Lazar (11 page)

“You’ve just seen Margaret.”

“But … but how on earth do
you
know that?”

“Through the miracle of new technology,” Hal turned and
smiled cryptically at Jan. “You met her by the north corner of the west wall,
just here.” His finger pointed at the exact spot, on the plan of the monastery
displayed on his computer, where she had literally bumped into Margaret. “You
chatted for about five minutes,” he resumed, turning back toward the screen,
“and then she ran away, toward Old Wickwich.”

“But
how
?” Jan
snapped, infuriated by her cousin’s teasing smugness. “How, how, how, how, how
can you possibly know what happened?”

“Not ‘Why, why, why?’” Hal quipped, but realised straight
away that this was not the time to be scoring points. He turned and smiled at
Jan again, but this time kindly. “Your cursor, the cross on the screen – I
followed it. You went down to St James’ church, then along there and back again
… then up there and across here, then you went inside the monastery and stopped
… just there.” He traced Jan’s journey with his finger.

“Then Margaret’s cursor appeared – the circle. She came
down this way…” he moved his finger slowly down the screen, “and you came out
to meet her. At one point your icons almost overlapped.”

Jan looked at Hal and then gaped at the screen in wonderment.
It would have been in disbelief if she had not already experienced so many
other inexplicable things that day. All this, she thought, just so that she
could pass her message back in time. It was phenomenal.

“Come on then,” Hal interrupted her astonishment. “I’ve told
you what happened here. What happened to you? What did you see?” he asked, then
added, “Did you see her face?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ghastly, or what?”

“It was beautiful.”

“Eh?”

Jan described the girl she had seen to her cousin. He frowned
and looked incredulous.

“No, no, that couldn’t have been her,” he said, “that’s not
the girl I saw. Are you sure that it was Margaret?”

“Yes, I’m absolutely positive,” Jan confirmed. “But you’re
right, it wasn’t the same Margaret that we saw yesterday. This one was far less
sinister and unnerving. In fact it was she who seemed frightened of me, as
though
I
was the ghost.

“But then, perhaps, in a way, I was,” Jan mused,
tantalisingly, as she walked over to Hal’s bed and sat down, cross-legged with
her back against the wall. She took her time making herself comfortable. It was
now her turn to tease her cousin. She glanced over to him. He had swivelled
round in his chair and was looking, quizzically, straight at her.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, there was something else. Something even stranger than
everything else that’s been happening since I found the ring.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, something so weird I still can’t believe it really
happened; so mind-bogglingly bizarre that I’m not sure that I can even trust my
senses.” Jan was not very good at teasing and was beginning to overdo it.

“Really?” Hal exclaimed with exaggerated interest. “You must
tell me about it some day.” He turned back to his computer.

“No, it really was amazing.” Jan’s excitement got the better
of her and she leapt up and ran over to the screen. “You see that wall?” She
pointed at the north wall on the monastery plan. “I could touch it!”

“
That’s
amazing?”
Hal said, sardonically.

“No, I don’t mean the ruined rubble on the ground,” Jan
explained, “I mean I could actually touch the original wall, the one that was
there when the monastery was built. I could actually
feel
the wall that was in my dream and on your computer. I couldn’t
see it, but I could feel it. I even grazed my knuckles on it.”

Jan showed the back of her right hand to Hal. He looked down
at the broken skin and then up into his cousin’s face. From beneath a frown,
his eyes looked hard into hers. He shook his head.

“You actually touched something that wasn’t there?” he asked,
very slowly.

“It was there – once,” Jan pointed out.

“You mean you went through some kind of time warp?”

“Possibly – at least, my sense of touch did.”

Hal shook his head in disbelief, as though trying to dislodge
the idea from his brain.

“No, no, no. That’s just too weird. I can understand how a
virus might be able to affect what’s displayed on my computer screen or what we
see or dream, but to change reality…”

“Just because it doesn’t fit in with your theory,” Jan
interrupted.

“Who says it doesn’t,” retorted Hal. “I just need to think
about it a bit more, that’s all. In any case, I’ve only got your word for it.”

Jan stood up, suddenly, to her full height and grabbed Hal
roughly by the wrist. She was angry.

“Right, that’s it,” she shouted. “This isn’t a figment of my
imagination, this is reality – don’t you see? It’s out there, in the real
world – not in here or there.” Her finger flashed between her head and
Hal’s computer.

“Come on. We’re going to the ruins –
now.
”
 
Jan grabbed his arm and dragged him off his chair.

“Hey, hold on,” Hal protested, “I haven’t turned my computer
off.”

“That’s OK,” Jan retorted as she pulled him through the
door.
 
“We won’t be away that
long.
 
It won’t take much time to
make you believe me once we’re there.”

“Race you to the monastery.”

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” Jan called out
after her cousin as he ran across the field toward the doorway in the west
wall. “Mind the door,” she added, but he took no notice. Hal ran straight
beneath the archway into the body of the church.

Jan felt her heart sink slightly. Perhaps the spell has been
broken. Now that she had fulfilled her task and warned Margaret of the storm,
perhaps the haunting was at an end. Or perhaps Hal was right. She flinched.
Perhaps there is no door at all, except in her imagination. Or perhaps both
doors were now wide open.

Although she was still a fair way off she could see her
cousin through the arch. He was holding out his arms and moving forward very
gingerly. Having not encountered anything after half a dozen steps he began to
muck about and pretended to be sleepwalking. Suddenly he stopped.

“You’re right,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “There is
something here. Wow! A wall! I’m touching a wall.” He ran his hands up and down
an invisible surface in front of him.

“See, I told you,” Jan almost squealed in excitement and
began running immediately, as fast as she could, toward her cousin. “You
wouldn’t believe me when … ugh!”

Jan rebounded, as if off solid air, and fell, a crumpled
heap, upon the ground before the entrance to the church. Hal stood absolutely
still for a moment, mouth wide open, staring at his cousin as she rolled around
in agony in front of him. Then he snapped out of his astonishment and ran over
to her side.

“What happened? Did you trip? Hey, how did you do that to
your face?”

There was a gash on her forehead and the early blooming of a
bruise across the bridge of her nose. Blood trickled from her nostrils. She
pulled herself up into a sitting position and stared in puzzlement and silence
at her cousin.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Let’s see your eyes – check
whether you’re concussed or not.”

Jan looked up. Hal could not see into her eyes at first
– the sun was shining on the tears that had not yet rolled down her
cheeks. He handed Jan his handkerchief. She gingerly mopped them up. Hal looked
again then, having satisfied himself that her pupils were of equal size,
repeated his initial question.

“What happened?”

“I ran into the door…”

“How did you manage that? It’s wide enough to drive a bus
through.”

“Not the doorway, the
door
.”

“Eh?”

“I ran into the medieval door – the door you’ve just
walked clean through.” Jan frowned, then winced. “How come you could feel the
wall but not the door?”

Hal looked away guiltily.

“Er,” he began, as he stood up and turned to look back toward
where he had been standing. “Um … There wasn’t a wall. I couldn’t feel a thing.
I was just fooling around.”

Jan glared at him. He awaited an onslaught from her tongue,
berating him for having not believed her and causing her to hurt herself. Instead
her glare dissolved into a puzzled look.

“But why can’t you feel it? How come you can walk right
through the door when I …, I…” Jan was lost for words.

“Um, perhaps it’s because there is no door to walk into,” Hal
tentatively suggested. “Perhaps you simply tripped and fell.”

Jan’s glare returned with a vengeance.

“You don’t believe me, do you? You just can’t get your head round
the fact that I’ve run into a phantom door – even though you saw it
happen. You don’t even believe your own eyes.”

“I do,” countered Hal. “But all I saw was you fall over.”

“If you saw me bounce off an invisible door in your stupid
virtual reality goggles you’d believe your eyes then, wouldn’t you? Why can’t
you believe it when it
really
happens?”

“Because I know how it works on a computer – how the
software makes the image on the screen,” Hal attempted to explain. “I can make
the connection between the program code and what we see, how the one causes the
other. But there’s no way I can understand how something can appear solid when
it isn’t really there.”

“There you go again, ‘How, how, how?’ It’s ‘Why?’ that’s
important.
Why
is all this happening
to me?” The tears of pain that Jan had wiped away were replaced by those of
anger and frustration. “All you ever think about is the mechanics,” she
continued. “What about the motivation?”

“It’s mechanics that make the world go round,” Hal pointed
out as he ran his fingers around the edges of the archway.

“Whose world?” Jan snapped.

“The world we all live on,” responded Hal.

“What about the world we all live
in?
”

Hal stared blankly at Jan for several seconds, then blinked
in mock confusion.

“Nope,” he shook his head, “you’ve lost me there.”

Jan burst out laughing at Hal’s exaggerated expression of
bewilderment.

“Come on,” she smiled, “give me a hand up.”

Hal helped her to her feet. She stood still for a moment,
gently removing the traces of her nosebleed from her face, then looked at Hal
and smiled again.

“Let’s be a bit more scientific about this, shall we?” she
suggested. “Let’s investigate what it is that
I
can feel and you can’t. You never know, I might be able to work
out the textures of the surfaces so you can fill in the walls on your
computer.”

Her cousin laughed.

“We’ll still have to guess at the colours.”

“Yes,” Jan’s smile broadened. “Now, get out of the way. You’re
standing exactly where the door is.”

“Whoops, sorry,” Hal said, and moved aside.

Jan reached forward, gingerly, until her fingers stopped and
spread against an invisible flat surface.

“It’s wood, quite smooth,” she commented. “It feels new. What’s
this? Ah, it’s a metal nail or something.” She ran her hands up and down the
surface. “The door appears to be studded. Hey,” she wrapped her fingers around
something at approximately shoulder height, “it’s an enormous metal ring.” Her
fingers traced its circumference until they encountered something at the top. “What’s
this – a carving? It feels like a face – hair? A mane. It’s a door
knocker hanging from the jaws of a lion’s head.”

Hal stood gaping at his cousin, fascinated by her fingertips.
They were flat and bloodless, as though pressing against glass.

“You really
can
feel
something there, can’t you?”

Jan looked at Hal with a mixture of exasperation,
astonishment and triumph.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Now do you believe
me?”