1 Change
At some point during Ben Aynsley’s walk home, the world changed around him.
He didn’t realise it was happening at the time, of course. It was only when he reached town that he began to spot the differences, the changes.
It was only when he reached town that his problems really began...
~
He’d been over at Andy’s house in the small village of Weeley, watching football on satellite TV. After the match they’d had a kick about in Andy’s back yard and then, with the storm clouds heaped up on the horizon, Ben had headed for home across the wasteland known as Barlow’s Patch.
The storm was like no storm he’d ever experienced.
Within minutes of Ben setting out, the clouds had tumbled across the sky, blotting out the afternoon sun. As he cut across the old quarry track the first heavy raindrops began to fall.
Ben only had a light coat on, so he took shelter in one of the ruined quarry buildings: a brick shell with empty window frames and a half-collapsed, corrugated tin roof.
Outside everything was grey, the clouds overhead so dark it was like a night sky. Lightning strobed, edging the clouds with white. Rain hammered on what remained of the tin roof, and Ben backed away into its shelter.
At one point, he looked up at the dark, twisting clouds, and that must have been when it happened.
When everything changed.
The sky flickered and then the clouds seemed to bulge with light. A fork of lightning ripped across the grey and for an instant it was as if the sky itself was being torn apart. Ben felt a tingle of static electricity across his skin. Heart racing, he wondered if this was what it was like to be struck by lightning.
Suddenly the air was sucked from his lungs and he felt powerful forces tugging at his limbs – like strong hands trying to tear him apart. He twisted, fighting the pressure; he felt as if he had been pulled off the ground and was spinning in mid-air.
A heavy impact knocked the air from his lungs and he found himself flat on the ground, face in the mud.
He rose to his knees, gasping for breath.
He felt sick and dizzy, his head still spinning. Where...? He couldn’t think straight.
He looked around.
The old building was no longer there. Hadn’t he been sheltering from the storm in the ruins of a quarry building?
He wiped his face with his cuff, then stood unsteadily and brushed the dust from his clothes.
Dust.
The ground was dry.
Hadn’t there been a storm?
He heard voices coming from the quarry. Men: shouting, arguing. That wasn’t right, either. The quarry had been closed for five or six years. It was surrounded with chain-link fence and barbed wire to keep children and dogs away from the old workings. There were tunnels and deep pits in there and it was easy to get lost – or so people said. You could lose yourself in the quarry and never be found, they said, and so people tended to stay away from the place.
Paths popular with dog walkers and mountain bikers went past the quarry, though. Maybe that explained the voices he could hear.
They were louder now, and definitely angry. They were arguing: the words were hard to make out but the violent tone was unmistakable.
Ben was still shaken by the storm. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew for certain that he didn’t want to meet the owners of these angry voices while he was in such a confused state.
He hurried back onto the track across Barlow’s Patch and soon the quarry was far behind.
~
He must have taken the wrong turning. That would explain it.
That would explain why the allotments weren’t there any more, and why the new houses on Campernell Close had been replaced by a small industrial estate: a tyre and exhaust centre, a printing company, a builders’ merchants, a lorry depot.
There were dozens of paths across Barlow’s Patch. They twisted and turned and crossed each other repeatedly. It was difficult to tell one area of scrubby grassland from another.
That must explain it: in his confused state Ben had followed the wrong track.
He came to the road that ran along the edge of the Patch. He crossed it and soon he came to Regent Road, just where he had expected.
He looked along at the industrial units, puzzled.
He shrugged, and headed down Regent Road, past lines of bungalows that were somehow familiar and strange at the same time.
He couldn’t work it out. He didn’t doubt that this was Kirby. Where else could it be? He’d lived in this small town for six years, since he and his parents had moved down from Norfolk.
If you head across Barlow’s Patch from Weeley the first place you reach is Kirby.
Maybe that lightning had actually struck Ben: maybe it had rewired the memories in his brain, making the familiar look strange. Maybe that was why something as simple as walking home left him feeling so confused.
He came to the end of the road, where it met the main road into town. According to the sign, this wasn’t Regent Road at all, but “Regency Road”.
Familiar yet strange.
He shook himself, as if that would somehow clear his mind.
He followed the alleyway that formed a shortcut through to the old market square in the town centre.
An elderly lady was coming the other way, a small white terrier straining at the lead. As they passed in the alley, the dog started jumping up and yapping. The woman glared at Ben as if it was somehow his fault, then pulled her dog away.
The market square was all wrong.
The shops were the same as Ben remembered: the chemist, the grocer’s, the newsagent and two estate agents. But... the grass and trees, the walled pond with the spitting fish fountain, were missing. In their place was a chained-off square with parking spaces painted onto it, some litter bins and some kind of display board showing a tourist map of the town.
Ben leaned against the high brick wall at the end of the alley. He pressed his forehead against the cool bricks, trying to stop his head from spinning, trying to make sense of something that quite clearly made no sense whatsoever.
Somewhere on his way back to town the world had changed. Or something in Ben’s head had changed.
He wasn’t sure which alternative he preferred.