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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Horror
eBook Description: Richards explores the nature of reality and perception filtered through the conduit of time; examines how our decisions can lead us down unsettling paths, and however carefully we make our choices they can still contain strange consequences, often tragic ones.

eBook Publisher: Elastic Press, Published: 2007, 2007
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2008

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], eReader (PDB) [187 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [175 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [159 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [192 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [214 KB], hiebook (KML) [416 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [262 KB], iSilo (PDB) [145 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [182 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [227 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [245 KB]
Words: 52015
Reading time: 148-208 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 978-0-9553181-1-5

Going Back

After it happened, my marriage only lasted two more months. Janine? She would tell me, some fifty times a day, that it wasn't really my fault. But she never looked in my eyes once, each time she said it. And by mid-February, she was gone.

My drinking, already bad, went into overdrive at that point. My good job and my nice home went the same way as my marriage. Family and friends all tried their best, but ended up abandoning me. Only one thing, in the end, prevented me from going all the way down. It was that ... however low I seemed to sink, however much I tried to deaden the pain with alcohol ... every single time I closed my eyes, I could still see it, hear it. Josie stepping off the kerb into the traffic. The squeal of tyres on frozen asphalt. And a small, truncated shriek.

It was what pulled me together finally. I realised that I only had two choices. Kill myself. Or try to stop it, try to save her.

That meant going back.

Modern science was no use to me at all in that endeavour, so I turned to older belief systems, starting with the local ones first. Wikka, and then Druidism. I studied them back to front, spent time with their practitioners. Eventually discovered there was nothing for me there, and so I went to the Americas, starting in New Mexico and travelling ever south.

Mushrooms were ingested, powders sniffed, potions swallowed, smoke inhaled. I painted my face, danced and chanted. And a dozen times during that period, I did go back, grab Josie just in time, and everything would be all right again. And then, some two or three days later, I would slowly come around. Realise that only my dreams had been altered. Nothing more.

Finally, like thousands of searchers after greater truths before me, I decided to go East.

In Japan, I found him. Half an hour's slow train ride outside Kyoto, there is Nara, a most holy place, by virtue of its sacred Deer Park. It has almost as many shrines as roving, half-tame deer.

I went to the largest building first, the hulking, dim Daibutsuden. Spent almost an hour wandering around it, under the impassive gaze of the vast, shadow-clad bronze figure of Buddha which dominated the whole place. Found nothing of use there. When I emerged, I consulted my map. And discovered that there was another, equally important site some twenty minutes' walk away, across the park from there. Actually amongst the woods. The Kasuga Taisha Shrine.

Right there in the trees. And animism, connection with nature--I had already concluded--was pretty important, if I was ever going to find my way back. I could only travel backwards to the point where I saved Josie if the world allowed me to. It was a matter of ... receiving its permission.

It was well gone midday by this time. It had rained heavily all the previous night, and the sky was still so filled with black pendulous cloud that I moved through an early twilight. I was alone as I walked across the open grassland to the trees. The few tourists who'd arrived today were still clustered around the temples. As I went in through the branches, down the narrow track, the light became still dimmer. By the time I reached the shrine, I could barely see ahead of me at all. Until I reached it.

The place was especially wondrous in semi-darkness. There amongst the wood were ranked thousands of stone and metal lanterns. Only a few of them were lit, so that the rest looked only half-real. There was silence all around me, save for the occasional drip of water from the tall, rain-sodden trees. I could have stayed there until true night fell, so wrapped up was I in it all.

When the priest stepped out from nowhere, I ought to have been startled. But he did it in so gentle and so delicate a way that I was not alarmed at all. He seemed to be tall and thin, though I could not be quite certain of that. He was dressed from head to toe in dark grey robes, so that his frame was barely visible at all, his face seemed to float quite unsupported in the dimness. A young face, the scalp clean-shaven. Eyebrows gone, and high cheekbones, and lips so full and curved that I could almost have been looking at a girl. He gazed at me for a few seconds, expression impassive, only his eyes smiling at the sight of me. And then he beckoned me to follow him.

I had done stranger things than this by far, the last few years. And so I followed without question.

Further back in the woods was a small stone hut, the door lit by a single candle. This he disappeared inside, to re-emerge from seconds later with something clasped in his fist. He didn't show me what it was, at first. Just stared at me again, as though waiting.

And I don't know what did it, but it all came pouring out.

Out shopping with Josie ... just before Christmas ... frost on the paving stones, breath misting on the air ... she just four years old, so excited ... and I kept hold of her hand the whole time, yes I did, I promise I did, except ... except ... the old woman passing by us, losing her footing on a patch of ice ... and I reaching across to steady her out of pure instinct...

"I only let go of Josie's hand for a few seconds!" I was now crying out loud, amongst the darkened trees. "A few seconds, oh God, I swear it!"

The priest, his eyes still smiling, reached out with the index finger of his free hand. Let one of my tears drip onto it. Then clasped that in his palm as well, as though it were some gem.

He showed me what he had fetched from the hut.

It was no bigger than an old penny. A tiny disc of metal, of a greenish hue. And ranked around its outer rim were twelve evenly-spaced Japanese characters. Like a clock, but with no mechanism and no hands.

He gave it to me.

"You must return to where it happened, the exact same place," he told me.

His lips were not moving in any kind of rhythm to the words that I was listening to. Was he speaking in his own tongue, and I hearing in mine?

"You must hold this in both hands, and think about what happened. And then, you can go back. You can put it right."

"But," he warned me, with a sympathetic sternness, "there will be a price."

Really? And could it be any worse than the prices I'd already paid? I nodded my thanks to him, and then started back for England.

It was even the precise same date. Four years to the day since Josie had run off into the traffic. I waited till gone midnight, when the high street would be empty. Then I returned to the exact spot.

Four years since I'd been here, but it was easy to find.

I clasped the little disc between my palms, in a prayer attitude. And closed my eyes. And remembered the squeal of tyres, the brief shriek. They were still there, fresh as ever in my skull.

And when I opened my eyes, it was daylight, the street around me was full of people. There was the old lady, slipping on the patch of ice.

Someone else reached out to catch her anyway.

I swung sharply to my right. And there she was.

A frozen moment...

In which, I could even see what she had been running towards. Over on the far side of the street, a woman was walking, on a pair of tartan leashes, a brace of West Highland terrier pups, so young that they looked no more than animated balls of fluff. And Josie had loved puppies--I had promised her one when she was old enough to look after it, such a hollow promise now.

Her whole tiny body was straining towards the little pups, both of her arms outstretched.

One of her feet had already left the kerb.

The frozen moment passed. I lunged forwards. And grabbed her by the fleece-lined hood of her smart winter coat. And dragged her back.

I'd done it. So I hugged her. But she simply struggled in my arms, let out a troubled whimper.

That was when a hand descended on my shoulder, from behind.

"Christ almighty, thank you," said a voice.

And my insides seemed to tighten. Because that voice--it seemed rather too familiar.

"I only let go of her for a moment," the man behind me was now saying. "I don't know what I was thinking of."

Then he reached down, and scooped Josie out of my helpless grasp.

Slowly, I straightened. Turned around. Looked at him.

This wasn't what I had envisaged, all this time I'd dreamt of going back. I had meant to return to the same place and same time, the way I'd been. And put everything right. And go on with my life the way it had supposed to be.

Instead of which..."

I was looking at Me.

And the strangest thing of all was that he didn't even seem to recognise me.

Strangest thing. Until I caught sight of my own reflection just behind him, in the glaze of a shop window.

I and Me? Just four years apart, we were completely different. He, clean cut and clean-shaven, conventionally dressed, sporty-looking, with his skin pale from the drizzly English weather.

And myself? I had a beard now, and my hair grew down across my shoulders. My skin was baked brown from years spent in far warmer climes, and my clothing was a rag-bag collection from half across the world.

And yet ... it wasn't even this that truly separated us.

I looked at his face and his eyes, unaltered by experience, untouched by hardship, tragedy.

Then I stared, very hard, at the reflected sight of mine.

We might as well have come from different planets.

He was looking at me strangely now, as though suspecting that there might be something wrong with me, wrong in the head. But then his politeness took over, and he thanked me once again. He even wished me Merry Christmas before going on his way.

I watched me bobbing off along the high street, with my daughter clasped tight in my arms. Watched me heading back towards my nice home and my loving wife. My good job and my promising, unblemished future.

One that I would never know.

At least I'd saved her. There was consolation, plenty of it, just in that.

I waited till I'd disappeared completely, before going on my way.