The Severed Man Read online

  Title Page

  TIME HUNTER

  THE SEVERED MAN

  by

  George Mann

  Publisher Information

  First published in England in 2004 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

  www.telos.co.uk

  Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: [email protected]

  The Severed Man © 2004 George Mann.

  Cover artwork by Matthew Laznika

  Time Hunter format © 2003 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish created by Daniel O’Mahony

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Dedication

  To Mum, who read me Mr Men books when I was small.

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks as ever to Fiona and James, to the Sales & Marketing teams at BL, to Simon and Kate, to Mark Newton, to Daniel O’Mahony and all the Time Hunter writers, and to David, Rosemary and Steve for their faith in the books.

  The Time Hunter

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish... Honoré is a black American ex-GI, now living in London, 1950, working sometimes as a private detective, sometimes as a ‘fixer’, or spiv. Now life has a new purpose for him as he has discovered that he is a time sensitive. In theory, this attribute, as well as affording him a low-level perception of the fabric of time itself, gives him the ability to sense the whole timeline of any person with whom he comes into contact. He just has to learn how to master it.

  Emily is a strange young woman whom Honoré has taken under his wing. She is suffering from amnesia, and so knows little of her own background. She comes from a time in Earth’s far future, one of a small minority of people known as time channellers, who have developed the ability to make jumps through time using mental powers so highly evolved that they could almost be mistaken for magic. They cannot do this alone, however. In order to achieve a time-jump, a time channeller must connect with a time sensitive.

  When Honoré and Emily connect, the adventures begin.

  Prologue

  Screams.

  Like wretched, tortured, agonised yowls, they echo into the cold emptiness of the room.

  A base, animal whimpering, a gurgle of pain.

  A needle and a hot, flickering flame.

  Light replacing darkness replacing light, as if someone is staring at car headlamps hurtling along a road, as if they’re watching the flickering on a broken television set that’s been tuned to a dead channel.

  And blood.

  Lots of blood.

  A voice is there, too, somewhere beneath the agony, rasping a name. It is laughing at the history that is dissipating all around it, swirling away into nothingness as the darkness moves in to swallow everything.

  In this room, here, there is only the present, a long and torturous second stretched out and maintained, aloof from time, as if the rest of the universe has suddenly ceased to exist.

  No one can remember how they arrived, or how long they have actually been here. Only the pain and the darkness remain.

  A figure rises from somewhere in this darkness, but the view of it is hazy, dream-like, as if seen from behind a veil. It stares with shining, glassy eyes at the looping time streams all around it, watching as they bubble away into the future and the past, watching as they alter, ever so slightly, as the screaming comes to an abrupt halt and the ebb and flow of another existence dissolve against the persistent flow of time, dashed into fragments of nothing as if they had never actually existed.

  Another one cut free, another one released from time’s ticking bonds.

  The figure steps away, carefully laying its implements down on a surface nearby. It wipes its hands on a dirty smock, and then steps towards another figure, this one prone, on a bench a few feet away.

  Presently the screaming starts all over again.

  For the tiniest of moments, the first figure hesitates, as if unsure whether or not to carry on, as if the horror of its actions has finally begun to register behind its eyes. But then it picks up its tools once again and the blood begins to flow down its arms, pooling on the floor in large puddles of glossy red.

  This time the pain is different. This time it is far more acute.

  The figure continues to labour over its charge, sweat running down its heavily-creased brow. After all, there are many others waiting to be released from their shackles, and tonight, it has much, much work to do.

  Part One: The Severed Man

  Rapid Movements Of The Eye

  The marketplace was deserted, ethereally quiet.

  Honoré Lechasseur felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck bristle against the cold, and shivered. Spitalfields was usually thronging with people, even at this late hour. Empty, it just felt wrong, somehow unnatural. He shifted his feet and blew into his cupped hands in an attempt to keep warm. The fog was thick and penetrating around him, stifling the radial glow of the street lamps.

  On the opposite side of the road, the scorched remains of the old church stood sentry-like against the moonlight, casting shadows across the street in wide, sweeping arcs. Around it, the remnants of splintered gravestones erupted from the soft loam, describing a shattered smile of jagged, broken teeth.

  The shadows would be a good place to hide.

  Lechasseur glanced about, trying to catch sight of his prey.

  He’d been tracking the boy across the capital for nearly three hours, only stopping to catch his breath in the stolen moments before rounding a bend, or waiting to step out of a doorway. Now, he was cursing himself for losing sight of the child.

  He stepped out into the road, listening for any sign of movement. Nothing. The marketplace was absolutely deserted. He glanced in both directions, up and down the road. The fog was everywhere, dampening the air.

  He’d have to start again in the morning.

  He sighed and turned about, ready to start the long trek back towards his lodgings.

  Damn boy!

  Then, in the quietness, he heard the scuff of a heel from somewhere behind him. He span around, catching sight of the child ducking around a corner just a few feet away, his ragged scarf fluttering behind him as he ran. Lechasseur took off after him. His heart rattled in his chest, pounding blood around his body as his legs pumped at the hard cobbles. He lurched around the corner, sure that he was only minutes away from finally ensnaring his prey.

  Then, as suddenly as if Hades itself had just erupted from the ground before him, the world was full of light.

  Lechasseur skidded to a halt and shielded his eyes from the sudden glare. It was blinding; a brilliant, hot white that emanated from somewhere – or something – a little further down the road. Between his fingers, he tried to make out what it was.

  And that was when he saw it, a figure emerging from the whiteness like an apparition, or a tiny, fragile angel.

  The girl in the pink pyjamas.

  He shrank away from the searing light, covering his face with his hands...

  ‘Emily...’
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  ... and felt a firm hand on his shoulder, felt the faint whisper of a voice in his ear.

  ‘Can you see it Honoré? Can you see it now?’

  The darkness consumed him once again, and he was lost in a swirling mist of fog and dreams.

  ‘Emily...?’

  Lechasseur sat bolt upright on his bed, sweat running in trickling rivulets down the fold of his back. His hair was damp with stale perspiration. He glanced around the room to make sure he was still alone. Bare walls stared back at him, gloomy in the inky wash of the moonlight. He allowed himself to breathe.

  The dreams had been worse over the last few days; a procession of stuttering, random images that, upon waking, had left him with a sharp feeling of disquiet. But the whispering voice was new; a rasping, disturbing wheeze in his ear. He had no idea what it could mean, or to whom the voice was supposed to belong. Someone from his past, from the War? That would certainly explain the sudden flash of light; a flashback to Normandy and the explosion that saw him invalided out of service. But what it had to do with Emily, he had no idea.

  He tried to put it out of mind.

  Lechasseur swung himself out of the bed and padded his way over to the small basin in the corner of the room. The porcelain was cold and hard against his clammy skin. He splashed some water over his face, shivering momentarily with the shock, and then buried his face in the soft, downy towel.

  Outside, the sounds of the city were slowly coming to life. He brushed the curtain out of the way and peered out at the street below. It was still dark. His tired reflection stared back at him from the pane of glass like a taunt. He watched for a moment, until his face was obscured by the streaky wash of raindrops being dashed against the window by the wind.

  In the morning, he would talk to Emily.

  In the morning, he would forget all about the dream, just get on with the day ahead and try not to think about sleeping.

  In the morning...

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to stave off the tiredness that was creeping through his body like the slow onset of a lethargy.

  He had to do something about getting some sleep.

  Three hours later, Lechasseur began the slow walk across town to meet Emily. She’d decided to get a room of her own and had found somewhere she liked after a week or so of searching. It was close to Spitalfields, the place where she had been found by a policeman, wandering with no name and no memory. It was just a shame it was so far from Honoré’s own place. He’d decided not to use his bicycle, thinking that he could do with the walk, but the cold was biting into his fingers now, and he was starting to wish that he had at least brought along some gloves. He jammed his hands deep into the pockets of his leather trench coat and stepped up his pace. Around him, the city was a hive of activity. Delivery vans trundled down crowded streets, whilst market traders set up their stalls by the side of the road. It was early, but Lechasseur had been up for some time; he was not a man who kept normal hours and, unlike most people, even enjoyed the bustle of the morning. Today he was tired, weary right down to his bones, but the fresh air was starting to brush away the residual cobwebs from the restless night before, and he could feel his mood beginning to lift.

  He was anxious to put an end to the bad dreams as soon as possible. He hadn’t worked for over a week, and needed something to get his teeth into, to take his mind off his own personal distractions. After he’d met up with Emily, he’d pay a visit to one of his contacts over in the West End, see if there was word on any of the police cases he’d been keeping tabs on of late. It didn’t hurt to stay abreast of what Scotland Yard were working on; and occasionally, when the police seemed to be dragging their heels, Honoré had found himself picking up the trail, seeing if he couldn’t bring a new perspective to the situation. It had been known to pay off.

  He passed by an office building where the desk clerks were already hard at work inside. The tapping of their typewriters could be heard through a crack in the window, like the chattering of so many animals locked in a small pen. He smiled. Not the life for him.

  In many ways, London was still an enigma to Lechasseur. The rain-soaked streets were familiar enough, of course, as were the people – the instantly recognisable cross section of humanity that inhabited any city the world over – but it was the city itself that still left him perplexed. It was as if the roadmap was in constant flux, shifting about him as he slept, so that he could never work out exactly what had changed. Sometimes it was as simple as a post box being on the opposite side of the road to where he remembered it, or yet another identical row of houses springing up in a place where he had never seen them before; but mostly it was less explicit, more to do with a feeling than anything more substantial. The city changed along with his mood, and he was unsure if he would ever get used to it. He supposed it was partly due to the extensive rebuilding that was changing the face of the city in the aftermath of the Blitz, but as much to do with the passing of time, the onset of entropy – a symptom to which he seemed unusually sensitive. He guessed it must have something to do with his strange connection to Emily, and his affinity with time itself; he didn’t just see the city changing around him, but on some level was aware of the actual process, the organic alteration of the landscape. Places changed, just like people – that had been one of the most important lessons he’d learned. And London was no exception to that rule.

  Honoré stopped briefly by the window of a bakery store, taking in the fresh smell as they removed a tray of warm loaves from the oven, but hesitated from stepping inside when, in the reflection in the window, he caught sight of someone watching him from behind. He immediately tensed. He studied the face in the window for a moment. The man looked old, his grey beard hiding much of his face, but his eyes were bright buttons, watching Lechasseur’s back with a burrowing intensity. His long, scrawny hair was a mess of matted grime and dirt. The rest was obscured by the dazzle of sunlight on glass.

  Honoré turned, but the man was already across the other side of the street, looking the other way. Honoré watched him, trying to ascertain what was going on. The man looked like a tramp; his clothes were tattered and torn, and by the look of him, he had been sleeping rough, spending the nights huddled in an empty doorway or curled up on a street corner like so many other of the dispossessed who inhabited this city. His hair was a ragged brown mop, and he carried with him a small satchel that he had slung casually over one shoulder. He looked like every other tramp Lechasseur had seen on the streets of London since the days of the war – homeless and hungry.

  He took a step forward into the road, but stopped when he noticed that the man was talking to himself, or sniggering under his breath. Lechasseur’s curiosity was piqued. He could sense there was something wrong. The man was definitely mumbling something, quietly, into his cupped hands.

  He looked more closely, tried to see the man in the deeper context to which he was becoming accustomed. Each person had a time-snake, a thread through history that stemmed from the moment of their birth to the time of their eventual death. Lechasseur was sensitive to this, and could see people’s snakes like an aura, could read everything about them from the impressions they had made on time, space and history, the footprint they had made on the fabric of the universe.

  There was something not right about this time-snake, however – it stretched out in three different directions, each one ending in a tattered ribbon, as if it had been cut free from its purchase in the future or the past. These grotesque appendages curled around the man like a nest of headless serpents, medusa-like, whipping through time as if severed from reality. In the midst of it all, he babbled to himself, seemingly unaware of what was going on around him. The man was adrift in time, out of context, and clearly out of his mind. There was something infinitely sad about him, yet Honoré also felt a spike of danger in his presence, as if greater things were at work that he did not understand. To see someone who had just been lifted out
of his own timeline – it just felt wrong, and his stomach turned at the thought of it.

  He turned away and started walking, unsure if he wanted to see any more. He could feel his nerves jangling, could sense the man’s gaze boring holes into his back as he walked.

  He glanced at his watch – he was going to be late for his meeting with Emily. He ducked out of the way of a postman who was struggling with a large parcel bound for one of the local stores, and then he heard the voice ringing loudly in his ears.

  ‘Can you see it Honoré? Can you see it now?’

  He stopped dead in his tracks.

  There was no mistaking it – it was the voice from his dream. It had come from somewhere behind him. He looked around.

  Nothing.

  It had to be the tramp.

  Lechasseur ran back the way he had walked, his eyes flicking from side to side, trying to spot the severed man. He found the bakery he had been standing outside just a minute before. The man was gone. He stepped out into the middle of the road, trying to work out which direction the stranger had taken, but it was no use. It was as if he had simply disappeared, as if he had simply been swallowed by the spot he’d been standing on. Honoré shook his head, a strange, creeping sensation spreading along his spine. The dream had been one thing, but things had suddenly got very strange indeed.

  He didn’t hesitate any further. He turned around and walked as quickly as he could towards the café where he knew that Emily would be waiting for him. After the morning he had had, he was in need of a strong coffee.

  Of Saints And Madmen