Hearing the front door slam, Sarah slipped into the front bedroom and peered through the smoke-tinged net curtains that hung over the grimy window. Her father was already at the front gate, shuffling out into the night. He had a flat cap clamped down tightly upon his head, a ratty old scarf wound around the lower half of his face, leaving only the hawk nose and the dull eyes exposed to the cold. It was a safe assumption that he was out for the night then; He wouldn't wrap up for a simple trip to the corner shop, but The Legion was right across town.
Sarah fought the urge to race straight to her own room and waited until the old man lit a cigarette and drifted to the end of the road, around the corner and out of sight. As soon as he disappeared from view, she ran across the narrow landing and pulled her tiny record player from its hiding place beneath her bed. She was running late already, and she still had to change, but there was always time for music, especially when she had the house to herself and no need to worry about the volume levels. Rubber Soul was on the top of her record pile, as it had been for the last few months, and she once again slid the shiny black disc from its stiff paper sleeve and lowered it reverentially onto the spindle. On her knees, she wiped the stylus with a square of yellow cotton to remove even the faintest trace of grit which might damage the precious LP, then lowered the needle into the groove with practised ease. She still tensed herself against the harsh crackle of a mis-cue, but there was only the slightest hiss as the diamond stylus slid into the silent valley between tracks. Then the driving beat and throbbing baseline of her favourite cut began to reverberate in the plain plaster echo chamber of her room. She turned the volume up as high as it would go without distorting and began to bop her head in time to the music, singing along as best she could.
Have you heard, love?
It was hard to keep up, and if she tried to mimic John's snarling disdain for too long she started to cough, but something about the song caught her up and dragged her along in its wake. This was real music, the purest, strangest sounds around and the exact polar opposite of the maudlin old German love songs her father murmured to himself when he staggered home from The Legion, when he'd had one too many and got to thinking about Sarah's mother. For a moment there, kneeling before the red leatherette altar, Sarah had a momentary glimpse into her father's mind; For the first time, she understood the way the half-remembered melody could lift him out of the world and carry him back to a better time. It shook her, a shock of recognition; In her own way, Sarah knew, she was just like him, spending six days of every week in stasis, holding on for those few hours when they could live, when the music set them both free. The rest of the time they were trapped in the house together, back to back, her father with his gaze fixed firmly on the past, Sarah looking ahead.
That was the difference, she decided. She was facing the future. Her father's hatred of the modern world, with its long-haired singers and coloured actors on the telly, it was all part of his desire to hold the past as tightly as he could, to claw his way back into it. Always back. Back to the war, to the time when he had a job, a purpose and a wife, to the days when he did more than smoke an endless series of cigarettes and wait for Friday nights. Sarah was heading in the other direction, straining for a tomorrow which hung just beyond her grasp, racing towards the future at thirty three revolutions a minute.
Deep in thought, her forehead dipping towards the threadbare carpet, Sarah felt rather than heard the music, a pulsating beacon in the centre of her mind. Lamplight on the bridge of thoughts as the way opened once more. She rolled to one side, sprawling on the floor, gazing up at the cracked ceiling, focussed at some point far beyond it. A blink of her eyes and the point was internalized, deep within. Another blink flipped the perspective and put the point somewhere out beyond the stars, and in an instant she was travelling with it. She felt the familiar weight on her chest, the heavy presence of a Mara pushing her physical form back even as it drew her soul upwards and out. Her muscles locked in place, a hypnagogic paralysis that would restrain and protect her body until she returned to it. Drifting away, she glanced down at herself, appraising and examining her sleeping self from a fresh vantage point, then turned and headed out into the higher realms.
A knocking at the front door brought her back with a bump. Her mind reeled in the backwash of departing dreams; A silver star, a red forest, the zones of alienation and isolation, an earnest young man sitting on a lonely hillside clutching a book of poetry. The moments drifted apart and she pushed up onto her elbows, looking around uncertainly. Had she been asleep? The steady thrrrp... thrrrp... thrrrp... of the stylus at the end of the LP suggested that at least ten minutes had passed, and her back ached as if she had been lying on the floor for a good deal longer. The knocking came again, louder and more insistent, and she struggled to her feet and made her way down to the hall. She should never have allowed herself to be tempted by the music, she thought. She was already running late when her father had left, and then she went and fell asleep! She knew that it would be Bill at the door, ready to give her a dressing down for standing him up, and she almost turned and crept back up the stairs. Then the hammering began again, and she heard an unfamiliar voice calling her name.
With growing trepidation, she slipped the chain onto the door, then opened it a crack and peered out into the darkness.
"Yes?"
The policeman standing on the doorstep looked down at her with mute despondency. His colleague held up a warrant card which might have been cut from the back of a cornflake packet for all the attention she paid it.
"May we come in miss? I'm afraid we have some rather bad news about your father..."
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