Epiworld (10 page)

Then another bizarre vision strikes me. Demi is telling me she’s running away with Chas.

‘Dr Mac, did Demi – did she say anything about going away?’

‘Going away?’

‘Yeah; she said she wasn’t getting on with her dad.’

‘Demi loves her dad, despite what she says.’ Dr Mac adjusts the pillow behind my head. ‘Look, Travis, I don’t know why you’re back. If it’s to settle an old score over putting you in the home I’m not sorry about the decision we made. It was for your own good. As it turned out the Frasers couldn’t look after you, could they? Mrs Fraser was dead within six months, and Jack hasn’t coped. You were better off in the home, although I heard you’d jumped ship. I suppose it came as no surprise. You haven’t changed much, by the way. What’s your secret to eternal youth?’

‘I don’t like you for what you did, Dr Mac,’ I tell him honestly, ‘but that was – four years ago. Listen, have you ever met Demi’s boyfriend Chas?’

‘I didn’t know she had a boyfriend. Here, drink this,’ he puts a small white tablet in a glass of water, ‘it’ll help you to sleep. Now I have to ring the hospital, find out what’s going on with the Frasers. I really should’ve gone with them, but as I had to look after you, I sent the community nurse instead.’

When I’m alone I sit up in the bed, clutching my hair. I want to pull it out. First I lose four years of my life, with no memory of where I’ve been, then I look at myself in the mirror, and I haven’t aged at all! There are also the eerie memories of the beach: Demi about to run away with her ‘boyfriend’, Chas, who looks like a younger version of Professor Chase, our fight, me having a seizure, collapsing in the sea, him giving me his jumper to keep me warm...

A red jumper, exactly like the one lying on the back of the chair!

Demi returns to Barrasay a week later. Her dad’s dead. They say there are suspicious circumstances; murder, they reckon. Demi isn’t allowed to give him a funeral until the police release his body. She returns by helicopter with two police detectives. I’m nervous, having the police so close, but they have to be there for Demi. Mr Fraser’s coffin is taken to the undertakers in Crianvarich where he has to wait until the police finish their investigations. They start to question everyone who knew him, and who went near the farm that night. I suppose it won’t be long before they want to see me. I’m trying not to worry. At least the police in two thousand and fourteen are human, and not allowed to shoot you!

Demi says she’s glad to see me again, although she’s a changed, depressed girl, who doesn’t eat or sleep much. Dr Mac insists she stays at his cottage until it’s all over. The farm is sealed off as a crime scene, so she can’t go back there, anyway.

I have to put my own questions on the back burner for now. It doesn’t seem the right time to ask her about Chase.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Travis,’ she says, when I come downstairs for a drink of water very early one morning, and find her sitting at the kitchen table, her arms folded, staring into space. It’s dark outside, except for the light of the full moon. She begs me not to put on the electric light, so we sit together in the moonlight. I put my arm around her shoulders. Her face is wet with tears.

‘I wish there was more I could do for you, Dem.’

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she replies sadly, and bursts into fresh tears. Sighing, I go to the fridge for the milk which I pour into a glass.

‘Come on, drink this. You hardly ate a thing at supper.’

Sniffing, she accepts the glass. I sit down next to her, putting my hand on her arm.

‘Have the police got any clues at all how it happened?’ I ask gently.

She shakes her head. ‘They have to finish questioning everyone first. They’ve ruled out suicide, though. He was – he was hit from behind.’ She sips her drink slowly. ‘I bet they won’t get who did it. They’ve already admitted they don’t have much to go on. The farm’s not throwing up that many clues, apparently.’

‘They won’t go away without solving it,’ I say soothingly, ‘not if they’re sure a crime’s been committed.’

‘Oh!’ she wails. ‘I wish Chas was here!’

It’s like someone has hold of my heart, squeezing it tight. So I haven’t been imagining him! He exists!

‘Aye, I forgot,’ she says, smiling weakly as she wipes her face with a tissue, ‘you haven’t met my boyfriend Chas, have you, Travis? I’m sorry; I never got the chance to tell you about him, what with everything else going on.’

I blink at her.

‘I – I met him the other night, Demi,’ I say quietly. ‘You were running away with him.’

She sniffs and laughs at the same time. ‘Behave, Travis! He’s at home, in Manchester, back at university. I wasn’t running anywhere; I was just walking.’

‘So Chas is what, eighteen, nineteen? Tall, dark, wears glasses?’ This time I have her full attention. ‘I
have
met him, Dem; on the beach, where you found me. We didn’t like one another. I hit him.’

She sighs. ‘Travis, you’re telling one of your daft stories again.’

‘He’s a medical student, who wants to be a neurosurgeon as well as a psychiatrist! How would I know that if I hadn’t met him?’

Some of the milk spills onto the cloth as she slams her glass on the table.

‘You’re spooking me, Travis! The only way you could’ve met him was before he left, and you weren’t around!’

‘No; I hadn’t met him before that night.’ Not unless I count twenty ninety-nine! ‘It
was
on the beach. Dr Mac doesn’t know about him, Demi; why haven’t you told anyone?’

‘I didn’t want Dad finding out!’ she snaps. ‘Shut up, Travis! You’re sick; a head case! I’m going to bed!’

She scrapes back her chair, and flounces into the sitting room in a rage. I follow her, determined to make her listen.

‘Demi, what was I wearing when you found me?’

‘Oh, Travis, I don’t know! It was dark, it was late. I couldn’t see.’

I run past her, up the stairs to my room, coming back down again with the red jumper. I fling it at her. ‘Recognise it?’

She stares at it. ‘It – it belongs to Chas! Where did you get it?’

‘He gave it to me after he pulled me out of the sea.’

Still clutching the jumper Demi sinks into the nearest chair.

‘I had it on when I came round in the cottage. Only one person could’ve given me that jumper, Demi, and that’s Chas himself.’

‘If it’s the same,’ she says quietly, ‘there’s a small hole in one of the sleeves.’ Sure enough, there it is, in the cuff. Demi’s eyes are glazed and misty. ‘I offered to darn it, but he said not to bother. Here,’ she throws it back to me, ‘you may as well keep it. I don’t know how you came by it, but I’m telling you one thing for sure, Chas wasn’t there that night; unless you think I’m bonkers, and I’m not! I must’ve told you about him, and described him to you. You must have dreamt he was there. Yeah, that’s it.’ She doesn’t sound too sure. ‘I’m – I’m tired. Let me go, Travis. Please!’

‘What if I told you I was a sort of time traveller?’ I blurt out.

‘Oh,
Travis
! For God’s sake...!’

‘What if I told you nearly every time I have a really bad seizure it propels me through time?’

‘I’d say you were off your head!’ Demi strides across the room to Dr Mac’s drinks cabinet, unscrews the top off a bottle of whisky, and pours it into a glass. The whisky disappears in a trice, and she pours out another.

‘Look at me, Dem!’ I swing her by the shoulders to face me. ‘Have I aged in the four years since you last saw me?’

She peers at me. ‘No,’ she admits. She takes another gulp of her drink. ‘No, you haven’t aged at all, Travis. Not since the first day we met. It’s like time has stood still for you. You don’t seem to have grown up much, either!’ Giggling, she pulls me closer. ‘I’m sorry I called you a head case.’

Our noses touch. It’s nice, until I smell her whisky breath.

‘Don’t drink any more,’ I plead. I take the empty glass from her, and lead her to the settee. ‘Look at this, Dem.’

I hold the pod between my fingers. She squints at it. ‘What’s that?’ I place it in the palm of her hand. ‘It’s quite heavy.’

‘It’s a thought pod from my future.’

Demi laughs, like she’s enjoying a joke. ‘Show me how it works, then.’

‘I can’t. You need to have one, too.’

‘It’s unusual; but if you can’t prove it works...’

I tell her the rest, about the Rockets, the institution, Dr Alexander, the ECT, my life in twenty ninety-nine. I’m relieved to tell her, even if she doesn’t believe me. I decide not to tell her about the real Michael Charles Chase yet; I don’t want to freak her out completely.

She doesn’t speak, only yawns. The whisky has gone to her head. Her eyes flicker sleepily. ‘I’m disappointed. I thought you were going to tell me you were from another planet.’

I smile. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Then why tell me such a crazy story? I’ve never heard of anything so daft in all my life! A time-travelling epileptic! Comical!’

‘It happens to be the truth, every word of it. Think about it, Dem.’ I move closer to her, stroking her hair. She doesn’t push me away. ‘Think how I turned up out of the blue on the beach the first day we met. You knew my name, but I didn’t know who you were.’

‘It was a long time ago.’ She snuggles her head into a cushion. ‘You were lying on the shore, and I was telling you to wake up because I thought you might drown. That’s all I know.’

‘You called me by my name. You said I told you what it was, but I couldn’t have done. I’d never met you before that day.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Now you come to mention it,’ she says slowly, ‘I think – well, I don’t recall seeing you before that, I only know I saw you lying on the beach, and what happened afterwards, the cave, and your seizure, and you coming to the farm. The rest is all a bit of a blank. How did I know your name, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Clothes,’ she mutters, ‘you never had any clothes. I thought that was weird; I never saw your backpack. You said you’d left it at the hotel.’

‘I never had a backpack.’

Her eyes are shut, her breathing is steady. I think she’s asleep, but then: ‘Dad! Dad! I’m so sorry!’ She starts to cry. ‘I wanted to run away, Travis!’ She clings to me tightly. ‘God knows I did! I talked to Chas about following him to Manchester,’ her eyes are wide open now, staring up at me in bewilderment, ‘but that’s all it was – talk. You said I was running away, but no one knew about my plans except me and Chas. I never told you about them! Why did you say I was running away, Travis? What
made
you say it?’

Then she’s sick on the carpet, so I’m saved the bother of answering.

––––––––

I
get the impression Demi is avoiding me. She walks out of a room whenever I walk into it, and she’s out of the house for hours.

‘She’s all on edge, jumps whenever I speak to her,’ I complain to Dr Mac. ‘It’s like she’s scared of me.’

‘She’s grieving, laddie,’ he says. ‘This business has been upsetting for all of us, but it’s much worse for her. She’ll come round in her own time.’

So I leave her alone.

I’ve got my own problems, anyway. I’m still spooked by the images I keep getting of that night on the beach. Chase is there, as large as life. I also think about Demi’s words to me:
Why did you say I was running away, Travis.
Is that why she’s avoiding me? Is she afraid I might be telling the truth?

Whenever I get the chance I go back to my cave and sit, staring out to sea, trying to figure out where my life is going, and what my purpose is in this new world. I still hear the same voices calling to me, but I know they’re not coming from the pod, only the cave walls. I’m used to them now. They’re comforting in a way, even if they are scary. They usually say, ‘Wake up, Travis! Come back to us!’, but most of the time I can’t figure out what they’re saying at all.

Back at the house Dr Mac gives me odd jobs to keep me occupied. This includes looking after the garden, helping Mrs Dunbar, his housekeeper, with the cooking, washing, cleaning, and taking telephone messages when he’s out on house calls. I even learn how to use his computer, entering in appointments for his surgery.

‘How are you getting on with the medication, Travis?’ he asks one morning after we’ve had breakfast. Demi has gone to see her solicitor about her father’s will, and Mrs Dunbar is hunting for her shopping list.

‘I’m all right. I’m just a bit light-headed in the mornings.’

‘Good; but I’d like to discuss something with you after morning rounds. I’ve got a proposition for you that you might like to hear. It could be the solution to all your problems.’

He leaves me alone in the house, tidying the filing cabinet, dying to know what his proposition is.

About an hour later the front door slams.

‘Dr Mac?’

‘No, it’s me.’ Demi is standing in the office doorway.

‘Hello,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Got everything sorted with the solicitor?’

‘Almost. Travis,’ she comes slowly towards me, ‘Chas is coming back to Barrasay.’

I stop what I’m doing. She doesn’t seem too excited about it. Her face is deathly white.

‘Is he, now? When?’

‘Tomorrow. He’s staying for a couple of weeks; but, Travis, that’s not all. He said,’ Demi swallows, ‘actually, he asked – how you were doing after your seizure, and – and if you still had his jumper!’

I don’t answer. She rushes at me, trembling. ‘Travis, this is freaky! I never told him about you, or the beach! Maybe he
was
there – but – but it’s all a blank!’

‘Listen,’ I say calmly, ‘don’t worry about it. There must be a reasonable explanation.’

I’m sorry for her, but inside I’m glad. It means my mind hasn’t been playing tricks on me!

‘I’m going for a lie down,’ she says, and leaves the room.

When Mrs Dunbar comes back from the shops I help to unpack the groceries.

‘Put that Dundee cake on a plate, Travis, and we’ll have some for lunch,’ she says. ‘I’ll make some tea. Fancy a cheese sandwich to go with it?’

She starts to cut the cheese. As I go into the hall to call Demi I meet Dr Mac coming through the front door.

‘Thank God that didn’t take too long,’ he says, taking off his coat, and dropping his bag on the floor. ‘Just in time for lunch, I see. What are we having, Travis?’