Timewatch Read online

  Marjory and Mr. S. were quietly sipping their drinks. They must have really hit it off earlier. He had overheard them at dinner talking about their visit to the antique shops in Jackson Square. Mr. S. was excited about buying some earrings made out of human hair. He was sure that they would sell very well in his store in Kenora.

  Cummings was pouring Caleb a shot of brandy.

  Beside J.J. stood a small table that held Jeremy’s memoir, which Gerry had put there after supper. J.J. picked it up. The binding felt dry and cool to his touch. Thin spidery writing covered every inch of the brittle paper. His fingers began to burn. He tried to wrench his hand away, but a mighty force seemed to be gluing them to the page. He opened his mouth to shout—and fell into another time and place.

  In disbelief, he gulped and rubbed his eyes, but the man standing in front of him was shockingly clear. He was wearing stockings and breeches and a reddish-colored cloak, which reached just below the tops of his boots. His long hair was neatly tied back in a ponytail.

  “Who are you?” blurted out J.J.

  “Your ancestor, Jeremy Morgan, at your service. Now pay attention, Master Jason. There is something you must do.”

  It’s just like school all over again, thought J.J. resentfully. Fixing Jeremy with what he hoped was a good imitation of the Terminator’s hard stare, he asked, “Why?”

  “Because if you refuse,” said Jeremy enunciating each word precisely, “much of your world will know cruel oppression at the hands of one who knows no mercy.”

  J.J. blinked and then let out a strangled yell. It was like the time in Mr. S.’s shop when he’d gone traveling out of his body and looked back into Celtic times. All around him was clear blue sky and nothing holding him up as far as he could tell.

  “That which you term your ‘consciousness’ is here with me. Your body is taking its ease back in Caleb’s library,” said Jeremy’s voice from beside him.

  “How can I be separated from my body?”

  “Consciousness can be anywhere it is needful for it to be. Time and space are not the barriers you view them to be.”

  Jeremy sounded like one of those far-out quantum physicists. Since there wasn’t anything he could do about his situation, he might as well enjoy the view, even if it was the product of what had to be his hyperactive imagination.

  And what a view! He could see the outline of California, the tips of mountain ranges poking up through huge clouds of dirty gray smoke.

  “Where are we?” asked J.J.

  “San Francisco in 1992 in an alternate reality.”

  “What happened here?” J.J. whispered, for the land was burning: towns, villages, fields, everything torched.

  “You see before you a conquered country,” said Jeremy. “The Great Oppressor, in league with the Japanese, dreams of world conquest. His armies are victorious everywhere and now shake the New World as a farmer might shake an apple tree. None dare oppose him except some few. And so the land burns.

  “Disease kills as many as force of arms. Three persons in five fall prey to smallpox. Of those three, one dies, one becomes horribly disfigured, and one is only slightly marked. It is the custom during particularly bad outbreaks for the corpses to be burned.”

  J.J. shuddered. Now he could see what was left of farmhouses, their chimneys broken and red tiles jutting out from gaping roofs. In some cases, only burned-out shells remained. The towns were in even worse shape, with whole blocks of buildings wiped out and only piles of rubble to mark where they had stood. A few people were scavenging in the ruins. They dived for cover when what looked like jeep-type vehicles painted brown drove slowly down the street.

  They moved swiftly to the south. “Los Angeles,” said Jeremy.

  The structures of the megalopolis, familiar to J.J. from movies, were not there, only a string of small towns that showed the same signs of devastation as the towns farther north.

  “Behold, the Spanish territories,” said Jeremy. “They were established here until the Japanese overtook them. Rather than build great manufacturing enterprises, these outposts ship the fruits of the land to the mother country, which uses these resources to manufacture goods and then ships these goods back to the colonists.”

  Now they were moving inland, soaring over mountain peaks that stuck up above a jumble of rock and wastelands of cactus and sage in lonely deserts where nothing moved for miles.

  Foothills began to appear and then high, broad plains where vast herds of animals moved slowly. They dipped down closer.

  “Bison!” exclaimed J.J. “So many of them!”

  Now he could make out some dark-skinned men and women on horseback, expertly cutting out some of the animals from the rest of the herd.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Indians in the west joined with other Indians from all across this great land to create a federation of Indian nations. They supply quantities of meat, hides, and the by-products of bison to the rest of North America, even shipping their products to foreign markets.”

  Below them, J.J. could see a train pulling into a station surrounded by acres of corrals that contained bison standing, patiently awaiting their fate.

  Abruptly, J.J. could feel himself streaking faster and faster eastward, the empty plains giving way to a patchwork quilt of neat farms.

  There was nothing resembling the great cities of his time, cities linked together by a network of roads in a nonstop urban sprawl. Here were smaller towns where slow-moving vehicles, about the size of Volkswagen Beetles, puffed along dirt roads. Women in long dark dresses and scarves on their heads walked sedately from shop to shop, most carrying baskets into which they put their purchases. Men were dressed in pants and coats of the same dark material as the women.

  “Their forebears were the early Puritans,” said Jeremy answering the boy’s unspoken question.

  “Don’t they believe in having fun?”

  J.J. could hear a snort of laughter from Jeremy as he answered, “The Master of Hell was associated with fun. In Puritan New England it would be a grave error to associate oneself with the Horned One. Religion is a sober affair. Everyone goes to the meetinghouse on Sundays.”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  “Few people would patronize your business, bullies would set upon your children at school, and ladies would scorn to be seen with your wife.”

  “So they didn’t really have a choice.”

  “You say it very true, Master Jason. No War of Independence, offering the right to live free from whatever class of society into which one was born, occurred. No masses of immigrants seeking to conduct their lives in the manner they chose flooded into the land. No great nation promoting individual freedoms and responsibilities—the likes of which the world has never known—arose.

  “It happened in this manner. After Metacom or King Philip, the name given to the Indian leader, and the tribes who joined him laid waste to the English colonies, the French under Count Frontenac swooped down from the north upon the colonies and took control of the area.

  “After the burning of their towns, the widespread killing of their people, as well as the repressive policies of France, the Thirteen Colonies never built up a great nation. And so the matter has stood ever since.

  “Thus, when the armies of Hitler enslaved Europe in the 20th century, there was none to stop him. England, France, and all their allies eventually succumbed to the Great Oppressor, who, along with his ally, the Japanese, established a great empire extending throughout the whole of Europe, right up to the borders of Russia. Now he looks across the sea to the Eastern Seaboard of North America.

  “There are cycles in time. The Hindus wrote about yuga cycles, each one of which lasted for thousands of years and had various characteristics. The Mayas also were aware of various cycles of time, as were the North American Indians. We are shifting now into another cycle. Soon the present cycle will close permanently.

  “A distinct possibility exists that other forces will be able to shift the pr
esent timeline into what will become a nasty future.”

  “So, what has this to do with me or the other Morgans?”

  “More than you think.”

  “But how?”

  “Each of you has a talent, such as your ability to pick up impressions from objects. At other times you may have an intuitive knowing of the appropriate thing to do.”

  “I still don’t understand how this works.”

  “You are at a particular point in time—a kind of window or opportunity—where, with some help, you will be able to project your consciousness into a former body of yours that lived at a particular turning point in history. This will allow you to effect the changes necessary to prevent the other forces from altering the present and future.”

  “What happens if we can’t?”

  “Then the timeline in which you now live will not manifest.”

  “Would that be so bad? Life isn’t so great now for a lot of people.” Like his mother, who had to have an operation and had lost her dad, and especially for the people living in third world countries.

  As if reading his mind, Jeremy said, “And yet, my young kinsman, you live in a time where you have choices and opportunities undreamed of by those in other periods of history. Would you, for example, give up the industrial potential, which sometimes creates pollution, and forgo certain experiences that hold a great richness of expression for human beings?”

  “Uh, I guess not.”

  “As I did mention previously, there are certain periods where, depending on the choices that individuals collectively make, the stream of human events may go one way or another. Colonial America was one such turning point. There are others.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Each person is connected to a field of consciousness and, therefore, connected to each other. Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious. So what each person does, or even thinks, has an effect on everyone else. By your thoughts and actions, you Morgans can affect the direction in which humanity will go.”

  “They’re never going to believe this, not in a million years!”

  “Leave that to me, Master Jason. I charge you to tell them what you have seen and then bid them go to the San Juan Mission south of San Francisco. Advise the abbot that you have come for the box left there by Jeremy Morgan. You will find further instructions in the box.”

  J.J. opened his eyes and found his hand gripping the memoir.

  Mr. S. was already out of his seat. Putting an arm around him, Mr. S. asked, “What’s the matter, Jason?”

  J.J. wanted to sink down into his chair. Everyone was staring at him. Then Laney slipped over to his side and whispered, “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to you, young man?” asked Caleb, frowning.

  “Uh, well, I had a kind of vision. I met Jeremy and …” His voice trailed off.

  This was going to be worse than he thought. Dan was staring at him skeptically, but then Marjory was saying, “Why don’t you just tell us what happened, Jason?”

  He gulped and said, “Jeremy said we’re supposed to go to the San Juan Mission and pick up a box that he left there. And then we’re going to travel back in time.”

  Dan whistled and leaned forward in his chair as he asked, “Did he tell you how we’re supposed to go back in time?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Doesn’t seem possible.”

  “I belong to a physics club at my high school. A physicist came to talk to us once. Someone asked this guy about time travel. He said it was theoretically possible. The math equations show that what he called ‘the arrow of time’ can go backward as well as forward.”

  “But no one has ever done it,” said Dan, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Not necessarily,” said Marjory. “Cases do exist where people appear to have gone back into the past. A few years ago I came across a book written in 1902 by two Englishwomen who had toured Versailles just outside Paris the previous year. They saw a woman in a large hat and full-skirted dress, who was sketching. Later, they saw a picture of the woman, whom they identified as Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis the Sixteenth.

  “Apparently, these two ladies had wandered into another time period, the 18th century, just before the French Revolution. And there were a number of other anomalies, including a footbridge they had walked over that no longer existed in 1901 but had been there in 1789 and a door that they had seen a footman closing, but which had been bolted shut for years before the ladies’ visit.”

  “Could the ladies have been, ah, mistaken or just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame?” joked Dan.

  “I think not,” said Marjory. “Both were highly respected academics. Eleanor Jourdain was the principal of St. Hugh’s College at Oxford, and Annie Moberly was the headmistress of a school for girls.”

  “Do you remember, Aunt Marjory, when we visited Bond Street in Liverpool? A clerk told us about something similar that had happened there,” said Gerry.

  J.J. began whistling a tune.

  “Isn’t that ‘Hey Jude’?” asked Gerry.

  When his relatives all looked at him, J.J. could feel himself flushing and said, “My dad’s always playing old records by the Beatles. He said they grew up in Liverpool.”

  The tense atmosphere relaxed and everyone smiled, even Caleb, whose lips twitched briefly.

  “So what happened in Bond Street?” asked Laney.

  Gerry sat up straight, her face animated as she said, “We were shopping there and dropped into Dillons bookstore. The clerk, who was helping us find a book, mentioned that several days earlier a woman had been waiting in the shop for her husband to join her. When he came in, he looked confused. He told his wife how after they had split up to do some shopping he noticed everything had become really quiet—no traffic noises. He found himself suddenly standing in the middle of the road, where a 1950s-type van with Caplan’s written on it had almost run him down.

  “The other strange thing was that when he peered in the front window of what he was sure was the bookstore, he could see women’s shoes and handbags for sale; the sign over the entrance read Cripps. As he walked into the shop, the interior suddenly changed back into a bookstore. It was later found that a clothes shop called Cripps used to be there.”

  “What about the van?” asked Caleb.

  “In the 1950s, there used to be a company called Caplan’s, which used white vans.”

  Mr. S. scratched his head as he asked, “Have any other strange phenomena occurred there?”

  “Yes, I believe there have been other incidences in Bond Street of what some call time slips,” said Marjory.

  “So perhaps there is a possibility, after all, of time travel,” he said reflectively.

  There was dead silence, except for Caleb’s putting down his glass a little too hard on a table.

  “Getting back to the present,” said Caleb, “I told you all yesterday about my visions of Jeremy and how when I didn’t call the family together as he asked he caused my elevator to go berserk. Now the boy has seen him, too.”

  “I have been dreaming, also,” said Gerry quietly. “About Jeremy’s sister, Susanna. It was very … real, not like a dream at all.”

  “I think you should know that J.J. has a gift for psychometry,” Mr. S. said. “By holding a Celtic pin, which had been dated back to the time of the Romans in early Britain, he picked up impressions of some events that happened in that period of history.”

  “And just before we came over here, Aunt Marjory, you saw a Celtic woman, Bryanna!” exclaimed Gerry.

  Dan was shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “I don’t doubt that your experience was very real to you, J.J., but time travel, alternate timelines? It sounds right out in left field.”

  J.J. did know how Dan felt. Even after what he’d seen, it was still hard to accept.

  “There may be a way of determining the truth of the matter,” said Marjory. “I think we have to go to the mission and fin
d that box.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement while Caleb said, “I agree. You’ll all enjoy the ride out there—the scenery is really spectacular—so be ready to leave tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

  The others nodded in agreement and then filed out of the library.

  CHAPTER 14

  Susanna Morgan Near London, May 1, 1649

  * * *

  A soft May breeze was bending the heads of the roses and ruffling her hair as Susanna sat in the small garden at the back of Paul’s house. In the months she had lived here, life had flowed in quiet, even channels, its small pleasures, like sitting in this rose garden, soothing, thought Susanna as she surveyed the herb and vegetable garden.

  Her heart lifted with excitement when she thought of her forthcoming marriage with Paul. She had begged him to wait until he had found news of Jeremy, whom she wanted to attend their wedding, or, if that was not possible, to at least find out where he was and if he was safe.

  Paul’s good friend, Mr. Carvajal, whose ships regularly plied the trade route to the New World, had promised to help find her brother. As she rubbed her belly, she hoped Jeremy would be found soon. Her feelings for Paul had grown so strong that she had given herself to him. It was right after they had heard of the execution of the king on January 30, 1649. She had fallen into a depression, during which Paul’s loving attentions toward her had made her fall even more in love with him.

  She remembered that evening as they had sat beside a dying fire, their hands touching, his smile, and his deep voice saying good night, all culminating in her returning his chaste kiss on her cheek with a kiss that was neither proper nor chaste. But she had never regretted it, although she could not entirely dismiss an underlying unease that sometimes disturbed her sleep.

  She heard the crunching of gravel at the front of the house as a coach came to a stop. It must be Paul returning. She would tell him now, this very night, about the babe growing in her belly, that she wanted to marry him very soon, whether or not Jeremy was found.

  A few minutes later Mrs. Zeman, who had become more of a friend than a servant, came running in. “Susanna, come quickly! The master has met with an accident!”