Echoes Read online

  Title Page

  TIME HUNTER

  ECHOES

  by

  Iain McLaughlin

  and

  Claire Bartlett

  Publisher Information

  First published in England in 2005 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

  www.telos.co.uk

  Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: [email protected]

  Echoes © 2005 Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett.

  Cover artwork by Matthew Laznika

  Time Hunter format © 2003 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish created by Daniel O’Mahony

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to George Mann and David Howe for making it work.

  And special thanks to our families and friends. The best.

  Dedication

  For the people who matter. You know who you are.

  The Time Hunter

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish … Honoré is a black American ex-GI, now living in London, 1950, working sometimes as a private detective, sometimes as a ‘fixer’, or spiv. Now life has a new purpose for him as he has discovered that he is a time sensitive. In theory, this attribute, as well as affording him a low-level perception of the fabric of time itself, gives him the ability to sense the whole timeline of any person with whom he comes into contact. He just has to learn how to master it.

  Emily is a strange young woman whom Honoré has taken under his wing. She is suffering from amnesia, and so knows little of her own background. She comes from a time in Earth’s far future, one of a small minority of people known as time channellers, who have developed the ability to make jumps through time using mental powers so highly evolved that they could almost be mistaken for magic. They cannot do this alone, however. In order to achieve a time-jump, a time channeller must connect with a time sensitive.

  When Honoré and Emily connect, the adventures begin.

  Prologue

  The tower loomed ominously ahead of Emily Blandish and Honoré Lechasseur, its glass and metal front throwing a dull light through the thick snow until it disappeared from view a few storeys up, eaten out of sight by the blizzard.

  Lechasseur shivered deeper into his leather overcoat. ‘Something tells me we’re not back in Kansas,’ he rumbled, a hint of America’s South in his deep, soft voice.

  The joke flew over Emily’s head, as did so many of the cultural references she heard. She had no memories of her life beyond the most recent months she had spent in the company of Honoré and their exploits travelling through time. She was sure the memories were locked in her head somewhere, but for the moment they stayed infuriatingly out of reach. Most of the time, her amnesia wasn’t that much of a problem and she got by without any difficulty, though she was aware that she did get odd looks when commenting that she had no idea who the Crazy Gang were or that she had never heard of Clark Gable. For a time it had bothered her, but now she was used to it, and this time she at least understood the gist of what Lechasseur had said – they weren’t back in their own time period of 1950. When they had left on their previous jaunt through time, there had been no snow or gales forecast, and in 1950 at least, London had no buildings like the one in front of her. Whenever this was, it wasn’t home. She shivered and looked round, searching for a clue as to where they had arrived. She caught brief glimpses of distant buildings as the snow momentarily lightened, but the blizzard mostly blocked them from sight, leaving the tower before them the only structure in full view. ‘Shall we?’ she asked.

  Lechasseur let a few flakes settle on his hand and watched as the white snow melted to reveal his mocha-coloured skin. He hated snow. It was cold, wet and slippery, and something he’d had no experience of, growing up the humid climate of Louisiana. As a boy, he had heard of snow and thought it would be exciting and fun. He had been wrong. He loathed the stuff. ‘Suits me,’ he answered. ‘Just get me indoors.’

  They crunched their way forward, clutching each other’s arms for support.

  ‘These shoes weren’t designed for this sort of weather,’ Emily grumbled, more to herself than to Honoré. In front of the main doors, a curved glass overhang provided some respite from the wind, and Emily stamped her feet to loosen packed snow from her heels. ‘We’ll catch our deaths if we stay out here,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be much safer indoors,’ Lechasseur answered, concern clear in his voice.

  ‘Why?’

  Emily followed the direction of Lechasseur’s pointed finger. His reflection stared back at her, unease obvious on his face. Overprinted on his reflection was a familiar symbol, ornately engraved into the glass on one of the panels on the front of the building. Its lines were smoother than Emily recognised, and it looked as though it had been run through several committees and designers to give it a safer, more appealing appearance, but it was undeniably the same ‘horned devil’ symbol she had seen on their recent adventures in 1924 and 1892[1]. A shiver ran through Emily, and her legs went weak. There was something about that symbol.

  A hint of a tail had been added, but the main image was unmistakable – a circular design with small, curved horns at the top.

  Emily reached a hand towards the symbol but yanked it back abruptly as the glass panel slid aside. She looked sheepishly at Lechasseur, embarrassed at being so jumpy in front of her friend. ‘An automatic door,’ she said, self-consciously.

  ‘I guess,’ Lechasseur nodded. ‘So, do we go in?’

  Squaring her shoulders, Emily took a deep breath and stepped through the door into the building.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Lechasseur muttered, and he followed Emily into the building’s reception area. ‘Why am I hearing the phrase, “Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly”?’

  The glass door slid silently closed behind them.

  Chapter One

  • Where am I?

  • Don’t be afraid.

  • Where am I?

  • We won’t hurt you.

  • What is this place? Am I dead?

  • We’re not going to hurt you. Patience, would you talk to her?

  • Very well, Joan. Please, be calm. No-one here will harm you.

  • I can’t see you.

  • We will not hurt you, I promise you this. What is your name?

  • Am I dead?

  • What is your name?

  • Alice. I’m Alice. Answer me. Am I dead? Am I?

  • We do not know that, Alice.

  • We might all be dead.

  John Raymond carefully closed and locked his office. He straightened his tie and patted his hair into place. It was gone nine in the evening, and the building should be almost empty. He was unlikely to meet anyone, but if he did, he would look his best. He always liked to present a certain appearance – an appearance of affluence, of confidence. His suits were tailored by the most exclusive firms in London, and his haircuts cost more than an average person would earn
in a week. They were all a part of letting the people he did business with know that John Raymond was a success. And success mattered to John Raymond.

  Raymond’s office was on the twentieth floor, at the very top of the building. Appropriate enough, given that he owned the tower. Officially, it was named the Dragon Industry Tower, but John Raymond had made sure that, even before it was built, everybody was calling it Raymond’s Tower. This was his legacy, his great statement. A huge tower block built away from the centre of London. He was taking business back to the people. At least, that was the official line. The truth was that this land by the Thames on the site of an old dockyard was cheap and afforded space for parking. A commercial tower block like this one, filled with thriving businesses, would need hundreds of parking spaces.

  But the tower wasn’t filled with thriving businesses. Even when it had opened in a blaze of publicity eighteen months earlier, only half the available offices had been rented out. A year later, and the tower was less than a third full. Try as he might, Raymond hadn’t been able to convince businesses to leave the hub of central London. The few that had had originally come had been tempted by the promise of reduced rent, and now more than half had given notice that they wouldn’t be renewing their leases.

  Raymond had made one significant miscalculation in building his tower. He had ensured that there would be ample parking spaces, but parking spaces were of little use if people couldn’t get their cars to the car park. This section of London was served by a ring-road, which had been closed for major structural repairs four months before the tower opened, and was still closed now. The only alternative route was through winding, residential streets, which doubled the length of any journey. Businesses had sent representatives to look at the offices. They had made all the right, encouraging noises as Raymond had desperately wooed them with expensive dinners; but in the end, few had come. Raymond had lobbied the local council to delay the later stages of the road repairs. He had even offered bribes – some of them accepted. But the council had eventually stood by its decision. The roadworks continued.

  Then, just to add to his problems, there were the persistent and, to Raymond’s mind, ridiculous stories of ghostly apparitions being encountered in the tower late at night. Raymond vaguely recalled hearing, when he had first bought the site, that there was a history of ghost stories attached to it, stretching right back to the Victorian era, and maybe beyond. There had even been someone offering ghost tours of the area to gullible foreign visitors. But Raymond had never expected that this would put businesses off from relocating to the tower. Admittedly, there had been that one time when he himself had thought that he had glimpsed the ghostly figure of a woman in a darkened office. That just went to show how powerful the human imagination could be, when fed with a diet of these ludicrous stories. Sadly, though, the few businesses he had managed to attract to the tower had found it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain security guards and cleaners to work in their offices after dark, increasing their reluctance to renew their leases, and damaging the tower’s reputation still further.

  For all his high-ranking friends, money and influence, there was nothing Raymond had been able to do to alter the situation. The tower was left half empty, and so it had become a huge drain on the rest of his empire. His great dream had become an albatross, pulling him towards bankruptcy. He had made discreet enquiries about selling the tower, but there were no buyers. He had dreamed that people would name the tower after him, and now they did. The press had dubbed it ‘Raymond’s Folly’. He had almost wept when he had seen that as the headline in The Times, running above the story detailing the collapse of his business empire. Raymond had contacted everyone he knew in business, called in every favour he could, and even some he had made up, but there was no way out. Within a month, probably less, he would be bankrupt and a laughing stock.

  He walked the corridors slowly. As expected, the few offices that had been leased were now in darkness, the workers gone for the night. Raymond thought again of the ghost stories that had plagued the tower, and reflected that the place truly felt like a ghost ship. The atmosphere of failure was oppressive. Raymond made his way to the roof and took a deep breath of the cooler air. Rain was coming. He could see the clouds approaching along the Thames. In his life, John Raymond had made a lot of enemies, and he knew how much they would revel in seeing him brought to his knees. They had called him arrogant, a rampant self-publicist, an ego-maniac. There was no denying that Raymond was a proud man. Too proud, certainly, to let his enemies see him reduced to a pauper by a court. He walked slowly to the edge of the roof and climbed up onto the safety wall that ran around the perimeter. He looked back at his building with pride. In time, it would be accepted as a success. He would be redeemed by history, but in his lifetime, John Raymond could never accept the tag of failure. Slowly and deliberately, he stepped off the side of his building.

  Using a compact mirror, an attractive auburn-haired woman in her late thirties briskly applied make-up with a practised hand. Her schedule was hectic, and she didn’t have time to waste hours in front of bathroom mirrors preening herself. Years of practice of re-touching between meetings meant that she could be done in moments. She glanced at the clock. Not bad. She would be on time. For once, work wouldn’t delay her. She had just reached for her lipstick when she heard the first wail of a siren. A few seconds later, a second siren joined in the howling. She felt a terrible, sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach. The sirens were different in pitch – one was an ambulance and at least one of the others was the police. To be so loud they had to be coming here, to the tower, and somehow, in her heart, she knew something had happened to John.

  • How can we all be dead if we’re talking?

  • We don’t know, Alice.

  • That’s all you two say. We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know. Do you know anything?

  • Very little, I fear. Our circumstance is a mystery to Joan, me and all the other women in this place.

  • Other women? How many of you … of us, are there?

  • How many would you say, Patience?

  • It is difficult to be precise. More than twenty, certainly, but fewer than thirty, I believe.

  • You don’t know that either.

  • We cannot see each other.

  • Patience is right, Alice. We can talk to each other only if we really want to. We have to try.

  • And some of our number have withdrawn into themselves, preferring solitude, waiting alone in the darkness.

  • Will it always be like this? I can’t see anything but pitch black.

  • In time you’ll be able to … see us would be wrong. You sort of just know who’s there, and you can see them in a way. Sense them.

  • But we do not know how that comes to be, either. I believe that the Lord is protecting us.

  • This can’t be real. I don’t believe in life after death. I don’t believe in God.

  • Are you a heretic?

  • Don’t be upset, Patience. Alice didn’t mean to offend you. Did, you Alice?

  • What? No. Look, if you’re from the God-squad, I don’t want to offend you. Right now, I’m wishing I had something to believe in.

  • So few of us here have anything to believe in.

  • God will provide, Joan.

  • Sometimes, I don’t believe either, Patience.

  • What’s that noise?

  • It’s nothing to be afraid of.

  • So why do you sound so scared?

  • It may pass.

  • They’re all terrified. I can hear them – all the people here. Make it stop.

  • We cannot do that.

  • It’s coming this way. Patience?

  • Joan! I am … I … dear Jesus in Heaven, guard this soul of your servant I ask you. I am …

  • Patience?

  • She’s gone.
>
  • She’ll be back.

  • How can you be sure?

  • Because we always come back.

  A thick layer of dust rested over what had once been a grand hall. A great wooden table, at least twenty-five feet long, filled half the length of the room. A heavy wooden chandelier hung over the table. Paintings adorned the walls: images of men ranging from the 15th Century through to Regency times. Their suits of armour, shields and swords decorated the hall. Years of dust and cobwebs covered them. The atmosphere was one of decay and neglect, of a once-majestic room ravaged by the unstoppable onslaught of passing time.

  A dusty candle sitting in the centre of the table sparkled, and the wick flickered to life, apparently of its own volition. The flame took hold and cast a dancing yellow light around the room. As the shadows moved, other candles began sparking into life. On the great chandelier, all forty candles caught light at the same time, and as they did so, the dust on them faded. It wasn’t burned off. It just melted into nothingness, as if it had never been there. The filth and grime that covered the room simply faded and disappeared, as if banished by the light. By the time the giant fireplace was filled with a roaring log-fire, the room was as it would have been in its pomp. The wood was scrubbed clean, the metals polished. Ornate, buffed wooden chairs were pushed in tight to the table, their back legs in two perfect rows on either side. Even the grimy, matted reeds that had covered parts of the stone floor had been replaced with fresh coverings. Twenty seconds earlier, it had been abandoned. Now, it was ready to welcome guests.

  As quickly and as suddenly as the room had changed appearance, food began to appear on the table. Platters covered with roast chicken, boar and pheasant filled the centre of the table, surrounded by bowls and plates laden with fruits and vegetables. An open bottle of wine sat beside a pewter goblet, three quarters filled with the rich, red liquid, waiting.