The Fall

18

Lee Burton stood at the bus stop on the main road to Casterton. He looked round at the fields of potatoes, wheat and sugar beet, all drenched in dazzling sunshine. The only building he could see was the Plough Inn; a typical country pub, whitewashed walls, black slate roof, with a small car park and a children’s play area complete with swings and a slide.

On the walk up here from the amphitheatre he had realised that whatever mechanism had pitched them back through time had just gone and done it all over again. He clearly remembered being shot, how he’d caused the robbers’ car to crash and losing his arm on the railway line, then how it’d all gone dark until he opened his eyes in the sun-filled amphitheatre again.

He hadn’t a clue how far they’d travelled back in time. A few hours? A few days?

But as he stood there and saw the cars running by on the road he knew it must be much farther than that.

He saw an old Ford Capri.

Rather, it should have been old. It should have been a superannuated rust bucket with a clapped-out motor. But this was a gleaming new model. The registration would have given him an approximate date but he realised he just didn’t care that deeply anymore what year this was.

Shock still numbed him.

He wanted to get into town, then get a few drinks down him.

No. Scratch a few. He wanted lots and lots.

A double-decker bus rumbled up the hill and stopped with a hiss of hydraulics. The door opened.

At least the bus didn’t look that much different from those he was familiar with. He climbed on and handed the driver a 50 pence piece.

‘Casterton, please.’

‘Ent ya got any less, son?’ the driver asked.

‘How much is it?’

‘Eighteen new pee.’

Lee forced his hands into the tight pockets of the black trousers he was hating more and more with every passing minute.

The driver drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and hummed while Lee fiddled with small change, eventually counting 18 pence out in copper. ‘Don’t forget your ticket,’ the driver told him as he went to find a seat.

Seconds later, Lee sat absently rolling the ticket into a tube as he watched the passing scenery. Most of the cars he couldn’t even identify, but he’d seen them often enough in old TV programmes from the ’70s.

He still felt a glassy indifference to it all. At first he ascribed it to the shock of nearly dying twice in what would have been the space of a few hours. The physical pain of both incidents was still pungently real to him. He still found himself rubbing his stomach where the bullets had punched holes through the skin.

But now he wondered if it was more than pure shock that made him feel this way: he was indifferent to his surroundings; this was a sense of detachment from reality. Perhaps I feel like this because I’ve lost control of my life, he thought. Something else pulls the strings now. Here he was, riding on the bus to town. Only at any second he might blink and find himself back in the amphitheatre with the rest of the accidental time travellers.

The only reality he could centre himself on was his thirst, and his longing for that first mouthful of beer.

Nicole Wagner climbed down the trunk of the tree. The hefty gorilla suit repeatedly snagged on branches.

She panted hard, her long blonde hair messed, knotted, the strands speckled green with pieces of leaf

She guessed that, after hitting the top of the tree, she’d fallen perhaps halfway through the branches before landing face down on a more unbending – and unforgiving – branch. Her boobs and stomach ached furiously from the collision.

Right now the only thought in her head was to get down to the ground, then run.

William Bostock would soon realise she hadn’t broken her neck. Soon, he’d find a way down into the quarry.

‘C’mon, c’mon, Nicole… faster… faster,’ she panted to herself. She had to get out of the tree. She had to run.

Back to the amphitheatre. That would be best. People there. Bostock wouldn’t dare touch her.

She looked down through the web of branches. There was the ground, perhaps eight feet below.

Just swing down, holding onto the bottom branch, dangle there for a second, then drop to the ground.

Then get the hellfire out of there. Run.

She sat on the lowest branch above the ground; little thicker than her wrist, it creaked and swung beneath her. Her feet moved as though she was sitting on a playground swing.

She took a deep breath. Almost there…

‘Gerr-darn-here!’

The animal-like roar startled her.

She cried out as Bostock lunged out of nowhere to grab at her foot.

He must have found some path down into the quarry more quickly than she’d thought possible.

Now he clung to one of her feet. She screamed as he pulled.

Instantly he’d pulled her half off the branch by her foot.

Her rump was no longer seated on the branch: it rested in mid-air. The only thing stopping her falling to the ground below, and a certain bloody and painful death at Bostock’s hands, was that she’d instinctively grabbed the higher branch in front of her face.

This was as thin as a child’s arm and so springy it bent with her weight.

Screaming, she kicked with her free leg. But Bostock stood with both feet firmly planted on the ground and was tugging her by her left ankle. With every pull she dropped by about a foot or so as the flexible branch bent.

Every time he straightened his legs ready for the next tug, the springy branch lifted her back up by a foot.

Christ… The man was like a bell-ringer; she was the bell rope.

Up and down, up and down…

And it felt as if her shoulder joints would pop from their sockets.

She couldn’t hold on. She’d have to let go…

The pain was immense now in her arms and back.

She couldn’t breathe.

He pulled down hard.

Down she went like that bell rope.

Then suddenly she shot back up, almost catapulted back into the tree by the branch in her hands.

He’s let go…

Dazed, she shook her head, trying to understand why he’d released his grip.

Nicole glanced down as she swung there like a gymnast.

He was sitting on the ground. Gripped in his hands was one of the feet from the gorilla costume. He was glaring at it while swearing loudly.

Thank God, she thought gratefully. The elasticated foot had slipped off, dumping him rudely into the dirt.

With an effort, she drew her knees up to her stomach as she hung there so he couldn’t reach her feet. (She knew he wouldn’t just give up and go away. No, would he hell! He seemed to have the temperament of a bull-dog as well as the look of one, with his flattened face and short thick limbs.)

The branch whipped her up and down as she hooked one leg over it before hoisting herself into a seated position.

Safe for the moment, at least now she could regain her breath.

‘Get down here!’ he snarled as he hauled himself to his feet.

She looked down. Bostock’s foreshortened body looked stubbier than ever; his upturned face glistened with sweat; his eyes burned with fury.

‘Get down.’

She shook her head, an emphatic no. She didn’t want her head broken open with a bloody rock.

This time he changed tactics. He couldn’t reach her so he jumped up to grab the trailing ends of a connecting branch. As soon as he had a grip he tugged at it, shaking the whole branch she sat upon, like he was trying to shake apples from a tree.

Quickly, still sitting astride the branch like it was a horse, she worked her way towards the trunk where it was thicker.

Soon it hardly moved at all, no matter how hard he tugged.

For the next five minutes she sat there watching tensely as he tried everything he could to either dislodge her or reach her.

After furiously swinging on every branch he could reach, in the vain hope of dislodging her so she’d fall out of the tree, he began picking rocks out of the long grass and throwing them at her.

But she moved again until the branches formed a shield between herself and him. No rocks even touched her.

Next on his agenda was to try and climb the trunk of the tree to reach her.

Although powerful-looking, Bostock was very short, and not at all agile. It didn’t help that there were no real hand- or footholds on the tree for the first six feet or so of the trunk.

He did manage to grab hold of a branch just below her, which would have made a half-decent handhold.

However, as soon as he’d curled his stumpy fingers around the branch, Nicole climbed down the tree until she could reach them.

Then, taking her weight on her bare left foot, where the gorilla foot had been pulled off, she used the other foot to stamp down on his fingers as hard as she could.

After the seventh or eighth stamp on his knuckles he swore loudly and let go, slithering down, face against the trunk of the tree, the bark scraping his chin and nose.

He swore louder.

‘I’ll get you!’ he yelled.

Nicole was trembling from her bones outwards but she managed to say in such a calm voice it surprised her, ‘No, you won’t.’

‘I will, you bitch.’ He looked suddenly crafty; his eyes gleamed up at her as he stood there, head tilted back, watching her. ‘I’m not leaving here. And you can’t stay in that tree forever, can you!’

She stared down at him, not replying.

He said in an oily voice, ‘Well, I’m prepared to stay here for as long as it takes.’

‘They’ll catch you!’

‘No, they won’t. No-one will find Marion for days yet.’ Smiling, Bostock lay down flat on his back on the grass, his hand pillowing his head, looking for all the world as if he was enjoying a sunny day in his back garden. Now he could watch her comfortably, without tilting his head back.

Nicole crouched down on the branch with her back to the main trunk of the tree and stared right back at him. His eyes were quite insane. She saw that clearly enough. Mad, bad and dangerous were the words that ran through her brain. Mad, bad and dangerous.

She knew she had no other option. There was nothing else she could do. They were both in for a long wait.

Ryan Keith got a lift into town from an Australian couple who’d been at the amphitheatre. Immediately he went into the nearest supermarket. The name of the store, Hillards, was unfamiliar to him. It smelt different from other supermarkets – a strong floral disinfectant, he supposed. Some of the products on the shelves looked unfamiliar, too, but in that state of mind he didn’t stop and look more closely. Gazing at goods on display wasn’t why he was here. Moving like he was on autopilot, not noticing other shoppers grinning at his Oliver Hardy costume, he picked up two bottles of vodka, then headed for the check-out.

The sweetest thing imaginable right now was to get completely out-of-your-skull wrecked.

Once the girl had punched the till buttons he handed her his Visa card. Then he waited as she laboriously pulled a credit-card slip printer from a shelf beneath the till; she slotted the card into it; rested a carbon slip over the top; then struggled for a moment to slide the pressure bar over the top.

It was all taking a very long time. Ryan was conscious of that. The bowler hat made his head itch but he didn’t think to remove it.

He merely waited.

That sweet-looking vodka glinted like holy water in the bottom of his basket.

The temptation to simply open a bottle right now was nearly overpowering. His scalp itched even more: centipedes could have been nesting in there the way it felt, their multitudinous pointy feet digging into his scalp as they scurried through his hair.

‘This card isn’t right,’ the girl said.

Ryan looked at her, frowning in a woolly, distant kind of way as the words sank in. Eventually, he responded, ‘You take Visa, don’t you? It said so on the door.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s valid. It doesn’t expire until the end of April next year.’

The girl gave him a puzzled look, then glanced around her as if half-expecting some camera crew to pop out, complete with a presenter to tell her all this was a riotously funny practical joke. Oliver Hardy presents duff card to checkout girl. Cue studio laughter.

There was no-one there she could see. No hidden camera, no presenter wearing a cheeky Gotcha! grin.

Patiently, but a little louder as if to make sure her voice was picked up by a hidden microphone (she still thought this was some kind of elaborate set-up), the girl said, ‘The card expires April 1999. But it’s the “valid from” date that’s wrong. It’s valid from January 1996. See?’

‘So?’

‘Well, the year is 1978, isn’t it?’

‘This is 1978?’

‘Yes.’

What the man in the Oliver Hardy suit did next took her by surprise.

With an explosive yell, he cried: ‘Shit!’

Then he grabbed a bottle of vodka in each hand and ran for the door.