Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 40

            ‘Let me show you,’ I continue. ‘You’re not alone, Yates. I’m sorry for all the things that happened to you…’

            ‘Why are you apologising?’ he asks, shrugging.

            ‘Because someone has to.’

            He goes silent.

            ‘So you slipped into a former version of yourself?’

            ‘It happens sometimes,’ he says. ‘Come inside.’ He waves his hand. ‘You’re letting all the heat out.’

            I follow him over the threshold, closing the door behind me. The feeling of warmth makes me shiver off the cold outside that still clings to me. It’s strange. Occasionally, I see a moment of the middle-aged man in him. He’s a teenage boy and a man all at once, I guess we all are to some extent.

            ‘Now, I’ll make you a cup of tea as long as you promise it will stay in its cup this time.’

            His voice echoes through the hall and I realise he’s already in the kitchen.

            I follow him through and sit back on the stool I sat at less than an hour ago. I look through the small window above the sink and see a line of pink on the horizon.

            ‘Wait, it’s dawn already? It was day when I crashed?’ I only notice now that time has been moving at an accelerated rate ever since I found myself a ghost.

            ‘It’s the travelling,’ says Yates, pouring water into the kettle. ‘I’m reliably told that it’s something to do with the turn of the earth. You leave it and then you re-enter it elsewhere, and elsewhen.’

            I suspect that he was ‘reliably told’ by a book, not a person. But are there books that talk about ghosts? Real ghosts? Not the old horror stories my grandad used to read to me. Although I know now I hold a book about ‘real ghosts’ in my hands.

            ‘I’ve brought you something,’ I say, placing the first book down on the counter. ‘First of all I brought it to show you what you can see out there, but then I found…’

            ‘Is that a first edition?’ he says. ‘Where on earth did you find that?’

            ‘I…erm,’ I start. I realise that Yates, with his somewhat volatile personality, may not appreciate my stealing a first edition book from the museum of his hero. ‘I found it, in a bookstore I go to in London sometimes.’

            ‘I bet it cost a pretty penny.’ He snorts. ‘Liberating isn’t it, stealing books.’ He glances towards his living room which might as well be wallpapered with them. ‘I feel like the world owes me something.’