‘Damn it!’ In the basement, Ruprecht, emerging from his tinfoil radiation-blocker, shines a torch through the smoking air to peer into the crib. But there is Geoff’s shoe, exactly where he left it.
‘It didn’t work?’ Geoff, hopping over, isn’t entirely devastated to find his shoe still inhabiting this universe. He bends over to retrieve it from the pod. ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world – I know, why don’t we try…’ His eyes flick around the basement as he squeezes his shoe back on. ‘Mario, do you still have your lucky condom?’
‘Ha ha, no way are you putting that inside this foolish death-machine.’
‘But maybe its luckiness would help the experiment,’ Geoff cajoles.
‘I am not going to hand over my fail-safe secret weapon to some parallel-me in another universe,’ Mario says firmly. ‘He can get his own bitches.’
‘Okay…’ Geoff’s eye sets to roving once again. ‘How about…’
‘What’s the use,’ Ruprecht cuts across him desolately.
‘What do you mean, what’s the use?’
‘I mean, it’s not going to work. Clearly what happened with Optimus Prime was some sort of fluke. Maybe the result of an external factor we didn’t take into account, the position of the moon, the quantity of moisture in the air. It could have been anything.’
‘But that doesn’t mean you should just give up on it…’
‘Let’s just call it a day,’ Ruprecht says monotonously, prodding the charred computer keyboard with his foot. Sixteen hours of repeated disappointment have etched themselves into his face, like an acute strain of the grey necrosis of disillusion the others feel creep across them every second of every day, transforming them into adults.
‘What about the future of humanity?’ Geoff appeals; but Ruprecht has already turned his back and is shuffling geriatrically around the room, shutting down the computers one by one, when the door bursts open and Dennis and Skippy come running in.
‘Hold everything!’ Dennis exclaims.
Skippy, who’s holding some sort of a printout, says that he was searching online for material for this punishment essay Ms Ni Riain gave him, about the Gaelic origins of the name Seabrook, ‘and I found this site?’
The site is called The Druid’s Homepage, and purports to be A Resource for Bards, Shamen, Mystics of Erin, and all those Seeking the Rituals of the Old Time. ‘It’s mostly about Druids and making potions out of leaves and stuff. But then in the middle of it…’ he scans down through the page ‘… names can still give clues as to the whereabouts of these sacred sites, even in the modern – oh yeah, here it is – while Seabrook’s present Gaelic translation of “Siobruth” is a meaningless back-formation from the English, it is possible that Seabrook, now home to a church and well-known school, may have its origins in Sidhe an Broga, pronounced ‘Shee an Brugga’ and meaning ‘Fairy House’. This is the name given to the cave-like chambered cairns referred to in the Old Lore as the traditional homes of the Sidhe and the entrances to the ‘Other World’. The correct term for these mounds is tumuli; they are frequently found, like similar sites such as Stonehenge in England and the Boyne Valley in Meath, at the intersection of ley lines in order to harness the power of the grid of electromagnetic energy that covers the earth. Many experts believe that these tumuli, created to astronomical specifications so precise they are still beyond the reach of our most advanced computers today, were the work of a race of extraterrestrial beings who briefly made their home among us and used them as gateways to travel through and outside the universe…’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Ruprecht says.
‘Aliens, Ruprecht!’ Dennis chimes in. ‘The mounds were built by aliens! And there’s one of them somewhere in Seabrook!’
Ruprecht, wiping grease from his hands with a towel, merely grunts.
‘You think the mound has something to do with what happened to Optimus?’ asks Geoff.
‘Think about it for five seconds,’ Dennis says. ‘Remember what Ms Ni Riain told us, the old Irish legends, you know, about this race of magical beings who lived in the countryside, only most of the time they were invisible? Doesn’t that fit what you were saying, Ruprecht, about the higher dimensions, and how even though they’re right there we can’t see what’s happening in them? Don’t those old fairy-stories sound like they’re describing people, or something, who know how to move in and out of the higher dimensions? And these mounds are the gateways they built between our world and theirs, using their extraterrestrial knowledge.’
‘Poh, those stories are just stories,’ Mario says, ‘made up by drunk Irish people from days of Yore.’
‘Sure, that’s what I thought too, when I first heard them,’ Dennis says. ‘Like, why would a race of hyper-intelligent extraterrestrials want to live in Seabrook? But after what happened last night –’
Ruprecht is not even listening any more; he has turned back to his clear-up.
‘– and then I remembered what happened to Niall’s sister…’ Dennis continues.
Mario and Geoff look at each other. ‘What happened to Niall’s sister?’
‘You didn’t tell me about her,’ Skippy says.
‘I didn’t? What happened down at the gym?’ Dennis shakes his head. ‘Well, that’s the most incredible thing. Niall’s sister’s a fourth-year in St Brigid’s. She’s in the drama society, and she’s got a big part in the Christmas play this year?’
‘What play are they doing?’ Geoff asks.
‘Oliver.’
‘Oliver, in a girls’ school,’ Mario says disgustedly. ‘That makes like zero sense.’
‘Anyhow, she and this other girl have been staying behind after school to do extra rehearsals of their scenes. They use a room down by the gym. St Brigid’s is a bit like this place, with a new part and an old part. The old part doesn’t get used much any more. There’s a Latin room, and a room they use for sewing classes and stuff like that. And there’s also this other room that’s always kept locked. If you ask the nuns, they’ll say it’s just an old storeroom, and that it’s kept locked because the floor is rotten and it’s not safe to walk on. But there are all these stories about it too, like that a girl hanged herself in there, or that one time a nun was cleaning ashes out of the fireplace when she saw the Devil coming down the chimney, so they closed it off?’
The others are giving him their full attention now; even Ruprecht is dismantling machinery more quietly than he had been.
‘Okay, so one night a couple of weeks ago – it would have been about the same time as the Hop, I suppose – Niall’s sister and her friend are down in their room, rehearsing. They get quite caught up in what they’re doing and they end up staying down longer than they planned.’
‘This friend, is she hot?’ Mario puts in. ‘I have seen Niall’s sister, thanks but no thanks – however, how about the friend?’
‘I haven’t met her,’ Dennis says. ‘It doesn’t really affect the story either way.’
‘Yes, yes, carry on.’
‘Anyway, all of a sudden the two of them notice it’s got very cold. Like icy cold. So they decide to call it quits for the evening. They start walking back to the main door, when her friend grabs Niall’s sister’s arm and asks if she can hear something. They stop right there and listen as hard as they can and Niall’s sister makes out this very faint music playing. It seems to be coming from behind them. They look at each other. It’s after five and they didn’t think there was anyone else around. They retrace their steps back down the hall. The music’s still really faint, almost too quiet to hear, like it’s being played way off in the distance. But there’s no doubt where it’s coming from. The locked room.’