Title: How Soon Is Now?
Author: Paul Carnahan
Publication Date: June 10, 2024
Pages: 462
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy/Time Travel
A troubled ex-journalist launches a
perilous mission into his own past after being recruited by a mysterious
group of time travelers.
Luke Seymour uncovers the secrets of the
eccentric Nostalgia Club as he battles to solve the riddle of their
missing leader, honing his newly discovered – and dangerously addictive –
talent for time travel and plunging ever deeper into his own time
stream … where the terrible mistake that scarred his life is waiting.
Set in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the
1980s, 1990s and near-present, ‘How Soon Is Now?’ is a gripping new
novel loaded with unforgettable characters, intricate storytelling, dark
humour and a unique twist on the mechanics of time travel – all moving
towards a powerful and emotional climax.
Available at:
Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/How-Soon-Now-powerful-travel-ebook/dp/B0D1RG2GL5
Amazon U.K.:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Soon-Now-powerful-travel-ebook/dp/B0D1RG2GL5First Chapter:
Time tidies up after itself better than
most of us realise, so I’ll be brief. I want to get everything down
while I can still remember how it happened.
It started with a note: Blue ink on a
slip of paper you might mistake for a Christmas cracker joke, with these
words written in a plain and precise hand: ‘We know. We can help. Come
to the Thrawn Laddie, Edinburgh, 7.30pm Wednesday.’
I was at the off-licence, digging for
change in the outside pocket of my suit jacket, when I found the note. I
was down to one suit that still fitted and wore it most days – I was,
more or less, still keeping up appearances – so the note might have been
curled up there for hours, days or even months. I glanced at it without
really reading it and stuffed it back into my pocket, where it stayed
until I made it back to the flat with the evening’s beer supply.
Once the bottles were safely in the
fridge, I emptied my pockets, throwing a fistful of old train tickets
and crumpled till receipts into the bin. The note nearly joined them,
but something about the neatness of the script caught my eye, and I read
it properly for the first time. ‘We can help’. Who could help? How
could they help? Where had it come from? I left it on the kitchen table
for the rest of the week; a minor mystery pinned under a beer bottle.
It was a long week. Alison still wasn’t
talking to me after The Incident at our college reunion, and even
Malcolm wouldn’t return my calls. I eyed the note every time I passed
the kitchen table on my way to the fridge and, by Wednesday evening, had
convinced myself a minor mystery might be just the distraction I
needed. One Glasgow-to-Edinburgh train and a 20-minute cab ride later –
an extravagance, considering I was trying to make my redundancy money
last – I was standing on Morningside Road, outside the Thrawn Laddie.
That October night was cold and crisp,
and a wall of heat hit me as I opened the door. The pub – a dusty jumble
of antique clutter and old-world charm – had changed so little in the
30-plus years since it had been one of our preferred student haunts that
I half-expected to spot the old gang huddled in our favourite corner,
but the place was now a near-empty refuge for elderly locals and a few
wine-sipping post-work professionals. The students had moved on.
I checked the clock above the bar:
7.10pm. I could fit in a couple of pints, if I was quick. I ordered a
Guinness and settled at a single table with a clear view of the door. By
7.30, the only new arrivals had been a pair of old gents who went
straight to their friends at the end of the bar without looking in my
direction. I finished my drink, ordered another and took it to my table.
My second glass was nearly empty when the bored young barman, a skinny
youth labouring under a misjudged haircut, loomed over me.
‘Mind if I give your table a wipe?’ he said. I lifted my pint glass and drained the remnants.
He ran a damp cloth over the table, gathered my empties and asked: ‘Another Guinness?’
‘No, thanks.’ I slipped my hand into my
pocket, and my thumb and forefinger pinched the little note. ‘Maybe you
can help me with something, though. Has anyone been asking for me? I’m
supposed to be meeting someone.’
He stared at me, waiting for something.
He cocked an eyebrow – the one pierced by a silver stud – and I added:
‘Seymour. My name’s Luke Seymour.’
He shook his head. ‘No one’s been looking for you, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘Who are you meeting?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He looked puzzled, so I added: ‘It might not be a person. It could be a group.’
The barman stuffed the cloth into his back pocket. ‘Might be the crowd back in the function suite, then. Are you one of them?’
‘One of them?’
‘The good old days mob,’ he said. ‘They
rent the back room on a Wednesday night. Had an early start this week
for some reason. You could try giving them a knock.’
‘I might,’ I said. ‘Who are they?’
‘The Nostalgia Club, they call
themselves. They might be who you’re after. Past the toilets and turn
right. You can’t miss it. Follow your nose.’ He pointed towards a
corridor leading off the end of the bar.
I thanked him, left my table and followed my nose. As I turned the corner, the barman gave a soft cough.
‘Word of advice,’ he said. ‘I’d knock first. Good luck.’
After a brief stop at the gents, I
followed the corridor off to the right. At the end was a dark oak door
bearing a brass plaque: ‘Function Suite’. Below that, stuck to the door
with a strip of sticky tape, was a sheet of A4 on which was written, in
the same precise hand as the note in my pocket: ‘NOSTALGIA CLUB.
PRIVATE.’
There was muffled conversation on the
other side of the door, submerged under the thin, scratchy strains of a
wartime ballad. With my ear to the door, I could just about hear the
voices, one male, one female, over the music.
‘—try again,’ said the woman. ‘What if he doesn’t —’
The man spoke over her in an even tone with traces of an accent I couldn’t place. ‘He will. We have to be—’
The ballad hit a crescendo of horns, strings and syrupy vocals, drowning out the voices.
I raised my hand, about to rap on the
door, then let it fall to my side again, struck by sudden
self-consciousness. What kind of help was I expecting to find in the
back room of a Morningside pub? Things hadn’t been quite right for a
while and the fits, as I thought of them, seemed to be increasing in
frequency and intensity, but I hadn’t mentioned them to anyone – not
even Alison. Especially not Alison. I suddenly felt foolish for
travelling all that way hoping to solve a problem I couldn’t even admit
existed, and was about to turn and leave when my fingers tightened into a
fist. I rapped on the door, surprising myself with four sharp, firm
knocks.
Before I could retreat, the music behind
the door stopped. Voices – the man and woman now joined by others –
overlapped. There was a thud, the sound of wood scraping on wood, then
approaching footsteps. The door opened just enough for the long nose of a
short, bald man to protrude into the hall. The nose’s owner peered up
at me through jam-jar-thick spectacles and, with practised politeness,
said: ‘This is a private gathering. You’ll find the toilets back along
the corridor. Enjoy your evening.’
A faint smell of liquorice snaked
through the gap and into the corridor. The bald man stretched his mouth
into a tight smile and began to close the door. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. I
grabbed the handle and pushed back. ‘No, sorry,’ I said. ‘I think I’m
meant to be here. I found this note.’
I pressed my shoulder against the door
while I reached into my pocket with my free hand, fished the note from
my pocket and waved it in front of his nose. ‘Seven-thirty, Wednesday.
That’s today.’
‘It is,’ he said, with a sniff. An expression of uncertainty passed across his face, and he looked over his shoulder.
‘Who is it, Marcus?’ the husky voice of
the woman I’d heard from the other side of the door grew louder. Her
head bobbed into view above his, her curious hazel eyes fixed on me. She
placed her hands on the small man’s shoulders and steered him away from
the door. ‘No need to be rude to our guest, Marcus,’ she said, pushing a
tangle of hair, rich copper with a streak of grey, from her eyes. She
had one of those faces – handsome and strong-jawed – that seemed
immediately familiar, though I was sure we had never met. She opened the
door wide, stepped aside to give me a clear view of the room, and there
they were: The Nostalgia Club.
There were six of them in the function
suite – a grand title for a spartan, parquet-floored room no bigger than
20 feet square and decorated in that queasy colour which can pass for
either burnt ochre or decades of gathered nicotine. Marcus adjusted his
spectacles and retreated to a small table, on which neat rows of glass
vials, oil burners, incense sticks and tealight candles waited in front
of a cardboard cigar box. A candle guttered, sending a ribbon of smoke
across the room as he settled into his seat.
At another table to his left, a
ginger-haired and heavily-bearded young man dressed in camouflage
trousers and a black T-shirt winked at Marcus from behind an outsized
laptop connected to a pair of speakers. ‘Thought you said he wasn’t
coming?’ said the younger man.
‘I said he might not,’ grumbled Marcus.
A tiny, owlish old woman perched on one
of the chairs lined up against the wall lifted the grizzled Cairn
Terrier resting in her lap, took the dog’s paw in her hand and waggled
it at me in a welcoming wave. ‘We knew he was coming, didn’t we,
Biscuit?’ she said, bending to kiss the dog’s head.
Beside her, an impassive woman in her
early 50s, smartly dressed, immaculately made-up and without a single
blonde hair out of place, surveyed me silently.
At the centre of the room, hands
gripping the metal frame of an incongruous sun lounger in an
eye-watering floral pattern, stood an elegant man of about 35, slim and
dapper in jeans, tweed jacket and herringbone waistcoat. His
close-cropped hair and neat goatee framed a face dominated by large,
inquisitive brown eyes that flicked between me and the woman who had
opened the door. ‘Now, Ruth, aren’t you going to invite our guest in?’
he said. His voice was musical, lightly accented and tinged with a touch
of World Service RP.
The red-haired woman held out a hand in
welcome. ‘Of course. Come in, please,’ she said. ‘I’m Ruth. Welcome to
the Nostalgia Club. Would you like to join us?’
As I hesitated in the doorway, Ruth
placed a hand on my waist and guided me into the room, nudging the door
shut with her foot. She was tall and walked with a slight stoop, as if
trying to disguise her height. Spotting the slip of paper in my hand,
she said: ‘I’m glad you got our note. We were starting to worry you
weren’t going to find it.’
‘Or wouldn’t be mental enough to come all this way even if you did,’ grinned the man with the ginger beard.
I dropped the note back into my pocket. ‘I’m in the right place, then?’
The man with the goatee almost danced
towards me, arms outstretched. ‘You most certainly are,’ he said,
shaking my hand vigorously. ‘We’re delighted to see you at last. You
must have a lot of questions.’
‘A few,’ I said.
‘Excellent! We’ll answer as many as we can, as soon as you’re settled.’
Ruth patted my arm, took a spare chair
from the row along the wall and placed it beside the gaudy sun lounger
to face the group. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Can I
take your jacket?’
I shook my head, but I sat. The goateed
man studied me with undisguised delight while Ruth stood at his side.
‘This is Mahdi,’ she said. ‘He can probably explain better than any of
us what this is all about.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that, but I’ll do my best,’ said Mahdi. ‘How can we help you?’
That was a bigger question than he knew,
but I kept my voice steady and restricted myself, for the time being,
to the basics. ‘You could tell me who you are and what this note means,’
I said. ‘And if you can let me know how it ended up in my pocket,
that’d be great, too.’
Mahdi laughed and clapped his hands. ‘That should give us enough to begin with, Mr Seymour.’
‘You know who I am, then?’
‘To an extent,’ said Mahdi.
‘Why don’t we start with the note?’ said Ruth. ‘It ended up in your pocket because we put it there.’
‘You could’ve just handed it to me – or introduced yourselves and said whatever you wanted to say, like normal people.’
Mahdi and Ruth exchanged a glance, and Mahdi said: ‘That didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.’
‘Why not?’
‘You didn’t seem to be in the mood for introductions,’ said Ruth.
‘Or for standing upright or walking in a
straight line,’ said Mahdi. Ruth gave his hand a sharp tap and said:
‘We decided, under the circumstances, it might be better to leave the
note with you and hope to meet you properly when you were in a better
frame of mind.’
‘When was this, exactly?’ I asked.
‘Three weeks ago,’ said Ruth.
The reunion was the last time I’d been in Edinburgh. ‘Benson’s?’
‘Bingo,’ she said.
The few clear memories I had of that
night were enough to leave me cringing over whatever other horrors I
might have forgotten. No wonder Alison and Malcolm weren’t talking to
me.
‘You weren’t there the whole night, were you?’ I asked, my cheeks reddening.
‘Oh, no,’ said Mahdi, shaking his head. ‘Just long enough to deliver our message.’
My fingers reached to toy with the note in my pocket. ‘How many of these notes did you hand out?’
‘Only one,’ said Mahdi. ‘We’re very careful about who we invite.’
‘You can’t be that picky if you invited me.’
‘No need to be modest,’ said Mahdi. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Why?’ I said. The room was
uncomfortably warm, their attention made me uneasy, and my voice rose in
irritation and discomfort. ‘You still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘We’re the Nostalgia Club.’
‘Then you’ve been waiting for the wrong guy. Nostalgia’s not my thing.’
Mahdi bent forward, hands on his calves,
his eyes fixed on mine. ‘Are you sure, Mr Seymour? We’re all partial to
an occasional wander down memory lane, aren’t we?’
‘I try to avoid it.’
‘You do?’ he said, sounding surprised.
Ruth stepped in front of him and said: ‘We’ll explain everything, I
promise, but perhaps you should meet everyone first.’
I checked my watch. ‘And then you’ll tell me what this is all about?’
‘We will,’ said Ruth. ‘You’ve come this far. Hear us out?’
I folded my arms and leaned back in the chair. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Splendid,’ said Mahdi, stepping away
and raising his arm with a flourish, like a ringmaster about to present
the next incredible act. ‘Allow me to introduce you to our little group.
The charming gentleman you met at the door is Marcus Millar, doyen of
the olfactory arts, and beside him is our master of music and sound, Mr
Duncan Creighton.’
Marcus harumphed from behind his spectacles, while Duncan gave me a salute.
Mahdi dodged around the sun lounger to
the two women seated against the wall. ‘No meeting of the Nostalgia Club
would be complete without Margaret Boyle and her charming friend
Biscuit,’ he said, tickling the terrier’s chin. ‘And beside them, we
have Miss Barbara Kinsella.’
Barbara gave a curt nod, while Margaret
offered a puckish smile: ‘Nice to meet you, son,’ she said. ‘We hope
you’ll stay a while.’
‘Finally,’ said Mahdi, ‘we have Ruth Temple and myself, Mahdi Azmeh. We are the Nostalgia Club.’
‘Hello,’ I said, crossing my legs. ‘Nice to meet you all. Why am I here?’
Mahdi sat in the spare seat beside Barbara and, for a moment, stared at me in silence. ‘You really don’t know?’
‘I really, genuinely and absolutely
haven’t a clue. I’m not even sure why I came.’ I stopped and waited for
his response, but he continued to stare at me. ‘Maybe I was just bored,’
I said.
‘Maybe,’ mused Mahdi. ‘Or perhaps
something compelled you. An impulse, possibly? An idea that seemed to
arrive from out of nowhere?’
He was closer to the truth than I was ready to admit. ‘The note says you can help me.’
‘I certainly hope we can.’
‘With what?’
His foot tapped against the hard floor. ‘How would you like us to help you?’
Duncan sighed loudly and stretched out
his long legs. ‘Cut the cryptic shite, Mahdi,’ he said. ‘You can see the
guy’s not into it.’
Mahdi turned to him and dipped his head
in lieu of a bow. ‘Thank you, Mr Creighton. Direct as always.’ To me, he
added: ‘What if I said we can help you make sense of a few things and
set you on an interesting new path? Would that clarify matters?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I’m quite happy with the path I’m on, thanks.’
‘Are you, though?’
That was enough to ignite the irritation
that had been building since I had entered the room. I pushed back my
chair, rose and marched to the door. I was reaching for the handle when
Ruth called out behind me: ‘We can help you. We really can.’
I turned the handle.
‘You feel like your life isn’t quite your own, don’t you?’ she said. ‘That you’ve ended up somewhere you’re not supposed to be.’
I kept my fingers on the handle, my back to her.
‘Sometimes you feel like you’re not really here at all. And sometimes you go back, don’t you?’
‘We can help,’ the note had said. Perhaps they could.
I turned to face her. ‘I haven’t been
feeling right lately. There’s been a lot going on.’ My hand clasped and
unclasped the door handle. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’
In just a few paces, Mahdi was at my
side. ‘You did the right thing. We’re here to help.’ He gently eased my
fingers from the handle and ushered me back into the room. ‘Please,
sit.’
I sat, and he settled into the chair
opposite. ‘Forgive me – we seem to have been talking at cross purposes. I
assumed you were at least somewhat familiar with our activities. I’ll
try to explain.’
‘Properly,’ said Ruth.
‘Of course,’ said Mahdi. ‘A few things first.’
Marcus took off his glasses, laid them
on the table and rubbed his eyes: ‘Can we do it without the theatrics?’
he said. ‘He’ll stay, or he won’t stay. Just tell him, and we’ll find
out which it’s to be.’
‘I’m with Marcus on that one,’ said Duncan. ‘Just this once.’
Mahdi ignored them. ‘Some people are
born with talents,’ he said. ‘Some are gifted artists, some have a
beautiful voice, some are extraordinary athletes. Others might have a
gift for persuasion, for mimicry, for knitting, for mathematics, or
poetry, or—’
Ruth stood behind my chair and leaned to
half-whisper in my ear, loud enough for Mahdi to hear: ‘He’s going to
get to the point any minute now.’
‘Of course I am,’ said Mahdi. ‘Many
gifted individuals discover their talents early. Others bloom later in
life, thanks to a chance encounter or a helping hand. Some talents are
so rare, so specialised that, without careful nurturing, a person might
never even realise—’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Duncan.
‘This could take all night. Cut to the chase: We’re time travellers.
That’s what this is. We’re time travellers.’
I laughed, but no one else did. ‘Time travellers?’
‘Yes,’ said Mahdi with more than a hint of pride. ‘We travel—’
‘—in time,’ I interrupted. ‘I get it.’ I
waited for the laugh, the wink, the smirk, but it never came. They
stared at me in rapt expectation. ‘Like some kind of role-playing game?’
I said.
‘No. It’s not a game,’ said Mahdi.
‘Definitely not,’ said Ruth.
‘A joke, then?’ I demanded.
‘It’s no joke, son,’ said Margaret. ‘That’s what we do.’
I looked from face to face and, in as neutral a tone as I could summon, said: ‘You’re time travellers? All of you?’
They all nodded.
‘Even the dog?’
Margaret giggled and bounced Biscuit on her lap. ‘Don’t be daft. He’s just a dog.’
‘Okay,’ I said, contemplating the safest
and fastest way to exit a room full of lunatics and retreat to a safe
pub and a steadying drink. ‘You’re time travellers from the year three
million who like to hang about in the back room of an Edinburgh pub
every Wednesday night?’
‘We’re not from the future,’ said Mahdi.
‘Outer space?’
‘No,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re all very much
from here, now. We’re not spacemen from the future or anything like
that. We’re just normal people, who—’
She paused, looked at the ceiling, and
then swallowed hard. ‘Travel in time,’ she concluded, clearly aware how
ridiculous it sounded. ‘That’s why we’re all here.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s have a look at it, then.’
‘At what?’ said Ruth, baffled.
‘Your time machine. Where is it?’
Besides Duncan’s laptop and speakers, the only equipment in the room was
a whirring mobile air purifier close to Marcus’s table.
‘We don’t have a time machine,’
chuckled Mahdi. ‘Popular fiction has misled you on the mechanics of
time travel, Mr Seymour. You won’t find any elaborate Victorian devices
or bigger-on-the-inside phone booths here.’
Duncan frowned and muttered: ‘Police box. It’s a police box.’
‘Or police boxes,’ continued Mahdi. ‘Nothing of that sort. You’re already travelling in the most efficient time machine of all.’
I looked down at my belly straining against my slightly-too-tight trousers.
‘The human body,’ said Marcus, helpfully.
‘Yes, I get that,’ I said, opting – for
the moment – to humour them. Now that I was in the middle of it, it
might at least make a funny story to help break the ice with Alison and
Malcolm. ‘How’s it done, then? You just make a wish and go flying off
into the middle of next week?’
‘Not next week,’ said Marcus. ‘Or the week after. Not even as far as tomorrow.’
‘So you’re time travellers, but you don’t even go into the future?’ I scoffed.
‘Sadly not, other than by the usual
means,’ said Mahdi. ‘We’re obliged to move forward a second at a time,
just like everyone else.’ I opened my mouth to speak, but he carried on:
‘Think of it this way: We’ve already created our path from the past to
now, so we can follow it back. None of us has been to the future, so
there is no path to follow.’
It made as much sense as anything else
I’d heard so far. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So you only travel into the past. Are
you going to tell me how you think you do it?’
‘We don’t think we do it,’ said Marcus. ‘We do it.’
I pointed towards the sun lounger at the
centre of the room. ‘If you time travel in your own bodies, I assume
that’s got something to do with it. What is it, hypnotism?’
‘It’s not hypnotism,’ said Ruth. ‘It really happens. You’re still looking for reasons not to believe it.’
‘I’ve got plenty of reasons not to believe it. It’s ludicrous. Isn’t it?’
‘You think so?’ said Duncan, looking up from his laptop. ‘Why?’
‘Because time travel’s impossible. Even
if it wasn’t impossible, it’s hardly likely to have been discovered by a
bunch of oddballs in the back room of a pub.’
‘We didn’t discover it,’ said Duncan. ‘We just use it. None taken, by the way.’
‘None what?’
‘Offence. For the “oddballs” thing.’
‘Oh, right. Sorry. Anyway – time travel? It’s impossible.’
‘It’s not impossible,’ said Duncan. ‘You’re doing it right now.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Because I’m
moving forward into the future? That’s not time travel. That’s just
living. Everyone does that.’
‘But not everyone can do what we do,’ said Mahdi. ‘We aren’t constrained by the same laws as everyone else.’
Ruth crouched at the side of my chair.
‘What I said earlier – about feeling like you’re not quite here … it
made sense, didn’t it?’
‘No.’ I stifled a shiver and struggled,
again, to evade thoughts I’d been avoiding for months. ‘You think I can
do this time travel thing as well, don’t you? That’s why you wanted me
to come here.’
‘Yes,’ said Ruth.
‘I think I’d know if I was a time traveller,’ I said, forcing a laugh.
Mahdi looked at me with discomforting
intensity. ‘Would you? Perhaps you just haven’t found the right
conditions so far. That’s what our little club is for – together, we
nurture and amplify our talents. We can do that for you, if you’ll let
us help you. And, if you find you like it, well—’
He stopped and exchanged a glance with
Ruth. ‘Perhaps you might be able to help us with a little problem of our
own.’ He walked to the sun lounger and sat on it, bouncing gently.
‘You’re sceptical, I can see that. Try it for yourself, and I promise
everything will become clear. Your past is waiting to be explored, Mr
Seymour. All of it.’
I could have left, right then. I could
have walked out, closed the door behind me and never seen any of them
again. But I didn’t. Instead, I asked: ‘All of it? What if I don’t want
all of it?’
‘I understand,’ said Ruth, ‘but don’t worry. You choose where you want to go. No nasty surprises, I promise.’
‘You’ll love it,’ said Margaret. ‘Just take a wee lie down. It’s easy.’
The orange-and-purple floral pattern on
the lounger was a migraine waiting to happen. ‘On that thing? You think I
can just lie on that and pop off to Culloden, or the Stone Age or …
wherever?’
Mahdi stood, motioning for me to lie
down. ‘Nothing as dramatic as that. Our travels have their limits. For
now, we could try something simple. You were asking earlier how we
managed to pass you our little invitation. Would you like to take a
look?’
The last train home was still hours away
– and lying down on the lounger might make a good punchline for my
story. ‘Why not?’ I said, rising from the chair. ‘What do I have to do?’
‘Just lie back, and we’ll guide you through the rest,’ said Ruth, switching off the air purifier.
‘Does the sun lounger go back in time as well?’
Mahdi patted its frame. ‘No, no. The lounger stays here. Now, please. Lie down. Relax.’
I settled into the lounger, which proved
unexpectedly comfortable. Duncan’s fingers flew over the keys and
trackpad of his laptop. At the same time, Marcus took two vials of
liquid from his collection, mixing drops from each into a slim tube,
which he plugged with a plastic stopper, shook and held up to the light
before adding another drop from each of the vials.
‘Please place your arms at your sides and close your eyes,’ said Mahdi.
‘Am I going to concentrate on your voice and then feel very, very sleepy?’ I asked, closing my eyes.
‘If you wish,’ said Mahdi. ‘The main
thing is to let your mind detach from the here and now, to slip loose
while focusing on your destination. Benson’s, three weeks ago.’
He paced around the sun lounger. ‘I’ll
do my best to guide you along the first steps, but you’ll be doing most
of the work, such as it is.’
‘Okay. What can I expect on the other side?’
‘You’ll arrive within yourself as you
were three weeks ago. Inside, looking out. The best seat in the house,
you might say. But first, Mr Millar and Mr Creighton will create the
appropriate conditions to help guide your trip. Are you ready,
gentlemen?’
I opened one eye to watch as Marcus
poured four drops of liquid from the tube he had just prepared onto one
of his oil burners, then lit a tealight beneath it. Duncan pressed a key
on his laptop, and sound erupted from the speakers. He winced and
lowered the volume, reducing the burst of noise to something more
recognisable: A hum of conversation, laughter, the clink of glasses and
the occasional chime of a till. Bar room sounds.
‘Close both eyes, please, Mr Seymour,’
chided Mahdi. ‘You’ll find the whole experience more rewarding if you
follow my instructions.’
‘Sorry. Instruct away.’
‘And try to take it seriously.’ He
lowered his voice, and I focused on his soft footsteps as he padded
around the lounger. ‘Listen to my words, but focus on the sounds and
smells we’ve provided for you. Use them to draw yourself to your
destination. Visualise it. Envelope yourself in it.’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘That’s just remembering. Memory isn’t time travel.’
‘Concentrate, Mr Seymour,’ said Mahdi.
His footsteps stopped, and I could feel his breath on my ear. ‘Memory is
where time travel begins,’ he said. ‘It’s the fuel for what we do. Tell
me, Mr Seymour, do you ever go to the gym?’
I kept my eyes closed. ‘Look at me. What do you think?’
‘Perhaps not. But the principles are the
same – this is like exercising a muscle. It may be a struggle at first,
but you will gain in ability and strength each time the exercise is
repeated. Short hops will be enough of a challenge at the start, but
you’ll quickly manage – crave, even? – more.’
The smell of the room was changing. The
liquorice scent was gone, replaced by warm aromas of hops, whisky and
hot breath. A question came to me – a ridiculous one, but I asked it
anyway. ‘How do I get back?’
‘So you believe you might actually go
somewhere?’ Even with my eyes closed, I could sense the smile on his
face. ‘We’re making progress.’
‘I didn’t say I believed it,’ I said, sitting up and opening my eyes. ‘But if I did, how would I get back?’
‘Don’t worry. It takes only a slight
effort of will to return to your starting point. In any case, I’ll be
here to guide you back, if required. Lie back and close your eyes,
please.’
I shuffled in the sun lounger, closed my
eyes and turned my attention to the filigree of sound flowing from
Duncan’s speakers. With enough concentration, I could pick out
individual strands and found myself switching, as though using a TV
remote to change channels, from the chiming of the till to the chatter
of the drinkers and then the noise of feet on creaking boards. New
sounds emerged: particular voices, a distinctive laugh, the clunk and
swish of the door opening. The smells became richer and more complex,
too, with new notes drifting to the fore: a hint of aftershave, rain
drying on an old coat, stale smoke on a passing stranger’s breath. There
was something else – a savoury scent I could almost taste. Light and
shadow flickered across my closed eyelids.
‘Something’s cooking,’ I said, and my voice sounded faint and far away.
‘Is it really?’ said Mahdi. ‘What do you think it is, Mr Seymour? Can you tell? Smell it. It’s close, isn’t it?’
I chased the scent past wisps of
furniture polish and sliced lemon until I pinned it down. Bread, butter
and cheese heating together. ‘Cheese toastie,’ I said – or thought I
said. A drowsy weightlessness was spreading up and down my spine,
rippling across my limbs and into my hands and feet.
Mahdi’s voice had taken on a peculiar echo. ‘You’re nearly there. Keep going. Further.’
My entire body was tingling, filled with
a familiar and not-unpleasant sensation of simultaneously floating
forward and sinking back, swaddled in swarms of humming static. ‘Breathe
in,’ said Mahdi, from an impossible distance away. ‘What do you hear?
What do you smell? What do you see? Where are you?’
Footsteps circled me. ‘Take a deep breath and hold it for as long as you can.’
There was a chill to the air as it hit
my lungs. I held it there, warming it in my chest for what felt like
hours, until Mahdi spoke again. ‘And … breathe … out…’
I exhaled slowly through my mouth,
drifting further from the lounger, the function suite and the ties of
the present. When I breathed in through my nose, the tang of bubbling
cheese made my nostrils twitch. That toastie was close to burning. The
floating feeling spread across my chest, out to my arms, down my legs
and across my scalp in tingling waves. Cold air prickled at the back of
my neck and blew past my ears, becoming a rising wind which drowned out
the sounds of the bar and bloomed into a howling rush of pummelling
energy which threatened to whirl me around and knock the air out of my
lungs. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the roaring tumult whipped
across me and was gone.
And I’m here.
About the Author
Paul Carnahan was born in Glasgow,
Scotland, and grew up in the new town of Cumbernauld. After studying
journalism in Edinburgh, he began a decades-long career in local and
national newspapers.
‘How Soon Is Now?’ is his first novel.
The second, the Britpop-era romance ‘End of a Century’, will be
released early in 2025, and a third is currently a work in progress.
Website & Social Media:
Website ➜ www.paulcarnahan.com
Twitter ➜ https://twitter.com/pacarnahan
Instagram ➜ https://www.instagram.com/paulcarnahan6/
Goodreads ➜ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211423352-how-soon-is-now
