15
Toby felt so happy to have seen his Grandma one last time, but seeing his Mum and Dad arguing like that had bothered him. A lot. Right there, before Christmas dinner! If he hadn't knocked on the window, warned them that his younger self had nearly reached the house, things may have been awful that Christmas.
It was as though they didn't care. That their silly little arguments were more important than anything else. A time of good cheer and goodwill. That was how people described Christmas and it was nothing like that at all. The old man had shown him that Christmas was like any other time of the year. Horrible.
"I want to go home." He didn't even bother to watch the world change around him. Instead, he looked at his hands. "This hasn't been fun at all and I don't think I've learned what you wanted me to."
"You think this was meant to be fun?" Once again, the old man stopped their flight. Toby didn't recognise the area below his feet. He didn't really care. "Perhaps you haven't learnt anything. Perhaps you have learned much. I never wanted you to follow me in the first place."
"If this is a dream, I want it to stop!" He didn't look at the old man. He kept his eyes downcast, staring at his hands, still. "I'm sorry I even met you! You're just the same as everyone else! Telling me things instead of explaining. I'm not stupid!"
"No, you are not. Far from it." Turning in the air, the old man faced Toby, causing the winds to hold Toby at the height of the old man's face. "Soon, your childhood will be over. You will grow and you will change and all the things you think are stupid and boring will become important. If you understand these things now, how much better a person will you become?"
Toby's hands were the last thing to touch his Grandma. He didn't want to forget that and he felt certain that he would as soon as the old man took him home. He didn't know what the old man expected of him. Didn't know what he wanted. Toby only wanted to be a twelve year old kid, enjoying Christmas. He didn't want to grow up yet.
Below, he could see clouds passing by and, below those clouds, there thousands of homes with thousands of children waiting for Christmas morning. They didn't have some weird old man dragging them around, trying to teach them lessons about adult things. It was night. They were asleep, or sat waiting for Santa. He had 'Father Christmas', who wasn't anywhere near as jolly.
"What if I don't want to be a better person?" He knew he sounded sulky, but that's how he felt. He only said it to annoy the old man. "What if I just want to grow up how I grow up and not care about what other people think?"
"What if, indeed." This time, the old man grabbed Toby's sweater, lifting him closer. "What if?"
The old man's face filled Toby's vision. He could see each individual hair of the old man's beard and moustache. The straggly, kinked strands trailing from his face, down to his chest. Toby could smell apples on the old man's breath, could see every pore in the old man's long, hooked nose. What he didn't want to see was the old man's eyes, but he could feel their pull.
He struggled, trying to force the old man to let go, not caring if he did fall to the ground far below. He didn't want to see those eyes, but, bit-by-bit, he found his own eyes rising. Rising until he locked them on the old man's and he saw the universe there. Every world, every star, every dark, empty space. He could see the Earth and the Moon and every Christmas. He could see the days before Christmas even existed. And he saw the long, stretching future.
Even as he stared into the old man's eyes, he realised everything was changing around them, as though the world folded and twisted. Toby could see, and feel, an intense, blinding, boiling hot light that wrapped around them. He tried to close his eyes, but the eyes of the old man held him helpless. Now he wished more than ever that he had stayed in the flat.
"And I've told you before, I'll follow the law, if I must, but there will be no extensions." The voice sounded somewhat familiar, but Toby felt sure he had never heard it before. "Get them out of that house, today, or it's the courts. They had the required notice, it's not my problem if they have nowhere else to live."
Toby blinked several times, trying to make his eyesight normal again. The light had blinded him, sending shooting stars before his eyes and afterimages that he could not catch and make stand still. He heard the clinking of glass and the sound of someone dropping something. On to a table, or a desk, he couldn't tell.
He started to see things. Shadows that had blurred edges. It took a few seconds, but his eyesight returned and he found himself in some kind of office. A posh office, if he were any judge. The old man stood behind him, now, his hands on Toby's shoulders, keeping him facing a certain way. Facing towards a man behind a desk, his legs crossed and a drink in his hand.
On his wrist, Toby could see a watch that looked very expensive. In fact, everything looked expensive. From the man's suit, to the dark, heavy-looking desk, the high-backed, leather chair. Even the man's hair cut looked expensive, though Toby didn't know how he knew that. He only felt it looked that way.
As though he had better things to do, the man ran a lazy finger over the screen of a phone, sat on the desk, and Toby supposed the man had this minute finished a call. He looked satisfied with himself, as though he had accomplished something great, but it sounded to Toby that the man had kicked someone out of their home. He hoped that wasn't true.
"Do you recognise him?" The old man moved Toby closer to the desk. "Familiar at all?"
Toby leaned forward, the old man's hands giving him balance. He squinted as he looked at the man who had such a smug smile on his face, Toby took an instant dislike to him. He didn't know the man, but, and he didn't know why, something did feel familiar about him. Like his voice before Toby could see again. Familiar, but not someone he knew.
"I think he looks a bit like Dad." Something in the size and shape of the man's nose told Toby that. "But I don't know and Dad doesn't have a brother or anything, so he can't be family."
"Can't he?" The old man's hands turned Toby around.
The door to the office had opened and a beautiful woman stalked in. So beautiful, Toby thought she could have had a job as a model, or working in movies. The woman had a bunch of papers in her hand as she headed towards the man at the desk, flicking through several of the sheets before dropping them on the desk before the man.
"I could be at home, getting ready for a party, but, oh no, Tobias here wants to work on Christmas Eve!" The woman picked up a pen from a tray, clicking it and putting it beside the papers. "These are all final purchase contracts for the new housing development. Apart from the top one, which is an eviction order request. The eighth this week. You're on a roll."
Toby almost choked. Tobias was his full name. The name he actually hated. Taking a hold of the old man's dress, he pulled him until they both stood on the other side of the desk, next to the man, and Toby looked down at the man's phone. He hadn't switched it off, but Toby couldn't see the date.
Then he thought of looking at the papers the man signed and he almost fell back into the old man. The date read as twenty years in the future and Toby realised why the man looked so familiar. The old man had taken Toby to his past, now he had taken him to his future. Toby wasn't so certain he wanted to see this at all. He didn't like the idea of seeing what he had become.
"Celia, my darling. What do you say, after I've signed these, that we have our own little Christmas party." The man behind the desk, the older Toby, 'Tobias', leered at the woman, but she only rolled her eyes, tapping her finger on the papers. "Just you and me? Come on, you can't turn me down forever!"
"I can and I will. Think yourself lucky that you've kept your hands to yourself and you pay a lot of money for my wages, otherwise you'd be sued for harassment. Often." Celia gathered up the papers that Tobias had signed and gave Tobias a stern look. "I appreciate the job, and that you don't treat me as badly as every other woman you come into contact with, but this is a job. Nothing more. Now, if your right royal pain-in-the-backsideness has finished, I'm going home. Merry Christmas."
Tobias smirked as Celia turned away, stealing a look at her body as she headed towards the doors. He turned the pen in his fingers several times before clicking it and dropping it back into the tray. For several moments, Tobias sat in his luxurious chair, doing nothing, saying nothing. Then he swivelled to the side and it seemed as though he looked directly at Toby.
"I know you're here." Tobias pointed towards Toby's face and laughed. "Don't forget, this is your future. You are my past. I've been waiting for this day for years. Ah! There you are!"
Toby realised that the old man's hands had moved from his shoulder. He glanced around to see the old man standing at the other side of the office, far enough away that the magic that concealed the old man no longer affected Toby. Tobias, his older self, could see him.