Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 31

                He jumps on my words like they’re an insult, but I meant nothing by them.

                ‘You’re sitting by the fire and your house is intruded by some stray and out of the kindness of your heart, you make him tea, and then, lickety split, he wants to move on. Well thank you very much!’

                The bubble of irritation rises in my throat like bile, burning my insides and turning them black.

                ‘I didn’t mean to intrude,’ I snap. ‘I don’t know how to control myself. I only died a couple of hours ago and after seeing my parents and my girlfriend’s parents distraught after losing us, I’m a little unsettled. If you don’t want people finding you here, why do you leave all the lights on?’

                ‘Will you stop it with the girlfriend?’ pleads Yates. ‘There were so many people like you at school, and at work. You drove me to it!’

                ‘Drove you to what?’ My fingers prickle as Yates’ temper rises and ebbs to a monotonous drone. It is only then that I notice the red marks around his neck. He follows my eyes and adjusts his collar. ‘Mr Yates,’ I begin, realising my mistake. ‘Let me…’

                ‘No, no, no,’ he repeats and he’s marching towards me. My tea goes flying, hot liquid spilling over the counter. The cup topples, and spins, shattering on the worn tiles on the kitchen floor. He grabs the hood of my hoody and I’m being dragged through the hallway.

                ‘You don’t need to do this,’ I say. ‘I want to stay, I’m sorry!’

                We clip the same pile of books as before and it topples again. The Alchemist catches my eye, that bright red, worn cloth cover spinning and coming to land, pages open on the floor.

                He opens the door in front of me and throws me onto the doorstep.

                ‘The next time a man invites you into his home, don’t insult him,’ he says. ‘I’ve had it with you, I’ve had it with everyone. I just want you all to leave me alone. Travel by closing your eyes and counting to ten. Think of wherever you want to go and you’ll be there, just make it far away from here!’

                His voice rises with every word and ends the sentence on a shout, slamming the green door in my face.

   The cold of the outside world strikes me like a fist and  I wrap my thin clothes around myself.

   He keeps the lights on because he’s desperate for company, he pushes everyone  away because he’s as damaged in death as the world made him in life. My heart goes out to the man who trapped himself. I close my eyes and reach out, but not very far. He still stands on the other side of the door, still like a statue. His outline is masked by the darkness that’s filled his body.

                 I store the feeling of the haystack field and the castle of books in my mind. I remember the smell of the hay and the moistness of the air; the scent of books and the crackle of fire.

                 I count to ten, knowing where to go next.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 30

            ‘So it never fades away?’ I’m scared before I can help it. The fear of that terrible place looming over me for the rest of my death.

            ‘Unless you find something that calms you,’ says Yates.

            He’s making the tea now. Two mugs lined up on the counter. He milks first and I’m a little disconcerted for a second.

            ‘How do you get all these books?’ I ask as he passes me a steaming mug.

            The porcelain is hot to touch and I have to set it down. He still walks around like I’m a chore to be here.

            ‘Here and there,’ he says. ‘I find it easy to travel to one place. The town where I was born. I can see it so clearly in my head I can go there as much as I want.’ He stirs his own tea in a disillusioned sort of manner. Staring into the swirling liquid.

            ‘If I could find Penny,’ I say. ‘I think that’d calm me.’

            ‘Some of us aren’t that lucky,’ he snaps. I see a teenager in him. He layers the words with scorn.

            ‘Sorry,’ I say.

            ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replies.

            ‘Have you ever found any of your loved ones?’

            ‘I tried,’ he remarks. ‘Not that they’d care, or if there’s a lot of them.’

            He’s growing sadder by the second and I wonder if it’s wise to shut yourself away from the world like this. On the surface, living in a warm, lit house in the middle of nowhere with mountains of books sounds like a form of heaven. Maybe the reality is quite different.

            ‘Who’s your favourite author?’ I ask, trying to change the subject.

            ‘Oh you probably haven’t heard of him.’ He says it quickly like it’s a big secret.

            ‘Try me,’ I say moving closer, sitting down at the stool by the counter. I take a sip of tea. The warmth is the same, the spread of hot liquid from my mouth down my throat and into my chest. I feel alive.

            ‘Well,’ he starts. ‘He’s written a few. He used to be around in the eighteen-hundreds, Thacker’s his name.’

            ‘Oh, The Alchemist!’ I interrupt.

            His face darkens. ‘Yes, that’s one.’

            He goes quiet again. I don’t understand why, it’s like every time I try and find some sort of affinity with him, he puts up a barrier.

            ‘Would you mind showing me how to travel?’ I ask, trying to get something from him.

            ‘Oh that’s charming!’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 29

                The man has cheered up considerably since I invaded his quiet bookish death, but that wasn’t exactly difficult. His offer of tea seems to be on behalf of politeness rather than a genuine offer of kindness.

                Quickly, we stacked his books back in their pile and he took me through to a modest little kitchen.

                ‘So you just decided to live here?’

                ‘No one else was,’ he answers. ‘The name’s Yates by the way.’

                ‘Easton,’ I reply.

                ‘Strange name,’ he says, ‘means east settlement or island of stones depending on your preference of language.’

                ‘I think my parents just liked the sound of it.’

                He doesn’t reply, just turns back to fill the old fashioned, whistling kettle. I’m desperate to know more about this new world, and most importantly control myself, but the man intrigues me. I don’t know why anyone would want to segregate themselves so totally.

                ‘You’re wondering why I’m here aren’t you,’ he says. He’s perceptive, I can see that much. ‘I can see that it would look strange. The world at my fingertips and I become a hermit.’

                He turns around. He looks uncomfortable, like I’ve intruded on some private ritual, but he still talks to me. As much as he doesn’t seem to want to talk to me, he’s still talking, and making an unfamiliar ghost a cup of tea. Maybe he’s glad of the fleeting company.

                ‘I’m sorry for intruding,’ I say. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I got here. One second I was thinking how I can find my girlfriend when she could be anywhere…’

                ‘Ah,’ he interrupts, holding up his finger. ‘Rule number one of ghosting, never live near a haystack, or indeed a stack of needles. People have a rather annoying propensity to think in cliché.’

                The kettle’s whistling. I guess that it must be the noise and light in the abandoned place that keeps people away. A ghostly, deserted light on a moor would discourage many a cold, lost traveller. Though it may attract some.

                ‘Doesn’t anyone ever find you?’

                ‘A few,’ he says. ‘I don’t think you quite understand how far in the middle of nowhere you’ve found yourself. It makes the most wonderful place for reading.’  He smiles. It lifts his face and the years melt from him. ‘Reading calms me,’ he says. ‘Stays me from that awful desolation of memories that grips me whenever I try to travel beyond this moor.’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 28

                The book is as worn as mine, but an older edition. Mine's a cheap paperback that somehow ended up at a comic book shop. I often wonder how many lives a second hand book touches. I hope mum and dad will sell  on my modest collection, I’d like to see them in good homes.

                I’m not worried as footsteps approach. How many people have stared right through me today? Whoever owns the house will just assume that one of his piles of books has given up, and then maybe invest in some more shelves.

                The man who comes around the corner looks like he should be a dad, though the quiet house around me hints that he’s alone. His hair is receding and he walks with the gait of someone who’s spent his life growing out of trousers and turning down hems. Glasses hang from a string around his neck and his eyes are tawny like an old, watchful owl.

                I look at him, still on the floor and he looks right back at me.

                Through me, I think. I’m invisible to him.

                ‘Are you going to just sit there?’ he says. A strand of grey hair falls out of his carefully backcombed do and he pushes it back with his glasses. ‘They were carefully organised, I’ll have you know.’

                I scramble backwards, picking up books apologetically. ‘I’m-I’m sorry,’ I stutter. ‘You can see me?’

                ‘Of course I can see you, I’m dead aren’t I?’ he snaps. ‘I’d ask you knock before you enter a man’s house.’

                ‘Is this real?’ I say. ‘I didn’t think ghosts lived in houses.’

                ‘Of course it’s real,’ he says. ‘Haven’t you heard of haunting before?’

                I look back at him. The owl in his nest of books. Stories of hauntings come with terror, and chills up your spine. This ghost has a fire roaring in the grate. Although, a fire roaring in a deserted house would give anyone an uncanny sense of the ghostly.

                ‘Why do you have so many books? Was this your house?’

                ‘Because I'm an enthusiast.' He talks like a teacher, one who thinks his subject should be obvious. 'And no, I found it,’ he says. Then after a pause: ‘You’re new to all this aren’t you.’

                I nod. ‘It’s been a strange day for me.’

                ‘Welcome to the afterlife,’ he states simply, waving his hand in a slightly tired fashion. ‘Cup of tea?'

                ‘We can still drink tea?’

                ‘You can drink whatever you like, it does you no good or bad, you simply enjoy the memory of the darjeeling that once was.’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 27

                The smell that reaches me as I pass through the door is unmistakable. How many of mine and Penny’s dates been surrounded by that smell? Countless wonderful days in secret shops down secret streets, and between high walnut shelves of secret words.

                Bookshops and libraries and cafes, places where you could sit and read forever. I started reading so much more when I met Penny. Science was my passion, reading became my pleasure.

                This house smells like every one of those days rolled into one. It’s like the aroma of the best baking, leaking from the kitchen to the taste buds and watering mouths.

                The sight that greets my eyes is an old friend. A warm and beloved acquaintance despite my never seeing them before. Books line every surface, every wall on shelves and stacked up in tall, tottering piles that look like they’re held up by some powerful force. My scientific mind refuses to think the word ‘magic’.

                The lights are yellow and slightly dim, and the warmth that encompasses me emanates from the roaring fire in the grate in the hallway. As I look down it, I see that it is slightly crooked, though that might be on account of the towers of books, great and small.

                I can’t help but run my hand along the spines of some fantastically ancient tomes that look like they’d be too heavy for me to lift. I’m mesmerised by the beauty of the place and can only wish that Penny were here to see it with me. I know this is what our house would have looked like.

                The rug that runs down the centre of the hall is old and threadbare, covered in a fading, intricately beautiful design. I vaguely make out a dragon, chasing a spurt of flame, and some fairies dancing around a fountain.

                This is truly a strange and wonderful place.

                I venture into the house a little deeper, wondering what else may lie within. Absent-mindedly, my shoulder scrapes along a pile of books. I experience the moment of slowed down panic I always felt whenever I knocked over a glass. I see the books start to fall, but I’m powerless to stop them. I cry out a little and can only watch as they fall onto me, knocking me backwards and crash onto the floor, toppling me, then another, shorter pile and coming to rest.

                ‘Who goes there!’ comes a voice from the next room.

                I sit, frozen to the floor with books between my legs, a familiar red clothbound cover catches my eye. The Alchemist by Robin Thacker.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 26

            They’re arranged in a square. Two above and two below. It takes me a moment to realise that I’m walking towards a house.

            The grass rustles as my feet part the blades. I try to work out where I am based on the stars. I think of my telescope, at home in my bedroom in the loft. Its eyepiece eternally trained at the night’s sky.

            I know the stars of the northern hemisphere like they’re junctions in my hometown. They are the same stars as the ones I look at every night, staring intently like they might give me a message, blink out, or whisper some secret.

            So I’ve narrowed myself down to a hemisphere.

            Before long, ankles sodden and scraping uncomfortably, I come upon a gate in a hedge that comes up to my waist. I close my hand around the latch and lift it up with a squeak. I imagine myself looking at the gate from the house. Seeing the latch lift as though by its own volition. The gate swinging inwards and then closed again.

            I know I can walk through the gate, but I feel like I should be sparing with the abilities I have gained. I want to feel human. I like feeling connected to the world. If I don’t, I fear I may fly away, and I’m not ready.

            Do I ever want to? Will I ever listen to that voice in my head? Right now the thought terrifies me to the point of sickness, and to me that’s very human.

I walk up the path to the front door, the gravel crunching beneath my feet.

I look down and skirt to the side again. I think of being inside. Maybe a child watching TV and hearing the gravel crunch on the driveway. I’d get up and stare into the darkness, a million pictures of monsters squirming out of the gloom. I’d see nothing and that would scare me even more.

I have to know where I am. I know I have the ability to transport myself, and I will, but I have to know where I am first. I feel detaching myself without knowledge of where to travel back to if things go wrong again is like taunting the voice in my head. Daring it to take hold of my fragile form.

The front door is green, made of vertical slats with a small handle like a farmhouse. I take a breath and plunge into its surface.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 25

All I can think, as I bring myself to my feet, is that I’m grateful the rain has stopped. 

I look up, then down and watch as the world focuses itself. The canopy of stars above my head is beyond beautiful. A vaulted sky high above me.

            I love those nights when you feel like you can see every single star in the universe. Just layer upon layer: big, small, and infinitely far away. I feel like I’m looking at a wall painted like a chalkboard. The stars are flecks of paint, spattered from an overloaded paintbrush.

            Is that how small we are? Is our sun, the ball of fire that gives us life, just a paint-spot on the canvas of the milky-way in the deserted gallery that is the universe?

            The light from the stars above, complementing the thin crescent moon illuminates the land around me. I can scarcely believe my eyes as I see I’ve moved.

            I’m in a field of haystacks. I feel a slight tingling in my fingers. I realise I feel the same when I walk through walls, when I sense the dead all around me, when I’m at one with the universe.

            The grass is long beneath my feet. Long enough to wet the hems of my trousers. As I begin to move, the heavy damp material rubs against my ankles.

            The field is large and looks like it goes on forever in the darkness.

            Why here of all places? I could have taken myself to New York, Rome,  to Barbados or a desert island with en eternity to live in comfort, but I come here, to a damp nowhere.

            It scares me that I have no control over my abilities. That I slip in and out of memories and apparent space whenever I please. I’m a floating mass of nothing caught of the breeze.

            And still I don’t know where Penny is. A quiet voice thinks she might have seen her parents and run, if she’d ever been there at all. If she’d ever made it out of the Edge.

            I shudder at the possibility. Surely she would have saved herself. Penny had been so close to her mum. If I still held that connection to my mother after I died and pulled myself out of the memories, then I’m certain Penny must have.

            I need a plan. I need to work out where I can go and how, and then I need to think where in the world she’s gone.

            Turning on the spot, my eyes find a beacon of light in the distance. Four pinpricks illuminating an area of darkness. 

Box Set - Chapter Three

I can feel the point in the distance; like a lighthouse reaching out of the mist.

I see the world in a different way. When I closed my eyes when I was alive, I remember the soothing darkness. The simple closing myself off from the world that would soothe a headache, help me focus or coax forward the quiet of sleep.

I remember the echoes that light would leave. Spots of colour that I could never pinpoint. Flashes of fractured light that would pulse and then fade. Now though, the world appears as a single continuous immeasurable feeling, neither sight nor touch, but something tantalising and in between.

I focus on the feeling and the ground beneath me feels like it moves. The more I feel it, the faster I travel forward. The world widens before me, away from the road I stand beside, away from London, the UK, Europe and the earth.

The Sun, millions and millions of miles away, is a brighter beacon than I have ever seen, and still my mind expands, rushing and rushing towards the twinkling desolation of infinite stars… systems… galaxies…

I can feel the turn of the earth…

I’m nauseous and unsteady all at once. There it is again. The edge of this plain, everywhere and nowhere. The unknown is all around me. They are sensations that I am not quite ready to experience and with that, my eyes snap open.

I can feel Penny’s home calling to me. Maybe if I concentrate, and let the lighthouse see me, I will be there in an instant, like Benjamin said. It is fear keeping me rooted to the spot.

Slowly, I turn away from the road and decide to walk.

I have spent my whole life living in the pages of science fiction and the subject which saw sense in the world, knowing how fast the planet speeds around the sun, and the solar system through the galaxy. I have loved the world of superheroes, of the Iron Captain, The Bullet, Diviner, Titan, and all the others I love.

I love them because they are mighty, brave and powerful, but have the repeated experience of the real world humbling their alter egos. The mild-mannered men and women who found life hard despite their obvious superiority over everyone else.

Now, I feel like I have a power, but it is too much, and I ache for the return to my human body.

I want to see my parents too and I’m torn between who I should visit first. Seeing my parents upset will only upset me, but there is no way to avoid it. But they might not know about the accident yet.

I feel the change in my stance as I realise that I can see them happy, just for a little while.

I break into a run, past the standstill traffic. None of them know what’s happened. I wonder who the driver of the van was. There were three body bags. Me, Penny and the driver. And there was nowhere to place fault. A van had blown its tyre at high speed. It swerved, we collided, we died. There was only one survivor from the crash and it was the screaming woman. I can’t imagine being her. The lucky one.

Is that ever lucky? Surely she’d feel the imprints left by the dead until the end of her days. Not to believe in the presence of people hanging over them forever, but a memory every now and again. When she least expected it, over breakfast, or stressed at work, she’d close her eyes and see the van, spinning out of control, the road a blur before her. I know I’d feel a cold fist around my heart every time I thought of it.

My house isn’t far away. As I enter the high street, slowing to a jog as I run out of breath, I see the afternoon shoppers, ducking in and out, umbrellas blustering above them.

I think of Benjamin, looking as solid as any living person before me and I wonder – how would I ever know anyone is dead? I can walk down the street and see everyone and any person I pick could be a spirit, but they could easily be alive. I could reach out to touch them and bring a moment of discomfort.

I’m reminded of parties at school. House parties I was invited to by association, before I even met Penny that day by the smoking hut. I would feel lonely in a roomful of people. Penny was the one person who saw me when she looked at me. She wasn’t my friend and then my girlfriend because I helped her with schoolwork, or because she could hide behind my good behaviour to gain favour for themselves. She was my person.
                I realise that I’m starting to think of her in the past tense. I don’t want to. I feel alive. I still have sensation in my fingers and toes. I can pinch myself and I don’t wake in my bed. I have thoughts and feelings and dreams and desires. If that isn’t still alive, then I don’t know what is.

My house is close to town so it doesn’t take me long to get home. I’ve walked this street so many times. With its neatly arranged, identical semis with the trees arranged either side.

I walk down the middle of the road. I don’t see a point walking on the pavement. I can’t die again.

My restraint breaks and I start to a run again, the parked cars, trees and houses whipping past like paintings smudged by a clumsy hand. I live at the other end of the street.

Number forty-seven looms up at me like a castle. Exactly the same as every other house on the street, with a matching green door and gable and a perfectly kept hanging basket over the porch. I feel afraid to walk in. And how do I get it? I didn’t exactly get to keep my keys when I passed over to the other side.

I cross the driveway, tentative as though someone will jump out at me any second and catch me being naughty.

I place my hand up against the door. I know I can even ring the doorbell, but I know Dad will moan about the annoying kids down the road when it’s just his son trying to make contact. The green paint is smooth, solid. I’ve seen so many films about ghosts. There’s the most amazing graphic novel called Spirit, which I must have read a thousand times. I know the realities of ghosts now. There are no demons to fight, no other realms and universes to cross to.

I try to avoid thinking about the edge.

But in Spirit, like almost every other story about ghosts I’ve ever read, ghosts can walk through walls. I close my eyes and concentrate. I notice the feeling of detachment from the living plain. But instead of fear, I try to embrace the feeling.

I know the wood of the door is a perplexing concoction of atoms, with an electrical signal holding it all together.

As I touch it, I feel the signal. The vibration, like a continuous static shock, courses through the wood, through my fingers. The atoms are uncountable, tiny, but I can see them. It’s like the surface of a planet built like a honeycomb shell.

I choose a gap, one of many trillion and I push, trying to make it wider. The atoms don’t move, so the forces compress me as I push forward with my hand. I don’t want to stop, my hand is inside the door, a part of the door, so I step forward, pressing myself between atoms, becoming a signal myself until the sensation of static leaves me. I am whole again.

I open my eyes and I’m in my hallway; the feeling of soft carpet beneath my trainers.

 ‘Make me a cuppa, Jude,’ calls my mum down the hallway.

             Dad strolls into the hall. In his slippers and his dressing gown. He’s having a day off. Skiving, just like I was when I suggested taking the Spitfire out for a spin. We were supposed to be in class. Me in Physics, Penny in Lit.

But the freedom of the open road had been too tempting to ignore. Neither of us had skipped school or college before. That day, I’d woken up with the idea in my head. The Spitfire was ready. A year of tinkering in my best friend Tom’s garage had paid off. She had been gleaming, green and showroom clean.

Dad’s Triumph Spitfire is a cup of tea and slippers in front of the sports channels. His love is his wife. I see him turn to the kitchen and then Mum emerge from the living room. Smiling with a glint of mischief in the eyes we share. She attacks from behind tickling him on the sides in the place she’d shown me he was vulnerable when I was little. We’d spent good long whiles pinning my dad to the floor in fits of teary laughter.

Then they turn and kiss. I’m gripped by a moment of natural repulsion to see my parents display passion. But I force myself to open my eyes and see them happy.

‘Where did that come from?’ Dad asks.

‘It’s just nice to have you home.’ And she hugs him.

 I recall weeks of arguments all including the same headline. You’re working too much Jude. Only to be met with. I have to Faye, living’s expensive…Don’t you think I know that?…The list goes on in my head. Like a film I’ve watched too many times I can quote every line.

‘Now,’ she says. ‘Water, teabag, splash of milk, four sugars.’

‘Careful, that might all go to your hips,’ my Dad replies. Darting out of the way of the flying hand aimed at his side.

‘Old bastard,’ she taunts.

‘Sexy cow,’ he says, aiming his own hand at her backside.

He clips her as she walks back into the living room, smiling a secret smile never seen by anyone else.

I feel uncomfortable and happy at the same time. Sharing a moment never shared.

I walk into the living room, and sit. I will spend as much time as I can with them. Sitting in the comfy armchair I’d always claimed as my own. My homework chair, across from Mum and Dad on the sofa.

               I am home, and it is enough to make me feel alive.

           I don’t know how long I have until the police call to inform my parents I’ve died. I don’t want to be around to watch. The reality of seeing my parents upset and not being able to do a thing to comfort them and tell them that their son has lived on in some way, would be too much to bear.

So I sit with them. Watch them watch films they’ve seen a thousand times. They watch the film they saw on their first date nearly twenty years ago. It just appears on TV and their day is brightened. They sit and chat, my mum’s blonde hair falling over my dad’s dressing gowned lap. It is a happy moment and I understand what Benjamin was talking about. I know now that I would never mind a single spirit sharing any one of my happy moments.

In this new place, where simple existence and standing up straight can be scary, it’s important to stop and remember what it was like to be human.

Because it’s tempting to visit all my favourite memories, to see me at my happiest. But that’s the easy way out. I have a new world to explore, with people I’ve loved and lost. My grandparents are here somewhere. Out in the world, hand in hand. And Penny is too, and I know she’s the same as me. If I would go and see my parents first of all, then that’s where I’ll find her.

I stand up just as the phone starts ringing. The landline in the hall we never use anymore. Mum stands and walks past me, straightening her top. I know who’s on the other end of the phone.

I follow her and watch her pick it up. I can’t listen, I can’t, I can’t.

‘Hello,’ she says, still laughing at a joke Dad just told.

The voice on the other end is indistinct, but his tone, official and calm, tells me enough.

I watch her face fall. I have to comfort her, I have to. I raise my hand, three inches from her shoulder. But I know the discomfort I will give her.

‘Jude!’ she almost screams.

I panic. I retract my hand as she runs back to the living room. I run in the opposite direction. I plough headlong towards the door and pass through it without even meaning to.

            I hear her before I leave; the cry of unexplainable sadness that escapes her. It stays with me. I know it will always stay with me. 

            The rain that has been falling steadily all afternoon has retreated to a steady mist of drizzle that sprays my cheeks.

How can I feel? The rain clearly falls on me, but I leave no footprints on the wet ground. There’s no water collecting at my feet. I clearly exist in some form, but I defy every law of physics I take for granted.
I scream , infuriated to have upset my parents. I am powerless. What is the point of living on? Is this punishment? Have I done something to deserve this?
The ground beneath me caves in. Splintering out from the point beneath my feet as though a single stone has been holding the world together. Screaming still, I fall through utter blackness, spinning past flashes of light.
Memories, good and bad, exciting and pointless reach out to grab me, to settle me somewhere stable, but I slip through their fingers like a fish caught out of the water.
I try to concentrate on my memory from before. But all I can hear my heart beat thumping in my ears, faster and faster by the second, drowning out any hope of remembering my mother’s. Her cry follows me down, feeding the Edge. But this isn’t the Edge. The chaos is receding, this is something more…
‘Take me back!’ I yell into the darkness. ‘Back!’
I feel the darkness closing in, as my panic  intensifies.
I make no sense, I make no sense, I make no sense.
It closes in with tangible shadows, darker even than the blackness that surrounds me. The flashes are blocked one by one.
I try to close my eyes to ignore the darkness. Creating a place that is mine, the only place I have left. But my eyelids refuse to close, tempted by the shadows. I wonder what it would be like to fall forever… says a voice in my head.
Frightened by the very prospect I tense myself with all my might and my eyes snaps shut.
The pavement feels wet, gritty and glorious beneath my hands. I get up, shaking. I have to control my emotions. As difficult as it is, every moment of panic or despair feeds whatever lies in the gaping maw which taunts me in the Edge and beyond.
I don’t want to believe in that either but I have no choice. All that lies there is emptiness. Because I feel that’s what lies in the darkness. It scares me that part of my mind, buried in my unconscious or deeper, wants to take me down there.
The fear of that is all the fuel I need to carry on.

Penny’s house isn’t too far from mine, so I set off at a jog to keep myself warm. I know desperation can make people do a lot of things which are out of character. I did an out of character thing this morning and ended up dead.
But I have to avoid the Edge at all costs. It brings the kind of danger I’m not accustomed to and I don’t want to know it any better. If I was to guess, trying to keep as much science as I possibly can to calm my questioning mind, I would say that though I’ve left my body, my mind, or consciousness has remained intact. A mind isn’t a tangible thing hence my invisibility.
I am clearly dead, considering I’ve seen my bloodied body, but it appears as though there is life after death. My continued interaction with the physical world is still a mystery to me. As a mind though, I am clearly prone to slipping into other areas.
I’m still scared to try and transport myself the way Benjamin said I could. The sensation feels so Edge-like, that I’d much rather walk, and experience the pleasure of still being able to.
I reach her house in a few more minutes. I wish I could have an hour in a Library. I could research all the accounts of ghosts, apparitions, poltergeists, spiritual visits and everything in between.
With a start, I realise that I can. I can visit any library in the world after hours and read to my heart’s content. I can do a little bit of haunting.
I want to know how I have come to be this way, but no more than my need to find Penny again.
I arrive at the front of her house. Her red front door is like an open mouth ready to accept me. I imagine the raven hair waiting  for me on the other side. All the things I love about her: the way she wears the same shoes every day despite their falling apart, the towering stack of books she keeps by her bedside in case she fancies something different.
Unable to contain my excitement, I dart towards the door and pass through.

I’ve stood in Penny’s house a thousand times. It opens straight into her living room and it’s deserted. I take in the bookcase, well stocked by her librarian father. The shelf devoted entirely to her chef mother, with cookbooks big, small, old and new. The sofas are well worn and comfortable, the TV small and unimposing. We’ve cuddled, a million times in front of the DVD player tucked underneath it, or just sat with her parents and chatted. I was the son they never had, just like Penny was a daughter to my parents.

I walk through the room, still excited, ignoring my early setback. A small knot of worry tightens in my chest. I haven’t seen her yet, and somewhere in the house, her parents will be in distress. And it’s my fault.

I try to push the thoughts from my head. The accident was no one’s fault, but it feels like I’m the one to blame. She was in my car, skipping school was my idea.

I walk into the kitchen and there’s no one. The tiny utility room looking over the empty garden, the old swingset moving in the breeze, like there’s a ghost even I can’t see swinging back and forth, without a care in the world.

I turn and start up the stairs in the living room; instantly I hear voices. They’re in her room.

I run up the stairs. I almost don’t notice the no sound my otherwise heavy steps don’t make. Her door is right at the top of the stairs, and it’s slightly ajar. I can’t open it, they’ll see and instantly be scared, and I can’t reach out to try and walk through it, I don’t trust myself not to move it physically.

But I can see through the gap. Penny’s mum, Irene, sitting on her purple bedsheets, her dad Frank stands by Penny’s own modest little library. All arranged but still haphazard, the occasional trinket or nick nack wedged in like bookends.

But I can’t see Penny. Then again, I can’t see half the room, she could be just standing behind the door. We could be separated by a single plank of wood.

‘I just can’t believe it, Frank.’ Irene’s face is streaked by tears. ‘I only spoke to her a few hours ago, and now I’ll never see her eyes again. She had the prettiest eyes.’

Tears start falling again and Frank instantly crosses over to her.

‘I know, Irene.’ He’s crying too, and now so am I. I can’t wait any longer. I know they can’t hear me.

‘Penny!’ I whisper, urgently.

            I wait, listening to the sound of my own breathing, growing heavy with anticipation. Penny’s parents have gone silent for a second, and I worry for a second that they’ve heard me.

            I watch them because they’re the only thing I can see through the gap in the door. They hold each other, Irene’s shoulders shake. I watch Frank’s hands going up and down with them, trying to fight back the tears himself,  trying to be strong for his wife.

            ‘Penny?’ I say again. Worry filling my thoughts as I greet the silence.

            She has to be here. She would go visit her parents.

            I was so sure she’d be here.

            Unless she doesn’t want to see me.

            Starting to feel sick, I take a deep breath and dive through the wall, feeling the compression and unclenching as I emerge on the other side.

            The room is empty. A pile of clothes on the chair. A desk, overrun with paper and notebooks.

            I lose my breath and stumble backwards. I’ve felt the rug pulled from beneath my feet. I shouldn’t have been sure. I should have given myself other options to calm myself.

            I’m back through the wall in seconds. Down the stairs, through the front door and into the street.

            Where is she?

            The world spins. The impossibly big world with every person who’s alive and every person who’s ever died. The biggest haystack I could have ever considered.

            I collapse to my knees. The world fades to blackness. I hit the ground, my knees squelching into wetness. My eyes don’t focus.
            I don’t know where I am.