘Answer me with
a “yes”. And I’ll tick you off my list.’ said George.

‘Anything
else?’ asked Jules.

‘It is time.’
said Oliver.

George read
each name out, and Sam held the door open on the transport so we
could step straight in.