Box Set - Chapter One

I am an island. I am chaos in the stillness of a second. I am shelter in the storm. I am alive, I am dead, I am Easton.

I am lost, that much I know, hopelessly lost and scared beyond comprehension. All I can see is the blur of colour; the memory of pain, the ferocity of the blaring horns, and the rain on my icy cheeks.

But I am slipping. My seventeen years are all together, spinning, wild and sickening.

My fourth birthday, the candles on a race-car cake.

My first kiss, played again and again: a sofa, a nervous hand, a girl I try to forget.

The wedding dress of my mother, spinning and spinning and spinning, a wooden dance floor and shiny shoes.

These memories are mine, but they are so far away, like grains of sand in my fingers on happy days at Weymouth beach.

I try to close my eyes but they don’t obey me. My body is not my own, it’s stuck fast in a river of cement. Every thought, every sight, every book, every film, every snippet of mindless speech that escaped my lips is my here and now. This is how I know I am dead.

The crushing silence of my never-lived days stretches out in a line before me. The shadows that never were reach back to me, dragging me towards them. I soar through them, seeing everything and nothing. Children, loves, losses and life I do not recognize, lost on the road beneath me feet.

My feet on solid ground. I am there and then gone, swept away with the tide. Dashed against the rocks of my life, never to be found again. Drowning in everything that is me and never to be saved.

It is a drumbeat, a million miles ago that stops me in my tracks. I hear it and I am still, I am calm. The comfort is like falling on a cloud, on a quilt of the softest feathers, and my chaos screams to a stop.

The darkness sings me to sleep.

When I wake I’m on a road I don’t know the name of. The twisted wreck of my Triumph.

My legs are my own and I use them, like I’m a child again. Like these are my first steps in a body made just for me.

One –

Then the other –

They move in front of me and I gaze from high above, like I’m staring at my reflection in the hall of mirrors that visits Hyde Park every year at Christmas.

 I raise an impossibly long hand to my neck and feel the moisture on my fingertips. The rain that still falls, blustering and blowing. The flashing lights, the yellow jackets. The sights and sounds of the place of my death. But I smile, tears in my eyes knowing I can feel the rain on my skin. And every moment of rain I have experienced floods to me, falling on me like they’re raindrops themselves.  

I remember the song on the old radio as we crashed; the cassette that took me months to complete.

Is that it? Underneath the layers of noise? Our favourite song to drive to?

What had been next? It had been a surprise.

And that is the second. The moment when I wish I could die all over again. I’ve killed her. Penny. My hand on the wheel, her life in my hands. I’ve taken her with me.

But she is not beside me anymore. I have abandoned the earth and her absence scares me more than anything else.

I feel my mind drifting again, and it makes me feel drunk, so drunk that my vision swims and I almost collapse to floor. If she’s dead too then I have to find her.

I start running, moving my leaden legs, one after the other to find the site of the car crash. The way is clear in front of me and I am oblivious to whether or not they can see me. The policemen, the firemen and the paramedics, crawling over the wreckage of the Triumph Spitfire that Mum thought was a Ford.

My little slice of freedom, the car I loved, now a twisted wreck beside a delivery van. I remember it too clearly for it to be real. It’s like I’m watching a video of the crash, over and over again. The screech, the swerve, the scream.

 Because he’d lost control, the simplest of things, a burst tyre; the slick surface of the road taking them into a spin which would collide with my paper-like car and end our lives.

 ‘I’m here!’ I yell, the rain stinging my lips.

 Maybe I’m not dead at all. Maybe I’ve just been thrown from the car.

 I run up to the nearest paramedic, hard at work trying to reach inside the delivery van. I can still hear the screams inside.

 Stomach churning, I reach out to him. Reach out and touch his shoulder, the high-visibility material slick to the tips of my fingers.

 I’ve never seen someone jump so much. He nearly hits his head on the jutting, mangled doorframe.

 ‘What the…?’ His lips move for him and he shivers, whipping his head around. His eyes remain confused, searching for the person who touched him. I am the window he stares right through.

 ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ he says, and turns back to his work. ‘We’re going to get you out of there ma’am!’ He calls, the wind howling; seeking attention.

 ‘Is Rory alright?’ she cries.

 ‘He’s – he’s just fine Jane,’ he cries, hesitating a moment, shaking off his involuntary shudder, eyes flickering to the right. ‘Let’s concentrate on the door…’

  But I’m moving away, following his eyes. I am dead. I touched him and I caused such unexpected discomfort just by crossing the invisible barrier between the fighters below, and those who had already failed.

  He was looking at the body-bags.

  Three black, sodden body-bags, and one is being zipped up.

  A familiar nose draws me like a magnet. Long and pointed, protruding above the zip. I stare at my own face. Hazel eyes closed, lips already turning blue in the cold. The most surreal moment of my life, closing behind the teeth of a zip.

  But the two other bodybags. The one next to mine. The other, several feet away. Corpses close enough to hold hands.

  Penny.

  I want to open it to make sure, my hands grasp the stretcher in front of me. It shakes, and moves across the tarmac. I may be a ghost, but my experience with the paramedic taught me that I can still interact.

  ‘Grab it!’ comes a call and there are paramedics taking her away. I see the curve of her body underneath the black polythene. I follow it and grab the rail, not thinking. It jerks to a halt.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell it’s stuck,’ says one. ‘Chris was supposed to clear all rubble away wasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh you know what he’s like, if I…’

  But I’m yanking it back again. ‘You’re not taking her,’ I shout. I’m beside myself. This is all I have left of her. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, what do I do with myself full stop. I’m a spirit, a bubble stuck in the endless whirlpool, avoiding the dark of the plughole.

  ‘Bloody wind!’ says the first one again, and all of them pull together. I’m no match for them.

  ‘No!’ I call, but they are deaf to my pleas.

  I fall over as it’s dragged out of my hands. The tears come in waterfalls to join my saturated cheeks. Great, embarrassing sobs rise from my throat as I watch them push her body into the back of the ambulance. In all my years, few that they were on the earth, I have never felt so alone. Denied a touch, denied love, denied everything else.

  ‘Penny!’ I cry, scrambling to my feet, casting about for the shape of her on the side of the road. A shock of short, raven-dark hair, beacon-like green eyes calling to me across the river of the road. But there is no one. There is the line of cars behind the police tape. Headlights blind me, casting no shadow at my feet.

  What if I’m the only one?

  What if everyone else moved on to somewhere better and I’m stuck here? Given the curse of being able to touch but only cause discomfort.

I look at my hands and think of all the times I’d just been sitting, and without warning shuddered. Had some ghostly presence been trying to communicate? Nana maybe? She was gone but maybe she was trying to make contact.

Even now it sounds farfetched. And why stay?

The answer glares at me like a neon sign.

To stay with the people you love.

I realise this is a gift as well as a curse. If this is what happens when we die then they’re all out there somewhere. Everyone who ever lived and loved.

‘Where are you then?’ I feel the unexpected anger rising in my voice. An eternity of the dead and not a single person is here to help me. Console me in my moment of passing.

‘Is it just me out here? Because I’m not having that! All the bad people in the world and I’m the one who gets this?’

I’m still crying. The crippling loneliness had got to me. It felt heavy, like a crushing weight. The total absence of anyone else I can talk to.           

‘Gets what?’

I flinch and let out an embarrassing yelp. I'm really not ready for surprises yet.       

It’s a smartly dressed old man, short and bald, with a ring of silvery white hair. He looks like Friar Tuck, or my granddad. Except, I’m safe in the knowledge that it isn’t my granddad because my granddad wasn't black. I always like how the older gentlemen tend to walk around in a shirt, tie and a jumper as casual attire.

'Are you ok, son?' asks the man.

I don’t know what it is about his voice, soft and soothing, lightly American with a little bit of something else. His eyes are big and brown and I recognize the spread of warmth in my chest, the relief of the first eyes on me since my death.

I smile.

‘What brought you back?’ he asks, grinning. ‘This is my favourite bit.’

‘W-what’s going on?’ I reply. ‘You can see me? Are you…?’

‘Dead? Yes,’ he says, like he’s saying he had eggs for breakfast. ‘No one with real warmth in their chest, or blood in their veins, the survivors down below can see you anymore.’

I’m crestfallen like I didn’t already know.

‘Don’t look so down, son,’ he says. ‘Come with me.’

He leads me away from the road, leaving the screams of the woman, still trapped in the delivery van behind.

The grassy verge is soft between my fingers as we sit down. He sits with a groan, the image of an old man.

‘The name’s Benjamin,’ he says. ‘Now tell me,’ he goes on, setting down a walking stick with an ivory handle I hadn’t noticed before. ‘Before you say anything. What brought you back?’

‘Back from where?’ I ask.

‘Pick your brain off the floor, boy,’ he snaps and I’m being rapped with the cane.

‘Hey, hey!’ I say, rolling back onto the wet grass.

‘Spirits these days,’ he says with a small smile. ‘Don’t know what they teach you?’ He sighs. ‘The Edge.’ I give him a blank look. ‘The moment you died. You saw your life, every second of your life all at once. Makes me shiver to think of it. I never thought I’d be out of there.

‘The edge?’ I ask. ‘You give it a name?’

‘Course we give it a name,’ he says. ‘Things are scary when they don’t have a name.’

‘I heard a beat, like a drum, and I just saw darkness,’ I reply, feeling warm in remembrance. It obviously shows in my face.

‘Sounds mighty terrifying to me, son,’ he laughs. ‘I’m surprised you’re not still in there.’

‘But It felt so…content,’ I say after a moment, searching for the right word.

There’s a moment of realisation in those wrinkly brown eyes. ‘You know they say we escape the Edge by finding a moment of such happy contentment that we can’t do anything but settle, like we’re a deadly, volatile mixture and a handful of memories are the only things which keep us from going over.’

 ‘What do you think I saw then?’ I ask. ‘I think I’d remember.’

 ‘Of course you don’t remember, not consciously anyway. But some say memories are indestructible, even the ones we don’t realise are there in the first place. When was the first moment you were awake, and so happy, you turned the dark into wonder?’

  I’m starting to feel very stupid, sitting there on the verge. This time, Benjamin doesn’t beat me with his cane, he just looks at me, encouraging me to find the answer myself.

  ‘A memory I’ve never actually had?’ I say the words slowly, considering each one. I feel a small spark of recognition, knowing I’ve found the correct train of thought to board. ‘The only time I’ve had memories I can’t remember, would have been before I was born. So…’

  ‘Your own mother saved you from the Edge,’ Benjamin finishes for me. ‘The moments you were alive in the womb, soothed to sleep by her heartbeat.’

  I sit back for a second, unable to utter a word in this strange new land where I live beyond death and long forgotten memories become real again.

  ‘Can I visit the Edge?’ I ask. ‘If I want?’

  ‘That’s the best thing about this place,’ Benjamin continues. ‘You can visit anywhere you want. Close your eyes tight and think hard enough and you’ll be there. That goes for your memories or anywhere else you can think of.’

  ‘It’s that easy?’ I say. ‘Will it feel the same, being in there I mean?’

  ‘Only if you lose control.’ His eyes help me stay calm. ‘And that’s easier to do than you might think. It’s so easy to dwell on the past. Those moments in life we wish we could change. If you want my advice, I’d let the past stay where it is, and think about the road ahead. Getting lost in the Edge is no way to live, it only helps us travel over.’

   I nod slowly. He says live like we’re still alive. I guess we are in some shape or form. I guess life is a resilient opponent, apparently harder to extinguish than people might think.

   ‘I’m Easton,’ I say, holding out my hand. He shakes it, his palms as touch as leather. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

   ‘No problem, son,’ he says, waving his hand. ‘I always help when I hear people needing it. Not enough of us do these days. I can’t tell you how long I was pacing around the world before I found a man who could see me. Because that’s the thing, close your eyes and you’ll find yourself in Vegas, but time’s still time, straight as a highway.’

   ‘How many of us are there?’

   ‘Oh, too many to count.’ He pauses. ‘Close your eyes.’ I do so. ‘Listen carefully,’ he says. ‘You feel that? A tingle in the tips of your fingers, the warm feeling at the base of your neck. That’s everyone who’s died, existing in this place.’

   I can’t believe it, I can feel everyone. Connected as though by a string around our finger, if I concentrate, I can feel Benjamin next to me, as old as old can be. I can feel people across London, across the world, moving around, walking, quickly blinking out one second and appearing somewhere else. A collective human mind, far beyond the population of planet earth.          

‘Why are we here?’

‘Why are we down there?’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Search me, if I were you, I’d enjoy it, same as I do, see the world, live your new life,’ he says. ‘You can interact, that’s the biggest unwritten rule of this place. You can interact but think about what you’re doing. How would you like it if you were alive in your favourite armchair, cup of coffee one hand, a book in the other and your lamp levitated off the table. I don’t know about you, son, but that’s the sort of nonsense that gives decent folk the heebie jeebies.’

I look at my new friend, my only friend for a second. Sometimes, just rarely, there is the twang of the deep south in his voice, the occasional word which doesn’t fit, or a faint smile of remembrance on his lips like he’s slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes we’d forgotten we owned.

‘Where are you from, Benjamin?’ I ask, feeling very rude.

‘Four hundred years I’ve walked this earth,’ he says. ‘Seen a lot of things, seen wars I couldn’t do a thing about, seen people beaten, hurt, abused, and not been able to touch them or do a thing about it. But I’ve seen more love than I could even begin to describe, millions of happy families who I hope don’t mind they’re sharing a memory with an old fool. Tell you the truth son, being born some place doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, I’ve almost forgotten.’

‘Have you ever tried to find someone you knew when you were alive?’

‘Plenty of times,’ he says. ‘I meet the boys in Alabama once a week for a game of five-card-draw.’

‘How did you find them?’

‘Luck,’ he says. ‘And a familiar scent on the breeze.’

‘So if I wanted to find my girlfriend,’ I say, looking at my shoes. ‘She was in the car with me. How would I go about that?’

‘You know her better than anyone,’ he says, placing his hand on my shoulder. ‘Where do you think she’d go? If you want to find her, you’ll find her.’

I obviously look disappointed.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. You have as long as you want in this place. The thing about people in love is they cross paths again if you’re patient and you wait. Don’t be fretting about why she’s not here. Some people wake up and they run. They don’t look back. Some of them close their eyes and disappear, but they’re out there somewhere.’ There is a twinkle in his eye I haven’t yet seen, as warm and familiar as the first day of summer.

He stands up.

‘Where are you going?’ I ask.

‘I got places to go, people to see,’ he says, tapping his cane on the sodden ground. ‘I can’t spend all day spelling things out for you.’ I stand too, holding out my hand for the old man to shake.

‘Thank you, Benjamin,’ I say. ‘How can I find you again? I don’t suppose you have a phone?’

He laughs. ‘Goddamn things, I remember a time when you put some thought into the things you wrote. Folk talked more when we sent letters.’ He considers. ‘Central park, every Friday at noon,’ he says. ‘By the lake in the middle. Come visit in the autumn, it’ll blow you away.’ He pauses. ‘Nice meeting you, son,’ he says, like he truly means it. ‘Now make me a promise and keep it.’

I nod, it’s the least I can do for the old man.

‘Go have an adventure.’

He blinks and he’s gone, like he was never there in front of me.