Chapter Seven
Andy was fortunate the cut only needed a clean up and a bandage.
“The head bleeds a lot,” said the museum’s first aid lady. “It always looks a lot worse than it really is.”
This was cold comfort for Andy, because he really was in a lot of pain. However when his head was finally dressed he looked like a wounded soldier. He climbed onto the bus with his injured head held high.
Andy strode down towards the back of the bus getting a mixed review of looks from his classmates. Some jeered him for being a klutz and others seemed in awe. The incident had only served to heighten Andy’s reputation as a rebel. Tim was sitting next to another boy near the back of the bus.
“Hey Duncan,” Andy said. “I need to talk to Tim. Can you move for me?”
The other lad looked warily at Andy then shifted. Andy took his seat.
“How did you get that wound on your head?” asked Tim.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Andy replied
“It looked as if you tripped over those rope things when you tried to get a better look at that display. What was so special about it anyway?”
Andy opened up the front of his school blazer a little, exposing the Talisman slightly. Tim was horrified.
“Where’d you get that from? You flogged that from the display didn’t you! They’ll kick you out of school now for sure if you get caught.”
“Shhh! Shut up you idiot!” hissed Andy, looking around to see if anyone overheard. “I didn’t nick it as such, and it was this thing that caused my accident.”
“How’s that?” asked Tim.
“I can’t tell you here.” replied Andy. “But I’ll tell you after school. Can I come over to your place?”
“Yeah sure,” said Tim, “But if anyone catches you with that thing, I don’t know anything; OK?”
Andy sighed.
“Yeah, fine. You don’t know anything at the best of times anyway.”
“Do you want to come to my place or not?”
“Alright. Don’t be such a wuss,” said Andy.
The rest of the bus trip slipped by in silence. Andy went straight to the toilets when he got back to school. He hid the Talisman in a hole in the toilet ceiling that a plumber had made but had yet to repair. He didn’t want to be caught with the Talisman should it be noticed missing by the museum. He knew he’d be suspect number one if they did. The rest of the day seemed to drag by unnaturally slowly like it always does when you’re waiting for something to happen.
Three-thirty pm finally arrived and school was over. Andy retrieved the Talisman from its hiding place and then met Tim at the front gate. The two of them walked around the corner to meet Tim’s mother Kim, who was waiting to pick them up in her ancient VW Beetle.
“Why don’t you wait at the gate like everybody else?” asked Andy.
“You’ve seen our car,” said Tim. “I don’t want anyone seeing us get picked up in that!”
“Why should you care what the posh idiots at this school think?” Andy said.
Kim was sitting in her car, listening to the radio and singing away to herself. When she saw the boys she smiled and waved out. Tim was embarrassed.
“Hi guys. How was the trip to the museum?”
Then she saw Andy’s bandage and her smile fell.
“What happened to you, Mr Anderson? Have you been fighting again? What have I told you?”
“No, no, Mrs Meadows. I wasn’t fighting, I slipped over and hit my head; honest.”
“Well OK then,” she replied still looking dubious. “Do you want to stay for dinner tonight?”
Andy’s face flushed a little with embarrassment. Kim knew his mother would be out tonight and that he would be home alone without much to eat.
“Yes please; if that’s alright,” he said gratefully.
The boys went straight upstairs to Tim’s room, where he closed the door and turned on his TV.
“Just so no one can hear what we’re talking about,” he said. “Let’s have a look at that antique thing of yours.”
Andy opened his school bag and pulled out the Talisman. They both sat down on the floor and leaned forward to have a closer look at it.
At first glance it looked like a thousand other old trinkets that people hang around their necks, but on closer inspection they could see it was no ordinary thing. It looked like a combination bike lock, or the round dial on the door of a bank safe. The device had four wheels, each one smaller than the next, one placed inside the other. On each wheel were a number of symbols, all made up from dashes and dots.
“What are they?” asked Tim.
Andy screwed up his face in concentration.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “They could be letters.”
“Or numbers,” Tim added. “Count them.”
Andy counted. There were ten.
“How many on the other three circles?” asked Tim.
“Hang on,” said Andy as he began to count again. “There’s ten on each one.”
Tim was staring intently. He pointed at the smaller circles on the Talisman.
“They’re the exact same symbols on each circle.”
Andy looked. Tim was right. Each dash-dot symbol and the order in which they were laid out on each circle was the same.
“They obviously have a meaning.” he said. “But how do we find out?”
“I suppose we could use the internet, but where would we start?” said Tim.
Andy shrugged.
“I don’t know. Let’s have a look at the rest of it.”
He picked it up again and put it in the palm of his hand, then gave a yell and threw it down again.
“What’s the matter?” Tim asked.
“It’s like it’s alive!” said Andy shaking his hand like it had been burnt.
“What do you mean, alive?”
“Well, it sort of hums and feels warm when you pick it up,” Andy said.
Tim looked puzzled
“I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure?
“Course I’m sure,” snapped Andy.
Tim got off the floor and sat on his bed.
“Well, we don’t know what it is and it scares me, so leave it there and tell me what happened to you.”
Andy picked the Talisman up by its cord as if it was about to sting him and dropped it in his schoolbag. He zipped the bag up and sat on the couch.
“It’s like this,” he said making himself comfortable. “You remember when we walked into the Hall of Aviation and you lined up for that ‘Big & Fast’ machine?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, I decided to have a look at the rest of the hall while all you other losers stood round waiting and I spotted that display around the corner. I thought it was a bit lame at first but it got more interesting when I started reading about it….”
Andy told the whole story to Tim, who was sceptical at first, but by the end of it he was totally immersed.
“... So that’s when you all came round.” Andy finished talking and lay back on the couch.
Tim looked thoughtful. Neither spoke for a minute.
“Well, he said, we know three things.”
Andy sat up and looked at him.
“What’s that?”
“The first thing is that you weren’t in the ‘Big & Fast’ machine because I was next to it the whole time. At least until you created your scene around the corner.”
“OK.” said Andy. “What’s the next thing?”
“I don’t think you had a dream. Why would you? You were wide awake when I spoke to you and it was only a couple of minutes later you were on the ground with a cut head.”
“I could have passed out and cut my head,” Andy suggested.
“Yeah, but cut it on what?” Tim replied. “Look at the amount of blood you had on your head and still have on your school uniform. You’d been bleeding for a few minutes and there was none on the floor or anything else around you. If you’d fallen down and cut your
head, there’d have been blood everywhere.”
Tim was right. The two fell silent again. Then Andy spoke up, asking the obvious.
“So what’s the third thing then?”
Tim was hesitant. He was reluctant to say.
“Come on.” Andy insisted, “What is it?”
“Well.” Tim finally started, “The only option is that you’ve picked up this strange device, put it on and it has actually transported you back in time.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. So what do we do now?”
Tim stood up, went over to his computer and turned it on.
“We do some research,” he said as the computer started its usual log on routine. “Man this thing is slow.”
His door opened.
“You should be grateful you have one at all, Timothy Meadows!” Tim’s mother said leaning in through the door.
She threw some of Tim’s old clothes over to Andy.
“Have a shower and put those on Andrew, then give me your uniform and I’ll wash it. You’re not going home tonight to an empty house. You may have concussion from that knock to your head.”
“But my mum,” he protested. “She’ll get worried if I don’t turn up and….”
“No she won’t, because I’ve already told her,” Tim’s mother cut in. “She’s quite happy for you to stay.”
“Thanks Mrs Meadows.”
“That’s quite alright. Now hurry up. Dinner is nearly ready.”
Tim’s mother left the room.
“We’ll have a look on the net after dinner,” Tim suggested.
Andy had his shower and got dressed in the fresh clothes. Dinner was enjoyable, all the more so because Tim’s sister was still at netball practice, so she wasn’t there to throw her usual sarcastic insults at them. After dinner the boys helped clean up and then went upstairs. They spent a couple of hours looking through the internet without any success.
Tim’s dad, Carl, came into the room and told them to get ready for bed. He looked at the screen as they were scrolling through a web-page on ancient Egypt. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“What are you two doing now?” he asked peering a little closer at the screen.
The boys had to think fast.
“Umm, just looking for something we saw in an old exhibit in the museum Dad,” said Tim, looking a bit anxious.
“What sort of thing?” his father replied.
Andy knew from experience, the best type of lie had as much truth as possible in it, so he made up a story based heavily on what happened to him.
“Well Mr Meadows, I was in the museum today and they had this exhibit about an ancient culture, and they had a piece of jewellery displayed which had this engraving over it. I thought it was really interesting, so I looked a bit closer and that’s when I fell over the rope and hit my head. I didn’t get a chance to find out what it was, so we’re having a look for it now.”
Mr Meadows was still peering at the computer screen. He pointed at the Egyptian hieroglyphics they’d been looking at.
“Is this what you saw today?”
“No,” said Andy.
“What did it look like then?” Mr Meadows asked.
“I’ll show you,” said Andy grabbing a pen and paper from Tim’s desk.
He drew a rough diagram of the dashes and dots that were on the Talisman and showed them to Mr Meadows.
“Is that exactly how they looked?” asked Mr Meadows.
“Not quite,” said Andy. “They were in a circle and the pattern repeated itself.”
Mr Meadows scratched his chin like he always did when he was thinking.
“I don’t know what they are but if they’re in a repeating pattern like you say then it’s either the same words being repeated over and over again, or it’s a numerical pattern. I don’t think it’s words because the shapes are nothing like the hieroglyphics on the screen there,” he said pointing at the computer.
“Hiero whats?” asked Tim.
“Hieroglyphics,” said his Dad. “Look, see those Egyptian writings there?”
“Yes,” said the boys.
“Well, each one of those small pictures is a symbol for a whole word unlike our written language which uses combinations of individual letters from the alphabet to define a whole word. Many of the ancient civilizations used hieroglyphics to write. But I don’t think these are words or letters.”
“Why not?” asked Tim.
“Because, if they are as Andy has written, then they don’t seem detailed enough to form a word. It’s funny you know, I’ve seen them before. I think they may be numbers.”
“So how should we find out?” asked Andy.
“You don’t tonight. You go to bed and sleep on it. Tomorrow is another day,” Carl replied.
Tim’s father started to leave then stopped.
“Why don’t you ask your history teacher Mr Brown? You both seem to get on with him pretty well. I’m sure he could help you. Good night.”
After Tim’s father left Andy got the sofa-bed ready and climbed in. Tim had a shower, got into his pyjamas and climbed into his own bed.
Both boys lay quietly in their beds consumed by their own thoughts. The room was dark and they could hear the hum of traffic outside and the TV on downstairs, broken by the occasional laugh from Tim’s parents. Andy lay in bed and listened to it all. His own room was dark and cold. His mother often went out and left him alone, which was bad enough, but, occasionally, she would arrive home with a group of her mates and keep him awake most of the night. Andy preferred that she went somewhere else, which she often did.
Tim sat up.
“Andy!”
Andy could hear the tension in his voice.
“What?” he asked, half asleep.
“You’re gonna get busted for that thing you’ve got!”
“Why?”
“Because they must have noticed it missing by now and after today they’ll come looking for you.”
Andy was wide awake now, thinking hard.
“Look, if it was valuable like you say, then they wouldn’t have hung it out for the likes of me to walk off with it, would they?”
His logic was good, but he knew Tim was probably right.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll hide it somewhere safe so I won’t get caught with it and we’ll wait until the heat dies down. Until then, we can do our research and find out what those symbols are on the front. OK?”
Tim was a bit happier now and lay down again.
“Just one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t hide it round here. You’ll get me and my family into trouble. Then I’ll get grounded, or worse, and you won’t be allowed to come round anymore.”’
“Miss me will you?” Andy mocked.
“Not if you get me and my folks busted I won’t!” Tim said, only half joking.
“OK,” said Andy. “I’ll find somewhere safe for it tomorrow.”
No more was said. After a long eventful day it did not take the boys long to get to sleep.