Out of Time Read Online Free PDF

unrealised feelings, could be disrupted and destroyed. That he was one moment in a normal day, in an activity as tame as going home from school, and the next in this wild improbable country hunted by packs of men, was the stuff of nightmares, part of the confused jumble that haunted him at night. But this time he was not going to be released by waking to his old surroundings because this time he was not asleep.
    He trudged on, on automatic pilot. In the late afternoon as the shadows lengthened, the trees, releasing their resinous smell, pressed closer, lines of pine, fir and yew.
    The forest filled him with terror. He had never succeeded in banishing its mythological figures, familiar from fairy tales that used to people his imagination. Though their power faded as he grew older, he realised now that they had been lying in wait, ready to take revenge for their dismissal. Here, they had him at their mercy and they taunted him, witches, warlocks, demons, hobgoblins. He kept his head well covered by his hood for if he looked he might see, and if he saw succumb to their power. The impossible had already happened. Anything could follow. He broke into a run, hoping to escape, but the forest stretched as far as he could see, on and on, perhaps forever, perhaps it covered the whole world. Its evil spirits were closing in on him. He felt their hot breath on his neck.
    Though he was unaware of it for it had never been put to the test, Joe carried inside him a reservoir of courage. This now came to his rescue. He stopped running, he stood still, he faced the enemy and he sang. He sang every song he could remember, he shouted out the words, he bellowed his defiance, his confidence growing with every note. Joe felt the forest’s inmates shrink before his onslaught, conceal themselves in the darkness to which he had banished them. He walked on steadily, along the thin strip of bank, towards the summit of a hill. His repertoire exhausted and his throat aching, he kept command over his fears by playing mathematical games, number one, double it to two, then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two. Iteration. He did the same with square roots, pushing them higher and higher until his mind reeled; then primary numbers that stretched to infinity. These he had always relished. Because they went far beyond any calculation made either by computer or by man, they had served to give him a sense of eternity, symbols of the immutability of existence, a safeguard against mortality.
    He stopped as the light failed, gathered dry grasses, branches and twigs, lit a fire and flung himself gratefully beside its Promethean flame, his guard against wolves and unholy spirits. Sensing that he was no longer easy prey, they left him alone.
    *
    There is no moon tonight. The park is dark. Skip, skip, skip. Susie is taking her nightly exercise. Her mother watches anxiously, her father walks the perimeter of the grassy clearing, then nods. The girl stops skipping and the procession, man, child, woman, moves stealthily forward, past the trees and to the park’s railings. Here a small gate is opened. The man looks to right and left and beckons child and woman to follow. Keeping low, they cross Bridge Road, walk stealthily up Rose Avenue and across to number fifty six Jarvis Road.
    A face appears briefly at number fifty four but Susie’s parents do not see it. They are desperate to reach their home.
    The girl sits on a high stool in the kitchen and eats hungrily from a plate of meat and vegetables. She drinks a mug of milk, eats some fruit.
    ‘Time to go, Susie,’ her mother says.
    The girl shrinks away but the parents, grasping her firmly by the shoulder, march her upstairs to a third floor attic and push her unwilling form through a small door. The mother follows into a windowless room that contains a truckle bed, chair, table, some wooden toys and a doll. Susie lies down on the bed and the mother caresses her forehead but the father gestures impatiently. The mother