Part Four
Jim frowned as he strode back to Manor House. With his luck, he would encounter Vera Carlton on the way into the house and again, while invisible, on the way from there to Ten Acres. He didn’t like to be rude to his adoptive father’s aunt, but she made it nearly impossible to be otherwise. She had never accepted his place in the family and made no secret of the fact.
He entered Manor House and started up the stairs.
“Disgraceful!” declared an acidic voice from just below. “Come back here, young man!”
Jim closed his eyes for a brief moment, then turned around. The woman he wanted to avoid was at the foot of the stairs, tapping her foot impatiently. He walked back down, keeping silent as he did so. He had decided, long ago, that the easiest way to deal with her was to say and do as little as practical.
Her voice lowered to a stage-whisper. “Why Matthew allows you in his house, I cannot say.”
Still, Jim kept his silence.
“Where is Madeleine? Tell me at once!”
For a moment, he considered his options. He could tell where he last saw her, which would not help. He could tell where she was going, which would be worse. Or he could play dumb.
“I don’t actually know where she is.”
“Liar!”
“No, that was the truth. I would be a liar if I claimed to know where she is.”
Which was true, he told himself. She might be in this reality or the alternate one by now. For her sake, he hoped she could avoid her great-aunt in both.
“You will take me to her this instant,” the old woman ordered. “I will accept no excuses.”
Jim sighed under his breath. “I just need to go to my room first.”
“I said no excuses. I will not let you out of my sight until Madeleine is found.”
His jaw tightened for a moment. “If you’re suggesting you would like to watch while I use the facilities…”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Dirty boy. Be back here in two minutes.”
Jim turned and ascended the stairs once more, without answering. He would have to deal with the consequences of his disobedience later.
He closed the bedroom door behind himself and locked it, leaning against it for a moment. Squaring his shoulders, he approached the patch of wall they always used, formed the portal and stepped through.
It winked out almost before he had fully arrived and he frowned at the place it had been in consternation. Reaching out, he tried to make another, but it would not come. He entered the attached bathroom, stood before the mirror and willed himself to become invisible, knowing that he would have to check that both his eyebrows were done before he could go outside. Nothing happened.
Jim gulped. He felt sweat form on the palms of his hands. It must be too late to fix the problem in the alternate reality. Instead of just making it through the portal, he must have slipped back out of it on the same side, just as it closed. And now he was stuck here, with Vera Carlton on the warpath, waiting for him in the hall below.
He did what he said he was going to do and went to face his fate. A qualm ran through him as he reached the top of the stairs. Was that painting there when he came up? He thought it had been moved a year ago.
At the bottom of the stairs, he looked around. She was gone. He listened hard – and felt that his deduction was confirmed by the fact that he still had his sensitive hearing. Vera Carlton was in the study with his Dad, still demanding to know where Honey was, but she sounded much less angry than she had only a few minutes ago. This was unheard of.
Thinking quickly, Jim left the house, avoiding other people as he went. He skirted past the clubhouse, which was deserted, and around the back of Crabapple Farm. He hesitated there, hearing two familiar voices in the old orchard. Honey and Mart had gone together to Crabapple Farm. Maybe they could tell him what was going on.
He stopped, just out of sight, and listened for a moment. He wasn’t sure why he did this, but some kind of warning bell was ringing in his head. A moment later, he knew why: they were kissing. And Honey was giggling. And suddenly he knew that Vera Carlton was upset because she suspected this very sort of thing. Which made no sense because he had no idea that this was going on.
So he felt even more confused when he heard Honey say, “It’s hard to believe we’ve been together for over a year.”
It was at that point that it dawned upon Jim that the portal had taken him somewhere, but that it was up to him to figure out where – and how to get back again.
He looked around, wondering whether he might encounter another copy of himself. Thinking back on it, his room had had an unused air to it, as if its occupant had not been resident for some months. The household routine kept it clean and fresh, but it was unlived-in.
He frowned. Assuming that he still had a job to do, he needed to get up to Ten Acres unseen and find the fragment. Once he had it, he would have to think about how to return it to the place it should be.
With that in mind, he set off again, trying to keep an ear on where Honey and Mart were, without listening too closely to what they were doing or saying. After a few minutes, they faded out of range and he contented himself with listening to the creatures in the woods around him.
He arrived, undiscovered, on the local equivalent to his own land and began looking around. Only a few minutes into his search, he found a path that he had never noticed before and followed it to a side door of the barn. The size and sturdiness of the lock caused him to raise his eyebrows. Circling around the barn, he found no way in.
Jim returned to the foundations of the old house and sat down on an edge, in the shadow of a bedraggled evergreen, to think. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. From here, he could not see the other houses in the area and he hoped that people in them could not see him. The last thing he needed was to draw undue attention to himself.
“The trouble is,” he muttered aloud, “I have no idea where to start. The area’s too big.”
He looked around himself, turning slowly as he surveyed the area. But even as his focus was on the ground, the buildings, the undergrowth, a layer of his mind tried to get his attention. He listened hard, taking in the heightened buzz of insects and the movements of animals. And that’s when he heard the thunder. Distant still, outside the normal range of human hearing, but not that far away.
Jim looked around at the ruin. He did not have the key to the summerhouse with him, and even if he did, it might not be the same in this reality. He had already established that he could not get into the barn. There were no other buildings here, as far as he could tell. If a storm did blow in, he would be at its mercy. And when you had super-sensitive hearing, there were more dangers than just wind, rain and lightning.
Another grumble sounded, nearer than the last, and he made his decision. He needed to get out of here, just in case.
He cast his mind across the various options and chose Crabapple Farm. Surely, he could find somewhere there to shelter while the storm passed. With that in mind, he set off.
Honey and Mart still lingered in the orchard when he arrived in hearing range. For the most part, he couldn’t make out what they were saying, as the noise from the storm was interfering. Jim winced as a louder rumble sounded.
“I think it’s going to storm,” Mart commented, sounding surprised. “Where do you want to go?”
“Not home,” Honey answered, at once. “We could go to the Pavilion or the clubhouse, I guess, but I’d feel safer in a house. I don’t suppose we need to go just yet.”
“We’ll have to, soon.”
Honey sighed. “I don’t want to. This feels so right. And it’s so nice to be out of view of everyone else, even if the main person I want to be out of view of is Brian, while he deals with whatever it is that he’s dealing with, but I do like being out of view of everyone, too, but it’s a different kind of like, if you know what I mean.”
Jim pressed his hands over his ears as Honey gasped and the sound of kissing resumed, but he still heard her say, “Yes, that kind of like.”
Thunder rolled again, now loud enough to cause Jim’s ears to ring.
A moment later, Helen Belden opened the kitchen door and called, “Bobby!”
Jim heard the boy groan softly, then reply, “Coming, Moms!” He crossed the yard and entered the house.
Looking around, Jim wondered whether he could get into the garage. He really needed something to block out the noise. At home, he kept industrial-strength ear-protection in various places, for just this kind of circumstance, but here he did not know where to get any. He searched his pockets and found a pair of disposable ear-plugs and put them in. They dulled the regular noises, but when another roll of thunder sounded, he knew that they would not be enough.
He halted his approach as Honey and Mart ran from the orchard to the house, both looking a little dishevelled. The rain had started, coming down in large droplets. A rush of wind followed Jim into the garage. He looked around wildly and saw exactly what he wanted. The air filled with a noise like static; Jim’s head filled with excruciating pain. He jammed the ear-protection onto his head, but it was a fraction of a second too late. As the sky flashed white, Jim passed out.
He came to some time later. The storm still raged, but none of the lightning strikes were as close as the one which had knocked him out. He sat up and rubbed the lump forming on the side of his head. He must have hit his head on the floor when he fell. He did a quick check and found a sore spot on his arm, which would probably bruise, but nothing else amiss.
The rain began to ease off, then stopped altogether. Tentatively, Jim removed his ear-protection. A few moments later, he took out the disposable ear-plugs, too. He could still hear the thunder, but it was no longer painful.
Then he heard the kitchen door open.
“I did tell Jim I’d keep an eye on it,” Mart was saying. “I don’t think there’ll be any damage, but I’d better take a look. You don’t need to come if you don’t want to.”
“Of course I will. It’s not like I can actually do anything at home,” Honey answered. She took a deep breath. “I love how fresh and clean everything smells after it rains.”
They set off up the path, talking of inconsequential things. After a moment’s thought, Jim decided to follow them. He wondered what would happen if they found the fragment before he could. He tracked them using the sound of their voices, making sure to stop when they did – which was often. In fact, there was a good deal more kissing happening than walking. Jim heard Mart whisper something about the clubhouse, then decided to pretend he hadn’t.
Eventually, they reached the ruins and began to wander around them. Jim, meanwhile, lurked just outside of sight.
“What’s that doing here?” Honey asked, while standing quite close to the place Jim had sat earlier.
He patted his pocket and was relieved to find the handkerchief still there. But then he remembered that he’d also had a small bulldog clip in the same pocket and it was no longer there. It might, of course, have fallen out in the garage when he collapsed, but somehow he didn’t think so. He most likely would have landed on it and it certainly would have left a bruise.
“Maybe Jim dropped it the last time he was up here,” Mart answered. “It’s the kind of thing he often has in his pockets.”
“I’ll take it back with us,” Honey decided.
After that, Mart went to look at the barn, while Honey checked the summerhouse. Neither of them did a very thorough job, but met back at the foundations of the old house for more kissing.
Not wanting to stay and listen, Jim wandered in the direction of the summerhouse and decided on a whim to see if that might be where Bobby had hidden the part. The other pair took no notice of the sound of him crawling up to the door. His clothes got wet and dirty, but the journey was worth it. There, leaning against the corner of the door was the piece of the brooch.
A strong, green glow came from it, the moment he touched it, and he felt a surge of power. Jim covered it with his hand and froze, wondering whether Honey or Mart might have seen it, but he relaxed a moment later. The sound of their kissing had not changed. Retreating the way he had come, he began to ponder the question of returning.
He couldn’t safely use the portal location he had arrived by, even if he could get it to work. Vera Carlton’s presence in Manor House precluded that. The stables might be an option, as might the laundry room at Crabapple Farm. Outside, he heard Mart invite Honey to inspect the clubhouse for damage and once more Jim decided to follow them.
Their progress, this time, was faster. Honey expressed a fear of being caught by her great-aunt and that seemed to speed her steps. Jim watched them unlock the door and slip inside, but not close it after themselves immediately. Again, he could hear kissing. He ran lightly to the door and peeped in. The couple were fully engaged in what they were doing and not paying the slightest attention to their surroundings.
Jim slipped inside, just before Mart blindly reached out and slammed the door.
Holding his breath, he tip-toed into the storage area.
“Lock the door,” Honey urged, moments after he got there. “I don’t want any interruptions.”
Jim heard Mart do so, while Honey drew the curtains. The kissing began again, more urgently this time.
This had better work, Jim thought, as he reached out a hand to the wall. I really don’t want to be stuck here.
The green and blue swirls appeared beneath his fingers and Jim breathed a silent sigh of relief. He stabilised the portal and stepped through.
Continue to part five.
Notes are at the end.
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