Barbara Erskine - Sands of Time

As she settled into the seat of the 767, peering down over the dull panorama of West London, she reached automatically for her notebook.

Unless you have had a chance to study them in the departure lounge before you leave it is hard to get an overview of your fellow passengers on a plane. The one sitting next to you is of crucial importance – particularly if their personal habits are unpleasant or if they turn out to be an Olympic talker. Or if they are under the age of reasonable restraint. The rest are only glimpsed in tiny cameos if they stand up or move about or as they sit in serried ranks facing you as you pick your way to the loo, making the most of every second of blessed freedom before slotting yourself carefully back into place.

Amanda, on this the longest flight she had as yet made, unbelievably, grew bored. It was not as though she had a holiday to look forward to. The journey would end in a series of meetings. And tricky ones she was fronting for her cowardly boss. She was tired of the view of the seat in front. She could not see the screen with the film – which at any rate seemed to be about delinquent baseball players, not her favourite subject. She ate. She slept. She read. She studied cloud formations and she looked down at the beauty of the deep blue crepe which stretched on every side far below as they flew west over the Atlantic Ocean.

Her somnolent boredom was interrupted by the pilot. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are just flying in across the coast of Labrador. It might interest you to know the temperature down there now is minus twenty-eight degrees.’

Amanda’s eyes flew open. She leaned towards the window and peered down. The endless shining blue had disappeared. Far, far below the sea was grey and white and broken with ice and rock. Very soon there was no sea at all. All was ice. She shivered despite the fact that the temperature in the cabin must have been approaching plus twenty-eight degrees. The emptiness, the bleakness, the purity and wildness of that endless landscape was breathtakingly beautiful.

Across the aisle Amanda’s neighbour stood up, stretching. Unnoticed he had been studying her on and off from behind his newspaper. He cleared his throat and hovered. ‘Excuse me.’

She did not hear him. She was totally absorbed in the landscape below.

Smiling, he turned back to his seat nodding to himself. She was in a world of her own. The perfect place to be.

The plane was lower now. If there had been people there to see, she would have seen them as small black dots, indistinguishable from the stumps of felled trees or, she thought suddenly, bears. She craned closer to the window. She could see a road now, dead straight, cutting like a ruler across the landscape below. Lower and she could see that there was only one car in that whole desolate scene and near it she could see two small specks moving away from it. Who? Why? Where? The familiar mantra echoed in her brain. They were too far apart to be together and yet in that whole vast landscape how could they be separate?

In the seat across the gangway Amanda’s neighbour glanced towards her seat and frowned suddenly. He hadn’t seen her get up and leave her place. He turned, craning towards the back of the plane. No sign. Excellent! Smiling, he faced the front once more, wondering where she had gone and how long she would be.

The bite of the cold air and the crunch of snow beneath her feet, was so sudden, the moan of the wind so desolate, she was for a moment incapable of reacting. Near her she could see the woman. She was wearing a fur-trimmed parka and thick trousers but her gloves were gone, her hands like her face, chapped and raw. ‘Help me!’ Her breath was coming in tight raw gasps.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Amanda could feel the ice riming her eyelashes. The wind tore the words from her lips.

‘He’s going to kill me!’ The woman looked over her shoulder and following her gaze Amanda saw a figure in the distance labouring through the snow.

‘Help me!’

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide, just one chance as the wind whipped the top coat of snow from the road like spume from the sea. ‘Down here – maybe we can hide in the snow.’ She caught the woman’s arm and pushed her down into a drift at the side of the road. A few frantic scoops and she was hidden.

No time to hide herself. Trembling she turned to face him; saw the angry, blotched features, the snarling mouth, the hair whipped free of his hood, beaded with ice. There was a gun in his gloved hand.

‘Where are you, Mary-Anne?’

He ran towards Amanda without seeing her. ‘All I wanted was that you loved me!’ She could see the tears freezing on his cheeks, hear the despair in his voice. ‘Was that too much to ask?’ He staggered to a stop, staring round the empty landscape, still not seeing Amanda. His lungs were heaving, his sobs coming in raw anguished gulps. Suddenly hurling the gun out into the whirling whiteness he collapsed onto his knees.

Beside her there was a flurry of snow. ‘Andy!’ The woman was clawing her way back towards him. ‘Andy, I’m sorry. I love you. I love you!’

He was holding out his arms. They were both crying now. The wind grew stronger. Behind them the car was out of sight.

‘Go back! Get in the car!’ Amanda pleaded. She squinted through narrowed eyes up at the sky. Was that her plane up there, silver against the billowing snow cloud? Panic knifed through her stomach. The couple were staggering up the road into the wind away from her. In a moment they would be out of sight and she would be alone. ‘Wait!’ Her voice was torn to shreds by the wind and spun away to nothing. ‘Wait – ’

She couldn’t breathe. The air was hot. Stale. Her out-flung hand caught against the window next to her ear. She had been asleep. Dreaming! Disorientated she pulled herself to her feet and clambered over the empty seat next to her, intent on finding the loo. It may have been a dream, an imaginary interlude, but her hands and face were chapped and frozen, her breath still rasping in her chest.

The man across the aisle smiled. ‘So, where did you get to then?’

She stared at him, puzzled.

‘Looks as though you popped out for a breath of air.’ He was looking at her feet.

Following his gaze she gasped. Her shoes were wet with melting snow. Snags of ice clung to the bottom of her trousers.

Looking up she met his eyes and he saw the first dawning hints of fear. ‘Go and freshen up,’ he said. ‘I’ll order you a drink.’

When she came back to her seat he had ordered her a whisky and ginger but he did not move to the seat next to her. Instead he leaned across the aisle. ‘OK?’ His smile was gentle. Unthreatening.

‘What happened to me?’ Her hands had begun to shake.

He shrugged. ‘A dream? Out of body experience? Lucid trance? Writing your own script?’ He nodded at her book of snippets still lying open on the seat beside her, the pen cradled against the wire spiral at its centre.

‘You make it sound quite normal!’

‘Who is to say it isn’t?’

‘It’s never happened to me before.’ She was still very shaken.

‘Perhaps only in your dreams.’

She took a sip from her glass, feeling the bite of warmth through her veins and looked at him properly for the first time. Before, she had noticed him of course. Had seen he was about her own age – good-looking – had assumed he was trying to pick her up. Now she saw he was older than she had thought and she sensed genuine interest, kindness, in his glance.

‘Was I really not here. Out of my seat?’ She glanced down at her still-damp shoes.

He nodded.

‘I don’t want it to happen again.’

‘I’m not sure you can stop it.’ He frowned. ‘There are things you can do to help. I could write down the titles of some books for you to read.’

‘How come you know so much about it?’

‘I lecture on these things.’ He smiled. ‘I’m giving a talk in Toronto on parapsychology.’

‘What a coincidence.’ She took another sip of the drink then a thought struck her. She turned in her seat and stared at him. ‘It is a coincidence, isn’t it? You didn’t beam me down there or something.’

He laughed. ‘If only such things were possible, my dear.’

‘And those people in the snow. Did that really happen?’

He shrugged. ‘What people? What snow?’

She slumped back against her seat, defeated.

There was a moment’s silence then he leant across towards her again, raising his voice slightly against the roar of the engines. ‘The snow was real. I saw it on your boots.’

‘So I’m not going mad?’

He shook his head. ‘Never worry about that. You have a talent – perhaps ability is a better word. Cultivate it if you dare. It could be exciting.’

‘No one will ever believe me.’

‘No. But you’re a writer. Write about it. Tell the story. Let those who want to, believe. The others can read and enjoy and maybe even wonder.’

He had been looking at her notebook. She picked it up thoughtfully. He had assumed she was a writer and it was true. After all, she spent every spare second of her life writing. She would talk it over with Derek. Tell him what had happened. No, he would never believe her. Her unknown friend was right. If she was to write her snippet at all for general consumption it would have to be as fiction. As a dream in a magazine article perhaps. Or maybe as a novel? Already, without realising she had done it, she had picked up her pen.

But deep inside her something has changed. Without knowing it she has become afraid of travelling alone. She has encountered passion and fear and she has realised how detached her own life has been. Her relationship with Derek when she gets home will be closer, more dependent. When he asks her to marry him in six months’ time she will say yes.

Across the aisle Jack Kennedy smiled. He too had reached for his notebook. His was electronic.

Case 128: Subject’s name: Amanda Jones. He had seen her name on the label of her cabin bag. Estimated sensitivity: 7/10. Actual: 10/10. Verifiable facts: Maybe corroboration from two people on road? Check date and location. He smiled quietly.

He had learned from experience to provide aftercare for his guinea pigs. Whisky and ginger for those visiting the snowy wastes. Iced gin and lime for those who landed in the Sahara. Chilblain cures or sunburn. And of course a signed copy of his own book on trans-and bi-location, with an e-mail address where they could reach him with news of life/career changes resulting from their experience and for advice when it happened again – as it always did…

Of course there was always a risk. Always the possibility one day one of them would fail to return to their seat near his on the aircraft. That would be interesting. Probably unfortunate. Definitely worth an appendix on its own in his next book. A snippet. He smiled as he thought of the word scrawled across the cover of her notebook. It was funny how he often picked writers in his otherwise random selection of victims. Two novelists, a travel writer and four journalists to date. All travelling alone.

As he filled in the last detail and closed down his computer he lay back in his seat. Across the way Amanda was writing hard. He smiled thoughtfully. Perhaps he should ensure his next subject – no. 129 – did stay down there. His return flight to London in three days’ time might be an ideal opportunity. Imagine the furore when they found a passenger had disappeared. Imagine the puzzlement. Imagine the sense of power as he selected someone who this time would be the victim of the perfect crime. Because, even if it was in the name of science, it would be murder. There was no doubt at all about that.

They think I’m sitting on the train