The Last Magician

The Road Home

Ashbrooke Road gave way to Rushton Lane.

A familiarity crept into Jack’s head, the occasional snapshots, as unlike his surroundings as they were, came more and more frequently. He began to recognise places, buildings, roads.

Rushton Lane lay as just another line of dead grass and devastated houses. Deja vu was a term that could have been created for this unique situation; the belief that every turn led to somewhere he had been before. Yet it was more the sights than his recollection that brought the feeling to him over and over again. A constant world of dead grass, dead buildings, dead gardens; dead people?

It was probably the one question he did not wish to know the answer to. There had been no hint of life in the village, but likewise no sign that the dark shadow of death had passed through. None of the ramshackle homes appeared to be lived in, but could that not be said of many homes during any war zone? He had no proof that the boarded up windows or the crumbling walls contained no life, not yet.

His body was suddenly feeling the effects that his walking and the lost hours of sleep had had on him. He was becoming dehydrated in the hot sun and needed water, desperately needed it, would sell his soul to have just a few drops of cool liquid pass his lips.

The last few minutes had brought to him one of the memories he had longed for since his awakening. The one that showed him where he should be heading. Home.

The image was there but unclear. It was just the outside of a house without any distinguishing features, nothing that would make it stand out from the other shells around it. When he found it, though, he would know. If he could make it to his house nothing else would matter.


Rushton Lane was his street. The house could only be minutes from where he stood. Once he began walking it would be no time before he found the house, found the familiar sight of his hallway and sitting room.

And something else that amost brought him to his knees. Someone his mind had forsaken until the moment it had chosen to spring it on him.

Charlie.

When he found his house, would he also find Charlie?

Would he find his wife?