Solomon Daisy had told me that going through the portal would be like a roller-coaster ride.
He was wrong.
First of all, I had forgotten there would be a step down. When the ground wasn’t where I expected it to be I fell forward, landing hard on my hands and knees. For a long moment I couldn’t breathe. Then at last my lungs remembered what to do and sucked in air. But the air was different. Colder. Damper. With a hint of burnt pine.
My body was fizzing inside and out. I could hear a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It felt less like a bad roller-coaster ride and more like I imagined ‘the bends’, that thing scuba divers get if they come up too fast.
As if the tingling on my skin and the squealing in my ears and the damp in my nose weren’t bad enough, my eyes were glued shut like after a long sleep.
When I managed to prise them open I felt a jolt of panic.
I was blind.
They had sent me into the past naked as a newborn and blind as a bat!
Then I understood. It was dark because I was in a temple with no windows, designed to resemble a cave. As my eyes adjusted, I realised it wasn’t pitch black but dark green, like being deep underwater. Straight ahead I could just make out the statue of a man in a floppy hat sitting on a bull.
It had worked! Solomon Daisy had sent me back to the Temple of Mithras, presumably in the year 260 AD or thereabouts. The tingling in my arms and legs was calming down and the ringing in my ears was beginning to fade.
Feeling dizzy, I got slowly to my feet and turned to find the source of the eerie green light. It was the circular portal, with its filmy bubble skin. In a pitch-black setting it actually gave off a faint light.
Suddenly, the green exploded in a blinding flash as a shape leaped towards me. I jumped back, tripped on a step leading up to the statue and sat down hard.
The green flash faded, leaving me in darkness again. In my ears, a strange moaning noise overlaid the fading bat-squeal.
‘Oh,’ moaned a voice.
Someone had come through the portal after me!
‘Oh!’ came the moan again. And then a voice with a Romanian accent said, ‘Wimpy? Are you here?’
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
‘Dinu?’ My voice came out croaky. ‘Dinu, is that you?’
The only reply was the sound of someone heaving and then being violently sick. A moment later I caught a rancid whiff of vomit.
Now I wanted to be sick too, but I had nothing in my stomach to throw up.
‘Dinu, what are you doing here?’ My voice was still croaky.
The flash of green had temporarily blinded me, but now my eyes were readjusting. Silhouetted against the green portal I saw the shape of a boy on hands and knees.
‘I saw you go through naked, so I did too,’ he said. ‘They tried to stop me but they weren’t fast enough.’ He started laughing and finished up vomiting again.
‘You idiot! You’re not supposed to eat for two days beforehand,’ I said. ‘You could have killed us both. If I hadn’t crawled away you could have materialised inside me and we’d both be dead!’
‘Oh!’ This time it was a whimper.
My anger actually made me feel a little better. Then a thought hit me like a number forty-four bus. ‘Dinu, do you have any fillings in your teeth?’
‘No.’ It came out as a moan. ‘Why?’
‘Because if you’d had anything inorganic in your body, you’d have exploded like a cat in a microwave.’
‘What is inorganic?’
‘It means metal or stone or anything not alive.’
‘Oh!’ he moaned again.
‘Dinu,’ I said, ‘do you even know where we are?’
‘Another dimension? Like TV show Stargate? Maybe another planet?’
‘No. This is a time portal. We’ve gone back in time nearly two thousand years.’
‘To time of cavemen?’
‘No, you idiot! To Roman London.’
‘Oh!’ He retched again.
The stink of vomit filled my head. I tried to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose.
‘Dinu, go back now.’
‘Yeah. I think you right maybe,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel so good. But how?’
‘Can you see a circle of faintly glowing green light?’
There was a pause and then, ‘No.’
‘You can’t see that greenish light?’
‘My eyelids are stuck together.’
‘Open them!’
‘I can’t.’
‘Wait. I’ll guide you.’
I took a step forward and almost slipped in something warm and slimy and wet.
‘Ugh!’ I drew my bare foot back and moved a little to the side.
‘Wimpy, where are you?’ he moaned.
A moment later I grasped his arm. ‘Got you!’ I said.
He replied by vomiting.
‘Ugh!’ I said. Then, ‘Hurry. We have to go back around to the front of the portal. I’ll push you through. You’ve got to go up a bit, like the first step of stairs. Good. But not there. Here. It’s right here. Now go!’
But at the very moment I gave him a shove, the hum stopped and the light faded. Dinu took several stumbling steps forward and bashed into the big statue of Mithras on the bull.
‘Ow!’ he said.
‘Oh no!’ I groaned. ‘I don’t believe it!’
I was stuck in the past with my arch-nemesis for at least another twelve hours.