Chapter 32
“Arthur!”, I scream one more time, tears rolling down my cheeks.
Holding my hands over my ears I crouch, swinging myself back and forth, and think, Arthur cannot be dead. And yet I know he is.
I keep rocking myself the way kids do, crushed by the pain, when I hear a sort of gurgle, muffled at first, then louder, accompanied by a fit of cough.
“Arthur!” I exclaim.
After a good amount of coughing he finally manages to say, “Iris, where are we?”
At the sound of Arthur’s voice my tension melts away in laughter and tears, and I hug him so tight it hurts.
“What happened and where are we?” he asks again.
“We’re in Mine 503”, I tell him.
“The one where we didn’t stop in the past because the road was blocked, remember?” I continue, noticing the blank expression on Arthur’s face.
“Oh yeah…” Arthur recollects.
“And you were there” I add, pointing at the screen.
“What?!” Arthur exclaims, bugging his eyes.
“We need to get out of here, I’ll explain later” I urge him.
“Why do we need to get out of here?” Arthur wants to know.
“Because it’s not safe” I tell him.
Arthur observes me for a moment, frowning in the peculiar way he does when he is processing too much information at once.
“Wait…you said Mine 503?” he asks after a moment, and I nod.
“This is where it all started” he states enigmatically.
“What do you mean?” I ask, puzzled.
“This is where my trip started. When I got into the time machine, I landed here. I walked around, and strangely enough I found a bike lying on the ground. I hesitated for a moment, but there was really nobody in sight and I decided that the bike couldn’t possibly belong to someone. Or perhaps it did, but I took it anyways. Then I did something really odd, I don’t know how I came up with the idea” he starts and pauses.
The image of Arthur pedalling all the way to the center of the mine dawns on me. He is hovering above the ground rather than truly pedalling on it, in a surreal and yet strangely convincing picture.
“Did you pedal all the way down to the center of the mine?” I ask.
“How do you know?” Arthur starts
“In actual fact I don’t,” I shrug, “I mean, it doesn’t seem possible to do so.”
“It doesn’t seem logically possible and yet I imagined doing it and then I just did it”, he tells me.
“And what happened next?” I want to know.
“The mine cracked open and I began to fall. The fall seemed endless. I thought I had either fallen asleep or died. The darkness was complete, and after a while it felt like I was no longer moving. I had reached a sort of internal peace and gotten to accept that I was dead when I found myself, suddenly and inexplicably, in the middle of a windy road,” Arthur says and pauses.
“What about it?” I prod him.
“I remembered that road, I had been there as a kid. My family and I had gone for a trip to the Netherlands and we had camped around a place called Valkenburg. There was an old castle there, crippled and eroded”, Arthur remembers.
A sense of uneasiness dilates within me as I listen to Arthur’s memories.
“One day we rent bikes and cruised around Valkenburg, and landed in a street that reminded me of the one I saw today, at least at the beginning,” Arthur starts.
“And what happened next?” I ask.
“Today the scenery changed as I biked and I found myself in an ambience that looked Dutch and yet-” Arthur attempts to explain and stops, unable to articulate.
“Things might have changed since you were last there,” I suggest.
“No, that’s not it. I had the eerie feeling that things were slightly out of place even when all the houses appeared built in the Dutch style. I dismissed it as a subjective perception till I saw a house which was most definitely American,” he tells me.
I look at him with a questioning gaze.
“American?” I ask.
“Yes, the house was American or North American, but certainly not Dutch. And I felt like I knew the house,” he tells me and stops, struggling to continue.
“Tell me about it,” I prod him.
“I entered that house, and I figured it was your house. You lived there as a kid,” he sighs.
“Me?!” I exclaim.
“Yes, but it wasn’t this you, it was another you, living in another life,” he tells me.
I start to understand.
“Where was the house?” I want to know.
“In Boulder,” he says.
“How can you be sure the house was in Boulder?” I want to know.
“I was your father’s friend, and I had gone to your place to see him. At a point in our conversation he said, ‘Boulder is a neat place, but it can get boring’, and that’s why I am sure I was in Boulder” he explains.
“Did you see me?” I need to know, and I shiver as I wait for his answer.
He nods.
“And?”
“And you started playing grownup with me,” he tells me, without looking at me.
“You mean…” I start.
“You took my hand and told me things I would have preferred not to hear,” Arthur says.
“Ok Arthur, why don’t you tell me the whole story?” I snap, impatient.
“You took my hand and you started to flirt with me when all of a sudden the ceiling of your room cracked,” Arthur continues, raising his eyes and steadying his voice.
“Another crack…and what did you see?” I ask.
“Beyond the ceiling there was a room shaped just like yours and yet furnished in a completely different manner. You were up there, and you were an adult. You looked down through the crack, but you didn’t see me. There was a man in the room, I sensed that his presence made you uncomfortable. He told you that your life would change forever if you jumped in the room where I was,” Arthur says.
“I remember…so it wasn’t a dream…” I whisper.
“I don’t know anymore,” Arthur replies.
“I ignored the man’s words and jumped down…” I say.
“No you didn’t, not right away at least” Arthur replies.
“Yes I did,” I insist.
“No, I’m the one who climbed up” Arthur objects.
“So what happened to young Iris who was with you in the room?” I want to know.
“I…I left her behind,” Arthur fumbles, dropping his head.
“You left little Iris behind?!” I exclaim incredulous.
“Well, I wanted to go up first and then bring her with me, but-” he starts.
“But?” I urge him, grabbing his arms.
“But when I looked down little Iris had become a boy,” Arthur says at last.