longer. He did not mind them leaving him out; in fact, he was relieved. Apparently, they had nothing to say to a writer of escapist literature who in addition came to meetings with a kitchen knife strapped to his back. He was not in the slightest bit interested in what they had to say either, so he gazed through the window at the turbulent swirls of mist. He soon realised that Stoker’s voice, when its owner was not cowed by fear, was too loud to ignore even if he wanted to.
‘What I’m trying to achieve with my novel, Mr James,’ the Irishman explained, waving his arms in the air, ‘is a deeper, richer portrayal of that elegant embodiment of evil, the vampire, whom I have attempted to divest of the burden of the romantic aesthetic that turned him into little more than a grotesque sex-fiend, incapable of inspiring in his victims any more than a sensual frisson. The protagonist of my novel is an evil vampire, whom I have endowed with the original attributes found in the myth of folklore, although I confess to having added a few of my own, such as him not having a reflection in mirrors.’
‘But if you embody it, Mr Stoker, evil loses most of its mystery and its potency!’ exclaimed James, in an offended tone that took his fellow writer by surprise. ‘Evil should always manifest itself in the subtlest way. It must be born of doubt, inhabit the shadowy realm between certainty and uncertainty.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you mean, Mr James,’ murmured the Irishman, once the other man appeared to have calmed down.
James let out a long sigh, before agreeing to expand a little more on the sensitive subject, but Wells could tell from the bewildered look on Stoker’s face that the Irishman grew increasingly confused as the other man spoke. It was no surprise, then, that when they stopped in front of Stoker’s house, the red-haired giant had the air of someone punch-drunk as he stepped out of the cab. The situation only grew worse after Stoker’s desertion (for this was precisely how Wells experienced it) as the two men found themselves brutally exposed to silence. A silence that the urbane James naturally felt obliged to break by engaging Wells in a shallow discussion about the different kinds of material that could be used to upholster carriage seats.
When Wells was finally alone in the cab, he gave thanks to heaven, then eagerly became lost in his deliberations as they left the city behind. He had many things to think about, he told himself. Yes, matters of great import, ranging from the future he had glimpsed in the clippings, which he was unsure whether to forget or to commit to memory, to the exciting idea that someone had thought of charting time as though it were a physical space. Only this was a region that could never be properly charted, because there was no way of knowing where the white cord ended. Or was there? What if the time travellers had journeyed far enough into the future to discover the edge of time, the end of the thread, just as the traveller in his novel had tried to do?
But did such a thing exist? Was there an end to time, or did it carry on for ever? If it did end, then it had to happen at the exact moment when man became extinct and no other species was left on the planet: what was time if there was no one to measure it and nothing to experience its passing? Time could only be seen in the falling leaves, a wound that healed, a woodworm’s tunnelling, rust that spread, and hearts that grew weary. Without anyone to discern it, time was nothing, nothing at all.
Although, thanks to the existence of parallel worlds, there would always be someone or something to make time believable. And there was no doubt that parallel worlds existed. Wells knew this for sure now: they sprouted from the universe like branches from a tree at the minutest change to the past, just as he had explained to Andrew Harrington in order to save the young man’s life less than three weeks earlier. And discovering this gave him more satisfaction than any future success of his novel, because it spoke of his powerful intuition, the effective, even precocious workings of his brain. Perhaps his brain lacked the mechanism that enabled Rhys to travel in time, but his powers of reasoning set him apart from the masses.
He recalled the map the traveller had shown them, the figure made of coloured strings representing the parallel universes Rhys had untangled. It suddenly struck him that the map was incomplete because it included only the worlds created by the travellers’ direct interventions. But what of our own actions? The parallel universes not only grew from their wicked manipulations of the hallowed past, but from each and every one of our choices. He imagined Rhys’s map with this new addition, the white cord weighed down by a sudden flowering of yellow strings representing the worlds created by man’s free will.
Wells emerged from these reflections as the cab pulled up in front of his house. He climbed out and, after tipping the driver generously for having made him leave London in the small hours of the morning, he lifted the gate’s latch and entered the garden, wondering whether it was worth going to bed or not, and what effect it might have on the fabric of time if he decided to do one thing or the other.
It was then he noticed the woman with the fiery red hair.
Chapter XL
Thin and pale, her reddish hair glowing on her shoulders, like embers escaped from a fire, she looked at him with the peculiar gaze that had caught his attention a few days before, when he had noticed her among the crowd of onlookers milling around the scene of Rhys’s third crime.
‘You?’ exclaimed Wells, stopping in his tracks.
The girl said nothing. She simply walked as silently as a cat to where he was standing and held something out to him. The author saw it was a letter. Puzzled, he took it from her lily-white hand.
‘Read it, Mr Wells,’ she said, with a voice that reminded him of the early-afternoon breeze rustling the net curtains. ‘Your future depends on it.’
With that, she walked away towards the gate, leaving him motionless in the doorway, his face frozen in a frown. When he managed to rouse himself, Wells ran after her.
‘Wait, Miss
He came to a halt halfway. The woman had disappeared: only her perfume lingered in the air. And yet Wells could not recall having heard the gate squeak. It was as though after handing him the letter she had literally vanished without trace.
He stood stock still for a few moments, listening to the silent throb of night and breathing in the unknown woman’s perfume, until finally he decided to enter the house. He made his way as quietly as possible to the sitting room, lit the little lamp and sat down in his armchair. He was still startled by the appearance of the woman, whom he might have mistaken for one of Conan Doyle’s fairies had she measured eight inches and worn a pair of dragonfly wings on her back. Who was she? And how had she suddenly vanished? But it was foolish to waste time surmising when he would no doubt find the answer in the envelope he was holding.
He tore it open and took out the pages it contained. He shuddered when he recognised the handwriting. His heart in his mouth, he began to read:
