Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 18

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.